Embattled U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said America has avoided a second terrorist attack for five years because the “Eye of Mordor” has been drawn to Iraq instead. ~Bucks County Courier Times

Just when I start to feel sorry for Rick Santorum, he opens his mouth and reminds me why I am pleased to see him defeated.  How many things are wrong with the analogy?  Let me count the ways.  1) It presupposes that the war in Iraq and the war with jihadis are of one piece, which they are not; 2) on the other hand, it would suggest that it is merely a distraction to keep the Enemy busy and confused until “the hobbits” (who plays their role in this fantasy, I cannot say) destroy “the Ring” (which would imply that the war with “Mordor” would then be over), which means that Iraq is at best some kind of misdirection or feint that occupies the Enemy long enough to deliver a knock-out blow somewhere else…which we have no means of doing while Santorum has no idea of how to do such a thing even if we did have the means; 3) it conceives of the war waged by the jihadis as stemming from the single will of some Dark Lord somewhere who guides all of the actions of the enemy forces (much as Santorum’s continued use of the ridiculous phrase Islamic fascism also does), when the war is in fact being fought against disparate and semi-independent groups that do not necessarily follow the will of a single authority; 4) the Iraq war was a war of aggression, which is all together very Mordorian and hardly a good analogy for a defensive struggle against the aggression of “Mordor”; 5) the Eye focused on Aragorn’s army mainly because of Aragorn’s presence in the army, and for scarcely any other reason, and we have hardly encountered our version of the returned King (unless we are expected to believe the absurdity that Mr. Bush is that man);  6) The Lord of the Rings is an epic designed to teach the inherent corrupting influence of power and domination and so teach a moral lesson about the evils inherent in power, and it is perhaps the single worst story to invoke as a source for the justification of a hegemonic war. 

Update: Colbert takes apart the analogy in a slightly different way.  Best line: “And Gollum, well, I guess he’d be John McCain.”