So, 200 troops from the 101st Airborne,
one of the best armed and trained military divisions on the planet,
supported by missile-firing helicopters,
managed to take out four people, one a 14 year old teenager,
protected by the walls of an adobe house,
in a mere six hours.
Nice.
There was no obvious intention to take
them alive, so to brag about what can only be described as incompetent
military overkill,
is beyond my understanding.
But what's worse, this was out and out
murder.
Iraq didn't threaten us, didn't even have
the means to threaten us, yet we still invaded them for whatever reason
the
White House is using this week. And as
brutal as Hussein and his sons were, Iraq is still a sovereign nation,
and only one
of dozens governed by brutal dictatorships
around the world. What gives us the right to waltz in there and murder
their
leaders and citizens? There are world courts
to handle these situations, and whatever happened to our law about
assassinating world leaders? Little wonder
Bush reneged on Clinton's agreement to join the World Military Tribunal.
America has truly lost her moral authority
under this Bush regime. At first I thought the pre-emptive attack on Iraq
was
a typical Karl Rove ploy to distract attention
from their disastrous tax cuts and resulting economic recession,
with maybe
the chance to grab some cheap oil. But
now, I'm left with the uncomfortable conclusion that it really was an imperialist,
ideological mission by the NPACers (Cheney,
Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle etc.), to reconfigure the Middle East in terms
of their own world view. And true to the
chickenhawks that they are, they picked a country that had no chance of
defending
itself, which is becoming increasingly
more clear as time passes. Notice how quiet these chickenhawks became when
faced
with a true threat from North Korea, a
country with a million man army and who knows how many nuclear warheads.
In a couple of short years, America has
deteriorated from the most respected nation world-wide, a nation of peace
with respect for all other nations, to
a despised bully who has to buy her friends for support, albeit insincere.
Under Bush,
we are now seen as an arrogant, imperialist
country who only cares about rewarding the fortunate domestically, and
punishing
those who disagree with us internationally
with either military might or economic superiority.
We are a disgrace.
We are a disgrace because we pick on small
defenseless nations. We are a disgrace because we pick on small
defenseless people economically. We are
a disgrace because we murder willfully under the guise of liberation.
We are a disgrace because we allowed this
to happen by being too complacent and not voting. We took Al Gore
and Bill Clinton's economic miracle and
diplomatic genius for granted. We have only ourselves to blame.
And now it may be too late with republicans
controlling the companies that own the unverifiable touch screen
voting machines. Remember, it was only
last fall that the republicans won every race that was "too close to call"
using these machines. And handily at that.
The American dream has become the American
nightmare; swelling deficits and unemployment, rising crime,
corporate scandals, and record bankruptcies
to mention a few. And that's only the tip of the nightmare as we
suffer a huge loss of respect internationally.
Suddam Hussein is a bad guy, no doubt. But
he was no threat to us and we had no justifiable right to attack Iraq.
It's bad enough that we're botching the
occupation, but to brag about murdering his kids, particularly when it
was
two hundred of our best trained guys against
his sons, grandson and a body guard, well, what does that make us?
We are not officially at war with Iraq, who never threatened us, so it certainly doesn't make us heros. Bullies? Murderers?
It doesn't matter how evil Saddam and his
sons are or were. It was not our business to invade Iraq any more than
it was Iraq's to invade us because they
don't like our way of life. The international commuity tried to warn us
off,
but did Bush listen?
What a mess.
We will never get out of this international
fiasco or recover our honour with any semblance of face until the
Bush regime is replaced with an American
President who acknowledges our errors.
It won't be Bush.
But this had to be said.