[The voting is tomorrow in my district. Only this time I don't know who is the lesser of the two evils.] Dems Field Another Pro-War Candidate Meet Hack the Hawk http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh07302005.html July 30 / 31, 2005 By JOHN WALSH The latest Congressional candidate to be peddled by the pro-war Democratic establishment, including Howard Dean, James Carville, the Daily Kos, Democracy for America, Al Franken on Air America Radio, etc., is Paul Hackett in southern Ohio. He faces his Republican opponent in a special election this Tuesday, August 2. Hackett goes by the all too appropriate nickname, "Hack," and his claim to fame is that he is a marine who fought in Iraq and will be the only Iraqi veteran in Congress! The truth beneath this silly gloss is a lot uglier. Among his other "achievements," Hack is a proud veteran of the campaign which leveled Fallujah, killing untold numbers of innocent Iraqis and turning hundreds of thousands into refugees. Here is how he charactizes, on his web site, what he did in Iraq: "I was against the war. It was a misuse of our military that damaged our credibility throughout the world and squandered our political capital. Still, I volunteered to serve, and I have no regrets." Translation "I will mindlessly do what I am told no matter what my brain says." And he has "no regrets" about the slaughter of innocents in Fallujah. On Fallujah, he says: "Religious fanatics and insurgents had seized the city. They had to be stopped." So what does Hack propose now? Again in his own words, "The good news is we can successfully exit Iraq once the roughly 140,000 Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) are adequately trained. The bad news is they are nowhere near the level of skill to accomplish that mission and are likely years away from that goal. No matter what your position on the war, if we pull out now the entire region will spiral into chaos. We must not withdraw our troops before the Iraqis are ready to stand on their own." Translation: "Stay the course." And he also takes a swipe at those who are against the war, saying that "too many liberals who opposed the war want to see the president's Iraq policy fail." Translation: "Those who oppose the war do so only out of personal hatred for Bush." Both these themes parrot the line of the war parties. There is absolutely no difference between Hack and his Republican opponent Jean Schmidt on the war * or any other issue for that matter. Here is what she says: "The training of Iraqi and Afghan security forces is ongoing and will allow both new governments to begin to assume more responsibility for their security and sovereignty. Our troops should not withdraw from these nations until they can assume these responsibilities on their own and we are making rapid progress towards this end." Translation: "Stay the course." At least, unlike Hack, she did not volunteer to participate in the criminal slaughter of this illegal war. This latest of Democratic hacks embodies the worst nightmare of another Ohioan, the principled Dennis Kucinich, who cautioned in his presidential campaign that we must not replace a Republican war in Iraq with a Democratic version of it. The Democratic establishment was clearly not interested in another Kucinich when they fielded Hack. He also stands in contrast to Kucinich in another interesting way. During the '04 primary campaign the Boston Globe ran pictures of the houses of all the Dem candidates. Besides the mansions of Kerry and the others, there stood the little home of Kucinich with a single battered car in the driveway. In contrast Hack, a millionaire who heads a law firm in Cincinnati, is a resident of Indian Hill, a wealthy Cincinnati suburb. His purchase of this property in 2000 made The Cincinnati Equirer's column of the most expensive real-estate transactions in the area. Hackett is scheduled to face his Republican opponent in a special election this Tuesday, August 2. Not a bloody dime's worth of difference between them.
He isn't pro-war though he is an Iraqi war veteran, who says he will volunteer to go back should he lose his bid for congress. I started a thread about him several days ago. That thread is here. http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=99803
It's not a problem. Your thread has already tripled the response mine got. Anyway he's an interesting fellow. He also has more war qualifications than so many of the pro war chicken hawks he seems to despise.
I think it's going to be interesting tomorrow. The signs for Hack's opponent far outnumber his near where I live, could be different else where. Dems seem to have no organization here. The tide may be turning. Maybe.
This thread is one of the stupider bits of propoganda to come down the pike in recent years. This guy puts glynch to shame. Hackett is against the Iraq war and always has been. It's a stupid lie to say otherwise. And calling him Hack is gross. He opposed the war but he did the duty he was sworn to do and he risked his life to do it. It's not his fault he found himself in a morally untenable situation. Yeah, I would probably personally respect him more if he'd refused to fight given he opposed the war, but I don't think it's my place to judge. And we in the peace movement stopped spitting on vets in the 70s. (It was a good call, by the way. As it turns out, it's not their fault.) He did his duty to his country as he'd promised and he's doing it still. The fact that wnes has a hard time deciding between a guy who risked life and limb to do the duty he was sworn to do and then came back to talk about how the war was wrong and a woman who blindly supports all things war and demonstrates it by wearing flags, attending funerals and questioning the patriotism of someone who's served is a sad, sad commentary on this country. This article is really very, very dumb, wnes. I know you're an anti-Iraq war guy from your posts. If you stand by this stuff, you might as well say you can only vote for Kucinich, Sharpton and Byrd. And you might as well say you sincerely don't know who'd be better in a race between Cheney (or Bush or Wolfowitz or Rove) and Hillary (or Gephardt or Kerry or Edwards or Biden and on and on). As a liberal, I kind of pride myself on the fact that we don't have a Coulter type making successfully loud news on our side and that if we did we wouldn't take them seriously. This article is embarassing.
p.s. to wnes, regarding the Schmidt signs outnumbering Hackett's... No Democrat has polled higher than 30% in that district in decades. If Hackett pulls 40%, it's an enormous shift in decades-long attitudes there. If he wins, it's an enormous upset. The fact that he has less signs means less than nothing. p.p.s. Don't forget you're in Ohio, where the population was sufficiently bigoted to vote in the last election according to who demonstrated a more profound hatred of gay people. So it's hardly an even race.
Wow, if Batman Jones posts these days, it must be that he sees something is terribly infringing the Democrat establishment. I am relatively new to this forum and I don't know what glynch wrote in the past which might be principally offensive (to the Democratic "core"). With the two-party system, most of the times I am very likely to vote for Democrats, which are more in line with my believes and ideologies. But that is by no means I like any bit of the (Iraqi) War and the stances shown by the likes of Hilary, Lieberman, Gephardt, Kerry (to a lesser degree), and Dean, as well as their purported "centrist" politics.
Batman: This thread is one of the stupider bits of propoganda to come down the pike in recent years. This guy puts glynch to shame. Et tu, Batman. I agree with Batman, this was a stupid article from Counterpunch. I often see stupid articles from there, though I like a fair amount of them also. To dismiss Hackett as a mere "pro-war" candidate is mindless left posturing, which the site engages in frequently. Actually I have seen few if any diagreements Batman and I have had on issues, perhaps much to his chagrin. Perhaps somewhat on Israel and I suppose Afghanistan, as I now see my very limited and short lived support for our war there as a mistake. The war against Afghanistan was imho wrong and the only valid purpose was to track down Bin Laden, not to take over Afgan society and to play into neocon delusions. I do bow down to Batman's witing ability and his usual temperateness on the issues, though I guess his foil, TJ, would disagree. wnes, I appreciate your posts. You and I and, if I dare say, Batman largely agree on how to best support the Democrats. I voted against Bush and Nader both times and for Gore and Kerry. Being in TX, many of my friends voted for Nader, who is extremely misguided.
Hey glynch, I didn't mean anything by it. We do agree on most everything. And I basically agree with you on Israel and Afghanistan as well. I just meant that while you represent the extreme (not in a bad way) left wing on issues of war and peace, the writer of the article way out-lefts you. And, in doing so, he cuts off his head to spite his face. If we're gonna gang up on Hackett, we might as well blow off the whole deal. This guy is a gift to anti-war Democrats. To demonize him is ludicrous. wnes: I'm mostly with you. I deplore Gephardt, Kerry, Hillary et al on Iraq and on many other issues. Even so, I voted for my first Dem nominee for president since Dukakis last year. The stakes are too high these days to insist on completely pure candidates. Truth be told, I'd rather not vote for anyone that isn't vegan. But that doesn't leave me a lot of options.
p.s. To wnes. If you think I'm a Dem establishment guy, you haven't read my posts. I freaking hate the Dem establishment. (The last Democrat I enthusiastically supported was Jerry Brown, back in 92 when I worked for him.) That doesn't mean I'm going to call an anti-war veteran a pro-war murderer. And I repeat that if you as an anti-war guy are having a hard time choosing between Hackett and Schmidt, you're just insane.
This thread is a sign of why the Democrats continue having problems getting back to majority party status. While I believe there is a large anti-Bush sentiment out there that doesn't mean a sentiment for the ideology of someone like Kucinich.
What can I say, at least on this BBS, the cool thing about being a Democrat or aligning with Democrats is that we agree to disagree and still fight a good fight for common causes.
I disagree. Our strength is our diversity. We embrace a whole spectrum of political beliefs, unlike the current Republican extremist leadership, who would be hard pressed to find a spot in their party for the Republican leadership of the '60's and '70's. And that will be their ultimate undoing... the very rigidity of their ideology. The Democratic Party has room for Batman and glynch, for a JFK Democrat like myself (that's how I think of myself... I've mellowed over the years), and there is plenty of room for conservative/moderate and rational people like MadMax, for example. It's a crucial difference, and one we need to encourage. Let the Republicans be the party of exclusion. Let them be the party of the elite, the wealthy, and the big corporations. Let them be the party who lies to and rapes the Middle Class. Let them be the party who distains the disadvantaged, the poor, the elderly. We can and should be different. We are different, and should celebrate it. Keep D&D Civil!!
I am considerably to the left of the Democratic party, very anti-Iraq war, read Counterpunch pretty regularly, and donated money to the Hackett campaign a couple of days ago.
Hey, Gifford, way to go, especially on the contribution to Hackett. What other sites do you like? I probably overstated how often I find articles on Counterpunch that I don't like. Cogburn, though a good writer, can be a bit annoying and I don't think he takes into account that since he is a mere journalist, he can take positions that are more "left" than any politician or policy person can at times effectively put forward.
