--- ah, I do so love the smell of napalm in the morning. And there
surely is a goodly amount of napalm blowing throught the blogosphere
this morning. I found a picture last night on A Small Victory that
has twisted me into an uncaring, unseeing, seething mass of fury.
Still. This morning. Even though almost twelve hours has passed since I
saw it. I'm not the only one who's written something about it either. Lileks had a few choice words about it this morning, as well.
This picture is the proverbial napalm that has engendered all of this verbiage.
There's been a lot of debate about whether or not this photo is legit. Reportedly it's from one of Little Green Football's regular posters. They were taken at the San Francisco rally on Saturday. (For more of this guy's work you can go here) I can understand where some of the more charitable posters at A Small Victory would
think that no one could be that crass, hence it was undoubtedly
photoshopped. I don't think so. I think it's for real. I'm fucking
furious. Livid. Absolutely livid. To think that someone could
conceivably hate the president and his "cronies" enough that they would
think it was all right to say that the world was better off without the
World Trade Center is fine. Good for them. They're entitled to their
free speech after all. Just because I don't like what someone has to
say doesn't mean they don't have the right to say it. But don't fucking
tell me that this guy is correct
in his assertions. Don't. Ever. Tell. Me. That. This is the anti-war
movement, my friends. No charge is too over-the-top or too revolting to
get their point across. They're against freedom that is brought about
by a man they hate. They hate
President Bush. Fine. I don't really care about that. But what is so
flaming hypocritical about their arguments---all of them---is that you
know if it had been Clinton that had liberated Iraq, none of this would
matter. They would think that a preemptive invasion of a country was
fine. They thought so about Kosovo in 1999, didn't they? That was
genocide. We'd sat on our hands during the early-90's when the Serbs
were slaughtering their neighbors left and right. Bush I let all of those poor people die...something had to be done to right that wrong. So, we went in without a UN mandate and that was just fine in 1999. Because they trusted
Bill Clinton. They don't trust GWB, so it's not all right to do this
for Iraq. It's just that simple. It's all about oil with GWB. He wants
the oil, so he invaded the country. Now, I wasn't really wild about the
notion of invading Iraq without a UN mandate, either. However, it was
pretty clear that anyone who was holding up the show in this department
wasn't objecting out of altruistic reasoning, but to protect deals
they'd inked with Saddam. They had their capitalist pig reasoning, too.
Ultimately it came down to a very simple concept: you can either talk
it to death or you can do something about it. We did something about
it, rather than sitting on our hands and worrying about whether the
President of Oblivionland was going to wage a diplomatic protest at the
UN. There comes a point in everyone's life where they have to do what
they have to do, and damn the consequences: nation states are no
different in this regard. We did what we had to do: and millions of
Iraqis are free today as a result. But the anti-war protesters don't
give a damn about that. It's completely irrelevant.
They give a damn that it wasn't their guy who did the
liberating---hence the motives behind the liberation are suspect, in
their eyes, so the War on Terrorism, the War in Iraq and everything GWB
has ever done during his presidency is EVIL, you hear? EVIL. This means
that nearly three thousand people deserved to die because it happened
during the presidency of an EVIL man. This also includes the liberation
of millions of people and the start of democracy in a country where the
concept of FREEDOM was a concept to be dreamed about. Where freedom was
something only other people could enjoy. Where freedom was a wistful
yearning, only thought about at night, under the covers, or whispered
about with friends you trusted not to turn you over to the secret
police, lest Saddam and his cronies tied your arms to the back of two pickup trucks and then instructed the drivers to put the pedal to the metal.
What the fuck?
And that's all I can really say about that. What the fuck?
It's vulgar, but it fits. Who are these people trying to convince with
their posters? With their devotion to actually marching throught the
streets of a city where no one is going to stop them from saying what
they're saying? It's preaching to the choir. And it's a chickenshit
thing to do. It's COWARDLY. Yep. That's right. It's lily-livered. It's
safe. After all, who would listen to them in Oklahoma? They're just
inbred idiots down there! They're not nearly as sophisticated as we are
here on our beloved peninsula, where everything that matters resides!
We're just better than they are. More enlightened. They're living in
the dark ages out in the midwest. They really need to get a life!. If they are so righteous about their opinions, so sure that they're right
they need to get out and spread the word, don't you think? I'd love to
seem them come to my house. I'll go out and buy a Louisville Slugger
just to make the occasion special.
Pretty soon it's going to be really easy to start lumping all of the
anti-war people together. They all marched together the other day,
didn't they? There are so many reasons why we shouldn't have gone to
war. I can understand that and I'll even listen to the more rational
reasons and accept that those people have a point. But when you see
something like this---something so vile that it just makes your stomach
turn---why the hell shouldn't I take far left's tack, and lump them all
together? Because you know that's what they've done with everyone who's
the slightest bit conservative. If you perhaps voted Republican because
you wanted less government, you're evil. You put the wrong guy in power! Because of you we have a president who eats babies for breakfast!
Never mind that you might be socially liberal, but you voted for the
lesser of two evils in the election in 2000. They have no time for
policy differentiations on the right---so why should I allow for policy
differentiations with the left? Why shouldn't I think they're all
communists who are against freedom and capitalism? Why shouldn't I?
Give me one fucking good reason why I shouldn't think they're all evil
when that's exactly what they think of me?
You know, some days it's really hard to live up to Voltaire.
Posted by Kathy at March 1, 2004 01:05 PM | TrackBack