Categorical Aperitif

Leave it to John Brown, one of the U.S. diplomats who quit in protest as the Iraq invasion approached, to draw out unpleasant analogies between the murderous lunatic who rampaged across Virginia Tech last week and, um, our own current leadership. From yet another must-must-must-read TomDispatch:

Given my own twenty-plus years in the Foreign Service, on occasions like this I find myself looking at my own country from a non-American perspective. I must confess that, when I first saw psychopathic mass murderer Cho Seung-Hui's photographs of himself savagely pointing a gun at the camera, I was reminded not only of the violent images in our popular culture, but also of George W. Bush and his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to speak of the thrust of his whole foreign policy.

Indeed, for others on our globe, mass murder in Iraq, scenes of degradation from Abu Ghraib, CIA extraordinary rendition expeditions, and our prison at Guantanamo have already become synonymous with the U.S. government and the President; so, it would not be surprising if Cho's actions and Bush's foreign policy were linked in the minds of people outside the United States. I see several reasons why, for non-Americans, a mad student and our commander- in-chief could appear to be two sides of the same all-American coin.

Go read now. I'm busy but hope to be back with some Random Flickr Blogging (at least) later this week, schedule permitting. After reading Brown's piece, I need a laugh.