Legitimize.....Delegitimize

First, let me preface my following commentary with a cut and paste definition of the word "legitimize":


legitimize
verb
legalize, legalise, decriminalize, decriminalise, legitimize, legitimise, legitimate, legitimatize, legitimatise

And of the word "delegitimize":

de·le·git·i·mize (dl-jt-mz)
tr.v. de·le·git·i·mized, de·le·git·i·miz·ing, de·le·git·i·miz·es
To revoke the legal or legitimate status of.

Yesterday I listened to an interview that the Vice-President, Dick Cheney gave to Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto. Cavuto invited a former U.S. senator from the loyal opposition to comment on the Vice-President's remarks. This former senator continually refered to the jihadist thugs in Iraq who are killing our sons and daughters, and murdering Iraqi citizenry with horrific impunity as "insurgents". The rhetorical drift of his wordplay was to delegitimize our rationale for being in Iraq.....which is to fight terrorists and Terrorism. What he neatly glossed over is the fact that Iraq is a sovereign nation with a duly elected government....a government, however flawed and imperfectly evolving, that has asked us not to leave quite yet.

What this former politician has also managed to do, in delegitmizing our presence, is to legitimize the status of our enemies from terrorists to insurgents. Although an insurgent isn't quite up to the legal pedigree of a lawful belligerent, it is a sight better than a mere terrorist. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's deft propogandist excelled at this sort of slight of hand.......Final Solution is ever more palatable than Holocaust. The fact that the Islamic terrorists in Iraq, as elsewhere, are doing any and all manner of heinous depravities on a minute by minute basis apparently pales in comparrison to the politically expedient need to grant them an upgrade in status by delicately decriminalizing their tactics and methods. The strategic victory and ongoing tactical incentives the loyal party of opposition is handing the enemy is incalcuable.

Vice-President Cheney voiced the opinion that the upsurge in US and Iraqi deaths in the run-up to the mid-term election is a calculated effort on the part of the enemy to influence voting here in America. The Dems may not see themselves as the ultimate manifestation of broken American will and resolve, but the enemy most assuredly does. Net result.....GIs and Iraqis die, even as CNN and politicians attempt to capitalize on the very garbage they are being spoonfed by a savy enemy.

As if that weren't enough......another U.S. senator yesterday publicly delegitimizes our GIs serving in Iraq with the following statement:

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

Our courageous sons and daughters, volunteers and legal belligerents all, are now lowered to some dreg-like mercenary status; not quite criminal, but certainly well on the way. Hey little Billy, stay in school do your homework and you won't grow up to be a .................... (you fill in the blank).

So there you have it; terrorists legitimized into insurgents, and our citizen soldiers, sailors and Marines delegitimized from dedicated patriots into losers and slacker miscreants straight out of The Dirty Dozen. (I would like to extend the benefit of the doubt to the two senators alluded to in this rant, but I can't; both attended Yale and both are law school graduates. They are cut from the same bolt of cloth and have made words, with all their ramifications and power, their life's work.) Well, at least the rest of you can do your homework, study hard, wash behind your ears and make an effort to vote well next Tuesday. Me? As the salutorian of the 1971 graduating class of Salisbury High School in Allentown, Pennsylvania I can't wait to get back to Iraq and away from pesky ole Mom and my homework.

(Speaking of Iraq......Sergeant Battles has posted more drawings.....man is he good!)