"We are fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here". This was a rallying cry leading up to the Iraqi war. It was predicated on faulty intelligence and "sexing up" the data regarding Iraq's weapons capabilities, their harboring of terrorists, and desire to harm the United States and her citizens.
Three years later, no weapons of mass destruction were every found. The only terrorist organization Iraq was supporting performed raids into Iraq's old enemy, neighboring Iran, and has since been declassified by the US as a terrorist organization. Iraq's want to harm America or Americas seemed to go as far as one specific American, George Herbert Walker Bush, and even this desire was half hearted. Iraq was too broke, too demoralized, and too isolated to give a good goddamn. Sure, they talked big. Like bullies in every quarter, they were all talk: penniless, surrounded by enemies, and run by the like of Saddam, all Iraq had was bluster and one mean internal torture apparatus. Was Saddam a bad man who was terrible to his people? Yes. Did that warrant a $200 Billion dollar war and the cost of thousands of American and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives? In the wake of the Iraqi constitution debacle, inevitable installation of a Muslim Theocracy, and the makings of severe balkanization in the region, the answer would be no.
But this notion of "fighting them so we don't have to fight them here" continues to be proclaimed self-evident gospel. Why? Because, in some perverted way, using the most bizarre twisted logic, the Bush administration actually believes that an American presence in the Middle East is preventing attacks on US soil by quenching the jihadist's thirst for American blood closer to their home. Bush and his cronies are serving up fresh, young American men and women, not to take the battle to the enemy and win. Our soldiers are being sacrificed in the most literal sense, upon the altar of war.
It dawned on me as I listened to the Ed Schutz show. A caller was in support of the war and said a very curious thing "I would rather have soldiers who are trained to fight die overseas than civilians here in the US". I found myself yelling obscenities at the radio. The callousness, the cynicism, the cold, calculating a matter of fact manner in which the caller consigned our troops to their role, as scapegoat, as holocaust, to be "supported" as they are led to the cold stone to be snuffed out for a bloodthirsty god called security sickened me to the core.
And just when I thought the bile couldn't get any thicker in my gut, witness the GOP's response to hurricane Katrina. More sacrifice, only this time, it was the poor black populace of a major city who dared to be victimized during the President's vacation. Their sacrifice would not be for our "security". Instead, at the right moment, with the correct amount of desperation on their faces, they would be photographed and videotaped to further a particular political (meme: dear leader as great savior) and economic (poor neighborhoods on prime real estate to be cleared and developed) agenda. Their lives and suffering would be given up to a higher power...the pursuit and abuse of power.
We are chattel.