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June 17, 2003-5:43 a.m. In my spare time, when I�m not stressing at work or wondering how in the world we are going to be able to save my brother, I find myself increasingly alarmed by this administration�s propensity for wars that solve nothing. We went to Afghanistan in pursuit of Bin Laden. Did we get him? No. We tore up an already pretty bleak country and came home with a few minor foot soldiers. Do the Afghanis have a better quality of life as a result of this exercise in vanity? I doubt it. The smoke had barely cleared over Afghanistan when we were reintroduced to an old, familiar villain�Saddam Hussein. Dozens of UN weapons inspectors were saying that there were, likely as not, few if any weapons of mass destruction or WMD the acronym that is now our chief spoil from this war. We vilified the French for not being supportive of our dubious contention that the world was in grave danger if Saddam Hussein was allowed to remain in power and ignored the fact that North Korea was flaunting their nuclear capabilities right in our faces. We allowed museums to be looted, destroying icons of Iraq�s cultural legacy in the same way as if looters were to carry off the Liberty Bell or the Declaration of Independence. The fact that this was done by Iraqis rather than US soldiers makes us no less culpable. Now our president refers to the people who want an accounting for this fiasco as �revisionist historians.� The fact that he didn�t stumble on this phrase is in itself amazing. I contend that all history is revisionist. The facts as they appear to me now (and may be revised later) are:
Perhaps, if gasoline were now about a dollar a gallon, I could get on board with this administration and their warmongering. I might feel like the deaths of young mothers and the maiming of young women who were supposed to be nowhere near the fighting were justified. **Disclaimer: All characters in this diary are fictional. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, real or imagined, is purely coincidental and unintentional.** |
