Surrounded by wee ones in all their glorious cuteness, I'm nonetheless unable to document any of it due to this foul, angry mood.
I've stayed away from political blogging, mostly from ambivalence. Last year I devoted most of my time to writing a political blog (and gave very little thought to this blog) but after the train wreck of November 2, 2004, my heart went out of politics. It was apparent to me my that my country had been hijacked by a bunch of heartless, brainless goons intent on enriching themselves and corporate crooks while wiping their ass with the Constitution. My faith in this country has been completely deflated along with my will to write a political blog.
That faith took another hit today. Reading what's featured in today's column by Bob Herbert in the NYT is absolutely infuriating:
The officer's comment was a harbinger of the gratuitous violence that, according to Mr. Delgado, is routinely inflicted by American soldiers on ordinary Iraqis. He said: "Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They'd keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people's heads."
He said he had confronted guys who were his friends about this practice. "I said to them: 'What the hell are you doing? Like, what does this accomplish?' And they responded just completely openly. They said: 'Look, I hate being in Iraq. I hate being stuck here. And I hate being surrounded by hajis.' "
"Haji" is the troops' term of choice for an Iraqi. It's used the way "gook" or "Charlie" was used in Vietnam.
I can't see how anyone, right or left, would consider this defensible, acceptable, or make them proud to be an American. I swear to God, if the 2006 election doesn't exhibit an anti-neocon/anti-James Dobson backlash, I'm moving to Europe.
Oh, by all means, I'm expecting gutless conservative trolls to leave cowardly 'anonymous' comments because A) it happens all the time and B) they lack the brains and gonads to risk a truly reasoned argument.
16 comments:
"I swear to God, if the 2006 election doesn't exhibit an anti-neocon/anti-James Dobson backlash, I'm moving to Europe."
Can I come with?
I know it's wrong, but truly, ignorance is bliss.
I felt the same way after November. And I just read that Herbert column too. It doesn't really surprise me, though it does disgust me.
With all this stuff going down, how long can this country maintain a pretense of innocence? And you know it's our kids who are going to be left holding the bag long after these evil ones have left washington. grrrrrr
I'll come with you, as long as we don't have to sleep outdoors. ;)
I'm in, too. I'll even sleep outdoors.
Why go to Europe when you can come here and live in my basement?
Okay Jim I'll play devil's advocate here.......
What does what happened in November have to do with morons acting stupid and hitting innocent people over the head with coke bottles? I fail to see the connection.
Jim, my point is that the country re-elected the liar who got us into an illegitimate conflict and our troops are over there acting like bullies because they don't want to be there.
The entire WMD canard has been totally exposed. The report last week by the CIA has put the entire WMD issue 6 feet under.
Is the world better off without Saddam Hussein? Definitely. Is the US safer as a result of the Iraq invasion? Not by a long shot. The State Departments own reort this past week meekly admits that global terrorist attacks increased 3-fold in 2004.
Judging by the latest polls, however, it appears a great many Americans are regretting their vote in 2004.
So these soldiers should not be accountable for their actions because President Bush was elected in 2004? Bush made them do it?
Straw-man, Jim; I never made that my conclusion. Those soldiers should be held accountable - just as W should be held accountable for lying to get us into a war we should have never been fighting.
And that was the point - the electorate chose to re-elect a liar. The mess we're in over there (and the resentment/misbehavior exhibited by the troops) is W's fault. Connect the dots and it goes back to him and his dishonesty.
So I suppose then that the actions if say were not done to Iraqi's and was done on US Citizens here at home, your blame for there behavior would then shift to whom?
Or evere "their" behavior! LOL
Suddenly my fingers don't work. evere=even
G, step. away. from the Crown. ; )
Can I just say that this little sparring match is making me *hot*?
Let me know if you guys need help figuring out which pee pee is bigger.
See Jim? I told ya it would work!
Thank you, Charone, you said it better than I could. Those kids have been put into a situation where this behavior is condoned. It's like one huge Stanford Prison Guard experiment.
This is not just a few bad apples. Of course the guys who did this should face consequences.
But this strategy of dealing with prisoners comes from the very top. Read the Gonzales Memo. It is Rumsfeld, and ultimately Bush as well, who approved of, who most likely called for, this kind of treatment.
So yeah, punish the little guys who carried out the orders. But let's not forget that this treatment reflects in a very clear way the world view of the top people in this administration, their utter and blatant lack of respect for international law, including the Geneva Conventions. The November election was taken by them as a stamp of approval, that they can get away with anything. And they may be right. That's why this is so disgusting.
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