in other words

The GOP has a rather shabby looking ad tha ttheir running (including on their site) that flatly tells the Democrats that "retreat and defeat isn't an option" because "our soldiers are watching...and so is the enemy". I have to ask if this is even patriotic (as the opposite of what the GOP is calling the Democrats) as it seems to me to be telling the soldiers that they are little more than pawns in some policy -- that their deaths mean absolutely nothing and that there's no end in sight. It seems more henious to me than the usual "stay the course" bullshit that spews from the mouth of the president in that it takes the option of acknowledging mistakes and misfortue competely off the table.

Most importantly though, the use of this commercial is a move from the Iraq war as the result of some misguided idealism to that of a policy decision for the scoring of political points. It turns the war into something less than a battle and more into one of dog-wagging -- our troops staying becoming more of a defiant "fuck you" to the opposition (in the attempt to rally the base come next year's election and this year's opinion polls) than anything approaching noble.

Lastly it just shows how out of touch the Republican Party is. Most Americans, the polls show, agree with the Democrats in their opinion. Even normally hawkish people (like Murtha -- Democrat, yes, but uber-Republican in military maters) are seeing this, but the Republican Party refuses to budge, refuses to even allow for discussion the possibility that their man fucked up in sending us into the middle of a desert where the people don't like us, giving the terrorists™ we're supposedly fighting some prime exercise in their tactics. It really makes me sick, that the ruling party could be such assholes, so imperialist and holier-than-thou.

I don't know, I just viewed the ad and this is what comes to mind...