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Cultural Musings on Chatham-Kent
AMERICA AWAKENS TO ITS OWN HALLOWEEN NIGHTMARE
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
I happened to come across the following column that I wrote a few years ago at this time of year. I was lamenting the continuing "reign" of George W. Bush and fearing a Harper government here in Canada.Well a few years have passed and unless I am very wrong, I expect that by the time you read this column, Barrack Obama will be the president-elect and although I know he can never live up to all of his promises, he does inspire hope and, as he has said so often, a possibility of real "change". We all live in hope and I am willing to give him a chance. After all, can anyone be worse than George W. Bush!!?
Two years ago, I was fearing a Harper regime that would equal a Bush regime and I still hold fast to that belief. I think that it's so sad that just when the United States will be moving forward with a new vision we are stuck with a "mini-Bush" and an anti-intellectual that will lead Canada into a stagnant, uninspired and sad future. His conservative views are not what is needed now. We need bold new thoughts and actions for a new age in North America. We won't get this from Steven Harper.
Anyways.....read this little glimpse into the past. It is especially interesting at this U.S. election time and will give you some reminders of just how absolutely stupid George W. Bush was and why Oliver Stone's movie entitled "W" ( which I highly recommend!) is so dead on!
Before the last U.S. election I went on sort of a rant ( I do that every now and then!) about how the reelection of George W. Bush would be a very negative event and another four years of the Bush Administration would put all of North America in dire straits. Well......hopefully by now you are slowly grasping what I was ranting about!
The silly, macho "mission accomplished" publicity stunt staged on an aircraft carrier with Bush landing in a jet fighter shortly after Baghdad "fell" was a perfect example of the Bush administration's shallow, adolescent, inadequate grasp of the people of Iraq, its extensive history and simple common sense.
Bush duped, lied to and manipulated the American people and a few allies into believing that Saddam Hussien was a threat to world safety and that he had ties to Al Qaeda and had huge caches of "weapons of mass destruction". All was a bald face lie meant to advance his own private war to unseat Hussein and to protect Iraq's vast oil reserves for his oil buddies back in Texas.
His involvement in Afghanistan, although a bit more reasonable, has gone on way too long and it is now blatantly obvious that the supposed capture of Bin Laden was a sham or at best an impossible task for the world's most powerful and sophisticated army.
In all cases and situations Bush and his cronies demonstrate an embarrassingly inadequate knowledge of the history of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Korea and even Canada. The current U.S. administration acts like a bull in a china shop and justifies all of their self serving, self-centered actions throughout the world by claiming that they are ìfighting terrorismî.
Unfortunately and ironically it is their interference, bullying and total disregard for any other country but their own that has made them one of the most hated countries in the world and has placed them squarely in the sights of terrorist groups throughout the world. Their actions have done nothing but solidify and unite terrorist groups in a manner previously not thought possible. Instead of protecting their country from terrorists, they have simply raised the stakes and put us all in harmís way.
The Bush regime has ignored global warming, the environment and the future in order to please big business and avoid spending much needed money on the future of the United States and as a result North America as a whole. The excessive amount of money he has so recklessly spent on the military has placed the U.S. economy in such a precarious position that economic collapse of the once mighty U.S. economy is a definite if not unstoppable possibility.
The question remains if the world can endure, without absolute and utter destruction, two more years of George W. Already the cries for impeachment are starting to be heard from one side of America to the other and the "love affair" with the right wing, pseudo-evangelical, half wit is over; however, it may be, for the once mighty United States of America, an affair that went on way too long and one that will have negative reverberations for many years to come.
Here in Canada, we have our own "Mini-Bush" and it is hoped that when Bush and his right-wing cabal are removed from office (ceremoniously or unceremoniously) that we in Canada will see the writing on the wall. We must get rid of the Harper regime before it becomes a ghastly mirror of its counterpart in the U.S. and we are all forced to suffer more loss of young lives, economic recession, and Canada morphs into an intellectual wasteland that is despised and hated throughout the world.
The Bush Administration is a perfect example of a government that refuses to learn from its past and totally disregards its own history as well as world history. Unfortunately, we must all suffer for this lack of knowledge and insight. Must we always be ruled by fools??
Jim and Lisa Gilbert are local, national and international award winning educators and historians.
