Frustration over war crimes - what on Earth will bring justice?

[ozymandius]

Rudyard Kipling's "White Man's Burden" is a bunch of crap. Yet the United States in all its self-righteous glory has used Kipling's poem as a rallying cry for oppressing the Phillipine independence movement nearly a century ago and elsewhere many times thereafter.

History teaches us that white men cannot save the world from itself. Nor can it make the world a more comfortable place for future white men who visit outside the occidental world. Guerilla warfare and a millenium of resentment seems to be the consequence and reward for westerners' meddling in regions where we do not belong.

Yet the sentiment of Kipling's little polemic lives on to this day. Aznar, Berlusconi, Blair and Bush seasoned this white man's burden theology with a bit of Goebbels and launched us into a needless and illegal war.

These men defied international law: its treaties, charters and conventions. A solemn Bush announced a year ago that "time has run out" for Saddam and that his allegiance with Al Qaeda threatens to deliver the world's deadliest weapons into the hands of terrorists. We know now that this was a damned lie invented by Rumsfeld's pet CIA project know as the Office of Special Plans (OSP).

Bush signed the death warrant of thousands of people that evening when, in prime time, he announced coalition forces would enter Iraq. Thousands dead! Saddam's torturers have been replaced by our own. Almost a thousand U.S. troops are dead. Combined with the numbers of other nations that have lost personnel, the thousand mark was surpassed last week. Promises of liberty have been supplanted with guerilla warfare (against which we cannot win) and a fertile recruitment field for people who newly embrace the theology of Osama bin Laden.

Thousands dead and for what? A hunch? Imperialist ambition?

Now we have the Senate issuing a report that las the blame on "faulty intelligence". Yet how often have we heard about the OSP? Nothing is happening in the House (go figure). In Britain, Lord Goldsmith and Lord Butler appear to be playing footsie with the legal advice given to Blair in advance of issuing his call for war based on a plagiarized, cooked dossier. The case is being made that intelligence officials were "subconsciously influenced" in interpreting intelligence reports.

Students of philosophy: British intelligence claims to have no free will.

It would seem that if one wished to become a mass murderer AND steal taxpayer money - all one needs to become is an elected official.

Where is the justice for those wronged and outraged? Why, after so much has gone wrong with their "best laid plans", do these same elected officials feel that they deserve to be rewarded with more time in public office?

[Q]

1. As a 'good American'...you're not supposed to FEEL anything...

...just shut up and vote and let 'democracy' take care of everything else.. Principles are flexible. Values are bendable. Winning is everything.