dog messiah

remember those halcyon days before columbush discovered osamica, when the wannabe king's top priority was missile defense?

almost nobody outside the bush legion took the idea seriously, and it seemed destined to wither on the vine after 9/11, but what if it kept percolatin' in the imperator-in-chief's terrorfried brain?

wednesday's first caller to washington journal suggested that very possibility: maybe his glorious majesty so loved raygun's star wars that he deliberately provoked kim jong il into giving US a pretext to resurrect that $1 trillion gift to the military industrial complex.

that throws a whole different light on the "axis of evil" speech, demonization of kim, refusal to talk one-on-one to north korea, and perhaps even the iraq war.

i ask you, where lies greatness? in saying "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" [mar 1933] or in saying "facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun—that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud" [oct 2002] and "...the danger is already significant and it only grows worse with time. if we know saddam hussein has dangerous weapons today—and we do—does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?" [oct 2002] and "some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? if this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late" [state of the union, jan 2003] and "they hate us because they hate freedom" and "we fight'em there so we don't have to fight'em here" and "trust us"
.......................?

fdr taught us to defy fear.

gwb [no, not the bridge] teaches us to ingest fear, to nourish it in our bellies, to bring it to birth both drooling down our chins and wetting our pants whenever he rings his pavlovian bell.

my vote goes to fdr.