(Cross-posted from The Blog Roundup).
Brad DeLong has a certain way with words. In just a sentence or two he can express a complex idea that's been bumping around in my brain for a while but which I simply couldn't articulate, and that's so blindingly obvious in its insight that it takes a moment for me to realize just how perceptive it is. Take, for example, this opening salvo:
The first lesson of the George W. Bush administration is that it is always worse than you imagine, even though you've taken into account that it is always worse than you imagine.
Yes, I feel myself saying when I read that. Yes, yes,
yes. That's it, the true impact of whatever they do is so much mind-bogglingly worse than I could conceive possible, that I can't quite believe the evidence of my own eyes and ears. Then, just when I thought it couldn't possibly get any worse, it does:
Death squad activity is terrorism. Its purpose is never merely the assassination or kidnapping of a small number of leaders, but always the cowing of entire populations. This case is no different. Note the language carefully:
One military source involved in the Pentagon debate agrees that this is the crux of the problem, and he suggests that new offensive operations are needed that would create a fear of aiding the insurgency. "The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists," he said. "From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation."
The target isn't a few dead-enders or foreign terrorists; the target is "the Sunni population," which needs to be taught a lesson...
All this is like torture itself -- each brick in the wall of truth, each step on the road that they take to dehumanizing our country, each immoral and illegal act, is part of a sequence designed to disorient and demoralize us, to break our spirit, to destroy our will to resist. And just like the torture victim, our only hope is to hold on to ourselves, to what we know is right and true, and to never concede.
- Trendar