Bob's Links and Rants

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Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Seriously Depressed: Sorry, I can't seem to get back into blogging. The war seems to me to have proved that most of the excuses for it were nonsense: Iraq clearly had no large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons, and didn't pose a serious threat to any of its neighbors. One oppressive regime has replaced another. So the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have defeated Slauson Middle School by a score of tens of thousands to one hundred. Congatu-frigging-lations. International law and what little respect remained for the US in the world have been destroyed. We are hated and feared, and with very good reason.

Meanwhile, the same Republicrats who said we had to "support our troops" have been pulling the rug out from under them at home. Veterans benefits have been cut--some support. Two-hundred thousand troops will be returning home, many sick or wounded, to find that the government they thought they were fighting for doesn't care about them. If they leave the military, they will find it nearly impossible to find a job. Paul Krugman makes this obvious and depressing observation:

The overwhelming political lesson of the last year is that war works — that is, it's an excellent cover for the Republican Party's domestic political agenda. In fact, war works in two ways. The public rallies around the flag, which means the President and his party; and the public's attention is diverted from other issues.

As long as the nation is at war, then, it will be hard to get the public to notice what the flagwavers are doing behind our backs. And it just so happens that the "Bush doctrine," which calls for preventive war against countries that may someday pose a threat, offers the possibility of a series of wars against nasty regimes with weak armies.

Someday the public will figure all this out. But it may be a very long wait.


I must say I am not at all excited about living the rest of my life in this warped country. I am very tempted to move to Mexico or Costa Rica and hope that the Grim Reaper gets me before the Dim Freeper (W, that is, or his brother--US News is predicting the 2008 election will be Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton--haven't we suffered enough already?). I guess my course of action for the next year and a half is to do everything I can to get Kucinich or Dean elected president. I don't think I want to stay through another four (or twelve) years of Bush rule.