Reporting from Washington, D.C., on a beautiful evening, weather wonderful, after taking a long walk after a divine supper. Now, on to the post I've wanted to share for a few days, which is now perfectly timed. After all, as our president has his “war council,” the saner souls among us might begin with talking about W.’s ridiculous “war on terror.”
I’ve read an advanced copy of George Soros’s; book The Age of Fallibility – Consequences of the War on Terror, and I can tell you it is not for girlie men. Someone in his circle will have to read it and hand our president the Cliffs Notes. He’ll never get the premise, never mind the exposition and philosophy.
I've also had the pleasure of conversing with Mr. Soros over a conference call about his book. I couldn't resist talking about Mr. Soros's encounter with Grover Norquist in one of his now infamous Wednesday meetings, which is recounted in the book. Boy, I'd love to have been stowed away in the room for that one. When I brought it up in the conference call he simply chuckled. It was a very interesting Sunday conversation with Mr. Soros, to say the least.
If you've never read George Soros, The
Bubble of American Supremacy is a good place to start.
One of the bloggers on the call asked Soros how he felt about Bill O'Reilly's continual ranting about him, giving him credit for financing the entire vast left wing conspiracy. Though nobody likes to be talked about in the style of Bill O'Reilly, it was obvious that Soros thought of Bill O'Reilly as a mere gnat. Something to be brushed off like the insignificant pisant he is. That would make old Billy boy crazy if he knew.
Something that came over crystal clear in the conference call is that Mr. Soros wants a healthy democracy here in America and has no interest whatsoever in obliterating the Republican Party. That will come as a surprise to some, especially the Big Giant Head (as Keith Olbermann calls Bill O'Reilly).
Though on different sides of the political spectrum, Mr. Soros also said
something similar to what Kevin Phillips, author of American Theocracy,
has said in interviews. The Republican Party has been taken over by extremists,
which is causing a great deal of damage to this country.
Allow me to play stenographer so I can offer you a very brief looking into
Soros' book.
The Bush administration declared the war on terror to further its own
objectives. to this end, it magnified the danger instead of putting it in the
proper perspective. The events of 9/11 were awesome in their own right, but
the Bush administration suggested that terrorists might now gain possession of
weapons of mass destruction. To quote President Bush: “America must not ignore
the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot
wait for the final proof–the smoking gun–that could come in the form of a
mushroom cloud.” Compare that with President Roosevelt's dictum: “The only
thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Has there ever been a war with an unidentified enemy, undefined objectives,
unknown rules, and an indefinite duration? Yet, by exploiting fear, that is
what the Bush administration has induced the American public to accept as the
natural and obvious response. So much so that when I say that we must renounce
the war on terror as a false metaphor people simply do no understand what I am
talking about. [...]
Since (9/11), public opinion has turned against us and almost every
initiative that is backed by the United States is greeted with suspicion and
opposition by the rest of the world. Even a cursory look at the current state
of affairs reveals that the decline in American power has been much greater
than anybody could have anticipated. As a result, we are less secure and the
world is less stable than it was when al Qaeda attacked the United States.
This only skims the surface of the topics Soros delves into in his new book,
which is a fascinating read. However, again, it's dense and I do wish he'd have
put the cut and dried section about the “war on terror” up front. The density is not for the summer beach reading crowd.
The most important thing Soros says, I believe, is that “America must undergo a change of heart.” We have to understand that our gas guzzling cars come at a price. Preemptive war against Iraq, when the enemy
was bin Laden, cost us. I'd love to know what he thought the death of Zarqawi means to Bush's fantasy “war on terror”; believing it wouldn't mean the end of anything. Our “war on terror” comes at an even greater price, mainly because it isn't working, because it's the
wrong way to look at our challenges today.
Tomorrow, the Take Back America conference begins. I’ll check in during the day.
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