As we stand on the eve of president-elect Barack Obama's inauguration, there has been a lot of articles taking a look back at key members of the outgoing Bush Administration. This brought to mind a recent Wall Street Journal interview with former United States Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, where he says this about the loss of his position some 16 months ago:What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?. . . for some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.I had to re-read the last sentence twice before I could close my gaping mouth. Is it possible Mr. Gonzales doesn't know the meaning of the word "casualty"? A quick check with The Cambridge Dictionary of American English delivers this entry for the word:
casualty /ˈkæʒuəlti/ noun [C]Assuming that Gonzales — a Harvard Law School alum — knows exactly what "casualty" means, I can only conclude that he equates the loss of his job and professional reputation with the loss of life suffered by thousands of American, Iraqi, and Afghani men and women — many of them innocent civilians — as a result of the United States' War on Terror.
a person hurt or killed in a war or other event, or something harmed or destroyed by an event
Whatever the verdict is on Gonzales' authorization of interrogation tactics such as waterboarding, or his efforts to reauthorize a secret government eavesdropping initiative, or his office's dismissal of nine U.S. Attorneys nation-wide who refused to use their positions to advance the power of the Republican party — the fact that Alberto Gonzales could equate the loss of his professional reputation, something which even he admits he had a hand in bringing about, with the losses suffered by those who lost their lives, loved ones, families, worlds — points to an audacity and tone-deafness that insults even Marie Antoinette's mythical insularity.
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