When I heard that our strutting, without-doubt President had to sneak into Islamabad with the landing lights off and the shades lowered on proud, majestic Air Force One, symbol of U.S. pride and leadership, I thought, "Gosh, there's irony in there somewhere." Stealth government. Stealth wiretapping. Stealth Cheney. Stealth Ports deal. Stealth landing. What goes around comes around.
So what has changed for the billions spent and the deaths and the dismemberments and the shattered families and the grief and the post traumatic stress syndrome afflicting our brave soldiers for a long time to come? I heard someone say the other day that before the U.S. invasion, people in Bagdad lived side by side for many years not knowing who was Sunni and who was Shiite and now they can't speak to one another until first asking, "What are you?" Wasn't there something like that in Germany long ago?
I guess we'll either be totalitarian soon and learn to like it or traumatized by impeachment and resignations and prosecutions and retributions from the Middle East. And for what? Oil? So Rove's ego could get stroked? To glorify God? To speed up the Rapture? To rid the world of happy people who don't worry about being sinners?
I'm trying to remember what life was like when Bush II took over? What was going on then that made the far right extremists so enraged that they needed to trash a large part of the world? What was so lacking in their lives that they needed to become such vengeful, self-destructive warmongers? Love for Jesus?
I don't write these much anymore because I don't want to be one of those not-in-power sad-sacks who cling to the past or the future. But when I heard that Bush landed in Islamabad with the lights off and shades down, I thought, "Of course he did." This has been a Shades-Down Presidency.