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Unreal administration
I’ve had nothing to say about our efforts in the Muslim world lately, but Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace’s appearance on Meet the Press today was an epitome of every Bush administration fallacy that I have analyzed at such length over the last three years. As just one example, when he was asked by Tim Russert for indications of progress toward victory in Afghanistan, Pace said: “Afghanistan has had presidential elections. They’ve had elections for a parliament. Democracy is advancing. And the terrorists are threatened by this, so they’re striking back.” Pace seemed oblivious to the actual meaning of what he was saying. He was not, as he imagined, describing an end game in which desperate enemies strike back one last time before their final defeat; he was describing an intensifying, endless war, in which the more we push democracy in the Muslim world, the more threatened hardline Muslims will be, and the more terrorism we will have, as I’ve pointed out many times. Meanwhile, on Iraq, when Russert challenged him on whether we are winning or not, Pace indicated that “victory” depends on the Iraqi government providing services and jobs, so that young men will realize they have a stake in the government rather than with terrorists. Of course, we earlier redefined victory from its correct meaning, the destruction of the enemy’s ability and will to fight, to its new, Bushite meaning, the building of a democratic government. Now we’ve redefined victory again—to the provision of jobs and government services.
If I could summon the energy, I would analyze this to death. But I just don’t care anymore. And I’ve already said it a hundred times. The Iraq war, and the Bush foreign policy generally, is the greatest exercise of unreality in the history of American politics. Email entry |