Juan Cole Hits a Home Run

Here's another must read. Professor Cole weaves together a powerful argument against right wingnut patriarchy, using Iraq, the Schiavo tragedy, George W. Bush, and Tom DeLay. As I'm sure many others have said/thought/mentioned or otherwise considered, the "culture of life" sure knows how to dish out industrial-sized doses of death without so much as working up a sweat. And Cole gives the pResident a figurative slap upside the head after reading about his bizarre Thursday "press conference:"

It is like a parody of himself. He stresses that intelligence work is a) hard and b) secret.

That is supposed to make it all right that we sent a high-tech army into a poor, weak country and turned it into a failed state, killing 40,000 innocent Iraqis and suffering over 1500 coalition troops dead and over 10,000 US troops wounded, many maimed for life, and spending $300 billion on it? For no reason? When the poor weak state did not in fact have the weapons of mass destruction that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz insisted it had? When they bullied anyone who questioned their evidence for all this, and got their billionnaire buddies who own the media to have their anchors and editorialists also bully any dissidents?

Because intelligence work is hard and secret?

How does Bush square all the violence he has unleashed in the world with his praise of "life?" What is the link between war-mongering and being "pro-life?"

And, for equal times sake, he lays into the anti-choice folks:

It turns out that anti-abortionism is not about life at all. It is about social control. It helps establish a hierarchical society in which men are at the pinnacle and women kept barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. Likewise, the Schiavo case was in part about the religious Right dictating to Michael Schiavo how he must lead his private life.

Good stuff. Take a look.