Out Framing the Conservatives

Framing options for Democrats on the Iraq/Iran war issues: (condensed and edited from Chris Currie’s letter to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse)

1. In 2002, the Bush Administration and the Republican Party began using a planned invasion and occupation of Iraq as a political tool to "rally Americans around the flag" (to benefit Republican candidates). Those who opposed war as a solution were "unpatriotic". They may be preparing to repeat this bloody trick for 2008 by using Iran.

2. Bush’s war policy has already cost more American lives than Osama Bin Laden’s entire Al Qaeda network! Overall, Bush’s decision to go to war has resulted in the death of well over a few hundred thousand innocent people and wounded and/or displaced several million more. His war has assisted Al Qaeda’s recruitment and revitalization in both Muslim and non-Muslim nations alike.

3. Bush "justified" the invasion of Iraq based on credible evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. We knew he had them because Bush’s father provided Saddam’s scientists with dozens of biological weapons shipments and hundreds of tons of chemical WMD precursors. US intelligence efforts also provided Saddam with targeting information that he used to effectively mass murdering Iranian soldiers using WMD and simply ignored Saddam’s his use of WMD to mass murder Kurds, If Bush's WMD allegations turned out to be true regarding reports of Iraqi weaponized smallpox, millions of American’s could have perished if Saddam had decided to use them knowing his days were numbered…or had such a bioweapons pandemic been sparked accidentally in the fog of war. Iraqi possession of such powerful WMD was the best reason to avoid a “shock and awe” invasion.

4. Neocon don’t live by… love-your-neighbor-as-yourself principles. They live by the creed of national superiority, US exceptionalism…and might makes right. Peace loving democrats find it difficult to ‘fight’ back. Even Jesus Christ recognized the need to HARSHLY CRITICIZE some of the local religious leaders of his time. But, he NEVER advocated ‘shock and awe”.

5. When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the United Nations General Assembly, most mainstream news agencies were more interested in highlighting his ridiculous comments (no Gays in Iraq) than covering some of the valid points he made or his backing away from denying the Holocaust. Are our news agencies assisting the Bush in building momentum for military strikes against Iran? Is any agency talking about the US body count and economic consequences from entirely predictable yet unstoppable Iranian countermeasures?

5. The deadly anthrax sent through our postal system shortly after 9/11 was manufactured by our own government’s weapons labs. Is a cyber or nuclear home-grown terrorist attack possible "on US soil"? What intrusive/repressive/abusive government measures will be justified to ‘preempt/prevent’ one? Will such efforts inspire an American third-party sympathizers (like the Oklahoma City bombers). As the Book of Revelation says, those who live by the sword tend to die by the sword. The very existence of those weapons is a threat to our security.]

6. Democrats still think they won in 2006. They haven’t grasp the fact that the Republican’s simply lost. In 2004, John Kerry was correctly perceived by millions of voters (including millions of Democrats) as being a "gutless flip-flopping Bush Lite". His campaign “advisors” were more interested in protecting their temporary lead in the opinion polls than they were in offering the American people a bold and practical alternative to the Bush ‘preemptive doctrine’. Democrats were too fearful to offer the American people a global vision. An extension of the American revolution to all humanity. Republicans have since reframed their preemptive doctrine to a global police and nation building effort of ‘protecting freedom’ and ‘encouraging democracy’….something that only a federal world government with an enforceable bill of rights could accomplish (with a real but limited ability to tax people worldwide and a real global police force that could “fight terrorism” by investigating, arresting, trying, and incarcerating proven terrorist … rather than dropping bombs on “suspected terrorists” and their families). Enforceable global government regulations are the only realistic solutions to WMD proliferation, genocide, terrorism, famines, plagues, climate change, economic collapse, corporate plundering and abuse of basic human rights, etc. The Republican’s worship of war, greed, and the reversal of progress in human rights so as to benefit of the top 0.1 percent of our population is un-American, un-Christian, and non sustainable on any level.

But American’s would have to pull them selves away from the latest holliwood or congressional scandle to learn enough about the threats we face to really understand the need for global solutions.

Unfortunately Churchill was likely correct. Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…but only after thoroughly exhausting every other possibility…at least twice…