Bush's war on terror is a colossal failure! The chimperor* has no Clothes

[leftchick]

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1120859414342&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795

~snip~

The war on terror has been a monumental failure. In fact, it has made matters worse.

You could see that in the words of George W. Bush and Tony Blair after the London blasts.

They contrasted the dastardly acts of the terrorists with their own good deeds for Africa and the environment. True but irrelevant. The terrorists are not from Africa and they don't care about gas emissions.

Blair added: "We will not allow violence to change our values and our way of life." And Anne McLellan parrotted: "We will defend our way of life."

This is a Bush-ian formulation: they hate us because we are free. It cleverly obviates any need for self-scrutiny.

It is also patently false.

[Wetzelbill]

1. It's my standard policy to reply to any post that uses "The Chimperor"

So I just did.

[leftchick]

5. fitting

is it not? ;)

[Wetzelbill]

7. oh I laughed so hard when I first hear it

I nearly choked on a pretzel......

:)

[CJCRANE]

2. It's a failure in its stated goal - to reduce terrorism.

But the implicit goal of the neocons is to actually create more instability in the Middle East (their real goals seem to be exactly the opposite of what they publicly state).

[natrat]

3. yes but someone has made oodles and oodles of $$$$

so for some it is success,,,silver lining to every cloud, so chin up

[G_j]

4. "..not allow violence to change our values "

Tony, perhaps we might ask why violence is also your value?

[Jack Rabbit]

6. They hate us for our freedoms?

No problem. Bush has a way to make them love us, as Mr. Siddiqui point out:

Terrorists also have already changed our way of life.

Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo Bay. Secret prisons abroad. "Renditions." Torture. Assassinations. CIA abductions, even on the friendly soil of Italy.

Fear still rules America. Even after waging a war on false pretences, Bush can find refuge from low approval ratings by continuing to link Iraq to 9/11, as he did the other day before — where else? — military cadets.

Our own governments are invading our privacy, suspending civil liberties, criminalizing entire communities and repeatedly exhorting us to be "vigilant," thereby risking vigilantism, the anti-thesis of the rule of law.

They hate us for our freedoms? Fine, we'll just get rid of them.

* * *

What did Mr. Bush expect to gain by going into Iraq? If Iraq had no ties to terrorists and no weapons to give them -- or with which to threaten his weakest neighbor -- then the invasion was pointless. What is even more disturbing is that they knew it was pointless, which is why cynics like your humble servant conclude that it must have had some other point than the ones stated prior to the invasion, or even the different set of points put forward since.

Not only is the invasion of Iraq a failure, it is a war crime. Those who conspired manipulate public opinion by fixing facts and intelligence around a policy of launching an unnecessary war of aggression should be treated as war criminals: impeached, removed from office, indicted, convicted and imprisoned for the rest of their lives.

We aren't safer because neoconservatives are as dangerous as the terrorists themselves.