Here in America the date July 4th has some significance, for virtually unknown reasons. In a survey that I saw recently, yet can’t find a link to, over half of the kids in America were not able to name the country that the USA declared independence from. Precious.
The actual event has lost so much meaning over the years that it is now more about a day off of work (for some), a day to drink excessively (for myself) or a day to just blow shit up. I know that a couple hundred years have passed since the war that liberated us from the British occupation of the states, but it is pretty simple to draw a few parallels between the British occupation of the U.S. in the 1700’s and the U.S.’s occupation of Iraq in the 2000’s.
In the 1700’s (and well before that), we were all just ripping off (and killing) the Native Americans. Every country on earth seemed to have had a hand in it. Name a nationality and marvel at what some representative of that country did to rape, pillage and/or plunder the virgin land and its inhabitants.
Now, instead of ripping off the land, we are focused on the oil. We are the oppressors, yet again. It may be disguised as a “war on terror”, that doesn’t change the fact that there is no way we would be in the war with Iraq (sorry, the war is over, we are trying to stabilize Iraq) if there was not a lot of oil involved. This is the wrong war to be fighting, at the wrong time to be fighting at all.
If the US media were not involved, and if you were to poll, at random, 1,000 Iraqi people, I bet that the number of them considering the U.S.A. “Liberators” would be a very small number. I bet that number would skyrocket if you asked the same group of Iraqis if the U.S.A. was an invading force that needed to be eliminated.
Iraq hates us, NATO hates us, all of the countries that are not in NATO hate us, what are you going to do now, Mr. Bush? Your legacy may well depend on the next decision you make about the war on terror. If you pull out you negate so many speeches about “staying the course”. If you continue to occupy Iraq there will be thousands more dead American soldiers…with no end in sight…I don’t care how good you were at the game “risk” as a child, this is life or death. And those deaths should be squarely placed on your shoulders, you made the call to go to war with a country that was no threat to the US, you forced a bill through congress to give you ultimate control, and you can’t dig yourself out.
Imagine the praise of the Iraqi’s when you finally make the decision to pull out. They will actually have democracy, and not the forced democracy of the oil crazed US, real democracy. I’ll call this pipe dreams 101.