May 18, 2008, P.R. Geniuses
Where to start... I suppose we'll jump right in with this account of the U.S. military's apology to Iraqis (and the Muslim world) for an incident involving a soldier taking target practice at a Koran. "Cultural insensitivity" is the understatement of the year. It's moments like that, and Haditha, and Abu Ghraib that just seem to undermine the locals' confidence in their American oil thirsty imperialist oppressors allies.
Of course, as this brilliant discussion by The Editors over at The Poor Man Institute tells us... who cares? The Editors quote from "a dissenter" over at Andrew Sullivan's:
President Bush is a good man who has tried to do what he thought was best for the country without regard to the political costs. Calling him a war criminal is an easy and unfortunately popular thing to do these days - but the real debate needs to be over what do we do to both protect ourselves and our allies and gain the kind of rights to which we believe all men and women are entitled in the Islamic world.A religion that permits - indeed requires - the murder of gays and women who go against the principles of a barbaric code is not a religion and it is time we all deal with this “elephant in the room.”
President Bush standing firm for the rights of gays and women? And for their rights in the Muslim world no less? No, no, I couldn't possibly comment further. I will just say that this sort of interesting perception of the world by segments of the American public is what often ends up leading to incidents like the Koran shooting (and similar incidents like abuse of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, etc.)... the sort of thing that just makes it hard to win hearts and minds that we will need on our side if we are to ultimately win this war on terror thing.
And speaking of President Bush, he has gotten rave reviews (as William Kern at the Moderate Voice tells us here) for his Middle East trip, and in particular, his unabashedly pro-Israel speech to the Israeli Knesset (in which he tacitly accused Sen. Obama of "appeasement" for suggesting opening a dialog with Iran... a dialog supported by Obama's fellow traitor/appeaser Defense Secretary Robert Gates). Details, details.
And there you have it. All one can say is... 8 months, 2 days... but who's counting?