The Politics of Indignity

[impeach the gop]

When proud people feel like afterthoughts they get angry, whether in restive Iraq or rural America. And some get violent


NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE


Nov 28 — Thanksgiving is not an Iraqi holiday. So maybe it’s not surprising that few Iraqis were in evidence when President George W. Bush made his gutsy whistle-stop at the darkened Baghdad airport on Thursday. He was there to share turkey with the troops, after all, not with the people they liberated. Security considerations are great. The natives are restless. Bush managed to meet briefly with four local officials, but to paraphrase an earlier maxim of campaign strategy, “It’s not about the Iraqis, stupid.”


(snip)
“As to the ‘Patriot Act,’ a piece of misnomenclature if ever I’ve heard one, you know the aphorism, ‘Man proposes, God disposes’? It may well come down to ‘Fed proposes, we shoot poseurs.’ Would the military actually fight guerrilla warfare in its own back yard, with its own friends and relatives? Government lacking the consent of the governed is apt to have poor longevity.”
No, I don’t think we’ll see the midwestern equivalent of the Sunni Triangle any time soon. But Washington would do well to remember, before rage turns to conviction, that “human freedom and dignity” isn’t just a convenient catch-phrase at a daring photo-op. The Iraqis know that. And so do most Americans.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/999029.asp?0cv=KA01&cp1=1

[kainah]

1. gee, someone else noticed we are just "poseurs"

I think that really is the perfect descriptor for this misadministration. It's all about how it looks.........