Author: Bryant

Then:

“I don?t think there is any role for the U.N. in the short term in searching for, or identifying, or securing weapons of mass destruction, but we do not necessarily rule out some kind of U.N. role down the road.” That’d be U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton.

Today, things are different:

“The United States has started discussions with the International Atomic Energy Agency to make arrangements for IAEA teams to return to Iraq to determine what may have been stolen from nuclear sites, a State Department official said yesterday.”

I note this not so much because I don’t think it’s OK to change your mind. I do that all the time. It’s more because I keep seeing people talking about how this Presidency is a straight-shooting Presidency that means what it says. Also because when I point out that a political stance is untenable, and then that political stance changes, I like to crow about how I’m right.

You know, it might be dangerous to let kids play violent videogames. In this case, Washington State just made it illegal to sell videogames to teenagers if they contain violence against police. Good work, y’all! Now let’s take care of those icky books that tell stories in which there’s violence against policemen. Nasty things.

“There’s a hell of a lot of suffering and ‘injustice’ in the world, but no one besides Muslim Arabs (and non-Arab Muslims they’ve recruited) seem to be responding in this way.”

Ah, Steven.

Shining Path, Aum Shinrikyo, FARC, the Basque terrorist groups, Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the Tigers of Tamil, 17 November, and of course our own homegrown militia groups.

Oh yeah. And I heard there was some kind of terrorist group operating out of Ireland these days.

The rest of the piece is pretty goofy too. Every time someone condemns another country for not being committed to the war on terror, they ought to consider the American attitudes towards terror before and after 9/11.

OK. this post is just beyond the pale.

The backstory: Kelley Ferguson is a stupid idiot who faked a terrorist threat in order to get out of a cruise with her parents. Missed her boyfriend. Totally stupid.

But how do you get from there to blaming Bush? “And many people, wavering between fear of the unknown and the all too casual attittude eminating from the White House, can treat a terrorist attack as a prank.”

I don’t think Bush is doing a good job setting the national mood on terrorism. The aftereffects of Gulf War II are going to matter; people can’t help but notice the lack of WMDs in Iraq and the recent Al Qaeda bombings will erode trust. Bush said that regime change would reduce terrorist threats, and that clearly hasn’t happened.

A digression: the last wave of Al Qaeda attacks came while we were debating the wisdom of war on Iraq. I said at the time that I suspected Osama wanted the US attacking Iraq. I think recent events make that even more likely; psychologically, he’s demonstrating that all that US effort (which was encouraged by the October 2002 incidents) didn’t stop him. And, come to think of it, the chances that Iraq will be run by Islamic extremists are somewhat higher (not a lot, but a little) than they were before the war — Osama’s gotten rid of his rival Saddam at very little cost to himself. Nice work. Sigh.

Back to the point. Bush is not doing a good job of anything except making us feel tough. However, you can’t bloody well blame Kelley Ferguson on that. She has parents, does she not? They are presumably not deaf and dumb; presumably they have occasional communications with their daughter, if she’s going on a cruise with them.

So how about we stop pointing fingers at the Administration, and start taking some responsibility for our own actions? Her parents fucked up. They did a bad job raising her. It is not OK to — permit the metaphor — make jokes about guns when you’re boarding a plane. I learned that lesson as a kid, and I learned it while Reagan was President. Somehow my parents managed to shield me from the awful consequences of a Republican President and taught me some common sense, miracle of miracles.

Blaming Bush for bad parenting is inane, and it speaks to one of the sadder tropes of the left wing in this country. Personal relationships have far more of an effect on children and our morals than what the government says, and individuals are not helpless. We do ourselves a disservice when we pretend otherwise, particularly when it’s for partisan reasons.