You do not own their courage

Saw this the other day and it's been weighing on my mind. I was ambivalent about the Iraqi elections on Sunday. I believe the whole invasion and subsequent screwup to be disgraceful. However reality is reality and the situation in Iraq is what it is. This is NOT an endorsement of Bush's failed policies but I hope the Iraqi election does bring peace and freedom to Iraq. I just don't think it will. This doesn't diminish in anyway the courage that the people of Iraq displayed on Sunday. They were heroic and I was awed by their resolve to vote.

I just am sick and tired of Bushites crowing over the election as if this justifies all their horrible mistakes, all their brutality ... all their arrogance.

You do not own their courage : scroll down to see

by: Charles Pierce Newton, MA via MSNBC's Eric Alterman "Altercation"

You do not own their courage.

The people who stood in line Sunday did not stand in line to make Americans feel good about themselves.

You do not own their courage.

They did not stand in line to justify lies about Saddam and al-Qaeda, so you don't own their courage, Stephen Hayes. They did not stand in line to justify lies about weapons of mass destruction, or to justify the artful dodginess of Ahmad Chalabi, so you don't own their courage, Judith Miller. They did not stand in line to provide pretty pictures for vapid suits to fawn over, so you don't own their courage, Howard Fineman, and neither do you, Chris Matthews.

You do not own their courage.

They did not stand in line in order to justify the dereliction of a kept press. They did not stand in line to make right the wrongs born out of laziness, cowardice, and the easy acceptance of casual lying. They did not stand in line for anyone's grand designs. They did not stand in line to play pawns in anyone's great game, so you don't own their courage, you guys in the PNAC gallery.

You do not own their courage.

They did not stand in line to provide American dilettantes with easy rhetorical weapons, so you don't own their courage, Glenn Reynolds, with your cornpone McCarran act out of the bowels of a great university that deserves a helluva lot better than your sorry hide. They did not stand in line to be the instruments of tawdry vilification and triumphal hooting from bloghound commandos. They did not stand in line to become useful cudgels for cheap American political thuggery, so you don't own their courage, Freeper Nation.

You do not own their courage.

They did not stand in line to justify a thousand mistakes that have led to more than a thousand American bodies. They did not stand in line for the purpose of being a national hypnotic for a nation not even their own. They did not stand in line for being the last casus belli standing. They did not stand in line on behalf of people's book deals, TV spots, honorarium checks, or tinpot celebrity. They did not stand in line to be anyone's talking points.

You do not own their courage.

We all should remember that.

Personally, I wonder what they were really voting for, after all is said and done? Were they really all voting for a new government or was it just an attempt to get the US the hell outa their country?