Editorial #2

This post was written by guest author, Andy Gately.

I admit that the intro to my article made fun of Bush’s inarticulation, but my article focused on his policies. But you gotta admit, its pretty embarrasing having a president who builds up our nuclear program, but can’t pronounce “nuclear.”

To begin with, all that crap on the Bush website about saving the environment is just talk, sure he “supports those proposals,” that doesn’t mean he’s gonna make it happen. That’s a token gesture if there ever was one, and only lip service to placate the environmentalists, most of which see right through it. Why is Bush drilling all over the god damn place if he’s such a fan of renewable energy and conservation? He talks a lot of game, but his actions reveal his real allegiances — to the companies that financed his campaign: big oil and multinational corporations.

Your response to my referring to the average American as politically stupid and easily misled completely missed the point. Clearly, Americans have proven that they can be manipulated by their leaders since the public has just backed a completely unjustified war. How can you in good conscience vote to send more people our age to die in a country that (a) has never attacked us, (b) has never threatened to attack us, (c) is one of at least a half dozen hot spots around the world in which there are human rights abuses, and yet we are ignoring those because they are of no strategic interest, and (d) had no physical evidence of WMD’s, before OR after our invasion. The whole pre-emptive strike is the most ludicrous concept ever. If our inspectors had found evidence of nuclear weapons, MAYBE we could then send in troops, but when they didn’t find shit, we’re like “Too bad, we’re still gonna come kick your ass. Fuck the rest of the world’s protests.” That’s the basic message we sent — if you disagree with us, tough shit, cause we can bomb whoever we want, with our without global consensus. The president even sabotaged the whole inspection thing — he sent in a few CIA agents DISGUISED as weapons inspectors to spy on the Iraqis. Way to make a sham of the whole peace process, chief.

The old line about how Saddam is evil and had to removed is a bullshit argument. Of course Saddam’s evil, but it is documented and commonly known that we tolerated his massacres of the Kurds as long as he continued to facilitate our access to oil in the region. It was ONLY once he decided to invade Kuwait that we said “enough already.” But it wasn’t to protect the Kuwaiti people, oh no, we just used that as the perfect excuse to get into Kuwait and set up air bases there to further extend our imperial stretch into the Middle East and our leverage over oil prices. Bush senior clearly didn’t give a shit about the people there, because he promised the Iraqi people military support if they rose up and fought Saddam, then once Saddam retreated out of Kuwait, he REFUSED to go after him and left Saddam to murder all the Iraqi people we encouraged to resist. That’s the kind of people we’ve got leading us. Liars who seize any opportunity to further ensure “American” interests.

Here’s another fun fact. Did you know that immediately after Saddam heard that the US was pissed off about his invading Kuwait, he offered to settle the dispute with the US through peaceful negotiations, and made MULTIPLE peace offerings, even offering to retreat back into Iraq? And what did Bush Sr. do? He rejected them all flat out, saying “we won’t negotiate.” Why would he do this? Because he used the invasion, like I said, as an excuse to get his greedy little hands further into the Middle East. Then, to top it off he lied to the American people and said “I went to war as a last resort, only after all chances at diplomatic resolution repeatedly failed.” Sounds familiar. What a fucking liar. And the average American bought it completely, despite the fact that, if they bother to get their info from something other than the Bush-worshipping Fox network, they could learn the truth for themselves, from plenty of published sources. Hence, THE AVERAGE AMERICAN IS STUPID. Or, they just don’t care unless it directly affects them. Probably a combination.

9/11 was Bush Jr’s excuse to go back to the Middle East under the bullshit allegations that Saddam was somehow connected to Bin Laden. Are you beginning to see a family pattern here? This intelligence claim came from ONE IRAQI INFORMANT, as the 9/11 commission discovered. That is clearly not enough evidence to send a country to war. And yet we did. And I cannot understand how you think it was a good idea for Bush to ignore the U.N.’s protests. What the fuck good is a global peace organization when we can just circumvent it anytime we damn well please? Explain that to me, please. We act like we’re the God of this planet.

Here’s another idea — hypothetically, even if Iraq did have nukes, who the fuck are we to say they can’t? They didn’t threaten us, we shouldn’t get in their affairs. What, we can have nukes but no one else can? Why? And if we are deciding to play global police, then we should LISTEN TO THE REST OF THE WORLD when they disagree. But our administration is too self-righteous to back down or admit they’re wrong. I’m not saying previous presidents were much better, I’m saying the whole system is corrupt. Consider that India and Pakistan have nukes, and we’re not trying to take those away. They’re unstable too. Why all the double-standards? If you can offer some insight, Shannon, by all means, enlighten me.

You ended stating “And finally, you said that ‘there are intelligent responses to provocative material, and then there is Shannon’s response.’ If you are going to say that, at least get it right. There was only one response besides mine, so there was ‘an intelligent response’ not ‘responses.’ ”

Wow. I didn’t say there are intelligent responses to “my article,” I said “there are intelligent response to provocative material,” meaning not just mine, ALL material out there. I would think that was obvious. Read carefully first so your quips at least make sense.