James Joyner points us to an OpinionJournal article by Bret Stephens which analyzes the statements of several leading Democrats, such as Sidney Blumenthal, Al Gore and Paul Krugman.
According to Sidney Blumenthal, a onetime adviser to president Bill Clinton who now writes a column for Britain's Guardian newspaper, President Bush today runs "what is in effect a gulag," stretching "from prisons in Afghanistan to Iraq, from Guantanamo to secret CIA prisons around the world." Mr. Blumenthal says "there has been nothing like this system since the fall of the Soviet Union."
In another column, Mr. Blumenthal compares the April death toll for American soldiers in Iraq to the Eastern Front in the Second World War. Mr. Bush's "splendid little war," he writes, "has entered a Stalingrad-like phase of urban siege and house-to-house combat."
The factual bases for these claims are, first, that the U.S. holds some 10,000 "enemy combatants" prisoner; and second, that 122 U.S. soldiers were killed in action in April.
To cut to the chase, Bret compares those US figures to the actual figures from the historical events referenced by Blumenthal: In January 1940, the Soviet Union held over three million people in "corrective work camps," awaiting trial or transfer to a work camp, or in the custody of the NKVD; and as for the Stalingrad reference,
German deaths between Jan. 10 and Feb. 2, 1943, numbered 100,000, according to British historian John Keegan. And those were just the final agonizing days of a battle that had raged since the previous August.
Bret states that there are only two possible explanations for the radical, over-the-top, ignore-the-facts statements from these men and other Democrats like them: either President Bush is as bad as these critics say he is, or Sid, Al and Paul and their ilk are insane. He presents a calm, reasonable analysis and conclusion. Please go read the whole thing. I'll wait here for you.
No, go on, go read Bret's article.
Okay, ya done? Good. Because I'm not going to present "a calm, reasonable analysis and conclusion." I'm going to present cold fury.
These anti-Bush extremists are dangerous. Through their lies (N.B.: my definition of a lie includes any time someone tries to get others to believe something that is known to be untrue, even through simple hyperbole), they are seeking to hurt President Bush politically. The downside to this is that our nation takes a hit as "collateral damage" every time they do that.
They spout lies, knowing they are lies, and reduce our nation's prestige in the eyes of the world, hurt our ability to negotiate with other nations, heighten the danger for our servicemembers in their fight against terrorism, and encourage our enemies around the world.
Until now, I have followed a similar path to many others by avoiding the "T-word." Just because someone disagrees with you politically is no reason to question their patriotism, and certainly no justification for calling them traitors. But that doesn't describe what we're talking about here. We're talking about people knowingly taking active steps that harm our country, for their own perceived political benefit.
If you folks feel uncomfortable labeling these liars for their actions, don't worry about it. I'll do it for you. They're traitors. They are causing the deaths of our own servicemembers, American and other countries' civilians in the Middle East, as well as Arabs and Muslims in the region. They're traitors. Plain and simple. It's a shame political realities will prevent them from ever being indicted, tried, convicted and sentenced appropriately for their traitorous actions. The US and the rest of the world would be better off without them.
Ptui.
