Wednesday, January 12, 2005

McCarthyism, modern style

One of the new litmus tests the righties have to ferret out whether or not you're a loyal american is how you answer the following question: Do you believe the US better off or not now that Saddam H is behind bars? If you answer yes, it means you support the invasion and occupation of Iraq. If you answer no, it means you side with the terrorists, al-Qaeda, Uday, Saddam, etc. Kinda a political version of "have you stopped beating your wife?". Simple evaluation, USA Today style. Helen Thomas fell prey to it today; you get sucked into such an argument trying to fend off the McCarthy-esq tarring that the key issue never gets discussed. Kinda like Salem a few centuries ago......

I submit that the USA is less safe due to the invasion of Iraq, and no safer with SH behind bars, as he has never posed a threat to the US. He's a bad guy, but he was once our guy. He never threatened the US (like, say, N. Korea), and was too self-centered, hedonistic, and Western to send a missle with a return address. Time to start looking at the folks in the middle east not as one big group of homogenous "foreigners", but as the different, distinct cultural factions that they are (would you look at folks from NYC, Vancouver BC, and Tulsa as all essentially the same?).

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