(no subject)
Oct. 18th, 2004 09:01 pmWhen Farenheit 9/11 first came out on screen I was invited to go, but I declined. I couldn't look. I had to turn away, in the same way I'd normally turn away from a horrible accident (only none of this involved any accidents). I finally brought myself to watch it, on video, alone, without anyone else's commentary, and where I could stop if I needed to.
No surprises. It provides a pretty concise case for why we have invaded the absolutely WMD-less Iraq on absolutely false pretenses, and why the name of Bin Laden is no longer in the news.
But the juxtaposition of the rich Saudi princes and Haliburton profiteers with the undereducated, poverty-stricken young guys who are actually doing the fighting because they believe in this country was what really got to me. They're fighting against an enemy who is justified in absolutely hating our guts for the way in which we have "liberated" them, and both sides are being blown to pieces, and for what? My brother thinks Bush is an incompetent (alot of moderate Repubs believe this). I don't think so. He has very competently secured a lot of profits for a lot of his friends. But back to the soldiers. We *need* these young guys to defend us against real threats. Yet they are deployed, WASTED in a place that had nothing to do with 9/11 or Al Qaeda, and which had no weapons of mass destruction, and which posed no threat to us or anyone else (except maybe their own people).
One thing the movie left out: The strategy of securing the oil fields in Iraq and elsewhere and the securing of the location of the proposed pipeline in Afghanistan can be supported by the possibility that peak oil has been reached and the supplies are starting to run out (not by WMD, for chrissake). This amounts to pure survival, unless we *very quickly* develop alternative energy sources. Which I highly recommend, by the way. Fast. Because establishing an empire has always been the beginning of the end, historically, and I don't think we are somehow exempt from that.
But even the motive of peak oil becomes suspect in the face of the profits that are being raked in during all aspects of this war - weapons, clothes, reconstruction, communications, everything.
No surprises. It provides a pretty concise case for why we have invaded the absolutely WMD-less Iraq on absolutely false pretenses, and why the name of Bin Laden is no longer in the news.
But the juxtaposition of the rich Saudi princes and Haliburton profiteers with the undereducated, poverty-stricken young guys who are actually doing the fighting because they believe in this country was what really got to me. They're fighting against an enemy who is justified in absolutely hating our guts for the way in which we have "liberated" them, and both sides are being blown to pieces, and for what? My brother thinks Bush is an incompetent (alot of moderate Repubs believe this). I don't think so. He has very competently secured a lot of profits for a lot of his friends. But back to the soldiers. We *need* these young guys to defend us against real threats. Yet they are deployed, WASTED in a place that had nothing to do with 9/11 or Al Qaeda, and which had no weapons of mass destruction, and which posed no threat to us or anyone else (except maybe their own people).
One thing the movie left out: The strategy of securing the oil fields in Iraq and elsewhere and the securing of the location of the proposed pipeline in Afghanistan can be supported by the possibility that peak oil has been reached and the supplies are starting to run out (not by WMD, for chrissake). This amounts to pure survival, unless we *very quickly* develop alternative energy sources. Which I highly recommend, by the way. Fast. Because establishing an empire has always been the beginning of the end, historically, and I don't think we are somehow exempt from that.
But even the motive of peak oil becomes suspect in the face of the profits that are being raked in during all aspects of this war - weapons, clothes, reconstruction, communications, everything.