HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
Sept 30, 2003 So the intelligence was a little sketchy. So the Weapons of Mass Destruction haven’t been found. So all those neat Arial photos and charts and diagrams that Colin Powell dragged before the UN Security Council all turned out to be some really nice marketing work…who cares right? After all, we went into Iraq and showed the world just what our steroid fueled military machine can do…we marched in, kick some serious Iraqi butt and in the process we rid the world of a tyrannical monster! Oh yeah, by the way, we were also kind of wrong in implying that he was directly involved in 9/11. We know that he wasn’t, but he did live in the same part of the world and on more than one occasion it is pretty certain that he said the word ‘terrorist’ so that’s good enough for us, right? You’re damned right it is. And if any of you whiny peace freaky communists out there have the nerve to say anything different, well it’s obvious that you are just a bunch of anti- American malcontents and well, we’ve just shown how we deal with anything anti-American haven’t we? So go ahead, wave your stupid little signs and shout your silly little slogans. Tom Ridge and his buddies in the Department of Homeland Security know exactly who you are, where you live, what you’re talking about on the phone, what you’re reading at the library and what nasty words you might be writing in your e-mails…so don’t even think about getting on a plane out of the country. We have your name on the list and we want to have a little chat with you. Sure, all of the above is very easy to dismiss as just some more “liberal paranoia propagated by the Liberal controlled media” but the problem is that everything that was mentioned above HAS happened. None of this is made up. So, fine, you say. What about it? What’s your Liberal-whiny point for gosh-darned sake? The point is this. Despite the cliché’d sound of it, we really are living in a different America than we were before 9/11. We are living in an America where our elected leaders feel that blatant lying and misrepresentation are acceptable in pursuit of their objectives. We now live in an America where suspicion of anyone who happens to appear to be Middle Eastern is morally justified and prudent. We now live in an America where such suspicion allows us to feel OK about bypassing the civil and constitutional rights in those individuals. In other words, as long as the phrase “in the name of national security” is tagged on to a sentence, then we have no problem swallowing down that guilty lump in our throats when one more of the Constitutional freedoms that we are so intent on defending is eroded away. So now, when President Bush requests another $87 billion for the Iraqi Freedom campaign, we are just supposed to ignore the fact that over $20 billion of that money is not even earmarked for the military, but rather will be going directly to Bechtel and Halliburton. We are paying these nicely connected corporations to rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq, things like roads and water systems and schools. Unfortunately, that same kind of infrastructure here in the US is crumbling. Schools are laying-off teachers, the buildings are falling apart and generally spiraling into a dismal state of mediocrity. So lets boil this diatribe down to basics. Essentially, we are now living in an America where lying on a massive scale is acceptable so long as it justifies our leaders objectives; prejudice and the elimination of personal, constitutionally protected freedoms is acceptable so long as it is in the name of national security; it is more acceptable to give billions of dollars to multinational corporations to rebuild a country that we just happened to have blown apart (oh yeah and just happens to be ‘swimming in oil’) than to provide our children with a proper education in buildings that are not falling apart. Yep, America has changed dramatically since 9/11. Certainly changes had to occur in order to cope with the current world situation, but we have the right and obligation as Americans to make certain that those changes don’t end up destroying the very thing that we are trying to defend. Right now, America is the most powerful nation in the world militarily. Essentially, what that really means is that the only country that can really destroy us, is ourselves. ------------ Email Scott Jones: rosenquill@rocketmail.com Comment on this column in the forum. Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
