Are You a Liberal or a Conservative? Take the Driftglass Test
Technorati Tags: Riverbend, Baghdad Burning, Sabrine, Al-Janabi, Iraq war, Iraqi Army, rape
Driftglass has a staggeringly awesome take-away from Riverbend's account of Sabrine Al-Janabi, a young Iraqi woman who was raped repeatedly by several Iraqi Army soldiers -- you know, the same Iraqi army that U.S. troops are training? After posting a large chunk of River's post, Driftglass writes:
If you read what Riverbend wrote and your reaction is something like “Merciful Christ. How will we ever be forgiven for what we have done to that country? How will we atone? And how can we still be debating this? How can anyone with a sliver of conscience still be invoking God and Homeland, Freedom and Faith, 9/11 and 'Fight Them Over There' to keep us trapped in this hell we sired?” you’re a Liberal.
If you read it, get halfway through, and your brain locks down and starts desperately scurrying around like a rat in a dumpster fire, looking for a way to rationalize it, to excuse it, to pick at its methodology…
Looking for a “Yeah, but…” to absolve you for having sown this wind and reaped this whirlwind…
Looking for today’s Magic Coward Words from Fox High Command that will let you complete the sentence “But the Democrats…” in some way that permits you to wriggle out from under your complicity in the Iraq Disaster…
Looking for some rebuttal, no matter how slight – maybe some anonymous email from somebody’s second cousin who has a friend, who knows a guy, whose half-sister is married to a guy, who went to high school with this dude who served in Iraq and says things aren’t really that bad – that will let you off the hook…
Or if you just sneer, say “Fuckin’ raghead bitch prolly had it comin’” and go about your business unmoved…
…then you are a Conservative.
And if you find that you are a Conservative, then you can quit bothering to hunt for phantom enemies within, like the Liberal Press and the Dirty Hippies, because you – personally and specifically -- are the enemy.
You – personally and specifically -- are what is wrong with America.
2 comments:
Undertoad,
Would that be "If you were desperately concerned about it starting on August 2, 1990, when Saddam Hussein became our enemy by invading Kuwait"? Or would it be "If you were desperately concerned about it throughout the 1980s, when Saddam and his sons were raping and torturing women, and murdering hundreds of thousands of Iranians and Kurds with poison gas, with the full knowledge and consent, and the actual aid, of the United States, because Saddam was our ally (meaning he did what we told him to do)"?
If the first (concern beginning in August, 1990), you are a conservative.
If the second (throughout the 1980s, when Donald Rumsfeld was sent to Iraq to shake hands with the man who dropped cyanide and mustard gas on Kurds and Iranians), you are a liberal.
Hey Kathy and Anonymous!
Are you both out of your tree? Is it so easy to compartmentalize people? If you ask any of the victims, they will tell you they do not care WHO raped them, it should never have happened in the first place. Maybe the liberal hates the current human rights abuses, and the conservative hates the former human rights abuses and the humane person hates BOTH.
Iraq is a very uncomfortable example of how doing the right thing may not always lead to the right conseqences. The right thing was not invading the country in the frist place. But that does not give much comfort to those who suffered under Hussein and there were many.
Couldn't a different way have been found to get Hussein out? I don't know the answer to that. But right now the situation sucks both prior and after the American and British invasion.
Take Care
Joan
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