Saturday, March 08, 2003
I like to read other weblogs, and I appreciated the comments on GW Bush I found here. Marissa, it's likely that we'd get along.
W and I, though: we wouldn't get along, if ever we met. I watched his Thursday press conference at my girlfriend's house, and I found the following statement highly illuminating as I read the transcript over at cnn.com:
QUESTION: As you know, not everyone shares your optimistic vision of how this might play out. Do you ever worry, maybe in the wee, small hours, that you might be wrong and they might be right in thinking that this could lead to more terrorism, more anti-American sentiment, more instability in the Middle East?
BUSH: I think, first of all, it's hard to envision more terror on America than September the 11th, 2001. We did nothing to provoke that terrorist attack. It came upon us because there is an enemy which hates America. They hate what we stand for. We love freedom, and we're not changing.
And therefore, so long as there's a terrorist network like al Qaeda and others willing to fund them, finance them, equip them, we're at war.
Wow! That's an incredible leap of logic for a man entrusted, as he repeatedly reminded us, with the safety of the American people. "If you don't agree with us: WAR!" This sounds to me suspiciously like the sort of fundamentalism the U.S. is supposed to be stamping out in the Middle East, and is just one example of how Bush and his ideologies seem offensive and dangerous to me. He expresses no interest in examining the causes of anti-American sentiment (doesn't even acknowledge that part of the question, acutally); his thinking is simplistic, stated in terms that even a third-grader could understand. Well, I don't think the current geo-political situation is as simple as "We good, like freedom, make war on evil America-haters." I'm interested in finding out why the U.S. is so widely disliked, and why people are willing to kill themselves to prove it. How did we get to this point, where our nation is so reviled that it seems sweet and honorable to kill oneself opposing it? Obviously, the U.S. is seen by some as malevolent and overpowering; that the use of military might will "correct" this perception seems a questionable assumption.
Please don't misunderstand me: I am in favor of using force to control Iraq (and North Korea!), but only because we have passed the point where force is unavoidable. But I am deeply disappointed in the way our nation's leaders have portrayed the need to use force in Iraq as immediate and pressing. I don't agree with this at all--Iraq is not a nation of wealth and power, as Bush describes it, but rather a state that has been tightly controlled since the end of the Gulf War. There are a lot of considerations to be made before invasion--and I've not been pleased with the tack taken by France and Germany in this matter--but it just seems like, through his administration's aggressive and solipsistic stance, Bush has botched any chance we had to capitalize on post-Sept. 11th goodwill and recruit supporters to the righteous cause of deposing Saddam Hussein. For this, I hereby formally announce my intention to vote against Bush at the next Presidential election, and I urge you to do the same.
W and I, though: we wouldn't get along, if ever we met. I watched his Thursday press conference at my girlfriend's house, and I found the following statement highly illuminating as I read the transcript over at cnn.com:
QUESTION: As you know, not everyone shares your optimistic vision of how this might play out. Do you ever worry, maybe in the wee, small hours, that you might be wrong and they might be right in thinking that this could lead to more terrorism, more anti-American sentiment, more instability in the Middle East?
BUSH: I think, first of all, it's hard to envision more terror on America than September the 11th, 2001. We did nothing to provoke that terrorist attack. It came upon us because there is an enemy which hates America. They hate what we stand for. We love freedom, and we're not changing.
And therefore, so long as there's a terrorist network like al Qaeda and others willing to fund them, finance them, equip them, we're at war.
Wow! That's an incredible leap of logic for a man entrusted, as he repeatedly reminded us, with the safety of the American people. "If you don't agree with us: WAR!" This sounds to me suspiciously like the sort of fundamentalism the U.S. is supposed to be stamping out in the Middle East, and is just one example of how Bush and his ideologies seem offensive and dangerous to me. He expresses no interest in examining the causes of anti-American sentiment (doesn't even acknowledge that part of the question, acutally); his thinking is simplistic, stated in terms that even a third-grader could understand. Well, I don't think the current geo-political situation is as simple as "We good, like freedom, make war on evil America-haters." I'm interested in finding out why the U.S. is so widely disliked, and why people are willing to kill themselves to prove it. How did we get to this point, where our nation is so reviled that it seems sweet and honorable to kill oneself opposing it? Obviously, the U.S. is seen by some as malevolent and overpowering; that the use of military might will "correct" this perception seems a questionable assumption.
Please don't misunderstand me: I am in favor of using force to control Iraq (and North Korea!), but only because we have passed the point where force is unavoidable. But I am deeply disappointed in the way our nation's leaders have portrayed the need to use force in Iraq as immediate and pressing. I don't agree with this at all--Iraq is not a nation of wealth and power, as Bush describes it, but rather a state that has been tightly controlled since the end of the Gulf War. There are a lot of considerations to be made before invasion--and I've not been pleased with the tack taken by France and Germany in this matter--but it just seems like, through his administration's aggressive and solipsistic stance, Bush has botched any chance we had to capitalize on post-Sept. 11th goodwill and recruit supporters to the righteous cause of deposing Saddam Hussein. For this, I hereby formally announce my intention to vote against Bush at the next Presidential election, and I urge you to do the same.
