Mr. Bush has gotten Teddy Roosevelt's dictum exactly upside down. He shouts loudly and carries a small stick.This is followed by an enumeration of the many ways in which Europe, Russia, India, China, and RussiaIndiaChina can eat our alleged-superpower lunch.
But the most chilling part for me was this:
One should remember what Osama bin Laden said. He did not say he would conquer us and convert us all to Islam. He said he would bankrupt us. If Bush gets us further mired in the Middle East by attacking Iran and Syria, as he seems likely to do, bin Laden might very well succeed. War is always a drain on the economy. War always produces death, destruction, debt and taxes.Bin Laden and al Qaeda could never hope to defeat us in any conventional military sense, nor even to terrorize us to the point of surrender. But what they can do, and are doing with Bush and the Republicans' enthusiastic assistance, is to steadily wear down the United States' financial, political, and moral viability. Every day, we become less and less a shining beacon of democracy and free-market capitalism, and more and more a foolish, dysfunctional, theocratic, corporatist banana republic destined for the dustbin of history.
You cannot defeat your enemies by becoming them.
5 comments:
Hi Eli, Thanks for linking to me:)
Charley has some excellent articles. This one was pretty terrific.
My pleasure, OWL! I'll have to start keeping an eye open for him.
Charley used to be a right-wing, Confederate flag loving, Pat Buchanan admiring, gay hating ideologue. He would in one column passionately defend the rights of the Palestinians and in the next attack gay Americans, his fellow citizens, simply for asking to be treated with equality. Despite this, I still couldn't keep myself from reading his Orlando Sentinel columns because he was 80% right most of the time. His anti-Israel tirades might have cost him his job, although that's just pure speculation on my part.
Charley has gone through a period of self reflection. He's no longer disdainful of MLK and now considers him an important figure in American history. He's no longer anti-gay and does not object to SSM. He's a registered Democrat, a member of the Sierra Club, but also a member of the NRA and the Sons of Confederate Veterans. He considers himself a small l libertarian. Always enigmatic, Charley continues to be a pleasure to read over at AntiWar.
The fun part is beijg called a traitor by the people pissing the country down the drain. Wheeeeee.
Interesting, Gabriel. I'm not a libertarian, so he's probably going to say a lot of things I disagree with. I might not mind the idea of power devolving from the federal to the state level, if I had any faith in them not being even more corrupt and incompetent than the feds.
Although right now, they couldn't do any worse...
Thers, don't you know that all *real* Americans are in favor of pissing the country down the drain? Why do you hate America?
Post a Comment