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Last week, four soldiers of the Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry were killed by U.S. "friendly fire," a military euphemism for screwing up royally.
An Air National Guard F-16 dropped a laser-guided 500-pound bomb on young Canadians taking part in a "live fire" training exercise near Kandahar, a former Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan. The American pilot, noting the gunfire, radioed in a request to drop a bomb. He was told not to, but he was not told that the people firing weapons on the ground were our allies honing their skills to fight in this endless, futile war. So when Fly Boy makes a pass over the area, he decides he's under attack -- and bombs away.
And our president's response to this colossal blunder? With a wave of his hand, after giving a speech in Nowhere, Texas, he brushes it off with an offhand, "I've expressed my condolences to Prime Minister Jean Chretien."
Bush, you are such a major weasel.
You should have said you were hideously sorry for this tragedy. If you had a heart, you should have been calling the families of those four young men to apologize for having some Top Gun in the air who isn't following orders.
You also should be reaming the butts of our military officers who didn't bother to tell the flying surveillance missions that Canadians were engaged in a training exercise.
Then you should do the honorable thing, and fall on your sword for being the stupidest, most graceless president we have had since we got rid of Daddy Bush.
Yes, indeed. I'm seeing red. I despise George Dubya. I didn't think I could despise anyone American as much as I did George the First, but blood will tell. My only comfort is that first Bush-league president had an approval rating of 90 percent after the Persian Gulf War and managed to land himself in the Republican manure up to his neck in time to be a one-term president. And I wouldn't mind starting a tradition by having a one-term Baby Bush, he of the pudding face of his mother and the scattered wits of his father, who also was a public embarrassment. Y'all do remember him vomiting on the Japanese prime minister?
America has been obscenely silent on the Canadian incident. Almost two days after the tragedy, when Bush was under pressure by the press to "say something," he lamely walked over to reporters and, oozing insincerity, muttered the usual platitudes.
And while we're killing Canadians in Afghanistan, Israel is running amok. And our response is to offer to referee. We are giving Israel $2 billion in weapons a year so they can strafe Palestinian towns, murder women and children, and bulldoze towns. And now they won't let humanitarian workers in to see what mayhem they have wrought.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is not only a hugely fat toad, he is Israel's answer to Hitler. At least that Nazi madman kept his genocide a secret for as along as possible, knowing the world was not going to approve. Sharon trumpets his murder spree like he's the Messiah Jews have been awaiting for 4,000-plus years.
Sharon allowed the slaughter of Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon a couple of decades ago and he hasn't changed a bit, except to get fatter. The United States turned a blind eye to that crime. Now, he's slaughtering Palestinians again, on land that was supposed to be ceded to them in a peace pact Sharon didn't sign and apparently has no intention of honoring.
Frankly, I have no love for Palestinians and I loathe the suicide bombers determined to undercut any chance at peace. If I had my way, the leaders of both Palestine and Israel would be lined up and summarily executed. Then we'd tell those two Semitic peoples to play nice or Uncle Sam will be displeased. Unfortunately, that is not in my power.
President Weasel does have the power to tell Sharon to get his bullyboys out of what was supposed to be Palestinian land. And they should take Orthodox Jewish squatters building homes for their large broods with them. Or the United States will cut off shipment of all those lovely helicopters.
He should explain to American Jews that we are no longer going to fund genocide. Yes, I know campaign contributions and Jewish votes will be lost. But a decent president should care about his country and world more than about being reelected. But that's an increasingly rare species of president.
Ending terrorism against Israel was the alleged reason for the invasion, but the Israeli incursion into the West Bank is not going to deter the suicide bombers until every Palestinian is dead. That may be what Sharon has in mind.
Because anyone with even the most modest mental equipment can see it's only going to fuel the impetus for attacks. We now have Palestinian women blowing people up and nowhere in the Koran does it promise women a Muslim paradise where 72 virgins await their pleasure.
West Bank towns and villages are now rubble and their children, those who survive, will remember. And they won't just blow up Israel, they'll be blowing up anything American for aiding and abetting their persecutors.
And our president doesn't have the humanity, the grace if you will, to immediately apologize to Canada for killing four soldiers fighting with us in our self-proclaimed war against terrorism. He sends Secretary of State Colin Powell on a doomed-from-the-start mission to bring sanity to the Middle East.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak even refused to speak to him, saying he was "indisposed." Indisposed to American visitors, in any case.
We have not captured Osama bin Laden, but we have pissed off a number of Islamic countries in the process of trying to bring him to justice. We stand idly by while Israelis murder their rivals for an ugly piece of desert. We allow Saudi Arabia to fund any number of Islamic terrorists without calling them to task because we need Saudi oil. And I guess we're ready to watch the Islamic World explode because President Weasel wants to get a second term.
I'm ashamed to be an American.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 23 2002 |