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Observations on the world today.

Wednesday, March 31, 2004

We Distort, You Deride. 

FOXNews.com - You Decide 2004 - Clarke Wants Pro-Kerry Group to Remove Comments From Ad:
President Bush's former counterterrorism adviser complained Wednesday about the use of his name and comments critical of Bush in a new broadcast advertisement from a political group supporting Democratic candidate John Kerry.
Okay, first, MoveOn is not a pro-Kerry group. They are an anti-Bush group. Get it straight, Feux.

Second, I sympathize with Clarke, but his words are pretty much public domain. The left has quoted everyone from Theodore Roosevelt:
"...to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
...to Herman Goering:
"Why, of course people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
...to make the point that Bush is a bad president. Clarke is no different just because he doesn't want to be quoted. This is not as bad as Fox suing Franken over the words "Fair and Balanced," or Donald Trump trying to copyright the words, "You're fired," but it is the same principal. We on the left are free to quote Bush to discredit Bush ("Bring 'em on!") Why wouldn't we be free to use Clarke?

Of course, I suspect that Clarke doesn't even really object to the use of his quotes. I suspect that he simply made a show of protesting so that he can use the argument that he is non-partisan. The argument is true whether he protests or not, but if he didn't protest, he'd be vulnerable to attacks that he supplied MoveOn with the quotes as part of his imagined "grandstand."

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