Tim's Favorite Blogs
Media Matters
Blog Directories
Sunday, September 30. 2007
Let’s Be Asses
It’s no secret, I like Maureen Dowd. As a columnist. She’s a looker alright, but I save my lechery for Playboy models, although Maureen could probably teach me a thing or two about … err … just about anything. Maureen, for those who may not know, is a regular columnist for that most hated of “liberal” rags, The New York Times.Quite often — too often really — I’m tempted to plagiarize her material, but then it would be found out and there goes whatever credibility I may still possess. Not that a lowly unknown such as myself has any credibility outside my small circle of friends who actually read this blog.
For the past few hours I’ve been reading through her editorial columns, siphoning whatever information I might find useful to put into my own editorial column. Her latest column is titled “Nepotism Tango” and concerns the possibility of a 28-year span of Bushes and Clintons in the White House. Hard to tell if she’s seriously dumping on Hillary Clinton or not; makes you wonder if Maureen got a curt “no” when she asked for a few minutes of time with her Junior Senator. Of course I’m just speculating. Who says “no” to Maureen Dowd?
Dick Cheney … oh yeah, forgot about him for a moment. And the rest of the White House.
This started with Ms. Dowd because of her preceding column about the rude treatment the president of Iran received when he spoke at Columbia University. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may not be anyone’s favorite world leader outside of the small coterie of mullahs and sycophants that control Iran, but he was invited by the president of Columbia University to speak and the simple lessons of decency dictate Lee Bollinger treat his guest with respect. Bollinger first called Ahmadinejad a “petty and cruel dictator.” Bollinger then went on to catalogue all the ills of the regime in Tehran. His introduction was anything but warm. To much applause as well.
One of the legacies of the Bush years is a return to boorish behavior. Indeed, it was the bellicose attitude of the president and his masters that started a war in Iraq that benefited Iran more than any other. Diplomacy was turned into a soapbox for chest thumping nationalism and obnoxious behavior, sort of like Nazi Germany in the early 1930’s and like the Hitler, Bush found himself the Commander-in-Chief in a war he could not win, depleting the military of its most valuable resource; the people.In the 2004 campaign, the main theme was that President Bush — the draft dodger — was a tough guy, a real man and his opponent, Senator John Kerry — the decorated war hero — was not. Kerry and the Democrats were adopting a “strategy of retreat” and that Kerry couldn’t win a war (Iraq) he thought was a mistake. Here it is three years later and the war drags on, not with fewer U.S. troops in Iraq, but significantly more and there are no plans to reduce that number for at least eight months.
Tough guy sound bites may win elections, but they aren’t diplomacy and they obviously do not win wars, mistaken wars or otherwise.
One of the funniest (at the time) was Bush’s use of the term “evil-doers.” This is the president of the United States? Despite the gravity of what had just happened two months earlier, the attacks on September 11, 2001, hearing the president, in a nationally televised speech, refer to a group of people as “evil-doers.” I about fell off the couch with laughter. That was back in the day when the president assured us Usama bin Laden was going to pay for his crimes. He even went so far as to term the “war on terror” as a “crusade” and that this was, for Bush, a mission from God. Bush wanted bin Laden “dead or alive,” invoking the largely mythical portrait of the old American West, a Hollywood vision of what America might have been if the world had indeed been a black and white world where the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black. Interestingly, two of the most famous “good guys” of the Old West, Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp, both wore black hats.
By 2002, Bush said of bin Laden, “I am truly not that concerned about him” and he told Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes bin Laden was “… not a top priority use of American resources.” Toppling Saddam Hussein and creating a Middle East version of Bush’s vision of America in Iraq was the top priority.
Unfortunately, when a president talks like a schoolyard bully and displays the behavior of an ugly American in a Parisian bistro, a large enough number of American citizens follow suit and that becomes the world’s view of American attitudes and values.
How many Germans, normally decent human beings, got pumped up and followed the jingoism of Hitler in 1932, when he promised a new Reich in which Germany would be the pinnacle society in the history of mankind? It isn’t popular to compare our president to the man who started the worst, most destructive war in human history, but how can we ignore the parallels?
Besides the nationalistic jingoism, the president and his minions have convinced a large enough percentage of Americans that diminishing our civil liberties is good for the country, pretty much has Hitler did in 1932 when he grabbed power and began his fascist regime.
And like Hitler found himself in 1939 when the entire world was stacked against him, except for a few allies, only one of them being a world power (Japan), the United States has been on the defensive around the world since the president started his war in Iraq. They haven’t taken up arms against the United States, but we find ourselves with few allies in the “war on terror” and even fewer still in Iraq.
Iran is not a beacon of freedom or hope and Ahmadinejad has been a boorish leader. He held a two-day conference for holocaust deniers two years ago. He has led his nation during one of its most severe eras of repression; journalists, academics and other dissidents have been jailed for what they have written or said. But is that any reason to debase ourselves with rude and boorish behavior? Bollinger didn’t need to treat Ahmadinejad so childishly, the Iranian leader’s own words pretty much put the traffic pattern engineer (he holds a PhD in traffic management) in the light we so often view him.
What Bollinger’s introduction did do is confirm to the rest of the world the United States is a country that prefers bellicosity to the edicts of decency and hospitality. In Iran they berate (and jail) visitors who speak out against the regime. We should set a higher standard of conduct and civility. Unfortunately, under this president, civility is a word not heard in his vocabulary. Calendar
Quicksearch
Categories
AD Links
Referrals
Syndicate This Blog
Blog Administration
Powered by
TheForkesReport