Editorials

Things I agree with...

Bush the Incompetent (Washington Post)

Incompetence is not one of the seven deadly sins, and it's hardly the worst attribute that can be ascribed to George W. Bush. But it is this president's defining attribute. Historians, looking back at the hash that his administration has made of his war in Iraq, his response to Hurricane Katrina and his Medicare drug plan, will have to grapple with how one president could so cosmically botch so many big things -- particularly when most of them were the president's own initiatives...

...And things I don't:

Warriors and wusses (L.A. Times)

I DON'T SUPPORT our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on.

I'm sure I'd like the troops. They seem gutsy, young and up for anything. If you're wandering into a recruiter's office and signing up for eight years of unknown danger, I want to hang with you in Vegas...

...But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward...

I agree with him in his sympathy of the many who joined up after 9/11 to go after Osama and got sent to fight an Iraqi civil war instead, but hey the least we can do for them is throw them a parade when they come home to thank them (even if I disagree with the war itself) for their courage. Yes, things like adequate medical coverage are the priorities (though I'm sure funding's been cut to that), but I see no hypocrisy in supporting them in celebratory ways (though I share his dislike of hollow bumper-sticker 'support'). I think it's a perfectly reasonable, valid position for one to support the individual soldiers themselves who are just trying to make the best of a bad situation and hate the chickenhawk Commander-in-Chief who has screwed them over.