Bush's 'Global War on Radicals' - Robert Parry. Consortium News

[autorank]

From the master...a holiday treat!

Bush's 'Global War on Radicals'

By Robert Parry
December 23, 2006

The United States will never win the “war on terror,” in part, because George W. Bush keeps applying elastic definitions to the enemy, most recently expanding the conflict into a war against Muslim “radicals and extremists.”


With almost no notice in Official Washington, Bush has inserted this new standard for judging who’s an enemy as he lays the groundwork for a wider conflict in the Middle East and a potentially endless world war against many of the planet’s one billion adherents to Islam.

Indeed, it could be argued that the “war on terror” has now morphed into the “war on radicals,” allowing Bush to add the likes of Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and the leaders of Syria and Iran to his lengthening international enemies list.

Bush’s twists and turns in defining the enemy in the “war on terror” started more than five years ago, in the days immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Amid the nation’s anguish, Bush spoke in grandiloquent and quasi-religious terms, vowing to “rid the world of evil,” a patently absurd task that never received the ridicule it deserved.

Snip

Bush the ‘Extremist’

Indeed, many people around the world consider Bush – if not a “terrorist” – at least a “radical” and an “extremist,” representing not traditional conservative American principles but rather a radical and extremist view of presidential power that includes his presumed right to invade any country he wishes around the world.

[leftchick]

1. bush is patently absurd!

Thank you for this auto!

:hi:

[autorank]

2. ...and that's on a good day...

:hi:

[Uncle Joe]

3. After the radicals and extremist category,

he will go after the liberals and pissed off, followed by the moderates and the slightly upset, and finally the annoyed conservatives.

Thanks for posting autorank

Kicked and recommended

[autorank]

5. Hi Uncle Joe...I had the same thought when I saw the headline.

So now they're coming for us...but, they now can with the new and improved legislsation denying habeas corpus. Just haul us in, a little dunking, and then deny us an attorney. * has lost any sense of proportion or restraint. He won't take the "hint" from the new and improved Iraq Study Group and he won't listen to the consiglieri, Jim Baker. How long until we start seing a Teardown? and what will it look like?

Maybe this...

[Uncle Joe]

6. Thanks autorank,

and that Time cover is one of my favorites, but I have lost a great deal of faith in the mass corporate media. I am wondering when crunch time comes, will they keep it up or bail him out. I am wondering how much of a teardown will be based on principle as opposed to perceived political winds and how will the same media be in 2008?

I must leave shortly for the evening, but have a good night, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays as I may not be back before Christmas

[mod mom]

4. Terrorist works for me.

Thank you for all your excellent posts.

:hi:

[Jeffersons Ghost]

7. K&R

[bobthedrummer]

8. Anyone that is not with the BFEE is a "radical"-it's up to the Decider

as long as he occupies the WH.