(dave e)

i give up

from ha'aretz, by way of salon tabletalk:

According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

let me see if i understand.

a little less than two years ago, the scariest day in america. no need to go on about it, you and i were terrified, right? i still look up when i see low planes. with tremendous and immediate national and international support, the u.s. military overwhelmed a despotic, misogynist theocracy in afghanistan. the postprimitive collection of fiercely independent tribes that make up that country got a new president, hamid karzai. he has survived an assasination attempt, and his authority extends little beyond the city limits of kabul. after months of seeing osama bin laden's face at least once per newscast, the u.s. search for him and for the religious leader of the taliban, mullah omar, kind of faded away from american discourse. oh, sure, they're still there, we're told, out in the "wilderness boundary area between afghanistan and pakistan." today, the second day of the summer of 2003, i see that bin laden is nowhere to be found, that omar is busy again, and that americans are still kept nervous about the terrace. you know, the war on terrism. that terrace might get you.

in the meantime, americans believe that it was wise to start another war (ok, defend itself... if you insist, we can call it that). remember, the war against the terrace in afghanistan, though absent from your nightly news, can't possibly have been won. if the point was to "smoke 'em out of their caves," or somesuch strategy, so they no longer had a place in southern asia, the job hardly seems done. the thing is, the reason i'm ranting about this, is the fact that so many 'mericans actually believe that saddam hussein played a substantial role in the september 11th disaster. um. if i remember correctly, the alleged meeting-in-prague was disavowed by the u.s. administration. it's also my understanding that bin laden issued a prominent fatwa for the head of hussein, a despotic (but, not good for appeasing fundamentalist warmongers) secular leader of a persian "nation." country singers like toby keith and darryl worley sing songs about kickin' hussein's ass 'cause we need to remember what "they" did to us. have you forgotten? (by the way, does anyone else remember the "gaddafi duck" song from the 80s?) people go, "oh, yeah! god bless america. united we stand. power of pride. 9/11 was the worst day ever. let's go git saddam." [EDIT: did some more looking. found this. perhaps the point isn't that a majority of americans believe that saddam hussein was responsible for the september 11th horror, but that, without much reason, so many are willing to ignore distinctions and convert justifiable anger at september 11th into an incomplete logic for going into another war. foxnews, for the record, still introduces stories about iraq with their gyroscopic "war on terror" graphic].

WHAT THE FUCK?

look, i'm not talking about weaponsofmassdestruction. i'm not even talking about whether or not the war was right, whether or not the u.s. is an "occupier" or "liberator," whether this will haunt us for decades, or whether our president rightly declared victory by landing a plane on a ship loaded with people who'd been on the longest deployment ever and probably wanted to see their families instead of waiting a couple of extra days for a photo op.

i'm talking about the fact that facts, reflection, and informed decision making have, apparently, little to do with the way people come to conclusions.

premise 1: according to the washington post, there are 11,500 american soldiers in afghanistan, looking for bin laden, omar, remnant taliban and al qaeda.

premise 2: afghanistan remains out of control, and the two faces we saw on the news every night are still out there.

premise 3: 'merica, following the intellectual lead of the messr's worley and keith, kicked butt in iraq.

premise 4: whether or not they existed, the weaponsofmassdestruction have not been satisfactorily accounted for.

premise 5: sucks to be an iraqi nowadays (if that last link doesn't work: an image of a teenager, hands apparently bound, being led by a u.s. soldier, captioned, "U.S. soldiers arrested 17-year-old Khaled Salim in the southern suburbs of Baghdad Tuesday. Salim, who insulted occupying troops on his way to school, was bound and taken away as a warning to others").

premise 6: turns out, 'merica is ready for iran, now.

premise 7: the president of the united states of america, my country, is telling men who are ostensibly world leaders that god is "telling" him what to do next.

premise 8: these are becoming more frightening than funny.

conclusion: i'm sort of at a loss.

apologies to the three people who read this. nothing new, here, for sure. just needed to do something besides banging my head against the table for a few minutes.

Posted by dave at June 24, 2003 4:13 PM | TrackBack