A left-leaning look at the stories and people that build, shape, manipulate, encourage, and/or contribute to the downfall of the United States.

Friday, November 03, 2006

A Short Comment on Terrorism

I normally don't reduce myself to name-calling, but I get really sick of pundits' outrage at people like Cindy Sheehan calling George Bush a terrorist.

So let's examine why such a name is not only justified, it's pretty much mandatory, unless we'd rather ourselves be hypocrites than our president be a "terrorist."

The USA PATRIOT Act defines "domestic terrorism" as any act intended to:
a. intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
b. influence the policies of a government through intimidation or coercion; or
c. affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.

Now it's easy to take media-friendly despots like Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong-Il and call them terrorists because they fit one or all of those definitions. And that would be fair and accurate.

But oh, how it can hurt to take that very same light and shine it on ourselves. It must be done, though, if we have even the vaguest delusions of objectivity.

Look at George Bush's actions in Iraq and say with a straight face that he was not attempting to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction. Even if you agree with the thing, that's what he was doing, there's not much denying it. If you really believe he wanted to make Iraq a democracy, then you must also believe that the way he did so was through military action - or, to put it a harsher but equally accurate way, through mass destruction.

Look at George Bush's statement to the nations of the U.N. that they are "either with us or against us in the War on Terror," and tell me he wasn't trying to influence the policies of a government through intimidation or coercion (well, multiple governments).

And as for intimidating a citizenry, well, most would say that it would be cheap and debatable (not debatable on any level of legitimacy, but that's seldom stopped any debate) to say that he used the threat of WMDs to intimidate the country into supporting a war, but Bush also used the threat of imminent collapse to frighten the citizenry into supporting Social Security "reform" (newspeak for "privatization"), and the threat of terrorist attacks to intimidate the civilian population into voting Republican in '06 ("It sounds like they [Democrats] think the best way to protect the American people is wait until we're attacked again." - Bush in a speech in California, October 2006).


Bush fits not just one of the criteria for the definition of "domestic terrorist" that he himself approved, but all criteria. Ergo, by our nation's own definition of "terrorist," George W. Bush is a terrorist.

QED.

STFU.
posted by SwiftyLeZar at 6:20 PM