(Eric Blumrich’s grandpa)
No, they sure don’t. Unfortunately, sometimes war is necessary, but it’s never good. The horrors and atrocities that war unleashes, especially modern warfare, requires that option to be pushed into the back of the closet, only to be dragged out in circumstances of dire need. Certainly not for the reasons that the bushists have used for their wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The plain simple fact of the matter is this: We cannot call ourselves godly, humane, or compassionate as long as we keep trotting out the war option. “Got a problem with somebody? Well, just haul out the guns and the bombs.” There is no difference between flying a plane into a building, and dropping a 500 pound bomb on a family in their house. None. Period.
There is a valid Federal Government interest in reducing the number of events in which great pain is inflicted on sentient creatures. Examples of this are laws governing the use of laboratory animals and requiring pain-free methods of slaughtering livestock…
- Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act of 2005
Once that child is born, however, we really don’t give a shit what happens to them. If we did, every child would have access to quality health care, a quality education, freedom from hunger or homelessness.
Instead, we do this. Well, this child is certainly liberated, isn’t she?
and it was all planned long before 9/11.The Surreal Politics of Premeditated War
by R.W. Behan
George W. Bush, who proudly claimed the mantle of “war president,” was keenly rebuked in the recent mid-term election. The event was notable, but it merely continued the surreal politics of premeditated war—a politics that has dominated the last six bizarre, hideous years of our nation’s history.
Two elements of the repudiation seem unreal, indeed. Not the fact of it, but the amazing length of its gestation period—those six years—and how tepid it was. Given the documented record of the Bush Administration—lying us into war, torturing prisoners, rewarding cronies with no-bid contracts, spying secretly on the nation’s citizens, selling public policy to Jack Abramoff’s clients, stating even their intent to ignore laws with dozens of “signing statements”—one would expect the political about-face to have occurred far sooner, and the protest to have been a firestorm. Bush loyalists in Congress (and George Bush) should have been turned out angrily and en masse two years ago.
The victorious Democrats’ response was even more surprising, and also unreal. “Impeachment is off the table” quickly became the mantra: let us instead proceed with raising the minimum wage. Apparently the Bush Administration’s record is flawless, showing nothing remotely approaching a high crime or a misdemeanor. Impeachment would be a “waste of time.”
There is a good reason for these strange results: we practice a politics of surrealism, and have done so since George Bush was first put in office.
Ron Suskind of the New York Times learned how the Bush Administration works, from a “senior advisor to Bush” (Karl Rove is a suspect): “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” They have done that, incessantly, and it is the source of the surrealism. Spins, evasions, omissions, jingoisms, distortions, “perception management” (i.e., propaganda), and deliberate lying all contribute to a political discourse adrift from what is honest, true, and reliable.
The Clear Skies Act allowed more pollution, the Healthy Forests Act caused more trees to be cut down, the Patriot Act scarred the Bill of Rights, No Child Left Behind was a step toward privatizing public education, the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act was a bonanza for the pharmaceutical industry and began the process of dismantling Medicare, the Military Commissions Act fostered torture and suspended habeas corpus.
But no such manufactured reality is more misleading, fraudulent, and damaging than the “global war on terror.”
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