Aaah. I just returned from a vacation away from all computers AND from the American press.
Go Canucks!!
Unfortunately, the Canadian press has a wicked sense of humor: periodically, it reprints right-wing tripe from just below the 49th parallel. Sometimes, it also comes up with tripe of its own, between reports on hockey, hockey, SARS, and hockey.
My favorite item was a homegrown editorial by Daniel Pipes in the National Post called, you won't believe this, Strongman first, democracy later. Mr. Pipes proposes that, were elections held tomorrow, Iraq would elect someone we don't like. Therefore, Iraqis shouldn't be allowed to hold elections until they WILL pick someone we like, and in the meantime, should be ruled by a strongman who we like.
No, I'm serious. He writes this. He makes it a bit flowery, so we forget that the glories of democracy are exactly what he proposes to deny the Iraqis until they come around to "our" way of thinking.
Since when is obedience liberation?
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From what I understand from the news summaries up north, a few exciting things happened in my absence on the war front. The first was that a variety of documents were found, which only tarnish countries the Bush Administration wants tarnished.
Gee, how convenient!
The other is that some anonymous Iraqi scientist has announced that Hussein had ALL KINDS of forbidden WMDs, but conveniently destroyed them and obliterated ALL evidence of their existence, so we basically have just his word to go on that the entire war was justified!
Gee, how convenient also!
Meanwhile, there was no publicity surrounding the fact that Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, has subsidiaries that profit from work in countries that allegedly sponsor terrorism, such as Iran, Iraq and Libya. Nor that his company has paid fines for defrauding the U.S. government on contracts. Nor that Halliburton sold nuclear detonators to Iraq in violation of U.S. sanctions.
So we're supposed to be mad that the French and Russians have lucrative POTENTIAL oil contracts with Iraq, but we're not supposed to be mad that Cheney's company profits now from ACTUAL work done with those countries, including work that was ILLEGAL.
I would ask what this Administration is smoking, but a) I don't really want to know (it's likely a nasty petroleum product!), and b) it doesn't matter what they smoke if the mainstream media continually fails to inform the public of what's really going on. In the absence of context or other facts, people WILL be mad at the French and Russians for their potential profits rather than the unknowns of Cheney's actual profits.
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I'm hoping there were lots of essays in the papers while I was away, refuting the smug warmongers who, having failed to find weapons of mass destruction or an army worthy of threatening its neighbors and the world, still claims "victory" after belatedly redefining the attack on Iraq's entire purpose. The quick fall of Iraq shows it wasn't a threat; the non-use of weapons of mass destruction which justified this war means that either Saddam Hussein is much nicer and more restrained than has been charged, or that he never had them in the first place.
So the U.S. won the war, but lost all its moral capital. And ultimately, this means that the peace protesters were right.
Somehow, I doubt this is being emphasized to the extent it should be.
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Meanwhile, the U.S. is increasing local love for Americans by parading prisoners around Baghdad naked and shooting into a crowd of Iraqi civilians protesting the previous U.S. attack on a protest. This time 2 protesters were killed, 18 were injured, and the U.S. is admitting it happened, but trying to suggest that the people in the hospital might have been shot by someone else.
And here at home, the U.S. government can't seem to think of new ways to protect us from the terrorism its actions cause, instead choosing to strip freedoms from Americans because it can. "Patriot Act II would authorize the government to create a DNA database of 'suspected terrorists,' strip citizenship from any American who supports even the legal activities of any group the attorney general labels ?terrorist,? and nullify court-approved orders that limit political surveillance by state and local law enforcement." Gone is innocent until proven guilty, privacy, and irrevocable citizenship.
I don't think this means that the terrorists have won. I think this means that we have a very, very bad government in place here, and that we urgently need a democractic regime change.
More comments and links when I catch up on my reading.
