The Terri Schiavo War in Iraq:
What is it with right wingers and their inability to just let dead causes die? For the way Iraq war supporters cling to this shameful debacle resembles nothing so much as their refusal to let Terri Schiavo finally expire back in 2005. The Petraeus/Crocker hearings were merely justification to keep the feeding tube in the oughta-be corpse. Bush's speech tonight is just more bullshit rhetoric to prop up the body.

It all just reaks of the putrescent smell of that disgraceful "debate" over the body of Terri Schiavo. The constant promise that miracles are possible, that they were just around the corner, even though Schiavo had been in the same state for years. The self-righteousness of those who wanted her hooked up to machines, consequences be damned, because doing so was in and of itself a good. The strange, sad idiocy of the few citizens who were chanting for Schiavo's right to "life," no matter if that life was merely an inexorable decline into complete breakdown. Those who wanted to let Schiavo die? Tarred as people who hate life. Christ, Bill O'Reilly may as well be telling us that Iraq is smiling at the balloon. Joe Lieberman barely even needs to write a new script.

Like so many of us were saying back in that stupid March of 2005, let it go. The fight is over. No matter how many drugs or operations or prayers you use, it's done. Walk away. If Schiavo's body was gonna heal, it'd have to be on its own, for there was nothing left to do. Who knows. Maybe Iraq will do better once it's taken off life support. But, even if you believed the initial invasion was right and good, you gotta understand: the dead need to decompose. Maybe flowers will bloom in the rot. Maybe it'll just be dirt.

Shortly after Schiavo died, on Meet the Press, John McCain, who was one of the 97 senators too cowardly to show up to actually vote on the Schiavo bill, spoke with a great deal of regret over the whole Schiavo matter, demonstrating how lessons can be learned: "Maybe we didn't use our brains as well as we should have...I think we ought to get this issue behind us and move forward. It's an American tragedy and I hope that the next time we're presented with one of these situations we'll perhaps approach it in a more measured and reasoned fashion." He could have been talking about...well, other things, too.

Of course, in the same interview, McCain said, "I do believe that there are some signs, which can be viewed as hopeful...There is a better training and equipping program of the Iraqi military. We've got one of our best generals, General Petraeus, doing that." Like with Terri Schiavo, in Iraq, "hope" is just another word for "blindness."