The Zong

Presidents’ Day never really feels right to me until some asshole who doesn’t know anything about anything gives the country a history lesson.

“George Washington’s long struggle for freedom has … inspired generations of Americans to stand for freedom in their own time,” Bush said, using a morning visit to Mount Vernon to compare the dilemmas faced at the birth of the nation to the troubles he now confronts.

“Today, we’re fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life,” he said. “And as we work to advance the cause of freedom around the world, we remember that the father of our country believed that the freedoms we secured in our revolution were not meant for Americans alone.”

I know it’s kind of a silly thing to get pissed about, but that never stopped me before. Back when he was a lower-case W, did George Bush ever actually learn anything about our nation’s first president and the wars he fought in? If he had been properly learned, he would know that, first off, the Revolutionary War wasn’t all that similar to the Iraq war, but if it was, we Americans were certainly considered the insurgents.

That’s just about where the similarities end, because in the War on Terror we don’t even know who the hell we’re fighting most of the time. Also, if we lose the War on Terror then we’ll probably have to engage in some super-embarassing diplomacy, whereas if we lost the Revolutionary War, we’d all be speaking Middle-English and we’d probably have to listen to a lot more of Christopher Hitchens’ bullshit.

That said, I really hope the War on Terror isn’t as important to our freedom and liberty as the Revolutionary War, because George Washington is dead. I’m sure that if he were alive on September the Eleventh, he’d have stormed right into Tora Bora on his trusty steed and put a musket ball right in Osama Bin Laden’s stupid Jihad-Hole. As for Big Fake G.W., well, he’s got a pocket full of more bullshit!

Quoting the first president — and referring, by implication, to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — Bush said: “He once wrote, ‘My best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever in any country I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom.’ “

Mine too. Maybe the Iraqis don’t have a banner of freedom handy, so they’re trying to take one of ours.

- M.G.