Generally speaking, the more people tell you how tough they are, the harder they’re working to convince themselves. George W. Bush is no exception. The president’s authoritarian impulses, on display during an amazingly petulant Rose Garden press conference, so clearly derive from his own fundamental weakness of mind and character that it’s become increasingly embarrassing to watch him perform. The more strenuously he struggles to hide his inner punk, the more clearly it emerges. Consider his childish response to NBC News’ David Gregory’s question about the administration’s pre-election efforts to legalize torture. Bush’s testy attitude toward the tall newsman he calls “Stretch” goes back a long way. After Gregory, covering a joint news conference in Paris in 2002, asked President Jacques Chirac a question in French, Bush sneered, “The guy memorizes four words and he plays like he’s intercontinental.” Last week he mockingly told Gregory, “You’re looking beautiful, Dave.”
Gregory’s challenging questions seemingly set Bush’s teeth on edge.
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To the kinds of voters whose passions the White House is trying to arouse between now and November, for Powell or anybody else to invoke what Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, called “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” may be tantamount to treason. Or, for that matter, to David Gregory’s ability to speak French. Who cares what foreigners or “pointyheaded intellectuals” think ? An obsession with striking virile poses has preoccupied a substantial proportion of the electorate ever since the Confederacy lost the Civil War.
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But the principled resistance of military men like Powell and Arizona Sen. John McCain, as well as of Southern senators like Virginia’s John Warner and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, has done more than complicate White House arithmetic. It also has altered the symbolism, threatening to expose torture for what it is: a bully’s tool for generating fear, unworthy of a free and democratic people. Mideast governance Voices letter writer Larry H. Gentry recently challenged an assertion in this column that no Muslim countries are currently governed by Islamic extremists. “What about Iran, Syria and Lebanon ?” he asks. Here’s the answer. Lebanon has an elected government. Its current prime minister is a Christian. Syria is a Baathist (i. e., secular ) military dictatorship. Iran has a very complicated government. Its president is elected, but the ultimate power is held by Shiite clerics. By definition, they’re as hostile to al-Qa’ida as Americans are. None of these countries had anything whatsoever to do with 9 / 11.
http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/167229/
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