With Trembing Fingers

Posted by barb on May 20, 2004 in Random Thoughts |

This is a good article by Hal Crowther, With Trembling Fingers on the Bush administrations failures and lack of shame about those failures.

A guerrilla who opposes an invading army on his own soil is not a terrorist, he’s a resistance fighter. In Iraq we’re not fighting enemies but making enemies. As Richard Clarke and others have observed, every dollar, bullet and American life that we spend in Iraq is one that’s not being spent in the war on terrorism. Every Iraqi, every Muslim we kill or torture or humiliate is a precious shot of adrenaline for Osama and al Qaeda.

I absolutely agree — the war in Iraq was not waged in response to terrorism; terrorism was just a great excuse to get the American people behind the war. The whole thing has become one huge clusterfuck, and no one in a position to change things is willing to admit it.

On the near side of my haystack, among hundreds of quotes circled and statistics underlined, just one thing leaped out at me. A quote I had underlined was from the testimony of Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg trials, not long before Hitler’s vice-fuhrer poisoned himself in his jail cell:

“It is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”

Doesn’t that sound familiar? Anyone who does not lock-step with Bush on his Iraq policies is branded anti-patriotic by the leadership.

I’m so tired. I’m angry any time I see another story on Iraq. It’s time for the leaders in this country to step up, admit things are going badly, and correct those mistakes. I fear this won’t happen until we have someone new in the White House. I fear that it might not happen with this election — the polls are still too close for comfort, and we need more people to see the light.

(Found this article through Pharyngula.)

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