More Random Thoughts

There is a story that circulated around The Internet some time ago, I have no idea if this was a moral tale, the dangers of all languages besides English, or just another effort to make fun of the French but anyway. The story goes, at a convention of NATO generals the supreme French general protests that everyone is speaking English, to which the Australian general responds, that were it not for the English, Americans, Canadians and of course Australian's, the French general would be speaking German!

For years the notion was the English language promoted democratic government. After all the great democracies all spoke English, America, India, The UK, etc. Well I was just glancing at yesterday's Globe and Mail and there was an article:

Dateline: Washington DC, Friday January 11, 2008 (AFP, The Canadian Press)
Protesters in prison-style orange jumpsuits staged demonstrations around the world [today] to mark six years since the U.S. prison camp opened at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba Police arrested about 80 protesters outside the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington.

Amnesty International, which organized the protests, also sent a list of recommendations to presidential candidates, backed by signatures from more than 1,200 legislators around the world. So far, none from Canada have signed the list.

I have a confession to make, I am once again embarrassed to be called a Canadian. We should be protesting this prison just like everyone else, it's wrong. Remarkable isn't it, two words describe so much about this so called "war on terror", it's wrong. It is all wrong. Its not a war on an emotional state, that is not a winnable proposition. What we have going on is a fiction, its an effort to sustain the wealth of large corporations within the United States.

Think about it, if you want to stop terrorism you have to start by asking the forensic question, what is their motive? This quickly leads to some very embarrassing questions regarding the foreign policy of the United States and The West in general. We had a moral obligation to Afghanistan after the Soviets pulled out. We should never have involved ourselves in the unfortunate mess that was English relations with Iran (Iran had an infant democracy, why didn't America stick to her ideals and not intervene, tell the English to buy oil from Texas if Iran wasn't playing nice.)

Assuming we wanted to stop terrorism today would it make sense to piss off the entirety of West Asia for Weapons of Mass Distraction? Remember WMD? The reason the America's went into Iraq? Ooops, turns out there weren't any. It also turns out that even before the invasion the United States Government knew there were going to be problems, just Google Search "Future of Iraq Project" but who wants to worry about a long occupation and nation building when you can get such a turn on landing jets on aircraft carriers!

Ultimately the real problem is, its just too easy for all of us to be distracted by the petty and unimportant things, POTUS Bush lands an S-3 on the USS Abraham Lincoln and half the male population of the United States wets their pants. Meanwhile an insurgency is brewing in the place where major combat operations are "over"... oops! And really who wants to read my angry rantings about politics when its so much easier to go outside and play? It seems to me we would rather be distracted or entertained then do the dirty work of being good citizens in a democratic country. Someone, please prove me wrong, find me a counter example, because frankly this whole line of thought is depressing me.