Contempt For Americans
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Attorney General John Ashcroft, the senior managers of the Bush Administration make no secret of their contempt for the rules of democratic procedure (inefficient, wrong-headed, and slow), their distrust of the American people indolent, immoral and corrupted by a debased popular culture, undeserving of the truth), and their disdain for the United Nations and the principle of international law (sophomoric idealisms popular with weak nations too poor to pay for a serious Air Force). I don't for a moment doubt the eager commitment for "regime change", but on the evidence of the last eighteen months they've been doing their most effective work in the United States, not in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia or Iraq. Better understood as radical nationalists than as principled conservatives, they deploy the logic endorsed by the military commanders in Vietnam ( who found it necessary to destroy a village in order to save it), and they offer the American people a choice similar to the one presented by the officers of the Spanish Inquisition to independent-minded heretics -- give up your liberty, and we will set you free.
- Louis H Lapham, February 2003 issue of Harper's.
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