Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave
February 23, 2006
A couple of you made excellent comments yesterday on my post about port security and the outsourcing of port operations to a company based in Dubai. And so I thought I’d continue the discussion by bringing in the very intelligent points of The New York Times’ Paul Krugman (subscription required) to the table.
The central idea behind Krugman’s column today is that after years of blurring the lines between bad Arabs that attacked us on 9/11 (Al Quaeda, Afghanistan) and bad Arabs that didn’t attack us on 9/11 - the Bush administration has no credibility with the American people when it points to Dubai and whines, “but these are the GOOD Arabs!”
He writes:
The administration successfully linked Iraq and 9/11 in public perceptions through a campaign of constant insinuation and occasional outright lies. In the process, it also created a state of mind in which all Arabs were lumped together in the camp of evildoers. Osama, Saddam — what’s the difference?
Now comes the ports deal. Mr. Bush assures us that “people don’t need to worry about security.” But after all those declarations that we’re engaged in a global war on terrorism, after all the terror alerts declared whenever the national political debate seemed to be shifting to questions of cronyism, corruption and incompetence, the administration can’t suddenly change its theme song to “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”
The same tactics that have so infuriated progressives - blatant manipulation of the truth intended to manipulate the masses - are now coming back to bite the Bush administration in its collective tuchus. And I suppose it’s poetic justice. There was little that we could do to combat such a powerful and masterfully delivered tactic - but things that powerful are often double-edged swords.
I for one, am enjoying the spectacle of Bush running away from the results of his own campaign of lies. As CNN pointed out a few weeks ago, Bush only has 1,000 days left in his administration.
Here’s hoping he’ll be on the defensive for most of it.
This is definitely one of those issues I’d have never have guessed would make it on the radar of big issues at the beginning of the year.
I particularly liked the slant Hunter at Daily Kos gave on it (see my post) that was both well put and thought provoking.
At the very core of this is the house of cards ideology that puts corporations first and tells us to never trust government - unless it is someone else’s government it would seem.
Katrina, this - Bush has seen one worst nightmare issue after another delivering smackdown after smackdown.
Someone needs to give the guy a blow job in the Oval office so Congress can impeach his sorry ass out of office, because he’s otherwise going to have to suffer through three more long years of this stuff.
Ed Note: I’ve added hyperlinks to the posts that Daniel refers to for quick and easy access by my readers. Thanks, Daniel!