Donald's Blog

  This old house was only a few blocks from the state Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. All the neighborhood cats lived in the basement during the winter. The house has long since been torn down, but in 1972 there were AR2ax speakers in the front room, and a lot of good music was heard there.

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In the 21st century I am just as opinionated as ever, and I now have an outlet. I shall pontificate here about anything that catches my fancy; I hope I will not make too great a fool of myself. You may comment yea or nay about anything on the site; I may quote you here, or I may not. Send brickbats etc. to: dmclarke78@icloud.com.

 

September 10, 2014

Weazel words

The lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal today is a list of problems the world faces, particularly in the Middle East, and the first paragraph claims that President Obama is "admitting that the liberal critique of the Bush administration's approach to Islamic terrorism was wrong." Much further down, the main thrust of the paper's editorial policy continues:

Mr. Obama can blame this rising tide of disorder on George W. Bush, but the polls show that the American public doesn't believe it. They know from experience that it takes time for bad policy to reveal itself in new global turmoil. They saw how the early mistakes in Iraq led to chaos until the 2007 surge saved the day and left Mr. Obama with an opportunity he squandered. And they can see now that Mr. Obama's strategy has produced terrorist victories and more danger for America.

I am more than a little disappointed in the president myself, but these weasel words in the newspaper are revealing only of the paper's visceral hatred of Obama. Never in a million years can the Wall Street Journal admit that the "bad policy" inevitably "to reveal itself in new global turmoil" was itself the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld invasion of Iraq in 2003. However nasty a dicatator Saddam Hussein may have been, he had nothing to do with 9/11, and the invasion was an unnecessary disaster, leading to the destabilization of the entire Middle East, and so badly executed that a surge was necessary four years later because there hadn't been enough troops committed in the first place.

But all we have in the USA these days is the politics of hatred.