Cipherdom (deprecated)

Labor Lost

Here are some interesting stats on the convenient omission of Osama's name at the recent GOP convention. Thanks to Marietta's "A Day at the Races" blog, which I found via the redoubtable "Randomness Personified."

Vernam has been down w/ pneumonia all weekend, though the worst seems to have passed. Little Vernam, Jr. had it worse, as the bug settled deep in his lungs during a week-long camping trip he took w/ his scout troop. But he's doing better, too. Nice to see Amy and Olam kept up the fight in my absence! 8^O

I feel compelled to make two clarifications. First, here's what "asshat" means. Second, I do indeed exhibit an unmistakable loathing of our current president. There was a time when Vernam was tolerant of conservative views; he wouldn't have survived 13 years in the South without being able to abide wacky right wingers. Literally, some of my best friends . . .

But a line has been crossed during this Administration. The guy took office ("take" having a whole new connotation due to the botched election) under false pretenses, having campaigned as a moderate who respected opposing viewpoints. Nothing could be further from the truth, as we've seen. Instead, he has taken unilateralism to new heights both at home and abroad. With reckless tax cuts and spending, he and the Republican congress have taken us from a budget surplus to a massive deficit. With a pack of lies and exaggeration, he took us into a war that even he admits was the result of "miscalculation." The best I can say about him, frankly, is that he's a dim SOB unduly influenced by a cadre of radicals whose far-from-the-mainstream views have proven disastrous. But if someone less charitable wants to assert that Bush is the real architect of our misery, please feel free. It's giving him more credit than he deserves, in my opinion.

People far to the left of me have equated Bush with Hitler, it is true. (Moveon.org did not air ads to that effect, however.) Before that, certain elected Republican officials compared Clinton to Hitler, so that sort of overwrought polemic had a recent precedent. A longstanding rule of Netiquette called "Godwin's Law" stipulates that any person who compares someone to Hitler automatically loses the argument in question. So ol' Vernam is way too slippery for that. I don't believe Bush is fixin' to round up all us malcontents and infidels, however much simpler it might make his life.

But, as a nation, we should be very careful about imposing our will on individuals or countries who can't defend themselves. Whether or not America behaves in a fascistic way, undeniably a large portion of the world beyond our borders has come to believe that's how we act. You could say that the only thing terrorists understand is brute force, and that might be true; in the short term, no amount of diplomacy is going to dissuade them from wanting to destroy us. But over the long haul, behaving belligerently can't be in our best interests. It's what prompted this hatred to begin with, and the more we resort to force in the Middle East, the more we lend credence to the radical Islamists' argument.

The whole notion of a War on Terror plays right into the bad guys' hands; with every Pyrrhic victory we "win" in the Middle East, it becomes that much easier for Islamic radicals to portray us as aggressors and oppressors. In his acceptance speech, Bush stated unequivocally that he will attack preemptively whenever he discerns a threat to U.S. security. Post-9/11, that's a defensible policy, at least where the American public is concerned. Whether it's wise is quite another question. What is not defensible is to lead us into a war under false pretenses, with what Bush now admits was a "miscalculated" plan for managing the peace. The Iraq adventure has made us less safe on many levels. It's inflaming radicals throughout the Middle East; far from being viewed as liberators, our army is regarded as an occupying force. He needlessly tossed aside U.S. alliances that had been the basis of international security for more than 50 years, then realized too late that the restoration of Iraq couldn't be accomplished without them. He created such distrust of American motivations that we will be hard-pressed to act when a real WMD threat emerges in Iran or North Korea. Because of him, we are demonstrably less safe in the near term and the long term.

Posted by Vernam at September 6, 2004 01:10 PM | TrackBack