Bush speaks

Unfortunately, because Bush works for Dick Cheney, we can't just treat his comments as the sneering, poorly-informed chatter of an overgrown spoiled rich kid and dry drunk.

Bush's speech at the State Department on Monday 08/14/06 was mainly focused on trying to equate Lebanese Hizbullah and Al Qaida to the Iran and Syria. Mostly Iran. But this also struck me:

The conflict in Lebanon is part of a broader struggle between freedom and terror that is unfolding across the region. For decades, American policy sought to achieve peace in the Middle East by promoting stability in the Middle East. Yet the lack of freedom in the region meant anger and resentment grew, radicalism thrived and terrorists found willing recruits. We saw the consequences on September the 11th, 2001, when terrorists brought death and destruction to our country, killing nearly 3,000 of our citizens. (my emphasis)

Now, I don't want to join the ranks of those who are perilously criticizing our Commander-in-Chief in time of war, or anything. But didn't Bush say there that bad government and lack of freedom in the Middle East helped create The Terrorists as a menance? And even that American policy was heavily to blame for that? What, is he suddenly wanting to give The Terrorists therapy or something? Is he asking us to give them hugs of understanding?

But then he says it's not credible at all to think that the Bush Doctrine of preventive war (the "freedom agenda") could be motivating The Terrorists at all:

Some say that America caused the current instability in the Middle East by pursuing a forward strategy of freedom, yet history shows otherwise. We didn't talk much about freedom or the freedom agenda in the Middle East before September the 11th, 2001; or before al Qaeda first attacked the World Trade Center and blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in the 1990s; or before Hezbollah killed hundreds of Americans in Beirut and Islamic radicals held American hostages in Iran in the 1980s. History is clear: The freedom agenda did not create the terrorists or their ideology. But the freedom agenda will help defeat them both.

I suppose he's confident that our "press corps" won't bother to call him on the laziness and sloppiness of those constructs. And why shouldn't he be?


The master narrative about the motivations of The Terrorists is that that hate us for our freedoms. But in order to justify the Cheney policy of escalating destabilization of the Middle East, he says that The Terrorists started hating us because they didn't have freedoms at home. But the invasion and occupation and 3 1/2 years of aerial bombing of Iraq couldn't have had anything to do with making the problem worse. Nor Israel's month-long assault on Lebanon's infrastructure and civilian targets.

It's all so vapid. And the Cheney-Bush team has become so used to changing the Party line back and forth and having a faith Republican echo chamber to repeat it that they're starting to seem like that don't even care if one paragraph of a speech even sounds coherent with two paragraphs later.

Well, at least Tony Blair seems to admire him unconditionally. Pets are pleasant that way.

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