Carnage and Mayhem

Perhaps not everyone caught the recent video clip of the President where, in an effort to explain America’s current economic doldrums, he says that “Wall Street got drunk and now it has a hangover.” As yet another example of Bush’s finesse and intellect in dealing with complex problems it’s not bad. Millions of people are being kicked out of their homes, the cost of everything from gasoline to food is skyrocketing and this guy just laughs.

WPA poster from 1930's

My grandfather used to complain about FDR back in the 1930’s, saying that Roosevelt was destroying Key West and turning it into a tourist trap with his “Work Progress Administration,” but I can’t even imagine what he’d have to say about Bush. FDR may have hastened the island’s demise, in Ernest’s eyes, as a good place to live, but most historians view Roosevelt as a man who strengthened America, not weakened it.

Yet, were my grandfather alive today, who would he vote for? Side with John McCain (who is apparently quite a fan of Ernest) and you get “another 100 years” of war in Iraq, and Ernest, in spite of his experiences on the Italian front in WWI and his work as a correspondent in Spain during the Civil War and later on in France, was not a fan of genocide. He hated it, as anyone who’s ever read his dispatches from Anatolia for the Toronto Star can attest.

Senator Obama, however, is hardly what you could call a “peace” candidate. It’s true that he wants to pull out most combat troops from Iraq, but only to “better” use them fighting terrorism in Afghanistan. But no western power has ever managed to completely subdue the tribes in Afghanistan. The British Empire couldn’t do it, nor could the Soviets, who were literally kicked out of the country, and I doubt that Obama will be able to do it either. Once elected (and I don’t think that there’s any doubt that he will be the next US president) he’ll continue to spend billions of dollars (that in truth America doesn’t have) on a war that can’t be won. Thousands of soldiers on both sides will die, along with an even greater number of civilians and for what? What will we have accomplished in the end? Carnage and mayhem or untold suffering, what kind of choice is that?