Slogans, Strategy, and Moral Relativity

Preemptive Karma:

Last night Nancy Pelosi told David Letterman that "(s)tay the course is not a strategy -- it's a slogan..." And she's absolutely right. Likewise, the oft repeated Bushite explanation that "they hate our freedom" is about as reality based as the whole "stay the course" psychobabble meme. Only it's more of an Orwellian meme because the exact opposite has been true too often.

Lebanese recover from Kafkaesque trip to Israel is a piece about five alleged Hezbollah members taken into custody by Israeli troops three and a half weeks ago, which was reported by media outlets worldwide. Only it turns out that not a single one of them were Hezbollah members.

The Israelis dumped all five on the Lebanese border this past Monday after twenty days of imprisonment, interrogation and minus a few teeth (but don't call it torture...). No apology. No explanation. Nothing.

Tortured And Innocent is a piece about an innocent Turkish man imprisoned and tortured by American forces in Gitmo for four years before being released.

Since none of these individuals had any demonstrable connection to any terrorist organization a reasonable person could argue that they at least did not "hate our freedom" so much that they were willing to associate with or join a terrorist organization. But how many reasonable people could survive false imprisonment and torture and then be released with zero apology from their torturers and not come away from the whole experience with some pretty darn good new reasons to hate the perpetrators of such a travesty of justice?

Rightwing freaks like Neal Boortz insisted that Rep. Cynthia McKinney should apologize to the Capital Hill police officer she'd had an altercation with earlier this year. And why? Because she'd slapped him.

Apparently in the twisted world of rightwing freaks slapping someone requires an apology but busting out the teeth of a perfectly innocent Lebanese or torturing an innocent Turk, not to mention their imprisonment, is something that those particular victims ought to just suck it up over, be glad that they eventually regained their freedom and to hell with apologizing to them.

But hey... ignore the man behind the curtain. Just forget that the king is stark naked. Accept the proffered trite pacifiers and go on about your business believing that staying the course and that terrorist hate us because of our freedoms actually mean something and were spoken by honest men. Send your sons and daughters off to die in strange lands while Dick Cheney's continued severence installments are guaranteed by the massive profits Halliburton has made scamming both American taxpayors and Iraqi civilians.

If our government can imprison and torture an innocent man for four years and not offer explanation nor apology, what makes you think you'll get anything more out of this government?