Funny, on point, insightful.
No wonder newspapers are in trouble.
Enjoy Protein Wisdom:
"Jimmy Carter: Guantanamo 'is a disgrace to the USA'": "...Not that it matters, of course. Carter’s just a fringe element of the Democratic party anyway, and besides—who listens to ex-Presidents?
And do you honestly believe terrorists donÂ’t have more important things to do than pay attention to the partisan sniping of grandstanding western politicos? There are nail bombs to make, and buses and subway cars to blow up.
As to whether or not Carter’s comments provide rhetorical cover for the terrorists—of course not! Carter is simply voicing his dissent, and if a former US president can’t openly criticize his government—publicly, overseas, during wartime, and on the basis of a narrative of events that an investigative panel has already concluded simply does not represent the facts on the ground—well, then the terrorists have already won. After all, aiding the enemy in their propaganda war IS the highest form of patriotism, and nothing says “I love my country” more than “I love my country provided its run by people like me; otherwise, I don’t really much like it at all—or rather, I like it, I just don’t like all the stupid rubes who keep ruining it by voting for evil assholes.”
From aljazeera.COM:
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Saturday blasted the U.S. detention center in Cuba, saying that Guantanamo Bay Naval base was an embarrassment to the United States.
Carter was speaking at the Baptist World Alliance’s centenary conference in Birmingham, central Englandcriticized also criticised the current American President’s decision to invade Iraq, describing the war as “unnecessary and unjust.”
“I think what’s going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the USA,” he told a news conference, adding that it was “the cause of terrorism.”
Carter went on to say that Gitmo “has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts”—a statement that, robbed of context, is certainly factually correct (after all, as the Times Online pointed out last week, London bomber Shehzad Tanweer cited it as a reason for his turn to jihad), but one that is nonetheless repulsive for being “true,” in that Carter is not only describing terrorist reaction, he is implicitly validating it by explicitly corroborating its claims. So when the Moderate Voice argues that “It’s a separate issue as to whether the perception is correct,” and that “Guantanamo [...] has become a public relations disaster for the U.S.,” the editors miss the obvious point, which is that pronouncements like Carter’s are what created the public relations disaster in the first place.
Rhetoric matters. And no amount of defensive sneering will change that fact.
So, for my part, I’m going to continue saying so—in the most direct terms possible—until self-loathing terror apologists like Jimmy Carter are shamed into deferring their own self-righteous ego masturbations for the sake of waging war against those who truly do wish to destroy us. "
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