Wake up, America!

It’s all over the news now:  The American public wants us out of Iraq and no longer trusts the Bush presidency.

Where was everyone six years ago?  Watching Rupert Murdoch’s personal cable news (FOX), perhaps?

Millions of us knew six years ago that something wasn’t kosher.

We could understand why we might attack Afghanistan:  Al Qaeda was holed up there.  Mind you, that country had been bombed flat for decades by the Russians, and we supported the Taliban for years.  Reagan even called them freedom fighters and announced a national “Afghanistan Day!”  No doubt they are fundamentalist crazies who are particularly hard on women.  But then the average Afghani had a lot more serious stuff to worry about than the dress code - stuff like food, clean water, medicine, etc.  

So we bombed the daylights out of the Afghanis.

What was the first thing we did when the Taliban retreated?  We put in a pipeline for Central Asian natural gas that the Taliban had blocked.  Hmmm...  Makes you wonder.

Then, not long after, Bush and company decided we should invade Iraq.  Millions of us wondered:  Why Iraq?  Sure, they had a stinker of a dictator.  But we supported him for years, supplied him with poisonous gases and satellite instructions for fighting troublesome Kurds and Iranians.  But the highjackers were Saudis and a couple of Egyptians.  And bin Laden (a Saudi, and a son of family friends of the Bush’s) was a Sunni fundamentalist - an enemy, not a friend, of Sadam Hussein.

Weapons of mass destruction was the reason given.  But millions of us knew (those who weren’t listening to Rupert Murdoch) that the UN had found no weapons, that the CIA reported there were no weapons, that nobody but Bush and his pet Englishman believed there were weapons!

So we bombed the daylights out of the Iraqis.

What were the first things we did when we went in?  Secure the oil wells and protect the Ministry of Oil.  The museums, containing priceless antiquities from the oldest civilizations, were left to looters.  The electricity was left down, the garbage piled up, the water became polluted, people were left homeless.  And, a surprise to way too many people, the Iraqis didn’t seem to like us!

A few years later, it was clear (to millions of us) that Bush and company had lied to us, gotten us involved in two unwinnable wars, alienated the world, sent thousands upon thousands of American men and women to their deaths or permanently wounded lives, and managed to kill and hurt hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women, and children.  About half of the Iraqi and Afghani casualties were little kids - you can find pictures of their torn bodies on the internet, if you really want to.

So what did Americans do?  We re-elected the criminals!

But at last, the majority of Americans are catching up.  I would like to ask them (on behalf of the millions of us who were apparently better informed than even the president of the United States of America back in 2001):  Are you finally ready to wake up?

© Copyright 15 February 2007 C. George Boeree