Al Gore Speech 5/26/2004
Part 3
This is part 3 of my fisking of Al Gore's
speech from May 26, 2004 at a MoveOn.org rally. Gore's remarks are
in blue.
[
Gore's Original Speech ]
[ Part 1 ][ Part
2 ][ Part 3 ][ Part
4 ][ Part 5 ][
Part 6 ][ Wrap
Up ]
Tim's Note: Gore becomes progressively
less coherent, and it getting hard to dump on something that's as
obtuse as this speech, particularly in this next few segments. Bear
with me.
All that is required, in the view of Bush's
team is the mere assertion of a possible, future threat - and
the assertion need be made by only one person, the President.
Gore is trying to make out that Bush is
the only person in the country that thought Iraq needed to be
invaded. He's either lying or misinformed. Not only did Congress
call for the fall of Hussein during the Clinton Administration,
Congress authorized the use of force against Iraq for President
Bush, a historical fact that Gore leaves out. Iraq was in violation
of dozens of U.N. resolutions. Corruption may have robbed the
U.N. of the will to act, but that does not mean there wasn't plenty
of justification, and plenty of American leaders who agreed.
Gore's attempt to demonize George Bush as the only guy who wanted
to make war is particularly odious when held against Gore's comments
in September of 2002 (more later).
More disturbing still was their frequent
use of the word "dominance" to describe their strategic
goal, because an American policy of dominance is as repugnant
to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless,
naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people. Dominance
is as dominance does.
Dominance is not really a strategic policy
or political philosophy at all. It is a seductive illusion that
tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger for more power still
by striking a Faustian bargain. And as always happens - sooner
or later - to those who shake hands with the devil, they find
out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their
soul.
Not sure what to make of this. Is Gore really using Abu Ghraib
as a metaphor for all of the Bush administration's foreign policy?
Does he really think Bush wants to metaphorically put a leash around
the rest of the world, to point at their genitals? It's hard to
find a point to this paragraph, other than to incite the faithful,
but it is a bit much.
One of the clearest indications of the
impending loss of intimacy with one's soul is the failure to recognize
the existence of a soul in those over whom power is exercised,
especially if the helpless come to be treated as animals, and
degraded. We also know - and not just from De Sade and Freud -
the psychological proximity between sexual depravity and other
people's pain. It has been especially shocking and awful to see
these paired evils perpetrated so crudely and cruelly in the name
of America.
So the Bushies have lost touch with their own souls. Because a
bunch of pinheads abused prisoners in Iraq? This is certainly an
odd cocktail of metaphysics and psychology.
[
Gore's Original Speech ]
[ Part 1 ][ Part
2 ][ Part 3 ][ Part
4 ][ Part 5 ][
Part 6 ][ Wrap
Up ]
Tim McNabb
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