How long can a country live on the edge of fear without lashing out at the source, or without collapsing inward, turning on itself, so that its citizens consume each other? If the country lashes out to defend against the perpetual tyrrany of fear, is it justified? If no, then are the citizens justified when they take it out on each other?
Does this sound familiar?
So tell me, which country am I talking about? I could be just as easily talking about Iraq as the US. Or the Philippines for that matter. Or Israel, Columbia, the Ivory Coast.
But, naturally, I am not. I am an American and, as I've been informed over and over and over again by the media (both ours and 'theirs'), as an American I think of nothing but myself.
Damned right.
And here's what I'm thinking...
I'm tired of helping my husband pack his suitcases, polish his boots, press his BDU's and polish his gear before he takes off for another foreign country and puts his life on the line to protect the freedom of pissants who have nothing better to do than jam the White House and Senate's phone lines complaining about a war they won't get involved in anyway.
I'm tired of going to sleep holding onto a pillow and trying to sniff the last traces of my husband's cologne in an effort to pretend that he's here, safely next to me as I fall asleep, then waking in the morning to find that idiots whose freedom and safety my husband works to protect are actually offering themselves as human shields for living excrement like Saddam Hussein.
All this, even as the the UN Inspectors pointedly note that Iraq is not disarming. AP quotes Chief Inspector Hans Blix today:
He said letters from Iraq about two R-400 aerial bombs — one of which may be filled with a biological agent — and about the finding of handwritten documents on the 1991 disposal of chemical and biological weapons "are potentially interesting" and will have to be examined.
But Blix said the letters did not represent "full cooperation or a breakthrough."
Meanwhile, Reuters indicated the following:
Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix handed fresh ammunition Wednesday to hawks threatening war with Iraq, saying Baghdad still had not made a "fundamental decision" to disarm.
What is so damned hard to understand that the inspectors are not looking for signs that Hussein has bio/chem weapons in addition to missiles and other banned devices. (What, don't folks remember the missles Blix discovered already? Or the fact that Iraq was caught in the act of seeking out high-spec missiles suitable only for uranium delivery and not the conventional weaponry that Hussein claimed??)
We know for a fact that Iraq has them. The only ones disputing this is the Iraqi government, and the tapes played by Powell along with Blix's discoveries is sufficient to show the Iraqis are lying. Again.
What Blix and his team are there to look for is evidence that Iraq has destroyed these banned items.
They're not finding it.
For those who went to schools that emphasized self-esteem improvement and community tolerance over things like reading comprehension and math, let me make this simple:
(1) Evidence of existing weapons of mass destruction as well as banned devices with no evidence that the devices have been destroyed means, more likely than not, Iraq still has them. Duh.
(2) UN Inspectors can't find them, and they can't find traces of their destruction. That means that more likely than not, Iraq has them hidden.
(3) There is no valid reason for Iraq to be hiding these things, except to ensure their ability to use them in the future.
So we can go 'round and 'round about inspections, fine. Those who say the failure of the inspectors to find existing weapons is sufficient reason not to go to war are missing the point. They could carry out inspections for the next 20 years and discover nothing. But discovering 'nothing' means they also haven't discovered proof that Iraq destroyed the banned items left over from Gulf War I, much less the materiel it's compiled in the meantime.
Meanwhile, I'm going to go on hugging my husband's pillow and kissing the picture I keep of him in my nightstand as I try to fall asleep without worrying whether he's still alive. And I'm going to be damned proud of him, and damned honored to be going through this every night.
Because one thing I have no doubt about: those same celebrities who are whining now about not wanting a war are the very ones who shuddered and trembled and cried about the horrors of 9/11 and the loss of our country's innocence. Those very same exposure-seeking twiddleheads who cancelled their awards shows out of fear of further terrorism forget, like France has, that it's guys like my husband who are the real human shields. It's just a shame that, unlike the twiddleheads, our volunteers don't get to pick and choose which human excrement they'll defend.
2:31:52 PM ; 
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