Why, why why must we suffer this ignorant idiot ANY LONGER? Gah! At least muzzle the moron for the next year and a half and don’t let him speak in public….
Bush cites Israel as model for Iraq – Yahoo! News
“Our success in Iraq must not be measured by the enemy’s ability to get a car bombing in the evening news,” he said. “No matter how good the security, terrorists will always be able to explode a bomb on a crowded street.”
He suggested Israel as a model.
There, Bush said, “Terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in suicide attacks. The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy and it’s not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that’s a good indicator of success that we’re looking for in Iraq.”
It was likely to be controversial — and possibly even explosive — for Bush to set out Israel as a model for a Muslim Middle Eastern nation. Israel has been locked for decades in an intractable dispute with Palestinians in the neighboring occupied territories, a conflict that is viewed as a major recruiting tool for Islamic extremist groups like al-Qaida.
UPDATE: I see Juan Cole agrees with me:
These words may be the stupidest ones ever uttered by a US president. Given their likely impact on the US war effort in the Middle East, they are downright criminal.
The US political elite just doesn’t get it. Israel is not popular in the Middle East, and it isn’t because Middle Easterners are bigots. It is because Israel is coded as the last European colonial presence in the region, an heir to French Algeria, British Egypt, and Dutch Indonesia– and because the Israelis pugnaciously continue to try to colonize neighboring bits of territory. (This enmity is not inevitable or eternal; in 2002 the Arab League offered full recognition of Israel in return for its going back to 1967 borders, but the Israeli government turned down the offer.) But for the purposes of this analysis it does not really matter why Israel is unpopular. Let us just stipulate that it is. Why would you associate American Iraq with such an unpopular project, if you were trying to do public diplomacy in the region? Bush had just announced a new push to get the American message out to the Muslim world, the day before.
Israel-Palestine is among the world’s hottest trouble spots, and the conflict has poisoned politics throughout the Middle East. It was among the motives for Bin Laden’s attack on the US on September 11, so it has spilled over on America, too. A second one of those would be a good thing?
So who would play the Palestinians in Bush’s analogy? Obviously, it would be the Sunni Arabs, who apparently are meant to be cordoned off from the rest of Iraqis and put behind massive walls and barbed wire, and deprived of political power. That is not a desirable outcome and is not politically or militarily tenable in the long run.
And, let’s just stop and think. Even if it were true that an Israel-Palestine sort of denouement were in Bush’s mind for Iraq, was it wise for him to make it public?
I don’t know whether to sob in grief or tear my hair out in frustration. How much longer do we have to suffer?
Labels: monumental stupidity
3 Responses
He has to debase himself. All of them will confess their own stupidity and call it genius, until the reality comes home to them.
Was it not always so for all of us?
In condemning others I remain always conscious that I may sentence myself, out of my own ignorance of what I may do unknowing of consequence.
My belief in practicing peaceful means leaves up to some faith that the ends achieved will be consistent.
perhaps his logic is like this
when every country is a terrorist style democracy
no country will be free from terror
so then by default no terror will exist since it will be the standard
wait, i am confused now
perhaps he meant
when everyone is a terrorist, every one will be happy
since we all will have guns
no wait that’s a song happiness is a loaded gun
so maybe he means
when iraq is like Israel it will be Israel and so then no one in the middle east will be fighting since it will all be the same
I guess I don’t know what he means
😉