Apparently all of those Hollywood liberals just can’t help themselves from making reactionary blockbusters. Vapid wastes of film – filled with a paranoia reminiscent of McCarthyism, massive terrorist attacks, paramilitarism, suspension of civil liberties…and Bruce Willis’s ugly mug. Welcome to Die Hard 5,556,432.
It has been four years since our countries unprovoked invasion of another, and for our president, I feel nothing but the sincerest pity. Being a “good ol’ boy” can take you a lot of places in this world, but it can’t save you from your own folly.
With thousands of American soldiers perished, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and soldiers dead, there will be no triumphant landings on aircraft carriers today proclaiming “Mission accomplished”.
The mission was not accomplished, and it never will be. I have yet to hear a response to the question that I have at times posed to supporters of this unfortunte aggression; “What democratic country in world history had democracy handed to them by a foreign power, rather than being won by the people of that country?”, and my second question “What imperial power has ever successfully defeated a guerilla insurgency?” I am open to any and all answers, but I expect there to be few.
I, like many, who oppossed this tragic slaughter, before it began, once held great antipathy towards W and all that he and his gang represented. Now is by no means a time to gloat. But with Powell long gone (conscience got in the way), Rumsfeld fed to the lions after electoral defeat, Cheney convicted in all but a court-of-law (for putting American secret agents lives in danger by releasing the identity of a spy for political purposes), and Bush the lamest of ducks (forced to sit throught two more years, politically impotent and waiting for histories unkind judgement to fall upon him) it is hard to not feel sorry for this ambitiously ignorant group of tragic heroes overcome by hubris. It’s a story that has been recycled since the world began, but we never seem to learn, do we?
W, and all who subscribe to his ideology, need not fear. Capitalism and democracy will eventually conquer the world. (Assuming an endless supply of natural resources, which of course we all know is readily available on this planet).
There is something about the dispersion of political power, and the logical segmentation and commoditization of human labor and natural resources, that sings like a sweet melody to the human spirit. Everyone wants it. Even a leader like Hugo Chavez, with all of his belligerent bluster, will never truly embrace state socialism. That dream is dead.
Rather, W could take a lesson from those pansy-ass Europeans who don’t like to participate in military exercises except for peacekeeping purposes. Like the Euro’s, we as Americans can just sit back and watch as peoples throughout the world overthrow their tyrants, buy televisions, start eating fast food, driving cars, leaving religion, and discovering divorce, while their children do lines of coke at high-school parties: like any good Western (or Eastern) child should.
We have so much to give to the world; nuclear weapons, obesity, heavy oil consumption, eating disorders, reality television, Wal-mart. Why ruin it by exciting their ire and hatred, rather than playing on that most essential word of modern marketing: “desire”? W’s fundamentalist counterparts in the Middle-East may be radicals, but their children could have been- that most degrading of capitalist phrases- “consumers”. Instead, our failed leaders have pissed them off mightily and we, and our children, will pay the price.
