Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Cognitive Dissonance

The great novelist/essayist Marilynne Robinson makes a deceptively simple point in a recent interview:

"Today, it is true that we have come under attack — but it was not Iraqis who attacked us. If it had been, we would not have had to talk about preemption."
The point seems to have been lost on a number of journalists. Would it be so hard to ask Dick Cheney how he can conflate Iraq and Al-Qaeda, and simultaneously call the invasion of Iraq "preemptive"?

Robinson also has a short piece of fiction - her first in decades - in the New Yorker, accessible through the link above. Read it.

No comments: