Butch Hancock is a wonderful singer-songwriter who was raised in the Lubbock area, out in West Texas. Butch once told me about growing up in the sometimes confusing fundamentalist Christian ethic of that bastion of the Bible belt. He said that, as hormone-charged teenagers, they were instructed that sex is the nastiest, filthiest thing in the world… and they should save it for someone they love.
Well, just down the road from Lubbock is where George W spent his early years. Apparently, he took this same convoluted, fundamentalist logic to heart, for we now see it playing out in his Iraq policy. It goes something like this: Since we’ve sent more than 3,100 Americans to their deaths in the nasty horrors of Iraq, we should save that horror – even expand it – for other soldiers to enjoy.
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Never mind that a big majority of Americans voted last November against such madness, and that some three-fourths of our people now oppose Bush’s escalation of this misbegotten war. Never mind that three-fourths of the Iraqi people themselves believe that our presence there provokes more violence than it prevents, and that they would feel safer if our troops were withdrawn. Never mind that only 35 percent of our own troops there approve of Bush’s handling of the war, and that 71 percent of them want our military to be withdrawn and sent home this year. Never mind that Bush’s so-called “coalition” of allies in Iraq are already withdrawing the small number of troops that they had sent into that nasty horror. Never mind the realities – Bush is pushing his war like it’s something to love… and save… and keep forever.
This is Jim Hightower saying… Of course, George has none of his loved ones in the war, nor does Cheney, nor the executives of Halliburton, nor the other fiercest warmongers. It’s your loved ones for whom they’re saving this hellacious nastiness.
Sources:
“Bush Needs to Hear – From Us – That Surge Plan for Iraq is Wrong,” New York Times, February 15, 2007.
“Iraqis Show Us The Door,” New York Times, February 13, 2007.
“Americas view of the GOP crumbling with Iraq,” Austin American-Statesman, February 18, 2007.
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