The Eye of Mordor
Everyone is climbing on to Rick Santorum's comments yesterday that Iraq is keeping the Eye of Mordor off the US.
Frankly, if you want to explain the logic (sic) of one of the Bush arguments on Iraq, I don't think this is such a bad metaphor. Of course, I don't buy the "if we don't fight them there, we' ll have to fight them here" crap, but if you want to explain the idea, the Eye of Mordor may not be that bad a way of doing it.
What worries me though is the implication of this. We have to keep the war in Iraq going forever if we want to keep the eye turned elsewhere. Of course, that may be the real explanation for why we're doing so poorly over there -- it's deliberate, intended to keep the war going as long as possible.
There's a whole different way to think about Sauron's eye. What the global war on terror is really intended to do is to keep the eye of the American public focused there and not on Bush's trashing of America and incompetence in Iraq.
Embattled U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said America has avoided a second terrorist attack for five years because the “Eye of Mordor” has been drawn to Iraq instead.
Santorum used the analogy from one of his favorite books, J.R.R. Tolkien's 1950s fantasy classic “Lord of the Rings,” to put an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq into terms any school kid could easily understand.
“As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else,” Santorum said, describing the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth.
“It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S.,” Santorum continued. “You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States.”
Frankly, if you want to explain the logic (sic) of one of the Bush arguments on Iraq, I don't think this is such a bad metaphor. Of course, I don't buy the "if we don't fight them there, we' ll have to fight them here" crap, but if you want to explain the idea, the Eye of Mordor may not be that bad a way of doing it.
What worries me though is the implication of this. We have to keep the war in Iraq going forever if we want to keep the eye turned elsewhere. Of course, that may be the real explanation for why we're doing so poorly over there -- it's deliberate, intended to keep the war going as long as possible.
There's a whole different way to think about Sauron's eye. What the global war on terror is really intended to do is to keep the eye of the American public focused there and not on Bush's trashing of America and incompetence in Iraq.
posted by walldon | 12:31 PM
1 Comments:
And, of course, the "Eye" was distracted by heroic leaders (not "chickenhawks") putting themselves in harm's way so as to shield the hobbits as best they could. Meanwhile the hobbits themselves took a lonely road of incredible danger and self-sacrifice to address the root cause of the evil (or something pretty close to it).
Santorum's analogy hardly fits the book, and suggests that the Iraq War is just a distraction, created to shield an America that is doing nothing to address any real issues. So much for spreading democracy.
As you say, the genuine target of distraction is that of the American electorate.
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