Greetings from Austin.
This morning Munchkin and I were watching CNN, as Munchkin has a keen awareness of the political landscape. I know this because while Anderson was watching President Bush try to justify the "surge" and the war he passed judgement by letting out an enormous bowel movement.
While doing late night Munchkin duty, I have grown accustomed to the late night CNN reruns. Last night "Hardline with Chris Matthews" asked whether - from this point forward - American soldiers in Iraq were "dying in vain." This, I believe, is a cop-out. I'm not sure why you have to put the qualifier of "front this point forward" in front of the phrase, other than to avoid bruising egos of people who have lost family members. The Merriam-Webster dictionary has the following definition:
in vain - to no end : without success or result
By this definition, it seems like thousands of soldiers will have died in vain. There seems to be no way that anything other than this can occur. Even if Iraq completely changes and becomes a democracy, was it worth thousands of American lives? Even one? But ... there are few phrases as emotionally loaded as "die in vain", and though the origin seems to be biblical, the most significant American tie is to The Civil War. From The Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln said:
"It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain."
Perhaps rather than "died in vain", we should use the word "needlessly". I would be curious to know poll results of whether Americans feel that their soldiers had "died in vain" or whether they died "needlessly". I suspect the percentage saying the latter has happened would be much higher.
Sorry, that was a bit of a tangent. What I was trying to get to was video of Andrew Meyer, a University of Florida student who asked John Kerry questions at a public speech. When Mr. Meyer, a 21-year-old college student, had asked his questions and used up his allotted time, he refused to leave the podium when asked to leave. He then was escorted from the microphone by security and asks, "What did I do?" Since the security team must have been hired from the former LAPD cops who "secured" Rodney King, this was shortly followed by Mr. Meyer saying, "Don't tase me, Bro". Guess what happened? One Florida Gator ... tased. Some stories are so good that you just can't make them up.
This, my friends, is about 3 years too late. Imagine what would have happened if Kerry did this during the 2004 election campaign? Imagine if he said, "Officer, Mr. Meyer is still conscious. Please crank up the power a little bit and tase him again. Does anybody else have any other questions?" The South would have voted overwhelmingly Democratic. Here in Texas, he would have won the Taser bloc, which usually helps candidates carry the state. Not only would this be a man who would be perceived as being tough on terrorists, but every NRA member would have looked at him and said "that's our guy" and we'd be waiting for President Kerry's reelection campaign.
I jabber a lot.
Here's another picture of Munchkin ...
