The Republican Horror Picture Show

So what do Terrorists want anyway?

They want us to be scared. To be TERRORIZED.   Their goal is to spread panic, fear, chaos, and confusion.  They want us to be constantly thinking of them and their cause, and to change our way of life because of it.  They want our lives to become miserable, like frightened little mice, scurrying around, worrying about how to protect ourselves from them.  They want our country to become divided, forget its own principals, lose its soul, and to no longer have any respect in the world.

So why then GW, are we giving them what they want?

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" ~Franklin Delano Roosevelt

I am a veteran of the scare wars.  For me, it started when I was in grade school, with the "Duck and Cover" drills.  When the air raid sirens went off, it meant that that we might be under nuclear attack, and we were supposed to "duck" under our desks for protection.  Seems ridiculous now, but it was pretty scary stuff for a 6-year-old.

Later, in my teenage years, the Cold War was in full swing.  Communism was on the march, trying to take over the world.  We, the Champions of the free peoples of the earth, absolutely had to stop them in Vietnam; otherwise the whole world would fall.  The evil Soviet Union had tens of thousands of thermo-nuclear weapons (just like us), and a madman (Brezhnev), who was ready to use them. Ah, the good old days of MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction).  We had movies like The Day After and Testament to help feed the fear.  As a teenager, I was sure I would never make it to 30.  For about a year I dropped out of school and became a hippie; one of the reasons being that "I might as well enjoy life while I still can".

In the early 1980's I joined the Army, and found myself on the front lines of the Great Cold War.  I went to Germany, and spent almost 8 years there, waiting for the Soviet Army to invade Western Europe through the Fulda Gap.  In my particular (Russian linguist) job however, I had a special "insider" access to what was really going on, and I began to realize that the Russian Threat was being, uh.... overestimated quite a bit (do I dare say bad intelligence estimates).  Anyway, I enjoyed my stay in Europe, traveled around quite a bit, and was not really surprised when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed.  The world was not as scary as I had been lead to believe.

So now we come to the "Terrorism" scare wars.  Personally, I think this is only a transitional period between the Russian Threat, that fizzled out on us, and the upcoming Chinese Threat. (We do have to keep those Military Industrial-Complex jobs going, after all)

 The problem with "Terrorism" as a war is that it's an idea without a nation to go to war with.  You can't really go to war with an idea.  It's kind of like a War on Murder or the War on Crime or the War on Drugs or the War on Poverty.  There's no concrete, solid country for the Air Force to drop their bombs on, or for soldiers to put their equipment into.  There was Afghanistan for awhile; I don't know why the Administration lost interest in them so fast.  I mean at least try to look like your going after Bin Laden, for Christ sake.  Maybe it's because Afghanistan was already pretty battered and bombed out from its old wars with Russia.  Or maybe the big Corporations and Oil companies didn't see any potential profits to be made there.  For whatever reason, (probably the Oil Factor), the Bush Administration decided to make Iraq the latest "Greatest Threat America has Ever Known", with the famous "If we don't stop them in Baghdad, they'll be in Boston next week" meme.  Yeah right, whatever.   I've seen that movie before.

The Republican Horror Picture Show
The Blair Bush Project
Texas Cheney Massacre
Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue
The Rummy

Personally I'm not putting up with this sh#t any more.  I'm not going to cower in my apartment with a stock of duck tape and MREs because a small band of religious psychopaths in a foreign country, don't like my music, don't like my culture, and want me to walk around wearing a sheet over my head.   Sorry, this time I'm all scared out.   If it's my time to die, so be it.  And oh, by the way Republicans, this country has survived many threats MUCH WORSE than today's, but for some reason, the Presidents and Congresses of the time didn't feel the need to cannibalize the Constitution, torture prisoners, and turn the country into a military fortress.

That being said, I do have to admit to one thing that does really scare me - the fact that we have the Worse President the US has ever had running the country right now.  That does makes me scared.