Saturday, January 18, 2003

Takin' it to the streets ...
There are a number of decent articles on the Web the last few days about the emerging protests surrounding the MLK Day celebrations and the upcoming war with Iraq.
Here is one from Alternet [http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N1835020]. Despite the frigid tempatures, huge crowds are expected across the nation. It is nice to see this all happening. Not only because it is our civic duty as Americans to assemble when we think there is injustice, but it is pretty obvious to most that this war with Iraq is unnecessary. One person who put it best this week was John le Carre in his piece suggested our nation has gone mad: ["The United States of America has gone mad"]:
In America, where all men are equal in His sight, if not in one another’s, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas. Care for a few pointers?
George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company
[Sidebar: Halliburton were allowed to build pipelines by the Clinton Administration in Iraq in 1998. More than likely, Cheney's friends can't wait to take control]. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God’s work.
In 1993, while ex-President George Bush was visiting the ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to receive thanks for liberating them, somebody tried to kill him. The CIA believes that “somebody” was Saddam. Hence Bush Jr’s cry: 'That man tried to kill my Daddy.' But it’s still not personal, this war. It’s still necessary. It’s still God’s work. It’s still about bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed Iraqi people.
To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won’t tell us is the truth about why we’re going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil — but oil, money and people’s lives. Saddam’s misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake.
How true it is.