roaring mouse
新手上路
One of the strange things about the Iraq war and other post-September 11 policies is that, except for gas being at $3 a gallon, who the hell cares? Part of the cunning genius of the Bush administration has been the way it's insulated Americans from the effects of their policies. You know, September 11 happens and they seize upon it to declare their "global war on terror". The president says from the outset that this is a long war, that it may take decades, that it's comparable to the world wars. On the other hand, he chooses not to mobilize the nation. There are no changes in our domestic priorities; no significant expansion of the armed forces.
Well, why was that? In their confidence about how great our military power was, they calculated that what we had would suffice. That was a major miscalculation. But I think they also calculated that by telling Americans, as President Bush famously did, to go down to Disney World and enjoy this great country of ours, they would be able to buy themselves political protection. Even though opinion polls show that public support for the president has dropped tremendously, in a sense events have proved them right. They have not been held accountable for their egregious mistakes because average citizens like you and me don't really feel the pain in any direct way.
Now, if the president had said: We're going to cut back on our domestic programs; we're going to raise taxes because this is an important war and, by God, we need to pay for it; we need a bigger army and so we're going to impose a draft - then I think Americans might have been more attentive to what's been happening over the past four years. But alas, they've not been. Instead, we've drifted down the path toward perdition.
Well, why was that? In their confidence about how great our military power was, they calculated that what we had would suffice. That was a major miscalculation. But I think they also calculated that by telling Americans, as President Bush famously did, to go down to Disney World and enjoy this great country of ours, they would be able to buy themselves political protection. Even though opinion polls show that public support for the president has dropped tremendously, in a sense events have proved them right. They have not been held accountable for their egregious mistakes because average citizens like you and me don't really feel the pain in any direct way.
Now, if the president had said: We're going to cut back on our domestic programs; we're going to raise taxes because this is an important war and, by God, we need to pay for it; we need a bigger army and so we're going to impose a draft - then I think Americans might have been more attentive to what's been happening over the past four years. But alas, they've not been. Instead, we've drifted down the path toward perdition.
