Enemy Combatant
Sunday, February 16, 2003
Let's see the bought-and-paid-for media try to spin this away . . .
(and thanks to Diane Everett for collecting the pictures -- that one of the guy in the hazmat suit clutching a photo of a serviceman -- his son? -- gets me every time)
I'm amazed and glad to see Chris Matthews come out in opposition to invading Iraq. "Every Arab school a madrass school" and likening Bush's foreign policy to Bernard Goetz are only two of his better bon mots. Here's a snippet:
. . . We're taking on a billion people. A battle for Baghdad could ignite a war with Islam. I think people in the Muslim world are going to see this as the Second Crusades. Every geography book in the world is going to say "American-occupied Iraq" over the map of Iraq. That's going to be the most glaring indignity the Arabs have ever faced. Every school in the Arab world will be a madrass school.
The way bin Laden points to the U.S. military bases in Saudi ArabiaÖ
Right. And nobody ever explained to me why we kept troops there all these years, when we know it drove them crazy. We're not even using them this time around. So why not get them out? Why didn't we recognize how much it bothered them spiritually and politically?
I know one thing: There are a billion Islamic people in the world today, and there will be about 2 billion by the time we're dead. They're not going to give up their religion. Five years from now, 10 years from now, there's going to be a huge Islamic population in the world, they're going to be nationalistic, they're going to be religious, and they're going to be militant. The question will be, "Do they hate us or not? Do they have a grievance?"
Well, do they?
Well, they will after this, won't they?
