[lit-ideas] Re: eloquent
- From: "joseph" <wells001@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2005 21:52:48 -0700
im replying to the very first message in this string! JimK and Julie, i hate
to be the one to tell you this, but your research, your arguement, your data ,
shall fall upon deaf-ears. HERE AT LEAST!
these people, although some of them learned, are narrow minded! they shall
walk off the cliff behind little bush regardless were he lying or selling hot
tamales out of the back seat of his car. Old Man Bush was a Leader, he was
intelligent and a Good President, his son, is a ..hmmm! well lest just say his
son is a boy, playing with toy soldiers. And, he can knock them off the table
onto the floor at whim, for any reason what so ever.
byeeeeee
Joseph wells
csusm.edu
----- Original Message -----
From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, July 01, 2005 2:20 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] eloquent
Friday, July 01, 2005
Unbelievable...
âNot only can they not find WMD in Iraq,â I commented to E. as we
listened to the Bush speech, âBut they have disappeared from his speeches
too!â I was listening to the voiceover on Arabiya, translating his speech to
Arabic. He was recycling bits and pieces of various speeches he used over two
years.
E., a younger cousin, and I were sitting around in the living room, sprawled
on the relatively cool tiled floor. The electricity had been out for 3 hours
and we couldnât turn on the air conditioner with the generator electricity we
were getting. E. and I had made a bet earlier about what the theme of
tonightâs speech would be. E. guessed Bush would dig up the tired, old WMD
theme from somewhere under the debris of idiocy and lies coming out of the
White House. I told him heâd dredge up 9/11 yet againâ tens of thousands of
lives later, we would have to bear the burden of 9/11â again.
I won the bet. The theme was, naturally, terrorism- the only mention of
âweaponâ or âweaponsâ was in reference to Libya. He actually used the
word âterroristâ in the speech 23 times.
He was trying, throughout the speech, to paint a rosy picture of the
situation. According to him, Iraq was flourishing under the occupation. In
Bushâs Iraq, there is reconstruction, there is freedom (in spite of an
occupation) and there is democracy.
âHeâs describing a different countryââ I commented to E. and the
cousin.
âYes,â E. replied. âHeâs talking about the *other* Iraqâ the one
with the WMD.â
âSo whatâs the occasion? Whyâs the idiot giving a speech anyway?â The
cousin asked, staring at the ceiling fan clicking away above. I reminded him it
was the year anniversary marking the mythical handover of power to Allawiâs
Vichy government.
âOh- Allawiâ Is he still alive?â Came the indolent reply from the
cousin. âIâve lost trackâ was he before Al Yawir or after Al Yawir? Was
he Prime Minister or did they make him president at some point?â
9/11 and the dubious connection with Iraq came up within less than a minute
of the beginning of the speech. The cousin wondered whether anyone in America
still believed Iraq had anything to do with September 11.
Bush said:
âThe troops here and across the world are fighting a global war on terror.
The war reached our shores on September 11, 2001.â
Do people really still believe this? In spite of that fact that no WMD were
found in Iraq, in spite of the fact that prior to the war, no American was ever
killed in Iraq and now almost 2000 are dead on Iraqi soil? Itâs difficult to
comprehend that rational people, after all of this, still actually accept the
claims of a link between 9/11 and Iraq. Or that they could actually believe
Iraq is less of a threat today than it was in 2003.
We did not have Al-Qaeda in Iraq prior to the war. We didnât know that sort
of extremism. We didnât have beheadings or the abduction of foreigners or
religious intolerance. We actually pitied America and Americans when the Twin
Towers went down and when news began leaking out about it being Muslim
fundamentalists- possibly Arabs- we were outraged.
Now 9/11 is getting old. Now, 100,000+ Iraqi lives and 1700+ American lives
later, itâs becoming difficult to summon up the same sort of sympathy as
before. How does the death of 3,000 Americans and the fall of two towers
somehow justify the horrors in Iraq when not one of the people involved with
the attack was Iraqi?
Bush said:
âIraq is the latest battlefield in this war. â The commander in charge of
coalition operations in Iraq, who is also senior commander at this base,
General John Vines, put it well the other day. He said, "We either deal with
terrorism and this extremism abroad, or we deal with it when it comes to us."
He speaks of âabroadâ as if it is a vague desert-land filled with
heavily-bearded men and possibly camels. âAbroadâ in his speech seems to
indicate a land of inferior people- less deserving of peace, prosperity and
even life.
Donât Americans know that this vast wasteland of terror and terrorists
otherwise known as âAbroadâ was home to the first civilizations and is home
now to some of the most sophisticated, educated people in the region?
Donât Americans realize that âabroadâ is a country full of people- men,
women and children who are dying hourly? âAbroadâ is home for millions of
us. Itâs the place we were raised and the place we hope to raise our
children- your field of war and terror.
The war was brought to us here, and now we have to watch the country
disintegrate before our very eyes. We watch as towns are bombed and gunned down
and evacuated of their people. We watch as friends and loved ones are detained,
or killed or pressured out of the country with fear and intimidation.
Bush said:
âWe see the nature of the enemy in terrorists who exploded car bombs along
a busy shopping street in Baghdad, including one outside a mosque. We see the
nature of the enemy in terrorists who sent a suicide bomber to a teaching
hospital in Mosulââ
Yes. And Bush is extremely concerned with the mosques. He might ask the
occupation forces in Iraq to quit attacking mosques and detaining the
worshipers inside- to stop raiding them and bombing them and using them as
shelters for American snipers in places like Falluja and Samarra. And the
terrorists who sent a suicide bomber to a teaching hospital in Mosul? Maybe
they got their cue from the American troops who attacked the only functioning
hospital in Falluja.
âWe continued our efforts to help them rebuild their country. Rebuilding a
country after three decades of tyranny is hard and rebuilding while a country
is at war is even harder."
Three decades of tyranny isnât what bombed and burned buildings to the
ground. It isnât three decades of tyranny that destroyed the infrastructure
with such things as âShock and Aweâ and various other tactics. Though he
fails to mention it, prior to the war, we didnât have sewage overflowing in
the streets like we do now, and water cut off for days and days at a time. We
certainly had more than the 8 hours of electricity daily. In several areas they
arenât even getting that much.
âThey are doing that by building the institutions of a free society, a
society based on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion
and equal justice under law.â
Weâre so free, we often find ourselves prisoners of our homes, with roads
cut off indefinitely and complete areas made inaccessible. We are so free to
assemble that people now fear having gatherings because a large number of
friends or family members may attract too much attention and provoke a raid by
American or Iraqi forces.
As to Iraqi forcesâThere was too much to quote on the new Iraqi forces. He
failed to mention that many of their members were formerly part of militias,
and that many of them contributed to the looting and burning that swept over
Iraq after the war and continued for weeks.
âThe new Iraqi security forces are proving their courage every day.â
Indeed they are. The forte of the new Iraqi National Guard? Raids and mass
detentions. They have been learning well from the coalition. They sweep into
areas, kick down doors, steal money, valuables, harass the females in the
household and detain the men. The Iraqi security forces are so effective that a
few weeks ago, they managed to kill a high-ranking police major in Falluja when
he ran a red light, shooting him in the head as his car drove away.
He kept babbling about a âfree Iraqâ but he mentioned nothing about when
the American forces might actually depart and the occupation would end, leaving
a âfree Iraqâ.
Why arenât the Americans setting a timetable for withdrawal? Iraqis are
constantly wondering why nothing is being done to accelerate the end of the
occupation.
Do the Americans continue to believe such speeches? I couldnât help but
wonder.
âTheyâll believe anything.â E. sighed. âNo matter what sort of
absurdity they are fed, theyâll believe it. Think up the most outrageous
lieâ They have people whoâll believe it.â
The cousin sat up at this, his interest piqued. âThe most outrageous lie?
How about that Iraq was amassing aliens from Mareekh [Mars] and training them
in the battle art of kung-fu to attack America in 2010!â
âTheyâd believe it.â E. nodded in the affirmative. âOr that Iraq was
developing a mutant breed of rabid, man-eating bunnies to unleash upon the
Western world. Theyâd believe that too.â
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