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Matthew Freeman is a Brooklyn based playwright with a BFA from Emerson College. His plays include THE DEATH OF KING ARTHUR, REASONS FOR MOVING, THE GREAT ESCAPE, THE AMERICANS, THE WHITE SWALLOW, AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR, THE MOST WONDERFUL LOVE, WHEN IS A CLOCK, GLEE CLUB, THAT OLD SOFT SHOE and BRANDYWINE DISTILLERY FIRE. He served as Assistant Producer and Senior Writer for the live webcast from Times Square on New Year's Eve 2010-2012. As a freelance writer, he has contributed to Gamespy, Premiere, Complex Magazine, Maxim Online, and MTV Magazine. His plays have been published by Playscripts, Inc., New York Theatre Experience, and Samuel French.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Meet the New Boss...Same As The Old Boss

Hey everyone...I'm interrupting this hiatus to show you a little bit of one of that carpetbagger Bush's latest "Defend this Unjustifiable Undeclared, Illegal War" speech. This is just the very end of the speech he delivered yesterday. You'll note that second term Bush sounds remarkably like Bush on his first day of work.

I will never be worn down by this I swear on my grave. I will mock him until he is only a name on a Library in Texas that only has subscriptions to Hunting Magazines.

Comments are in red:

"The last three years have tested our resolve. The fighting has been tough. The enemy we face has proved to be brutal and relentless. We're adapting our approach to reflect the hard realities on the ground. And the sacrifices being made by our young men and women who wear our uniform has been heartening and inspiring. "

We enter the fourth year of the war, and we are now adjusting our approach. Oh shit! He's going to start handing out armor to our troops. No more fighting with both hands tied behind our backs? Bring it on!

"The terrorists who are setting off bombs in mosques and markets in Iraq share the same hateful ideology as the terrorists who attacked us on September the 11, 2001, those who blew up the commuters in London and Madrid, and those who murdered tourists in Bali or workers in Riyadh or guests at a wedding in Amman."

If by "ideology" you mean, blow stuff up to scare people and defeat your enemy, yeah. They do. Of course, we also have that particular ideology. I remember reading about two guys named Fat Man and Little Boy who visited Japan.

I also love that he spells out the entire "September 11th, 2001" as if when he says September we think he might mention September 23rd or September 9th.

"In the war on terror, we face a global enemy. And if we were not fighting this enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle. They would be plotting and trying to kill Americans across the world and within our own borders. "

Right. Because since we started fighting them in Iraq, they've totally been sucked into it and we've got them fooled. Denmark is peaceful, London was not bombed by someone other than the IRA, Madrid is perfectly fine. Pay not attention to that man behind the curtain.

"Against this enemy there can be no compromise. So we will fight them in Iraq, we will fight them across the world, and we will stay in the fight until the fight is won."

Hear that Iran? Across the world, you Muslim Republicans. We still have a few young men who crossed over into fighting age since we started in Iraq. So we're far from all dead at this point.

"In the long run, the best way to defeat this enemy and to assure the security of our own citizens is to spread the hope of freedom across the broader Middle East. We've seen freedom conquer evil and secure the peace before.

In World War II, free nations came together to fight the ideology of fascism, and freedom prevailed. And today Germany and Japan are democracies, and they are allies in securing the peace. "

Ah, World War II, you old softie. Where would justifications for war be without you? I mean, heck the minute we heard about Hitler hurting people, we hopped in airplanes and beat up those Nazi jerks.

Well...ok. Not right away. But we did it, and that's what counts.

Iraq is just like that.

"In the Cold War, freedom defeated the ideology of communism and led to a democratic movement that freed the nations of Central and Eastern Europe from Soviet domination. And today these nations are strong allies in the war on terror. "

Yeah...Serbia is in fantastic fucking shape. Also, I didn't know we were now calling Blue Jeans and Cheeseburgers by the moniker Freedom. It's catchy.

"In the Middle East, freedom is once again contending with an ideology that seeks to sew anger and hatred and despair. And like fascism and communism before, the hateful ideologies that use terror will be defeated."

Bush saying fascism is a defeated ideology is like a fat kid saying chocolate cake tastes like shit.

Think about it.

"Freedom will prevail in Iraq. Freedom will prevail in the Middle East."

Replace Freedom with the Word Guns in the first sentence and illegal torture in the second. These are nouns you can sink your teeth into. Freshman Comp.

"And as the hope of freedom spreads to nations that have not known it, these countries will become allies in the cause of peace. "

You know, hard to argue there. This line of thinking has a fantastic track record.

"The security of our country is directly linked to the liberty of the Iraqi people, and we will settle for nothing less than victory."

Does that mean it's like in the Dark Crystal...where the bad guys would explode and a corresponding good guy would also explode, because they were good and bad halves of a being that was separated from itself?

I know what you're thinking about me. You think I have a ponytail.

Furthermore...right now, we'll settle for less. We'd settle for the UN to pass a measure telling us we can go home and they'll handle the rest. If England said "Everyone in the US gets one big shiny tank of cheap gas to end the war" there would be lines across the Atlantic.

"Victory will come when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq's democracy, when the Iraqi security forces can provide for the safety of their citizens on their own, and when Iraq is not a safe haven for terrorists to plot new attacks against our nation. "

What's amazing is that we can do none of these things with our OWN country. Terrorists threaten us, we can't provide safety for our own citizens, and most of the cells that plotted 9/11 were, as far as we know, inside our borders during planning.

It's sort of like any shitty mentor. Sure, your big brother can smoke pot and drive the car into a tree, but if you YOU do it, he'll beat the living fuck out of you.

Side note: He is still using the term Saddamists.

"There will be more days of sacrifice and tough fighting before the victory is achieved. Yet by helping the Iraqis defeat the terrorists in their land, we bring greater security to our own.

As we make progress toward victory, Iraqis will continue to take more responsibility for their own security and fewer U.S. forces will be needed to complete the mission. "

Right. So how many troops do the Sunnis need to defeat the Shiites? And are we going to wear Gray or Blue?

"But it's important for the Iraqis to hear this: The United States will not abandon Iraq. We will not leave that country to the terrorists who attacked America and want to attack us again. We will leave Iraq, but when we do, it will be from a position of strength, not weakness."

I'm sure Iraqis are happy to hear this. They're thinking how reassuring it is that we won't let them be hurt by people who fly airplanes into buildings. We will protect Iraq from Saudi Arabia with our last...breath.

"Americans have never retreated in the face of thugs and assassins, and we will not begin now."

People in glass houses...

"Thanks for listening. "

He did, in fact, end with that. It's a step up from God Bless Everyone. But it's sort of sheepish rhetoric.

You're welcome, you son of a bitch.

-----

Here endeth the fun times.

9 comments:

Alison Croggon said...

The disconnect from the "reality-based community" is becoming more and more pathological. I keep wondering how long Bush can keep talking about "progress" in Iraq - the only measurable progress seems to be the daily body count. It would be funny if the results were not so horrendously tragic.

Anonymous said...

I know you shouldn't laught at these things, because they are happening... but I loved that post.

Lucas Krech said...

Perpetual war, perpetual peace.

This country is very good at rhetoric. Its authenticity we have trouble with.

Anonymous said...

Oh man, I'm with you on this - I've made a promise to myself that I would not ever let him squeak by on anything without supreme ridicule . . . If we can keep up the fight, sooner or later the whole country will join in and lob verbal grenades at him day after day.

Freeman said...

Spalding:

Glad to know you've taken up a gun yourself for what you so truly believe in: Gas Money.

Sit down and let the grown ups talk about politics. You can play Xbox until we're done.

Anonymous said...

Spalding:

What do you think he's doing now?

No one here has said anything disrespectful of our men and women in uniform. If anything, we want them to have COMPETENT leadership so that their lives are not thrown away and wasted by being sent to war for reasons that turned out to be false (WMD) into a region equipped with bad intellegence (Dubya's own words) and faulty equipment and armor that doesn't protect them.

If you don't admit that this very real things effect the soldiers negatively, and ARE happening, then the one disrespecting the soldiers is YOU, so put that in your gas pipe and smoke it. You cannot say you care about soldiers if you support this incompetent boob of a president. Not with a straight face, you can't.

And I was under the impression they don't make that many cars in flint anymore, didn't they move those jobs overseas?

Anonymous said...

Spaulding -

Freeman's right, go back to your xbox - this is adult swim and you don't have the mental chops.

You evidently didn't read a word of what I wrote - no matter how badly our country needs gasoline, we shouldn't be throwing away the lives of men and women in uniform. It's not that we shouldn't get what our country needs, it's that we should get it in as competently way as possible. Nothing about Iraq was handled competently (and that's if, IF, I were to agree that it was even a good idea to go there for oil, which I do not agree)and events bear this out.

You're a fool, spaulding, a waste of sperm and space.

Anonymous said...

check this out - spaulding actually came to my site to leave a snarky comment and didn't even address my arguments -

what a gimp

Anonymous said...

Spaulding -
You call my viewpoint simplistic? Your view is that people have always died, so why should we care now that they are dying unnecessarily - that's the most simplistic, ignorant viewpoint I've heard in a long time - at least dubya and company was good enough to LIE about a nobler reason - you just want gas and as long as you're the one not dying, you could care less!

You're a gimp and the best part of you dribbled down your daddy's leg.