And for good reason. Because I knew it would be full of craptacular statements like these:
The president talked of “a struggle for civilization” and said the safety of the nation depended on the outcome of “the battle in the streets of Baghdad”. […]
In a prime-time television address from the Oval Office, President Bush said the “war on terror” was much more than a military conflict.
“It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st Century and the calling of our generation,” he said.
“It is a struggle for civilization. We are fighting to maintain a way of life enjoyed by free nations.”
How many lies can one man tell before we stand up for ourselves? The safety of our nation does not depend upon the outcome of the “Battle for Baghdad,” a battle by the way, in which our troops are stuck in the middle of a civil and religious war between Sunni and Shi’a militias. Just as the battle for Saigon and Hue and countless hamlets across Vietnam did nothing to advance American interests during the Cold War, so also the battles for Baghdad, Fallujah, Tikrit, Mosul, Ramadi, Najaf, Basra and so many more Iraqi towns and cities have had no positive effect on our security here at home, or around the world. Quite the opposite.
(cont.)
Every sane person acknowledges that the Islamic world is becoming more radicalized by Bush’s Super-Sized overreaction to the September 11th attacks. Terrorism is spreading, not because they hate our civilization or our freedoms, but because they hate our bombs, bullets and support for dictatorial regimes. We cannot spread democracy in the Middle East when every “ally” we have in the region runs a brutal, repressive regime. We also cannot transform Muslim anger against America by invading and killing more Arabs, especially Arabs who had nothing to do with the attack on our country.
Nor can we win a victory for civilization over barbarism, when we sink to the level of barbarians ourselves. In WWII we fought the Nazis and Japanese militarists, enemies far more dangerous than the terrorists of today, who ruthlessly killed far more people than Osama bin Laden can ever dream of slaughtering. Yet despite that fact, we managed to abide by the Geneva Conventions. We engaged in a “cold war” with the Soviets, an ideological foe dedicated to our demise who had an arsenal of nuclear weapons, yet we saw no need to duplicate their Gulag archipelago with secret prisons of our own.
Yet this is precisely what George W. Bush is asking us to support: the murder of innocents, the torture and imprisonment of people, many of whom had no connection to our enemies other than residing in the same geographical area, and the waging of aggressive war against countries that had no connection to the terrorists who attacked us.
The terrorist, by definition, is a barbarian and a murderer. He fights by targeting people whose only crime is the ease with which they can be killed. Thus, the terrorist can win no physical victory against his enemies. He cannot confront them in open, classical warfare. He is too weak for that. All he can hope to attain is a psychological victory over his foe.
Therefore, the terrorist seeks to create such fear and anger among his victims that those whom he attacks will lash out blindly in return, spreading the violence to other innocent people, and thereby enlarging the number of supporters and recruits for his agenda of hate and violence. George Bush, and his band of merry neocons, have handed Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda precisely the victory they were hoping for.
By conflating the horrendous events of September 11th into a larger, all consuming “Global War on Terror” Bush has transformed our nation, and not for the better. We are now less free, less safe, more fearful and more hated than at any time in our history. In the world there are now more terrorists, more terrorist groups, and more terrorist attacks than ever before. Osama bin Laden, and other terrorist leaders, are seen by more and more people as heroes, and Americans are viewed by more and more people as villains. Osama could not have hoped for a better result. By our own actions we have inflicted far more grievous wounds upon our democracy, our freedom and our way of life than he could ever have imagined in his wildest fantasies would come to pass.
Run down the list of our leader’s “accomplishments.” Under Bush, more countries have acquired nuclear weapons, and/or are seeking the technology to produce them. Under Bush, American interests abroad, both personal, corporate and national, have been damaged and remain constantly at risk. Under Bush, our national debt has soared to heights not thought possible the day he entered office as the beneficiary of a multibillion dollar surplus from the Clinton administration. Under Bush, our media has become a conduit for government and corporate propaganda. Under Bush, more Americans live in poverty, or lack adequate health care. Under Bush, we allowed an entire city to drown, and its people with it, as we watched in horror on our television sets for the Federal Calvary that came too late and with too little aid to give. Under Bush, our phones are tapped, our bank records and financial transactions are scrutinized and even the books we check out from our local libraries are monitored by an ever more intrusive police state. And under Bush, Osama bin Laden was able to perpetrate the worst mass murder in our nation’s history, and still manage to escape justice for his crimes after 5 long years.
All this is the legacy of September 11th, both the gross exploitation of that tragedy for political gain by Mr. Bush and the Republican Party, and the victory of a small minded religious zealot and criminal with delusions of grandeur. What a sad state of affairs, indeed.
And now Bush has the gall to ask us to unify behind his mindless crusade of an ever expanding, never-ending war? No thank you Mr. Worst Person in the World. I only pray that enough Americans can see the truth beneath your manure pile of lies to vote your party off Corruption Island this November, and return democratic majorities to both houses of Congress. In a just world you would be tried and then executed for your crimes, but I’ll settle for your impeachment, and that of Vice President Cheney. God knows, it can’t come soon enough.
Republican exploitation of 9/11