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Issue 9.29: Cunning Lingle
What Governor Linda Lingle told reporters on Jan. 5, 2006 during her trip to Manila:
January 12, 2006
"The Philippines in many ways is a first line of defense for us, so the cooperation among the defense forces here is very important."
What she didn't say:
U.S. foreign policy has rarely been expressed both so eloquently and so very bizarrely. Much like President George W. Bush, who loves to tell the American people that we're fighting a bloody guerilla war in Iraq so we won't have to fight "terrorists" at home, Lingle speaks of the Philippines as a kind of trip-wire, bravely fighting off an assault by terrorists/insurgents/evil-doers to the last man, giving us time to pack up the kids and the SUV and head to safer shores. Yet like Bush, she neglects to say why the Filipino people—or the Iraqi people, for that matter—agreed to turn their own country into our defense zone.
-Anthony Pignataro