For everyone whining and pissing and moaning about 9-11 (or The Day the Saudis Gave the Bushes an Excuse to Shred the Constitution), here's a point to remember:
I have been in more than a few bars with collection boxes for the IRA Provos, and I have more than a few times put money in those collection cans. And I'm not even Irish. But it seemed to me the struggle was important, that the Irish deserved to be free of their foreign masters. Free the Hunger Strikers in the Maze!
It was a long time before I realized those weren't targets being shot or blown up -- they were people. And a large number of people in the United States were dropping coins in those cans, lifting a pint of Guinness or Harp and solidifying camaraderie with the other people in the saloon by shouting, "Up the IRA!"
(You may not know that while the varied national groups known as "Hispanic" represent the largest source of illegal immigrants in this country, the second largest group of illegals are from Ireland -- free access to Canada, surreptitious transit into the US.)
I know how many despotic murderers, from Saddam Hussein to Colonel Noriega to Fulgencio Batista to Somosa of Nicaragua the governmental "we" has installed, propped up, and helped to kill their own people. There really wasn't much I could do about that then. I did not know of or approve of Donald Rumsfeld giving Saddam Hussein the fixin's to "poison his own people."
But this -- dropping money into a can so that people who have been driven into psychosis could buy guns and construct nail bombs to kill people in London or teenagers in Belfast or churchgoers in Colombia or set car bombs in Omagh or blow up Lord Mountbatten was something I did. I did it personally and intentionally, and even if I didn't understand the implications of what I was doing, whether in for a quarter or in for a grand, I bought a piece of that action. A whole lot of Americans did the same.
So with our history of feeding the fires in the UK, I would have assumed that had Tony Blair been in possession of any balls at all, when Bubba Bush asked him to go along into Iraq, he would have given him a Dick Cheney greeting, i.e., told him to go fuck himself.
Maybe now he wishes he had.
I have been in more than a few bars with collection boxes for the IRA Provos, and I have more than a few times put money in those collection cans. And I'm not even Irish. But it seemed to me the struggle was important, that the Irish deserved to be free of their foreign masters. Free the Hunger Strikers in the Maze!
It was a long time before I realized those weren't targets being shot or blown up -- they were people. And a large number of people in the United States were dropping coins in those cans, lifting a pint of Guinness or Harp and solidifying camaraderie with the other people in the saloon by shouting, "Up the IRA!"
(You may not know that while the varied national groups known as "Hispanic" represent the largest source of illegal immigrants in this country, the second largest group of illegals are from Ireland -- free access to Canada, surreptitious transit into the US.)
I know how many despotic murderers, from Saddam Hussein to Colonel Noriega to Fulgencio Batista to Somosa of Nicaragua the governmental "we" has installed, propped up, and helped to kill their own people. There really wasn't much I could do about that then. I did not know of or approve of Donald Rumsfeld giving Saddam Hussein the fixin's to "poison his own people."
But this -- dropping money into a can so that people who have been driven into psychosis could buy guns and construct nail bombs to kill people in London or teenagers in Belfast or churchgoers in Colombia or set car bombs in Omagh or blow up Lord Mountbatten was something I did. I did it personally and intentionally, and even if I didn't understand the implications of what I was doing, whether in for a quarter or in for a grand, I bought a piece of that action. A whole lot of Americans did the same.
So with our history of feeding the fires in the UK, I would have assumed that had Tony Blair been in possession of any balls at all, when Bubba Bush asked him to go along into Iraq, he would have given him a Dick Cheney greeting, i.e., told him to go fuck himself.
Maybe now he wishes he had.
posted by Saintperle at
5:52 PM
