Let's all apologize!

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Let’s all apologize!

When I was a kid growing up in northern New Jersey, I was frequently treated to TV coverage of Harry Truman’s “morning constitutionals.” Harry would stride along the streets of Manhattan with a bevy of reporters in tow and sound off at random about the state of the world in general, or about his daughter Margaret and how lousily the press treated her quavery-voiced recitals. But most of all, old Harry liked to launch his zingers at the Republicans, who, as far as he was concerned, were a little lower than worms on the intelligence scale.

As he so frequently proved, Harry’s political philosophy was to stay on the offensive and never apologize for anything you said.

What a tawdry, embarrassing performance it was then, when this week Dick Durbin, the Democratic senator from Illinois, roused himself, approached the podium of the Senate and in a voice slobbering with sobs, apologized for likening our treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo and elsewhere with Hitler’s concentration camp tactics and Soviet gulags.

Never mind that, as recent evidence suggests, his remarks about our Cuban gulag were right on the mark or that he spoke more than a kernel of truth. No, as soon as the wing nuts on the righteous right went ballistic and demanded an apology for demeaning our troops and the military in general, Durbin folded and plodded up to the podium, his oily apology in hand.

Even worse, after Durbin finished delivering his mélange of mea culpas, the Democratic Pontifex Maximus of the Senate, Joseph Lieberman, arose, and in his typically obsequious tones told Durbin what a good boy he’d been to lick the boots of Santorum & Co. and make nice with those senators who had been so terribly offended by his remarks. In this he was joined by the Savior of the Senate, John McCain, who praised Durbin’s lugubrious litany, and told his fellow senators that we all just need to get along, and let’s put this untoward episode behind us.

Apology accepted.

Of course, Lieberman and other Republican Lites in the Congress are the same people who told Howard Dean to stuff it and put a clamp on his mouth. Must not say anything bad about Republicans, since some day in the 22^nd century one or two Republicans might just vote for a Democrat.

What total bunkum!

Unfortunately, it’s the Republicans who well understand the wisdom of Harry. It’s they who are constantly on the offensive and it’s they who never apologize for anything. Not long after Durbin was slobbering all over the Senate, Karl Rove was in New York, telling a Conservative Party meeting there that the Democrats are essentially wooses who would have sent the marauding Muslims into therapy rather than bombing the bejeezus out of them after 9/11.

The Democrats are up in arms, yammering for an apology which will never come. In fact, the White House itself has backed Rove, claiming he was just defining the differences between the two parties.

And that’s how it is. Rove can define. Dean can’t. Rove won’t apologize. Durbin will. The Republicans are on the offensive. The Democrats cringe and whimper. And this is a two party system? This is a democracy? I don’t think so.

What is so horribly puzzling about all this is that the Democrats have been presented with ammunition to use against Bush and the Republicans on any number of platters. Though it’s been nicely suppressed by the American press, why haven’t the Democrats been clamoring for an apology from Bush as a result of the striking revelations in the Downing St. memos? What more do they want?

It is clearly the case that Bush, Wolfowitz, Rove and our eminent Secretary of War cooked the books, fixed the intelligence and sent over 1700 Americans to their deaths because of some personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein. They clearly lied to the public and they lied to Congress.

For fudging about his comical tryst with Monica Lewinsky Bill Clinton was impeached. For lying to the public and Congress about our need to go to war and kill thousands of Americans and Iraqis, Bush gets re-elected.

Hello? Isn’t lying to Congress an impeachable offense? Or at least might we demand an apology?

Not on your life. Republicans don’t apologize. They stay on the offensive. They bullied Clinton into submission, and they continue to tell Americans how swimmingly the war in Iraq is going and how we need to stay the course. And the Democrats let them get away with it.

Let’s face it. As long as the likes of Joe Lieberman can make someone like Dick Durbin apologize for speaking the truth, the Democratic Party is in big trouble. Indeed, I suppose you could conclude that Rove was right. The Democrats have proved themselves over and over again to be a bunch of spineless slugs.

You can bet the farm that the word “impeachment” will never pass the lips of Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi. If it does, expect an immediate apology from them and absolution from John McCain.

June 25, 2005