catapult magazine

Bush said today that “terror is not the tool of the free.” Turn the sentence around and it reads, “terror is the tool of the unfree.” Somehow I doubt if Bush thought through the implications of that sentence.

… and, in your opinion, what ARE the so-called implications of that statement?

That terror is the tool of those whose country is occupied. That the unfree use terror against the free. That the oppressed terrorize their oppressors.

So, WE’RE the oppressors to you. Got it.

Not to me. To the oppressed.

Don’t blame me for saying that the free don’t use terror, as I was merely quoting the president.

dan, your logic doesn’t seem to make sense. Saying “Ford is not the automaker of Chevy-owners” is not the same thing as saying “Ford is the automaker of non-Chevy owners.” A person may well drive a Toyota. In the same way the unfree do not have to resort to terrorism, nor is this a logical implication of Bush’s statement.

Also, I wonder if sometimes we are a bit short-sighted. To be sure conditions in Iraq stink right now. Iraqis may well have preferred a tyrant to the anarchy and chaos now prevailing. If a more free society does prevail in the long run (there’s still a serious question), will it be better for Iraqis? I tend to think so. At any rate, one can still hope that the world is a safer place because Saddam’s no longer in power.

You’re right that the unfree don’t have to use terror. But terror happens, and the only conclusion that one can draw from Bush’s statement is that terror is committed by the unfree. That doesn’t justify terror, but the implication that terrorists are freedom fighters is not far away.

If my interpretation is incorrect, (and I’m sure Bush would never call terrorists freedom fighters) what then did Bush mean? Does his statement mean anything? I guess I keep trying to assume that the president is saying meaningful things. But I just don’t get it. Like so many statements from Bush, this one gets less meaningful the longer you talk about it. Reminds me of the Boeing advertisement with the slogan “Freedom rises on the wings of technology” or some such crap. Feel-good meaninglessness at best.

By the way, I’m truly amazed to hear you say that the world may now be a safer place. Wow!!! No offence Anton, but I have to chalk that kind of statement up to the power of wishful thinking.

dan, perhaps I should have spoken more clearly when I said ‘one can still hope that the world is a safer place…’ What I meant was that there’s still hope that the world will be a safer place. Certainly at the moment in Iraq there’s greater chaos than when Saddam ruled, and sadly the situation is more dangerous for the people of Iraq now than it was before. But the deposition of a tyrant and supporter of terrorism may yet lead to greater peace than if Saddam had stayed in power and the US had not undertaken a war on terrorism in the long run.

As to Bush’s statement, it’s only meaningless if you interpret it a vacuum, as you seem to do. You have to interpret statements in light of their context. I would guess that the most likely meaning of Bush’s statement is that the strongest tool against terrorism is freedom. The free do not have to resort to terror. It might even mean that Saddam, being a tyrant, bred terrorism.

You seem to want to take the statement to mean that the US is breeding the present terrorism in Iraq by intruding on the freedom of the Iraqis. While you are free to argue this point, dan, it’s silly to try to read this idea into Bush’s statement as a case of accidental self-incrimination. Bush’s argument is valid, even if you don’t think it’s sound.

Yes, I think you’ve got a very good grasp of Bush’s line of reasoning. Freedom=prosperity=no terrorism. The problem is that it’s not that simple. First, there is the problem of perception. Very few around the world perceive the US military presence in Iraq as a freedom-giving act of charity. Many more view it as of some kind of neo-colonial imperialism, and many in the Middle East see it as a direct threat to their culture. Second, ‘freedom’ does not necessarily create prosperity and stability (ie China isn’t democratic, but becoming prosperous, Guatemala is ‘free’ but not prosperous). Third, prosperity doesn’t guard against terror (Columbine/Okahoma City).

I myself have serious doubts that democratic liberal values can be imposed from the top, especially by the United States. Many Americans feel that other countries should want to emulate the US political system, but you just don’t find that. Many perceive US politics to be too heavily dominated by capital to be truly democratic.

I think freedom is a very nice word. It makes us feel good. But when it finds its way into the president’s every second sentence, it becomes meaningless. ‘Freedom’, when uttered by Bush, means a particular thing to Americans, but quite another thing to non-Americans who might hear something akin to ‘Americanization.’

An editorial from a statewide newspaper here:

Here are a few pointers for the peace-at-any-price crowd in their quest to change hearts and minds:

• Stop making comparisons between President George Bush and Adolph Hitler. There aren’t any. You just make yourselves sound stupid.

• Try to refrain from saying the Iraqi people want U.S. troops to go home. It’s not true. A Gallup poll conducted in Baghdad found that 70 percent of people want Americans to stay and help rebuild their country.

• Yes, there are some people in Iraq who want U.S. troops to leave quickly. Most of them are Baath Party holdouts, Islamist fundamentalists and unemployed torture experts who want to return Iraq to the Bad Old Days of Yesteryear. You’re not going to win any converts by aligning yourselves with murderous thugs.

• Don’t even try to say that the situation is worse now in Iraq than it was before the war. It’s true that the rebuilding effort in Iraq is not going as well as everyone hoped, and that other countries are being remarkably stingy about contributing to rebuilding efforts. But don’t discount the good news, which includes 1,500 schools rehabbed, 22 million doses of vaccine administered, oil production at 75 percent of pre-war capacity, and the Iraqi army reduced from 430,000 troops to fewer than 1,000.

Also, electricity generation is at 99 percent of pre-war capacity. However, terrorists have managed to destroy 500 transmission towers since the end of the war; that’s five times as the number downed during the war itself. If Iraqis are without power, it’s not troops’ fault.

More good news: The number of independent newspapers has gone from zero to 170, while the number of rape schools, torture chambers, acid baths and people-shredders has dropped to zero. And while Saddam Hussein (and Osama bin Laden) are still on the loose, coalition forces have captured 39 of the 55 “most wanted” in Iraq.

• What about Afghanistan, you say? Yup, it’s still a mess. But it’s not as big a mess as it was before we got there. Four million children are back in school, 37 percent of them girls who weren’t allowed to attend school before. Elderly widows no longer starve on the street because the Taliban forbade them from working. Hardly anybody gets their hands chopped off for wearing nail polish anymore. Millions of children have been vaccinated against measles (which killed 30,000 a year) and polio, and about 2.5 million refugees and Taliban prisoners have voluntarily returned to their homes because they see hope for the future. A free press is flourishing.

So go ahead with the Cheney-Halliburton-no-blood-for-Oil rant, or how Bush was “selected, not elected,” or how all the money spent on the war could have made things so much better here at home, or how the whole world now hates America and it’s all Bush’s fault.

We won’t agree with you, but believe it or not, we’ll listen.