Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Kill Them All
201k apologizes for our recent absence; our crack staff have been busy with various projects, and we haven't had an editorial meeting in a while. But tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, so we have a feeling the group will be assembling soon...
Isn't it funny how no matter what goes wrong for the Bush administration, they claim it affirms their policies?
They bully the Spanish government into the Iraq war against the wishes of 90% of the Spanish people -- who rightly questioned the relevance of it to the "war on terror", and had the wisdom to wonder what the ramifications would be -- and when it turns out the relevance is demonstrably nil and the ramifications are predictably horrible, the administration insists the policies were correct and the people are wrong. Again.
The bombing, and subsequent removal of the Aznar government (which shared with Mr. Bush's the insulting habit of substituting propaganda for information) is now seen by the White House and its shills as proof that "weakness" against terrorists only "encourages" them.
The problem with this nonsense, besides the fact that it's a lot of hot air meant to distract attention from the worst foreign policy since "Manifest Destiny", is that it has only one natural end: kill them all.
To realize this one only has to read the uncomically dishonest Richard Perle, whose scorched earth philosophy and rhetoric found common cause with the oil interests ensconced in the White House. And make no mistake, "kill them all" is exactly what Mr. Perle, and anyone in the administration who agrees with him, has in mind.
Apart from its questionable moral underpinnings, this "philosophy" has a more concrete problem: it's impossible. You can't actually kill them all. Not without destroying half the world in the process. As we've said in the past, it's a global game of "whack a mole": the more you try to bash them with a hammer, the more moles you create.
Nothing is more effective at its job than the hammer; and nothing does more damage when used for the wrong job. Mr. Bush used the wrong tool for the wrong job, and made a mess of it -- as predicted. Now he and his defenders resent that the people of Spain have joined most of the world in calling him on it.
Even the best people to strike back when attacked. It's this natural and perfectly legitimate human trait that George Bush exploited when he used the post-9/11 anger to gain approval for his war on Iraq.
But even the angriest people will resent being tricked into striking back at the wrong enemy, as most Americans are beginning to feel they were. And many, like the Spanish -- who overwhelmingly questioned taking the war to Iraq in the first place -- will at the first opportunity exercise their ability to remove and reject those that abused their trust.
No amount of dissembling and inflammatory rhetoric will change that now.
We don't expect the Bush administration either to own up to its mistakes, or to stop blaming those who fail to toe the party line. But we do expect that a people so viciously misled -- no safer than they were on 9/10 -- will take the first opportunity to punish the liars responsible.
Once that is accomplished, the people can get about the business of truly protecting themselves from terrorist threats, unrestrained by either the mind-boggling greed or apocalyptic political hackery that drives the Bush Administration.
Isn't it funny how no matter what goes wrong for the Bush administration, they claim it affirms their policies?
They bully the Spanish government into the Iraq war against the wishes of 90% of the Spanish people -- who rightly questioned the relevance of it to the "war on terror", and had the wisdom to wonder what the ramifications would be -- and when it turns out the relevance is demonstrably nil and the ramifications are predictably horrible, the administration insists the policies were correct and the people are wrong. Again.
The bombing, and subsequent removal of the Aznar government (which shared with Mr. Bush's the insulting habit of substituting propaganda for information) is now seen by the White House and its shills as proof that "weakness" against terrorists only "encourages" them.
The problem with this nonsense, besides the fact that it's a lot of hot air meant to distract attention from the worst foreign policy since "Manifest Destiny", is that it has only one natural end: kill them all.
To realize this one only has to read the uncomically dishonest Richard Perle, whose scorched earth philosophy and rhetoric found common cause with the oil interests ensconced in the White House. And make no mistake, "kill them all" is exactly what Mr. Perle, and anyone in the administration who agrees with him, has in mind.
Apart from its questionable moral underpinnings, this "philosophy" has a more concrete problem: it's impossible. You can't actually kill them all. Not without destroying half the world in the process. As we've said in the past, it's a global game of "whack a mole": the more you try to bash them with a hammer, the more moles you create.
Nothing is more effective at its job than the hammer; and nothing does more damage when used for the wrong job. Mr. Bush used the wrong tool for the wrong job, and made a mess of it -- as predicted. Now he and his defenders resent that the people of Spain have joined most of the world in calling him on it.
Even the best people to strike back when attacked. It's this natural and perfectly legitimate human trait that George Bush exploited when he used the post-9/11 anger to gain approval for his war on Iraq.
But even the angriest people will resent being tricked into striking back at the wrong enemy, as most Americans are beginning to feel they were. And many, like the Spanish -- who overwhelmingly questioned taking the war to Iraq in the first place -- will at the first opportunity exercise their ability to remove and reject those that abused their trust.
No amount of dissembling and inflammatory rhetoric will change that now.
We don't expect the Bush administration either to own up to its mistakes, or to stop blaming those who fail to toe the party line. But we do expect that a people so viciously misled -- no safer than they were on 9/10 -- will take the first opportunity to punish the liars responsible.
Once that is accomplished, the people can get about the business of truly protecting themselves from terrorist threats, unrestrained by either the mind-boggling greed or apocalyptic political hackery that drives the Bush Administration.
