Dichotomy...

Well this is just a swell idea. I can't possibly be the first one to draw this comparison, but does this administration strike anyone else as a parallel to Moby Dick? Now, admittedly, I never actually read the book (though I did enjoy the version by reknowned illustrator Bill Sienkiewicz), but I still think I can paint Bush into an Ahab role trying to track down a basically unimportant white whale. Sure, Osama is evil or whatever and (indirectly) committed (or at least claimed some responsibility for) a great injustice upon us, but you can't really think that he's still a relevant threat enough to warrant chasing him from country to country blowing the crap out of the entire middle east. Or can you? I won't put anything past W. Besides, he fights terror because he's a terror-fighter. There's something to be said for revenge when well executed (see: Count of Monte Cristo or Inigo Montoya), but I'm not sure there's many people who can point at our recent military campaigns and say "now, that's well-executed revenge". Regardless of how you feel about the ideals of being at war with whatever we're at war today (it's islamofascism now, right?), you have to admit it hasn't been well run. As I've said before, you can't fight an idea or an object; you have to fight people. You can kill Nazis; you can kill Vietcong; you can't kill Terrorism because it's not an easily-definable group of enemies. Look how well the War on Drugs went. You might as well declare war on Gravity.

Posted by Rev. Adam on Thursday, September 21, 2006 at 2:09 PM | Permalink