A friend sent me this link to an interview with Gimli (Jonathan Rhys-Davies). It reminded me why I chose to support this war at the beginning, even though I felt and feel that the present president is a liar and a cheat and as corrupt and venal a man as has ever sat in the Oval Office.
Under the tenets of fundamentalist Islam, many of us on this list are candidates for the sword in our guts, rocks thrown to stone us, the axe to the wrist or the neck, the bullet to the head, the nuclear weapon to our town, smallpox in our crowded subway, the torch to our library, the hot knife to our tongue, the shut door keeping us in the house, the burkha over our bodies, the veil over our faces. I do not speak of the wrongs done to our ancestors in the past; I speak of us, today. Now.
Not all Muslims feel this way. Many do not.
Yet the great destruction of the World Trade Center buildings in New York City, and the airplane in the side of the Pentagon, and a fourth plane in a field in Pennsylvania, was so much pawn-to-K4. It was militant Islam’s opening move, not the endgame.
It is vitally important, for us and for our children’s children’s children’s great-great-grandchildren, and the world that they live in, that we put our whole concentration to this challenge. If American sons must die so that American granddaughters need not wear the hijab against their wills, then so be it.
War is upon us, whether we would risk it or not.
I’m thinking about sending this to an e-mail list I subscribe to, for pagans and pagan-friendly people. I haven’t decided whether to do so yet, and feedback would be appreciated.
Hmmmm…
The breakdown in the argument, of course, is that Iraq and militant Islam were about as far apart as you could get until we forced the partnership onto them.
And if you think that we’ll actively do anything remotely like installing democracy in Iraq, take a look east to Afghanistan right now for the blueprint for the future. A Western installed weak central government dependent on the West for its security…a client state. It may look different in Iraq becasue of the oil; there are already State Department spokespeople speaking on background about splitting Iraq into three states for control purposes. (BBC report on Thurday — I’ll try to source it for you.)
I have no problem saying that militant Islam is a threat to Western Civilization, Andrew, and I concur that we should be vigilant and may even need to step up efforts against it; my problem with the Iraq war is that it had nothing to do with a fight against militant Islam. It was a convenient time and place for venal men to do a venal thing for their own purposes.
Hell, Wolfowitz was actively talking about a desire to “finish Iraq” BEFORE 9/11, for the precise purpose of creating a power base for the US in the region.
It’s just not as simple as Iraq = the forces arrayed against us. Why not Saudi Arabia, then?
Hmmmm…
The breakdown in the argument, of course, is that Iraq and militant Islam were about as far apart as you could get until we forced the partnership onto them.
And if you think that we’ll actively do anything remotely like installing democracy in Iraq, take a look east to Afghanistan right now for the blueprint for the future. A Western installed weak central government dependent on the West for its security…a client state. It may look different in Iraq becasue of the oil; there are already State Department spokespeople speaking on background about splitting Iraq into three states for control purposes. (BBC report on Thurday — I’ll try to source it for you.)
I have no problem saying that militant Islam is a threat to Western Civilization, Andrew, and I concur that we should be vigilant and may even need to step up efforts against it; my problem with the Iraq war is that it had nothing to do with a fight against militant Islam. It was a convenient time and place for venal men to do a venal thing for their own purposes.
Hell, Wolfowitz was actively talking about a desire to “finish Iraq” BEFORE 9/11, for the precise purpose of creating a power base for the US in the region.
It’s just not as simple as Iraq = the forces arrayed against us. Why not Saudi Arabia, then?
Considering pagans, in general, are not just left-leaning but actively left-seeking missiles … well, seems a foolish call.
You know where I stand on this issue; were I president, most of the Middle East would be a roiling sea of glass polished by the burned and broken survivors for a great solar reflector to replace the oil lost. And I’d have been doing the dead a favour. But I digress.
I can’t see where that Bush Jr is the most corrupt and venal man we’ve had in office. Clinton lied when he didn’t have to about a blowjob. Nixon got caught bugging the Democratic HQ. All Bush Jr has done is stop a villainous tyrany, put the fear of God/US into the bad guys in the ME, began addressing and drawing out the pernicious anti-Asmericanism in Europe, and begun cleaning up the biggest threat to all the things that most threaten Western Civilization on Earth, terrorism, that his predecessors left to fester. If he’s a bad man for that, well, maybe it takes a bad man to really get anything accomplished in the world.
Considering pagans, in general, are not just left-leaning but actively left-seeking missiles … well, seems a foolish call.
You know where I stand on this issue; were I president, most of the Middle East would be a roiling sea of glass polished by the burned and broken survivors for a great solar reflector to replace the oil lost. And I’d have been doing the dead a favour. But I digress.
I can’t see where that Bush Jr is the most corrupt and venal man we’ve had in office. Clinton lied when he didn’t have to about a blowjob. Nixon got caught bugging the Democratic HQ. All Bush Jr has done is stop a villainous tyrany, put the fear of God/US into the bad guys in the ME, began addressing and drawing out the pernicious anti-Asmericanism in Europe, and begun cleaning up the biggest threat to all the things that most threaten Western Civilization on Earth, terrorism, that his predecessors left to fester. If he’s a bad man for that, well, maybe it takes a bad man to really get anything accomplished in the world.