I wanted to memorialize a remark that I made to Your Turn: Rites Of Passage:

I wanted to reply to two of the above remarks. They engage in breath-taking revision of history, and demonize “the enemy.” Hmm, come to think of it, isn’t the former required to sustain the latter?

The first remark:

“Be angry at W’s ineptitude - but where’s the anger at the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of Muslim political culture? Or is that acceptable? It’s a problem that existed long before Bush, and something his successors will have to deal with for a long time after he’s gone. It’s not ALL the West’s fault. But apparently it’s bad taste to say that.”

If anything, the historical record, at least for the past 50 years, is one in which the calculating depravity of the United States is on display. Mosadeq, anyone? Who funded the Madrasas? Who propped up the Shah, and trained Savak? Who paid for Hussein’s epaulets? The US, of course. Is the US in the Middle East for the love of humanity? That’s almost an obscene argument to make. Yet some do it. After all of the lies, it even has become the final justification of the Bush Administration.

“Do you get it yet? The people who engage in these acts are not helpless victims or freedom fighters who are seeking world peace - they’re ruthless murderers who are doing everything in their power to make life in Iraq living hell for their enemies whether they be American troops or their own countrymen of a different religious persuasion - apparently with your full support. Sleep well. … Put your hatred of GWB aside mong enough to see these people for who they are.”

‘Ruthless murderers’? Again? What planet have you been living on? Whose country is occupied by whom, once more, remind us? And for what reason? Just a brief refresher: when oil production in the US began to decline exponentially in 1970, that could have been a clue. Did the US change land-use policy? Did the US embark on a crash course to develop energy alternatives? Is the US approaching 10% wind energy generation, or 80% nuclear generation, as some countries are? No — quite the opposite: it embarked on the biggest suburban building spree in history, gobbling up arable land and fossil fuels with wanton disregard for the planet’s population. It is a brazen act of rapacity that history will not judge favorably. Weave yourself all of the Disney-fied, suburban, Leave it to Beaver, Judeo-Christian fantasies you want, but the truth remains. That, Marie, is why the mob is coming for your head.

The young couple in the picture: collateral damage, ‘the sorrows of empire.’

Posted by: rss | Mar 01, 2007 at 04:16 AM

I posted the following to Chicago Dyke’s CorrenteWire blog. It was in response to the kind of comment so typical of Karl Rove-esque (GW Bush’s Deputy Chief of Staff) take-no-prisoners political “rhetoric” (to be polite in my characterization).

The comment to which I replied:

Funny
Submitted by Nudnik on Sat, 2006-11-11 00:17.

Funny how the Left and the Islamofascists celebrate and rejoice at the same things.

My reply:

The rule of law
Submitted by Robert (not verified) on Sat, 2006-11-11 04:47.

Odd how it had struck me until now that the best parallel was that drawn between those who have used extra-legal means to fight secular government; that is, between Republican Fundamentalist Christians in the United States, and the advocates of Islamic Jihad.

Facist? Tyrannical? What could be more so than the suspension of Habeas Corpus, the use of “extraordinary rendition,” torture, “pre-emptive” warfare, and now the latest juridical and constitutional outrage, the Military Commissions Act of 2006? Who could be more alike their extreme and brutal treatment of gays and women than those who seek to abolish abortion, to deny secular civil union to gays, and to deny equal suffrage to ethnic minorities as do American Fundamentalist Christians, Islamic Fundamentalists, and National Socialists? Who could be more alike in their strident nationalism, wrapped in the cloth of religion and mysticism and anti-scientism than these three groups? And who would be more repugnant to those who advocate the rule of law, one person one vote and universal suffrage, [constitutional] and secular government then those who proclaim the state to be the realm of God? Who but the National Socialists and their ilk would stoop to demogogic, divisive attacks, calculated through appeal to jingoist patriotism to fracture a society for the sake of political expediency? And who is most likely to resort to ad-hominem name calling, such as “Islamofascist,” “Cut-n-run Defeat-o-crats”?

And this is to leave aside the shear strategic and tactical stupidity displayed at every step on the road to the quagmire that is Iraq today by the Bush regime. The United States was never loved in the Middle East, given its tendency to support the most brutal and extreme, not least among them Al-Quaeda and Saddam Hussein, but it was not loathed by the breadth of society as it is today. It need not have been so. This is why some small portion of the American populus changed their minds about the Bush Administration, along with the simple administrative ineptitude, cronyism, and corruption display ed at home. No amount of childish name-calling will erase this record.

This opinion pretty much sums up my opinion of the Military Commissions Act:

There are many things that are deeply distressing about the Military Commissions Act of 2006. One of the most distressing is its deeply cynical attitude about law. The President has created a new regime in which he is a law unto himself on issues of prisoner interrogations. He decides whether he has violated the laws, and he decides whether to prosecute the people he in turn urges to break the law. And all the while he insists that everything he does is perfectly legal, because, the way the law is designed, there is no one with authority to disagree.

It is a travesty of law under the forms of law. It is the accumulation of executive, judicial, and legislative powers in a single branch and under a single individual.

It is the very essence of tyranny.