Hitting the nail on the head, yet again
26/09/2006: "Coalition of the wicked and stupid"
Phillip Adams:
WITHIN days of 9/11 Susan Sontag gave the world some famous advice. "Let's by all means grieve together. But let's not be stupid together." Fearing a stupendously stupid response by Washington and Canberra, I began my next column with Sontag's quote, which provoked for me, as for her, the most enraged reaction in a long career.
Copping accusations of racism (I was deemed to be an anti-American bigot as well as a traitor) my column also responded to Christopher Hitchens' introduction of the term "Islamic fascism" into an already white-hot debate.
Islamic fascism reminded me that the US had never stopped "playing footsie with governments that slaughtered, disappeared, tortured and abused their hapless populations" - that the US "has for decades provided terrorist regimes with weapons, training and financial support" and that "among the recipients, Saddam Hussein, Washington's favourite dictator when it was confronting Iranians. And, yes, the Mujaheddin, predecessors of the Taliban, whom Washington saw as a kris pointed at the heart of the Soviet Union".
I argued: "Look, I hate to be critical of the country that gave us jazz, Singin' in the Rain and FDR, but the ineptitude of US foreign policy and the Keystone Kops absurdities of ventures such as Panama, the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam attest to the stupidities pf successive presidents, Pentagon chiefs-of-staff and secretaries of state. Not to mention the blithering incompetence of agencies such as the FBI and CIA.
"Now Bush demands justice. Not UN justice, only US justice. We're either with or we're against them. And John Howard, like Tony Blair, has signed a blank cheque for a US President who, as well as denouncing international agreements on global warming, biological weapons and torture, has refused to sign up for an international court to try war criminals. If Australia is to be a true friend of the American people, we must try to rein them in, not urge them on."
There's bigotry for you. As anticipated, Sontag's warning about grief versus stupidity was ignored and now provides an epitaph for the Bush administration and for hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed American troops and Iraqi civilians. And because Howard shared and cheered the same stupidity, the world is a far more dangerous place, as is Australia.
Now the National Intelligence Estimate, a 30-page consensus view of 16 spy services inside the US Government, quantifies the stupidity in regard to terrorism. Surprise surprise, the war in Iraq has been a recruiting agency for young Islamic militants. The result: their numbers are increasing faster than the US-led coalition is destroying the threat. That's what stupidity does for you.
Bush looks as silly as Mickey Mouse playing the sorcerer's apprentice in Fantasia, trying to mop the rising waters while a growing army of buckets add to the flood. And the apprentice to the apprentice, Howard, continues to back Bush in his grand delusion that things are getting better all the time.
Now, a colleague of Sontag, Joan Didion, has written an essay of immense significance in The New York Review of Books (October 5) focusing not on the Bush marionette but on that principal and unprincipled puppeteer, Dick Cheney. Her portrait of that huntin' shootin' rip-tootin' ideologue chills the blood.
Though fully aware that an invasion would likely trigger a civil war, Cheney supported it. When Colin Powell predicted such a negative reaction that the US would be forced to close its embassies around the world, Cheney said it was "not the issue". When Powell said "we could trigger all kinds of unanticipated and unintended consequences", Cheney said it again. "Not the issue." Just as he'd ridicule the Geneva Conventions and concerns about torture: "Not the issue."
Here's the issue. Cheney made more than $US44,000,000 as chief executive of Halliburton during his brief detour from Republican administrations, at a time when the company was coining it in Bosnia and Kosovo. One subsidiary, on its own, billed the US $US2 billion. Now Halliburton alone has signed contracts in Iraq worth $US11,431,000,000.
Didion tells the story of Joe Allbaugh, a Cheney acolyte, who left the Bush administration to share in the spoils of war. Having used his Texas CV to wangle a job as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he appointed Michael D. Brown to succeed him (he's the buffoon who helped stuff up the response to Hurricane Katrina, whom the President memorably lauded with the words "Brownie, you're doing a helluva job") so he'd be free to found New Bridge Strategies.
According to its website, Allbaugh's company "was created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the US-led war in Iraq". As Didion observes, "this was the US-led war in Iraq that had not then yet begun". Talk about insider trading.
Didion's essay overflows with material on Cheney that makes stupidity the least of his crimes. And this greedy, brutal man is still profiting from Halliburton through deferments and stock options.
Nowadays, when not shooting friends, Cheney keeps a lower profile. And he is running out of time; at long last, the US electorate is running out of stupidity.
Phillip Adams:
WITHIN days of 9/11 Susan Sontag gave the world some famous advice. "Let's by all means grieve together. But let's not be stupid together." Fearing a stupendously stupid response by Washington and Canberra, I began my next column with Sontag's quote, which provoked for me, as for her, the most enraged reaction in a long career.
Copping accusations of racism (I was deemed to be an anti-American bigot as well as a traitor) my column also responded to Christopher Hitchens' introduction of the term "Islamic fascism" into an already white-hot debate.
Islamic fascism reminded me that the US had never stopped "playing footsie with governments that slaughtered, disappeared, tortured and abused their hapless populations" - that the US "has for decades provided terrorist regimes with weapons, training and financial support" and that "among the recipients, Saddam Hussein, Washington's favourite dictator when it was confronting Iranians. And, yes, the Mujaheddin, predecessors of the Taliban, whom Washington saw as a kris pointed at the heart of the Soviet Union".
I argued: "Look, I hate to be critical of the country that gave us jazz, Singin' in the Rain and FDR, but the ineptitude of US foreign policy and the Keystone Kops absurdities of ventures such as Panama, the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam attest to the stupidities pf successive presidents, Pentagon chiefs-of-staff and secretaries of state. Not to mention the blithering incompetence of agencies such as the FBI and CIA.
"Now Bush demands justice. Not UN justice, only US justice. We're either with or we're against them. And John Howard, like Tony Blair, has signed a blank cheque for a US President who, as well as denouncing international agreements on global warming, biological weapons and torture, has refused to sign up for an international court to try war criminals. If Australia is to be a true friend of the American people, we must try to rein them in, not urge them on."
There's bigotry for you. As anticipated, Sontag's warning about grief versus stupidity was ignored and now provides an epitaph for the Bush administration and for hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed American troops and Iraqi civilians. And because Howard shared and cheered the same stupidity, the world is a far more dangerous place, as is Australia.
Now the National Intelligence Estimate, a 30-page consensus view of 16 spy services inside the US Government, quantifies the stupidity in regard to terrorism. Surprise surprise, the war in Iraq has been a recruiting agency for young Islamic militants. The result: their numbers are increasing faster than the US-led coalition is destroying the threat. That's what stupidity does for you.
Bush looks as silly as Mickey Mouse playing the sorcerer's apprentice in Fantasia, trying to mop the rising waters while a growing army of buckets add to the flood. And the apprentice to the apprentice, Howard, continues to back Bush in his grand delusion that things are getting better all the time.
Now, a colleague of Sontag, Joan Didion, has written an essay of immense significance in The New York Review of Books (October 5) focusing not on the Bush marionette but on that principal and unprincipled puppeteer, Dick Cheney. Her portrait of that huntin' shootin' rip-tootin' ideologue chills the blood.
Though fully aware that an invasion would likely trigger a civil war, Cheney supported it. When Colin Powell predicted such a negative reaction that the US would be forced to close its embassies around the world, Cheney said it was "not the issue". When Powell said "we could trigger all kinds of unanticipated and unintended consequences", Cheney said it again. "Not the issue." Just as he'd ridicule the Geneva Conventions and concerns about torture: "Not the issue."
Here's the issue. Cheney made more than $US44,000,000 as chief executive of Halliburton during his brief detour from Republican administrations, at a time when the company was coining it in Bosnia and Kosovo. One subsidiary, on its own, billed the US $US2 billion. Now Halliburton alone has signed contracts in Iraq worth $US11,431,000,000.
Didion tells the story of Joe Allbaugh, a Cheney acolyte, who left the Bush administration to share in the spoils of war. Having used his Texas CV to wangle a job as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he appointed Michael D. Brown to succeed him (he's the buffoon who helped stuff up the response to Hurricane Katrina, whom the President memorably lauded with the words "Brownie, you're doing a helluva job") so he'd be free to found New Bridge Strategies.
According to its website, Allbaugh's company "was created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the US-led war in Iraq". As Didion observes, "this was the US-led war in Iraq that had not then yet begun". Talk about insider trading.
Didion's essay overflows with material on Cheney that makes stupidity the least of his crimes. And this greedy, brutal man is still profiting from Halliburton through deferments and stock options.
Nowadays, when not shooting friends, Cheney keeps a lower profile. And he is running out of time; at long last, the US electorate is running out of stupidity.
posted by Anthony Stoddart @ 8:20 PM
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