Wednesday, January 31, 2007



The second time as farce

The US is set to present a dossier detailing Iranian influence over shi'ite groups in Iraq. But apart from the basic hypocrisy here - does a government which invaded and occupies a country to support its "national interest" really have any basis to complain when people use similar tactics against it? - this also reeks of the selective release of "evidence" that preceeded the Iraq war. There's the same reliance on exiles for "intelligence", and of course the same purpose: to whip up public support for war. All it needs is a "B-team" within the Pentagon to be shaping the evidence around the policy, and the sense of history repeating itself will be complete.

Marx famously said that history does repeat - the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. It looks like we are about to have the latter on our hands, unless we stand up and say "no".

4 comments:

Marx famously said that history does repeat - the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

I always thought Groucho was funnier.

Posted by Lyndon : 1/31/2007 12:08:00 PM

He was - but all he ever said that was relevant was "A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five."

Hmmm. Maybe Bush needs a 5-year-old inthe Oval Office to check his foreign policy.

OTOH, we could have a lot of fun applying marx to Key: "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies."

Posted by Idiot/Savant : 1/31/2007 12:16:00 PM

Nice.

Incidentally, my first comment rips off Jasper Carrott in one of his tv ad compilations.

It was the punchline for Karl's saying advertising was "maggots feeding on the rotting corpse of capitalism".

And this is an object lesson in why the parts of a joke should go in the right order.

Posted by Lyndon : 1/31/2007 02:09:00 PM

Actually I always thought Bush II was a Marxist. Unfortunately for him & us, Zeppo.

Posted by Anonymous : 1/31/2007 05:11:00 PM