An interesting thread. I was tempted to join in early on, before it descended into name calling. Well, I have a few thoughts I have been tossing around and I will throw them out here.
Let me preface my thoughts on the war by saying that I do NOT have any disrespect for anyone in this forum. I will not call any of you names, and I will read any replies and answer respectfully. My post may not be all that controversial, but I just want to make sure that you all understand that I am not attacking anyone who has posted in here. These are my thoughts and opinions.
About the war…
I am not an “anti-war protester” type… I just like to keep my eyes and my mind open to the possibilities, and it is possible that we are in over our heads right now. Things are pretty mixed where I live (in the South). Half of the people thinks we should be there, the other half doesn’t. Of the half that think we should be there, about a third of those are filled with jingoistic “America - right or wrong!” pride, the rest just sincerely believe that Saddam is a threat to their white bread suburban little lives.
Personally I am amazed that we are following a man whose college IQ tests
placed him at a whopping 97 (the national average, tip of the bell curve), and in his college phase accrued 9 DWIs! But then again, he wouldn’t be a good puppet if he had too much independent thinking skill. Thankfully for him neither does the rest of the country. Appropriate I suppose. This has been a convenient smoke screen for his agenda, which is to open up the federal coffers to his Wall Street buddies so they can steal as much as they can take while he is in power. It distracts America from the failing economy and from his Enron dealings (the only guy at the top who was going to be a “whistle blower,” a young man with a family and no history of depression, conveniently committed suicide). I guess that they have forgotten that GW was in bed with ENRON from the very beginning, even before the election, and that they actually wrote his energy policy.
I guess that they forgot that his, daddy George Sr., had to put a stop to
the jailing the criminals, whose failed S&L’s cost this country pver 300 billion, when it came time for his own son GW to face charges for his failed S&L, which by itself incidentally, cost taxpayers 11 billion dollars!
I guess that they have forgotten that this started as the war on terrorism,
and we were manipulated in our anguish, fear and rightly felt horror and indignation over Sept. 11th. When the short attention span of Americans
became bored with hunting down the elusive Osama, it conveniently
transformed into the war on Iraq and subsequently the rest of the “axis of
evil.” Now the entire region is destabilized. Once the rest of the countries on our “watch list” realized that the “little bully” had power and was willing to use it, they all began to rush to arms, and soon we will have a very good reason to defend ourselves. He (or the people who control him) wants to push us into a world war from all outward appearances. They are nationalists (isolationists), and they are succeeding in destroying what is
left of the stability in that region, and losing all of our allies in the
process. Murdering innocent civilians to enhance elitist oil accounts has a
way of planting seeds and creates more TERRORISTS.
I guess that they have forgotten that this is how Hitler’s power grew… he
inflamed national pride and struck a nerve with his message of hatred. He
was a populist. Have you seen any of the news where the officials have “warned” Americans that they need to stock up on water and duct tape to seal their homes because of the eminent bio-terrorist attack on
suburban America? It was by far one of the greatest INSULTS to my
intelligence that I have ever had to bear. It harkened back to the “Red
Scare” of the '50s… as if dropping and covering could save anyone should a
nuke be dropped on his or her town! If they had the capability of launching
such an attack, duct tape won’t save me. In fact, if I were to successfully
seal my house as they recommended, I would suffocate! I just can’t believe
that people can’t recognize this for what it is… a PATHETIC attempt to
create fear in the masses, to make us beg to be protected by our brave
leaders, hence clearing the way for them to pass legislation that will
whittle away yet more of our personal freedoms and privacy.
The only thing the Bush’s new Gulf War will accomplish is making arms
manufacturers and oil companies even richer and will create MORE terrorism… which maybe is what the Bush’s and Rumsfeld’s want so the can
continue this so-called “state of emergency” for as long as they want. Thus further eroding our constitutional rights… making it safer for global markets to get away with further abuses. After all, a frightened populous kept in their kennels and obedient to business and the state by a heavy duty, run amok POLICE STATE is the most easy to manipulate.
I guess that they have forgotten (or never even knew) that we CREATED
Saddam! We gave him money and arms (gave him power basically) so that he
could help us with our common enemy, Iran. Which, incidentally, is yet
another situation that we created for ourselves. The U.S. thought is was a
great idea to overthrow the democratically elected Mohammed Mossaday government and replace him with The Shaw, who was so brutal towards his own people that he literally killed off moderate opposition so that the only
other option was NOT so moderate opposition in the form of Iatollah
Homeaini, at that point violent Islamic fundamentalist uprising skyrocketed all over that part of the world, and to this day we still have the problem CAUSED BY OUR OWN GOVERNMENT. I wonder if things would be different today if we had left the people of Iran ALONE in the 1950’s and NOT eliminated their democratically elected government. The sleaziest aspect of this move was that we only did this because Mossaday wanted to nationalize the oil export business when he realized how much they were being raped by America and
Britain. The CIA even filmed propaganda newsreels showing Iranians
overthrowing their own government. We did similar actions with Osama,
Noriega, and others. We are solely responsible for the anti-American
sentiment that is prevalent across the world right now. But thank GOD for
lower prices at the gas pump though, right? I wonder if the son of the
former head of the CIA can clean up his daddy’s messes, just like his daddy
helped clean up all of his.
I am sick about this war. I have a cousin over there that is in the 101st
airborne who is undoubtedly in the thick of the action right now. I just
found out less than an hour ago that my brother-in-law is shipping out in
two more hours. His sister, my wife, is distraught. If they really do
possess any weapons of mass destruction and they decide to unleash it on the troops over there, I lose two family members. Despite my feelings toward the administration, I do support the troops and hope they make it back safely. They are just being good soldiers, doing what they are told to do and doing it well. It is really amazing to me when I realize how YOUNG the majority of the people in the armed forces really are. It is a lot of responsibility and they handle it extremely well.
Outside of my selfish reasons
for being upset about this war, I am disgusted with our intrusion… It
holds the same satisfaction for me that beating up my four-year-old son
would. In fact, it is going to have similar results. It wouldn’t be
difficult for an adult to beat up a four-year-old child, but anyone who
witnessed it would become enraged, and would quite possibly step in. We are
just asking for it, if you ask me!
Let’s not forget all of these NEW countries that became independent
countries after the fall of the Soviets…Uzbekistan, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan; ALL of them with Islamic fundamentalist movements, and thanks
to the training by the U.S. of all these warriors for the Jihad during the
uprising against the Soviet Union, not only did the CIA but Pakistan’s ISI
and intelligence recruit them train them, Saudi Arabia and U.S. Taxpayers
FUNDING them, they took their Jihad back to their native countries with them and now we also have this also going on in Indonesia, the Philippines,
stretching all the way to Egypt, and Algeria…THAT is the KIND OF FIRE WE
ARE PLAYING WITH over there. NO regard for the long-term consequences. I
quote the CIA in an address bulletin to the Bush administration: “Thanks to
further economic globalization, regions, countries and groups feeling left behind will face deepening economic stagnation, political instability, and cultural alienation… they will foster political, ethnic, ideological and
religious extremism. along with the violence that often accompanies it.”
They don’t even listen to the CIA in the Bush administration apparently. The
longer we blow people up indiscriminately, the more these fires of rage will keep growing and growing against the U.S., as well as a permanent state of emergency at home. If you read what’s in the recent “anti-terrorism legislation”–Most of those laws can be in turned used on people Bush, Ashcroft and Ridge don’t happen to like. To me that’s very UN-PATRIOTIC.
Most of the people who are in favor of the war that I personally come in
contact with get most of their opinions from what is reported on TV.
Surprisingly though, many of the people here in the very buckle of the Bible belt are against the war. Not so much that they would openly protest it, but when given the chance to vent their disgust with someone who is “safe” like me, they really let it out! When BUSH says things like “you are either with us, or with the terrorists,” I don’t feel that he is looking out for our constitutional rights as people of the U.S. Instead of addressing the ROOT causes of terrorism, our government is merely succeeding in making it worse
by the continuing the kind of imperialist behavior that got us into this mess in the first place.
Sorry for the rant. I have been storing up thoughts over these issues for while, and tonight I have been sipping on a delectable single malt scotch (yeah, great for the physique!), and waxing political. Hope all this makes sense tomorrow morning when I am sober.
