I was reading Cheers and Jeers by Bill from Portland Maine at DailyKos the other day. Bill humorously links to the Rapture Watch, a website that tracks signs that the apocalpse may soon occur. Amazingly, sites like this have cropped up on the web, along with Fundamentalist Christian sites that state the apocalpse is near. The idiot President thinks it's near also. Our society must be fraught with mass depression for so many to be so obsessed with the end. They are all looking forward to massive death. In the Gospels Jesus states, "No one knows the time of my coming." And yet so many believe they do, and they want it.
I'm not a Christian, I'm a Humanist and I believe Deist best expresses my lack of religious beliefs. I believe as Emerson and the Founding Fathers did, that we must determine a good place here on earth. I'm not waiting to be sucked up into the sky. And I don't believe I deserve anything better than what I have here on earth. Therefore I'm not anxious to enter into war with people where lives might be lost. A war for a concept, such as Democracy, or Capitalism, or Christianity - take your pick, loses all it's value when you look at a poor little kid with all his limbs blown off and his dead mother by his side. You can't tell me that Democracy will make life better for that kid. Sure if you're fighting people who are coming after you, I say kick their asses, and do it well and do it till they stop, but don't give me a war for concepts. War is killing people. That's all it is, and you have a war you better be willing and morally just and able to kill your enemy or keep your peace. A philosphy like that would keep us out of a hell of a lot of trouble.
I was all for going into Afganistan after 9/11. I was hoping they would kill Osama Bin Laden. Suddenly, as a person who opposed the death penalty, I felt the death penalty was all right for that guy. I hoped they would do it quickly with minimal loss of civilian life. The Taliban is a ruthless government that enabled Bin Laden to thrive. I was all for kicking their butts too. They way they smashed those giant Budda statues down, and enslaved their women showed they had no respect for any form of human kind or way of thinking other than their own rigid doctrines, but I wouldn't have wanted to kill them for that. They harbored Bin Laden as they do today, and for that they deserve a goodole' Toby Keith style ass whuppin'.
But we weren't able to do that and both are thriving again in Afghanistan. I can't tell you how much contempt I have for the government for allowing that. But I have even more contempt for them for starting an unnecessary war in Iraq. That little kid's picture with his limbs blown off haunts my mind. My tax dollars at work. Goddamn Bush for using my money to hurt that little kid.
The way Bush is talking he wants to start a war with Iran, and probably Syria too. Now is the time we must act. The only way to stop this madman is by turning over the Congress this fall. By checks and balances we can stop this madness before it goes too far. I fear if we don't get one branch of Congress for the Democrats this fall it may be too late. I wish for life.
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