It’s still dark at noon, there’s a massive, scary and possibly global-warming-driven gale blowing up outside and the BBC is reporting that US troops are already attacking euphemistically described ‘Iranian interests’ along the Iran/Iraq border.
American soldiers have already raided an Iranian diplomatic mission. It seems even the inviolability of embassies is fair game now. Le Loi? C’est Bush. Game on.
Massive troop surges, attacks on diplomatic missions, naval strike groups in the Gulf, a change of peskily obstructive generals – it’s clear that, as I’ve always said, megalomaniac midget George Bush is is planning to nuke Iran. The only question is when.
There’s depression and then there’s despair and this news, although expected, is tipping me towards the latter. It’s tempting to take a mental health day, to go back to bed and sleep it all away, but what good would that do? It’d still be there when I woke up.
No, Bush really is riding into his longed-for Armageddon with his eyes wide shut and nothing and no-one seems able to stop him, not even his own father – or maybe especially not his own father. Famously he’s said he’ll carry on to ‘victory’, whatever that is, even if only Laura and the dog support him – he’s even willing to fire his own officers, who, if they gainsay the boy emperor, are swiftly replaced with biddable fundy automatons.
He’s also promised a ‘cataclysmic fight to the death‘ should Congress attempt to oppose or depose him; indeed he’s already divorced one of his office wives in order to get lawyered up for the fray by hiring a veteran Watergate defence counsel.
Maybe I’m hoping for too much too soon, given the time differences, but there’s a very strange yet pregnant lull in the public conversation on the subject of Bush’s speech last night, as though people are hoping this is all not really happening. Some discuss Bush’s odd and apparently drug-fuelled affect and there is much weary outrage, but the overall tone, from the left blogs at least, seems to be despairing resignation .
Wingnut bloggers, as one would expect, are creaming their pants at the anticipation of an onscreen bloodbath.
The major US media outlets in general (though with a couple of honourable exceptions) appear to be supinely accepting this further invasion and the latest pre-emptive attack on a sovereign nation, as though sending more young people to die and destroying yet another country are perfectly valid and acceptable options. There are no questions asked about legality or even morality – the issues just don’t arise for them.
It’s as though, faced with what GB has said time and time again and in no uncertain terms – that he intends to have his own way on Iraq whatever anyone says – the nation has just collectively thrown up its hands and gone “Oh, whatever. Look, over there, Al Qaeda! Sexy airstrikes in Somalia!”
Americans can’t keep on acting alternately as though either a] this is a movie they can switch on and off at will or b] wringing their hands that it’s all those evil Republicans fault and not their responsibilty and that they’ve been hijacked by some shadowy neocon cabal and “it’s nothing to do with me, man, I voted for Gore. “
Every minute they and their elected representatives allow this administration to continue to flout the country’s own constitution and international law. every US citizen becomes more complicit, whether they opposed the war, voted against Bush or not.
Let’s face it, if America really wanted rid of him, they’d’ve read the Declaration of Independence :
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it
is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers
in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and
Happiness””
and then marched on DC with metaphorical pitchforks long since. It’s their sons and dusghters that’ll be dying after all.
But no, because of national self-interest and greed the citizenry have shirked their responsibility to their nation and the world. This vain and self-obsessed psychopath and his plan for a Middle East in nuclear flames is the result.
The Responsibility by Peter Appleton
I am the man who gives the word,
If it should come, to use the Bomb.
I am the man who spreads the word
From him to them if it should come.
I am the man who gets the word
From him who spreads the word from him.
I am the man who drops the Bomb
If ordered by the one who’s heard
From him who merely spreads the word
The first one gives if it should come.
I am the man who loads the Bomb
That he must drop should orders come
From him who gets the word passed on
By one who waits to hear from him.
I am the man who makes the Bomb
That he must load for him to drop
If told by one who gets the word
From one who passes it from him.
I am the man who fills the till,
Who pays the tax, who foots the bill
That guarantees the Bomb he makes
For him to load for him to drop
If orders come from one who gets
The word passed on to him by one
Who waits to hear it from the man
Who gives the word to use the Bomb.
I am the man behind it all
I am the one responsible.
Read more: Iraq, Iran, War, Nuclear bombs, Surge, Bush, Responsibilty, War poetry
