In order to Serve You Better, we’re going to invade Iraq
February 12th, 2003The US’s War On Dissenting Opinion continues unabated on any number of fronts. There’s no sense voicing any sort of contrary position or encouraging meaningful discussion; their course was decided long ago.
Albert Delgado commented on a previous blog post by quoting Herman Goering from the Nuremberg trials:
“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”
It’s not so much that I disagree with the end result they’re looking to achieve. I’m mostly insulted by their ridiculous diplomatic sleight-of-hand meant to fabricate premises for action and draw our attention away from the real core agendas driving their actions.
Please, give me credit for understanding and supporting a long-term strategy of protecting oil resources from control by irrational interests, or of nipping a potential nuclear terrorism or cancerous fundamentalism problem in the bud before it ever has a chance to take hold. Just don’t feed me prevarication and spin.
It reminds me of all the bullshit store signs I’ve ever seen that start with “In order to serve you better”, or “For your protection and safety”. You absolutely know what follows is going to be something that reduces your choices, infringes on your rights, or costs you money. I’d rather they told me up front that they really mean “In order to reduce shoplifting”, or “To keep our insurance costs down” and allow that I might have the sense to see that that will be to my longterm benefit to go along with it.
I agree with your assessment on US foreign policy. Bush and his administraton act like the “Emporer with no clothes”. I sometimes feel that they do not even believe what they are saying. It really is kind of sad.
Holy shit Brent. I’ve never been linked to before. I think I need one of those reverse linky thingies!
It’s hard to feel entirely comfortable with what my government is doing, especially since I am long on the records as abhorring this administration.
I think there are great reasons to go to war here: Saddam does terrible horrible things to his people…things reminscent of Hitler…and is a threat to nations and stability in that entire region. But, as Brent (and others) have stated, it’s most likely about oil, since Bush doesn’t seem to care too much about human rights violations in other countries…
So I’m sort of ok with the idea of going to war with Iraq in that the horrible things happening over there might stop, but I’m disgusted with the way he’s doing it and really uncomfortable with the fact that non-government people will have to die.
Oy.