Monday, September 25, 2006

A separate truth

We can’t handle the truth; at least that’s what the Newsweek Branch of the Republican National Committee seems to think. It’s OK if Europeans read in the International edition that we’ve totally bungled Afghanistan which is again home to a more wealthy and better equipped Taliban and a safer place for al Qaeda. Americans are better off reading about photography and pop culture in the American Edition. Newsweek has decided not to run the Afghanistan horror story where Americans are likely to read it.

I have no way of knowing whether this decision had to do with the observation that America is tired of facing facts and so might not by the magazine or whether, as I suspect, the press in America is as free as the Corporate arm of the GOP will allow it to be. Perhaps both explanations are true. We don’t seem to want to think about how Bush passed up the chance to kill Osama and destroy his movement in favor of pursuing his quixotic fantasy in Iraq and we don’t want to know how bad the news is. By nearly all accounts the news is very bad and likely to get a lot worse. All the more reason, I guess to wave flags, make up stories about Clinton, cry tears of self pity for the city we otherwise love to hate; all the more reason to back the people who totally and completely bungled the only chance we had to stop Osama, to enlist the support of Moderate Islam in standing up to the radicals. All the more reason to hide our heads in the sand of fabricated history and fatuous lies and so help complete the task of destroying our liberal and secular republic and perpetuating an endless skirmish with an ever more wealthy, popular and relentless enemy.

Today we are losing Afghanistan, tomorrow the world.

2 comments:

Crankyboy said...

It's actually in the U.S. edition, I just read it. It's that the U.S. edition cover isn't about Jihadistan. It's Anne Liebevitz or whatever her name is and her celebrity photos. It doesn't matter anyway. I fthe cover story on Newsweek and every other magazine was that Bush and Cheney were gay lovers who got married in Massachusettes and then opened an abortion clinic and sold nuclear secrets to al Qaeda and they had confessed on videotape, they still would get re-elected if given the chance. Stop getting so upset. Embrace the horror.

Capt. Fogg said...

If that were all that Bush and Cheney had done, I would be happy. Your grandchildren may be fighting the stupid war these bastards started.