Bring Jones Back

by Dan Jacoby

George Orwell's famous anti-Stalinist book Animal Farm begins with the animals rising up against the farmer Jones. They drive him away, and take over the farm. After a brief time of utopian ideal, the pig named Napoleon (the Stalin allegory) takes over. He quickly starts stripping the other animals of their rights, warning them that if they oppose him, Jones will return. His propaganda minister, Squealer, is always exhorting the other animals with the phrase, "Surely you don't want Jones back."

Now, people across America are beginning to understand that most of the "U.S.A. Patriot Act" (more on the name in a moment) is blatantly unconstitutional, and the rest is irrelevant. In defense of this stripping of our freedom, President Bush and the Republicans are sending out their propaganda ministers, Scott McClellan, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and others, that "surely we don't want ..." Actually, it's hard to say exactly what we don't want back. Budget surpluses? Peace and prosperity? Two million jobs? Respect around the world? Well, whatever their version of Jones is, we're not supposed to want it back.

Incidentally, the name of the act is reminiscent of the names of some Communist countries: the People's Republic of China (often called "Red China"), the German Democratic Republic (that's the former East Germany), the People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), and so forth. The louder countries claim they are republics, or democracies, or belonging to the people, the more totalitarian they are.

The Republicans are very good at coming up with names for their policies. They don't want us to focus on the fact that the name has nothing to do with the contents of the law. The 1994 "Contract with America" promised to accomplish exactly nothing. The "No Child Left Behind Act" leaves so many children behind that we can't even count them all. Now, the "U.S.A. Patriot Act" may be the ultimate irony. The original patriots, from Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, would roll in their graves at this cynical abuse of the term "patriot".

And it's all one. Whether naming laws to mislead the American public about their contents, or lying about the reason for invading Iraq, the "credibility gap" just gets wider.

President Bush and his cohort said we'd be safer without Saddam Hussein, but now Homeland Defense Secretary Tom Ridge says we're not. They said Iraq was an imminent threat to the U.S., but now they claim they never said that. They said Iraq had, or was about to acquire, huge stockpiles of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, but that wasn't true.

Now Bush's own National Security Adviser claims that Saddam Hussein was "the source of instability in an unstable area of the world," and "a dangerous regime in the world's most dangerous region." Never mind that she didn't want to admit that the original reason for invading Iraq was a lie. Does her statement mean the leaders of Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the al-aqsa Martyrs Brigade and other well-known and highly active terror groups (like, for instance, oh, I don't know, al-Qaeda) aren't "sources of instability" and aren't dangerous?

Surely we don't want Saddam Hussein back in power. But was capturing a man who was no threat to America, imminent or otherwise, worth diverting all those resources away from the search for Osama bin Laden? Was it worth losing the momentum for rebuilding Afghanistan and making permanent friends there? Was it worth losing the moral high ground, on which we could have led the way toward a safer Middle East?

Candidate Bush ran on a platform that claimed that the Clinton administration squandered opportunities. But President Bush has squandered a huge opportunity to create a more peaceful, friendly Muslim world. He has squandered a prime opportunity to build a free, democratic Afghanistan. He has squandered a tremendous opportunity to build bridges to a large, developing section of the world.

Surely we do want that opportunity back.

 

Copyright 2004, Dan Jacoby

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