Wed Feb 18 15:54:21 CST 1998
Tuesday I had two papers due. I wrote the one and slept through the class for the other coz I'd been up all night writing the first. I'll write the second paper tonight and turn it in tomorrow.
Master of slack.
So, I reckon there is catching up desired?
I gave up women for Valentine's Day. I'm not sure why, especially after that last entry about being a big mac. I think I'll just enjoy doing well and wait 'til there's any particular lady where things work out comfortably. In other words - do the best thing you can do and just not worry about it, play it naturally.
So with that, I think I shall just not talk about romantic inclinations I have here. I'll be a good guy with all my friends, and see what my own sweet-talking will cause to happen.
Instead, me and Nick and Cornelio and Mike and some other guys on the floor went to see Good Will Hunting on Saturday. Excellent movie! Nick was seeing it a second time and confirmed my suspicion that in its quality, it was thoroughly enjoyable still. I think he said something to the effect of it being a second movie ... there is such detail and stuff that your second time through you experience it differently. That is the mark of a distinctively good movie.
Interesting thing about Good Will Hunting though was that there was no antagonist. Everyone was playing a good guy. That bothered me just the slightest as far as plot complexity goes, but then I remembered that in life, in most cases everyone is trying to be the good guy - it is through skillful writing that you bring out conflict in such a situation.
Certainly more interesting than that damned The Replacement Killers ...
You know, with all the saber-rattling that we've been doing to threaten Iraq, I've felt very uncomfortable. I'm generally opposed to bombing the hell out of what are likely to be mostly innocent civilians, as well as to the embargo, which really just hurts the poor people worst.
And yet, I haven't a better solution to offer, or do I?
Yes, howzabout the President makes a speech ... something where he addresses the American people and the world and starts off about how evil Saddam Hussein is, and the terrible things he's done, and the threat posed by the weapons programs, and how he's fucking his own people in the ass, thumbing his nose at the whole world, and generally deserves whatever he's gonna get from the United States.
There is no doubt that measures must be taken against Saddam Hussein. As I address you tonight, American and British war planes are being launched from their carriers in the Persian Gulf towards targets in Iraq. There is much opposition to the use of our force on the part of France, Russia, and many of our allies. Nevertheless, the course has been set, and we must never give Hussein the impression that we will allow him to worm his way past the standards of the world community and the UN.
Our war planes and cruise missiles have a variety of targets, including air defense systems, command and control centers, munitions depots, presidential sites and suspected chemical and biological weapons sites which Saddam is denying UN inspectors access to. These targets will suffer heavily from the powerful ordinance that our military will begin inflicting on them momentarily. There will certainly be innocent Iraqi lives lost in these attacks, and long-term negative repercussions as a result.
However, it does not satisfy us that these targets be eliminated. Our problems will not be solved with a few airstrikes, or any other use of military force. Our problems can only be solved by a change on the part of the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people - a change that would benefit not only them, but their neighbors in the middle east, and the entire world as a result.
This change would be reflected in cooperation with UN weapons inspectors, to remove from their nation the poisons on their current regime. This change would be reflected in responsible government, which concerns itself first with feeding its people instead of continued military spending. This change would be reflected in a government that responds to the needs, both material and spiritual, of its people.
Governments derive their power from the consent of the governed. We have, since the invasion of Kuwait, taken this idea and applied it in the form of sanctions to cripple the Iraqi people and coerce them to change their government. It hasn't worked. Today, more than five years since operation Desert Storm, Iraqi children are undernourished and without vital medicines, and world opinion is more concerned with the plight of these innocent, good people than with the evil intentions of their leader. And it is right that the world should be concerned for them.
While the United States will never support lifting these sanctions until Iraq has complied with the directives of the UN Security Council, we realize that the Iraqi people have been weakened too far. That instead of throwing off the yoke of their tyrant they are bound to him as their only source of hope. To be honest, none of us can accurately guess the mindset of the Iraqi people, but we know that we can do something to help him.
So tonight, and for the indefinite future, American planes will be flying in to Iraq not only with deadly munition to use against Saddam Hussein and his evils, but also with humanitarian aid packages that will be dropped for civilians. For every bomb that falls from the sky there will be meals for hungry children, medicines for the ailing, clothing and books and other supplies that can feed not only mouths, but also nourish minds.
For it is the way of a tyrant to starve a population in to submission. Saddam Hussein is starving his people not only of food, medicine, and material welfare, but of intellectual and spiritual nourishment as well. It is this starvation which has caused the stagnant, hopeless situation we see in Iraq today, and it is this stagnation we must actively address.
For too long we have been playing games with Saddam Hussein on his turf by his rules. He is a warlord, and we have been responding with our war. He realize though that Saddam only feeds off of the destruction we can inflict. Now we will fight him with peace. We are putting our faith no longer in our own soldiers, who are foreign to Iraqi soil and can not themselves affect change. We are now putting our faith in the Iraqi people, that they are good people that need to be supported. If we support them, we support the idea that all oppressed people in this world must be freed.
It was Churchill who once said that given the supplies, he would finish the job of fighting fascist oppression. It is with our supplies again that we hope this time the Iraqi people, allies we do not yet know, but who we are putting faith in as human beings, can finish the job of fighting their oppressor, of changing the face of their nation from one of the world's worst and most threatening totalitarian regimes into something that inspires hope. The Iraqi people are the only people that can effect this change. It is the Iraqi people that we now charge with and will support in our endeavors.
Hokey? Risque? Stupid? Well, good thing I've not been elected president. The way I look at it though, fucking Iraqis in the ass doesn't help anyone. Saddam is trying to show them just a faint glimmer of hope in his leadership, in his own twisted, corrupt way. We have the materials, the supplies, and the moral superiority to show them a greater hope that does not rest in their dictator, but in moving past him. Saddam is a master of military oppression, especially when his subjugates are people without hope. If we give them hope, good will and love, and treat the Iraqi people with the respect that they deserve as human beings, they will persevere, and they will persevere to a better form of government.
Yes, dropping supplies on civilians will end up to a lot of the bounty being hoarded by Hussein's goons, but the people will know that these great things have come from the sky, and where they have come from. And they'll know who has taken them away, out of greed. It will become clearer who the enemy is. My enemy, as an American, is Saddam Hussein and his people. But the people of Iraq are not his people, I am sure, and the people of Iraq are the ones who can best finish the job of taking him out.
I would have to think this out a lot more to make the reasoning clearer.
12 February
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