A View From The Handbasket

Thursday, September 07, 2006
Simple-mindedness
Posted by neros_fiddle at 8:53 PM
Let's listen to the sophisticated foreign policy analysis of the President. First, he talks about the Bad Guys:

We face an enemy that has an ideology; they believe things. The best way to describe their ideology is to relate to you the fact that they think the opposite of the way we think. We treasure the freedom to worship. We value the freedom for people to express themselves in the public square. We honor the right for people to be able to raise their children in a peaceful society so they can realize their dreams. The enemy we face doesn't believe in dissent. They don't believe in the freedom to worship. They got a narrow view of freedom. But this enemy is particularly lethal because they're willing to use whatever tactic is necessary to achieve their objective.


Gee whiz. "They think the opposite of the way we think." That is a FACT, according to our elected leader. Among their Bizarro-world beliefs -- "The enemy we face doesn't believe in dissent." As opposed to Americans, who label dissent as treason and threaten to lock up reporters for reporting facts they don't like. "They have a narrow view of freedom... they're willing to use whatever tactic is necessary to achieve their objective." As opposed to Bush, who, as noted in the post below, spoke passionately about the value of secret prisons, torture, and absence of due process as dandy ways to achieve his objectives.

But enough of that. What did Bush have to say about the Good Guys?

The United States of America must understand that freedom is universal, that there is an Almighty, and the great gift of that Almighty to each man and woman in this world is the desire to be free.


So, the man we have entrusted with our freedoms has decided that we, his lowly subjects, "must understand" that "there is an Almighty." So all that talk only three paragraphs ago about the "freedom to worship" means exactly that -- you are free to worship. Not worshipping is apparently forbidden in the land of the free, the country founded by people fleeing religious persecution and, allegedly, currently threatened by those who, according to Bush a few scant paragraphs later, "want to spread their view, their vision." It is the most common of hypocrisies: insisting people believe like you is Spreading the Truth -- someone else insisting you believe like them is a Threat to Civilization.

You have to be simple-minded to so completely contradict yourself while explaining something that should be self-evident: that wacko Islamic terror groups need to be put out of business. (Leaving aside how to do such a thing, which Bush also has a shaky grasp of.) No one with a shred of rhetorical ability or cognitive deftness could possibly mess up making the argument that they're Bad Guys who do Bad Things. But Bush somehow manages to look bad arguing the obvious. And gets applause.

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