Nobody Believes Bush on the Ports Deal Even Though He’s Not Lying — For Once
I caught a few minutes of President Bush’s address yesterday to a convention of newspaper executives in Washington. His performance was absymal, as usual. He has more trouble reading from a script than most people do speaking extemporaneously.
But on Friday there was a new quality to his speechifying, especially when he was discussing the failed Dubai Ports World deal. He sounded a bit chastened and aggrieved:
“I’m concerned about a broader message this issue could send to our friends and allies around the world, particularly in the Middle East,” Bush said… “In order to win the war on terror, we have got to strengthen our relationships and friendships with moderate Arab countries in the Middle East.”
“Moderate Arabs?” I guess that means “Arabs who are not terrorists.” Until now it has suited President Bush’s interests to obfuscate the existence of moderate Arabs in order to build up the fictional Muslim Arab terrorist bogeyman he sent America’s sons and daughters to fight in Iraq.
Just three years ago, in the run-up to the Iraq war, the president deliberately conflated Saddam Hussein and his secular regime in Iraq with the ultra-extremist Islamic group, al Qaeda. In reality, al Qaeda hated Saddam’s secular dictatorship as much as it hated our freedom.
In his sales pitch for the war, the president constructed an Arab Muslim terrorist bogeyman out of truthiness: Arab Muslims attacked us on 9/11, therefore all Muslims are terrorists. Besides, Muslims are, by definition, unchristian.
The American public is constantly exposed to this kind of stereotyping in movies and on television, and certain sectors of the public accepted this bogeyman construct without question.
In a recent poll, almost 90 percent of active-duty U.S. military personnel believe the war in Iraq is retaliation for Saddam’s role in 9/11.
When almost 9o percent of our military believes something that is false, it isn’t coincidental. It is brainwashing.
Lying is not only immoral, in the long run it is always impractical. Eventually, the liar’s lies bite him on the ass, and that is what happened to President Bush on the ports deal.
The cold reality is, there is no connection between our national security and country of origin for the corporate offices of the conglomerate that owns the rigs that unload cargo at our ports.
This is what President Bush has been arguing all along. Fundamentally, he’s right — and yet even his own followers don’t believe him.
Schadenfreude! I’m soaking in it.
