Letters to the Editor
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war as bad medicine
kamiya's effort to explicate the mindset of the bush adm is most welcome. acknowledging their rationalizations & faulty logic is more productive than pure derision.
it also suggested an analogy for the travesties of neocon interventionism: bad medicine. bad policy resembles iatrogenic disasters like thalidomide - used as a sedative during pregnancy then causing armless offspring. like the worst physician, bush abandoned sound practice and cautionary principles. political systems are analogous to biological ones in that every action results in a reaction. the creation of al-quaida is much like the creation of resistant bacterial strains from misuse of antibiotics or malignancy caused by wanton use of radiology or immune suppression from excess use of steroids.
perhaps fear of disease or vulnerability to terrorist attack is doomed to stir bluster, panic, magical thinking. in both realms, the consequences of poor judgment can be irreversible harm, as kamiya suggests.