Holding Up The Mirror

Sometimes a political leader says something so boldly daft that you just have to hold up the mirror of their words in front of them. Such is the case with Bush's speech in Israel yesterday.

Quoth the Bush (Jr):

In his speech to Israel's Knesset, Bush said: “Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals.”

“We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler all this might have been avoided'.”

“We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Yes, and how many lies did BushCo propagate to "justify" their invasion of Iraq? Many - possibly more than any of us want to think about. Was anyone going to be able to "appease him"? Not a snowball's chance - Bush was hell-bent on finding an excuse to invade Iraq, and his shifting lies about the subject made the point for me.

Further, we can see from the progress in Iraq (or lack of it...) just how successful Bush's "six-shooter diplomacy" has been. His actions have further polarized the world and have done little to stabilize anything. Arguably, Bush's pugilistic approach to world affairs has done little more than guarantee that organizations like Hezbollah and al Qaeda will continue to find more fertile grounds in which to put down their roots - for they thrive in the shadows and rubble of conflict.

Or perhaps, when Bush moralizes about the evils that Hezbollah and others perpetrate, we should reflect upon his support of torture - done by either his people or others; the legal limbo of "not-quite-POWs" he's created; pseudo-courts rigged to achieve a political outcome rather than justice; or the myriad international treaties he has blithely ignored in the prosecution of his wars.