Please Join Me In Prayer

As I always say, we'd better pray to god that George Bush, Dick Cheney et al are consciously lying when they talk about the world. Because if they truly believe what they're saying, we're in even more trouble than I think.

For instance, here's Cheney on Monday, referring to the recent Chechen terrorist attacks in Russia:

...in Europe, for example, I think a lot of our European friends have been somewhat ambivalent about this whole proposition with respect to how we deal with these terrorist attacks. I think some have hoped that if they kept their heads down and stayed out of the line of fire, they wouldn't get hit. I think what happened in Russia now demonstrates pretty conclusively that everybody is a target, that Russia, of course, did not support us in Iraq. They did not get involved in sending troops there. They've gotten hit anyway. And I think people are back sort of reassessing now, in terms of what the motives may be of the people who are launching these attacks or using these kinds of tactics against our people.

As you see, Cheney has redefined "keeping your head down" to mean "killing 50-100,000 civilians in Chechnya." Russia was just minding its own business, keeping its head down, when OUT OF NOWHERE they were attacked by Chechen extremists!

This is, of course, all part of the effort of right wing governments all over the world to claim that terrorist attacks occur for no reason whatsoever, rather than arising from specific grievances. (Or to be more accurate, large numbers of regular people have specific, legitimate grievances against US, Russia, Israel, etc., etc. And terrorists exploit these grievances to try to gain political support from regular people.)

So what Cheney says makes as much sense as it would have for Putin to have said on September 12, 2001:

I think what happened in the US with the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center demonstrates pretty conclusively that everybody is a target. The US did not get involved in sending troops to Chechnya. They've gotten hit anyway.

In other words, if Cheney was being honest, he really does believe there's some sort of undifferentiated group of terrorists out there attacking targets virtually at random. If this view prevails among the people running the world, the chance of humanity surviving this century is about 1 in 100. So let us bow our heads and pray Cheney was lying through his teeth.