It appears today will be a very sad day for those of us holding out any hope of a peaceful resolution to the Iraqi situation. The “president” will be on the tube tonight telling us why we need to start dropping bombs on primarily innocent people in an act that most of the civilized world doesn’t see the need for. He’ll repeat all the usual rhetoric, invoke the name of god eight or nine times, tell us we have no choice, and give the go ahead. I don’t think I’ll watch.
I guess what has irked me most in these final days is the jingoistic jabber that politicians and preachers have been throwing out, specifically god’s role in all of this. It’s obvious that god likes us better than the Iraqis ’cause he’s watching over us. I guess he’s not watching over the children and the elderly and the infirm in Iraq…no one mentions them much. Must be some other god’s dominion. We have to protect Americans, as if we by some birthright are inherently more important or worthy than those born in other places. Our president believes that “the United States was called to bring God’s gift of liberty to ‘every human being in the world.'” Yeah, liberty in the form of two-ton bombs and heavy artillery. Some gift.
This is a sad world, and we’re going to make it sadder tonight, or tomorrow, or the next day. Two million children die of disease in Africa each year. Two billion people on this planet have no water to drink. Twenty five percent of African’s suffer from chronic diarreha because of it. Yet our priorities are to spend billions of dollars and an enormous amount of our reputation to topple a egomaniacal dictator whose closest neighbors don’t even fear.
Excuse me if I don’t get it.
As theologian Cornel West said, America needs a socratic moment. To think one baby is more valuable than another by where it was born is idolatry. Sadly some folks in Washington, who call themselves Christians, have placed our national flag above the cross.
On a side note – only one member of our congress will have a son in harms way if war breaks out.
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Joe Luft pointed a link to the new national priorities database. Very interesting trade offs our politicians and us as a nation are willing to make.
http://database.nationalpriorities.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/NPP.woa/wa/tradeoff
al
I have a little side business doing taxes for people in my community. I have asked each one of them the same question: should we attack Iraq without UN support? Every single one said, “No.” These are not liberal, professional, Democratic, ax-grinders. They are farmers, factory workers, blue collar workers, and just plain folks. My county had the highest percentage of Bush voters in the whole state. Every one said “no”. Bush is on very thin ice. In fact he is already a political dead man. (If I put NSA in this sentence, do you think it will be added to my FBI dossier? Betchyerass.)It bears repeating: all that it takes for evil to triumph is for good men and women to remain silent. The silence is deadly and deafening.
I was in the process of changing my banner to black when I hit your site and saw yours (one of those things you miss surfing via your aggregator). It’s a dark day.