The phrase of the week would have to be ‘asymmetrical warfare’. Picture it: you’re the camp commander at Guantánamo. Your prisoners are being held indefinitely without due process. There are some suicide attempts, and three prisoners finally succeed in hanging themselves. What do you tell the media?
“I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”
Or perhaps:
Or perhaps both.
This is only the latest (and most extreme) manifestation of the same damn line over and over again. And here it is: The strong are being persecuted by the powerless. Check these examples and spot the pattern:
When unlawfully held prisoners kill themselves, the US military accuses the dead of trying to make them look bad.
The Wall Street Journal says that people that earn the least are ‘lucky duckies‘ who don’t pay enough taxes and take advantage of the system.
The religious right, with all three branchs of government under their control, scream that America isn’t Jesusy enough.
Speakers of English, the majority language of the USA, worry about being overrun with Spanish speakers.
A soldier is killed in Iraq, and wingers, enmeshed in the war they wanted, attack the slain soldier’s mother for becoming a visible symbol for opposition to the war.
Christians, members of the world’s most common religion, scream that atheists are trying to suppress Christmas.
Bush, having stacked the Supreme Court with two extremely conservative justices, still complains about judicial activism.
The Christian Right (again) fear that heterosexual people are being recruited by gay people, and that gay marriage is somehow cheapening straight marriage. Apparently 97% of the population isn’t enough.
It’s just never enough for some people. Right-wingers have often accused the Left of promoting a culture of victimhood, but I’ve never seen anyone hone a persecution complex like this, and they’re the ones in power. Just holding a different point of view is enough to get you labelled an America-hater, a terrorist-sympathiser. And when you die, they’ll call it a cheap stunt.
12 June 2006 at 4:48 pm
I’m living in an America where Archie Bunker IS the hero. And no, I still don’t feel the american psyche moving to the progressive side. (Scream)
And I live in one of the most liberal towns in America. I can’t even imagine living in Kansas.
12 June 2006 at 10:49 pm
‘suicide as asymetrical warfare or PR’ is nothing short of disgusting. I hope they get sacked.
There’s also all the froth over the da Vinci code.