I doubt I’ll be subjecting myself to Bush’s State of the Union address this evening. I have an inkling of what he’s likely to spew. This morning I made the usual rounds, and found an abundance of articles giving good reasons why the U.S. government should not massacre invade Iraq.
“Instead of finding increasingly contorted reasons for going to war, President Bush and Mr. Blair should think about the possible consequences. As The Independent on Sunday has argued in recent weeks, a war risks fuelling terrorist attacks, with Britain becoming an especially vulnerable target. A military attack, even one that is successful in the short term, threatens to destabilise a fragile region, especially as attempts to revive the Middle East peace process have made little headway.”
not to mention:
“Death, disease and starvation await Iraq’s children should war break out, and casualties in the thousands or even in the hundreds of thousands cannot be ruled out, according to a report released Sunday by an independent team of European and American experts.”
Unfortunately it seems the U.S. is itching for a fight, no matter what the cost. So it seems it is no longer if. It’s when.
In somewhat related news, I’d been poking around AlterNet when I came across an article about Salon Magazine’s financial woes. I guess this includes me:
“…Salon is still a great magazine for the Gen Xers and older intellectual progressives, people who are grappling with how to balance the idealistic passion that occasionally bubbles up with the more hard-nosed realism that accompanies the responsibilities of raising kids or caring for aging parents, paying mortgages and school tuition, etc.”
I’ll readily admit, I’ve been reading Salon on a daily basis for years now. It helps me deal with the hard-nosed realism. The opinions expressed there often mirror and/or inform my own. Or make me laugh. Or cry (nearly). Especially those expressed by the amazing Anne Lamott. Here’s an example:
“Your sick worried mind can’t heal your sick worried mind. Well, maybe your mind is lovely and pastoral and you do not have paranoia, hypochondria, a bad attitude and delusions of victimized grandeur. That is very nice, but we don’t want you in our cave after the bombs fall, because you are going to annoy us to death.”
And after tonight’s address by G.W., I may be retreating to my cave…with my sick worried mind.