February 24, 2007 12:17 AM UTC

Bush, GOP == Osama, Ahmadinejad

• 3 Comments
• by: poopiscomingout

From Glenn Greenwald.

President Ahmadinejad’s comments yesterday summed up the mentality which drives the Bush administration perfectly, precisely because he shares the same mentality: “If we show weakness in front of the enemy, the expectations will increase, but if we stand against them, because of this resistance, they will retreat.” This is, in essence, the Neoconservative Anthem. It mistakes mindless chest-beating belligerence, panic and hysteria for strength and resolve, even though such behavior is really the ultimate hallmark of deep-seated weakness and fear.

When it comes to equating the United States with the likes of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, nobody has done more to attempt to bring about that outcome than George Bush and his neoconservative mentors. And they have accomplished that by simultaneously elevating the legitimacy and significance of those petty tyrants and barbarians, while continuously lowering our own behavior to the depths of their savagery and by adopting their insatiable need for violent conflict.

Even scarier is just how much Republican commentators seem to be on the same page as extremist, al-Qaeda types that we are fighting.

From Ballon Juice:

On face value it seems that D’Souza’s claim to mainstream status is, for lack of a better word, perfectly right. He still holds an extremely well-paid post at the mainstream Hoover Institution. His bio lists plaudits from Investor’s Business Daily and an impressive array of prominent media appearances. He served in the Reagan Administration. It is extremely hard to imagine that D’Souza, who finds broad areas of agreement with anti-American terrorists’ about what is wrong with America, does sit squarely in the middle of modern conservatism. Using the Glenn Reynolds rules of punditry, the overall silence from D’Souza’s ideological compatriots indicates quite clearly that they find his ideas largely unobjectionable.

Setting aside other blame America firsters like Pat Robertson and Jerry Flawell, it might still be possible to d’smiss D’souza as a lone nut if his allies kept their agreement to themselves. That was apparently too much to ask Glenn Beck.

 

“The things that they were saying about us were true. Our morals are just out the window. We’re a society on the verge of moral collapse. And our promiscuity is off the charts.

  “Now I don’t think that we should fly airplanes into buildings or behead people because of it, but that’s the prevailing feeling of Muslims in the Middle East. And you know what? They’re right.”

So much for one lone nut. Glenn Beck is essentially saying that he disagrees with al Qaeda on tactics rather than on principle. If bin Laden limited himself to, say, bombing abortion clinics and beating gays then maybe he’d get on board.

Ahh… Conservative Punditry.  Agreeing with Al Qaedea.  And Bush and the GOP using the same rhetoric nonsense that bin Laden and Ahmadinejad do–the same rhetoric as our enemies.

Barry Goldwater is spinning.