BushWorld seems to be a topsy-turvy place in which right and wrong can switch places overnight and principles are as permanent as yesterday’s weather.
It seems like only yesterday, for example, that the entire BushCheney regime was not merely defying the authority of the United Nations, but openly ridiculing it. In the run-up to their Iraq attack, they were calling the U.N. everything from irrelevant to wimpy, declaring that even if that body’s security council refused to pass a war resolution against Iraq, the U.S. would attack anyway. The Bushites asserted that they had the right to disregard the will of the U.N. whenever they pleased.
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Today, however, what was right has become wrong in BushWorld. This time it’s Iran that says it, too, has the sovereign right to ignore the U.N. and will continue to develop its nuclear capability even if the security council formally condemns it. So, suddenly doing a 180-degree reversal, the Bushites are now championing the authority of the very international body they had been stiffing. Here’s how Condi Rice put it, supposedly with a straight face: “The security council is the primary and most important institution of peace and stability and security, and it cannot have its will simply ignored by a member state.”
Another example is George W’s recent flip flop on gas-guzzling vehicles. Faced with an explosion of public anger over skyrocketing gas prices, Bush suddenly has become ConsumerMan, scolding both the oil and automobile industries for not improving the fuel efficiency of our cars and trucks. But wait, ConsumerMan – weren’t you the guy who furiously demanded that congress kill a provision in last year’s energy bill that would have required greater fuel efficiency? Why, yes, you were.
This is Jim Hightower saying… In BushWorld, what’s right can quickly become wrong, and wrong can turn into right – depending on the prevailing political winds.
Sources:
“Say Uncle, Rummy,” The New York Times, April 29, 2006.
“The Four Pitfalls: Public Citizen Rebuts Bush’s Weak Energy Policy Proposals,” Public Citizen, April 25, 2006.
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