 |
[RC] Good Editorial - Maureen A. Fager
Bush Gives You The Finger Millions worldwide rally against Dubya's oily little war -- not that he gives a damn By Mark Morford And then there's the one about the smirky war-happy oil-drunk American president who shrugged off the disdain of pretty much the entire world and humiliated us all on a global scale and went ahead and blasted the living hell out of an otherwise worthless oil-rich nation with no real proof of serious wrongdoing and for no justifiable reason, except for the oil and the power and for Daddy and for the face-saving faux-macho pride, and the oil. This is the guy. This is the president who cares not a whit that just last weekend, over a million people rallied in London -- the largest political gathering of any kind in British history -- to protest his (and Tony Blair's) little multibillion-dollar war. Or that 500,000 gathered at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, chanting slogans against his fearmongering ego, or that another 500,000 attempted to gather for a huge protest near the U.N. building in New York but, lacking a permit, were partially blocked by police. This is the smirky Texas executioner-president who looked on while even in God-thumping pro-family ultraconservative Colorado Springs, Colo., land of the Born Agains and the heavily uptight, police fired tear gas into a crowd of war protesters, even though children were in an adjacent playground. Isn't that nice? And Christian? Shrub just shrugs. Damn hippies. God bless America. And, really, who cares about the huge protests in Amsterdam, Brussels, Barcelona, Melbourne, Paris, Rome, Berlin, San Francisco, Seoul, Tokyo and at least 600 other cities all over the world last week? We've got a bogus war to fabricate here, people. And an environment to gouge. An economy to gut. Busy, busy. And, besides, were any of those horrified protesters petrochemical CEOs? Military-supply execs? Members of Bush Sr.'s draconian Carlyle Group? Colleagues of the ShrubCo cabal of neo-conservative gangster executives who stand to rake in billions when we go to war? No they were not. Screw 'em. Tough numbers to deny, nonetheless. Over 600 cities across the globe, all staging major anti-war rallies against America's aggro attitude and insipid war posture, millions and millions of people -- teachers and salespeople and politicians and doctors and students and workers, every creed and gender and age group and nationality and hairstyle -- and yet Geedubya simply equates them all with some sort of negligible "focus group." And he said he doesn't base his policy decisions on focus groups, of course, because naturally he uses Barbie's Super Magic 8 Ball and old secret codes from his Vietnam draft-dodging days intermixed with his father's late-night gin-soaked advice and a cassette of Dick Cheney whispering demon-conjuring incantations in Latin. I mean, really, how else can you explain it? This is the president who "respectfully disagrees" with just about everyone on the planet, with the almost universally held and repeatedly proven fact that Saddam isn't the slightest threat to the U.S. and never really has been, nor that he had anything to do with 9/11. Hey, with that sort of respect, who needs a bloody violent skull bludgeoning? Can I get a hell-yeah? This is the president who scowled his super-duper scariest scowl at Hans Blix, chief U.N. weapons inspector, as Blix calmly and rationally rebuffed everything a flustered Colin Powell could throw at him during the U.S. plea before the U.N. Security Council to please please please let America launch all our big new bombs and shiny cool expensive Lockheed Martin planes and then arm up 180,000 of America's poor and have them go kill a half-million scary Iraqi people and destabilize an entire continent even further, please please oh pretty please. U.N. inspectors, Blix reiterated for the 20th time, have found next to nothing. All those buildings in Powell's super-top-secret satellite photos? Empty. Nuclear factories? Nada. All those terrifying WMDs? Almost nonexistent. Can you smell it? This is when all that pro-war WWII-style jingoism starts to reek, its fumes just a little sour, a little venomous and toxic and soul curdling. Or that could just be Rumsfeld's cologne. Eau du Warhead. A touching side story: J. Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House and noted hunk of conservative sweating Muenster cheese, was actually considering legislation to ban French wine and bottled water -- for "health reasons," he said, and not because France has smartly dissed poor Shrub on the whole bogus-war thing. Isn't that cute? Hastert claimed that some French wine is clarified using cow blood. Hee. Oh Dennis. As the kids say, are you high? Hastert also reportedly claimed that certain molecules in French fries and French toast and French ticklers have perhaps been secretly coded by French porn stars with perverted terrorist messages designed to drive American babies insane and cause massive genital warts on teenagers and SUV owners. Just, you know, something he read. Note to Dennis: hush now. But enough with the bit players. Have we seen this sort of thing before? This kind of protest, on this scale? Vietnam rings a rather bitter, and heartbreaking, bell. But that movement had a decidedly different complexion. Huge protests, yes, but more localized, organized largely by doomed students, not quite so many millions of "normal" citizens rallying from Spain to Germany to Greece, all on the same day, all holding up signs featuring giant photos of our smirky squinty blank-eyed leader with a big red X over his face. And oh yes, upwards of 50,000 U.S. troops were killed in Vietnam. In Iraq, we might suffer, say, two dozen casualties, most from our own mistakes and "friendly fire" (if Desert Storm is any precedent), while we can expect to massacre roughly half a million Iraqis in the first week. Now, that's patriotic. Would anyone tolerate Shrub's warmongering if we stood to lose 50,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq? Hardly. Good thing it's mostly just innocent foreign civilians and children. Which brings us to the latest phony Orange Alert. And all the other astoundingly coincidental announcements of alleged terrorist action threatening the U.S., shrill alarmist rhetoric that, every single time, just so happened to be conveniently timed for just when Shrub was prancing most precariously in the glaring light of general idiocy and ratings slippage. Enron scandal: Time for a terror alert. The economy is tanking: Look out! Terrorists! Tax cuts for the rich: Terrorists are in your yard! The U.N. rejects your plea, the whole damn world is against your little war and you need to drum up some additional domestic fear like, pronto, to justify your small-scale megalomania: Stand back, time for a bogus Orange Alert! Coincidence? You do the math. This just in: A federal appeals court just decided that Arkansas officials can use drugs to render an insane murderer sane enough to execute. True. Finally, something Geedubya can cheer about. Just like Texas, eh, George? When life was easy and killing them crimnulz was just a flipped switch away? When all you had to deal with were a few dozen ragtag protesters outside the prison, decrying your love of killin' in the name of the state? Shoot. Life sure was simpler then. Damn hippies. _________________________________________________________________ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
|