Remember all those columns Monbiot write about the courage of our troops fighting house-to-house in Fallujah? Me Neither.Remember all his columns denouncing cowardly terrorists who blew up girls' schools?
The ancient Greeks, unlike the Jews or the Christians, invested their gods with human failings. Divine judgment, they believed, was neither flawless nor dispassionate; it was warped by lust, vengeance and self-interest. In the hands of Zeus, the thunderbolt was both an instrument of justice and a weapon of jealousy and revenge.
Monbiot's lucky that the gods don't strike him down for terrible writing. This reads like a lazy high school essay.
Those now dispensing judgment from on high are not gods, though they must feel like it. The people striking mortals down with drones are doubtless as capable as anyone else of self-deception, denial and cognitive illusions. More so, perhaps, as the eminent fictions of the Bush years and the growing delusions of the current president suggest.
So, who's most evillest: W or BO? Clarify, please.
Barack Obama began last week's state of the union address by claiming that the troops who had fought the Iraq war had "made the United States safer and more respected around the world". Like Bush, like the gods, he has begun to create the world he wants to inhabit.
So Bush is like a Greek god and BO's a wannabe?
These power-damaged people have been granted the chance to fulfil one of humankind's abiding fantasies: to vaporise their enemies, as if with a curse or a prayer, effortlessly and from a safe distance.
Pistols at dawn, says Monbiot.
That these powers are already being abused is suggested by the mendacity of those who are deploying them. The CIA, which is running the undeclared and unacknowledged drone war in Pakistan, insists that there have been no recent civilian casualties. So does Obama's chief counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan. It is a blatant whitewash.
Of course if we really wanted to vaporize our enemies from afar, all we need is one Ohio skipper with a bad attitude.