WAKE UP AMERICA

There’s a measure of irony in the fact that America’s invasion of Iraq to dispose of Saddam Hussein and bring democracy to ancient Babylon has ended with Al-Qaeda insurgents taking over the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi and declaring those areas to be the independent Islamic State of Iraq. The very people the Bush Administration, and more specifically former Vice-President Dick Cheney, said would welcome American liberators with open arms are now using their newly opened arms to ally themselves with America’s sworn enemy, the Al-Qaeda network of the late Osama bin Laden. Pardon me for saying so, but America’s hubris has brought this failure upon our self. Hopefully, we’ll learn our lesson and act more rationally the next time.

For example, after rebels started a civil war last year against Syria’s dictator, Bashar Assad, conservative Republicans spent that last eight months lambasting the Obama administration for refusing to aid the rebel’s fight by supplying weapons and logistical support. The late-night CSPAN airways were filled with Congressional Republicans denouncing our President as a coward and an unfit commander-in-chief over his refusal to intervene in Syria. However, within the past two months, as proof of atrocities committed by Syrian Rebels have started to be documented by foreign press observers, and the Rebel’s connections with Al-Qaeda has been confirmed, it would appear that Republican conservatives were once again ready to lead America into another trap of hopeless quick-sand. Thank God the Obama Administration was not so trigger-happy!

Many Americans find comfort in silly notions like the world is black and white, that we are the good guys and any who resist us are bad, and that if given the freedom to choose, people will choose our way of life and government, but that’s not how the world works. The world is mostly gray. Our friends sometimes do bad things and our enemies sometimes do good things. Freedom isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, and life under a despot can often be safer than life in the land of the free. Even today, amidst all the violence and death occurring in Iraq, per capita, more people are being gunned down here in America on a daily basis than they are over there. Apparently safety, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, too!