Republicans the real cut-and-run cowards

Posted by Bob Geiger at 7:47 AM on September 29, 2006.

Republicans have become so accustomed to using the phrase "cut and run" that they probably mumble it while sleeping and their childlike leader, George W. Bush, babbled it again yesterday, saying at yet another GOP fundraiser that "the party of FDR and the party of Harry Truman has become the party of cut and run."

That takes a ton of nerve coming from a Chickenhawk like Bush, who used Daddy's connections to avoid Vietnam and then went AWOL from his cushy stateside post. But we've heard that empty phrase from the cretins in the right-wing of the Republican party so many times that it barely even registers any longer.

They like to question the courage and patriotism of Democrats for being unwilling to shed more American blood and waste billions more on a pointless war, that the country was lied into and that's made us far less safe and more despised throughout the world. Aside from the fact that the majority of Americans no longer support the Iraq war -- and, thus, they must all be cut-and-run defeatists as well -- it is the Republicans who have shown themselves to be the lily-livered cowards among us.

Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their whole craven cabal are scared stiff -- and they want us to all be very afraid as well. How frightened are they? They're so afraid that they are willing to go against everything this country stands for, in a blind panic that they think will somehow protect their sorry asses from the big, bad terrorist bullies.

They are so damn scared that they're willing to take a country that was founded on individual liberty and turn it into a police state -- all out of fear.

So they respond to Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda attacking our country -- and, according to Bush, "our way of life" -- by putting their collective tails between their legs and abandoning the very core principles crafted by the founding fathers to embody "our way of life."

I didn't realize it at the time, but the hideous losses we suffered on 9/11 would truly test our national character more than any event of my lifetime. Do we stick with the values and hard-learned lessons of our past in the face of these new challenges or do we let Osama bin Laden truly ruin our country by becoming a shadow of the nation we have always been?

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), arguing against the Bush torture bill that passed both the House and the Senate this week, said it quite well yesterday:

“What has changed in the last five years that our Government is so inept and our people so terrified that we must do what no bomb or attack could ever do by taking away the very freedoms that define America? Why would we allow the terrorists to win by doing to ourselves what they could never do, and abandon the principles for which so many Americans today and through our history have fought and sacrificed?”

It's trivial for a nation to stand by its creed when times are easy. But it's times like these, when circumstances and conditions are tough, that give us the real test of our national strength, courage and resolve.

Under Republican leadership, we are failing that test in the most miserable and pathetic way.

A great nation uses a horrendous event like September 11 to reinforce the things that have always made us the envy of the world and that, at least until our recent history, made us, in our best moments, the standard to which other countries aspired. A people of character suck it up and strive to remain a beacon of hope, equity and civil rights, while fighting those who attack us as strongly as we can.

The only thing Bush and his team of sissies have been right about is saying that we're not a nation that cuts and runs -- which is why all Americans should hate how our chicken-hearted, reactionary government has consistently done exactly that ever since we were attacked.

What we've seen happen in the last five years is not something that should invoke pride or flag-waving jingoism in Americans. We've watched a president and vice president whose lies have become so commonplace that they seldom even make the news. We've watched as our military men and women are killed or maimed in a war that has nothing to do with terror and everything to do with Bush and his mindless supporters selling fear to suit their ideological and financial agenda.

We've seen a world go from loving us on September 12, 2001 – many governments declared "we are all Americans today" – to us becoming a global pariah, with nary a friend who believes in our word or the promise of our deeds. We saw astounding pictures come back from Abu Ghraib, in which prisoners under our watch were tortured and, in some cases, killed.

And just this week, we have watched the Republican-led Congress affirm that all of that -- and more -- is just fine with them. At the same time, we have become willing to let the president mortgage our present and our children's financial future to spend money on a war that did not need to be fought, while ruining a reputation that previous generations worked so hard to build.

So tell every Republican you know that they can take their 'cut and run' garbage and shove it.

In the face of challenge and terror, George W. Bush and the Republican party have continued to debase our nation's spirit and trash the values that have made us great. In other words, the Republicans are allowing a few terrorists to change the very essence of our country and make us so afraid that we no longer even know who we are -- or what we stand for.

When the going has gotten tough, and our nation's heart and soul are on the line, it's the cowardly Republicans who have truly cut and run.

Bob Geiger is a writer, activist and Democratic District Leader in Westchester County, NY. You can reach Bob at geiger.bob@gmail.com and read more from him at BobGeiger.com.