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Welcome to the musings and notes of a Cadillac, Michigan based writer named Micah Holmquist, who is bothered by his own sarcasm. Please send him email at micahth@chartermi.net. Holmquist's full archives are listed here.
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Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution) Aljazeera.Net English Blogs that for one reason or another Holmquist would like to read on at least something of a regular basis (always in development) Thivai Abhor |
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
One day I will likely tire of critiquing Bush's speeches... But, as Rosanne Cash has sung, "it hasn't happened yet." Yesterday's speech by U.S. President George W. Bush at the 85th Annual American Legion National Convention was included much of what one has come to expect from Bush. He talked about the "terrorists," who of course want to kill people who are "free" -a never defined term-, as if they are a unified entity where one speaks for all and all speak for one. He made it clear that the Palestinians will get a state if and only if the U.S. decides to give them one, and also that " [n]o nation can be neutral" in the "war on terror," which is a "the struggle between civilization and chaos." Apparently Bush has a brain like a computer and fails to understand the idea of different approaches. Bush did mince words when talking about outlawing the burning of Old Glory, an issue near and dear to the hearts of his hosts: And having fought under the American flag and seen it folded and given to families of your friends, you are committed, as am I, to protecting the dignity of the flag in the Constitution of the United States.Using, as he did through out the speech, grandiose language, Bush spelled out the future: We've adopted a new strategy for a new kind of war. We will not wait for known enemies to strike us again. We will strike them and their camps or caves or wherever they hide before they hit more of our cities and kill more of our citizens. We will do everything in our power to deny terrorists weapons of mass destruction before they can commit murder on an unimaginable scale.No definition of "known enemies" was given and Bush also failed to clarify whether dishonest is a permanent or just temporary way of selling the "war on terror." Most interesting was this bit: During the last few decades the terrorists grew bolder, believing if they hit America hard, America would retreat and back down. Five years ago, one of the terrorists said that an attack could make America run in less than 24 hours."[R]etreat and back down"? "[R]un"? What the fuck is Bush talking about? Everybody knows the people of the U.S. are just peaceful people who drive their proverbial tractors to their equally proverbial fields to create proverbial food and only have time to smile and wave at all because they are really nice people. Unless of course their proverbial farm is attacked as it was on a date I can’t recall –it was something like August 11 or September 12- by people who hate them for growing proverbially tasty food. Then they strike with anger, rage and proverbial blankets without any attempt to take over or control the proverbial farms of others before retreating back to their made up little world. I believe some of what I wrote in the previous paragraph. |