I do not breathe your politics
"Comment is free but facts are sacred." (C.P. Scott)
Monday, August 22, 2005
What reality is up against
Check this out. A Washington Post article: War Backers Set Up Camp Near Bush Ranch. Basically a bunch of Bush supporters have decided to set up a counter-demonstration against Cindy Sheehan's 'Camp Casey' peace camp.
(What on earth are they shouting when the Bush motorcade drives past? "We want war! We want war!" ?)
It's a camp named after a soldier who died in the war. His father seems to have decided that his son's death was a good death:
"If I have to sacrifice my whole family for the sake of our country and world, other countries that want freedom, I'll do that," said the soldier's father, Gary Qualls, a friend of the local business owner who started the pro-Bush camp. He said his 16-year-old son now wants to enlist, and he supports that decision.So that's hellfire Old Testament fanaticism for you. If he has to sacrifice his whole family, he'll do so. It's up to him, apparently. Note how this quote did not begin: "If I have to sacrifice myself for the sake of our country..."No, not him. He's too busy with, you know, stuff. And besides, he's too old to die for the country. It doesn't want mutton, only lamb. It occurs to me that this war is surviving so long - despite abundant evidence that it should not - precisely because there is no draft. There's no chance that the children of the neocons will be forced to fight. Extreme views like those of this 'father' are rare. You couldn't carry this war on a majority if parents had to vote to spill their children's blood. I've long held the view that people who wish the return of the death penalty should be denied the right to vote in secret for it. If there is ever a vote, they need to tick a little box that says "I will press the button, wield the axe, pull the trap door lever, or whatever the state requires in an execution, if I am asked to do so". If voters had to support executions with action, the state wouldn't get a majority. The same is true here. If you want the war to continue, sign up. You may be too old to fight, but are you too old to work an admin job in a US outpost near Fallujia? Or maybe drive supply runs to Baghdad. After all, that's not even fighting, is it. It's just driving. Driving supplies in a country that can't wait to be a constitutional democracy. And that insurgency? Don't worry, it's in its last throes. You won't need so much as an armoured vehicle. Hell, the logistics guys have been getting on just fine without armoured vehicles. posted by Michael at 8/22/2005 12:22:00 AM |
1 Comments:
Tim said...
Complexity alert. If I thought my parents thought "we spawned you but quite like you to sign up to protect our supposed nation", I'd be torn between rebelling against them by *not* signing-up, and rebelling with them by deliberately doing so... sigh. Just think what the intra-family relations must be like there :P
And am I the only cold-hearted logical blighter to have yelled "well if you will support the war and send your offspring into it, what do you expect but that they DIE?!" at the telly before now?