a berlin blog
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a berlin blog |
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Thursday, December 11, 2003 Shabby Police WorkMy good friend Marc Levy agrees with Andrew Sullivan on the framing of James Yee. (Levy and Sullivan almost never agree, so it amuses me to point this out.) Yee was the Guantanamo chaplain arrested and thrown into solitary for "terrorist activities," but charged with um, sleeping around. Levy and Sullivan are both right to be outraged, but Sullivan needs to understand that the reason so many people are pissed about the war in Iraq is similar: not because they liked Saddam, or wished he were still in power, or hate George Bush, or anything like that (though people who feel that way are easy to find). No, the problem is that our war in Iraq was a frame-up job.After 9/11, Bush found himself in the boots of a town sheriff after a senseless murder. The town needed someone to hang. The Taliban were a good start, but only a start; the real killers were still at large. They lived it turns out in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, but those were inconvenient places for them to be. Iraq made a much better story. It was also a more strategic place to occupy. So Bush and his deputies blew a lot of steam about Saddam's threat to world peace, his nasty-weapons arsenal, maybe his links to Al Qaeda. We had a well-televised war. The world saw Saddam punished, massively, on trumped-up charges. Not quite fair, but we'd moved in strong on an unsavory thug and it looked liked justice was served. This to quote Sullivan is called framing someone. I don't mind that Saddam is off the street. He was an evil bastard, and I can even see how Iraq might be an easier place to improve by invasion than either Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. Just go easy on the swagger, okay? Let's not pretend the real crooks are in jail. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:40 AM | |
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