"The Cowardice of King George" (It's the cowardice, stupid!)

[TahitiNut]

The Cowardice of King George
by Allen Snyder
OpEdNews.Com

Cowardice comes in many forms. If George W. Bush had seen any combat action, I could probably use that term in its most familiar sense. But even though Bush saw fit to go AWOL from his National Guard duty during the Vietnam Era, I’m still left with many instances of cowardly behavior. In fact, cowardice appears to be one of the only areas where George W. Bush doesn’t regularly disappoint.


What do you call it when a President sends young men and women off to die based on lies, fabrications, and half-truths, forbids video news coverage of their returning coffins, refuses to attend even one of their funerals, exploits heart-wrenching images of real heroic deaths from 9/11 to secure his re-election, continues to hide behind those same tragic events almost 3 years later, blame all the nation’s ills, foreign and domestic, on them, while flatly refusing to meaningfully participate in any investigation into their causes, effectively covering up a truth in which he is no doubt complicit, all for money, influence, neo-conservative ideology, and political power?

Cowardice.


What do you call it when a President initiates an unprovoked and unnecessary preemptive war on a destitute country, liberates thousands of its citizens and military personnel from their very lives, imperils countless others worldwide by challenging all terrorists to kill as many people as possible, talks the big talk only in front of gushing audiences of brain-dead supporters, while his bombs and bullets kill dozens daily, and refuse to count the bodies of those he’s killed, all for money, influence, neo-conservative ideology, and political power?

Cowardice.


What do you call it when a President continually uses 9/11 fear to curtail civil rights, invade privacy, pass dangerous and undemocratic legislation, suppress dissent, infiltrate protest organizations, brand opponents as unpatriotic, and alienate whole nations and peoples, in the name of freedom and security, all for money, influence, ideology, and political power?

Cowardice.


What do you call it when a President invokes the will of God in practically everything he does, sloughing his responsibility off on a dubious deity whose voice apparently only he hears, using religious bigotry and intolerance to keep Americans deeply divided, openly advocating massive involvement of religion and religious groups in government and social welfare, and supporting discrimination based on religious misinterpretations, all for money, influence, neo-conservative ideology, and political power?

Cowardice.


What do you call it when a President says nothing while his hired guns smear not only Spain the nation, but the Spanish people for acting on principle and conviction, democratically retaliating against their government for joining Bush’s lie-based war, says nothing while his pathetic minions castigate them while they mourn their dead, says nothing while his Education Secretary brands as terrorists the largest teacher’s union in America, says nothing while true heroes are maligned by the GOP hate machine, and says nothing while his VP pals around with Supreme Court Loser Scalia on the eve of Scalia’s hearing a case directly involving Cheney himself and his secret energy commission, all for money, influence, neo-conservative ideology, and political power?

Cowardice.


What do you call it when a President so confident about his policies he foists them on the entire world with reckless abandon refuses to debate those same issues with his likely opponent, John Kerry, while citing Kerry’s lack of preparedness as a reason for chickening out? When a President has to paint an antithetical picture of reality before he can claim success for even his least ambitious policies? When a President has to spy, bug, eavesdrop, manipulate, cherry-pick, strong-arm, bribe, blackmail, threaten, support terrorism, kill thousands, and lower the quality of life for the majority of the world’s population with an ill-conceived and arrogant narcissism and moral superiority all for money, influence, neo-conservative ideology, and political power?

Cowardice.


What do you call it when a President commits these heinous war crimes and acts against humanity, in full violation of international law, but never steps up like a man and takes responsibility for any of it, saying instead that ‘Saddam made me do it’ or ‘God told me to do it’ or ‘I’ve been called on to rid the world of evil’ or some such fated nonsense all for money, influence, neo-conservative ideology, and political power?

Cowardice.


What is the only character trait President George W. Bush has displayed with such flair and flamboyance, to the exclusion of all others; including most notably, compassion, leadership, and common human decency?

Cowardice.

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Allen Snyder can be reached at [e-mail] This article is copyright by Allen Snyder and originally published by www.opednews.com but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.

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"It needs fanatical faith to rationalize our cowardice." - Eric Hoffer

"Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated." - George Bernard Shaw

[dogtag]

1. Well done! I'm nominating for main page.

p.s. Can you do one on the disdain Shrubby has for the American people? It's so brilliantly illustrated in the "hunt for WMDs" under the desk video.

[Nlighten1]

2. Remember this?

[TahitiNut]

5. Another George said it well ...

"Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice." - George Bernard Shaw

[TahitiNut]

3. The words (if not the acts) of John McCain ...

If fear is a condition of courage, so too is love. It is love that makes us willing to sacrifice, love that gives us courage. And it was love that helped me endure five years of captivity in a Hanoi prisoner-of-war camp, the love and compassion that came from my comrades. Whenever I was down, my fellow prisoners picked me up, many times at risk to themselves. I learned what I didn't want to learn: that I had failings that required the assistance of others. The great privilege of my life is to be associated with men of courage who tried to impart their own courage to me.

Love makes courage necessary. And it's love that makes courage possible for all of us to possess. You get courage by loving something more than your own well-being. When you love virtue, when you love freedom, when you love other people, you find the strength to demand courage of yourself and of those who aspire to lead you. Only then will you find the courage, as Eleanor Roosevelt put it, "to do the thing you think you cannot do."

If you do the thing you think you cannot do, you'll feel your resistance, your hope, your dignity, and your courage grow stronger. You will someday face harder choices that very well might require more courage. And when those moments come and you choose well, your courage will be recognized by those who matter most to you. When your children see you choose, without hesitation, without remark, to value virtue more than security, to love more than you fear, they will learn what courage looks like and what love serves, and they will dread its absence.

We're all afraid of something. The one fear we must all guard against is the fear of ourselves. Don't let the sensation of fear convince you that you're too weak to have courage. Fear is the opportunity for courage, not proof of cowardice. No one is born a coward. We were meant to love. And we were meant to have the courage for it.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/86/mccain.html

[TahitiNut]

4. "Bush’s ... cowardice has guided him all along"

Bush’s National Guard years
His moral cowardice has guided him all along
by Josh Marshall

<snip>

A moral coward is someone who lacks the courage to tell the truth, to accept responsibility, to demand accountability, to do what’s right when it’s not the easy thing to do, to clean up his or her own messes. Perhaps we could say that moral bravery is having both the courage of your convictions as well as the courage of your misdeeds.

On the balance sheet of moral bravery — as opposed to physical bravery — John Kerry and George W. Bush were about as far apart as you could be on Vietnam. On the one hand, you have Kerry, who already had doubts about whether we should be fighting in Vietnam before he went but put his life on the line anyway. On the other hand, you have Bush, who supported the war, which means he believed the goal was worth the cost in American lives. Only, not his life. He believed others should go, just not him.

That is almost the definition of moral cowardice. And it’s a trait he continues to display as he smears other people’s meritorious service (John McCain, Kerry, et al.) without taking responsibility for what he’s doing. He gets other people to do his dirty work for him.

<snip>
http://www.hillnews.com/marshall/090904.aspx

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"The coward dies a thousand deaths; the valiant, only once!" -- Shakespeare


The rich and powerful coward has a thousand others who died instead.