Tuesday, November 06, 2007

George Bush speaks French

Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars, I find Bruce Fein's editorial in the Washington Times, comparing Bush to Robespierre of the French Revolution. I found these two quotes from Robespierre interesting:

No liberty for the enemies of liberty.

That's the sort of attitude that brought us things like Gitmo, extraordinary rendition, and warrantless searches.

The second is:

We must not let foreign enemies use the forums of liberty to destroy liberty itself.

Just try and tell me that's not another way of saying "The Constitution is not a suicide pact," another recent Republican mantra.

The rest of the editorial, demanding the return of habeus corpus is worth a read. He points out that only 5 percent of Gitmo detainees were captured by American forces. The rest were captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance, with little protection against wrongful detention. This is one of the fliers distributed in Afghanistan:

Get wealth and power beyond your dreams. ... You can receive millions of dollars helping the anti-Taliban forces catch al Qaeda and Taliban murderers. This is enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life. Pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people.

4 comments:

Jonathan said...

speaking of french quotes...

As long as people can "eat their cake" things won't change that much.

"cake" nowadays being reality tv, newstainment, celebrity gossip, and fast food.

though gas prices might get the unwashed all atwitter at some point, but I'm not holding my breath.

sheeple indeed.

prairie biker said...

do you have a source for that flyer? I'd be interested in running it past some friends of mine in its original language.

Narc said...

PB: I just quoted the editorial, so I don't really have a source. I found this site Google, but I know nothing about it. If you find something out about the flier or the translation, please let me know.

prairie biker said...

Buddy of mine says it's Pashtu, Dari dialect. He said it's a pretty accurate translation but it doesn't say "millions", just "lots".