The Idiot Watch
BY MICHAEL MANVILLE
08.04.2005 10:39 | DISPATCHES
Two cases of idiocy, one more dangerous than the other.
1. Gorgeous George Galloway, the ragingly left-wing member of Britain's Parliament who warmed the hearts of liberals everywhere by tearing Norm Coleman limb from limb in his Senate testimony, yesterday brought shame (as we all knew he would) to everyone who opposed the Iraq war, by going on Al-Jazeera and essentially inciting Islamist violence:
Two of your beautiful daughters are in the hands of foreigners - Jerusalem and Baghdad. The foreigners are doing to your daughters as they will. The daughters are crying for help, and the Arab world is silent. And some of them are collaborating with the rape of these two beautiful Arab daughters. Why? Because they are too weak and too corrupt to do anything about it.
......It's not the Muslims who are the terrorists. The biggest terrorists are Bush, and Blair, and Berlusconi, and Aznar, but it is definitely not a clash of civilizations. George Bush doesn't have any civilization, he doesn't represent any civilization. We believe in the Prophets, peace be upon them. He believes in the profits, and how to get a piece of them. That's his god. That's his god. George Bush worships money. That's his god - Mammon.
No one should have to say this, but the biggest terrorists are not, in fact, Bush and his cronies. George Bush is a terrible president, who has lied himself and/or condoned lying by his underlings to bring us into a terrible war, a war made terrible not by its ostensible intent (removing a dictator) but by its reckless and wanton disregard for the fate of the country to be liberated, and its reckless and wanton disregard for the well-being of the men and women sent to do the liberating. But neither the President nor his allies are the world's biggest terrorists, and even if they are the Arab world is not helped by car bombs and exploding buses. It really isn't. George Galloway is a fine performer, but his performance on Al Jazeera makes him Bush's mirror image: a man advancing politics with no thought of the consequences, a man prepaperd to invoke a particular view of the world regardless of the facts.
Crooked Timber gets its right in its response:
Galloway isn't speaking truth to power on Al-Jazeera like he was in the House of Representatives; he's speaking untruths to the powerless. And if you're doing that, you mind your language or you start undercutting the basis of your right to free speech. This is hardly a first offence too, but it's the most egregious one I've seen...
2. And our second Idiot to Watch is... our old friend Bill Frist!
Frist has condemned the idea of suing US gun manufacturers, and supported measures to exempt gunmakers from suits. Why? According to USA Today:
linking the bill to the war in Iraq, Frist said that Beretta, the manufacturer of pistols to U.S. forces in Iraq, warned that it may go bankrupt if the lawsuits are not stopped.
"These frivolous suits threaten a domestic industry that is critical to our national defense," Frist said. "Given the profusion of litigation, the Department of Defense faces the very real prospect of outsourcing sidearms for our soldiers to foreign manufacturers."
Thanks, Bill. By the way, Beretta is an Italian company. Regardless of who sues who, our troops will continue to get their foreign pistols. Nice work diagnosing Schiavo, though. You can't win 'em all.
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