Alright kids. I would like everyone to give a warm welcome to a friendly guest blogger. Little Flower has some ass kicking to do on those that call dissent treason. (And now a line from a Seater Kinney song stuck in my head- “Dissent is not treason but they talk like it’s the same)

Here it is: Winning Enemies and Influencing Terrorists by Little Flower

Is anti-war sentiment tantamount to being pro-terrorist? To anyone with an ounce of nuance in their brain — or a shred of decency — the answer is a no-brainer.

Unfortunately, lacking brains and decency is a requisite in the bizarro country of Joe Scarborough. Last night, Joe and his guest, Nevada Senator John Ensign, pushed the
latest GOP-hack version of the old saw that patriotism means never criticizing a Republican.

Said Ensign: “Well, what I‘ve said is political leaders need to be careful when we are at war on the words they say and how they say them because the insurgents and the terrorists that are around the world will use those words to recruit, they‘ll use those words to fund-raise and if they can think they are breaking our political will back here, it will just encourage them to carry the fight on.”

Asked for an example by Unholy Joe, the divorced defender of the Catholic faith, Ensign said, “Well, Senator Kennedy when he was talking to Abu Gharib compared those to the Soviet gulags. To compare Americans with the old Soviets I think is just outrageous and the Dick Durbin talked about Guantanamo Bay and compared us to the Nazis down there. And I just think that comparisons like that do a real disservice as to American soldiers and marines everywhere. And I think it‘s irresponsible and I do think it gives some recruiting efforts a boost to the terrorists. It increases the fundraising and it gives them the political will to fight on saying they think that America is a paper tiger and if they stay the course, that they will break us. They think it happened in Vietnam and they think it will happen here in Iraq … I think any time a country is divided, it plays into the enemy‘s hands. Lincoln talked about this. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Even going back to the civil war, General Lee looked at the press that was happening in the North. It‘s a reason he took the battle to the North and figured if he just had one or two more victories up there, the political will in the North would be shot and he would have victory. And the insurgents overseas are looking at our political will back home …”

Now one could go into the history of Vietnam, or the Civil War, to refute his individual points, and give Ensign deference due a senator. But a proper reaction is more visceral: “Stop lying, you anti-American asshole.”

Terrorists are not encouraged or emboldened by the dissent of American politicians, be they Democratic or the growing number of Republicans. Those Iraqis that attack U.S. soldiers are encouraged and emboldened by the fact that we are occupying their country, have killed tens of thousands of innocents, imprisoned tens of thousands more — most of them innocent, by our own military’s account — trampled on their religion and generally turned their lives into bloody hell.

The whole killing-them-to-make-them-like-us meme is doomed to fail. Because the act of killing creates hatred that doesn’t quickly go away. It always has and always will, at least until Jesus comes back, which he had better do soon if the neocons stay in power because otherwise there might not be anyone to save.

It is not that John Murtha talked about soldiers murdering an innocent Iraqi family that makes the terrorists want to kill us — is the fact that we slaughtered an innocent family that breeds the lust for revenge.

It’s not that Seymour Hersh wrote about Abu Gharib that breeds enemies — it is the fact that we are torturing and raping and killing Iraqis. Before Hersh exposed the scandal, we might not have known about it here but they sure as hell knew about it there.

Does an unemployed Iraq man — whose brother was shot dead at a roadside stop, whose cousin is in jail for no reason, who doesn’t have electricity most of the time, whose kids can’t go to school for fear of being kidnapped, who has to carry a gun to buy food, who can’t go out at night without fear of being murdered by his ethnic opponents — does he wake up in the morning and say to himself: “That Ted Kennedy doesn’t like Bush. Praise Allah, now I can find the heart to join the resistance.”

The answer is obvious to any person with a functioning brain. The fact that people like Scarborough and Ensign — who are not brain-damaged, they just play the part on television — know what they are saying is horseshit …

Worse, it is anti-American. True patriots speak their minds. Ruling over a silent oppressed minority is the fervent desire of Communists or dictators, which is a point that needs to be made over and over.