The fake outrage about the MoveOn ad would be comical if it weren't so cynical. Watch how this Tennessee Republican gets crushed when she rambles on with fake contempt for MoveOn while she doesn't even know the name of the last soldier who died from her district just one month ago. The idea that conservatives could be outraged at people using our soldiers as pawns is disingenuous. To conservatives, the military is one giant pawn.
Bush uses the troops as literal pawns every time he speaks. He even used them on the campaign trail in 2004. And remember his "Mission Accomplished" speech? Need I say more.
The rhetoric from the right throughout the war has been that we are shedding blood their to avoid attacks here at home. What do we call the pieces that perform that way in chess? Pawns.
The troops were even cited before the invasion as a reason to go to war. Rumsfeld said plainly that we couldn't just leave them there in the heat. We needed to use them. The existence of troops in the field as casus belli. As ridiculous then as now.
Conservative pundits support the war and the troops only when it's the policy of their president. Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter, they were all vociferously anti-war when it was Clintons Bosnia campaign (though nobody on the left called them traitors.) Many on the left were pro-war when it came to Afghanistan, including myself. I'm not against conservative war policy, I'm against bad war policy.
What will be interesting to me is how quickly the conservatives will flip when there is a Democrat in the White House. A few days after the inauguration? Probably so. Just as fast as they will be able to come up with some excuse to blame the failure in Iraq on the incoming President.
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