Damn the news cycle. I am just not that quick. Al Zarqawi is already yesterday’s news–overshadowed by a surprise and morale-boosting photo op by Bush in Baghdad, over run by yet even more public statements and speculation about the Duke Lacrosse Team Rape Circus and an exciting interview with Angelina Jolie by Anderson Cooper on CNN.
It seems like Al Zarqawi’s death was nothing more than a blip on MSNBC et al before we were treated to the images of William Jefferson (D-LA) being ousted from the Ways & Means committee and the chorus of “Democrats Cheat Too…” (A foreshadowing of how this will all play out in November? Sigh.)
Well, I for one am still adjusting my moral outrage meter over the blatant murder of Al Zarqawi and the sickening combination of celebration high fives (we done killed ourselves a bad guy!) and blasé anatomy lessons regarding death by shrapnel wounds, complete with charts and graphs played out on TV.
Hey! Hey! Hey! Didn’t we used to have TRIALS? Ok, so everyone knew what the Nuremburg Trials were about but at least we freaking had them! THEN we could hang/shoot/inject the sons of bitches.
We have allowed any discussion of the rule of law to completely vanish *POOF!* from our national discourse. It is now not only acceptable, but actually somewhat boring (considering the play time it got in the news compared to the sexier stories this week as I mentioned in the first paragraph) for the USA to engage in out and out murder of anyone this out of control executive branch deems an “enemy combatant”.
I don’t believe for one second that it would hurt a real American Patriot to stand up in Congress–on either side of the aisle, although I have to admit I have more hope for the supposed opposition party–and remind America about trials!
Believe me, there are some war criminals I would love to see “meet a different fate–or let me put it this way, …no longer (be) a problem to the United States and our friends and allies”. I would be the first one to throw a Ding-Dong-The-Asshole’s-Dead party, if we should be so lucky here in America to have an `event’ and have to remind former Secretary of State Al Haig of the constitutional line of succession.
But isn’t that the very definition of civilization? Democracy? To stand down and allow our laws to take over from mob rule and visceral vigilante revenge?
It is very easy to close my eyes and in the darker regions of my amygdale brain imagine the quick death and/or disappearance of, oh say, the jerk in front of me on his cell phone at the stop light, or the old woman digging around for correct change in her coin purse as if paying for her groceries is a surprise she wasn’t prepared for today–or the bloody dismemberment and ugly death of an out of control tyrant.
Civilization has forced us, during these stressful moments, to behave differently. To evolve. Democracy is the supposed pinnacle of civilization and what we are, according to Bush, exporting to those poor sons of bitches in the Middle East who happen to have been born over an oil reserve.
Really, I can’t get over it. Why isn’t any one else averting their eyes and questioning, uh, why we didn’t just arrest this guy and at least send him to GITMO? I guess compared to the news that America killed “30,000 more or less” (12/14/05 George Bush) innocent people in Iraq with no media response , the fact that a known `bad guy’ was killed on purpose got the news play we have come to not only expect, but accept.
Oh, and I am not so dumb that I don’t know what GITMO is for. (It is for protesters at choreographed Bush events around the globe and taxi drivers of bad guys and anyone who is Arabic and not a capitalist). I know Al Zarqawi was a news story that couldn’t just vanish into the black hole of GITMO. Karl Rove knows his shit, that is for sure.
I just wish more Americans in power had the balls to at the very least, not cheer at the blatant murder of another human being, no matter how heinous their alleged crimes.
I sure hope I will remember these words if and when our tyrant meets his deserved fate.