Greed and Oil. Another war for our souls

After close reflection, I’ve decided that most of my anti-war cynicism comes from Peter Townsend.



I took his words to heart.

War is one tragic, horrible story after another. How can it be anything else?

If there is one story that describes this war it’s the tragedy of Col. Westhusing. Robert Bryce of the Texas Observer brought the suffering of the war to me with this one story. Colonel Ted Westhusing was true blue. A devout Catholic, he had a wife and three kids. When the war started, he truly believed in America. He believed what his superiors told him. He believed in the cause of this war. On June 5, 2005 he gave up believing. - it’s worth a read. Westhusing’s story is about how war broke his spirit, and how it’s depth of evil destroyed his soul.

Suicide Was the Only Way Out of Iraq for Col. Westhusing

It’s what war does to men. No matter how you package the lie, it comes down to murder. They can romanticize it. They can put medals on it. They can glorify it as a fight for justice. But when one man murders another, for them, the lie of war becomes apparent. And how do you cope with murdering someone? Too late, you don’t have time to cope, you’ve been Stop-Lossed.

For the survivors of this war, even if Bush wins, they lose. Our soldiers are not returning to clinics full of mental health professionals. They are returning to a country that doesn’t believe murdering for a lie causes trauma. For Congress, those returning vets are weak and deserve their fate. They obviously don’t believe in our righteousness. How dare they? Don’t they realize that they are under orders to believe?

It’s that weakness that makes us human, and ultimately, good.
_________________________

Gary Shandling did a funny bit last April on Bill Maher. I thought it was insightful.

Shandling:

“And, so, they go in there and there’s no WMD. I thought we were going in for oil, pretty much right from the beginning. I thought this is probably about oil. And then – then I was upset for the – okay, there’s no WMD, and I was upset about that. And I’ve done a turn to the point now where I’m just hoping that there’s oil. Otherwise, we’re really screwed.”

Was the war about oil? Now that there are no WMD’s, Dubya would have us believe that it’s about bringing democracy to Iraq. It’s taken a while, but I think we’ve all learned to judge our President by his actions, not his words. Dubya’s deeds spoke loudest when he ordered the troops to secure the oil, not the people.

It was always about oil. We knew Dubya was an oil man and, and for him, national security is at stake. In less than ten years the oil starts running out and Iraq holds one of the last untapped oil reserves in the middle east. If we secure it now, we won’t have to spend the oil to secure it later. - at least that’s how those oil guys think.

This war was nothing more than an oil heist gone bad. How could it not go bad? Dubya was the brains of the operation. It wasn’t worth the expense to save the people of Iraq. Better to teach them a lesson. How dare they not accept democracy?

Oil = National Security ?

That’s why I want us to pull out of Iraq. That’s why we need to end the war. I don’t want those oil-at-all-costs guys to win. We need to send a message to these ruthless, bankrupt souls that are willing to send young men to their deaths for oil. We can’t reward this behavior. Let’s show ‘em what Americans are made of and give the oil to China. Or is that seditious?

I find it odd about we-the-people don’t win if the Iraq oil is secured. The only winners are the oil companies. Securing the oil is a 24/7/365 job that, we-the-people, must pay for; making it the most expensive oil in the history of the world. Why are we fighting this war?

One trillion dollars. It would of been cheaper to corner the oil market.
______________________

Of note: What’s with those civil war re-enactment guys? On its face it doesn’t seem like a very fun war to re-enact. I would of thought those sword and shield battles would offer much more to do. How does it get fun re-enacting the fight against slavery and racism? Or is that the draw?

Underneath it all, I’d like to end that romanticism. We can’t hope to end war when it’s still regarded as a good thing. No need to stop-loss our troops. These guys could be our new front line troops. Don’t they want to go to war?

For the record:

In fifty years, some out-of-work hillbillies will set about re-enacting the glorious battles of the Iraq war. I want to state for the record - people falling down to imaginary roadside IED’s just seems stupid.