Readable on the Huffington Post
A thoughtful post on Iraq on the Huff post.
This whole lack of clarity thing and ambivalence, etc, I think is pretty right on.
But take all this a step further - why do Americans get so angry with this administrations incompetence versus say, anger towards the insurgency who in it's best form are Iraqi nationalists trying to restore minority rule by terror and in it's worst form are Jihadists trying to install a theocratic government ruled by extreme terror.
Why do we blame America for the horrors of these murderous thugs? Do we blame Britain and France being too tough on Germany post WWI for the rise of Nazism?
The fact is, most Americans both on the left and right are more angry at Bush than at these assholes perpetrating the civil war, acts of terrorism, or whatever you want to call it. Why is that?
1 comment:
I think it has to do with our psychological make-up. I personally lump a lot of bad actors in the world into an ambiguous category of "bad people", but most often these people don't inspire much in the way of occupying my thoughts. The Janjaweed militias raping and pillaging in Sudan are undoubtedly awful, but do I necessarily feel anger towards them? They are too abstract to really develop a tangible emotional response to them. Same for Fidel Castro, or Kim Jong Il, or Islamic terrorists. When I see evidence of their evil acts I get very emotional, but on a day-to-day basis I don't express much hatred for these same bad actors.
For whatever reason, I harbor much more hatred for the Saudi princes and all their misogyny, nepotism, and hypocritical radicalism than I do the Saudis who actually become suicide bombers. The latter are just crazy, while the former are cynical and manipulative.
I might put Bush into the category of the Saudi princes. I feel he should know better than to act the way he does, seeing as he is a fellow American citizen and serving a proud tradition. I have no same standard for any of these Islamic terrorists or even leaders.
If there is a neighborhood lunatic doing bad things to people, the community will be angry with the lunatic, but after awhile if nothing stops the community gets more angry with the city officials who aren't properly taking action against the lunatic. I think this is natural.
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