What the hell are we doing?

I sat and watched in disbelief as the first bombs dropped on Baghdad, and wondered, is this the world we live in?

It seems odd to me that two nations are at war because two guys in suits can’t compromise. What’s more, Saddam and Bush aren’t even doing any of the actual fighting. Because two men are pissed off at each other, hundreds of Iraqi and American soldiers have to die to resolve (hopefully), this little spat. Remember, it’s easy to support war if you don’t have to do your own fighting.

Now Bush claims this is necessary. After all, he did exhaust all diplomatic means of negotiation. It was of the utmost importance to invade Iraq, effectively giving the middle finger to the UN, the very body created

(supposedly) to keep world peace. Oh and by the way, wasn’t the creation of the UN our idea?

So, a good portion of the world despised the U.S. prior to the invasion, and now we’re telling France, Russia, and Germany, once our allies, that we don’t really care what they think. If we want to bomb the hell out of the barren, impoverished landscape called Iraq, then we’re going to do it. And there’s nothing you can do to stop us.

That, to me, is a retarded strategy. Granted I don’t know much about politics, but I do know this: Don’t piss off the few friends you do have. And as for the people that already hate us? I can’t imagine this “liberation” campaign will repair our “Great Satan” image. Bombing poor people, killing Saddam, and installing a puppet government aren’t the best ways to rid us of our imperialist reputation.

And this idea of “liberating” the Iraqi people? Sure, we may kill Saddam and end his oppressive regime, but that is simply a by-product of what we’re really after. Bush is invading Iraq because there’s something to be gained. What that something is I have no idea, but I doubt we’re doing this from the goodness of our hearts.

Bush claims he wants to make the world a safer place, and deposing Saddam would do that. If that’s true, why aren’t we dealing with North Korea, which, by all accounts has a much more advanced weapons program than Iraq? And they have made no attempt to disarm. If North Korea is such a threat, why are we ignoring them to focus on Iraq? There’s a reason that we’re invading Iraq and avoiding all the other issues facing the country right now. We just have no idea what that reason is.

Speaking of things we should be focusing our attention on, how about the economy? The economy is in the dumper, yet we’re hell-bent on fighting a war that may not even need to be fought. Bush asked Congress for $80 billion to finance the war. We couldn’t put that money toward anything better? I don’t know, maybe educating our children, or patching the holes in our economy.

Oh yeah, and what about that Osama bin Laden fella? Have we found him yet? How’s the search going? I thought capturing him was a top priority. Why haven’t we heard about him for a while? Might this little attack on Iraq serve as a nice little smokescreen to divert attention from the slow progress of the war on terrorism? No way, the President would never do something like that.

Another thing that bothers me about this whole debate is how you are perceived if you don’t support the war. If you oppose an invasion of Iraq, you’re a goddam un-American liberal hippie pussy.

Un-American? Free speech and the right to express a dissenting opinion is the very basis on which America was founded. The right to criticize the decisions of the government is distinctly American. If I’m exercising my right to free speech, the very freedom that is supposed to be synonymous with America, how can I be considered un-American?

It just seems incomprehensible to me that while I’m going out on Saturday night, there are kids my age in Iraq getting killed, or watching their friend’s head get blown off because two guys in suits can’t come to some kind of agreement. Now I’m hearing about this American soldier who threw a grenade into his own tent in Kuwait, killing one and injuring 15.

What the hell is going on? We’re not going to stick around much longer if we keep this up. It’s like George Carlin says, “the planet isn’t going anywhere. We are. The planet is fine. The people are fu**ed.” While that is part of his stand up routine, he’s more right than we’d like to admit.