Frank Rich: Pining For Failure in Iraq
By Rocco DiPippo
Discover The Networks – Moonbat Central
August 21, 2005

Few people in the Bush-bashing MSM hate George W. Bush as much as NY Times columnist Frank Rich does. It is not that difficult to write fairly about someone or something one dislikes, but Frank’s hatred of Bush is so overwhelming that it prevents him from exercising the professional restraint and basic honesty required of that effort. Op-ed after op-ed, Rich churns out what are best described as variations on a Paul Krugman theme: Rich sings lies to a far-left audience that interprets them as truth. Few others buy the package.

Witness Rich’s op-ed piece in today’s Times, "The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan."

The article’s title, which equates 250 decorated combat veterans with "character assassination," hints at the dishonesty to follow. The article itself is a smear against the Bush Administration and the Right, a paean to Cindy Sheehan and a declaration of defeat in Iraq.

Rich’s major premise is that the Bush Administration engaged in the character assassination of Cindy Sheehan to shore up flagging public support for what Rich sees as a failed war in Iraq. In the same breath that Rich accuses Bush and the Right of smearing Cindy Sheehan, he smears the character of George W. Bush.  "…Aug. 6 was the fourth anniversary of that fateful 2001 Crawford vacation day when George W. Bush responded to an intelligence briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" by going fishing. " 

Let’s get this right: Rich says that Bush attends a security briefing concerning a known terrorist and his response to the briefing itself is to go and try to catch some fish. Right.

"So it goes with a president who hasn’t foreseen any of the setbacks in the war he fabricated against an enemy who did not attack inside the United States in 2001," says Rich. Two points here: first, the characterization of the Iraq war, or for that matter any war, as "fabricated" is murky at best. What constitutes a fabricated war? What constitutes a war that isn’t fabricated? Beats me. Perhaps Rich is saying that the reasons for the war were fabricated: a canard of the Left and the basis of all its other false conclusions as to why we’re in Iraq.

Rich accuses Karl Rove (of course) and the Right of smearing Cindy Sheehan. Smearing someone means to make unsubstantiated accusations against them. Which of Sheehan’s critics have accused her of that which she did not say or do?

On many occasions, Cindy Sheehan, in no uncertain terms, voiced her hatred of George Bush, her hatred of the capitalist system, her hatred of America and her hatred of Israel. Her use of foul language in expressing her opinions helped highlight her adolescent views on war, patriotism and foreign policy. Her words speak for themselves. Who can forget gems like this one:

"Let George Bush send his two little party animals to die in Iraq."

No fabrication of facts could portray Sheehan any worse than she portrayed herself. Sheehan shacked up with and was supported by virulently anti-U.S. ideologues including terrorist abettors Medea Benjamin and Lynne Stewart. These are verifiable facts accepted for what they are by anyone with a shred of honesty or common sense. 

Frank Rich is dishonest; he views justifiable criticisms of Sheehan as a smear campaign, even as he simultaneously truly smears Bush and the Right. By simultaneously praising Cindy Sheehan while castigating her critics, Rich is boldly stating a sacred tenet of the media Left that few of its members publicly acknowledge: Spreading falsehoods about right-wingers is acceptable. Telling the truth about left-wingers is verboten.  

Rich portrays Casey Sheehan as a victim:

"…the insurgents who slaughtered Specialist Sheehan and his cohort were militiamen loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric. The Americans probably didn’t stand a chance."

I’m tired of anti-war ideologues, Frank Rich included, portraying Casey Sheehan as a hapless victim of a failed war. Casey Sheehan was no victim–he well knew what he was getting into in Iraq. He’d been there before.

Everyone joining the volunteer U.S. military knows they risk going to war and getting injured or killed. Of course military men and women trust their superiors to minimize the risks involved with waging war. But even the best-laid war plans do not guarantee a particular outcome; war is by its very nature a sloppy, imprecise business where fortunes can turn on a dime. What looks like disaster at face value often proves to have contributed towards the greater goal of final victory. (Omaha Beach, anyone?)

There can be no guarantees that those who wage war will be unscathed. Rich will not admit this obvious point, for if he should, his entire construct of Casey Sheehan as victim crumbles.

 Frank Rich’s dishonesty sings through the piece. While he portrays Bush as a dopey party boy, he paints Joe Wilson, a thoroughly discredited liar, as a hero. He casts Richard Clark as a martyr by Bush’s hand when it was in reality Clark who discredited himself by partaking in the pre-election Bush-bash orgy staged by the leftist media elite.

The biggest travesty to truth occurs at the end of Rich’s article, when he blames a lack of "shared national sacrifice," for flagging support of the war. Coming from Frank Rich this bit of sanctimony rings hollow. Vietnam-era leftists like him have hardly demonstrated a propensity to sacrifice during wartime. But they’ve amply demonstrated a strong aversion to all things military. Many things come to mind when one thinks about the ’60s generation. Self sacrifice is not one of them. Self indulgence is.

Sagging support for the Iraq war is not due to a lack of "shared national sacrifice." The war’s growing unpopularity has been manufactured by leftists like Rich, who gleefully magnify every setback, ignore every triumph and do everything in their powers to disparage the military and its Commander-in- Chief.

Failure in Iraq is the Left’s goal, for it means the destruction of its whipping boy: Bush. It means a symbolic return to the time of Vietnam, to a time when America lost a big part of its soul–a time, in other words, when people like Frank Rich were relevant.