Taliban the Bomb

Let's take stock today of all the great things the Bust administration has done to protect Americans since we were so savagely attacked by terrorists on September 11.

• Passed sweeping legislation that allows government agencies to spy on what we do and say.
• Bombed the living bejesus out of anything bombable in Afghanistan (including the Red Cross).
• Bungled the investigation of the Anthrax attacks.
• Ended the quarter-century-old ban on political assassinations by agents of the U.S. government.
• Fought tooth and nail to prevent the federalization of airport security.
• Fought tooth and nail to ensure the passage of an "economic stimulus package" that doesn't help the economy much but includes a $25 billion payoff to Corporate America.
• Issued an executive order that essentially blocks the release of papers from the Reagan administration.
• Somehow managed to stifle the report of the National Opinion Research Center's tabulation of the actual vote count from Florida's 2000 general election.

And this is just the stuff that I can think of off the top of my head. It is extremely troubling to see that the response of this government to attacks upon the greatest democracy in the world is to... revoke democracy. I feel safer already.

We are losing the war of language surrounding the events of the day. I have heard several conservatives justify the deaths of Afghan women and children by citing the deaths of the innocent at the WTC. This argument is specious at best and knowingly misleading at worst. Nobody has accused Afghanistan of participating in the attack against the World Trade Center. The government of Afghanistan has been accused of sheltering someone we think is responsible for the attack, and the civilians we are killing with our errant bombs have been oppressed by that same government. The argument that the deaths of these innocent women and children are justified by the deaths of those at the WTC is a disgrace.

There is another inappropriate comparison being bandied about by conservatives, that of this conflict to World War II. This comparison always begins with the inevitable equation of the WTC attack to Pearl Harbor. From there, the analogy takes on a life of its own, justifying everything from prolonged war to the assassination of foreign leaders to the silencing of domestic opposition. But when viewed with a rational eye, the comparison falls apart.

Let's begin at the beginning. Pearl Harbor was a sneak attack, yes, but it was carried out by the military forces of a sovereign nation against the military forces of the U.S. It was a legitimate act of war that was intended to immediately follow a formal declaration of war (the declaration arrived hours late). The September attack was perpetrated by civilian terrorists with no intention of fighting a traditional war.

World War II was fought with a specific objective in mind: to push the aggressor nations back behind their own borders and then remove their governments from power. What is the objective of this "war"? To end terror? That's sufficiently vague to cover almost anything. To take down governments that sponsor terrorism? Then why haven't we bombed Saudi Arabia? They sponsor more international terrorism in any given month than Afghanistan could in a decade. How about Pakistan? Oh right, they've temporarily sided with us while we burn their neighbor to the ground.

The simple fact is that pResident Cokehead has the political cover he needs to perpetrate gross acts of malfeasance against the people he purports to represent. He's presiding over a bigger give-away to the wealthy than the one Reagan pulled off. Meanwhile, the American people are distracted by Anthrax and Afghanistan. Unless someone has the guts to speak up soon, you can say goodbye to the America in which you grew up.