putting the tyrants and the torturers on notice

[consider this a sketch of a real post. sort of meta-wit.]

People like Thomas Friedman are always saying that invading Iraq has put "the enemies of freedom" "on notice" (it's hard to write about this stuff w/o scare quotes), so that the undemocratic regimes elsewhere in the Middle East would be looking over the shoulder, wondering who's next, etc. Somehow this nervousness should cause them to be more accomodating towards the pro-democracy/theocracy reformers that so far we've only paid them to suppress.

A post I'd like to write would satirically take one of Bush's freedom on the march speeches and apply it to Morocco's recent and historic creation of a truth commission to investigate human rights abuses from 1956-1999 by the pro-Western King Hassan.

The idea is that Morocco is an example of how human rights advance in Muslim nations without bloody invasions and occupations from the West. This "puts on notice" the Crusader types who run Abu Ghraib while they're cutting deals with Qualcomm to install CDMA in Iraq instead of GSM. Combine it with lines like "justice will eventually come to those who run the torture chambers at Abu Ghraib" and Bush's line "All nations are in this struggle together. And all must fight the murderers" and the piece should write itself! Which is good, because at this rate I probably won't write it.