What About Us?

It turns out that there's just a lot to be pissed and cranky about in the world. At the time of this posting, the suspected Iraq Body Count (namely civilian casualties) stands in the range of 3,736 - 4,771. Well, now that we've helped cause the deaths of more of them than a group of hijackers (primarily from a neighboring country and having so very very very little to do with Iraq in any case) caused for us, I wonder if the pro-war side is going to be satisfied? Or do we now have to cause this sort of toll on another country (and if so, do we have to go through the process of starving the people and depriving them of decent medical and sanitation goods? Or can we just go in right away?). It's been a bad week for the US in Iraq. Remember how we got tired of waiting for the U.N. inspectors to find anything for us to give healthy government contracts over? Well, our team's given up on the Weapons of Mass Destruction front too.

The 75th Exploitation Task Force is dismantling its operations for a likely departure in June, says the newspaper, after the group failed to find any biological and chemical weapons.

Members of the team told the newspaper that they no longer expected to find such stocks, and that they had consistently found targets identified by Washington to be inaccurate, or to have been looted and burned.[BBC Online, 11 May 2003]

I'm not even going to repeat the lies the pundits told us, outside of the typical fond memories of "oh, when the war is over and we have free reign over the country, we'll find shitloads! It'll be a piece of cake! My Grandma could find some WMD's when this is done!" And yet - nothing. Even with all of those detailed blurry condemning photographs of incontrovertible proof that Colin Powell presented us. You'd think we'd figure out where those pictures were taken and could at least find something there. This was the imminent threat that provoked the worlds only superpower into preemptive attack mode?

I'm not saying that Saddam Hussein was a saint, or even anything resembling a good person. But there are a lot of bad dictators in the world today. And, of course, the World Bank and IMF historically have preferred it that way. Well, they probably would have preferred a good dictator over a bad one, but it's still better than a man rising up from the working class being voted into office on a platform of taking back the privatized institutions that were taken by multinational corporations with no interest for the locals. But there's usually a minority of rich white folk around in those situations with run-off laws to keep that from happening. Lucky for us, I suppose.

We spend less in foreign aid than we spend in military budget increases. As we're the largest military in the world, why do we need to keep spending more and more to kick the shit out of people who have less and less?

The May 2003 issue of Harper's has an article by William Finnegan on The Economics of Empire. It's an excellent read on the lies and dualities of free trade (how it's still fundamentally tipped heavily towards the rich countries against the poor, and how the United States practices FAR less than it preaches) and the ill-fated (but not necessarily ill intentioned) programs of the World Bank and IMF.

With all of this in mind, plus normal stresses of work and personal life, I guess it's no great wonder that I find myself back in the land of Ministry, getting (surprising?) enjoyment out of the new album, Animositisomina. The Apple Music Store turned out to be helpful today to in letting me get What About Us?, Ministry's contribution to A.I. (and the only truely good scene). You know life's good when Ministry become your soundtrack... Good times!