The last of these type of posts for a while I think. At this point, it’s just beating a dead horse. It’ll be interesting to see the eventual geo-political fallout from the Bush Doctrine (correction, not pre-emptive, but preventive strike). A co-worker made a good point today, that it would take decades to repair international relations. Somehow, in a few decades, I doubt it’ll much matter. At this rate, by we’ll have long lost both our social relevance and technological dominance. It’s a shame that we’re also giving up our civil rights and founding principles in the same shot.
- Newsweek Cover Story, Why America Scares the World: The Arrogant Empire
- NYT: A Decision Made, and Its Consequences
- USA Today: War is not in U.S. interest
In fact, while the United States has the backing of a dozen or so governments, it has the support of a majority of the people in only one country in the world, Israel. If that is not isolation, then the word has no meaning.
Where does it end? Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has laid out the road map, with Iran, Libya and Syria next on the list: “These are irresponsible states, which must be disarmed of weapons mass destruction,” he told visiting U.S. congressmen, “and a successful American move in Iraq as a model will make that easier to achieve.”
Of course, when the shooting starts, it’ll be a whole different ball-game. We’ll see, I suppose. I’ll just leave off this topic with something Rafe just wrote, which sums up my feelings and happens (if it is possible?) to be simultaneously succinct and eloquent.
I’ve given both sides of the debate very serious consideration, and unlike most neocons and warmongers, I’ve actually read The Threatening Storm. What I found today when I heard a reporter on the radio talking about how people in Baghdad were lining up at pharmacies to get all the medicine they can and filling up their cars with gas for all the good it will do is that my reaction against this war is a lot more visceral than I would have imagined. I grew up on the Gulf coast, and I can remember what it was like when we heard there was a hurricane coming. We did what we could and hoped against hope that the coming destruction would miss us, and it always did. What must it be like to be in a city in Iraq right now? You know the destruction is coming, and you know that the only thing that will save you now is luck.
I sit here in America, and I ponder the fact that we’re the people who are about to inflict that on another country. Not because they’ve attacked us, and not because they’re preparing to attack us, but because they might possibly attack us. I won’t argue with anyone who says that Saddam Hussein is a brutal, oppressive dictator who deserves whatever fate befalls him, but there are literally millions of people who are about to stop being Saddam Hussein’s victims and start being our victims. The United States is about to be the disaster that befalls them. And when I look at President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and their ghoulish set of war-loving minions, I don’t think they appreciate the gravity of that.