Abstract
On April 9, Condoleezza Rice delivered a talk in San Francisco. Or tried to. The former Secretary of State was interrupted repeatedly by cries from the audience of ‘war criminal’ and ‘torturer’. (For which we can thank our comrades in Code Pink and World Can't Wait.) As one of the protesters was being taken away by security guards, Rice made the kind of statement that has now become standard for high American officials under such circumstances: ‘Aren't you glad this lady lives in a democracy where she can express her opinion?’ She also threw in another line that's become de rigueur since the US overthrew Saddam Hussein, an argument that's used when all other arguments fail: ‘The children of Iraq are actually not living under Saddam Hussein, thank God.’ My response to such a line is this: If you went into surgery to correct a knee problem and the surgeon mistakenly amputated your entire leg, what would you think if someone then remarked to you how nice it was that ‘you actually no longer have a knee problem, thank God.’… The people of Iraq no longer have a Saddam problem. (Blum, 2011) Language is an invention that makes it possible for a person to deny what he is doing even as he does it. (Blum, 2012)
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