Four years after we watched the towers fall, Americans have not succeeded in "ridding the world of evil." We have managed to show ourselves, our friends and most of all our enemies the limits of American power. Instead of fighting the real war that was thrust upon us on that incomprehensible morning four years ago, we stubbornly insisted on fighting a war of the imagination, an ideological struggle that we defined not by frankly appraising the real enemy before us but by focusing on the mirror of our own obsessions. And we have finished - as the escalating numbers of terrorist attacks, the grinding Iraq insurgency, the overstretched American military and the increasing political dissatisfaction at home show - by fighting precisely the kind of war they wanted us to fight.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Sunday Drive By...
I highly recommend Mark Danner's "Taking Stock of the Forever War" in today's New York Times Magazine. I am especially impressed by (and completely agree with) this:
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I'm not on board with absolutely everything he says in this article, but I think this paragraph sums things up aptly.
ReplyDeleteJeff
Or to summerize it a bit more - "the bush administration handed the terrorists a victory"
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree that that's absolutely correct! In fact last fall I thought for sure that bush/cheney were on bin-Ladens payroll the way they were pushing their "be afraid, be very afraid" rethoric. I was thoroughly disgusted by so many Americans jumping on that band-wagon and leaving only 1/2 of the country supporting "the land of the free and the home of the brave" by trying to vote the very dangerous bush/cheney out.
I've said more than once that Bush and bin Laden were made for each other. Nothing consolidates power more than an iconic enemy.
ReplyDeleteIn a recent issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Harry Turtledove wrote a story that had me in tears (of laughter, that is) regarding Dubya & Osama's nuptials. I can't find it, damn me, or I'd send it to you.
ReplyDeleteTo hate and despise, to loathe and to fear, in riches and in wealth...
ReplyDeleteThe philosopher George Santayana: ""Those who ignore
ReplyDeletethe lessons of history are doomed forever to repeat them."
Major General Nathaniel Greene can arguably be said to have been the man who defeated the British in the American Revolutionary War. His brilliant guerrilla tactics in the South are taught at West Point and at war colleges around the world as the seminal bible of "G" tactics (to use Colonel David Hackworth's term).
It's apallingly apparent that Rumdum, Wolfie, Georgie Porgy, Meyers, Sanchez et al have stupidly ignored our own history. iI's equaly apparent that Bin Laden, Al Zarqawi et al have NOT!
On this anniversary of 9/11 I submit this sadly prescient link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/mcmaken/mcmaken51.html
PC,
ReplyDeleteThey've ignored a whole lot of history. And a whole lot of advice.