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at war with peace

at war with peace

There should be a World Leader branch of the patent office. Every world leader, peaceful or tyrant, should have to register their catch phrases with the office.

Doesn't Axis of Evil sound very similar to Forces of Evil? Who came first, Bush or Saddam? And isn't that whole evil/evildoer thing overused, anyhow? Someone needs to come up with a new way to describe their enemies. Axis of Badness? Axis of Malevolence? Forces of Sinister Like Beings? Ok, maybe not.

How close are we to a war with Iraq, anyhow? I need a translator for every speech I hear.

Iraq is our enemy. Saddam is a terrorist. We must wipe out terrorism. We will take down anyone who stands in the way of us winning the war on terrorism.

We are not making any plans to attack Iraq.

Bullshit. Just ask Photodude. He is better at presenting evidence than I am.

This election year is winding down already. Yes, I know it's only August. But once the airwaves are full of "vote for me not because I deserve it but because my opponent had sex with his probation officer" ads, you know it's in the home stretch. We have 3 full months of this pollution left. Then it's on to the real deal. The campaign for 2004. I wonder if Bush's campaign will be fought with the help of the U.S. armed forces? I wonder if his campaign to prove that he is a world leader who should not be messed with will have a casualty list as long as his donor list?

Anyhow, suppose we go to war. Suppose that sometime this fall/winter Bush decides that it's time to die for Saddam. What do you think it will be like? In Bush War I: The War My Daddy Fought, we watched the whole thing (or what they would show us) on CNN, and I never really felt threatened in any way.

But BWII will probably be different. Saddam may be a bit off of his rocker, but I feel a real sense of urgency to his threats to the United States. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have opened a new door for terrorists. It can be done. It has been done. All you need are a few psychotic martyrs and a bankroll. Don't think Saddam doesn't have both. Now that the world has seen America attacked and America broken and America in a panic, it's as if a line has been crossed. And you know that once that first person crosses over the line, the rest will follow. All it takes is one for the floodgates to open.

Will Iraq take the war to our own soil if we attack them? The chill up my spine when I think about it tells me yes. Terrorists are funny that way.

I'm starting to not really like this world we live in. It's a scary time and a scary place. I worry for my children's future. I worry that they will have a future at all. In a world where women and their kids celebrate death and destruction of innoncent people, in a world where kids are brought up to hate and destroy and separate, all I can do is instill some values and a sense of fairness and empathy in my children, send them out into the world and hope they use the good inside them to try and save it someday.

Comments

I don't believe for a minute that Hussein had (note: had) plans to attack the US. AIUI, Hussein's more interested in living the high life (such as is possible in Iraq) and showing the rest of the Arab world How Things Are Done (in his opinion) than hatching plans to brutally murder innocent American citizens.

That said, he's just stupid/desperate/crazy enough to attack Americans if he thinks he's gonna cop it anyway.

BTW: what do you think of "axis of poopyheads"? I mean, if Reagan could get away with his "evil empire" crack...

"America attacked . . America in a panic" You've hit the nail on the head. An increasingly small percentage of us grew up with the Communism panic and the atomic panic. Bush himself is a baby-boomer and has no memories of black-out curtains, censored mail to and from the military, and the race to develop bigger and nastier nuclear bombs. Most of his adult life (and yours) has not had an everpresent imminent threat. I would say that the last big physical threat to the U.S. was the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

So people, including many of our national leaders, are going into a panic. And, reacting badly by not thinking things through.

P.S. I may rant on this tonight.

I disagree Sue, we can very close in the early 80's when the Russian early warning systems indicated a US missile launch. It is only the clear thinking of somebody at the top in Russia, that decided to believe us that we had not lauched anything, accidental or on purpose, that kept that incident from escalating to a disaster. The way the systems worked, both the US and the USSR only had about 5 minutes to decide if they were going to launch a counter stike to a missile offensive. I think its absolutely amazing that we never had a major screw up on either side.

Also, growing up a military brat, the spector of nuclear war hung over my head most of my childhood. The younger half of Gen X, todays 20 somethings, are the first generation in a century to grow up without a war. (The Gulf war doesn't count.) The threat was very real throughout the 70's and first half of the 80's.

I have made this point about the threat of nuclear annihilation before, right on this very blog. And don't kid yourself, there are still plenty of missiles targeted at both sides and kept on a very jittery trigger.

During the congressional hearings last week, every expert that was called to testify was asked directly "does Iraq present an imminent threat to the US?" and every single one said "No".

Iraq represents a threat to stability in the Middle East more than anything else. He could nuke Israel if he wanted to (and vice versa, don't forget that Israel preemptively bombed some of his nuclear reactors years ago). But he is mostly a big, fat, easy target for Bush to go after with little domestic opposition. The Bushies started planning for this long before September 11, and they're determined to have their war whether anyone else wants it or not.

I would be more concerned that Saddam would use tactical nukes against U.S. troops than any attack on this country directly. The Bushies know this, too, and that's why they abandoned a 40-year-old policy of "no first use" of nuclear weapons. Our 57-year run of no nuclear weapons is about to end.

All of this just makes we want to go to sleep and wake up in 20 years.