“Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the King that led them to it” – Shakespeare, Henry V
Every so often, the confused cranium of George W. Bush emerges from seclusion and words escape his lips which are apparently designed to be explanations of his policies. Typically, his statements only create greater confusion amongst observers, possibly including the President himself. Ever expanding confusion, mirroring ever expanding entropy, the second law of thermodynamics applied to the gray matter of George Bush*; that would be a neat explanation for this statement, concerning deceased US servicemen;
“We owe them something. We will finish the task that they gave their lives for. We’ll honor their sacrifice by staying on the offensive against the terrorists and building strong allies in Afghanistan and Iraq that will help us win and fight … the war on terror.”
“Finish the task” — what task? as tex pointed out below, Bush has never defined the task. The task, like the justification for the task, is whatever Bush wants it to be, moment by moment. That’s what “they gave their lives for” as he puts it. They gave their lives for the imagination of George W. Bush. “Honor their sacrifice”…by wiping out any resistance to our dreams of world domination, no matter who be in our way. And who are “the terrorists” Bush is always referring to? The president is always talking about terrorists and insurgents, insurgents and terrorists. He hasn’t clearly delineated who the enemy is. Clearly, the enemy is anyone whom George W. Bush imagines them to be. “Building strong allies” refers to the permanent US military bases in Iraq, assuming Bush remembers that he is having them built. And then this matter of “the war on terror”, another thing Bush has never bothered to define in anything resembling specific terms. Since we don’t know exactly what the war on terror is, it isn’t possible to win it, except in the imagination of its Creator: George W. Bush. The president imagines the cause, imagines the enemy — why not simply get out of the region and he can imagine the casualties too!
*For the Second Law to apply to Bush’s brain, it would have to be, in technical terms, a ‘closed system’, in which no new positive thermal energy can enter…