Thursday, November 20, 2003
From the Vault
Our only president is over there in England, making nice (barely) with the Queen, and somehow arguing today that by ignoring the U.N. in his runup to war in Iraq, he somehow saved it from League of Nations style irrelevance. For a gloriously detailed analysis of the vaulting bullshit behind the soaring rhetoric, nobody does it better than the Center for American Progress. They demonstrate Bush's speech to be, if not utterly at odds with the truth, then providing some rather peculiar interpretations of just what we've done in Iraq and elsewhere.
Here's something you'll want to read twice just to make sure your eyes aren't deceiving you. It's not what it seems to be--not a mea culpa, but another flipping of the bird at the concept of an international community. You see, following international law would have been morally unacceptable in Saddam Hussein's case, and the Bush Administration is nothing if not scrupulously moral. Don't blame us. We always want to follow international law, but those damned moral imperatives! What else could we do?
Ahem. Way back when, John Adams coined the phrase "a government of laws and not of men." It used to be that's what we had. No more, and don't let anybody tell you differently. The Bush Adminstration has arrogated unto itself the decision of which laws to follow and which to disobey. Which makes them no better than outlaws. And all the soaring rhetoric in the world doesn't make it right.
Our only president is over there in England, making nice (barely) with the Queen, and somehow arguing today that by ignoring the U.N. in his runup to war in Iraq, he somehow saved it from League of Nations style irrelevance. For a gloriously detailed analysis of the vaulting bullshit behind the soaring rhetoric, nobody does it better than the Center for American Progress. They demonstrate Bush's speech to be, if not utterly at odds with the truth, then providing some rather peculiar interpretations of just what we've done in Iraq and elsewhere.
Here's something you'll want to read twice just to make sure your eyes aren't deceiving you. It's not what it seems to be--not a mea culpa, but another flipping of the bird at the concept of an international community. You see, following international law would have been morally unacceptable in Saddam Hussein's case, and the Bush Administration is nothing if not scrupulously moral. Don't blame us. We always want to follow international law, but those damned moral imperatives! What else could we do?
Ahem. Way back when, John Adams coined the phrase "a government of laws and not of men." It used to be that's what we had. No more, and don't let anybody tell you differently. The Bush Adminstration has arrogated unto itself the decision of which laws to follow and which to disobey. Which makes them no better than outlaws. And all the soaring rhetoric in the world doesn't make it right.
