Rhetoric

Over the past few months a shift in rhetoric has occured among those who would, to their last tooth and nail, defend our incursion into Iraq, Israel's overzealous invasion of Lebanon and the broader war against Islamic fundamentalists. Co-opting the aura of moral clarity that ostensibly motivated America to fight in WWII, the Bush administration and its lackeys have been conspicuously drawing comparisons between America's involvement in that second world war and our current global "war against terror." Some pundits in the media have even (and almost gleefully) taken to dubbing (or dubya-ing ) it World War III, perhaps hoping that by saying so will instigate the Rapture and Christ's second coming.

Indeed, it was just a few days ago that the inimitably quixotic Mr. Rumsfeld likened those who oppose his failed policies in Iraq to those who, in the late 1930's, sympathized with German fascism and who, later, advocated the appeasement of Adolf Hitler. According to Rumsfeld, those who wonder ever loudly why we're still in Iraq just "seem not to have learned history's lessons."

It's a dangerous time we live in when those who fabricate a war can, in defense of it, toss off such hypberolic rhetoric without ever fearing the kind of meaningful confrontation by journalists that would not only call into question such gross exagerations of the historical record, but that would also, hopefully, begin to restore some scale to the debate and its context.

Keith Olberman may have begun something yesterday when, in what amounted to a channeling of the spirit of one Edward R. Murrow, delivered a much needed chiding to Rumsfeldian logic. Check it out...