Here's a taste of the semantic brilliance that permeates each stubbed-toe syllable of this mumblefuck's boilerplate. Might as well put a snappy 4/4 beat behind it at this point and give it a catchy chorus. Whoomp! there it is!
The war on terror goes on. I was most impressed by the resolve of all the leaders in the room. Their resolve is as strong as my resolve. And that is, we will not yield to these people, will not yield to the terrorists.
By this point, it's pretty much like MadLibs, isn't it? Just change a noun here, and adjective there, lard it with the usual bromides about resolute resolve and stick-to-it-iveness, and the good folks that are on the job, and you're money, baby.
One thing we can actually agree with Bush on is the obvious -- that these people hate, that disengagement is not a viable option anymore, that giving a psychotic death cult what they want is just a slow suicide.
However, I submit that chances are roughly 99 out 100 that the attackers were traineed in either Afghanistan or Pakistan, and that the person who gave the go-ahead to do this is also either in Afghanistan or Pakistan. So maybe, just maybe, we start getting the message that leaving Afghanistan to the tender mercies of scum like Rashid Dostum was always a devil's bargain, and that we would have been far better off spending 1% of what we've spent fucking up Iraq just helping Afghanistan (and ourselves) out by building a road system for them, for starters. That would have been a true investment in human capital.
Instead they continue to spiral downward, caught in the grip of a warlord culture over 1000 years old, that likes things just the way they are. And the Taliban grow restive in the shadows, plotting, getting the old band back together, running communiques between Tora Bora and Waziristan, secure in the knowledge that while we think we can re-invent the Middle East, we don't have the political will to help a misbegotten area get out of the Middle Ages.
So we'll see if our "leaders" take an actual lesson from all this, and refocus attention where it needs to be focused, or if we keep dicking around in al-Anbar, dodging VBIED's just long enough to get the hell out and let the new Iraqi boss try out the counterinsurgency tactics previously employed by the old boss.
Resolve is a fine character trait to have, but it does actually require paying attention and desiring to do the right thing, as opposed to the politically expedient thing. I can't help but think that the future involves Iraq sliding precipitously into civil war; us leaving it in a mess; Iran exerting influence through the Shia majority in the south; and al-Qaida and Taliban assholes regrouping and recruiting in the no-man's-land we fobbed off to the Afghan warlords and Musharraf's troublemaking military and intel agencies.
Have I missed anything? Oh yeah -- even if Paris or Rome (or LAX, for that matter) don't get hit next, prepare to keep trading freedom downward for safety, or at least the illusion of safety. After all, only a murderous terrorist would have a problem with retinal scans and cameras everywhere, right?
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