Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Baghdad Dubbya

Yes, yes, yes. I’ve been a terrible, evil person for the past 2 months in neglecting my blog. I assure you that it was a temporary injunction brought on as a result of super-duper business on my part. I’ve been looking for a job and housing in South Florida for the past 2 months. The first month of my absence was due to the fact that, every time I decided I wanted to blog, I needed to rant about the job search, which has been a very tiring process. And I hadn’t told my work that I was leaving yet, so blogging about it, when I know a couple of my co-workers read this, would have been inappropriate. And the second month of that was mostly because I’ve been tying up all the loose ends here at work. But I think I have most of that out of the way at this point, so I have more time.

Today, I was propelled back on the blogging scene by an e-mail my dad forwarded me. It was from everyone’s favorite right-wing goon that my dad considers a friend and that is completely incapable of arguing using facts or ideas beyond, “no, what you said is wrong and while I have said nothing, I’m still right.” For back story, a few months ago I posted an exchange we had throughout the course of the day. Any way, below is a forward he sent to his mailing list of which my dad is a member (unfortunately for him):
***BEGIN
During World War II, the Japanese developed a way to try to demoralize the American forces. Psychological warfare experts developed a message they felt would work. They gave the script to their famous broadcaster “Tokyo Rose" and every day she would broadcast this same message packaged in different ways, hoping it would have a negative impact on American GI's morale. What was that demoralizing message? It had three main points:

1. Your President is lying to you.
2. This war is illegal.
3. You cannot win the war.

Does this sound familiar? Is it because Tokyo Reid, Tokyo Kennedy, Tokyo Pelosi, Tokyo Feingold, Tokyo Kerry and their ilk, have picked up the same message and are broadcasting it on Tokyo CNN, Tokyo ABC, Tokyo CBS, Tokyo NBC ... directly to our military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan?

The only difference is that they claim to support our troops before they demoralize them. Come to think of it, Tokyo Rose told our soldiers, sailors and marines she was on their side, too!
***END

OK, at first, I just thought this was stupid and pointless. But then I got to thinking about it and I got hopping mad. There are only about 100 different ways in which this is ridiculous, offensive and demeaning to free-thinking people around the world. About 80% of those revolve around comparing our current invasion and occupation of Iraq to our involvement in WWII. It’s so unthinkably vile and sickening, I can’t possibly cover every aspect that makes me wretch in my mouth.

Wow, so the only difference between WWII and Operation Iraqi Occupation and Oil Grab is that this time around, the people demoralizing our troops are from our own country. Let’s not actually broach the subject that our invasion this time around was COMPLETELY unjustifiable. Let’s not discuss the fact that our President IS lying to us (WMDs anyone?). What about the idea that our soldiers might be demoralized because they were given insufficient gear and troops to do the job correctly by the "brain" trust behind the war? What about the fact that there is no actual goal or mission in Iraq beyond staying the course and standing down when they stand up? What about the fact that our leaders condone torture but then leave the soldiers out to dry when the rest of the world finds out about it? None of this could possibly be demoralizing? How about the stop loss program? Our troops are all for that, eh?

The only historical comparisons that could be made between our involvement with WWII and Iraq are actually flipped. As my dad pointed out, much like Japan swooped in and took over the Philippines, so too did we take over Iraq. And as long as Japan was in one little island nation in the Pacific, they figured it’d be OK to hop around to all the other ones and take them over, too. Well, as long as we’re in Iraq, you know fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here, we might just as well take care of Iran and Syria. Linking WWII to Iraq is not only disgusting, it’s dangerous and perhaps a little frightening.

So there you go. That’s all it takes to get me back in the blogoshpere. Rile me up and watch me go. In the months to come, we get to hear about the adventures of the move, the job search fun, settling into South Florida (hence forth SoFla) and just around the corner, the return of football season!!!!