Another Well Said

... and well received; Normon Solomon, author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, addressing Bush's now fabled gall, this time in laying a wreath on Mahatma Gandhi's grave:

In an important sense, it's plausible to envision Bush as a lover of peace and even an apostle of nonviolence -- but, in context, those sterling invocations of virtues are plated with sadism in the service of empire. The president of the United States is urging "peace" as a synonym for getting his way in Iraq. From Washington, the most exalted vision of peace is a scenario where the occupied no longer resist the American occupiers or their allies.

The world has seen many such leaders, eager to unleash as much violence as necessary to get what they want, and glad to praise nonviolence whenever convenient. But no photo-op can change the current reality that the world's most powerful government is also, by far, the most violent and the most dangerous.