Will we ever learn? Or care?
Posted: October 26th, 2005, 4:40 pm
The pictures of shattered children that jimboloco posted in the "Airstrike" thread are just heartbreaking and numbing. I feel myself receding a little further into a terminal resignation, without possibility of hope. I know I can't go there, but I edge closer just the same.
I've been trying like hell to get inside the heads of our military leaders of the 'West', through articles, etc., and even dialogue here on this board, to try and understand why the hell we persist with the misery and bloodshed, to try and see what it would take to make it end, or at least start to make it end. It's frustrating as hell to me. And it deeply angers me to see my country responsible for such savagery, and all this in a war that was unnecessary, a war that was born out of lies.
All of it has troubled me a great deal, right from the start. The only faint bright spot throughout this tragedy has been the prospect of an eventual better life for the people of Iraq, a prospect which grows dimmer on a daily basis with Bush's dogged military bluster, and lingering, mounting suspicions that, despite what he says, he will fight to the end because he still wants military control of the place.
I suppose I can take some heart in the fact that the United States did remove a horrific butcher of a tyrant. The people of Iraq will no longer have to face Saddam's mass-murder and torture. But this solace doesn't last long when I consider that U.S. itself is substituting its own form of mass-murder for the last.
And then when I consider that the U.S. armed and empowered Saddam to start with, to much higher levels than he ever dreamed of (Reagan, Rumsfeld et. al), it is even more troubling, because I, like most people, slept right through it. I never spoke out in those years, as I should have.... as we all should have.
It was ruinous foreign policy which created monumental suffering; that which continues right up to today. And most of us rubber-stamped it with our deafening silence. It seems many, if not most of us hardly give a shit until the suffering hits home. American foreign policy has been filled with this sort of self-interested toxic bullshit, and it has gone unchecked over the years. That's what I find most disturbing about not only Iraq, but the bigger picture which contributed to ruin Iraq to begin with. Will we ever learn? God knows how many other ticking time bombs we've planted out there.
We may have removed a horrific thug from power, and perhaps we can take something from that. But his trial itself will be a kind of surreal "sketch" of the larger problem, which most will never see, or question. Like e_dog pointed out earlier.... why aren't Rumsfeld and his 1980s co-conspirators standing trial right alongside Saddam?
We may have removed Saddam. But we cannot, we must not obliterate that one positive with endless ongoing state-sponsored brutality in the name of imperial lust, disguised as a "noble cause". Absolutely no way.
I've been trying like hell to get inside the heads of our military leaders of the 'West', through articles, etc., and even dialogue here on this board, to try and understand why the hell we persist with the misery and bloodshed, to try and see what it would take to make it end, or at least start to make it end. It's frustrating as hell to me. And it deeply angers me to see my country responsible for such savagery, and all this in a war that was unnecessary, a war that was born out of lies.
All of it has troubled me a great deal, right from the start. The only faint bright spot throughout this tragedy has been the prospect of an eventual better life for the people of Iraq, a prospect which grows dimmer on a daily basis with Bush's dogged military bluster, and lingering, mounting suspicions that, despite what he says, he will fight to the end because he still wants military control of the place.
I suppose I can take some heart in the fact that the United States did remove a horrific butcher of a tyrant. The people of Iraq will no longer have to face Saddam's mass-murder and torture. But this solace doesn't last long when I consider that U.S. itself is substituting its own form of mass-murder for the last.
And then when I consider that the U.S. armed and empowered Saddam to start with, to much higher levels than he ever dreamed of (Reagan, Rumsfeld et. al), it is even more troubling, because I, like most people, slept right through it. I never spoke out in those years, as I should have.... as we all should have.
It was ruinous foreign policy which created monumental suffering; that which continues right up to today. And most of us rubber-stamped it with our deafening silence. It seems many, if not most of us hardly give a shit until the suffering hits home. American foreign policy has been filled with this sort of self-interested toxic bullshit, and it has gone unchecked over the years. That's what I find most disturbing about not only Iraq, but the bigger picture which contributed to ruin Iraq to begin with. Will we ever learn? God knows how many other ticking time bombs we've planted out there.
We may have removed a horrific thug from power, and perhaps we can take something from that. But his trial itself will be a kind of surreal "sketch" of the larger problem, which most will never see, or question. Like e_dog pointed out earlier.... why aren't Rumsfeld and his 1980s co-conspirators standing trial right alongside Saddam?
We may have removed Saddam. But we cannot, we must not obliterate that one positive with endless ongoing state-sponsored brutality in the name of imperial lust, disguised as a "noble cause". Absolutely no way.
