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Twenty GIs killed by rocket on U.S. base—democracy is prevailing
Did you know that the Iraqi insurgents are now attacking U.S. bases with rockets? Twenty GIs and two others were killed and 60 GIs, Iraqi soldiers, and civilian workers were wounded when a 122mm rocket hit a dining hall tent at a base near Mosul as the men were sitting down to lunch. And such attacks on U.S. bases have become common lately (did you know this?), necessitating the replacement of dining hall tents with hardened bunkers. And what does Boilerplate have to say? He says: “I’m confident democracy will prevail in Iraq.” I see two possible explanations of such off-the-planet statements, and it’s not immediately clear which is worse. The first is that, intoxicated by neoconservative ideology, Americans, from Boilerplate on down, now have the American version of the cargo-cult syndrome! They think a ruthless mass-murdering terrorist enemy is going to be magically made to disappear by means of a democratic election! The second possibility is that, deluded by neocon ideology, they think that, if there is an election, the continued terrorist attacks and the mass deaths of Americans and Iraqis won’t matter, because democratic elections are the noumenon—real, objective being—and all other things, including life and death, are mere phenomena.
In the first instance, Boilerplate and his followers think elections can magically change reality. In the second instance, they think elections are the only reality. The first notion is that of the savage. The second is that of the schizophrenic. I admit that this is an extreme statement. But when you turn a nation that is dedicated to a proposition into a nation that is nothing but a proposition, and when you try to do the same to the rest of the world as well, if that’s not insanity, what is? Email entry |