My question is, why do we have to ascribe so much damned significance to this war?
Deaths are tragic, yes, but how is this war, as it is presented to us, different from any other war fought in the second half of the 20th century? Just like Korea, just like Vietnam, just like Afghanistan for the Russians, we're just banging our ideological heads against theirs, trying to see which is harder. It won't lead to anything, it won't change anything, it won't resolve anything. All it does, is thin out certain populations. I weep for our servicemen and women. Could not care less about the Iraqis, their government, their plight or their desert. Saddam did not make Iraq or its problems. Just as the case is with every other dictator in history, his people and their problems made him.
Our problem is that we keep playing their game. Bin Laden provokes, and we follow suit with the most predictable course of action possible. We go in, and in the process of trying to stop the madness at its source, throw water on the proverbial gremlin that is islamic fundamentalism.
One of my big hopes is to see the discovery and implementation of a universal wonder-fuel before I die. Cold fusion, practically-derived hydrogen, liquified bovine flatulence, whatever it takes, to forever end our dependance on that ****hole of a region. Once our interest there is done, and our money stops flowing, the Middle East and every AK-toting, Allah-Ahkbaring caveman that dwells there will be forever robbed of the two things he needs most to survive--a reason to complain, and the funding to do it. Total and complete disassociation, not forceful restructuring, is the only way to create any sort of lasting change in that sandy rat-trap.
As for the Bin Ladens of the world, let them quit their rediculous charade and go back to drag racing Ferraris, snorting coke and trying to get lucky with underage body-pierced ecstacy addicts--at least those ambitions have some sort of tangible connection with reality. Anyone with half a brain should have seen through that bearded clam's act when his DNA didn't wind up plastered to the concrete at Battery Park in 2001.
I respect the **** out of our armed forces. I respect the **** out of our soldiers. I don't think that a single one of their lives is worth the whole of the collective cesspit that they've been sent to liberate/conquer/civilize. The fuel, well, since our entire way of life is based on it, that's a different story. If they're fighting and dying for the American way, then it should just be publically acknowledged that the American way is largely based on internal combustion, not bringing Britney Spears, McDonalds and Jesus to the Middle East.
