Madrid: A grim reminder

Posted by Pierre Igot in: Society
March 14th, 2004 • 12:02 am

US president George Bush called last Thursday’s bombings in Madrid “a grim reminder that there are evil people in the world who are willing to kill innocent life“.

Correct me if I am wrong, but, last time I checked, Mr. George Bush himself was more than “willing to kill innocent life” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places accused of “harbouring terrorists“.

Mr. Bush (and his acolyte Tony Blair) would be well advised to stop resorting to the rhetoric of good vs. evil when defending their so-called “war on terrorism”. But of course, it’s not the first time that politicians use simplistic rhetorical tools to justifying their actions without bothering to define the words that they are using.

What scares me is that there is no limit to what they might do or say to justify their actions, and that the global media and international political safeguards appear unable to take them to task for their carelessness and constant use of double standards.

The reaction to the Madrid bombings, to me, is a grim reminder of how scary the world’s political leaders have become. If no one forces them to really justify their actions any more, what’s going to stop them from triggering World War III?

I am not defending the actions of those behind the Madrid bombings or any other so-called “terrorist” act. I am just saying that labelling them as “evil” is not going to get us anywhere. On the contrary, it seems to bring us closer and closer to becoming just as “evil” ourselves.

Mr. Bush says he’s a “war president“. But nobody appointed him as such. There was nothing in the world that said that the response to 9/11 had to be war. On the contrary, it could be argued that 9/11 should have prompted us to start working on the “root causes” behind such acts, which are poverty, famine, alienation, etc. Can you imagine what 100 billion dollars (the cost of the war in Iraq, give or take a few billions) could have done to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the globe and make them much less likely to support or “harbour” terrorist movements?

I guess that type of reasoning is just too complicated for the likes of Bush and Blair.


One Response to “Madrid: A grim reminder”

  1. David Golden says:

    I am just old enough to remember the Eisenhower administration. By the time Kennedy was elected I had developed a keen interest in politics at the federal level. What amazes me about Bush is that everything he says is a lie. One would imagine that once in a while, as a matter of chance that he would make a truthful statement, but that doesn’t happen. I firmly believed that Reagan was the worst American president in modern history. Clearly, Bush now holds that distinction, He makes Richard Nixon look like a saint.

    What I find particularly disgusting is the way in which Bush used the Madrid bombings to justify his invasion of Iraq. There is no doubt that absent Bush’s Iraq policy, there would have been no tragedy in Madrid. The really frightening thing is that I think Bush now believes all of his own lies about making the world safe from terrorism. If he was truthfully interested in that lofty goal he would hold Saudi Arabia accountable for it nefarious internal and external policies, and see to it that Israel would return to it’s pre 1967 borders.

    Sadly, his deep personal involvement in right wing religious organizations, combined with his slavish devotion to the welfare of big business, mean that the status quo will remain unchanged. His limited intelligence wedded to the staggering mediocrity of his advisors, engender precious little hope for a more enlightened foreign policy.

    This “wartime President “, is a coward, a liar, a bully and a half wit. As long as he remains in office there is no hope for meaningful change in the manner in which Washington deals with the rest of the world.

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