The subject of war is something that seems so obvious to most of us: “why kill to justify killing”.

My political belief system has been newly honed, my education pretty much began with the induction of the president into office. Prior to this incident, I was pretty much ignorant of the political process; didn’t think about it. Over the past few years I have read everything from bush as hitler to saddam as a martyr.

Personally I don’t understand morally why we have our hands so deep in the shit of the middle east. I understand the whole “we need a port to land in” in order to protect our interests (ie our military advantage), but the insane amounts of money we have funneled into Israel have obviously not been to spark good humor or good neighborship with Palestine. Personally, if I was an extremist in my religious beliefs and was booted out of “the holy land”, I would be pissed off. Granted, the killing can never be justified, but the anger at its base is nothing we can question. We have no business, in my opinion, fucking around over there. Our “fucking around” was pretty much a generalization of why we got hit on 9/11 anyhow.

Now with this war. Saddam is a little bitch. I don’t think there is much we can say to defend him as a person, someone with a set of morals or even a conscience. He has slaughtered and experimented on his people for decades. He would never get the “man of the year award” for being the best neighbor, or man with the biggest heart. However, the whole idea behind a dictatorship is to do what you want to do despite any will of the people. We always had such issues with communism, how could dictators slip through the cracks? People are fighting for him, people are behind him because he scares the shit out of them. However, I feel as though the president has obtained that level of loyalty/fear.

I wonder how insane it must feel to watch foreign troops roll out over the landscape. We have never in the history of the people we hold near to us (grandparents, great grandparents, mothers, fathers) had to watch that. I couldn’t even imagine the fear instilled by watching the build-up of aggressive forces over my land.

I love the media, as well. I just saw one of the newscasters stating that Saddam must now question the loyalty of the people within his own circle. You have to love how easily they sacrifice lives in the name of “communication”.

To try and justify war on another country is something I don’t even think just the president should be able to make. It seems so ridiculous that in this day and age, blood is traded for negotiations. This is why testosterone should be banned from the peace-making process.

Senator Byrd’s address yesterday has everything to do with how damaging this process will be. Shannon has it on his page. Check it out.

If we removed our dependency on oil from the equation, we would be better off entirely. We would have no financial dependency on oil exports, and countries in the middle east would have to depend on tourism to survive. If we took any small chunk of the billions of dollars we spent on funding slaughter, we would probably have an answer; which would then remove animousity for the US foreign oil interests, prevent us from having a reason to attack them at all, and pull out any association with religious attack. After all, how much money could you make as a country when your entire economy is fueled by your oil exports? Certainly not enough money to even make a country appealing for dictatorship. Certainly not enough to fuel war efforts. Certainly not enough to make any of this worth it for anyone.