Mitch & The Zealots

Ah, zealotry.

It seems to be the way of the world nowadays. Sigh.

There’s a letter to the editor in Friday’s Courier-Journal from Mitch McConnell. Yes, that Mitch McConnell, you know, one of Kentucky’s two representatives in the United States Senate.

Among the objects of Mitch’s unfettered scorn are MoveOn.org, David Hawpe, Hillary Clinton, pacifists, liberals, and anybody who ever uttered an unflattering word about General David Petraceus.

Seems MoveOn.org pushed the limits of propriety in some internet political commercials. They accused Petraceus of betrayal and lying to America. They compared Dub to Adolph Hitler.

Or so says the letter.

I haven’t seen the ads myself.

I do my best to avoid such polemics. Zealotry is U.G.L.Y., whether I have some sympathy for the zealots’ target or not. It surprises me not a bit that MoveOn has pushed the envelope too far. (If, in fact, it did.) Rabid dogs don’t discriminate. Why should they be any different from those Swift Boat Dunderheads, who blasphemed John Kerry? Or the sickos that spun Vietnam hero Max Cleland into some charlatan?

Geez, Mitch, where was your outrage then? Guess some pontification passes muster, some doesn’t.

This smackdown is yet another example of how loathsome political dialog has become. There is no civility. There is no comity. There is finger pointing. Diatribe laced with spittle. Everlasting enmity.

Feh!

What really grabbed my attention in Mitch’s letter was one phrase. He mentions that Petraceus was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to “lead the multinational fight against terror in Iraq.” I know it sounds trite, that it’s an old saw. But whatever happened to WMD, or any of the several other smokescreens the administration tossed out as justification for the Iraq miasma we find ourselves mired in like an elephant in quicksand?

By all reasoned accounts, our invasion of Iraq has fostered terrorism in that country. Now we fight that which we begat by our own actions? How very wise.

What we’ve done is made Iraq safe for the zealots. They are emboldened. It is open season for hatred, recrimination, slaughter. Against the invaders. Hey, that’s us. And against each other.

Kind of like the original Zealots, with a capital Z. They were a Jewish sect in early AD. (Known as CE (Common Era) to people of the Jewish faith.) The Zealots didn’t like the Romans and their impositions at all. In fact, such was their hatred, they didn’t even like fellow Jews, who were inclined to reconciliate in any manner with the Romans. Extremists among the Zealots were known to embrace terrorism, even assassination.

Geez, this all has a familiar ring to it. Yo, Al Qada, CIA, Blackwater, it’s all been done before. It wasn’t pretty then. It ain’t pretty now.

Anyway, Mitch, get off your high horse. Stop spinning. Become a proselyte. For once in your political career, show some actual backbone. Defy the administration. Use your considerable clout in Washington to get us out of this mess.

Or are you too much the zealot?

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