Nothing like getting lectured about guts from a guy whose idea of hunting is to go to a private club and shoot cage-raised birds. And yet that's what we got Sunday, when Dick Cheney was brought above ground, re-animated and rolled into Fox News, to tell America we need to have the "stomach to finish the task in Iraq."
It was especially interesting to compare and contrast Darth Cheney's gut check with the president's comments later on 60 Minutes, when he said he didn't watch the entire Saddam hanging video. Didn't stay for the icky part--you know, the part when the guy he spent billions of dollars and thousands of lives to have killed actually was killed. "They could have handled it a lot better," Mr. Bush said.
Odds are the warrior in chief won't be watching the video of Monday's hangings, either, especially the part where Saddam's half brother was accidentally decapitated by the apparent ineptitude of the local hangman.
Let's see...what exactly are we supposed to have "the stomach" for?
Three thousand dead Americans...
22 thousand wounded Americans...
Hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis...
And as part of an "important milestone" for the new Iraqi nation, three truly horrific, brutal executions that cannot help but bring shame by association to the people of the United States.
The question is not whether America has "the stomach" to keep fighting, but whether our leaders have the stomach to stop fighting. The Democrats, as usual, cannot agree on an anti-war strategy, perhaps because the Mainstream Media's conventional wisdom still maintains that it is politically risky to vote to cut off funding for the escalation. But why? How is it that it requires courage to do what two thirds of the people want you to do? Why are so many Democrats afraid that the American people, who have led the anti-war movement all along, will suddenly turn on them for taking decisive action?
Let's help Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and every other potential presidential candidate who is temporizing or debating about what to do. Support only the candidates who have "the stomach" to make peace.
John Edwards had it right at the Riverside Church Sunday:
"If you're in Congress and you know this war is going in the wrong direction, it is no longer enough to study your options and keep your own counsel. Silence is betrayal. Speak out, and stop this escalation now. You have the power to prohibit the president from spending any money to escalate the war -- use it."
On the other hand, maybe I'm making too much of this whole Iraq nightmare. After all, Cheney did tell us just this Sunday that "we have, in fact, made enormous progress" there.
Which reminds me, when Cheney testifies in the Scooter Libby trial, will they even bother to swear him in? Will anybody on a jury believe that he's capable of telling the truth?
Shelley Lewis is author of Naked Republicans, a Full-frontal Exposure of Right-wing Hypocrisy and Greed.