Juan Cole, in his
must-read article details
ten nine things Congress could demand from Bush about Iraq, and also takes the time to elaborate why an out-and-out withdrawal is a very dangerous move, even though those who want the troops out now do have a point.
We may not have seen a civil war like what would happen from our immediate withdrawal, and I too can't imagine us living with ourselves if we perpetrated another Darfur in Iraq. But then Juan makes this comment about oil:
If 20% of the world's petroleum production were taken off-line by (oil pipeline) sabotage, the poor of the world would be badly hurt, and the whole world would risk another Great Depression. ....working people, whom we on the left are supposed to be supporting, get to work on buses, and buses burn gasoline. If the bus ticket doubles or triples, people who make $10,000 a year feel it. Moreover, if there is a depression, the janitors and other workers will be the first to be fired. As for the poor of the global South, this scenario would mean they are stuck in dire poverty for an extra generation.
Sorry Juan, but we have done this to ourselves.
I have repeatedly mentioned here of a coming crunch time for many of us, which is why I have pursued my passion now rather than later. What Juan seems to forget is that a good amount of these $10,000 a year folks voted to keep the same creep and his bunch of corporate cronies in positions of decision-making power.
Americans are arrogant and selfish. The latter is a subject I will tackle in another future diary, but it's time we all faced up to the facts - we are an arrogant and selfish people. Why? Because we have been brought up that way.
We have let prosperity go to our heads (I'm no different), and today's parents flaunt our children with excesses the likes of which some of us never have seen when we were young. Our citizens have grown spoiled and for the last five years have been told to shop till we drop by our elected leaders. We have been taught that the world is ours for the taking, and never been given a good enough, mind-piercing reason to give back. Many of us today do not have a sense of shared sacrifice, and self-professed Christians, we learn more to smite the enemy (fags, Muslims, un-believers, etc.) rather than pay attention to Luke 7:31 - "Do onto others as you would have them do unto you."
Juan can issue all the warnings he wants about oil pipeline sabotages across the entire Middle East, and mass genocide for a people we came "to liberate," but the fact of the matter is that Americans don't care. The biggest example why is we, the American people, have not held these folks accountable for their mistakes, and have pretty much only shrugged our shoulders when these bastards were promoted and/or given a raise.
All Americans care about is cheap oil, low taxes, and now today, bringing our boys and girls in uniform home now! They are not looking beyond the consequences of their selfish requests. With all due respect, what makes Juan think that all of a sudden these people suddenly care about the fact that we are instituting a theocratic state that eliminates women's rights? Hell, these are the same people that for the last five years have turned the other way and allowed others to strip them of their own rights and freedoms, all for the sake of feeling safe and being able to spend their money wildly and freely with no repercussions.
Juan's rhetoric may be all good and needed now more than ever, but that won't change the circumstances we will soon find ourselves in - a generation of tough love. Our gas and money guzzling days are coming to an end, whether we like it or not, and just like children, mere words and "time outs" won't be enough to change the attitude of many Americans. Obscenely high gas and electric bills will only make a dent. The de-financing of many American homes by the burst of the housing bubble will make the dent more noticable. The inability to find even a remotely good-paying job will make that dent painfully obvious.
We are parentless children who are about to learn the real cruelty of the streets. The privileges we have taken for granted will be taken away by the weight of the world, whether it is by civil war in Iraq, the collapse of the dollar, or more terrorism here at home. You wanna talk about miracles? A miracle will be that none of this will happen.
If there will be one lesson I hope most of us will learn is that Newton's 3rd Law of Physics - to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction - is as much applicable to regular life as it is in science. The spoiled, selfish attitudes Americans have exhibited upon ourselves and the world are about to be turned against us in ways that we, as a generation, have never faced before. Most of us here on this blog and who have been watching this happen before our eyes have been sensing it for some time, and as rough as it will be, we will be prepared. It's everyone else who will be shell-shocked by the Tough Love of the 21st Century.