I have stuff to write. Specifically, I have a 6000 word essay about the relationship between democracy and terrorism due in on the 4th of May, and a thesis about the Bush Administration's "freedom agenda" for the Middle East due in on the 1st of June. I don't know that I'm gonna make it, especially since I'm supposed to have a draft of the thesis in to my supervisor at about the same time I hand in my essay.
(By the way, the scare quotes around the words freedom agenda should not indicate to you that I'm doing a predictable liberal hatchet job on Bush, who, as we all know, is a chimp. A chimp with an IQ of 120* who speaks fluent French* and is an inspiring speaker provided you don't let him wander off topic. The point of the thesis is that, initially, the "freedom agenda" did in fact represent a genuine break with US foreign policy history, at least to some extent, until the Administration got spooked by the rise of Hamas and inhibited by the sheer shitfulness of the war in Iraq. If you call yourself a liberal, you should want to support democratic developments in the Middle East, including anyone in the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas or whoever, who shows signs of co-operation. The idea is excellent; the execution is appalling, Crack-man.)
*My sources are liberal - Ivo Daalder in America Unbound for the first, New York Times for the second. The NYT article was one of those "What would you ask the President?" things they do around election time, and the head of some US-France friendship society mentioned in her contribution that Bush speaks fluent French. It puts the whole "The French don't even have a word for entrepreneur" thing into perspective.
Anyhoo, it's fairly obvious from the posts below that I've been procrastinating my little (that is, not little) arse off via the pleasures of Blogger, despite the fact that this blog has about two genuine readers a day (out of about 30 hits per day, about two are not search spiders). So what I decided to do was to start writing directly into Blogger. That way, I can copy and paste what I write into my thesis template, and voila! The illusion of procrastination whilst doing real work! The two real readers are most welcome to comment.
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2 comments:
Fluent French? Maybe he can read this then:
Enlève ta croute que je swingue dans l'pus!
I'm sure he's not as bad as painted - who could be? - but it still seems likely the US has some fairly underhand motivations for a lot of stuff. Even setting aside the usual hypocrisy of big powers.
The US aren't "underhanded" about anything - they're usually pretty upfront about their desire to maintain hegemony in world affairs, get cheap oil etc. It's not really their fault if you aren't the sort of nerd who religiously reads reports to Congress, Foreign Affairs and so on. Delightfully, the Iraq war has eroded their hegemony - way to go you fucking GENIUSES.
You hit the nail on the head with the last comment, except that the US is kinda unique in its hypocrisy. China has never actually invaded a country to impose Communism, nor Russia.
The main issue I have is that, by portraying Bush as a 'chimp', supposed progressives have played right into the hands of Republican election strategists, as they successfully portrayed Bush as a good ol' boy you could have a beer with, not like that latte-sucking wanker Gore (or Kerry, or anyone else the Dems might have put up). Of course, Bush is no more accessible than Gore or Kerry. But because the Dems never adequately took on the absolute nonsense that Bush was somehow an 'ordinary guy', the US is quite possibly in a much deeper hole than it would have been had Gore been President at 9/11. (But then, who can really tell?)
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