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Not quite sure how this has happened. I didn’t used to agree with the old boy on, well, anything. Suddenly, I find myself reading his page and (gasp) saying “yes”.
Be gentle, Andrew. Be gentle.
He’s arguing he didn’t decide to go to war; Saddam did. He’s saying he agrees with his Republican critics. He’s blaming the generals for all the combat decisions that have made this war a failure. His blaming Tommy Franks specifically for the troop levels was particularly piquant. So he gave him a Medal of Freedom anyway? Worse, the president conflated every single radical element in the Middle East into one amorphous anti-American entity. It appears that he sees Shiite militias, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, Hamas and the Sunni insurgents as indistinguishable. He has even said baldly that the people bombing and murdering in Iraq are the same people who attacked us on 9/11.
Source: andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com
A shared loathing of Bush over a bottle of nice Chianti? My place, or yours?
What he hits on is something I’ve been noticing for quite some time now. And I have no better word for it than racism.
Yep. I said it.
Why is it people constantly confuse all the different forces at work in Iraq, the War on Terror, and the entire middle east for that matter? It’s not black and white. It’s more than “us” and “them”.
Or is it? I’ve heard seeming reasonable people spout off on “those terrorists” and the like without really knowing anything about “them” other than their skin color. If they’re Muslim, wearing a turban and dark skinned, they’re against us. Not that we’re against them, we are, but they were first. We’re only protecting our “freedom”. Our “way of life”.
They brought the fight to us on 9/11. And these colors don’t run.
The problem is we’re fighting everyone. Simultaneously. On all fronts. With no clear definition of engagement, goals, or when this thing might be “finished”. It is an endless war. Oceana has always been at war with Eastasia.
When Bush spits a line like “I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace” it is no mistake. That’s what these people actually think.
That is how their world works.
I read George Orwell’s 1984 in, oddly enough, 1984. When I was fourteen years old. Twenty some years later, we are living it.
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