Words not matching reality.
Posted by andir on October 06, 2005
I listened today to the president's speech on terrorism. Here's the long and the short of it: long in rhetoric and short in substance. More self back-patting. One interesting point. It struck me that this speech was appealing to our collective fear much more than our need to be better and inspire us to actually WANT to make things better. Another interesting thing is that you can hear the other side making the same claims of success in their fight with almost the same language. Here's an example you sould read while picturing Bin Laden with some cloth background and an AK next to him.
"There's always a temptation, in the middle of a long struggle, to seek the quiet life, to escape the duties and problems of the world, and to hope the enemy grows weary of fanaticism and tired of murder. This would be a pleasant world, but it's not the world we live in. The enemy is never tired, never sated, never content with yesterday's brutality. This enemy considers every retreat of the civilized world as an invitation to greater violence. In Iraq, there is no peace without victory. We will keep our nerve and we will win that victory."