Today I'm going to muse on the political culture of my current city, and why it is moronic. Here in Fredericton, a riding that historically has gone blue (that means the same thing as going red for my American readers), I am surrounded by people who have no idea how politics actually works. It's amazing what 8 years of voting liberal can do to the cultural psyche.
First of all, people seem to assume that President GW Bush was the worst president in history. They can cite no evidence, they can offer no sane argumentation. When questioned, they look at you as if you claimed the sky is neon yellow. Forget the fact that previous Presidents have committed perjury and probably felonies (President Clinton), completely fumbled Mideast policy and allowed Americans to be held hostage for over a year (President Carter), bungled the PR campaign on what was militarily the cleanest jungle war ever (President Johnson). I could go on, but I think you get my point. Make no mistake, I do not credit President Bush with being in the top 5, but you have to give the man a reasonable analysis. He dealt admirably with the greatest attack on US soil since Pearl Harbour. He concluded a successful ground campaign in a country that had repelled all previous attempts at doing so (seriously, even the Brits never had garrisons in every Afghan province). He removed on of the most intractable and wily dictators around from power, and he managed to hold his ground against two innovative insurgent campaigns at the same time, while simultaneously preventing a follow-up attack on the US. Allow me to be completely clear: Al Qaeda had plans and attempted to execute several attacks on the US post 9/11. That's how terrorist campaigns work. You open with a bang to get people's attention, and then you bleed their will to fight by demonstrating that you can hit them anywhere you want. That hasn't happened, so if you want to blame President Bush for Iraq, you had best be willing to give him credit for the lack of further attacks on US soil. Or you are a hypocrite.
Which brings me to my next point. Hypocrisy is rampant in this part of the country. It really irritates me, especially as a libertarian. People in this city just love to tell me how the Canadian military should be deployed to Darfur, but that the current Afghan mission is a war for oil. They love to tell me that the government should intervene and force Evangelicals to be nicer to gays, but that their "right" to smoke weed shouldn't be infringed. Well? Which is it? Do you want an interventionist nanny-state that regulates everything right down to how you feel about the asshole next door who plays country music at 4 AM? Or do you want the government to treat you like an individual citizen and stakeholder, with the rights and responsibilities that entails?
Nevermind, you're probably too baked to understand half of those words. Go back to parroting Jon Stewart and thinking you're brilliant.
And now for something completely different! Rule 5 WOOO! (Click for full size, I'm still learning how this stuff works)
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The hilarious part is that Afghanistan is not an oil producing nation.
ReplyDeleteYou're right though. People will argue against this conflict because they don't like the circumstances surrounding it, or the people that support it, but they are perfectly willing to commit to a virtually identical conflict somewhere else in the world.
The sad part is we should have seen this coming. We knew the Taliban were dangerous zealots when they blew up the bamyan buddhas.