Today is writing day. I have an interview to do (with a grade 10 student who I think will probably be disappointed with my answers), and then I need to get a couple of articles put together (yes, you'll find out why I won't see any more Adam Sandler movies).
…Although the first thing I want to do is build a good automated code back-up utility. I deleted some important source-code a week ago and I want to make sure that never happens again. I'll release that publicly as well as I think it could be very useful to others here as well.
US to Iraq: Unless you let UN weapons inspectors in, we will invade!
Iraq: OK, OK, you can let them in.
Weapons inspectors: We haven't found any WMDs yet.
US to UN: Our intelligence shows WMDs in Iraq (but we can't tell you yet how we know). Time to invade!
Weapons inspectors to US: But we really haven't found any!
US to World: Weapons inspectors have found WMDs in Iraq, therefore we may invade.
As some of you may know, American Marines in Japan have a bad track record for raping Japanese women; it's shockingly common (remember in 1995 when three US military staff gang-raped a 12 year old?). The disturbing part of the story is that the US refuses to hand over these well-paid rapists to Japanese authorities. As Harry Browne points out in his essay “I want my country back“, the US has troops in over 100 countries, largely immune from prosecution for these crimes. How would you feel if German troops were walking American streets raping Catholic schoolgirls? I'd say if that happens, Berlin could expect waves of fire-bombing.
He also asks the disturbing question, “why has America ignored North Korea?” The answer is simple: Iraq can't hurt America, but North Korea can (who's missiles at this point could hit Alaska). America has never attacked a nation that could hurt America*. Never. While America has invaded many nations in the past 50 years, it has never fought with a nation that has the capability to strike back. I'll let you choose the words you'd like to use for a nation that only attacks countries that can't strike back.
Now, that's not to say that Iraq is harmless (although I think we can reasonably bet that the US will just roll over Iraq in a matter of weeks). The people of Vietnam eventually managed to get rid of the US invasion, but they had to make massive sacrifices to do so. Millions of lives that would have been lived out peacefully ended early because of that war. Iraq is now arming its population for bloody urban combat — is a little bit of oil really worth killing not just millions of Iraqi citizens over (it's not the bombing that kills; it's the bloody aftermath), but (to guess) also potentially thousands of young US troops?
And why not focus on al-Qaeda? Are they really that much smarter than the West? So far we've had almost zero luck tracking them down, mostly because they play by different rules. By moving the combat away from technology, they level the playing field, and as they've shown, in that arena, they are stronger than us.
The terrorists have won. America has been destroyed. It's become a police state where not only do the citizens have no right to privacy, but the police have the right to execute citizens on the street should they be considered enemies of the state. I told you a story below about some “wrong place, wrong time” police misconduct. Let me briefly tell you the story that's in that previous link (and I should say that the story I'm recounting is not disputed by the police):
Oliver Martinez was riding his bike down the street when he passed two officers questioning another man. They stopped Oliver, frisked him, and threw him to the ground -- all because he'd chosen the wrong time to bike down that path -- suddenly one of the officers found a knife on Oliver (he was a farm worker) and shot him five times, including once in the face, leaving him blinded and paralyzed.Sargent Ben Chavez kept Oliver in custody -- even after the ambulence came, Sgt. Chavez climbed in with Oliver and continued to interrogate him. No charges have ever been filed against Oliver (he was considered a "potential witness" at the time, although now it's not disputed that he was simply a passerby), and the officers that shot him have never even received even a reprimand.
How many stories like this I have to recount before people open their eyes? America is doesn't exist any more. I don't know what the right word for that big country in the middle of this continent is, but it's certainly not the America that its founding fathers defined. Doug Thompson, publisher of Capitol Hill Blue, calls it The American Ghestapo.
* Before you bring up Pearl Harbor, realize that Hawaii was a sovereign nation seized by force by America. Ignoring the obvious preventability of the Pearl Harbor attack, by the time America got involved in WWII, neither Japan or Germany had the resources to attack mainland America.
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