Quote of the day

November 21, 2005

I imagine it’s difficult for adamant supporters of the war in Iraq to understand when people change their mind about the value of the war, but when faced with grieving parents, who’ve lost sons or daughters in Iraq, members of Congress should probably avoid questioning the parents’ sanity.

“You’ll have a parent or two here, as you know, whose tragic grief from the tragic loss of a loved one, of a child, causes their mental thinking to be a little destabilized. That’s understandable.” — Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) at a news conference Thursday, discussing parents of slain soldiers who turned antiwar.

Yes, if you’ve decided the war was a mistake, the logical conclusion for at least one Republican member of Congress is that you’ve temporarily lost control of your faculties.

Of course, by Rep. Gohmert’s standards, there sure are a lot of Americans with “destabilized mental thinking.”

Well, there ARE a lot of Americans with destabilized mental thinking. This condition has existed for many, many years, but it was 9/11 that really brought it out of many of them.

And on another subject, I have a question: Regardless of when the US decides to reduce troop numbers in Iraq, won’t the “terraists” or “insurgents” call this a victory for them? Whether the reduction/pullout is in 6 months, 12 months, over the course of 2 years, the other side will claim victory and claim they ran the infidel invaders off. I think this is a no-brainer. With that said, it really appears that all of the current hullabaloo about this topic is solely about the 2006 elections, no?

  • bubba is onto something here. The tact is that after 9/11 many Americans were in a state of grief. They were eager to lash out at someone… anyone and Bush obliged them. Now America has started to come to its senses and realized the errors of its ways. Bush hasn’t.

    Another point. Bush is now holding America hostage to his mistakes. The argument that an immediate withdrawal is tantamount to an American defeat and therefore we cannot withdraw ignores why America is in a position of losing. Bush took us into this unnecessary war. Bush failed to conduct the war in a fashion which would assure victory. Bush now claims his defeat would be America’s defeat. It is Bush’s defeat. Period.

    We will be no less safe, and likely safer, after we extricate ourselves from this quagmire. Certainly we should feel an obligation to the Iraqi people to rectify the mess Bush has made in our names, but our continued presence is not likely to do anything in that regard. We cannot control the events which we have triggered. We must accept that and remove ourselves and wait for the chain reaction to cease. Perhaps with any luck a future administration can make amends for Bush’s stupidity.

  • The gentleman who coined the phrase “mental thinking” seems to be using some organ other than his brain to do HIS thinking.

  • So if I were to urge my eighteen year old daughter to join the military, and she were killed, and I was then to complain that this is truely a screwed up war, it would just be an indication that I have become unhinged by grief?

    I think when the recruiting sergeant calls again, I’ll just recommend him to Rep Gohmert and explain that I do not believe in questioning the sanity of berived parents.

  • I seem to recall that Stalinist Russia institutionalized such people. The next step for us, perhaps?

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