disgust discussed

So now, I suppose, we are to rejoice. We who believe in freedom and democracy are supposed to be proud of the “justice” that’s been carried out in our name...

On the Gallows, Curses for US and "Traitors"

This just makes me feel utterly sick and angry on so many levels. But I think the main reason for my anger is that...we’re getting away with it yet again.

Conflicts Shaped Two Presidencies

“The sacrifice has been worth it,” President Bush said a little over a week ago. Really? Really? Exactly what “sacrifice” is he referring to? The three thousand American families who’ve lost a beloved and irreplaceable soul in an illegal war driven by nothing more than corporate and political greed? The half a million-plus (think about that number in the context of this situation...if that’s not a genocide, I don’t know what is) Iraqis who’ve been killed for...pick any of the umpteen reasons Dubya has cited since the invasion began, none of which are honest or legitimate...

What “sacrifice” has this man ever made to or for anything? The fucking nerve of that statement just makes me so angry and ashamed of everything this administration stands for. If there is any one American citizen who has no right to use the word “sacrifice” because he has absolutely no understanding of it, it’s George W. Bush.

And no one article or editorial I’ve seen better sums up the responsibilities and motives of the West better than this one...

A Dictator Created Then Destroyed by America

How do you define what a “war crime” is? An “atrocity?” A “crime against humanity?” Obviously, it depends mainly on who is providing the definitions.

I’m not trying to suggest Saddam Hussein was a good guy or that I’m sad that he’s dead. The fact that I am opposed to all capital punishment doesn’t have anything to do with my disgust over this execution, either. What bothers me most about it is the “official” story that is being assigned to it, which Robert Fisk bluntly and correctly points out...

"Handed over to the Iraqi authorities," he may have been before his death. But his execution will go down - correctly - as an American affair and time will add its false but lasting gloss to all this - that the West destroyed an Arab leader who no longer obeyed his orders from Washington, that, for all his wrongdoing (and this will be the terrible get-out for Arab historians, this shaving away of his crimes) Saddam died a "martyr" to the will of the new "Crusaders".

And there’s the simple fact that you cannot defeat barbarism with more barbarism. Maybe that’s the one lesson humans will never learn.

That is what makes me feel sick and sad today. That once again, as Fisk notes, “...we will have got away with it.”