July 06, 2006
War Junkies
"Between cheese-eating surrender monkeys and fire-eating war junkies."
"Why is it that the United States, which has not suffered a major terrorist attack at home for more than four years, thinks it's at war, while the United Kingdom, which was hit by a major terrorist attack just a year ago, does not?"
IshmaelMr. Sensitive), wanted to mention a couple things: first, there is significant opposition to the war in the US, even amongst conservatives (in some cases especially - we believed in Bush, and in some serious ways he's irked us pretty badly; fiscal conservatives such as myself are especially aghast at some of the, shall we say, considerable expenditures by this administration, and individual rights conservatives, also such as myself, find the overt and rather sunny-day pandering to his social conservative base both offputting and more than a little disingenuous). Which is to say, Americans act no more in concert than any other large population, in fact arguably less so, since the US is so heterogenous, both racially and culturally. Second, there is the history, mentioned earlier, of using "war on [insert] as a rhetorical device - cheap, but aparently effective enough to keep in the toolbox. And third, there is I think the still very real sense of affront that Americans feel since 9/11, that I'd venture to say has been exacerbated by the rest of the world's increasing tendency to, if not in name, than in spirit take the side of the Iraqi insurgency against us (see Putin's remarks on the recent killing of the embassy staff for examples). Although Chy may be right about insecure, I'd say we're not so much frightened as we are of the mind that we're damned if we do or damned if we don't, so we might as well do what suits us. And for this administration and likely the next (regardless of who or what party occupies the white house and congress), staying in Iraq suits us.