The War on Terror came home to roost again this morning, and reminded us that there is a price to be paid–and that the ones paying it are innocent civilians and volunteer soldiers from the countries Bush dragged with us into Iraq.
But, it would be stupid to say this is Bush’s and Blair’s fault. It isn’t and anyone who says it is is full of shit. That said, though, it might be time to ask when we’re going to stop messing around in Iraq and concentrate on getting these bastards where they live–wherever that may be.
That means stopping financing our own opposition by driving SUVs all over hell. It means we ought to raise the gas tax significantly and use it to discourage the consumption that funds our enemies, and to fund the war machine to kill them. It means concentrating on killing the SOBs in Afghanistan, where they started, and leave Iraq to sort itself out. It means, let’s stop worrying about gay marriage. And it means no more income tax cuts during war time.
Aside from the few thousand killed on 9/11, the innocent commuters last year in Madrid and today in London, and our volunteer soldiers and their families, we haven’t paid a damn penny for this war. Hell, a lot of us even got tax refunds while we’re charging the price we will pay–mere money–to our children. Maybe they’ll realize what Mommy and Daddy were really like when we’re dead and gone and China presents them the bill for the oil they’re buying out from under us.
We’re a rotten, selfish country to let others pay our bills. While we sigh, “Isn’t that terrible,” when London and Madrid are bombed, we can’t fill our recruiting quotas because we’re bogged down in the wrong war. The British and Spanish, to their cost, stood by us after 9/11. We should at least do the same for them by keeping our eye on the ball.
When the Roman historian Livy wrote the preface to his history of Rome, he knew the beginning of the end of Rome when he saw it. Greed was everywhere, and the sense of duty and discipline which had made Rome great was failing. Here’s how he put it: “…we slide more and more, until we begin to fall over the cliff to that time when we finally see we can no longer bear the vices which afflict us nor their remedy.”
Unless we’re really willing to take some of that remedy, and soon, Livy’s cliff is just going to keep getting bigger in the windshield of our SUVs.
And my friends in my former home cities of Madrid and London will continue to pay for the gas that’s getting us there.
Leave a Reply