January 16, 2009

Still worse cold. I am glad for the work Ken did on my windows and doors.

In his end-of-administration apologia, Bush brags that there were no terrorist attacks on the USA after 9/11. There didn’t need to be. He handed them total victory. They needed only to strike once to cause a gutless administration to change the American way of life as far as it was able quickly to be changed, to cause us to abandon our Constitution and our assumed personal liberties and to turn us into a nation of sheep on one level, and cowards and bullies and torturers on another. That American life changed the way it did after 9/11 is the sharpest indictment of the Bush administration, and one which may see no immediate correction. George Bush handed terrorism the victory. Torture was being discussed on the radio as part of the confirmation hearings of the new attorney general. The new administration seems to be on the side of the angels, but the old one was still trying to talk itself out of punishable crimes. Every military man on earth had just expressed the opinion that no useful intelligence comes out of torture, and two seconds later some Bushite says, “But, what if the person knows something really, really important! Aren’t you going to wish you had torture then??” They didn’t listen. They didn’t think. They didn’t observe. They didn’t imagine. Like dogs they were taught one trick and stayed with it. Now, like dogs who have learned but one, bad trick, they shall be beaten with the stick of history for as long as anybody can foresee.