September 11, 2001

It WASN'T a pleasant way to wake up. My alarm went off and blared something incomprehensible about a plane-crash into the WTC, then there's this eye-witness giving his side of the story, then he starts freaking out and yelling about another plane. Then there's another explosion and the next thing I know I was downstairs buck-ass nekkid fiddling with the TV to get a grainy image of a 737 doing its best confused starling impression into the side of the second tower of the World Trade Center (maybe the plane had just never seen its own reflection before and was curious?)

What exactly does one say about this sort of thing? Once was a possible accident involving bad air-traffic control systems, but a second time in half an hour meant, to me at least, the slight possibility of planning and/or premeditation.

Then there was the stressful ride to work, filled with the hit on the Pentagon, the shut-down of all air traffic, the blast outside the State department, a possible fire at the White House, and the curiosity of several flights unaccounted for.

I'm not all that much of a patriot, but I have to say freely that I was fairly enveloped with rage. None of the "It can't happen here" rage, but more the kind of "Why you gonna' bring yo' BULLSHIT up in MY hood" kind of ire.

It's time to take the gloves off. The last time we got hit like this was the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, and we all know what happened to the Japanese: by the end of that one they needed a radhaz-suit just to walk around the countryside. Of course, they took over our economy later, so maybe having the shit bombed out of them would be the best thing for the Middle East right now.

But who to bomb? If the perpetrators are smart they'll just keep their mouths shut. This hit proves the U.S. can be shaken, and it will lead to many more tries if we don't get the people who did this. But will they give a fuck if we DO get to them? Probably not. They're martys, remember? If they die in service to Allah or whomever, they automatically go to whatever passes for heaven. It's hard to fight terrorists when they don't give a damn about their lives because all roads lead to heaven for them. They've convinced themselves that no matter what they do, they're right. Hard to combat a lifetime of indoctrination...

So what to do? Personally, I can hear a conversation between George Sr. and George Dubya wherein Elder Bush (known fondly as "Burning Bush" to his fans) tells his slightly dim son to "Crank up the black-ops teams and hit the top 5 candidates, just out of sheer principle." This is one that I don't think should be taken care of in the courts. They haven't played by any rules, why should we? News of thousands of Palestinians rejoicing in the streets probably doesn’t do much for their cause here in the U.S. The Middle East has been a problem for seven THOUSAND years, and a bunch of meddlesome honkies sticking their nose in the middle of a domestic dispute isn't going to make a damn bit of difference except to give them another target to hit. Maybe we should just fund Israel, have them drop the Big One and finish up the war with Windex...

Oh, and I'd HATE to be even vaguely middle-eastern looking today...Allen, get Riz, Tony and Reza to a safe house for me, eh?

Looks like it's going to be martial law, military at the airports and isolationism for a good long while until the Middle East and all their problems are engulfed in sand...I personally plan to invest heavily in some of those "Real Women" dolls, guns and liquor and lock myself in the house until they pry me out with artillery...see you all in a few years...

Jes' kiddin'...

P.S.: Gabe, Redboy, Kendra...I hope you're all OK...buy groceries and stay put until they open the roads from Manhattan again, then get the fuck out for a few days/weeks/years...

Pre-War Post - Warts And All

Disclaimer:
I wrote this letter before the deal went down and have since been proven right on some parts and dreadfully wrong on the rest; mea culpa, I can accept that, along with the shame of having been one of the many tools who thought it might be fun to go play with our toys in the sand. Unlike the Republican and Democratic parties, I can learn from my mistakes and make sure it never happens again. The morass that is Iraq shows no sign of stopping or lessening, and perhaps the only thing we can do is to pull out and allow the region to reach its own sordid equilibrium (even though Iraq will probably end up as an extremist religious theocracy that hates us whether or not we pull out now or later). As it stands now, we've basically served as recruiters for various horrible extremist groups around the world and we're probably in for a rough ride. Americans haven't learned to believe in evil yet, and they somehow think they can stop terrorism, but the truth is that any retard who has a computer can get online and make a bomb and blow someone up. Don't be in a hurry to give up your rights because you think it will make you more secure; it wont.

And now to our pre-war post (warts and all):

“The last time the French demanded “more evidence”, it came marching into Paris under a German flag.”
-David Letterman

War sucks. I'll agree with you on that. However, it is my firm belief that sticking one's head in the sand is not the way to carry out foreign policy. Isolationism doesn't work, especially when you're the biggest target in the world. Admittedly, when we hit Iraq (and I do mean WHEN), it will be the first time in our history that we have been pulled into a conflict without first being provoked. The times they are a-changing...

I watched Colin Powell give his speech to the UN to try to get unanimous support for an attack. I think his argument was weak and unconvincing, and it is my belief that Bush doesn't really have CURRENT, utterly damning evidence of misconduct by Iraq in the weapons category. That said, I think that there has been more than ample misconduct in the recent past to justify his fears that Iraq is developing some crazy weapons over there to ensure that his regime remains in power and also to sell to the highest bidder (or craziest, if they plan to use it on us.)

On the UN website there is a list of Iraq's violations of its agreements with the UN that is as long as your arm. Here is a link to a paper on another site (not the UN) that lists, as of *1996*-*1998*, some of the suspicions on Iraq:

http://globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/crs/Crsiraq2.htm

There is NO QUESTION in anyone's mind that Iraq has done a great deal of killing in the very recent past. The site Physicians for Human Rights (www.phrusa.org) has a very long list of problems relating to human rights that Iraq has been guilty of. Actually, we're not sure they're guilty of them because they haven't let human rights inspectors into Iraq since 1992. So since we didn't actually SEE them gas the Kurds, and the only evidence we actually have are flimsy eyewitness accounts and soil samples containing breakdown products of nerve agents, I guess they haven't really done anything (deep, deep sarcasm here.)

The UN has been as effective at stopping conflict as a rabbit is at halting an 18-wheeler. There are many, many resolutions condemning Iraqi violence towards its own citizens (as well as other places), yet they never seem to manage to acquire enough "evidence" (meaning Pol Pot steps forward, blood dripping from his right arm which holds a still-twitching head, and says, "Whoops, you're right, I DID murder 1/3 of my country’s population. My bad.") to take any action.

The liberal view is that everyone has a right not to get killed for displaying any opposition to those in power, and that view is correct. However, there exists a gap in resolve that allows your average three-bong-hit Ghandi to stand up and occasionally get bloody to give people those rights and make sure they keep them.

As for the oil argument, I saw a direct quote from Mandela in S. Africa saying that the U.S. is after Iraq's oil because it produces 65% of the world’s oil. Aside from being completely wrong in his figures (Iraq produces about 5% of the world's oil, UN figures, and most of it is drilled for and distributed by French companies...any wonder why they pussed out, aside from being French? NOW who has the oil interests?) his reasoning was silly. We don't get even a fraction of a percent of our oil from Iraq, so there goes that argument. As for getting more from them in the future, how long do you think it's going to take to rebuild the country so we COULD get oil from them? Do you think a war (which is NOT cheap) and a Marshall-Style post-war plan (which will cost more than the war, probably) justify the POSSIBILITY that some companies may produce a profit for the US (and it'd be a DAMN long while to see that happen)?

Oh, and they also say that they don't have any nerve agents on hand, even though every goddamned news agency on the friggin' PLANET reported that they tried to buy over 1,000,000 autohypos and doses of atropine from Turkey a few months ago? Atropine is what is given in the autohypos as an antidote for nerve agents such as Sarin, Soman and VX that block acetylcholinesterase. The only other use for atropine is (in MINUTE doses) as a pre-treatment for anaesthesia. So suddenly Saddam has decided to start removing goiters? Don't think so...

So Bush may be banging his little tin war drum to distract from the fact that he has an enormous deficit to deal with and the economy is in the toilet (and yes, I DO wish Clinton was back in office.) I just wish Bush would find his penis again, that way he’d keep his hands off “the button.” That’s the nature of Capitalism, nobody does something for nothing. We are not claiming to be altruists in this conflict, it just so happens that a greater good for the Iraqi people will come about if the Hussein regime takes a powder. I mean, it’d be nice if they had someone to vote for besides ol’broom’stache, eh? Remember those elections, when he received 100%, that’s 100%, of the vote and let out a bunch of political prisoners in celebration? Can anyone here name the opposition candidate? Anyone? You, sir, yes you, the one in the corduroy jacket with the suede arm patches, can YOU name the opposition candidate? Well I can, and his name is “lunchmeat”, or perhaps “dead-man walking” would be a better name.

Oh, and probably the main reason that Russia is stepping out is that they’re still owed billions of dollars for missiles they sold Iraq during the Iraq-Iran conflict, and even though they’ve welched so far, if Iraq doesn’t exist then Russia DEFINITELY won’t get their money, which they need quite badly.

So you say that a war will cost many lives, military and civilian. Hasn’t it already cost many lives from starvation, disease and government gas attacks on the Kurds in Northern and Southern Iraq? (what, did you think the no-fly-zones were there so the U.S. could show off it’s pretty planes daily?) Do you think that the oil-for-food-and-medicine program actually got food and medicine to the Iraqi people? Those who have will always have, and I can pretty much guarantee that all that money, food and medicine went to maintain the Iraqi military and keep Saddam in moustache-wax…he probably hasn’t missed any meals from this whole deal.

So I guess the bottom line for me is that I don’t think war is a great idea, but when it MUST be done, it MUST be done as quickly and with as much overwhelming force as possible to minimize bloodshed. There is no polite way to kill. If you want rights, you can’t stick your head in the sand when other people don’t have them, and the best altruism comes (in true Capitalist fashion) when BOTH sides can profit. Would I go to war myself? Yes. Sometimes you have to take a stand even if it means you get your ass handed to your parents wrapped in a little US flag.

As for waiting for international opinion to sway in our direction, do you remember what happened the LAST time we followed international opinion? Yeah, we stopped at Iraq’s borders and didn’t go clean out the rats nest, so now we have to come back and deal with it in a much more dangerous time.