- The following quotes are from Bush's speech about the
War on Terror, as given October 6, 2005, and largely repeated October 28.
It was a speech especially dense with Bushspeak, a dialect which never
means what it seems to say. Perspective and the occasional translation
follow the quotes.
-
- "All these separate images of destruction and suffering
that we see on the news can seem like random and isolated acts of madness;
innocent men and women and children have died simply because they boarded
the wrong train, or worked in the wrong building, or checked into the wrong
hotel. Yet while the killers choose their victims indiscriminately, their
attacks serve a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals
that are evil, but not insane. "
-
- You might ask how is it possible to choose victims more
indiscriminately than by
- bombing cities? The Pentagon doesn't even attempt to
count Iraq's dead, civilian or military. Two serious efforts have been
made to count the civilian toll of the barbarism called "Shock and
Awe." One, an effort to count bodies all over the country in morgues,
hospitals, and other likely places, came up with more than 25,000 killed.
Another scientific study of Iraq's national mortality tables, published
in the British medical journal Lancet, came up with about a 100,000.
-
- What is Bush's understanding of this "clear and
focused ideology"?
-
- "Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others,
militant Jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism."
-
- Bush uses these coined-by-neocon advertising slogans
to describe an ideology, but in fact all they do is attempt to re-package
plain old religious extremists. I cannot help wondering how we would distinguish
them from Franklin Graham preaching about using nuclear weapons following
9/11 or Pat Robertson speaking about assassinating a democratically-elected
leader or the crazed preaching of heavily-armed American cults?
-
- "We know the vision of the radicals because they've
openly stated it -- in videos, and
- audiotapes, and letters, and declarations, and websites."
-
- Do you believe the audiotapes and videos periodically
broadcast any more than you believe the proved-fake documentation of Hussein
buying uranium in Niger? Are any of these so-called sources any more believable
than the ridiculous video CNN broadcast after the invasion of Afghanistan
in which dogs were being killed in a secret mountain weapons laboratory
run by men wearing sandals? How about spy satellite shots of mobile weapons
labs that never existed, evidence solemnly presented by Colin Powell before
the UN?
-
- Do you even believe Osama bin Laden is alive? Bush has
no reason ever to reveal Osama's death, an act which would convert Osama
from leader in hiding to Martyr. Of course, if you are reading this piece,
you likely are the wrong kind of person of whom to ask such questions.
Bush's words are crafted for people who let CNN do their thinking for them.
-
- "Now they've set their sights on Iraq. Bin Laden
has stated: "The whole world is watching this war and the two adversaries.
It's either victory and glory, or misery and humiliation." The terrorists
regard Iraq as the central front in their war against
- humanity. And we must recognize Iraq as the central front
in our war on terror."
-
- Bush follows a dubious quote from bin Laden with a preposterous
conclusion. There were, before Bush's invasion, no terrorists in Iraq.
Iraq's secret police hardly afforded a refuge to terrorists or any other
potential conspirators. Moreover, Hussein, the secularist, and bin Laden,
the religious fanatic, are known to have hated each other.
-
- Post-invasion Iraq is crawling with resistance fighters
from many places and of every possible description. In the words of the
head of Canada's intelligence service, CSIS, Iraq has become a training
ground for thousands who will threaten Western security for years to come.
We all have Bush to thank for this development.
-
- "The radicals exploit local conflicts to build a
culture of victimization, in which someone
- else is always to blame and violence is always the solution."
-
- I can't imagine words that better describe America's
reaction to 9/11. About twenty people committed a terrible crime. Instead
of going about the business of identifying and trying any others who were
responsible, Bush launched two wars he promises to continue for years to
come.
-
- A culture of victimization? America is the world authority
on that odd subject. Following 9/11 everything from the giant street signs
at doughnut shops to blinking signs on gas pumps insisted that Americans
must never forget. There were even sweatshirts being sold in supermarkets
and gardening centers. It was all one huge, confused, and dangerous reaction
spurred on by an incompetent man at the top muttering about "with
us or against us."
-
- "And they exploit modern technology to multiply
their destructive power."
-
- What modern technology? The men who died carrying out
9/11 possessed weapons like box cutters to take over the planes. The young
men in the London Underground bombing carried backpacks with relatively
crude bombs in them.
-
- Bush deliberately confuses the resistance in Iraq with
terrorists in other places. The resistance in Iraq now does have some improved
technology for attacking American armored vehicles. But why should this
surprise anyone? Many of these people have military experience and they
have resources that were stored away by Hussein. Besides, everyone learns
quickly during the deadly intensity of military conflict. During a few
years of World War I, new technologies for killing emerged quickly, including
tanks, machine guns, poison gas, and air bombardment.
-
- "The hatred of the radicals existed before Iraq
was an issue, and it will exist after Iraq is no longer an excuse. The
government of Russia did not support Operation Iraqi Freedom, and yet the
militants killed more than 180 Russian schoolchildren in Beslan. "
-
- Bush's cynicism and dishonesty here are off the meter.
The Russians have carried on for years a hideous war against Chechen independence.
Journalists from Europe have reported almost indescribable horrors. The
Chechens are desperate for vengeance against so powerful and ruthless an
opponent. People who have experienced the treatment they have experienced
are indeed capable of almost anything. Were Russia still the old Soviet
Union, Bush would be sending weapons and encouragement to Chechnya.
-
- "He (bin Laden) assures them that his -- that this
is the road to paradise -- though he never offers to go along for the ride."
-
- Coming from someone who avoided military service during
a major war so
- that he could carry on a carefree frat-life, someone
whose National Guard records have been mutilated, presumably to hide failings,
this is quite a statement. It is, moreover, quite wrong. Bin Laden, whatever
we may think of him, fought bravely in Afghanistan against the Russians,
gaining an almost legendary reputation. He is now, assuming he is alive,
a man whose age and health would rule out military service.
-
- "When 25 Iraqi children are killed in a bombing,
or Iraqi teachers are executed at their
- school, or hospital workers are killed caring for the
wounded, this is murder, pure and
- simple -- the total rejection of justice and honor and
morality and religion. These militants are not just the enemies of America,
or the enemies of Iraq, they are the enemies of Islam and the enemies of
humanity. We have seen this kind of shameless cruelty before, in the heartless
zealotry that led to the gulags, and the Cultural Revolution, and the killing
fields."
-
- Bush has killed and mutilated thousands of Iraqi children.
It cannot be otherwise when you bomb heavily in a country where so large
a fraction of the population is young.
-
- "And Islamic radicalism, like the ideology of communism,
contains inherent contradictions that doom it to failure."
-
- Bush repeats the phrase "like the ideology of communism"
a number of times, trying to establish a comparison that doesn't exist.
Communism controlled a number of major nations in the world. The opposition
of these governments to Western freedoms came directly out the fact that
you cannot run a highly centralized state and permit freedom as we understand
it. Islamic extremists control no states.
-
- "Those who despise freedom and progress have condemned
themselves to isolation, decline, and collapse."
-
- Bush here applies an idea that does not fit from theories
of economic development. This was always the case for communist governments
whose abuse of basic economic principles doomed them to eventual decline.
Nevertheless, for decades did America behave as though the analysis were
true? No, America spent trillions, literally trillions, of dollars in a
quasi-religious war against communism. In the end, communism did collapse
of its own contradictions.
-
- From the American point of view, the purpose of the Cold
War, at least once the truly dangerous, paranoid Stalin was dead (early
1953), was to secure American hegemony through much of the world.
-
- "the mastermind of the USS Cole bombing, who was
chief of al Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf."
-
- Mastermind? One suicide bomber in a small boat approached
the Cole and blew a hole in her hull. How does that require a "mastermind"?
The man in the small boat was determined, and the crew of the American
ship was lax guarding it - end of story.
-
- "Second, we're determined to deny weapons of mass
destruction to outlaw regimes, and to their terrorist allies who would
use them without hesitation. The United States, working with Great Britain,
Pakistan, and other nations has exposed and disrupted a major black-market
operation in nuclear technology led by A.Q. Khan."
-
- Outlaw regimes with weapons of mass destruction? Doesn't
that exactly describe Pakistan? And before 9/11, that was pretty much the
official American view. General Musharraf is a coup-installed dictator,
and his government developed atomic weapons in direct opposition to American
policy. Yet today, magically, he is listed with democracies in the fight
against terror.
-
- Mr. Khan is Pakistani and is regarded as father of the
country's atomic-weapons program. Despite assertions otherwise, it seems
inconceivable his covert activities in spreading nuclear know-how were
unknown to his government.
-
- "The United States makes no distinction between
those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor them,
because they're equally as guilty of murder."
-
- Has Bush heard the name Luis Posada Carriles, a man who
blew up an airliner full of people and is kept from facing trial in Venezuela?
Of course he has, and that makes this statement ridiculous.
-
- "The terrorist goal is to overthrow a rising democracy,
claim a strategic country as a haven for terror, destabilize the Middle
East, and strike America and other free nations with ever-increasing violence.
Our goal is to defeat the terrorists and their allies at the heart of their
power -- and so we will defeat the enemy in Iraq."
-
- This is preposterous. Guerilla forces do not work this
way. The hide, harass, and make life unpleasant for those they oppose.
Taking control of a state only invites retaliation against a clearly-defined
target. Look what Bush did to the city of Fallujah, thinking it was a hotbed
of terrorists. Marines turned it into a ghost town, yet resistance still
flourishes.
-
- "With every random bombing and with every funeral
of a child, it becomes more clear that the extremists are not patriots,
or resistance fighters -- they are murderers at war with the Iraqi people,
themselves."
-
- No, what they mainly are is one side in a civil war precipitated
by Bush's invasion, and civil wars are always the nastiest wars.
-
- "Some observers question the durability of democracy
in Iraq. They underestimate the power and appeal of freedom."
-
- Democracy and freedom are not the same thing. Majorities
often deny minorities their rights and freedoms. America has a long history
of government with democratic trappings that has denied freedom to others.
Ask the people of Hawaii. Ask Hispanics in Texas or California. Ask almost
any black American.
-
- Sunnis and others in Iraq feel Bush has stacked things
against their interests with the new constitution, and they are right.
-
- "We're standing with dissidents and exiles against
oppressive regimes, because we know that the dissidents of today will be
the democratic leaders of tomorrow."
-
- But the people Bush calls terrorists often are the dissidents
in their own lands. Bin Laden certainly could claim this description in
his native Saudi Arabia.
-
- "Iraqi soldiers are sacrificing to defeat al Qaeda
in their own country."
-
- Al Qaeda? Is that really Bush's enemy in Iraq? Surely,
even he does not believe that. His enemies there include the normal resistance
fighters against invasion we would find anywhere, native minority groups
whose interests are threatened by the government he installed, and undoubtedly
many angry young men from other lands who see grievous injustice in Bush's
invasion.
-
- The name War on Terror is itself perhaps the darkest
example of Bushspeak. You cannot have a war on ideas, or a war on religious
beliefs, or even a war on people's feelings of grievance and injustice.
The War on Terror is code for belligerent interference in the Middle East.
It is also code for the suppression of dissent in America, something dear
to the kind of people with which Bush surrounds himself, people who lie,
cheat, and profit from billions of dollars being squandered. And all this
crashes over us as a result of what the intelligence community calls blowback
from bad policies and neglect of years ago.
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