Fightin’ words

Fear and Loathing in Waynesboro column by Chris Graham
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You can take the Hatfield out of the Hatfield-McCoy feudin’, but you can’t take the feudin’ out of the Hatfield.

“It’s a disservice to those who have given their lives,” Reo Hatfield told News Virginian reporter Bob Stuart for a story in today’s paper ostensibly about an upcoming Hatfield-McCoy reunion in Kentucky, but which curiously ends with Hatfield, who is reportedly very interested in another run at city council, despite the obvious burrs in that saddle, telling off those of us who have an issue with President Bush over the Iraq war.

Hatfield told Stuart that while the war is not popular, it is important to stand by U.S. troops now more than ever.

“We are there (in Iraq) for freedom, and we are committed to our country,” Hatfield said in the interview.

Apparently Hatfield believes it to still be 2003, when he was still on city council, and it was treasonous to say anything other than “USA! USA! USA!” when the topic of the Iraq war came up in conversation. Thankfully, our foremothers and forefathers have stopped rolling over in their graves at our acquiescence as we’ve come more and more to realize that, yes, we can voice dissent in this country, and yes, indeed, it’s not even considered dissent anymore to say out loud that you have problems with the way President Bush lied us into Iraq and is trying to lie us into believing that he’s done a good job there and will soon be trying to lie us into another protracted war next door in Iran so that we can lose the last shreds of credibility that we have left before Jan. 20, 2009 rolls around.

“We must show our strength and that we are all united,” Hatfield told Stuart, showing how out of touch he is with the democratic-republican form of government that is the true source of the strength and unity that makes us what and who we are.

Nobody, Reo, nobody is saying that they don’t support the troops in the jobs that they have been given to do. Those of us who don’t like that we’re still in this quagmire – that would be the two-thirds of those of us who call ourselves Americans, incidentally – might not like the fact that our, ahem, elected leaders led us in this direction, and that thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis have had to lose their lives as a result.

Ironically, it’s us – again, those two-thirds of us who disapprove of the job that the president is doing with regards to Iraq, and who think that we never should have gone there in the first place – who are the biggest supporters of our troops abroad. See, we want them to come home in one piece, physically and mentally, so that they can build their families, build their businesses and places of employment, build their communities, and build their country.

You want to send our troops over to Iraq to settle ancient feuds that don’t make no sense to nobody else, well, we’d expect that out of a Hatfield. But you keep telling me that I can’t make a fuss about how plain dumb this whole thing is, hey, them’s fightin’ words.