Hi, I'm James Higdon. Thank you for reading this article today.
We will be at war by the middle of March, if not sooner, and that is
the subject of this answer to Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points Memo for
February 26, 2003.
On that day, Bill O'Reilly attempted to do his best impression of
Joseph Goebbels. It is said that during World War II Goebbels frequently
commented on taking note of which Germans were not sufficiently patriotic
in Hitler's Reich, and he claimed that they would be dealt with firmly
after the war. O'Reilly went out of his way to instruct that FOX
News
would be handling this job for the illegitimate administration in the
White House, "we expect every American to support our military, and if
they can't do that, to shut up."
The admonition would not be so bad in and of itself, but O'Reilly went
out of his way to couple it with a threat. Americans who work toward
putting an end to the oil grab once it "is underway will be considered
enemies of the state by me... [L]et's just say you will be spotlighted."
And according to Goebbels, the mentor of the FOX News philosophy,
"[d]uring a war, news should be given out for instruction rather than
information." This is the philosophy that seems to work for Americans
completely devoid of the ability to think for themselves, and FOX has been
hugely successful in cornering the market of that particular demographic.
We should not overlook that these are the days of "compassionate"
conservatism, and O'Reilly warmly informs us that "we don't want to demonize
anyone," but once the usurper has made his executive decision (as it
has apparently been made for him since the early 1990s) and soldiers
lives are on the line, "patriotism must be factored in" to give the
government the "benefit of the doubt, at least until the benefit has been
proven wrong, as it was in Vietnam."
Well, Mr. O'Reilly, "the benefit" was proven wrong in Vietnam precisely
because courageous individuals ignored sanctimonious, money-grubbing,
propagandists to protest, organize, and mobilize decent and moral
Americans to stop that war. Unfortunately too late to prevent the
loss of
50,000 of America's sons, fathers, husbands, and brothers in South East
Asia, and 50,000 more to suicide upon the return of troops to the US.
Without those patriotic Americans, my fascist friend, Americans might
still be dying in a war that was never designed to end. How many
American service personnel and Iraqi civilians will have to die before
you
believe that dissent should once again be permitted in this country?
How
many more American civilians will die under the ever increasing threat
of terrorism before we can discuss diplomatic solutions to those things
that incite terrorism? Knowing your history and the history of FOX
News, Mr. O'Reilly, I suggest that the answer lies not in the number of
dead, but in the amount of time it takes for unelected oil barons to
secure Iraqi oil wells, and for a lawfully elected Democratic president
to
return to the White House and inherit the waste of incompetence, born
of the "soft bigotry of low expectations" that George W. Bush will leave
behind.
O'Reilly, apparently unable to wait for the victorious smell of napalm
in the morning, has "spotlighted" two Americans for career destruction,
Sheryl Crow and Barbara Streisand. Streisand is given "fair warning"
along with any others who share her beliefs. Sheryl Crow, on the
other
hand, is taken to task for failing to support the inevitable war for
oil, but supporting our troops in Bosnia. O'Reilly and his cohorts
can
readily understand how one can "support our troops," but not our
president (so long as the president is a lawfully, popularly elected
Democrat), but are completely unaware of any conditions that might lead
an
American to support one war, but not another, nor the possibility of being
able to support our young heroes who fight for democracy but not the
current oil grab they are being ordered to die for. Such entertainments
require too much concurrent thought which might lead FOX away from its
logic limited demographic. Regardless, invading Iraq for oil is not
quite the same as bombing to remove the military capability of a nation
bent on genocide.
Says O'Reilly to Crow, "Milosevic was a villain who allowed his army to
rape and murder civilians. Saddam does the same thing. And
Saddam has
weapons far worse than anything Milosevic had. And we didn't get
a
U.N. mandate to bomb Belgrade."
All too true. We didn't get a U.N. mandate to bomb Belgrade.
We could
have gotten one, because it would not have violated the U.N. charter.
Hostilities had already broken out in the region prior to our entering
the fray. However, the charter of the U.N. demands finding an
alternative for war and it will become "irrelevant" if it backs Bush because
the Bush/Cheney oil thirst is all there is here to make hostilities
imminent. I suspect that O'Reilly knows this, but a highly paid
propagandist certainly has no business divulging all of the available facts.
Yes, it is true that Saddam has tortured his own people. This, of
course is not something that would be done by George W. Bush. The
White
House has said that torture to stop terrorism is justifiable, and the
Ashcroft Department of Justice has made it plain that it recognizes that
U.S. citizens have the right not to be tortured. Therefore the
citizenship of any American will be stripped by the White House (on the
say-so
of the White House) before torture begins (don't believe me--then I
suggest that you take a good, hard look at USA PATRIOT ACT II). Bush
will
surely be able to make the claim that he never tortured a fellow
citizen.
It is clear that the folks at FOX News are fully behind an invasion of
Iraq. But why? It is not because Saddam has chemical, biological,
or
nuclear weapons. On the basis of logic alone, one tends to believe
that he hasn't got them. No one has found them, despite the best
efforts
of every major world intelligence service over twelve years. He didn't
use them during the first Gulf War. He hasn't used them over twelve
years of sanctions and bombing. There are no conditions inside Iraq
that
cannot be contained by continuous and ongoing U.N. inspections.
FOX's quest for war is not based on Iraq's potential for developing
nuclear weapons. Iraq simply doesn't have them, nor is it capable
of
developing a militarily usable nuclear device in the foreseeable future.
Nor are terrorists likely to seek such weapons from Iraq. Al Qaeda
is
far more likely to purchase a nuclear device from countries which know
how to make them, like North Korea or even Pakistan. There are
currently only two countries in the entire world who are threatening others
with weapons of mass destruction and a "preemptive" military strike.
One
is North Korea, and the other one is us. And it is a sad day, indeed.
It was the United States, after all, which encouraged the world to
label "preemptive" force as an international war crime.
So, Bill, cast your longing gaze away from Hollywood celebrities for a
moment, and look over here. I would be proud to have you view me
as an
enemy to whatever state you should wish to describe, because you, Sir,
are an enemy to everything America and Democracy stands for. If people
want to "support our troops," as they should, they should start by
doing everything in their power to prevent George W. Bush from using our
fine young defenders as weapons in a crime against humanity.