Maybe Henry And Osama Could Get A Room And Humiliate Each Other In Private

Scott Horton at the Antiwar.com blergh points out this section from State of Denial about a conversation between Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson and Henry Kissinger:

"Why did you support the Iraq war?" Gerson asked him.

"Because Afghanistan wasn't enough," Kissinger answered. In the conflict with radical Islam, he said, they want to humiliate us. "And we need to humiliate them."

When hearing this it's hard not to think of these words of Osama bin Laden just after 9/11:

"What America is tasting now is something insignificant compared to what we have tasted for scores of years. [The Islamic world] has been tasting this humiliation and this degradation for eighty years."

Here's the thing: I remember feeling many emotions in lower Manhattan that day, but humiliation wasn't one of them. Indeed, if there were anyone I would have thought should feel humiliated, it would have been the people who revealed themselves to be so stupid and vain and cruel all they could conceive of to do with their lives was to murder 3,000 others.

By contrast, I do find it humiliating that we invaded Iraq, precisely because of what it revealed about our own stupidity and vanity and cruelty. I find it even more humiliating that, even with every advantage, our country has decayed to the point we find it impossible to hold those who made the decisions responsible. Most of all, I find it humiliating to live in a country where Henry Kissinger can go outside without being spit on by hundreds of concerned citizens.

Meanwhile, from a rational standpoint I don't think anyone in the Islamic world should find the Iraq invasion or eighty years of colonialism humiliating. (Though I do, of course, emotionally get it.)

Anyway, I guess it's no accident the CIA is flying around the world wearing masks and forcibly administering enemas. If only we could set up Henry and Osama on a blind date, they might end up so busy we could finally get some peace and quiet around here.