Bush's misdiagnosis

[ashling]

Mods's: I am not the original poster of this piec about Bush and Republican mis-
charicterizing the whole terror issue. It was originally posted in the Palestinian group. However, I feel that it is not exclusively about that crisis, but is an excellent explication of the errors, and outright lies and deception, coming from the White House.

As such, I felt this needed a broader exposure and deserves to be on the home page.

- Ashling

Daily Star Lebanon
By Rami G. Khouri
Daily Star staff
Saturday, September 02, 2006


There is something sad about a grown man playing children's make-believe war games in a tree house in grandpa's back yard - which is how President George W. Bush came across Thursday night in his speech on the importance of winning the war in Iraq in the global battle against terrorism. Rarely does a leader of a great country like the United States malign history, his people's intelligence and the dignity of over a billion Muslims in one speech, but Bush did that Thursday night and will probably keep doing it for a while.

Terrorism is no joke or game, I know, and the attacks of September 11, 2001, and subsequent ones around the world were tragic and criminal deeds. Nobody has to tell us in the Middle East about terrorism's evil, because we suffer its negative impact in two ways - as victims of terror for many decades, and also as the owners of the societies that give birth to so many terrorists.

Yet Bush's response to terror remains hobbled by three constraints: misdiagnosing the causes and aims of terror; waging a "global war on terror" that has only expanded the problem by giving terrorists new reasons to cause havoc; and exaggerating the nature and extent of the terror threat to Americans and the world primarily for domestic political purposes. The cumulative consequences of such an approach have been devastating in various ways - to Bush's own political standing at home, American credibility and clout around the world, and the continued threat of terror around the world. The shortcomings of Bush's anti-terror approach are very clear, five years after the September 11 attacks, yet he keeps promoting historically inaccurate and morally deviant approaches to the problem that only make the problem worse in many cases.

The president's speech Thursday night was most compelling for its capacity to say nothing that he has not said repeatedly in the past three years, while adding new layers of misinterpretation and diversionary chaff that he sells to the American public on the basis of emotionalism, patriotism and nostalgia. His main thesis summed up his shameful misanalysis: "The war we fight today is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century.''

<more>


http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=5&article_id=75185

[angstlessk]

1. Link does not work and when I search by author, Rami G. Khouri's last

article appears to be 8/29/06, so no luck there either. I would LOVE to read the rest of the article.

[MADem]

2. Here you go, it's the first article at the author's own website

http://www.agenceglobal.com/author.asp?type=2&id=7

Direct link, here: http://www.agenceglobal.com/article.asp?id=1031

Not via the Star...they're shaky sometimes as far as connecting to them goes. They also charge for content way too quick.

[angstlessk]

4. Thank you for that link...very interesting article. n/t

[ashling]

3. I edited to fix the link

if it still doesn't work, go to this post in the Israel/Palestine Forum, that one works (and is what I tried to paste here.