07.19.07
A Great Read About The Predicament We’re In
Glenn Greenwald, an excellent writer/blogger, uses JFK’s former speech writer Theodore Sorenson, and A 1957 JFK speech to show us what, ” A real leader, truly devoted to reversing the disasters of the Bush presidency”, should be telling us. Here’s the post, Recovering from the Bush legacy, from OpenLeft. In it he takes on former Kennedy speech writer Theodore Sorenson’s statement that we’re a “We remain essentially a nation under siege.”
The United States is not a “nation under siege.” That is a ludicrously melodramatic description of the terrorist threat and it is precisely the failure to challenge such fear-mongering sloganeering that has enabled so many of the destructive policies of the last six years. Any political figure who is authentically interested in the type of real debate which Sorensen touts will challenge, not bolster, this misleading premise. More importantly, a genuine debate regarding how to recover from the last six years (soon to be “last eight years”) will require a fundamental re-examination of America’s role in the world and, most of all, whether we want to continue to maintain imperial dominance. Contrary to conventional Beltway fears, this is plainly a debate which the American public is not only willing, but eager, to engage.
There’s a lot in that paragraph, it boggle the mind that Sorenson is playing in the neocon frame like that, and much more in the rest of the post. Nothing wrong with Sorenson who’s a great Democrat and was an excellent speech writer. But other than Ron Paul, no candidate of either party, is willing to mention the word Blowback. If we ever want to “fix” what’s wrong with the Middle East and many other foreign policy problems we are currently facing as a result of imperialism, we must be accountable to for our actions if we want to be able to hold others to account.
Freaks like this don’t’ help the discussion.