Gobsmacked

James Wolcott notes significant differences between international reaction post 9/11 versus the dauphin's "to hell with it" attitude post 7/7 (citing this Tom Watson piece from The Huffington Post):

Wolcott:

Like Johnny Rotten in "No Feelings," President Bush has got no emotions for anybody else, and can't be bothered even to go through the formal motions, having so many more important, interesting things to do, such as fall off his bicycle...

Has the United States or even simply Washington, DC held a silent moment for the victims of the London bombings? Has any national gesture of solidarity been proposed?

If so, I haven't seen or heard of it. We're just going about our business while insisting that the world perpetually acknowledge our scars and trauma from September 11th as our justification to wage whatever aggressive action we deem necessary to ensure it never happens again.

For months, we've been hearing and reading that Brits no longer discriminate between average Americans and the policies of our government--that the reelection of Bush has made them hold us in something of the same contempt they hold him. Well, they have good reason, and we keep furnishing them with better reasons all the time.

Watson:

On the morning of September 13th, 2001, the officer in charge of the Coldstream Guards Band and 1st Battalion Scots Guards received a call from Buckingham Palace. Banish tradition. The music accompanying that day's tourist-swathed ceremomy at the changing would be different. That day, the band played The Star-Spangled Banner. The Brits were with us...

Our President, George W. Bush, was actually in the United Kingdom when terror struck London. He was in Scotland, a two-hour flight from Heathrow. Understandably, he and the other leaders completed the G8 summit, unbowed by the carnage in the London transit system.

And then our President came home.

Watson asks rhetorically why Bush couldn't be bothered to even spend a few moments in London--to which Wolcott replies (probably correctly) that Bush simply "couldn't be bothered." Indeed, it seems as if these days the United States won't bother itself with ANY signal of empathy with a world increasingly threatened by vicious acts of terror--acts which, in some measure, are the result of muleheaded policies of the Bush administration. They exploit the tragedy of 9/11 when they should instead be hanging their collective heads in shame for being asleep at the wheel--and insist that their way is the ONLY way, world be damned. Then they follow up with the ultimate cynicism--better there than here, as if the globe can somehow be partitioned between fortress America and "abroad." What idiots.

Speaking of which, I'd also like to note for the record that, contrary to wingnuttia, those of us on the left don't "hate America." We hate MORONS, particularly those who insist on dragging this country down with their aggressively ignorant stands on matters like national security, which will NEVER be achieved with blowhard rantings, particularly when they're followed up with pathetic actions like the war in Iraq, where some 8-10 Army divisions are caught up in a stalemante with irregular forces at best. Idiots don't deserve adulation--they deserve rejection and contempt.