Keeping you distracted while war crimes are committed
By RJ Schinner, 11/2/06
Just days before an election many hope will be a referendum on the war, a frenzy has erupted over John Kerry’s botched joke. This has quickly become a top news story, with Bush, the Republicans, and the media attacking Kerry for “disrespecting the troops”, and some Democrats calling for Kerry to publicly apologize. Three things need to be said about this:
1) Contrary to what Kerry intended to mean in his joke, Bush did not launch the war on Iraq out of stupidity. The war in Iraq serves an agenda of enforcing the rule of empire on the Middle East; the nature of it is unjust, and the war crimes being committed on the Iraqi people (which Kerry never mentions) are the inevitable outcome of an unjust war.
2) There is nothing sacred or honorable (or for that matter intelligent) about what the troops are doing in Iraq. In fact, they are being ordered to carry out war crimes. We should be calling on them to refuse to take part in this any longer, and supporting people like Lt. Ehren Watada, who is jailed and facing charges right now for refusing to fight in an unjust war. Contrast that with the competition among politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, over who “supports our troops” the most.
3) All the uproar around Kerry’s botched joke attempt only serves to keep us from understanding and confronting the reality of what this war is about and what the troops are doing in Iraq in the first place. This whole conversation has to change.
