This is getting tedious. Another year has gone by and here I am, like a fucking monkey, fulfilling my obligations to bitch about a war on terrorism being fought badly. It wasn't always this way.
In November, 2001, I thought that despite the mistakes, the war on terrorism was at least moving forward. But in June of 2002, I was already getting frustrated. I wrote:
"I don't want to see any more photos of New York City firemen putting up American flags on the remains of the World Trade Center. I want to see photos of American soldiers putting up American flags on the rubble of Iranian and Iraqi government office buildings."
Exactly a year after the September 11 attacks, I chose to write about my memories of the day, free of the kind of mental processing that would occur later. A month after this, I was frustrated again and wondering what kind of cosmic joke we're living in when we smell smoke in our bedrooms, but roll over and go back to sleep.
In March 2003, I had an optimistic spasm and wrote of my full support for the war in Iraq. In reality, this article wasn't so much an endorsement of the war as it was a rant against the moral sliminess of the "peace" protesters. They didn't object to war in Iraq because it was an ineffectual battle in the war on (Islamic) terrorism. They objected because they are anti-violence in all contexts, even in self-defense and when victims are being tortured, and because they were content to delude themselves in believing terrorist nations in the UN are adequate allies for a fight against terrorists.
Clearly, though, I got caught up in the idea of "doing something", anything that involved bombing one of a handful of Middle Eastern nations. I gave our President slack in his choice of target. I gave him slack because it was within reason that Iraq was a first step, part of a strategy. I thought that his choosing a non-Islamic, Middle-Eastern government as the scumbags to make an example of might, actually, be enough of a threat without taking militant Islam head-on. I still think that this might have been possible if it were accompanied by the right rhetoric to the right people (read: mullahs of Iran). But when I wrote of my support for the war in Iraq, I wrote:
"Iraq is the beginning. Next, we deal with Iran and North Korea."
Of course, the leftists who are now against the war in Iraq never had any alternatives. The most that could be said of them is that they wanted a return to Bill Clinton's treatment of international terrorism as a matter for the police. (Or an unarmed CIA.) I'm not aware of any leftist ever saying, "Hey, we really should be bombing the fuck out of Iran right now, not Iraq!" They were against the war because they were against war. Just because the Right is wrong, the Left should not assume that they are, or ever have been, right.
A month after voicing my support for the war in Iraq, I was bashing a conservative scholar who believed that "culture, specifically that of the Middle East, is irrelevant to a nation's capability of accepting democracy as its form of government". I noted my approval of the idea of cultural imperialism, as long as it included the elimination of religion, but advocated that "frequent threats of mass annihilation in the Middle East will probably be necessary, and maybe sufficient".
When I endorsed Bush for a second term (five months after endorsing a candidate named "fuck you"), I was convinced that, "The fundamental issue of this election is the war against terrorism, and George Bush is the only candidate who will take it seriously." This is true. Of the candidates we had, Bush was the better choice. Yes, Kerry pointed out inconsistencies in Bush's words, but he made no mention of what he would do to stop another September 11. All he did was jump on the anti-Iraq war bandwagon only when it was getting popular to do so.
I believed that action is better than inaction. But our inept, erroneous action is becoming equivalent to inaction. What does it say to Islamic terrorists, to Americans, and to the world that we are more concerned with the fighting amongst religious fanatics in Iraq than we are with the threat in Iran?
If the U.S. government, both Republicans and Democrats, showed any signs of the willingness to address the threats that would protect this country, I would enjoy rooting us on and being critical when necessary in the hope that someone, somewhere, would listen. But I'm getting tired of rooting for the losing team.
