TRYING TIMES

Thank God for the release of Jill Carroll. For some reason that seems like the best news we could hear at this moment. Here's hoping she can recover mentally, physically, and emotionally from her traumatic ordeal.

So now Bush says : "The enemies of a free Iraq are employing the same tactics Saddam used, killing and terrorizing the Iraqi people in an effort to foment sectarian division". Certainly, Saddam killed and terrorized. But the reasons for him doing so would seem to be different then our humble preznit has proffered. Wouldn't he have terrorized in order to maintain his hegemony? Wouldn't all of his violence been intended to quell rebellion, rather than provoke it? Saddam's reasons for terror and violence would seem to be opposite the insurgents motivation. The insurgents aim to create and beget chaos, in order to keep the government from estabilishing law and order and an environment capable of progressing economically, politically, socially, etc. While Saddam would not have been for or against progress of this kind per se, he would have been in favor of whatever would keep him in power. This is precisely why Saddam's Iraq was such a seemingly contradictory mixture of modern social order and violent dictatorship. One minute he's letting women go to school and the next his gassing Kurds. I suppose we could refer to him as a pragmatic tyrant. Its all done to maintain his stranglehold and stop sectarian violence from injurying his power structure. To put the point of this post more generally, the meaning of violence for a terrorist of Bin Laden's type is to overthrow an existing order. Tyrant's like Saddam terrorize innocent people to maintain the status quo.

Why is it that everytime a high ranking American official visits a middle eastern country that its referred to as a "surprise" visit? Are there ever times when we actually let these people know that we're coming? No wonder all these countries hate us; who likes a pop in? One of the dictionary definitions of a surprise reads "an unexpected or unusual encounter". If, for instance, my relatives were to make a surprise visit to my apartment twice a month, wouldn't I begin to expect it? What gives? Is there a conspiricy among editors across the nation that every foreign relations visit be referred to as a surprise? Trying Times would like to see more headlines declaring "Bush makes surprise visit to Afghanistan; who could have seen this coming?" or "Condi Rice to visit Middle East again next week; try to act bewildered". Please, newspaper editors of the world: refer to events as extraordinary only when we will actually be surprised.