"Fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here."

It was about a year ago when I posted precisely how disgusted this phrase made me, and why. "Fight them over there?"

The initial reasoning for going to war in Iraq was, ostensibly, that they had WMDs. They didn't. Then it was to topple Saddam, a tyrant, to be sure, but no worse than many. And questionably certainly no worse in some respect to the extremist-influenced puppet government in place there now. Don't think so? Ask any Iraqi woman--particularly those who had a career under Saddam and are now relegated back to second-class citizens.

"Fight them over there?"

Well, sure, it's not OUR fucking backyard. It's not our schools, homes, and shops being blown up, now is it? It's not OUR children who are lucky to make it to school, and not us who are scared that something may happen while they're there.

"So we don't have to fight them over here."

Yeah, right. So hundreds of thousands of innocent people die in OUR war, conducted on THEIR streets, all so we don't have to worry about it happening on our turf? Setting aside the fact that we don't know if the war there is in any way keeping them from eventually coming here, it's still a morally bankrupt position.

There's a point where the very notion of collatoral damage morphs into something else. Hundreds of thousands of people killed in OUR War? Not their war, since they never asked for it, but OUR war. To allegedly keep US safe.

Sure as hell didn't keep THEM safe, now did it?

We can arrest them, torture them, disappear them, and ignore the incidental deaths because, as our leaders tell us, it's "all in a good cause." We're spreading Democracy, damn it. Oh, sure, it's crappy, corrupt, corporate-controlled, religious-fanatic influenced democracy, but it's better than a dictatorship.

Isn't it?

Ask the parents who've lost children, the children who've lost parents, and the women who've lost their freedom. Ask them.

Just don't be surprised if you don't like the answer.

Keep it out of the daily life of most Americans. Go over the top patriotic for the ones whose family members are doing the hard stuff overseas, and they stay quiet too.

are using Iraqi citizens as human shields. That's assuming, of course, that terrorists have no way of getting here as long as there is a war going on in Iraq.

... as always.

:kick: & REC'D!

Did you see this one?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2499032&mesg_id=2499032

"So we don't have to fight them here?....What are they gonna' do,Follow us home?...
...what the hell does George Bush think they are?...Lassie?

But they didn't come from over there. Bush and Cheney are home grown!!!

That's all this excuse is. It's moving the power plant/trash recycler/homeless or mentally-ill shelter over 'there' (usually among the poor and/or disfranchised) rather than having to deal with society's uglier side right up front. As long as the war is kept off the front page and 1500 miles away, nobody's going to question where the money's going. Considering that recent reports state that all Iraqi groups blame the US for the mess over there, I'm sure they're just thrilled that ol' GWB keeps pumping up the line that we've turned their backyards into our war zone.

The batshit crazy paranoid mindset of the worst cowards on the planet is revealed in that one word. "Them." The Other. The Alien. Doesn't matter who did what or when. Them" is everyone who is not "US" (Now is the cue to chant USA! USA! USA! in a spittle spewing mindless frenzy.)

And the warmongers lead the idiots in cheers for an invasion and occupation of a country or two that had no responsibility but has oil and a geographic position suitable for fulfilling the strategic fantasies of a bunch of Risk playing draft-dodgers.

And a million are slaughtered.

And the leading Democratic candidates in 2004 and 2008 just mouth nonsense and pretty phrases and talk about how they can do a better job of inducing the people of those countries to submit to US imperialism's master plans.

Sick.

Sick.