Onward Christian Soldiers? In the absence of WMD we’re expected to embrace the concept of bringing democracy to the backward Arabs? I caught some of this speech yesterday and listened as George in his affected macho way basically ‘warned’ Syria and Iraq they will have democracy whether they like it or not. He railed on about having no tolerance for govt.’s that force their theocratic ways upon their citizenry, especially abhorrent to him in the absence of a democratic process, while praising ‘friends’ like those in Jordan who were implicated in Maher Arar’s torture story and demand for full investigation of same, an assertion of his basic rights that these defenders of democracy will do everything in their power to suppress.
How does this selected resident reconcile his faith-based initiatives, jihad on the gay community, outsourcing of torture to countries like Syria, and politicising of abortion, just to name a few, with these admonitions? The American Taliban is no less offensive to a free society than any he plans to shock and awe now or in the future.
George attempted to soothe his Iraq detractors this week by claiming Saddam would no longer have ‘rape rooms’. He did this in the same news cycle it was announced DynCorp was contracted to provide training for the fast-tracked security forces in the region, a company that has in the past been accused of the same egregious crime.
Acceptance of his demagoguery hinges on adhering to a faith-based moral superiority that hasn’t begun to deserve even cursory entitlement to the claims he asserts.
Update: Jim Lobe covers the speech here.
An excerpted quote:
“This is part of an increasingly desperate attempt by the administration to shore up support for Iraq,” said Charles Kupchan, a foreign-policy analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“A war that was supposed to be about national security must now be cast as a war for Wilsonian liberalism,” he told IPS.