Let’s get past the speeches, the media, all the rest of it.
The election of 2008 is, for all intents, over.
It’s the war, stupid. It’s the stupid war.
That is what this election is about. It’s what this election has always been about.
John McCain supports the war. He will lose.
Hillary Clinton supported the war. That’s why she lost.
Barack Obama opposed this war from the start. That’s why he will be the next President of the United States.
It’s as simple as that.
Despite all the talk that we’ve forgotten the war, that we’ve forgiven the war, that we feel differently about the war because it’s not on TV every night, the war is still uppermost in our minds. It’s the nightmare we can’t close our eyes against. And it continues.
We care about our men and women dieing in this war. We care about the innocent loss of life in this war.
We hate this war. This damnable, despicable war. We hate it. We hate everything about it. We hate, deeply hate, the people who lied us into it. We hate, we are disgusted by, the people who believed the lies — the politicians and the media both.
We hate what this war has cost us. The lives. The wounded. The trillions of dollars. The economic loss. The $4/gallon gas. Mostly, we hatethe loss of America as the special place, the home of the good guys. The war killed that, too.
We hate looking in the mirror every morning and seeing a war criminal. And that is what the majority of us see in that mirror. That’s the reality of it. The blood won’t wash off — not now, not ever.
What we see in Barack Obama is the hope of bringing some of that feeling back. Some of it. We’re not so naive as to think that just because we elect a half-Kenyan, half-Kansan with a smooth speaking style as President, that the work is done.
That begins the work.
There will be many, many hard days, and weeks, and months and years to
come. This war, this damnable, despicable, awful war, has caused us to
dig a hole it will take generations to climb out of. When we fly on the
lofty plain of Sen. Obama’s rhetoric we’re pretending. It’s really like
his mother’s Kansas, over-the-rainbow stuff. But it’s words. Just words.
The hard work has not yet begun. The War Against Oil has not yet begun.
Americans will be dieing in Iraq this week, and next month, and for
many months to come. $10 billion per month will be poured into that
rathole for many months to come, no matter how we feel tonight.
But the press needs a nice big cup of shut the fuck up about the strategies and the
tactics and the personalities and all the other issues.
This election is about
one thing.
It’s about the war, stupid.
We demand that it end.
Stop the killing.
On a more callous level, I’d say screw stop the killing — stop the spending! Better yet, spend the money on something useful like improving infrastructure in the US.
On a more callous level, I’d say screw stop the killing — stop the spending! Better yet, spend the money on something useful like improving infrastructure in the US.