I’ve been kind of freaked out all day today thinking about war. I haven’t gotten much work done, and I’m too busy reading up on current events. I’m going to have to bill sick time today, I think.
I remember the gulf war, when I was ending middle school. Or was it high school? I remember trying to get people to meet me by the flag pole for a last minute protest during homeroom, but no one would. Those ubiquitous yellow ribbons. “Support the soldiers, not the war.�
These are things I thought after last night’s speech by GWB:
* We’re going to war.
* We’re going to war, supported by a potentially fictitious “coalition.â€?
* We can’t even afford to educate or feed our children. I know of teachers that have to panhandle for classroom supplies for their students. We’re going to finance the entirety of another gulf war by ourselves?
* There’s a sneaky large tax cut being pushed through the senate right now, and we’re going to finance the entirety of another gulf war by ourselves?
* We are the aggressors in this war. We are attacking another country with little reason. We are attacking another country because:
* Bush is ushering in a super-aggressive future where it’s called “suicideâ€? (his word!) to wait and see if your neighbors won’t attack you, and one should just go ahead and attack them, just in case.
* I have a sneaking suspicion that Bush is trying to coax Armageddon in, to force the end of the world to come in his lifetime.
* The Bush administration has been systematically redefining who is allowed to disagree with the government and still be considered ‘American’, and has been systematically demonizing dissenters, since September 11th. And now people are disagreeing and protesting, there’s no response. Our elected representatives seem to be lost, running in circles and avoiding the immediate and real issues. Many of our rights have been tossed – and all in the name of security. As Michelle said last night, if we really have to discard so many essential American freedoms, ones the country was built on, in order to preserve security, than it means the system isn’t working.
Remember during the last gulf war? When we had to really convince Israel not to return the attack, because of the frightening potential for a Jewish-Muslim war developing? How the heck are we going to prevent that from happening now? Especially now that the Israeli government is taking a ‘hard-line’ stance on Palestine, and is driving bulldozers over unarmed, peaceful protesters. You know, while they knock houses over in the Gaza Strip. An American woman died, and the war talk has kept us from asking, where did these bulldozers and tanks come from? Whose money was spent on this? Was it mine, from my 2001 taxes? 2002? And American woman died and it hardly made the news. What chance did the some-dozen other Palestinians (as young as 4 years old) have to make the news?
This is our “coalition�:
Afghanistan, Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Japan (post conflict), Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan.
(I guess it’s a shame that Spain’s once invincible armada is no more. (Thanks a lot, Queen Elizabeth!) Though if we’re fighting in a desert it wouldn’t do much good anyway.)
Here’s another thing I’ve been thinking about. The singer from the Dixie Chicks criticized GWB and was immediately demonized: people drove over their CDs, and the fact that she wouldn’t support our president was denounced. She stuck to her guns for a couple of days, and didn’t apologize until her record company made her. Why wasn’t she allowed by American society to speak her beliefs?
I am a patriot. I believe strongly in the American way of life. I love my country, despite her faults. But I don’t understand at what point I’m supposed to just suck it up, to realize the severity of the situation and to not speak my mind. When is that appropriate? And when do you think our founding fathers would have thought it be appropriate? Our elected representatives are hiding behind the “support the soldiers� tenet – they don’t have to say anything hard, or bad, or dissenting about this war, because they are busy supporting the soldiers. I know a lot of veterans. I know lots of people who went to war, and wish we hadn’t, and also wish we wouldn’t now. I also know many people who joined the military for the wrong reason, not because they want to fight, but because they felt they had to. Will they understand if we speak out against war that we aren’t speaking out against them? Won’t they understand that we speak out against war because we want them home, safe, and with their families?
I don’t want a war, y’all.
