Giddy at death

I'm sure we all remember the festive attitude that the Bush administration took when they talked about going to war against the people of Iraq as a response to the 9/11 attacks. I can still picture Rummy smiling and nearly laughing when he described "shock and awe".

Well, now that other wars are being seeded, the bushies have learned not to be so giddy about creating wars in public, but the attitude is still there.

First a quick primer - to the best of our knowledge, Hezbollah kidnapped 2 Israeli soldiers. This is a very bad thing from an organization of bad people. However, this is not condoned or conducted by the government or people of Lebanon. Lebanon needs help to get these bastards out of their country. Israel's response of bombing the infrastructure and military of Lebanon - the very things the Lebanese government needs to combat the bad guys - is fueling a war, not preventing it.

Lebanon has appealed to the US for help in stopping the violence. The official reaction of the US has been clear - we do not want to stop the killing, but would like to use this as an excuse to go to war with Iran, and perhaps Syria too. "Officials such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and U.N. Ambassador John Bolton have said the United States does not believe the time is right for a cease-fire." Bush's response on how to end the killing of Lebanese civilians was "See, the irony is, what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over."

Of course, the region has been destabilized by dubya's war for oil, so seeding new wars is a lot easier now, than fabricating an Iraq-9/11 connection. Since the bushies claim their mideast policy is working, one can only conclude that their policy truly is open warfare. With the massive, massive war profiteering their friends are enjoying at the expense of human lives, societies and the US taxpayers, the motivations are not hard to recognize.

For those that cling to the belief that all this violence is justified, here's a hypothetical question. If a Russian crime organization kidnapped 2 American soldiers, what should the US do? Should they work with the Russians to go after the criminals, or declare open war on Russia and start bombing their power plants?

(political cartoon credit to Tom Toles)