Thursday, June 23, 2005

the agony continues...

*
*
*
If you’re wondering when this political crap will stop and I’ll get back to my neurotic musings about family life, motherhood and being bipolar, you can wonder for a while longer. This is what I do to keep from screaming.


In an article from the BBC today on Durbin’s apology, ‘US Vice-President Dick Cheney says there are no plans to close the prison, and describes the detainees as "bad people" and "hardcore".’

Oh. So that makes it ok to torture them? Does it really, Dick? Does that mean if I get you locked up I can do nasty things to you, too? Because despite my essential pacifist outlook on life, I can think of a lot of things I’d like to do to you, and ain’t none of them have to do with apple pie.

Damn it, you asshole, can you not understand that the way you treat another human being is not based on what awful things they have done or not done in the past, or in the present. Every word out of your mouth is a disservice to your president’s professed Christian faith. Whatever happened to the “Prince of Peace?” “Turn the other cheek” and all that? Have you thrown the New Testament out the freaking window? Do you not understand the concept of karma, or are you simply ignoring it in favor of your own amoral, grasping outlook on life? OK, so you're not a Hindu or Buddhist. What about the Golden Rule, then? Didja mamma not teach you that?

Sorry. Didn't mean to bring up your mother.

The article also led me to this lovely editoral on Durbin’s spineless response. I wish I’d written it, but I can at least link to it, and my favorite part, in which Mr. Zorn is proposing what he would have written as a response:

"If anything I said caused you to believe that I was equating American soldiers with Nazis or equating American leaders with Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot, then you are an idiot.

"I said nothing of the kind.

"I said that our mistreatment of wartime prisoners is of the sort you'd expect to see in a brutal, totalitarian dictatorship, not in a nation that has long congratulated itself on its exceptionally high standards of liberty and law.

"It's a troubling similarity. It's a warning that we're slipping.

"But it's not--duh!--even close to an across-the-board assertion of equivalence.

"Hey, I'm sorry I played `the Hitler card.' It always inflames, distracts and confuses, and it never convinces. In this case, it let opportunists ignore my main point and gasbag instead about my unnecessarily overwrought metaphor and the many, obvious ways in which America is not Nazi Germany."

Newsday has an article with a telling tidbit from our Deputy Defense Secretary, the always thought-provoking Paul W. (Actually the article in toto is far more disturbing than the bit I've quoted here and is well worth a look.) Wikipedia has an interesting article about his background. This man is also running the World Bank. Even if he weren't an asshole, does anyone else see a conflict of interest here? He may be talking a good talk about Africa, but who thinks he's happy to direct attention away from Iraq and Iran?

"Wolfowitz told reporters this week that he had not read the documents [the Downing Street Minutes] and declined to discuss them. 'There will be a time and place to talk about history,' he said, 'but I really don't believe it's now.'"

Does anyone remember that quote from George Santayana? “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Oh – sorry, Paul, that’s right, I forgot – you want to repeat it. You’re probably sleeping better these days knowing that the war in Iran is getting started right under our noses and no one’s calling you on it.

This is yet another signal to me that the administration has no interest in the well-being of Iraqi citizens. Not only was there little to no planning about how to get the nation functioning after our illegal invasion, there’s no interest in it now that we’re getting our asses regularly incinerated by suicidal nationalists (along with the citizens you pretended to want to help). Jesus wept.

I got all kinds of problems with this one:

"It's been a long time since there's been a serious look at the administration's policies in Iraq," said Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat. "That's unfair to the American people."

Dick, you’re missing the point. It’s not just unfair to the American people, it’s an international crisis. The strongest arm in the world is run by a body of amoral individuals who are not being stopped by their countrymen and women. Nothing at all would prevent them from taking over whatever countries they want. According to one editorial, it’s already started in Iran – fly-overs to provoke the Iranian military into a counterstrike, at which point the Mongers say, “Ooooh, ooh, look what they did! See, now we have to invade. And isn't it convenient that we're already neighbors.” (All the while rubbing their oil-soaked hands together in bloody-minded, sociopathic glee.)

Growing up, I always wondered if I would be around to witness Armageddon. I just never thought it would be my country’s fault.

More from the article above:

‘Last week, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, tried to introduce a measure that would have required the president to submit a report to Congress detailing a strategy for success in Iraq that would allow U.S. troops to return home.

"Each passing day confirms that the war in Iraq has been a grotesque mistake," she said on the House floor before Republicans blocked her effort.’

No shit, Nan. We will never have success in Iraq or in the rest of the world, including within our own boundaries, unless and until the government is held accountable for their lies and murderous conspiracies. Yes, Nancy, you’re right, the war in Iraq has indeed been a grotesque mistake. Are you going to go farther with it? Are you going to get down to the bottom of why it’s so disgusting? Because until you do that publicly and until you stand up to this administration’s bullshit rhetoric and political intimidation, you will never do any good.

I really wonder if the Downing Street Minutes are actually working in favor of the Bush administration's war effort in Iran. If we the people are getting worked up about this, surely we won't have the intellectual capability of dealing with another such conspiracy in our midst, right? In that sense I have to appreciate Wolfowitz's disregard for the past, even if it gives me the willies.

I don't know. Why don't you tell me? Can we afford to wait until 2006 for a potentially Democratic-led Congress? What the hell should we the sheep be doing? Because honestly, folks, I'm so swamped the terrifying reality of this country's international malfeasance that I'm not sure we can do anything, other than continuing the outcry.

2 comments:

lost said...

Who elected a known Nazi to be the pope? Lets hear it for christianity!

lost said...

Who elected a known Nazi to be the pope? Lets hear it for christianity!