Friday, January 12, 2007

Another Roman Parallel

"George Bush is the new Pontius Pilate!" says OurDad. I know the hanging of Saddam may be old news, but around OurDad the anti-Bush rant is non stop and since Wednesdays presidential address it's been elevated to indoctrination.

"Handing Saddam Hussein over to the Shia's was just like Pilate washing his hands of the death of Jesus . I tell you this country is going the way of ancient Rome and this is just one more example." Then list of parallels ensued: devalued currency, brazen military challenges, moral decay, failing democracy. Great Mom tried to stop him, and this usually works, but not this time, only got worse. He started in on the dollars flowing into the pockets of his Bush/Cheney friends in the oil industry and military industrial complex.

But my quick thinking stopped him. "So dad does this make Saddam the new Jesus?"

He didn't have a answer for that one.




6 comments:

Miranda said...
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Miranda said...

Not liking the impending fascism so much, but the moral decay is kinda fun since it upsets the fundies so. Besides the morally decayed make better and more interesting friends. They are usually nicer.

Stewart Sternberg (half of L.P. Styles) said...

I love fueling rants. Here's something to consider.

I used to be cautious about laying the Iraq war at the feet of the oil companies. I preferred to think that this whole affair was a matter of bad intelligence coupled with poor judgment. It was mostly something that benefitted the military industrial complex.

While some people would call it an oil war,I would say: "Show me where the oil companies are benefiting."

This week it came to light that the American government is helping the Iraqi parliment to adopt a law that would give western oil companies exclusive rights to their oil fields. The companies will receive seventy percent of Iraqi oil profits for ten years or until they recoup their costs for exploration and development, and then twenty percent of the profits for the next twenty years.

In my opinion..this is now a war about oil. Bring home the troops.

SourDad said...

Stewart, it's getting more obvious the longer the bungling continues, and now that we're stuck they have the ultimate excuse.

If we leave now it'll only get worse and it'll be our fault.

So as it stands now who's fault is it?...

Miranda said...

The oil thing has been going around since prior to the invasion. The transfer of oil ownership from the Iraqis to western oil companies was always part of the plan.

I leave you with this article
from a March 2003 Newsweek.

I still feel like we owe it to the people in that region to right the many wrongs we have inflicted but merely escalating troop levels without some kind of diplomatic solution tied to is foolish at best and disastrous for the entire western world at worst.

SourDad said...

I think the second law of thermodynamics, which basically states that it's much easier to fuck stuff up than to unfuck it up, is getting way to much help from all sides, and is nearing the critical fuckmass.

The critical fuckmass is the mass at which a situation becomes completely ununfuckable.

Snark aside, I feel horrible pity for the people in Iraq who are paying dearly for this mess.