"Bush is living in Cloud Cuckoo Land."
- Mohammad Shafiq, the director of Ramadhan Foundation, a Manchester-based foundation which is the UK's leading Muslim youth organization
...in response to
Bush's latest inanity:
"One day, people will look back at this moment in history and say, 'Thank God there were courageous people willing to serve because they laid the foundation for peace for generations to come.' I vow so long as I am president to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain."
First of all, how much
chutzpah do you have to have to talk about the "courageous people willing to serve" when neither you, your vice-president, most members of your administration, and certainly none of your daughters have been among those "courageous people"? Secondly, how little history do you have to know to think there is any prospect of a world in peace "for generations to come"? Has there
ever been a period in which that was true? Finally, and most seriously, is the "not in vain" nonsense. Not only did those people die in vain, for no reason other than what will ultimately prove an unsuccessful attempt to extend American power, but so have a million or so Iraqis for whom George Bush hasn't given a moment's thought (not to mention the 175 Brits and 133 other coalition members whose deaths don't seem to be remembered by anyone except presumably their immediate families). Would George Bush dare look
their families in the eye and tell them that they didn't die "in vain," because they were helping to ensure America's national "security" and to prevent us from "having to fight them over here"? I'm sure they'd be thrilled to hear it.
