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Published 15 March 2003 (word count: 750) Waitaminnit.
I thought Osama and his home boys hated America because we have freedom. That’s what our faithful and venerated leaders told us. Shortly after the terrorist airline attacks, President George Walker Bush assured us via that infallible font of fact, the television set, that Muslim marauders detest us because we have “Freedom and democracy.” Not because of our foreign policies toward the Islamic world, but because we have Freedom and Democracy. My unimpeachable source for his comments is an article on a web site called The Loose Cannon Libertarian entitled Healing Our Leaders, published on October 1, 2001. And the unimpeachable source behind that unimpeachable source was the author’s own ears, which were remarkably free of earwax at the moment that our faithful and venerated President was playing Talking Head on that infallible font of fact, the television set.
Soon after, Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney assured us on Meet the Press that Osama hates us because we have “Freedom and democracy.” Not because of our foreign policies, but because we have Freedom and Democracy. The unimpeachable source for this statement is Meet the Press’s own web site.
Soon after that, Secretary of State Colin Luther Powell, apparently not officially briefed on the official wording of the official line, informed us that “They hate our value system.” Close enough for government work. But still not because of our foreign policies, but because we have Freedom and Democracy (or at least a value system). The unimpeachable source for this statement is Meet the Press’s own web site.
Imagine my utter confusion, then, when I read an article about the forthcoming war against Iraq (date and time to be announced, probably during sweeps week) on page 30A of the February 23, 2003 edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (known locally as the Startle-Gram): “As part of a postwar scenario, President Bush will remove most U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia. This would deprive al Qaeda of one of its grievances against America.”
One of its grievances against America? I thought their only grievance against America was our Freedom and Democracy (and Colin Luther Powell’s Value System). Our faithful and venerated leaders told us so. And they’ve already taken steps to deprive al Qaeda of that grievance. They created the USA Patriot Act.
To plagiarize yet another Loose Cannon Libertarian rant, USA PATRIOT Games, regarding this piece of legislative malevolence:
What it actually does is create the gun-and-badge wet dream of the All American Police State. Now, worse than ever, our lives will be infested with federal enforcers’ body parts: eyes ogling our email, ears filtering our phone chats, fingers fondling our “papers and effects” (as the Fourth Amendment so eloquently put it), feet tromping throughout our homes during secret searches, noses thrust indiscriminately into our faces at every turn, well fed asses festooning secret Star Chamber judicial benches.
So bin Laden and his al Qaedians can’t hate us for our Freedom and Democracy any more because we don’t have Freedom and Democracy any more.
Funny how Arabs without membership in the al Qaeda Club see things just the opposite. According to an Associated Press article last October, a Zogby International poll of 3,800 adults in eight different Islamic countries came to this conclusion: “A comprehensive survey of attitudes and opinions in the Arab world has found that Arabs look favorably on American freedoms and political values, but have a strongly negative overall view of the United States based largely on their disapproval of U.S. policy toward the region.”
Oh. So they don’t hate us for the Freedom and Democracy we used to have. They hate us for our foreign policies that we still have.
Just as the Bush administration is studiously ignoring the millions of worldwide war protesters now, so the same administration ignored the Zogby findings then. Instead, they ginned up yet another bureaucracy, called the Office of Global Communications, whose job it is to convince all those Arabs who don’t hate us for the Freedoms that we no longer have that they shouldn’t hate us for the Freedoms that we no longer have.
So why the policy change on page 30A? A trial balloon? Will the Bushniks really remove our soldiers from Saudi sod once the family Saddam business inherited by Bush fils from Bush pere is attended to? Libertarians can only hope. And as equally important: will the USA Patriot Act be withdrawn from our home turf?
Who hates our freedom most - foreign terrorists or American politicians?
- by Garry Reed
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