Beyond Ridicule, Beyond Lying

We can't blame Bush for 9/11 any more than we can blame FDR for Pearl Harbor. But if FDR had handled the war against Japan as poorly as Bush has handled the war against Al Qaeda, we'd be learning Japanese in all our schools right now. That's what is at stake in this war - leadership of the world. That's where Bush's failure is greatest, He is not a world leader, and it's plain to see.

I still grieve over the loss of the pieces on torture. All right, you know what I mean. Torture's not the current topic now, anyway. Civil war is the current topic. All the questions now are about what we should do if Iraq descends into civil war. Rumsfeld says that the Iraqi security forces will have to deal with a civil war. That's the only chance we have to form a stable, democratic government, he says.

You know what, I'm not going to ridicule our leaders anymore. They are beyond ridicule. I don't even like to ridicule people. It doesn't do any good: it doesn't persuade anybody to see things differently from the way they saw things before. But let me say this: these leaders have no claim on our trust, our loyalty, or even our forgiveness. They are the worst: arrogant, unforgiving, unreflective, and untruthful. One kind of dishonesty implies that you know you are lying. Another kind of dishonesty occurs because you don't care whether what you say is truthful or not. That is the kind of dishonesty we observe in our leaders. They are beyond lying. They are beyond ridicule. Nothing we could say now could describe how bad they are. They are not bad leaders because they are bad people, or because they are evil. They are bad leaders because they don't know how to lead. They are incompetent and they have no judgment. They don't know what they are doing.

I don't really get angry anymore. When Bush comes on the radio, even when it's a pretty short sound bite, I usually turn it off. I can't stand to hear his voice. The thought that he represents our country is horrific. Even though he does not sound very intelligent to me, I don't think he is stupid. The Democrats have harped on that canard - he's an idiot - for so long. It's a substitute for good thinking. President Bush is not stupid. But he's not smart in the ways that he needs to be, given the position that he's in. He may be shrewd and disciplined, but those aren't the qualities he needs now. He needs so many qualities that he does not have, and it's sad to see him so sure that we're doing okay. If we're doing okay, he's doing okay. And we know that he's deceiving himself. We are not doing okay, and neither is he.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. The thought reminds us of Lincoln and the beginning of the Civil War, but Jesus said it first. Who predicted during those weeks that followed 9/11 that we would be so divided now? A good leader would have kept us united. The people who support the war in Iraq are not traitors, no more than the people who oppose it. Yet the two sides in this argument do not listen to each other. Indeed, they don't listen because they don't care that much what the other side has to say. I'm part of the national deafness. I made up my mind on the question when the president first announced his plan to invade Iraq. I had never been more vehement on a question of war or peace, not even during the Vietnam war. I knew I wouldn't change my mind, no matter what the other side said. Lincoln wasn't going to change his mind about human bondage, either.

Had enough? Have you had enough? Have you had enough of an illegal war, and all the lies that surround such a horrendous enterprise? We don't have to follow this path any longer. We've already done so much damage - yes, to ourselves as well as to Iraq - but we can still turn back. We can't redeem the past three years, but we can still make things turn out for the best. We have to believe that's true, that no matter how bad things seem now, we can turn the dross into something brighter. If we lose that essential hope, then 9/11 and its depressing aftermath will truly have destroyed us.