Le Sequoit

When the Going Gets Tough

The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations. It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons…

We agree that the Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons…

If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today -- and we do -- does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?...

Every chemical and biological weapon that Iraq has or makes is a direct violation of the truce that ended the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Yet, Saddam Hussein has chosen to build and keep these weapons despite international sanctions, U.N. demands, and isolation from the civilized world…

It’s no mystery whose words these are, these are from a speech Bush the Lesser gave in Cincinnati four nights before the vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq. It’s one thing to hear that he wasn’t right about WMD’s, it’s quite another to look at his actual words and believe for a moment that this is anything but the intentional terrorizing of one’s own people in order to further an agenda. I was rummaging around in here because I wanted to make a point about this last speech; that in analyzing it in light of the 2002 speech and applying the same level of dishonesty things do not bode well for the state of affairs in Iraq.

That was yesterday. Today I was put back on the track by a Brit, of all people, Brendon O’Neill of Spiked Online Magazine, who came on my radio to remind me that lying politicians are nothing new and really not the point to the anti-war effort. The war is immoral of its own accord. It is immoral to punch someone in the face because you fear that some day they will be big enough to punch back. It is extremely bad form to preemptively invade a sovereign county, period. Even while I half believed the administration’s fear mongering litany of lies I knew this fact, no Downing Street memo has any bearing on the truth of it.

The “war” has no bearing on our defense, it’s offensive. Iraq isn’t a nation and will never be one. The “insurgency” is just a continuation of centuries of sectarian violence. The British couldn’t control these people with twice the force per capita. All the oil in Iraq won’t fuel our internally combusted life style for very long. The neo-cons will never bring democracy to anyone because, quite clearly, they don’t believe in it themselves.

Stop the war, first and foremost. Call the UN and tell them we’re bugging out. Sorry, a bit of temporary insanity of our own fundamentalists. Good luck with it, but we gotta go. Let the Chinese keep the peace; that oughta take us off the effigy pole.

Where are the signs? Where are the bumper stickers? Demonstrations? Where are the artists, musicians and poets?

Soon, I think.

posted by sequoit @ 11:58 PM