The entertainment value of the vice presidential debate between Sen. Joseph Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin was at an all-time high on October 2, 2008 when the two faced off in the only debate they will likely ever have with one another. Even I was eager to accept an invitation to watch the debate at my mother-in-law’s home (my wife and I don’t own a television). My wife commented on how pretty Sarah Palin was, and I had to admit that both Biden and Palin made an attractive couple of vice presidential candidates.

But my purpose in watching this debate wasn’t to critique appearance or entertaining punchlines. And I’m certainly not caught up in the American Idolized culture that diminishes even the most monumentally important issues to gags and trivial observations. Although I usually read speeches rather than watch them (I will also read this debate transcript as well), I really wanted to see what all the hoopla was about with regard to Sarah Palin. I came away from the debate with a single impression.

Pathetic.

I was near-sickened by the cutesy winks Palin presumably can’t help and continually frustrated by a guy who has been in Congress longer than many of the Obama-Biden supporters have been alive.

When the debate ended, I was still waiting for the most important issues to be addressed. After all, Gwen Ifill did ask some very relevant questions, but perhaps some of those questions could have been set aside for the MOST monumentally important issues of our generation.

I’m not concerned about how either Biden or Palin will address the political polarization in Washington D.C. nor do I care a wit about their views on same-sex marriages. Neither of these potential vice presidents will be instrumental in influencing those issues one way or another. But both are primary instruments who could potentially be involved in the following issues:

Administration Accountability

This country has been wrung through the wringer with the George Bush-Dick Cheney administration. Everything from expansion of government, abuse of power, ignoring the law, dismissing congressional legal demands, operating secret prisons, authorizing kidnapping, torture, domestic spying … the list reads like a list of criminal charges from the Hague. But no question regarding accountability was forthcoming in this debate. And that is key. After all, when leaders do wrong, who holds them accountable? Apparently, no one.

Save lives … not sacrifice them

Sarah Palin says Obama wants to surrender in Iraq, while she and McCain want to fight for America and win. Palin’s platitudes may play well with some Americans, but not with many veterans. You see, veterans are all about saving lives.

A soldier tosses himself on a grenade because he is trying to save the lives of those around him by sacrificing his own. Soldiers understand how nasty, dirty and despicable war really is. They see horrific things no human ought to experience. And they make mistakes they have to live with … if they survive the war.

The main thing Americans should be thinking about a war initiated deliberately upon a set of false pretenses and deceit is ending it immediately and removing our troops from a hellish place where they have damaged the environment, communities and the lives of millions of people. Our troops know the fear Iraqis live with daily, since they also must endure such fear. They know how it feels to sustain wounds they will carry with them for life. And they see death daily. Some experience it. Their families endure the pain.

Can you feel their pain?

All of that is the reality of war. And there’s more. There’s the kind of stuff no one wants to talk about. Sending young men to strange lands for long periods of time under extreme stress … bad things will happen. Predictable things will occur. Some soldiers will rape and pillage. Some will kill themselves. Some will kill even their own troops. Enemies will become friends … then enemies again. Trust isn’t a luxury anyone can afford. Women and children will be killed. Families will watch helplessly as their daughters are taken, raped and butchered. If you think Americans wouldn’t do that, you don’t know much about any of the wars we’ve fought … including this one.

Americans cannot afford naive gullible leaders

When a political leader who has never been in a fight, like Sarah Palin, begins to ramble on about how those brave young men and women, who ostensibly could be under her command, ought to continue to follow through on a deceitful strategy, put their lives at risk over lies and kill innocent people for the sake of completing a mission directed by a lying Commander in Chief, that political leader isn’t worthy of being in a position of leadership of any kind, much less in charge of the lives of so many people.

A real war hero seeks to save lives, not sacrifice them … a reminder for John McCain and Sarah Palin as they callously crow about winning something that was ill-conceived and immoral.

The United States Senate investigated the rationale for sending troops to invade Iraq in 2003. It concluded the Bush administration lied. It concluded the Bush administration deliberately deceived both Congress and the American people. New information that has shored up that conclusion has finally emerged. I wrote about the conflict before it occurred. My book reveals the truth about it all.

So knowing the truth, don’t we have an obligation to call off the killing of innocent peoples? Don’t we have an obligation to hold accountable those hands the blood of many people stain?

Are we to sit back and allow another life to be lost because some pretty woman without a clue offers us some juvenile rhetoric she learned in elementary school about how great and moral this country is? I wonder if she can pinpoint a decade in this nation’s history where the institutions she holds dear weren’t involved in doing despicable immoral acts? Surely, one would have to come forward in history past the Civil War, the Jim Crow South and the Civil Rights Movement. But then you’re well into Vietnam, Cambodia, overthrow of Iran has already occurred, the aftermath of a nasty war in Korea is still being figure out … and meanwhile, the U.S. government, with folks like Kissinger, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and a host of others, are deciding how to best maneuver U.S. covert operations and military conflicts in order to expand the power of the United States.

For the good of the world, of course (ugh!). Can we find a shining moment somewhere on this ant hill of history? When, Sarah Palin, was the U.S. the beacon of morality and the greatest nation on earth? Can you or anyone point to any 10-year period of time? Give it some thought … .

I thought not. Moving on.

If not now, when?

The excuses I hear for NOT impeaching this administration include: “waiting,” “not now” and “there isn’t political will.” These are the same excuses I’ve heard for more than two years! Those excuses would NEVER be given for vicious leaders like Saddam Hussein or any other leader of any other nation we didn’t like. But they order their military and covert ops to do the same things the Bush administration has fought to continue as a normal course. We wouldn’t even excuse the warlord of an urban gang in our country if he sent his minions to commit the atrocities the Bush administration has committed. Why does George W. Bush and Dick Cheney get to be perceived as anything other than powerful thugs?

And why do they get to continue to authorize so much death and destruction while the American public sits on the impeachment process that could have removed them both from office before this year began?

Damage to the nation? Versus what … sacrificing tens of thousands of lives?

The reason, really, isn’t because it would do damage to this nation. Do we really think the sacrifice of our sons and daughters over the next several months does less damage than the process of removing a corrupt Commander in Chief? The REAL reason there is no impeachment is because BOTH political parties are in cahoots, protecting the Bush administration until it leaves office. Then the rhetoric will morph into distancing ourselves from the past and forgetting bad history. That chapter is already being written.

But we shall see if that even comes to pass. A nation afraid to hold its leaders accountable is ripe for taking over. And it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Dubya simply refused to hand over power. Then the dilemma will finally emerge. Who has the intestinal fortitude to do what needs to be done? Who has the authority? What will America do?

Official debate result: entertaining, but a waste of time

The vice presidents are distractions. Their debate amounted to nothing more than fodder for the public. The issue of American oil companies in Iraq never came up.

Sarah Palin’s pet peeve is whatever the oil companies do in her back yard that she doesn’t like. But what happens when they go somewhere else and the U.S. president sends our military to provide security for American oil companies? Where was that issue? That is a tremendously HUGE issue in Iraq right now! Six major contracts are at stake and all of them are slated to go to U.S. oil companies and British Petroleum, which has a long sordid history in the Middle East side-by-side with U.S. covert and overt operations.

More real issues

Whatever happened to the issues of Russia, Georgia, NATO and missiles in E. Europe? Have we already forgotten the 2-1/2 month bombing campaign in the former Yugoslavia? What role is the U.S. involved in that part of the world where our leaders have suddenly decided to take multiple trips?

What about the Kurds in Iraq? Anyone want to take a stab at that one? The Kurds fight for independence is one that has been ongoing since WWI. The Kurds have a greater legitimacy to land in the Middle east than Eastern European Jews who suffered a Holocaust in Germany and Poland and somehow wound up with land in Palestine. Well, is the U.S. as concerned with the plight of the Kurds as it is with Israel? After all, the Kurds problem involves Turkey, Iran and Syria in addition to Iraq. Did we hear anything about that brewing conflict that will soon escalate the problems in Iraq? Did anyone ask about how the Kurds came to control the oil rich area of Northern Iraq and what Biden and Palin expect for U.S. policy to be toward that region once U.S. oil companies buy it up?

C’mon, people! Where’s the meat of the debate? We’ve got REAL problems ongoing from 28 years of Bush-Clinton-Bush in the White House!

And what about … the economy?

Americans are just waking up to the shell game we call the economy. The public is slowly coming to a realization that we’ve been duped for generations. Still many don’t have a clue what LIBOR is. Millions don’t know the Bush administration fought a war with ALL 50 STATES over predatory lending practices. Guess which side fought to continue them? The Treasury and the Federal reserve are two different entities, but most Americans cannot tell you the authority of either nor the boundaries of their authorities. And what does the Bank of England have to do with our economy? Another question most Americans cannot answer … and Sarah Palin would look like a caribou caught in the headlights of a snowmobile if she were asked that question. Biden would ramble on until we forgot the question and neither of these clowns would educate us on anything worthwhile.

America is in a sorry state

Now, we’re facing a choice between a GOP patsy whose campaign is controlled by the White House and an historic figure whose meteoric and unexpected rise to topple a powerful political couple ended with him distancing himself from his life-long spiritual mentor and aligning with the Kennedy clan and a life-long politician in Joe Biden. Who can we trust?

The answer is we can trust no man or woman. We can’t afford that luxury.

Posted on October 3rd, 2008 by MikeGreen
Filed under: Election 2008

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