Soapbox

Douglas Adams created a creature in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy�? that he described as “…so mind-boggling stupid that it thinks that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you.�? Well that fellow has nothing on the people running this country! George Bush apparently thinks that if he doesn’t call it a war- it won’t BE one! I guess this is no surprise coming from a man who believes that if he says that he’s balanced the budget often enough, he has.

Yesterday President George Bush marked the third anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war, a date that weighs heavily in the mands of many Americans, with a speech that lasted 2 whole minutes and did not once use the word "war".

Remember when we were all supposed to call the Iraq war the "global war on terror" and then the "Struggle against people with extremist ideologies-" or some such ridiculous thing? Well it turns out that what is taking place in Iraq right now- including the largest air campaign since the invasion- is not even a war at all! According to the president, after three years of anguish, it is simply "the Liberation of Iraq" and all the dead and injured are merely "sacrifices made".

Oh, well, that makes it alright then.

Over 2,300 Americans dead and tens of thousands wounded, a nation and an entire region in shambles, bombs going off every day killing children on their way to school, U. S. forces under fire every time they step outside their compounds, religious and political leaders assassinated whenever they speak out… and the President has decided that the real enemy is the English language! It’s not a war at all, see: it’s a lib-er-a-tion.
Donald Rumseld was asked this weekend if he could define what a civil war is, since he assures us daily that Iraq is not in the midst of one. He hemmed and hawed but couldn’t do it. Maybe it depends on what your definition of "civil" is. Or maybe it’s like pornography: he’ll know it when he sees it.

This cowardly bunch does not even have the moral courage to stand up and own what they have wrought, what they bullied and lied and cheated to create: a deadly and escalating WAR.

Sorry; I’m not buying. A war is a war is a war…and a war by any other name still makes people dead.

Is this America?

Is this the land of the free and the home of the brave, a beacon of democracy to light the world?

Today in American a talk show host threatens callers with “a little visit from security” for merely mentioning the name of a competitor, claiming that they are being obscene and harassing. True to his word, several callers have been contacted by the head of Fox security and warned to stop the harassment for saying the magic words “Keith Olberman” to the mighty Bill O’Reilly. This would be funny, if it weren’t so frightening. Apparently “I disagree” is now equivelent to making a bomb threat in America, where we torture and spy because we love.

And this week in the land of liberty the Missouri legislature announced that they will be debating a bill to make Christianity the state’s official religion. That’s right. The resolution will recognize “a Christian God,” and it does not protect minority religions, but claims it is to “protect the majority’s right to express their religious beliefs.” Only christianity merits what the resolution calls “justified recognition”

Oh, those poor, picked-on Missouri Christians. Have the Unitarians been laughing at them again?

Of course anyone who passed 8th grade civis knows that the U.S. constitution prohibits “laws respecting the establishment of religion” and the Missouri Constitution itself declares:
” no preference shall be given to nor any discrimination made against any church, sect or creed of religion, or any form of religious faith or worship”
…but maybe that doesn’t matter in America any more.

Maybe sending the thought police to knock on the door of anyone who disagrees is just a natural next step in a country where the president believes he can listen in on whomever he wishes, as long as he starts a war first. Perhaps we all wanted to forsake the Constitution, ethics and true morality in pursuit of the much loftier goal of keeping gays from being able to marry and preventing people from saying “Happy Holidays”. And maybe you want to live in a world where a woman who conceives an ectopic pregnancy is sentenced to death for her “crime”, as the abortion laws Ken Blackwell wants to enact would do.

Maybe you do. But I do not.