Wake Up

Only a few guessed that the retreat of darkness

presaged the emergence of an entirely new

and less tangible terror

It's over. It's been over for years. We lost. Friend and enemy alike warned us not to do it. But we did it. The disgustingly proto-fascist attitude that held sway before the war is something that brings a still-visceral disgust to me. Too many Americans were pro-war pre-war, weren't they? Too many Americans were unforgivably negligent in their duty to be informed citizens.

When the bombing of Baghdad began, I was genuinely ashamed of my country for the first time in my adult life. Disgusted. Fucking disgusted. Prime time television we made it, this storm of metal rained upon a nation of children and paupers. Did anyone shoot back? Did any Iraqi planes challenge ours? No. This was not war; this was murder. We will not have victory in Iraq because we don't deserve it.

We were cowards then, bombing at will while our "enemy" could only hope that their children would not be decapitated by flying glass and metal while they slept. What part of this do we fail to acknowledge? We chose to do this. The president of the United States chose to start a war. Chose to invade a country that had not attacked or threatened to attack ours. We have sinned, and our rewards thus far have been predictable.

Enough about "liberation". Enough about "misleading" intelligence. Enough about "9/11 changed everything". George W. Bush is a war criminal. He knowingly and willfully commited an act of aggression against a nation that could never have directly attacked his. George W. Bush is not a visionary. He did not make a gamble. He did not act on the best available intelligence. He did not go to war as a last resort. He is simply a murderer with a bigger microphone than most.

The way to get out of situations like this is to acknowledge that we have a problem. The problem is that we were wrong. More that wrong, this was a criminal enterprise. George W. Bush is a murderer. Period. He ordered the mightiest military in history to launch a full-scale attack on a country that posed no threat to us. Murder. Ask yourself this: if the leader of any other country had done this, what would we call him? Did Hitler not do this to Poland? Did Hussein not do this to Kuwait?

George W. Bush deserves the deference and respect accorded to the office of the presidency. He has disgraced that office to the point where any such deference has long been expended. If law meant anything, George W. Bush would be on trial for his life as the head of a criminal conspiracy that has resulted in the murder of tens of thousands of innocents.