posted August 18, 2006
While we’re on the subject of Iraq, I watched President George W. Bush say on TV the other day that if we cut and run, if we leave, “they will follow us home.”
Beam me up, Scotty, there’s no intelligent life down here.
But seriously, how did this guy ever get elected president? The only answer as far as I can see is that the vast majority of Americans are stupid.
If that is so, then Bush is the perfect match for the American mind.
And by stupid, I don’t just mean that in the old-fashioned sense – although that’s a big part of it - but also in the greater dimensions of the word, as in morally stupid and not knowing it.
It’s one thing to be stupid about something and realize it, but it’s another thing to be stupid about something and not realize it.
Stupidity, if one comes by it naturally, is nothing to be ashamed of. How can a stupid person help being stupid? These kinds of stupid people, as long as they are harmless, deserve care and protection.
It’s the people with normal minds that are too lazy to think and reason in a logical way, or who have never been taught to think and reason in a logical way, that make up the American mind of today.
That’s a big part of the problem we’re dealing with. An even bigger part of the problem is the fact that this kind of lazy or ignorant stupidity is a breeding ground for moral stupidity – the most dangerous kind of stupidity of all.
It is moral stupidity that will kill us all and end up being the cause of the eventual destruction of life on the planet.
The American mind is not only infected by plain old-fashioned stupidity, moral stupidity has spread over it like a cancer.
And by the American mind, I’m not just talking about the Republicans but the Democrats as well.
The Bushites, the Christian right-wing, chicken hawks, neo-cons and the other tough talking he-men and he-women are just the leading point of the American spear that is pushing for war around the world as the only way to bring about lasting peace.
The Democrats are right behind them, up close and personal, just as stupid in both the moral and old-fashioned way as the Republicans.
There is no difference between the two when it comes to the wars between Israel and the people of Lebanon and Palestine. They see eye-to-eye on Syria and Iran and North Korea and how America should deal with them – offering them treats to do what we say and threatening them with serious consequences and even a preemptive strike if they don’t.
They both have accepted from the beginning the bogus “Global War on Terrorism,” which will have to go down in history as that moment when old-fashioned stupidity and moral stupidity rammed together with an impact that can only be described as the big-bang birth of a new nation, under God with orders to spread Democracy around the world and defeat Satan and his followers, the terrorists, in the name of Jesus and good will toward men.
If Bush were not so stupid in both the old-fashioned way and the moral way, one would be tempted to give him credit for having a diabolical genius.
For a president to create himself a bogus war that allows him to increase his power almost to the point of a dictatorship as commander-in-chief in a time of war, and have America go along with it, he is either a diabolical genius or he knows diabolical genius when he hears it.
If Bush is not a diabolical genius and doesn’t know diabolical genius when he hears it, one must consider the possibility that he followed this diabolical advice to declare this War on Terror out of the honest belief that it made perfect sense and was the most intelligent and morally responsible thing to do under the circumstances and the enlightenment gained by 9/11.
Was it diabolical genius, old-fashioned stupidity, moral stupidity or a combination of the three that hatched up the plan to supersede the United Nations and break international law by attacking and invading Iraq?
Wouldn’t it be a little unfair to put the whole blame on Bush and the Bushites when the vast majority of America, including the Democrats and the media gave their support to it?
So what if the Bush administration told lies, falsified and manipulated the intelligence to fit the plan, that doesn’t let the Democrats, the media and the majority of the people of America off the hook.
There was never any reason to believe Bush and his administration’s claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, was on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon and was an immediate threat to America and Iraq’s neighbors.
On the contrary, only those infected with both moral and old-fashioned stupidity could ever possibly accept as straight truth to be believed without question anything that ever comes out of a president’s mouth, whether it be George W. Bush, Honest Abe Lincoln or George Washington.
To accept a thing as important as war and the reasons for it without question is not only plain stupid and morally repugnant, it is just about as unpatriotic a thing as can be imagined and shows that those who commit that sin do not understand their responsibilities as American citizens charged with defending her integrity and what she stands for as a nation of people.
The only thing that separates the stupid from the not so stupid is in the ability to question and the imagination to doubt. A big cloud of doubt fell on any truly intelligent person that listened to Bush’s “axis of evil” State of the Union Speech on Jan. 29, 2002, more than a year before America attacked Iraq.
Bush made it clear what his administration’s plans were for Iraq, Iran and North Korea. “States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world,” he said as the majority of those listening gobbled up his words like fresh popped popcorn, with extra butter.
That statement, in effect, declared war on the world, in that any nation in the world that we decide is not behaving properly, and any group within them or associated with them and determined by us to be a terrorist organization, is subject to either attack and regime change or elimination.
How diabolically ironic that the Bushites would come up with the name, “War on Terror” when it was America herself that was embarking on a campaign to terrorize the world.
Despite the regime changes that America brought about in Afghanistan and Iraq, the blood is flowing faster than ever and the fires of war continue to leap higher and the death toll of the innocents continue to mount in larger and larger numbers in both of those nations.
While those wars go on, America is providing Israel with billions of dollars in weapons and given her full support and encouragement to make war on Lebanon and Palestine for the purpose of killing as many of their resistance fighters as they can, namely Hamas and Hezbollah.
In both of those wars Israel has piled up a lopsided number of civilian kills and caused a lopsided amount of damage and suffering, so much so that it can only be considered state terrorism rather than self defense
There is a ceasefire for the moment but as far as America under the Bush regime is concerned it is still a situation that can be used to her advantage and fired back up as needed.
It doesn’t make any difference that Hamas was elected by the people of Palestine to head its government, or that Hezbollah has elected members in high places within the Lebanese government.
It doesn’t make any difference that both groups were formed as a resistance to Israeli occupation and have become a part of the fabric of the people themselves, growing up out of the people and defending the people.
It doesn’t make any difference how many innocent people have to be killed. It’s enough that Hezbollah and Hamas are on our list of terrorists groups marked for elimination.
For the moment, America has bigger fish to fry. It not only has Iran in its sights, it has picked up Syria too and is using the two-front war between Israel and Lebanon and Israel and Palestine to wag the finger at Iran and Syria, accusing them of being the root cause of it all for supplying weapons and encouragement to Hezbollah and Hamas.
That’s an example of the skillet calling the kettle black. How sad and tragic it is that America didn’t learn a lesson from the false propaganda that Bush fed the people about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and her evil aims against her neighbors.
What kind of diabolical genius was it that realized they could pull the very same stunt on the American people again? All they had to do is claim for a fact that Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon and is supporting terrorists for the sole purpose of killing innocent people.
If the majority of Americans were not so stupid, in both the moral sense and in the old-fashioned way, they would immediately question the truth of these claims and the same old method that Bush and his administration used to gain support for the attack on Iraq.
Iran has no intention of building a nuclear weapon. This is just another case of fitting the intelligence to the policy. Iran has just as much right to help the resistance fighters in Lebanon and Palestine as America has to provide arms to Israel and encourage her invasions of those two nations.
And finally you have the idiotic statement by Bush, claiming that if America cuts and runs and leaves Iraq, “they will follow us home.” A person would have to be plain stupid in the old-fashioned way to believe a statement like that.
Alas, that is the great problem. The majority of Americans are that stupid in the old-fashioned way. It has always been stupid to think that if we don’t fight them over there we’ll have to fight them over here.
It’s stupid to think that that’s the reason we haven’t been attacked on our own soil since 9/11, because we’re keeping the terrorist busy by attacking them on their own soil.
We haven’t done anything to keep another 9/11 from happening. We’ve only added to the probability that such an attack will be attempted again. We’ve stirred up the fires of hate by committing state terrorism against innocent civilians and attacking sovereign nations for the purpose of regime change.
Anyone who can look out at what America has accomplished in these five years since 9/11 and say with a straight face that we’ve done a pretty good job and should stay the course has a serious infection of old-fashioned stupidity fused together with moral stupidity, for which there is no known cure.
Our response to 9/11, especially our unprovoked and illegal attack on Iraq and our continued occupation of that country, along with our hostile foreign policy and conduct, has brought more harm and damage to America and her standing in the world than the plotters of 9/11 could have ever dreamed or imagined.
Why should they attack us again when we have done such a job on ourselves and continue shooting ourselves in the foot and making the world a more dangerous place to live?
That’s the trouble we’re in, America. It’s a deadly epidemic that has eaten away our moral logic and spread across the country from sea to shining sea.
Now what are we going to do about it? Where do we start and how do we start? Those are the questions we should be asking ourselves. Unless we do, there will never be any answers and we’ll just stay the course right on into oblivion.
Naman Crowe
namancrowe@yahoo.com
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Wow, Naman; I agree but you left out a lot of stupid.
What about the long term effects of the stupidity of sending jobs overseas while at the same time importing cheap labor?
What about short sighted Wall Street and corporate stupidity of forcing short term tactics for a quarterly profit at the expense of long term strategies for windfall profits?
What about the stupidity of allowing WalMart to put ma and pa out of business?
What about the stupidity of the gas guzzling SUV?
What about the stupidity of not using algae, the most prolific source of bio-fuel by far, instead of petroleum?
Seems like these days we have plenty of stupid but when election day rolls around the bovine masses vote "D" or "R" instead of for just once choosing "other." Until that day arrives, we will just get more of the
same old stupid.
Ike Conn
ikeconn@yahoo.com
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