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Columnist George Will has found senator-elect Jim
Webb (D-Va.) guilty of “careless and absurd assertions,”
for writing that the wealth gap between rich and poor is “the
least debated issue” in American politics. But if you think,
(and I don’t) what Webb said is absurd, how about the assertion
the sky will “rain artichokes” before the Soviets give
up communism? And what brilliant clairvoyant do you think opined
that statement just before the Rooskies junked communism?
Actually, if only out of charity, one shouldn’t fault Mr.
Will for not being able to predict the future. That’s too
much to expect of him. Trouble is Will doesn’t appear to have
a good grasp of the present. In his column of Sunday, December 3,
he scorns Webb for not wanting to shake President Bush’s hand.
Will calls Webb a “boor” and a “pompous poseur”
(two phrases that might have popped into Will’s mind while
shaving in the mirror that morning) and says Webb has “patent
disrespect for the presidency”. This, of course, is just the
opposite of what Webb actually told the Washington Post: “I’m
not particularly interested in having a picture of me and George
W. Bush on my wall. No offense to the institution of the presidency…”
What Webb rightly objects to is President Bush, not
the presidency. Here’s a president who has made a criminal
war of aggression in Iraq that is destroying that country, that
has driven a million Iraqis to fly for the their lives, that has
killed perhaps 600,000 more Iraqis and wounded perhaps a million
or more, that has killed over 3,300 American soldiers and soldier-of-fortune
fighters, that is costing the American taxpayers about a trillion
bucks; here’s a president that lied the nation into war in
the first place and who has assaulted the civil liberties of the
American people as no foreign foe has ever done and Will is mad
at Webb for not shaking his hand? Ye gods! What an idiot that man
Webb must be!
Would Will have faulted Webb if, hypothetically, he lived in Germany
in 1938 and refused to shake Hitler’s hand? (Think the comparison
is stretched? When Hitler had been in office six years he had only
killed about 70,000 Poles, hardly equal to George Bush’s record
for slaughter to date. And if Bush gets around to nuking Iran, which
some investigative reporters think he is plotting, he might yet
surpass Hitler.)
Will goes on to claim Webb showed “calculated rudeness toward
another human being --- one who, disregarding many hard things Webb
had said about him during the campaign, asked a civil and caring
question, as one parent to another.”
How touching! Here Commander-in-Chief George Bush
has got Webb’s son in Iraq in harm’s way for absolutely
no good reason, and Webb is faulted for seeing through Bush's phony
compassion?
One recalls the charming photographs of small German girls in their
peasant costumes shyly approaching a beaming Adolph Hitler with
handfuls of flowers. Yes, Hitler, the caring father of the German
state, so caring he plunged it into a war in which millions of Germany’s
young men died for nothing in Europe and Africa, just as Americans
are dying for nothing in Iraq. To be sure, Hitler was “civil
and caring” when he spoke to the parents of those children.
Probably, from the safety of his deep underground bunker in Berlin,
Hitler also cared for the 800,000 German civilians whom he allowed
to be massacred by the British and American air armadas when he
could have surrendered.
 Yes,
how dare Jim Webb be rude to George Bush? Even though the outgoing
Secretary-General of the United Nations says Bush’s war in
Iraq is “illegal” and Iraqis were better off under tyrant
Hussein than tyrant Bush, and international legal scholars have
made an excellent case for trying Bush & Cheney for war crimes,
how dare Jim Webb not want to shake hands with the man? Worst offense
of all, when Bush inquired of Webb how his “boy” was,
Webb rightly replied, “that’s between me and my boy.”
(Note: the pro-war faction, headed by Mr. Bush, likes to urge the
public to “support our boys” in Iraq, as if they are
Boy Scouts attending some summer camp festivity rather than paid-for,
trained professionals who volunteered for military service.)
Will has the gall to lecture Webb, “In a republic, people
decline to be led by leaders who are insufferably full of themselves.”
That’s news! Makes you wonder how grandiose Presidents Lyndon
Johnson and Richard Nixon ever got to a position of power where
they could blow two or three million Vietnamese to hell, not one
of whom, by the way, ever attacked the United States of America.
If those presidents weren’t full of themselves, what were
they full of?
Among Webb’s other faults, according to Will, is that Webb
is “going out of his way to make waves.” Well, what
else would one expect of a former Secretary of the Navy? For my
part, I hope Jim Webb stirs up a typhoon.
Sherwood Ross is a Charlottesville, Va.-based
writer who voted for Jim Webb. He is also an American reporter
who has worked for major American newspapers and magazines as well
as international wire services. To comment on this article or arrange
for speaking engagements: [email protected]. His
blog is The Smirking Chimp. |
