America attacked not Saddam Hussein, not repression and certainly not Osama bin Laden. Those three are alive and well. But, according to independent tallies, somewhere between thirty and one hundred thousand people have died from the American invasion of Iraq. Clearly that is who the mighty America attacked, because that is who is dead. The United States has achieved at least ten times the toll from the Twin Towers, and in the wrong country.
When all other justifications failed, our country offered, with one-hand democracy, a gift the Iraqi people never solicited. With the other hand our country delivered chaos, misery and death. Why Iraqis don't revel in these boons and thank us, Allah only knows. Still the United States hunts down and kills those Iraqis with the courage and fortitude to resist our generosity.
But hey - that's the government for you. Dadgum, dadgum gov'mint. Governments are by nature oppresive. Whadda you gonna do?
The American public is the part that gets me. The so-called "pro-lifers" who decry abortion in America have approved with their silence the American rescue of thousands of Iraqi women, children and pregnant women from the travails and joys of life. Of course another huge number of people have been relieved of some of their limbs, a clear rescue from the joys of life but a multiplication of the travails. Politicians never mention the dead and maimed Iraqis, and politicians are our best barometer of public interest; so I have to believe they are a non-issue in our largely Christian society. We Americans have selective courage. We are afraid of being blown up, yet we are unafraid to inflict explosion on others.
We have a president who is publicly repulsed by the sacrilege of using stem cells from a dead fetus, yet he initiated this Iraqi massacre with no good reason, and there is no outrage, no overwhelming rejection of him. Isn't murder a violation of the Ten Commandments? Doesn't God reserve the right of retribution? Aren't we cowardly to allow helpless, inoffensive people to pay the price for our security?
The Attorney General excuses the administration's wire-tap program as worth it, if by chance one important phone call is intercepted. This pathetic mindset projects that anything is alright as long as there is an infinitesimal chance that it will save our sorry butts. I submit that placing such a high value on our sorry butts renders them not worth saving. We no longer breathe the rarefied air of a society striving toward the ideal.
Since we are not a nation of unkind people, as revealed in times of domestic duress, I can see only one explanation: except that we bleed, cry and die in the same way, Iraqis are not like us. We never could terrorize a Christian country of European looking people in this way, because we could relate to them as humans. That would be unconscionable.
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