We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
But all around, even our old friends put us down
Let's drop the big one and see what happens
We give them money-but are they grateful?
No, they're spiteful and they're hateful
They don't respect us-so let's surprise them
We'll drop the big one and pulverize them
excerpt from "Political Science" by Randy Newman
Thank god for the United States, supreme guardian of individual security and freedoms for all citizens of the world. Latest example being a demand by China yesterday for the return of five of its citizens.
The US has sent them instead to Albania. That's because they're Muslims accused by the Chinese of instigating a violent separatist movement in a northwest part of China and the US fears if they were to send them home they might face persecution.
That wouldn't be so amazing, save for the fact these five individuals were captured by the US during our invasion of Afghanistan and have spent the last four years in our Cuban Gitmo Gulag where they were held without charges and persecuted.
But one should look at this in a bigger context of US "diplomacy". One of self-righteous indignation for the rights of all other nations when juxtaposed to our own. When you consider we are making plans to bomb Iran,
Russia and China's doorsteps, with an arsenal which may include tactical nukes while the vice president wraps up his freedom tour of former Soviet satellite nations where he chided the Russians for "backsliding on democracy" it's obvious the Bush idea of diplomacy is simple: repeated pokes to the eyes with a sharp stick.
I guess this is the best we as a nation can expect from an administration with all the diplomacy of a rabid pit bull. But then tact, negotiation and compromise is not the forte of megalomaniacs. Note the almost giddy response of our Oil Tanker Rice to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's letter yesterday.
"There's nothing in here that would suggest that we're on any different course than we were before we got the letter," by which Rice means war. Dismissal is so much easier than negotiation. Bombs so much easier than compromise.
So let's brace ourselves for more war because that's exactly where we're headed. You can't stop it. I can't stop it. Congress won't stop it. It's as though we've all jumped into the backseat of a hotrod being driven down a narrow, twisty mountain road by a power-drunk joyrider. And since none of us in the backseat seems inclined or able to just say "No!" and take away junior's keys, let's not forget to buckle up, hang on tight and hope he doesn't get us all killed.
It's difficult to tell if it's shear incompetence, omnipotence or a lust for the rapture. But I guess that's how it is with delusional religious megalomaniacal zealots. Why do I have this growing insecurity 'the person best able to protect America,' as polled Americans claimed in 2004, may end up, instead of lifting us all up to heaven, dropping us into the bowels of hell?
1 comment:
dada, sometimes I think there's no one at the wheel of that hotrod. It's on cruise control & won't stop until all our brains are scattered into lunacy. The seat belts & other safety devices were removed years ago when we gave the keys to a small band of zealots. Jeezus, is this what the avg iranian citizen is also feeling now? You're so right ... megalomanics do not negotiate. The world is their plaything. D.K.
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