Thoughts on July 4 From Bob Mulholland

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Bob Mulholland
Campaign Advisor,
California Democratic Party

Americans will celebrate July 4th, but let’s also think of our troops in Afghanistan and those stuck in Iraq by a “Commander-in-Chief” who if he had any other job in the military would have been relieved of duty a long time ago.

Karl Rove will go down as the most incompetent national political advisor of all time. Think Katrina, U.S. Attorney firings, deficits, “Scooter Libby, loss of Congress to the Democrats, Iraq, Walter Reed, immigration – and the list goes on.

Rove has spent years spinning that he was a master at the “game” of politics, that he reads dozens of books monthly and could cite data from elections all over America. Rove even told the press a few days before last November’s election that he saw 68 polls each day that showed Republicans would keep Congress. A few days before the 2000 New Hampshire primary he told the press that Bush Jr. would win. McCain won by 18 points.

What Rove never had was the memory of the smell of his own boots on the ground in a war zone or the understanding of what drives people fighting for causes like nationalism or religion. Think of the IRA or the Viet Cong or Nelson Mandela’s organization.

There was a reason that the U.S. troops literally took the last helicopter ladder out of Vietnam. Those Vietnamese who opposed the U.S. in Vietnam had one simple agenda – they wanted all the foreigners out (the U.S. had been preceded by the French, the Japanese, and the French before World War II).