I received an email from a friend who sent me one of those patriotic chain letters that said that I shouldn't be so selfish as to always worry about my little problems when there are soldiers fighting in Iraq. Here is my reply:
It's not that I don't support the troops, but I hate these type of emails. Those Americans soldiers weren't forced into the military. They voluntarily signed their life away. And if we didn't have such a screw-up as a president, they wouldn't be over in Iraq.
So many self-righteous hypocrites act like if we don't think about the soldiers "protecting our freedoms" (uh, more like "killing Iraqis") every single day, we aren't patriots and are somehow committing some sin. I think it's more patriotic to question our government, to make sure that it's doing what it's supposed to do, and hold it accountable when it doesn't, than to just blindly trust it and fall in line.
I just hate any chain letters, including stuff like this or "my 6 year old daughter has leukemia, please send this email to all your friends." crap. It may be true, but how's an email going to help a little girl survive leukemia?
*end*
I'm not trying to come across as uncaring. I've done community service since I was in high school. I love volunteering, signing petitions for a cause, or sending letters concerning the environment to my congressman/woman. I feel that it's really important to help my fellow man... but I'm still going to complain about some driver who cut me off on the freeway or tailgates me when I'm going over the speed limit, I'm still going to bitch about not finding a close parking spot, and I'm still going to feel like my problems are overwhelming. No one is so self-sacrificing to always think about how others are before themselves (except maybe my momma! lol).
I've always considered myself very political. My views are very strong and opinionated. And my politics are definitely influenced by my cultural and ethnic background.
I feel as though people who preach about supporting the troops, "never forgetting," and blindly following are just using patriotism as a way to be prejudice and ignorant. I understand being proud of what you are and where you come from. I think that the United States is one of the best countries in the world. We have freedoms that most countries have never had. But we shouldn't use our "superpower" as a way to bully countries into converting into our beliefs and ways of life.
It seems as if anyone who disagrees with our present government is unpatriotic. Like slapping a bumper sticker or attaching a plastic flag to your car makes you patriotic. I'm sick of people pulling out the patriot card whenever I voice an opinion different from theirs and our dimwitted president. This country was built on conflicting ideas and opinions. In fact, that's how this country works. If everyone in power agreed, we'd have no sense of accountability or a balance in power.
Ever since its creation, the United States has never had to deal with being a dictatorship or theocracy. We are one of the few countries who have succeeded with democracy. Americans have freedoms we take for granted, freedoms some countries could only dream about having.
And as for Iraq being better off, what we must remember is that you can't force democracy or freedom. Spending so much money (that we don't even have) on a war that was fought for all the wrong reasons seems so crazy and foolish.
Try as I might not to feed into the conspiracy that Bush was involved in some way with the 9/11 attacks, I must say that they couldn't have been timed better. Bush was losing popularity even among his supporters at the time. Afterwards, he was held as the champion of the American people. Again, when he was fairing poorly due to failure in capturing Bin Laden, just like that, Americans were in fear of being attacked by a country who doesn't even have nuclear weapons. So the US jumped on Bush's bandwagon to crush our enemies to dust.
It's a simple fact that we should try to use our power and influence to help and not hinder other countries. We put the Taliban into power when Russia invaded Afghanistan and not help them rebuild and stabilize their country, we befriended Saddam and supplied him with the means to create biochemical weapons to defeat Iran and even kill his own people, we allied ourselves with Russia to defeat the Nazis and closed our eyes to Stalin killing more innocent people than Hitler did. The "keep your friends close but your enemies closer" idea has been taken to the extreme by our country time and time again.
No one thinks about the fact that the United States almost holds a monopoly on nuclear weapons. We have more WMD than all other countries in the world combined. Not to mention that we're the only country to ever drop nuclear bombs on another country. And we wonder why we're hated? Why is it that the US tries so hard to keep other countries from having nuclear weapons when no other country seems to protest against us having them? I mean, shouldn't there be sanctions keeping us from building over 11,000 nuclear weapons? No other country has dropped nuclear bombs on another country. No other country mass produces nuclear bombs like we do.
The word "terrorist" is linked with racial, ethnic, and religious groups. Just watching movies (example, Executive Decision) or the news brings to mind some Allah-praying, turban-wearing, ratty-bearded Muslim. But what you must remember is that there are anywhere from 30 to 50 extremist groups in the world, and most are not Muslim, nor Middle Eastern.
Hunting down and killing terrorists makes them martyrs to their supporters, portrays us as the evil "infidels" those terrorists would have the world to believe we are, and incites even more hatred towards Western Civilization and Americanization.
Most of us can agree that the United States is not very well-liked in the world. Instead of using our political and military clout to overthrow those negative perspectives, we should first figure out why we are hated so. I believe it is because we help the wrong people at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. We always fight our friends and befriend our enemies. Alliances change as our political goals do. But when we help our enemies fight us (Bin Laden's CIA training, the US supplying Iraq with weapons to fight against Iran, secretly selling Iran weapons to fight Iraq, etc.), we have to question where our loyalties should lay.
There is no question that Saddam or Bin Laden were anything other than extremist dictators who should never have wielded so much power over people. However, the methods Bush and his administration used to remove (and not succeeding on Bin Laden's capture) them were not the wisest possible scheme.
Ugh, I just get so frustrated when people just don't question shit that's handed to them. They just take it and ask for more.
Okay, I'm stepping off the soapbox now.
