Blip from the Past: This is how we wag the dog, wag the dog, wag the dog…

Because this is an election year, it behooves me to remind all and sundry of the cray-zazee daze of George W. Bush’s tenure in the White House. This journal entry from January 2002 highlights what would be one in a long parade of ‘wag the dog’ antics offered up to the American Public by the Bush Administration. If Homeland Security’s silly Threat Level chart didn’t scare the be-Jeebus out of you, then by golly, John Walker Lindh surely would. Or at least, in theory, he should have. Maybe. So…anyway…John Walker Lindh is currently serving a 20 year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana and Osama bin Laden has been dead a year this May. Which event makes you feel a teensy bit safer?

Ashcroft wants you to hate his guts.Move over, Osama — here’s the Bush Administration’s latest poster boy for the War On Terror™. Poor John Walker Lindh. There’s just nothing worse than being a confused, misguided Marin County rich kid caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even worse to be captured fighting alongside the The Enemy by an administration frantically wagging the dog to make its populace forget about recession, rising unemployment and EnronGate. Our AG John Ashcroft (R-Bigot/NeoNazi) barely contained his glee at a press conference announcing Walker Lindh’s upcoming trial for treason. Ashcroft wants every red-blooded Amurrican to hate this guy’s guts. After all, there’s nothing more distracting than rising anger. (Notice that the Bush Admin never mentions the 14 year old kid who crashed a Cessna into a Florida highrise, leaving behind a suicide note stating that 9/11/01 was a good thing. Guess it’s because the kid was a member of the local Young Republicans club. Heh.)

Well, somehow I just can’t muster a single bit of rage at this sad and pitiful human being. Certainly, I don’t condone what he did nor do I sympathize with him. But I don’t hate him. Should he be punished? Of course. But my idea of punishment is far less Draconian than Ashcroft’s: why not just revoke his U.S. citizenship and shove him into permanent exile? But no, Ashcroft and his ilk want a public tar ‘n feathering for y’all to watch. You probably won’t be able to watch the trial of suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui. Why not? Read this and you’ll understand.

So, if you feel an all-consuming, boiling rage toward this John Walker Lindh idiot, that’s truly sad. You see, that’s just how Nazi Germany began. Think about it.

Posted in Afghanistan, Blip from the Past, Dubya, Politics, WTF and tagged , , .