Please, righties, read with an open mind:

From Jon Carrol:

An acquaintance of mine, Ted Webster, has thought of a fine bumper
sticker. Goes like this: "If Dean Is Too Liberal Why Don't We All Just
Shoot Ourselves?"

Yes, the dangerous radical who threatens our very way of life is the
last in a long line of zany socialistic Vermont governors. They're
almost Canadian. Leftie Dean cut state income twice and cut the state
sales tax entirely, and increased prison terms for felons.

He is also, of course, opposed to an unprovoked invasion of a foreign
country. He is opposed to lying about the reasons for the attack. This
used to be an honorable opinion. In the past, opposition to war often
came from people who'd served in the previous one. That opinion was
treated seriously, even when it was wrong. Franklin Roosevelt thought
it was necessary to convince the American public that war against the
Germans and Japanese was a good idea. His main opposition came from
conservative Republican senators. Everyone understood why they did not
want to get involved in a European struggle -- the horror that was
World War I was less than 20 years in the past. Vietnam is almost 30
years away; you'd think we might at least entertain the notion that
fighting a war half a world away is a bad idea.

So it used to be OK to hold an opinion different from that held by the
president of the United States. Now doing so leaves you open for
accusations of treason, which is how Howard Dean got to be the
fighting liberal. Swell.

Howard Dean said the United States was rendered "no safer" by the
capture of Saddam Hussein. This is of course true; no one seriously
disputes it. It may be that the capture of Saddam Hussein makes
American soldiers in Iraq safer, although it's too soon to know that.
Let us hope it does; if Iraq turns into a grinding war of attrition,
we'll be chin deep in the Big Muddy with rain predicted.

I'm not sure whether you were watching television when Dean made his
statement. It was like a bomb going off. Commentators could not
believe their ears. The look on their faces was precious. It was all,
"Am I going to lose my job for allowing that on the air?" Those guys
and gals seem to be a little nervous.

So here we all were, rejoicing over the bad dental work and scruffy
appearance of the onetime dictator, and here Dean was raining on our
parade. Typical Vermont behavior -- Calvin Coolidge was no fun at
parties either.

So let's review briefly why the capture of Saddam Hussein does not
make America any safer. On Sept. 11, 2001, there was an unprovoked
attack on American cities. It shortly emerged that this attack was the
work of radical Muslims, what we now call "Jihadists" to differentiate
them from the vast majority of non-radical non-murderous Muslims.

Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a secular nation. Its women were
unveiled; the sexes mingled freely in public places; Shariah was not
the law of the land. Thus and therefore, it is unlikely that Iraq had
anything to do with the Sept. 11 attacks, despite the administration's
attempt to dig up at least one meeting between someone and someone
else somewhere.

It is generally agreed that Osama bin Laden was responsible for those
attacks. Bin Laden is now almost certainly holed up in Pakistan, our
wonderful ally and great good friend. In other words: The guy who
actually attacked us is getting a free ride (and also helping in the
effort to destabilize Afghanistan, our other client state in the
region), while a guy who had nothing to do with attacking us is in
custody.

So what Howard Dean said is not radical or remarkable or innovative. I
mean, he's an interesting guy, and I might even find myself voting for
him, but he's not Roosevelt or anything. He just hasn't signed on to
the Official Bush/Cheney/Wolfowitz worldview, which makes him a
suspicious character indeed.



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One really interesting thing about Bush is his iron discipline at news
conferences. No matter what the question, he says what he came into
the room to say. It doesn't even need to make sense.