Posted by parhad (158.252.222.133) on October 08, 2001 at 18:05:48:
I had a shock looking at the front page of the New York Times today. There was Little Shrub, looking about as whimpey as his old man did 12 years ago...at the same desk probably, trying to focus on the same cue cards...probably mostly the same speech. Something about how this "will not stand"....how we will "defend our way of life/their way of death"...how we were attacking those who attacked us, unprovoked, or how we had to attack one despot for daring to attack another etc. America and Europe before it has been at war with the MidEast for over 200 years.
His father was also going to make this a safer world and all that rot...and all he did was set into motion the forces that brought down the buildings, as his son will now carry on where he left off.
What's the common denominator I asked myself....why it's OIL. Both Pappy Bush and his son Shrub are heavy into oil drilling...all of the Shrub's advisors are carry overs from his Pappy, or new moghuls in training.
Then I read how Mr. Bin Laden (as the ever correct Times refers to him) said that the dowing of the Trade Center and the killing of all those people was an act of God, that God was pleased etc.
The ugliness of that remark can only be matched by those made in this country days after the dropping of two Atomic Bombs on sleeping women and children, also innocent civillians, in another country where their voices counted for nothing...and 150,000 died in an instant with countless more disfigured for life and genetically scarred. That week Cathedral Bells tolled across America and the faithful came to worship and thank God for delivering them from danger.
Is it the same God...can there be different ones? Who's got the right one? Why shouldn't Bin Laden and others pray to their god for delivering their enemies to death, in order to save "his children". Why shouldn't Jews pray to Yahweh when Palestinians who try to blow them up for blowing them up before they can blow them up, blowing themselves up instead? And why can't Christians pray to whoever's left over when their enemies are wiped out?
No one is going to admit it, but any civilians killed in raids on Afghanistan will be welcome news here. We wont be satisfied until more of their innocents die than ours did. In fact, as long as we go on convinced that each of us has a God dedicated to our victory and willing for us to kill enemy babies...so long will these wars go on...count on it. No one will win anything...all sides will lose, all we're going to prove is who loses "less".
It sounds good enough now to know that we'll be the ones left with one arm, when everyone else has lost both arms, legs and their sight. Sounds like a "winner". See if you'll feel that way when it happens.
The Gulf war was supposed to take care of all of this...it just never ended and America has been fighting the Palestinians and by extension all of the MidEast since the sixties...they do it through their client state Israel...which, if it wants to exist at all, will have to play along. America tells Israel what to do, not the other way around.
None of this is being done for our sakes. America is a wealthy enough nation that it could supply all its wants from resources right here...paying a fair price for what it lacked. We have the history here and the institutions to be looked up to by most of the developing world, and that's just the way it used to be. But the government has increasingly become an arm of major Corporations, as the media have...and all this misery is being heaped upon our heads in order to increase already obscene profits...screw the ideals left standing anywhere. If you're rich enough you can buy a pretty good substitute for Ideals.