Down On War

I know I'm not alone in this, but this Iraq war is really getting to me. It's depressing. The lies. The deceit. Bush's smugness. Rumsfeld's arrogance. The poisonous lip service being paid to ideals and values that we all hold dear. And the people who are trying to speak up as the real defenders of those values, being demeaned and maligned.

Like everybody, I was unspeakably sad on and after 9/11. But I never felt scared or threatened. Sure, I wondered if something similar could happen here, to the CN Tower, the subway, the office buildings downtown. But the fear never crept into my gut.

Now, I'm afraid. Not so much for myself, but for the thousands of people around the world, especially in the Middle East, who are going to die and suffer as this insanity crawls forward. It's a black cloud over humanity. And it seems it's just begun...

Considering the stuff I posted a few days ago, it would appear that it's Washington's policy to keep this war going, i.e., it's not going to stop with Iraq. Of course, after 9/11, Bush has spelled out who the members of the "Axis Of Evil" are: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea, etc.

Assuming the "coalition" is victorious in Iraq (and they seem to be having a harder time than they anticipated, even before getting into the urban warfare in Baghdad), that's only the first step.

Of everything I've read so far, this article from Washington Monthly Online puts it all together quite nicely. This excerpt nicely sums up the central point:

"Today, however, the great majority of the American people have no concept of what kind of conflict the president is leading them into. The White House has presented this as a war to depose Saddam Hussein in order to keep him from acquiring weapons of mass destruction--a goal that the majority of Americans support. But the White House really has in mind an enterprise of a scale, cost, and scope that would be almost impossible to sell to the American public. The White House knows that. So it hasn't even tried. Instead, it's focused on getting us into Iraq with the hope of setting off a sequence of events that will draw us inexorably towards the agenda they have in mind."

So, naturally, the question now is: who's next?

And wouldn't you know it, there's Donald Rumsfeld today, rattling his sabre at Syria and Iran.

Unbelievable.

It's nice to see articles are being written about it, though. Not sure how much good they're doing, however. One can only hope that eventually the mainstream media and enough of the American public will start to question the sanity of this policy and these actions, and bring it further into the light of day. And even if rhetoric and reason and sanity and body counts don't carry the day, there's always the possibility that the American public will start pulling on the reins once they realize the economic impact it'll have on them. The rich have already had their $700 million tax cuts slashed in half.

And amidst all this, isn't it kind of ironic that the Lord Of The Rings trilogy should be the dominant film event of these times.

"One ring to bind them..." !!

Here's hoping the little people will once again rise to the occasion.