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Fox News Guest Claims Iraq War Didn’t Affect People’s Lives Personally
Jonah Goldberg from the National Review suggested on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom that ObamaCare is the policy equivalent of the Iraq war, but worse because the Iraq war didn’t affect our lives directly. He said, “(U)nlike the Iraq war, this affects people’s lives personally in a much more direct way.”
Watch the April 10 edition of Fox News’ America’s Newsroom via Media Matters here:
Goldberg nattered on through a series of Republican talking points about the ACA (“ObamaCares”), including my favorite that it was not saving dimes to the defict but adding trillions of dimes to the deficit, to land on his coup de grâce attack. Goldberg compared ObamaCares to the Iraq war, “In a lot of ways you could say this is the domestic policy equivalent of the Iraq war. It’s not going the way the guy promised… And unlike the Iraq war, this affects people’s lives personally in a much more direct way.”
Jonah Goldberg surmises incorrectly that Americans didn’t have any stake in the Iraq war, didn’t have any family members fighting, didn’t lose any friends or family fighting in Iraq, didn’t know any Iraqis enough to be impacted by their deaths, and/or don’t know anyone impacted by the war.
Perhaps Jonah Goldberg has been spared seeing returning troops try to deal with their disabilities. Perhaps he’s been spared local news headlines about the suicide of a returning veteran. Perhaps he has been spared the lonely flag flying on the home of a widower/widow. Maybe he hasn’t had to see childrens’ faces waiting at the airport to finally see their parent again. Maybe he doesn’t have any friends who spent years worried sick about their loved one fighting in Iraq, losing them for years to repeated tours. Maybe he hasn’t taken a walk through a memorial for our troops who paid the ultimate sacrifice.
But I can assure him that the Iraq war impacted many Americans directly. Some of them paid for it with the ultimate sacrifice, and their families are paying for it directly. This kind of clueless elitism is truly offensive from the party that never fails to use the troops as political props. This failure to connect with the very real sacrifices made by our veterans and their families may have been partly the result of a ban on the media showing the coffins of our dead troops, put in place in 1991 by then President George H.W. Bush. But the ban was lifted under the Obama administration in 2009. There’s no excuse now.
As for the policy comparison, that’s another fail. The Iraq war was started based on a deliberate lie about weapons of mass destruction. The ACA was designed to help Americans, not invade a country. The Iraq war killed millions. The ACA is designed to save lives by making affordable healthcare accessible to many more Americans, and to force insurance companies to be fairer with the customers.
Republicans might believe that ObamaCare is just like Iraq, but believing something that insane only makes them fringy. This is yet another attempt to excuse and justify the horrors of the Bush administration by constantly trying to attribute his debacles to Obama.
Republicans have accused Obama of having the trifecta of Republican embarrassments: Watergate, Katrina, and now the healthcare law is the Iraq war. At least we were spared the ever-present Hitler argument.
Finally, we all pay for the war, which Bush left off of the budget and President Obama rightly put on the budget, with our tax dollars. That’s pretty personal and pretty direct. Which means that Jonah’s argument kills the conservatives’ argument about the deficit, since their argument is predicated on the horrible notion that we are burying our grandchildren in debt. Much of that debt, by the way, came from the two wars Bush started, one of which was Iraq.
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12 Responses to Fox News Guest Claims Iraq War Didn’t Affect People’s Lives Personally
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Kimbutgar
Apr. 10th, 2013 at 3:35 pm
What is it with these people? They create their own alternate universe and the facts are right in front of them. Sounds like they have mental health issues which cause them to ignore facts and reality. Goldberg is really delusional.
Paws
Apr. 10th, 2013 at 3:35 pm
Have their brains just stopped working or are they just brainless altogether?
Reynardine
Apr. 10th, 2013 at 3:36 pm
The ewepeople are not counted as a loss, any more than are the Iraqis.
GeneralLerong
Apr. 10th, 2013 at 3:43 pm
Oh dog. The Doughy Pantload himself.
That anyone listens to this wretched fool, that he’s even given air time, says way too much about us.
Alexander Koppen
Apr. 10th, 2013 at 3:52 pm
He crazy, too many people died in War, Obamacare saves lifes.
Charlie F
Apr. 10th, 2013 at 3:55 pm
Goldberg’s remarks is one on the most incentive and idiotic statement I’ve ever heard.
Jonah go to the parents, wives, children who have lost a loved one in the Iraq War, go to the VA hospitals and ask them if they had any stake in the Iraq War. I bet you don’t have the guts to do that.
Tell that to those who served in the National Guard and the various armed services, that served several tours of duty and came home with no job, and whose marriage was ruined.
Tell that to those who served and missed their children’s birthdays, graduations and family celebrations.
Jonah you owe all Americans an apology for the remark you made.
Laure Olson
Apr. 10th, 2013 at 4:06 pm
This attitude is typical of a person who doesn’t care that people died, needlessly. As far as I know, no one has died because of the new affordable health care plan. Sick and ridiculous analogy.
Cheryl
Apr. 10th, 2013 at 4:08 pm
How about he comes to my home town near Fort Bragg and tell my next door neighbor that the Iraq war didn’t affect her, she lost her husband!
King Robert
Apr. 10th, 2013 at 5:02 pm
Anyone who believes the verbal dysentery that comes out of the Teabagging/Republicans mouths should never be able to pass a background check!
VOTE STRAIGHT BLUE IN 2014
Sally
Apr. 10th, 2013 at 5:07 pm
Typical GOPer. Wars are good, because they take poor uneducated young people and get them maimed and killed, while the people who sent them there get richer and richer. Wars are fine, because we’re just over there killing people who don’t believe in “American exceptionalism” or “christianity” anyway, so who cares?
This midset is why people hate America and hate the GOP. Bunch of creepy morons. We can’t afford healthcare for our citizens, our vets, our kids, because the GOP wants us in an endless war somewhere on Earth instead? Gee. That’s so very Christian of you all.
Kevin Shinn
Apr. 11th, 2013 at 6:43 am
Ahem. A fetus is a person until born, whereupon it becomes a commodity. What is it with liberals being so dense as to fail to understand such a simple plain and obvious fact?
mjh
Apr. 10th, 2013 at 7:06 pm
Jonah Goldberg from the National Review suggested on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom that ObamaCare is the policy equivalent of the Iraq war, but worse because the Iraq war didn’t affect our lives directly.
Well, Jonah, by that (so-called) “logic”:
if
“ObamaCare” = the Iraq War
and
the Iraq War = no direct effect on our lives
then
“ObamaCare” is a GOOD thing — right?
As for the Iraq War “not affecting people’s lives personally”, perhaps you should ask the families of the more than 4000 US servicemen and 10K+ Iraqi civilians who lost their lives in the conflict — they may disagree. Physically. Violently.
.