Hobbits, head to head

From yesterday’s Comments Zone:

Frodo, who cries at funerals, has left a new comment on your post "Bravo, Mr. President":

Time.
DemWit (aka Merry) to the penalty box for two minutes.
High-sticking over the blue line.

In Frodo's opinion, it would be hypocritical of him to affirmatively endorse an escalation of the unpleasantness in Afghanistan when he so decisively opposed the concept of preventative action in Iraq. In both cases the nebulous reference to the threat was sufficient to raise serious question in many minds. It is more than gut instinct about the lack of credibility by one President, and the good heart of another. It is about sending kids off to fight and perhaps die. That is, of course, the true concern of us all. Frodo is pleased and proud that so many have such doubts, and that they air them in front of everybody else.

That is why we try the murderers in open court.

That is why we are different from "Lisa, the howler monkey," from Dick Cheney, and yes (courtesy of Mr. Degan) from Gidget von Braun.

Even members of the Fellowship can disagree on how to destroy the Ring.

Posted by Frodo, who cries at funerals, to DemWit at 12/03/2009 9:24 AM

Hobbit:

We all cry at funerals.

I’m not certain we disagree: I’m just trying to make sense of it all. For two years I have heard you extol Barack Obama, and I am trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Many times I have told DemWit readers “I am not anti-war: I am anti-the wrong war.” Homer, Tolkien and, yes, even J. K. Rowling acknowledge the ever-present struggle between good and evil.

I believe terrorists of any persuasion are evil.

Many times I have affirmed that, unlike Iraq, we had a mission when we entered Afghanistan. If that mission failed for eight years, it is because we lost sight of it when we invaded Iraq.

I am walking around this apt in a “fog of war” trying to sort all this out in my head, writing phantom posts that might never see the light of day. Where in this country, I ask myself, is the great leader who can satisfy every American? According to the great rallying cry, “Yes, We Can,” I thought we had found that leader.

But, when someone like Joe Galloway (link in sidebar), who knows the soldier’s heart and a hell of a lot more about Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan than I, says the following, who among our little lot here can fail to be heartsick?

“So billions more of the money we can't afford will be poured down the Afghan rat hole, and hundreds more fine young American men and women will die and thousands more will be injured or wounded in pursuit of an impossible dream.

“If this is the best the new president and his Congress can do, then God help us. We might just as well have kept George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for another four years. Those guys wouldn't have dashed anybody's hopes.”

BJ aka Merry, Errant Hobbit of the Fellowship