Wednesday, March 24, 2004
George, it isn't enough just to kill them, because you can't kill them all!
I promised to let you know how Clarke's book Against All Enemies comes out. Here's the next to the last paragraph on the last page of the body of the book:
We've already drawn your attention to the truly creepy picture that drawing X's through the photos of dead men gives of Bush's character (back here), so I'm glad to see this character issue going mainstream in an authoritative insider's account. Somehow, I don't think this behavior is the answer to the question that "WWJD" poses....
However, what Clarke does not say is that Bush's approach to the WOT in general and AQ in particular is the same approach Bush uses against those he considers enemies domestically, in politics. I can also imagine Bush putting red X's through photographs of John McCain, Max Cleland, Joseph Wilson, Paul O'Neill, and he's trying to draw red X's through pictures of Richard Clarke and John Kerry right now. True, domestically, Bush only uses the tools of character assassination (we hope), instead of actual assassination, as internationally, but the mentality is exactly the same.
But Clarke's bottom line is this:
Bush's kill 'em all and let God sort it out approach IS NOT WORKING. Hopefully, Clarke will hammering that home at the 9/11 commission later this afternoon; Kerry's shadow Secretaries of Defense and State should take notice....
Finally, Bush's approach kill 'em all isn't going to work domestically in 2004 or after. He can't assassinate all of us, either.
President Bush asked us soon after September 11 for cards or charts of the "senior AQ managers," as though dealing with them would be like a Harvard Business School exercise in a hostile takeover. He announced his intentions to measure progress in the war on terrorism by crossing through the pictures of those caught or killed. I have a disturbing image of [Bush] sitting by a warm White House fireplace drawing a dozen red Xs on the faces of the former AQ corporate board, and soon perhaps on OBL, while the new clones of AQ are working the back alleys and dark warrens of Baghdad, Cairo, Jakarta, Karachi, Detroit, and Newark, using the scenes from Iraq to stoke the hatred of America even further, recruiting thousands whose names we will never know, whose faces will never be on President Bush's little charts, not until it is again too late
(print version of Against All Enemies, page 287, with Corrente AQ and OBL abbreviations)
We've already drawn your attention to the truly creepy picture that drawing X's through the photos of dead men gives of Bush's character (back here), so I'm glad to see this character issue going mainstream in an authoritative insider's account. Somehow, I don't think this behavior is the answer to the question that "WWJD" poses....
However, what Clarke does not say is that Bush's approach to the WOT in general and AQ in particular is the same approach Bush uses against those he considers enemies domestically, in politics. I can also imagine Bush putting red X's through photographs of John McCain, Max Cleland, Joseph Wilson, Paul O'Neill, and he's trying to draw red X's through pictures of Richard Clarke and John Kerry right now. True, domestically, Bush only uses the tools of character assassination (we hope), instead of actual assassination, as internationally, but the mentality is exactly the same.
But Clarke's bottom line is this:
Bush's kill 'em all and let God sort it out approach IS NOT WORKING. Hopefully, Clarke will hammering that home at the 9/11 commission later this afternoon; Kerry's shadow Secretaries of Defense and State should take notice....
Finally, Bush's approach kill 'em all isn't going to work domestically in 2004 or after. He can't assassinate all of us, either.
