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Great post at Mr Crunchy

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

We're Doing Some Uniting Now, Boy Howdy!

This past Sunday, in celebration of the big march on Washington for women's reproductive rights, Bush aide Karen Hughes suggested on CNN that somehow the pro-life movement was allied with the US in the war against al Qaeda. Or that the war against al Qaeda should make us all pro-life. Or something. Here's the quote:

"I think after September 11, the American people are valuing life more…and I think those are the kind of policies the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy, and really, the fundamental difference between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life."

Haven't we all felt the tremendous surge in the value we all place on every single human life since September 11? I mean, we've stopped executing criminals, everyone has good health care and we all feel really bad about the ten to fifteen thousand Iraqi civilians we've killed (so far) to shut down Saddam's imaginary weapons programs. I guess I can sort of understand what she's trying to say, if I hop on one foot and squint and shake my head real fast and pretend that instead of a brain I just have an itsy bitsy ganglia at the base of my neck controlled by a computer chip that Karl Rove soldered onto it, and I take a hubba-hubba-huge hit off my Pat Robertson bobblehead crack pipe. (For her part, Ms. Hughes has ceded her reproductive rights to Dick Cheney, and he's still trying to figure out what to do with them. He will not be releasing the identities of any, ahem, issue experts he calls in to discuss the Hughes Reproductive Rights Reuse Program Related Activities Program.)

The pro-choice folks are all pissed off, and understandably so, especially considering how close to home this hits with al Qaeda being such a pack of Feminazis and everything. The president of Planned Parenthood even wrote Ms. Hughes a letter requesting an apology. I'm sure that apology will be forthcoming any minute now, just as soon as Ms. Hughes remembers where she put her soul. But all of this is just news. What's more interesting? Meta-news. The meta-news here is that this may well be the Bush administration's first attempt to use a new policy, which has been dubbed Operation 9/11 Justification for Everything. Can you imagine? Try. (I don't know how to do Bush's accent in text, so I'll just keep the sentences real short so Imaginary Bush won't have trouble with them.)

"Understand your enemy. See? Al Qaeda loves taxes. When we lower taxes, we lower al Qaeda."

"There is oil in the Middle East. There may be oil in Alaska. If we'd struck oil in ANWR, we'd have more oil."

"Remember 9/11? Affirmative action sucks. Stay the course."

"9/11 wasn't provoked. It happened because of our way of life. Our way of life means 'marriage' is between one man and one woman. Al Qaeda wants to destroy our way of life. When gay people get married, it makes al Qaeda happy."

OK, so maybe that last one is a bit of a stretch.