Talkin' Shit About A Pretty Sunset

I'm not ashamed to say I've been a liberal of some sort all my adult life. I've done the Marxist route, the anarchist thing and now I'd say I still refer to myself as a leftist, but what I feel is most important is that I'm on no one's side. Hell, sometimes I'm pretty damned apolitical. All this, but I've never felt I was anywhere right-of-center.

But this Iraq election is something else. What are liberals saying? Well, other than nothing, I think there may be some soul-searching going on right now. Jon Stewart certainly was doing his share. He was saying that maybe he was wrong for 2.5 years of this war. Maybe war IS the answer? It's such a liberal cliche that "war doesn't accomplish anything" that it's become dogma. But doesn't it? I mean, I found myself thinking, "What could be wrong with this election?" This is the way liberals are trained to think: to be pessimistic about everything. Liberalism generally is synonomous with negativity. Optimism is solidly in the right's corner.

Anyway, back to the Iraq war. If this election stabilizes Iraq, there's no doubt we'll see decades and decades of right-wing administrations from here on out. This follows right in line with what people say about Reagan: he fought the USSR with nuclear build-up because he knew they were morally reprehensible. This, despite all the liberal naysaying about how the US should coddle the Soviet Union. He's the underdog who came out ahead. And now it looks like that's what's happening with Bush. Everyone was against him---media especially---but the true Americans stuck by his side and democracy prevailed in the end. But, you say, all those people died. Wouldn't people have died anyway if Saddam had stayed in power for another decade?

Hopefully the Iraq election will fail and the country will be plunged into civil war when we pull the troops out. Then us liberals can go on feeling smug, right? And if so, maybe Hilary will win in 2008.