Tired of...Being Tired
Wed., February 22, 02:25 PM
In college we had a very proper housemother who occasionally voiced her dissatisfaction by saying she was “p.o.’d.” As I told the other girls, she probably believed it meant “put out.”
Well, I’m p.o.’d myself, about a hundred things. But every time I tried to write about them, I ran up against the same brick wall: I can’t stand the whining. Believe me, if it irritates me that much, you don’t want to hear it either. Somewhere in there, I realized it’s not all me. Then again, is it ever?
I am tired of saying nothing about the “situation” in Iraq. I don’t want to undermine our troops; I’m proud of them and very grateful to them. I know they did their best, but I’m thinking that there’s nothing more they can do. What is the sense of sacrificing our finest people to act as referees in someone else’s civil war? I thought we had learned something from previous experiences.
Our illustrious leader says we will stay in Iraq until our mission is accomplished. What mission? Was it ever stated?
There was some talk about retaliation for 9-11. I thought those guys were in Afghanistan, but maybe it’s easier to wage a battle on a flat desert, as opposed to mountains and caves. They found Saddam Hussein, a villain who deserved to be brought to justice, but Osama ben Laden is still snickering behind his beard somewhere. (No doubt in a fancy cave complete with electricity and indoor toilets.) No one’s gonna find him – he says so himself.
Well, then, we had to go to Iraq to clean out the Weapons of Mass Destruction. Y’know, forty years ago I could believe Adlai Stevenson when he brought pictures to the U.N., showing missiles in Cuba. We not only saw the stockpiles, we saw them removed. Somehow, I don’t have the same trust in Colin Powell and his pictures of Iraq. (Can you say Photo-Shop?) I always had a lot of respect for Mr. Powell, but I can’t help thinking, “Was it fraud? And, if so, was he in on it?”
In any case, no one can find any of those Weapons of Mass Destruction so, if there were any, someone has cleaned them out. Does that mean our mission is done and our people can come home?
No, evidently Mr. Dubya has another mission in mind. He wants to make all those people just like us. My heart aches for those people, even as I may deplore some of their actions. We just trash everything they have done and believe in, to replace them with U.S. standards? You can’t do that! I’m not saying it’s not physically possible. Throughout history the combination of manpower and money have enabled tyrants to change who people are, or at least to make them pretend they’ve changed. But it is unethical and immoral to do that. Once upon a time, we would have said it was un-American. Diversity has always been our strength.
Let’s talk about something else that’s un-American. If you tell a country it has to conduct free elections, and if you supply overseers to ensure that the elections are held honestly, you can’t take it all back when you don’t like the results. They voted you out, so you take your toys and go home. That goes for Iraq, and it goes for the Palestinians in Gaza too.
Israel moved its people out of Gaza at expense to its government and deep emotional distress to its people. Hamas won the election and stated once more that it intends to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. So much for extending a hand of negotiation. This is not the time for telling them what to do – since they’re not going to do it anyhow. It is a time to withdraw, not only ourselves but our offers of aid. The U.S. can stay out of Palestinian territory. It can help Israel defend itself, if necessary, but it certainly should not encourage Israel to abandon any more settlements.
Uh-oh, we know that won’t work. It’s more like common sense. We can’t expect common sense from people who are willing to outsource our port operations.
From the time I was a small child, I’ve been proud of our country. We always knew that, no matter how bad things might be, we would endure and rise above them. But I’ve come to the conclusion that our beloved country will fall, not to tyranny, not to terrorism, but to stupidity.
