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Monday, December 17. 2007
I’ll Vote for a Vegan
Well, if you think Bush’s war in Iraq is getting better and isn’t escalating, here’s a little bit of news from Iraq; Turkey just sent warplanes into the Kurdish area of Iraq, attacking PKK strongholds there. Of course, the Iraqi government, such as it is, is too weak to respond with more than words, but the well-equipped and financed Iraqi insurgents certainly can — and will — against Turkey’s ally in the region … which just happens to be the United States.
Our government has been sharing — which means giving — intelligence on the PKK in Iraq to Turkey for some time. This was the first attack to really make headlines anywhere. One woman was killed. PKK members, not so unlucky. No one’s even sure if the PKK was anywhere near the places that were hit by the bombers.
PKK is the rebel/insurgent group based in Northern Iraq trying to create an autonomous Kurdish state in Southern Turkey.
Back in 2002 I remember the “experts,” William Kristol one of the more vocal “experts,” assuring anyone who believed their façade of sincerity that all the nations in the region understood stability was in everyone’s best interests so there wasn’t going to be any of this internecine warfare going on once Saddam Hussein was deposed.
Now, maybe I’m too cynical, in fact, people who know me will tell you I’m too cynical. Let’s ask my friend Dan. “Hey Dan! Am I too cynical?” Dan: “Tim is way too cynical … and a bit of a bullshitter. How can he remember five years ago when he can’t even remember we were supposed …”
That’s fine! Thanks Dan! Just the cynical, that’s all we need here.
Dan: “Okay … fine.”
So anyway, I’m a bit of a bullshitter … I mean a bit of a cynic. Dan thinks way too cynical. Be that as it may, I didn’t believe the “experts” when they said there wouldn’t be an insurgency, there wouldn’t be an escalation of violence in the region, the Iraqis would have control of their country in six months (Donald Rumsfeld said five) and our troops wouldn’t be there after six months. Rummy was actually predicting weeks!
Here we are, five years later, talking about invading Iran, Hezbollah, if you recall, launched an offensive against Israel from Southern Lebanon, aided in large part by the Syrians and Iranians who felt emboldened enough because of the quagmire Bush started in Iraq, a quagmire complete with an insurgency and the formation of Al Qa’ida in Iraq, three warring factions that wish to part ways with each other — a plan Senator Joe Biden thinks is the most realistic and stable solution — and Turkey bombing Northern Iraq in its quest to wipe out the rebel PKK that has been causing so much destruction in Turkey.It appears that Bush’s war in Iraq is progressing pretty much the way the real experts predicted five years ago. You see, through the expert use of the media, pretty much with the media’s consent and cooperation, we’ve been fed this line of bullshit for five years that Iraq posed a serious threat to the United States and that everyone — including the French, Germans and Russians — agreed that Iraq had a WMD program that needed to be found and halted. Or destroyed, which was the avenue the Bushies (neocons) wanted to take and took.
The fact is, the real experts were warning us of everything that is happening and has happened since Bush started the war in Iraq … but no one was listening. They got very little — if any — press in the United States. We had to log onto the web sites of European newspapers to get any kind of dissenting views, real dissenting views, with expert analysis to substantiate the dissent. Pretty much all we got in the U.S. media was comprised of: “that kooky congressman from Ohio, Dennis Kucinich, is against the war in Iraq” with no real airing of his “kooky” views as to why he opposed the war.
The more I write about Congressman Dennis Kucinich, the more likely I am to vote for the “kooky” congressman when the California Primary rolls around. Here’s at least one reason why he is considered “kooky”: he’s a vegan. The popular conception/misconception of vegans is that they’re a little goofy. Mainly because when they are depicted in the media they are often written (in scripts) as being hippie-dippy types, saying, “wow man,” a lot and the women vegans let all their body hair grow to grotesque proportions. I’m a bit of a perv, I like … well, never mind that …
Many, maybe most, vegans are your average, everyday people wearing the same kind of clothes, going to the same types of jobs, grooming in many of the same ways as the rest of us, but depicting that type of vegan just doesn’t settle with our penchant for needing everything to be easily definable and therefore easier to ridicule.
Also, when programs like Penn & Teller’s Bullshit show vegans, they find the goofiest vegans available and spotlight them … instead of the more normal ones. And I have to be honest, that episode was very entertaining. So, as long as Dennis Kucinich is okay with me eating cows, lambs, pigs, chickens, turkeys, etc, I’m okay pulling the lever on his name.
He’s also one of the more courageous people to be running for president. He has the guts to stand up in the face of overwhelming public opinion against his views and say, “This is wrong!”
Not to mention he married a really hot babe (Elizabeth) less than half his age! Although that’s no reason to vote for someone: Kudos Congressman!
Yeah, things are progressing in Iraq — exactly the way we were warned they would progress but were too war hungry to pay attention to it. Bush says the “drawdown” of troops will begin next year, right around the time campaigning for the general election begins. But, that’s a bit of a fabrication. The so-called “surge” numbers will be reduced to pre-surge levels, meaning by this time next year there will only be approximately 130,000 troops in Iraq, instead of the current 160,000 to 170,000. How long they will stay there is anybody’s guess, but I’m thinking if Dennis Kucinich is president they will be gone by Thanksgiving 2009.
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