Saturday, February 16, 2008

George "Hypocrite" Bush

From a talk he gave at Harvard way back in February 2002 called Distorted Morality: America's War on Terror? Noam Chomsky gives good advice on how we should view the character of George W. Bush:

…when George Bush tells us that he is the most devoted Christian since the Apostles, we should believe him, take him at his word and we should therefore conclude that he certainly has memorized, over and over again, in his Bible reading classes and in church, the famous definition of "hypocrite" that's given in the gospels. Namely, the hypocrite is the person who applies to others standards that he refuses to apply to himself. So if you are not a hypocrite you assume that if something is right for us then it's right for them and if it is wrong when they do it, it is wrong when we do it. That is really elementary and I assume that the President would agree and all of his admirers as well.
I believe that what Mr. Chomsky is saying is that George W. Bush is as much a terrorist as Osama bin Laden, and I think that I agree with him. What is a terrorist? What is terrorism? Here is Noam Chomsky again:
Well, to begin with, what is terrorism? Got to say something about that. That is supposed to be a really tough question. Academic seminars and graduate philosophy programs and so on -- a very vexing and complex question. However, in accordance with the guidelines that I mentioned, I think there is a simple answer, namely, we just take the official U.S. definition of terrorism. Since we are accepting the pronouncements of our leaders literally, let's take their definition. In fact, that is what I have always done. I have been writing about terrorism for the last twenty years or so, just accepting the official definition. So, for example, a simple and important case is in the U.S. army manual in 1984 which defines terrorism as the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious or ideological in nature.
Isn’t this what George W. Bush has done to the Iraqi and Afghani people?

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