I think back to everything I know about war (and really, I don�t know much, other than what I got from movies and my parents� stories of why they protested Viet Nam so vigourously when they were my age, ooh! And a Danielle Steel novel I read in grade 10. Swear it won�t happen again.) and I realize that we�re pretty damn pampered as far as media presence goes.
The amount of information coming from Iraq is staggering. I don�t know what to do with it. I�m agog. (And I don't like to be agog.) Every channel I turn to, every paper I open, every magazine cover I crack, there is the war. When I was working the desk during the night shift at the newspaper I work at, it was just death, death, death. I used to dutifully write down the stories coming from Iraq and go into the budget meeting prepared to ask for space to cover it, but after about a month of this, I just started waiting until the end and saying "Panic on the streets of Baghdad/Najaf/Fallujah. Death. Destruction. Violence." How many ways can you say that shit is getting fucked up out there?
I hate war. It is so ugly and pointless and ruinous. And now I felt I had to look up the word ruinous to make sure that I wasn�t using it incorrectly. My dictionary says ruinous means "More expensive than is necessary." I can�t think of a better word for war. War is "too expensive" in every sense of the word. The people who die, on all sides, their lives are too valuable.
There was a guy I worked with who I got along with okay. I knew we wouldn't ever be best buddies, but you know, we laughed about the same kind of stuff, but the shit with the war really divided us. I say flat out no way should America have gone to war with Iraq. I realize that as a Canadian, I have no say in this, and as a damn hippy (You will notice I left out the dirty part because I really wish pretentious, loser white-boys who are all "fuck the war" would just cut their stupid fucking white-boy dreadlocks already because hello, they smell!) I have even less say, but I think a war on terror is stupid and should have been avoided at all costs.
Yes, here it is. Another opinion from somebody who thinks Bush is Not A Very Good President and that he and his pals including Dick "Darth" Cheney are Profiting Handsomely From The Spoils Of War.
I don�t give a flying fuck what reasons George Bush gives for going to Iraq. I don�t care. They're all fucking bullshit, okay? There. Now it's out in the open. I�m a pacifist hippie and I don�t think war is ever worth it. (Though I'm not anti-gun I am pro gun-registry. I got to shoot a rifle once and would like to learn how to shoot at a gun range and in my weirder daydreams, wonder what it would be like to be shot, just to see how it would feel. Just, like, a flesh wound; a grazing if you will. In the leg. I'm weird. I know.)
This guy at work told me I was naive. Basically his argument was: �You don�t know how it is over there. So terrible! To have a mad-man running the country and killing his own people and reigning over them with an iron fist of terror. You can't tell me it's not better now than it was when Saddam was still ruling!�
First of all, he's right. I don�t know shit about living under a dictator. However, I have to think that living under a dictator would be better than dying under the hundreds of thousands of people willing to carry on in his name when the American military saddles up its hoss and goes in with the Toby Keith blaring because it can't find Osama bin Laden and hello! There's an election to win here! No time like the present to make some more enemies after all. So we should probably get cracking on that war on terror.
And you know, that's the great fucking thing about terrorism. You can keep fighting and fighting and fighting, and it ain't ever gonna end. Nobody's gonna claim victory over terror. So wartime economy is always up and with the war on terror never gonna end, happy times for all! Except basic economics tells us it can't last, that bust follows boom if boom goes on long enough and it ain't going to make a difference if there's a war or if there isn't. Plus, all those folks who are dying their faces off out there.
The soldier deaths upset me, definitely. Somebody sent me an e-mail with all these names of soldiers who had died and, yeah, sad, okay. But they know the risks. So that e-mail just pissed me off because nobody's cataloguing the names of the civilians dying in the middle east. Nobody's marking down little Hajib al-Maquar whose brother got killed by a rocket and who is only going to fight in a war because he wants to kill him some American ass in retribution and that's how wars never end. Because somebody's big brother got shot.
So American Administration, don't make me fucking laugh with your talk about "the politics of war." I don�t know the answers, and politics has never been my cup of tepid, bitter tea. But it seems to me that politics end when war begins. War is the opposite of politics. There ain't no sitting down at round tables discussing things and drinking little glasses of water with lemon in them. There�s nothing left to discuss, so let�s bomb the shit out of something!
It was fucking stupid. Like knocking on the door like a bunch of girl scouts who won't take no for an answer when the neighbors say they have no cash to buy your damn cookies and you barge in and start actively looking all: "Bitch, I saw you at the club flashing a roll like you were a novice tourist gambler working a casino in Vegas! WHERE'S THE MONEY!" And it's even worse when all you come up with some linty pennies in between the couch cushions.
Now, I understand that there's a big difference between Thin Mints and Weapons of Mass Destruction (mainly that Thin Mints are delicious and Weapons of Mass Destruction kind of leave a napalm-y aftertaste) but you know what I'm getting at. The way all this has played out is starting to remind me of that episode of the X-Files where Mulder switches bodies with Morris Fletcher, the CIA dude who tells the Lone Gunmen that Saddam doesn't exist.
Morris: There is no Saddam Hussein. This guy's name is John Gillnitz. We found him doing dinner theater in Tulsa. Did a mean King and I. Plays good ethnics.
Langley: You're trying to say that Saddam Hussein's a government plant?
Morris: I'm saying I invented the guy. We set him up in '79. He rattles his saber whenever we need a good distraction.
Now, I'm 99.9% sure this isn't true. But still. My paranoid hippie tendancies are playing out a conversation that goes something like this:
"Okay. So we can't find Osama."
"What're we gonna do?"
"I don't know."
"THINK Goddamn, you! This is the biggest thing we've had to work on yet! I mean, a hummer in the White House is one thing. You bomb a few empty buildings in Iraq, call in the troops to some war-torn country in Africa, boom! Monica who? But this... this is big."
"Okay, ummm, ummm.... What's Gillnitz doing?"
"Good idea! Check with his agent!"
"Oh, wait! He's tied up with a run of the Mikado in Omaha."
"Okay. Okay. We go in, we raise a stink about how we can't find him and then, when the show in Omaha is over, we give him a few weeks to grow a good beard and we get him to Iraq where we capture him!"
"Why?"
"DUH! Weapons of Mass Destruction? Hello! Those are REALLY hard to find! We can say we looked, and if we don't find anything, we'll go in anyway and we'll catch him. There will be another election soon and we'll remind everybody of how we caught him and they'll forget all about Weapons of Mass Destruction!"
Again, probably this didn't happen. The Gillnitz thing isn't real, but the "Let's get Saddam because we need a victory against terrorism. So any terrorist will do" thing seems pretty plausible to me.
And now they've got themselves a terrorist and low and behold! The beat goes on! Has terrorism stopped? No. Will it ever? Doubtful. Terrorism is pretty horrible shit, but war on terrorism, that's just stupid. If Osama were an American with voting privileges, he'd be casting a ballot for Bush because Bush's big talent is antagonizing Muslims. The war on terror is a faaaaaabulous way to recruit some people who would back Osama, give him some land, some weapons and then, then we're gonna have a rip-snorter of a war on our hands.
I looked through a bunch of quotes to try and sum all this shit up. I tried Ghandi, I tried JFK, I even tried Albert Einstein and my go-to quote guy Mark Twain. But in the end, it was a luminary of the late 20th century who REALLY spoke to me.
"What we got here is a failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach... so, you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it! Well, he gets it! N'I don't like it any more than you men."
And the wars go on with brainwashed pride/For the love of God and our human rights.
That's right, bitches. Axl Rose said that shit. And if a stir-crazy, drunken, shit-disturbing, stone banger, white-suit-wearing, long-ass video making, band-breaking up asshole like Axl can figure it out, it shouldn't be hard for the majority of the Americans 18 and over to understand that Bush did not even bother to look for Weapons of Mass Destruction because didn't exist and is STILL holding people in Guantanamo Bay. Who are they? We don't know. They can't tell us. Your basic human rights are being screwed. Civil liberties are leaving the party, babies. When they can hold you without reason, arrest you and keep you in prison without hope of a trial, without letting anybody even know where you are, it's time to be afraid.
What I am trying to say is this: Vote. If you are not a rich, white, businessman, you should vote for Kerry. Not Nader. Okay? I like Nader. He's a cool guy. But Pat Buchanan should give him a call and tell him to just give up. If you recall the debacle of the last election, you will just go and make your little mark and punch your chad or whatever the hell it is you do. If for no other reason than Canada is tired of being the sober voice of reason in North America. Why can't you guys ever be the ones talking us down from the ledge, huh?
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