Today's (12/13/03) David Brooks's article on "A Fetish of Candor" was published in the NY Times online issue, and he explains how Bush and Company are being honest about what they do, unlike other countries that say one thing and do another. I took exception to his remarks with the following, posted in their forum:

"I don't think the fact that what Bush is doing is OBVIOUS should be represented as honesty. It's just a lack of sophistication. When a country deals with another country, it requires some delicacy, some listening back and forth, especially if, for example, delicacy, diplomacy and sophistication are valued by the other culture rather than bald American "candor."

The justification that you give to the activities of Bush et al by a back-handed wedding of their clumsy, jingoistic moves to honesty, a word that we all value, just doesn't cohere.

The fact that there are thugs working in open daylight running our country as a reactionary, protectionist, culturally and politically imperialist state with no actual mandate to do so doesn't make it honest, just uglier.

Sure, when the machinations of such people are not visible it makes them insidious, and perhap less truthful, in terms of revealing the truth of what they are. But now that we see it in the light of day, it is abhorrent, and I personally long for the time when these anachronistic thinkers crawl back into the unlit corners of society from which they emerged in the last election, where they can again mutter their dark imprecations, to themselves, in private. Now that we know who they are, we can see clearly, and, to be honest, they are not what we want to look at, ever again.

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his article is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/13/opinion/13BROO.html?th

(You may have to join their free service to see it. But don't go out of your way)