The Danger
of Willful Blindness
For 3 months in the Yucatan, I didn’t meet anybody
from any country that didn’t think Bush was an imbecile and a disgrace
(except for
one couple from Indiana). In the Cancun airport, though, it was like returning
to the fantasy zone- dimwitted Americans who love Bush,
despite his destruction of the American budget and economy, and his embedding
us in a pointless, reckless, dead end war that has turned
the world against us. “Well, good for him, I hope he does more like that
(invade rogue countries),” said a macho American guy. I was
stunned. “I wonder how you’d feel if you had a kid in the Nat. Guard? Who
should we attack next? Syria, Iran, Egypt? You think we can
fight 1.4 billion Muslims? Bush has locked us in a 20-40 year war when
we could have probably crushed Al Qaida if he had concentrated
everything on them.”
Nothing was getting through, though, and nothing will, with the 40% of
the voters that have bought into right-wing talk radio hate and ridicule
Republican agenda. Incredibly, they really believe that Bush is protecting
us. The 800 dead and 11,000 wounded and evacuated don’t
matter. The 135 dead in April and the 900 wounded don’t matter. The generational
religious war Bush may have started doesn’t matter. The
serial lies don’t matter. Reality doesn’t matter. Our wounded are horribly
injured by massive artillery bombs that explode upward into the
faces and skulls of soldiers- above the body armor but below the helmet.
Of course the administration doesn’t want pictures of wounded, of
coffins, of funerals- the chickenhawks don’t want the price of their arrogance
and blunders seen by the populace. That’s the only reason. It’s
unpatriotic to not show these pictures and honor these victims of Bush’s
Oedipal complex, and for far too long, the craven media has been
shirking their job. They are beginning to remember it, as they prodded
and poked our blithe “What, me worry?” President in one of his rare
news conferences.
Nobody should be surprised at the prisoner torture scandal- we all knew
it from the first shocking pictures of the shackled hog tied hooded
Afghan prisoners in Guantanamo. This was sensory deprivation torture, along
with denying sleep- the easiest way to break someone. Do we
do that?, I thought. When you say prisoners have no rights: no right
to be judged, no advocate, no appeal, no hope, no future- torture is the
inevitable result. After all, these aren’t humans- these are creatures
with no rights- whom are they going to complain to? Now they say 24
prisoners have died in our custody.
The blind panic with which our military turned to Baathist Generals to
police Fallujah is indicative of how lost we are in Iraq. Here’s a flash-
within a month, some of these newly reconstituted Iraqi Army units will
be fighting us.
The greatest danger America has ever faced is the willful blind ignorance
that allows partisan voters to not see the truth- to live in an
alternate reality where Administration motives and actions are invariably
noble and critics unpatriotic. When the next major terrorist attack
occurs, these delusional fools would gladly squelch 220 years of hard-won
American freedoms. They need to have their faces crammed into
the slime and sleaze of this Administration before it’s too late. Fearless
warhorse Lautenberg did that with his double barrel Chickenhawk
speech, and Kerry's people must do the same, every second day, along with
a hopeful vision of an America of regained pride and
principles.
Michael Hammerschlag http://hammernews.com
return to bartcop.com
Privacy Policy
.
.