Why are we doing this?

Illinois woman arrested
for bartending –
in the nude.

“U.S. troops hunting for a militant raided a house and killed seven Iraqis, including three women” (Spokesman Review 9-20-08). If this were a one time occurrence one might assume it was just an innocent mistake. But it isn’t, and in fact we see everyday more reports of the killing of innocent civilians in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Why are we doing this? The Iraqis did nothing to us. Certainly their women and children did nothing. The same thing is true of Afghanistan. We see reports now very often about how we have killed innocent civilians, as many as 60 at a time in Afghanistan. Wedding and funeral processions bombed. Homes bombed. People walking down the street gunned down, riding in cars shot, and on and on. Nine men from Saudi Arabia mounted a terrible attack on New York five years ago and we are still killing people by the thousands. Why? What is the point? Basically, even the Taliban did nothing to us (that is, until we invaded their country). Even if it’s true they are hiding and protecting Osama bin Laden (assuming he is still even alive) is that really sufficient reason to go on killing their women and children? So we were looking for a “militant.” What is a militant anyway? Someone who wishes we would get the hell out of his country? And what militant is so important that it justifies killing innocent women and children? We have no business being in Iraq in the first place and committed a war crime when we invaded that country that had done nothing to us. We have no business in Afghanistan either, apart from the questionable hunt for Osama bin Laden, which seems to have been conducted with less than passionate enthusiasm. The Saudi terrorists killed just over 3000 of us. We have now killed more than a hundred times that many, perhaps a thousand times more, perhaps even more than that. And we’re still doing it. Daily.We have now lost more troops than the number of people killed in New York on September 11th. What has it brought us, besides our losses of both troops and money, the former in the thousands, the latter in billions. Now Gates has announced that we have a right to attack in Pakistan. What such “right” do we have. Pakistan is a sovereign nation that has been aiding us in trying to find bin Laden. As they have been unsuccessful does that somehow give us a right to violate their sovereignty? They don’t want us there, just as the Afghans and the Iraqis don’t want us there. We are never going to “conquer” Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and certainly not Iran. Never. It is totally pointless now. It is time to admit it. Time to realize we cannot control the behavior of everyone in the world, no matter how much military hardware we have. And don’t give me any crap about being a loser, or cowardly, or retreating, or unpatriotic, or whatevr. When stark reality is staring you in the face, and the entire world despises what you are doing, it’s time to face that reality and stop blustering and threatening and pretending. We ought to withdraw all our troops, offer the money we are now wasting on them to the countries involved for rebuilding, and allow them to try to rebuild and improve their lives, using their own people and their own labor rather than our cost-plus crooks. Of course we can’t do this now that we have no money. And we have no money thanks to our own crooks of the past eight years who were allowed to plunder at will. The Bush Republican mafia has to be held accountable for the disaster they have brought upon us. Anything short of this will mark us as a pariah nation forever.

There is a great article by Larissa Alexandrovna on at-Largely about the implications of the Bush”bail-out.” Everyone should read it. Things are not always what they appear to be.

McCain’s brain not sane on Spain,
His fallin’ for Palin is failin’ (sorry).

I have been going everyday at 4:00 p.m. to sit outside at Papa Byrd’s Bistro, enjoy a Mexican beer, and observe the passing scene. To my dismay I have learned there is no passing scene here.

LKBIQ:
To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.
J. K. Rowling