Homeland

[poliphilo]

Yeah, but it's the wrong story.  The real story isn't "Oh my God one of them might sneak over here and harm some of us". The real story is "Lots of us are over there and harming them on a daily basis for no particularly good reason". The real story is about Afghan shepherd boys being killed on the hillsides by US drones and Afghan families murdered in their beds by US soldiers. The real story cannot be told without shame. And there is something shameful too about turning away from the real story and telling an entirely confected one in which we, not they, are the ones under threat. 

Comments

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

For what little good it did, I was vehemently opposed to Afghanistan even before the first palette of greenbacks and Viagra hit the ground. It was a hideous strategic blunder, willfully committed by some of the dumbest sociopaths ever to steal their way into national office.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

One expects politicians to be sociopathic; it's the dumbness that comes as a surprise.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Exactly so! It is sadly rather easy for me to explain why the Bush junta was the dumbest leadership team of any country in the developed world. There is a reason they lost the election, after all, and at least in aggregate even the American electorate wasn't quite that stupid. What genuinely puzzles to this day is why Europe, especially the UK, enabled Cheney's murderous designs.

Then again, looking at the stupid and self-inflicted damage Europe's leadership is doing to their economies, right now, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised at all. They certainly didn't rise to the top through personal merit, obviously.