Slider, you front runner, are you still hiding out with your vision challenged buddies on SD11? I imagine you're just full of righteous jubilation, hoarse from cheering and generally happy-footing around in the joy of the moment as we "liberate" our children in Iraq.
Of course it's not about oil. No way. We don't care that they have enough oil reserves to satisfy our current import needs for the next 100 years. It's about those poor oppressed Iraqis. The same ones, in fact, that our first president Bush watched Saddam gun down by the 10s or 100s of thousands back in 91 after he'd encouraged them to rebel. Of course back then they were chanting something about rebelling in the name of some kind of Islamic radical. Thank goodness we care more about them now and can be sure they won't support a fundamentalist this time.
A cynic might say it's about breaking the power of OPEC, or even assuring that the vital energy resources of the Middle East aren't controlled by the Chinese, French and Russians and especially those misguided governments of the countries that own the resources. That cynic might even say that we need to be sure that our multinational oil companies aren't frozen out of that market.
That kind of thinking is hogwash, of course. Although Bush did say that the world had to solve it's own problems without us being the world's policeman, that was before the election. Since the time of the election Bush and his handlers have become so much more touchy-feely when it comes to the poor oppressed peoples of the world that they simply can't stand by and see their suffering any more. Soon they may even cry and bleed for the long-suffering peoples of other countries who just happen not to be sitting on a huge lake of light, sweet crude. Let's see, there's the Palestinians, most of Africa, much of Asia, a few countries in South America, the Cubans of course, and many countries in the Middle East, although these are our allies so that may make things a little more difficult, but what the hell, let's decide whether they need our help. If they do then let's just mass on their borders and offer them our help, or else. What's the joy of having the most powerful military in the world if you don't get to play a little war?
The apparent unwillingness of many of the Iraqis to be relieved of the burden of their home-grown oppression and accept our imposition of our choice for their government is a little troubling. It's just a minor detour on the road to their salvation, however, and we may have to kill more of them to save them than we had intitially planned. That's just a symptom of how oppressed they are. They are so used to their oppression that they are unable to accept their free choice to choose the non-fundamentalist government we will appoint. Foreign nationalism is really overrated, don't you think?
Hey, the nice thing about this is that we won't have to hear those "Bush is a wimp" statements any more. Just because a man uses a little influence to bump someone out of the National Guard during a time of war doesn't mean he wouldn't have gone himself if there wasn't some way to avoid it. Besides, the guy he bumped out of the guard may not have even had to serve in Viet Nam, and if he did he may have made it home ok. The point is that anyone that can salute as crisply as a former national guard man AND SEND OTHER PEOPLE TO DIE, can feel confident that he's not a wimp. Haven't we heard over and over again how hard it is to send men and women to their potential deaths. Of course that's not as hard as dying cause at least you get to repeat that onerous task. Why can't people forget the past and recognize that physical courage is far different from the type of courage exhibited by those that stay home and "feel our losses."
If the Iraqis hate us when this is over and we've "won." then we are literally screwed. The world will never again view us as a "safe" world power and the world will arm quickly to offset our military superiority. Can you say "China?" We'll become a prime target for every radical looking for a cause and a reason to become a martyr. The free trade opportunities and advancement of the world's poorer nations will slow or decline and we'll all live in a more violent world. We're betting a lot on the benevolent outcome that was promised by the "Iraqi Freedom" administration. I hope they weren't lying and that they knew what they were talking about. Ed |
