Law West of the Tigris

So they hung Saddam Hussein.

While it would have been salutary for all concerned for Hussein to spend the rest of his days in prison in The Hague (along with Henry Kissinger, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Pol Pot, Pinochet & a goodly number of others), there is no human punishment adequate to the scale of his (or their) crimes. Of far more importance than the punishment is the establishment of the truth of their crimes and the degree of their culpability. It is after that point that discussion of punishment, clemency & amnesty can begin.

The best construction that can be placed on the Iraqi Court is that rather than representing Law, it is a blunt attempt to establish Order, a la Judge Roy Bean of Trans-Pecos Texas, by means of judicial murder.,,only it is if Bean were a puppet of say, the Mexican Government...

Charles Stross

I'm reading Jennifer Morgue right now. Helluva good read. Stross's science fantasy has a feel to it that is a little like that of Lewis Padgett, a sci fi writer from the 50's.

George Bush, Nihilist II

To get a bit more specific about it all, George Bush keeps nominating people to various posts in the bureaucracy and the government who seem sworn to destroy, reverse or debilitate whatever agency or function to which they are appointed: John Bolton at the UN, the appointments to the EPA, the FDA, that family planning agency and a bunch of others...there are really too many names and scandals to keep track of, but you can look it up if you don't believe me...

George Bush, Nihilist

I am convinced George Bush does not have a plan for anything, except the destruction of American society as we know it.

I say that he is a nihilist because although he wishes to restore the U.S. to the pre-New Deal order, that is, the order of the robber barons, he is less concerned with restoration than he is with destruction. Every appointment is geared that way. He wants to destroy any person or institution that shows the slightest impulse toward the furtherance of the Common Good. He is not worried about what replaces those people or institutions, because (ironically for a anti-evolutionist) he is, whatever his conscious professions, a fiercely committed Social Darwinsist.