This Space for Rent

Not my country anymore.

Mark Danner has an excellent op-ed in the NY Times regarding Abu Gonzales and the New! American! Value! that is torture. His point is that Abu Gonzales is not only wrong, but incompetent as well, but that won't make a damned bit of difference because the minions of the Evil Party will simply moo encouragingly and vote to confirm him as attorney general.

Is the United States any different from Osama bin Laden? Well, trivially, yes, the United States has nuclear weapons. But are we different in any other way? Osama, when he wanted to encourage the United States, had his minions ram 3 jets into occupied buildings (he tried to ram 4 jets into occupied buildings, but it turns out that the United States managed to shoot one of them down.) The Coward in Chief, to encourage the citizenry of Iraq, has his minions sack and bomb cities, and they're thinking about good old-fashioned death squads. Osama wants the historic Caliphate to follow the (not terribly Islamic) tenets of his strain of Islam. Maximum Leader Genius doesn't seem to personally give a fuck about religion, but Dominionist kooks are stuck to the White House like it was flypaper, and that little cult is not even slightly Christian, even though they've chiselled ornaments off Christianity and applied them to their faith as if they were large featherless magpies.

Oh, and there's one other difference between Maximum Leader Genius and Osama bin Laden. Osama is parked either in the mountains of Afganistan or Pakistan (maybe! Given his services to the B*sh Junta, it's just as likely he's living on an estate near Jackson Hole, Wyoming) and doesn't have control of any country. The Coward in Chief, on the other hand, is the figurehead for a junta that took over the United States of America.

We Are All Torturers Now.

I don't want my children growing up under the shadow of the torturer. I think it's time for me to go.

Comments


"I don't want my children growing up under the shadow of the torturer. I think it's time for me to go."

I, for one, would hate to see you go, but I wouldn't blame you. I'm just afraid there's nowhere far enough. Let me know if I can lend you any Cassandra points (I think the railways accept them) or zlotys.

William Mon Jan 10 23:32:17 2005

I expect that eventually the tyrants will be overthrown and, if we're lucky, a country resembling what America is supposed to be like will rise out of the ashes. But I'd not place bets on it happening within my lifetime, and I really don't want my children to grow up as serfs in the Holy American Empire(tm).

David Parsons Tue Jan 11 01:38:20 2005

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