US Policy Adviser redefines “Beauty”

We have noticed a report that Kenneth Adelman has claimed that what the Coalition has done in Iraq is “a beautiful thing”. And we agree whole-heartedly. It’s a pity so few people now are able to see it this way. It just takes a little readjustment of the meaning of “beauty”.

As you know, the Australian Government applauds, approves and supports all things concerned with and initiated by the US Administration. We are desperate to be part of (and it is Australian Government policy to try as hard as we can to keep up with) their Grand Scheme of Things, and although its purpose is a mystery we have faith and trust in their goodness and wisdom. And you know that George has personal audiences with the Almighty, right there in the Oval Office!. God told him that Shock and Awe was what Jesus would have done.

“God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did.”   [New York Times, 24/9/2006]

Iraq; Kyoto; gay marriage; support for hypocritical closet homosexuals; inappropriately blurring the distinction between Church and State; scaremongering about terrorism; rewriting indigenous history, and now capital punishment — we’re with them.

Step for step. Lock step. Every step of the way.

We in the Howard Australian Government are pathetically grateful for any attention that the US may give us from time to time. For example, recently George W. Bush looked down at us and said, “You still here? I’d forgotten all about you! Look, we’re having a picnic. Why don’t you come along? In fact, you have to come along. It’s just over there in Iraq. Don’t forget to bring your sandshoes.” And then he patted us on the head and you should have seen our little governmental tail wagging!

Anyway, although we have faith and belief and trust, we are now confused.

When George asked us on the picnic, two of his top advisors were Richard Perle and Kenneth Adelman. They told us George was right. We believed them utterly because George told us to. And they said the nicest things about George and his Grand Scheme of Things.

When George told us that Donald Rumsfeld was the greatest military strategist who ever lived, of course we believed him. And no serving General ever disagreed. Until now.

It’s just that we’re a little confused about how the current situation in Iraq, which the US Military says is sliding swiftly towards chaos, fits into Rummy’s strategy. But then, he’s Rummy and George insists he’s still the greatest. What would little old us know? Probably chaos is part of Rummy’s strategy to confuse the enemy (that is, the Democrats).

But now the Military Times has an editorial calling for him to go. Vanity Fair has quotes from Richard Perle and from Kenneth Adelman saying that the Admninistration is “dysfunctional”. and these are people whose word we have accepted without question until now.

The editorial, “Time for Rumsfeld to Go”, says:

Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised.
…
The time has come, Mr President, to face the hard bruising truth; Donald Rumsfeld must go.

Richard Perle is a former Assistant Secretary of Defense, and an advisor to Mr Bush on the Defense Policy Board, a member of the American Enterprise Institute, the Project for the New American Century and the Hudson Institute. I mean, if you can’t trust these people, who can you trust?

And yet he told Vanity Fair magazine that incompetence in the Administration had turned Iraq policy into a “disaster”. A disaster!

Kenneth Adelman is a member of the Project for the New American Century, Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, 1976-1977, member of the Committee on the Present Danger, the RAND Corporation and the Institute for Contemporary Studies.

I mean. that’s high-powered right-wing cred, okay? And he says he is “crushed” by the performance of Rumsfeld and the Administration.

“They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era,” he said. “Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional.”

So you can understand why we’re a little confused. We bet on these guys and now they’re saying “don’t put your money on Bush”.

Well, We still don’t know. If you don’t remember, Adelman is the guy who said,

“I believe demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk,” 

and

“Measured by any cost-benefit analysis, such an operation would constitute the greatest victory in America’s war on terrorism].

And you know that glorious victory will come, we’re certain of it. Well, we hope desperately for it. It won’t heppen overnight, it may not even heppen this century, but it will heppen.

Kenneth Adelman, who looks like a kindly family doctor, is also the man who said about the war in Iraq:

“It bothers me that people in Britain don’t see it as people in America see it. We did a beautiful thing.”

And you know, we don’t think people are as aware as they should be of just how beautiful the thing we have done in Iraq is.

Should we agree with the US Military, Perle, Adelman, now or stand by George? Is George a dead duck like they say? If we stick with him like a mate, could we get burnt and look as stupid as him?

And then there’s the question of war crimes. People are starting to talk about them. Those civilian casualties are starting to bank up a bit, you now. They’re starting to look a bit untidy.

In 1946 the judges at Nuremberg who tried the Nazi leaders for war crimes left no doubt about what they regarded as the gravest crimes against humanity.

The most serious was unprovoked invasion of a sovereign state that offered no threat to one’s homeland. Then there was the murder of civilians, for which responsibility rested with the “highest authority”. [Pilger]

Now we would like to agree with Laura Rediehs:

“So, although both sides in this Great Cosmic Battle employ similar techniques – violence that includes the killing of innocent civilians – our doing this is justified because we are good; their doing it is unjustified because they are evil.”

… although we think she might have been being ironic. But she’s right. George talks to Jesus. The enemy only think they do.