I Weep for this Country
Nov. 3rd, 2004 05:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Literally. I cried myself to sleep last night and my eyes are leaking again today. I don't know what people are thinking. I don't know how they can look at that idiot and see a "leader" of any kind. A draft-dodging drug using party boy who has alway cheated to win. Looks like we're in for four more years of tax breaks for the wealthy and young men dying in the name of...oil.
I just don't understand. All I know is I'm going to encourage my son to marry his fiance as soon as possible. I don't trust the idiot not to reinstate the draft and my child is not going. He has a baby to take care of. I won't give up my child to an unjust war.
Anyway, I'm still shell-shocked. I don't know how I'm going to concentrate at work today. Because I will look at the people around me and wonder--why?
I just don't understand. All I know is I'm going to encourage my son to marry his fiance as soon as possible. I don't trust the idiot not to reinstate the draft and my child is not going. He has a baby to take care of. I won't give up my child to an unjust war.
Anyway, I'm still shell-shocked. I don't know how I'm going to concentrate at work today. Because I will look at the people around me and wonder--why?
grossly misled....
Date: 11/9/04 01:11 pm (UTC)Regarding the "draft dodging" performed by Mr. Bush, I'll point this out: Bush volunteered to join the Guard. His daddy may or may not have pulled some strings to get him into the pilot training program of the Air National Guard, but G.W. still had to pass all the tests to finish the training. He then flew F-102s. The F-102 was one of the most dangerous fixed wing fighters to fly. Also, when Bush was in the National Guard, we were still at the height of the Cold War and the Soviet Union was constantly flying into US air space with recon aircraft as well as bombers. The F-102 was commonly used to interdict the Soviet aircraft and fly as an "escort", though they were mostly there to be ready to shoot them down if they started acting up. Bush may not have had to do this, but it is not out of the question for it to have been asked of him at some point. Every time he strapped on that F-102 and took off, he was taking a chance, Soviets or no.
The National Guard has been called to active duty over seas since it's inception in 1913. Remember reading about World War 1 or World War II? National Guard units fought overseas in both of those wars. The National Guard can be federalized, at which point it becomes part of the United States military. Anyone who joins the National Guard with the idea that they'll never be sent overseas hasn't paid attention to their history books.
Finding a six foot tall Arab on dialysis has proven more difficult than one would expect, but I assure you that American soldiers are still looking for him. While some units were pulled out of Afghanistan to go into Iraq, other units replaced them. The Russians worked for a decade trying to turn the Afghan people into subjects. We've been in there for three years and barely that.
WMDs. Saddam had WMDs. They were gone by the time we got in there. How long they had been gone? I don't know. Saddam had from the early 1990s to move them. If he was smart, he moved them to Syria, or through it to the Beka Valley in Lebanon. A decade and more than a dozen UN resolutions didn't make him give them up.
WMDs were not the only reason to go into Iraq. After 9/11, Bush gave a speech in which he said that the US was going to go after terrorists and treat nations that harbor and fund terrorists as terrorists and to go after them, too. "But Saddam wasn't linked with Al Qaeda," you say? Ansar Al Islam had a training camp in Iraq between the Kurdish region and the town of Tikrit. Ansar Al Islam is funded by Al Qaeda. That one not good enough for you? How about this: Saddam paid the families of Palestinian terrorists $25,000 if the terrorist killed any Israelis. Funding terrorism, right there.
You mention that we went into Iraq for oil and to finish the job that George H.W. Bush couldn't finish. I'll remind you that A) G.W. wants to drill for oil in Alaska. Reasons for this are numerous, but the best one is because it reduces our dependency on foreign oil. Why go to war over foreign oil if you can get it here? Besides, Saudi Arabia has more oil and is more easily accessible. The equipment's already there and run largely by Americans, and we already have a military presence there. We could have made war on them for oil, which would have made more sense from a logistical and tactical perspective. The war for oil bit doesn't wash. B) I remind you that Saddam Hussein did try to have George H.W. Bush assassinated in the early 1990s while he was still president. Last time I checked, assassinating or attempting to assassinate a head of state is an act of war. The fact that Iraq did not become synonymous with "World's Largest Glass Covered Parabolic Dish" in 1991 is a testament to American restraint.
Re: grossly misled....
Date: 11/9/04 01:11 pm (UTC)Then there's the talk about our troops mutinying and refusing to follow orders. I assume you're talking about the group that refused to run an unarmored convoy through a dangerous region - correct me if I'm wrong. That convoy would have had the proper armor, except that Senator John Kerry voted against the $87 Billion in funding that would have supplied the necessary armor to those vehicles and others, as well as to the individual troops. John Kerry supports giving our troops all of the funding they need to finish the job....except the $87,000,000,000 he voted against.
John Kerry's concession does not make him classy. He didn't stand a chance of winning the electoral vote at the time of his concession. He didn't even have a chance of stealing it, since the margin Bush led by in Ohio was greater than the number of provisional and absentee ballots anyway. Without Ohio, Kerry had no chance of winning. His concession was to keep the Democrat party from looking more foolish than they did in 2000 when their candidate couldn't win his home COUNTY. Was the concession wise? Yes. Classy? No.
A direct quote from you, if I may: "The only real effect the Homeland Security measures have had is to keep Aunt Bertha from bringing her knitting needles on a plane." Would you like to know the reason for this? No? Well, I'm going to tell you anyway. Bleeding heart Liberals will whine and cry and throw a fit over any attempt at profiling those who would wish you harm and call it "racial" profiling. Except in this case, they'd be right. The people we have to watch out for are primarily Muslims of Arab decent between the ages of 18 and 30. But since any attempt to go "Hrm...that Arab man with the bulky jacket in July...in Texas, with the wires hanging out of it and a sign around his neck saying 'Allahu Akbar! Death to the Infidels' looks suspicious" gets met with "RACIAL PROFILING, STOP!", it's really tough to do their job. So to be politically correct, they have to give Aunt Bertha crap about her knitting needles and let the Arab dude wearing a bulky jacket with wires hanging out of it the middle of July in El Paso go.
Here's a question for everyone playing at home: Would you rather have the radical Islamic fundamentalists shooting at and trying to blow up our military personnel, or would you rather have them blowing up shopping malls and school busses here in the States?
Kerry lost the election. Bush can't run again in 2008. If the Democrats want the White House back, they'll get a candidate that doesn't make Teddy Kennedy look conservative.
Re: grossly misled....
Date: 11/9/04 08:16 pm (UTC)