Yankee Doodle Dandy
I've been wondering for some time if President Bush would ever use the American Revolution analogy for Iraq. He did it today.
It is disgusting, disingenuous, and duplicitous of Bush to make this comparison. We started our revolution. Iraq did not start theirs. Our Revolution, our Declaration of Independence, and our Constitution are what make us a nation. When we ask ourselves, "What is America?" we can look to the events that founded our nation.
What will be the Iraqis' "Fourth of July"? What will be their American Revolution? What "nation" is represented in their constitution? Where will they find the pride that sustains a nation?
I doubt Iraq--qua nation--will look back with pride on March 20, 2003. I doubt "the 20th of March" will have the same ring for them as "the 4th of July" has for us.
Harold Pinter's Nobel acceptance speech was incredibly vitriolic, but anyone listening to Bush compare the debacle in Iraq to the American Revolution ought to read it.
Update: Pile on.
Maybe we misunderstand our colonial history, but — what with a government far away attempting to manage its colonial outpost, an insurrection by the locals against those foreign rulers, a king named George who may well be crazy — doesn’t that analogy make us the bad guys?
It is disgusting, disingenuous, and duplicitous of Bush to make this comparison. We started our revolution. Iraq did not start theirs. Our Revolution, our Declaration of Independence, and our Constitution are what make us a nation. When we ask ourselves, "What is America?" we can look to the events that founded our nation.
What will be the Iraqis' "Fourth of July"? What will be their American Revolution? What "nation" is represented in their constitution? Where will they find the pride that sustains a nation?
I doubt Iraq--qua nation--will look back with pride on March 20, 2003. I doubt "the 20th of March" will have the same ring for them as "the 4th of July" has for us.
Harold Pinter's Nobel acceptance speech was incredibly vitriolic, but anyone listening to Bush compare the debacle in Iraq to the American Revolution ought to read it.
Update: Pile on.
Maybe we misunderstand our colonial history, but — what with a government far away attempting to manage its colonial outpost, an insurrection by the locals against those foreign rulers, a king named George who may well be crazy — doesn’t that analogy make us the bad guys?
posted by disappearingink at 4:28 PM
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