January 30, 2005

• A Ménage et Trois of Freedom….Or, A Freedom Sandwich, if You Will.
  © The Author, 2005

  I am an ignorant American. Sometimes I like to pretend I’m not by reading the New York Times, BBC News online and listening to NPR, but just like any news sources, these outlets can only present stories that affect the present. Having graduated college from an art school that never required me to take one single world history course, I am frequently unable to fully digest the stories presented. I lack context. In large part, this is why I was completely baffled when a new friend of mine was reluctant to disclose her Iranian ethnicity. Iran-what was so bad about that? I vaguely remember the events of the Iranian Hostage crisis unfolding on the television when I was in grammar school. That was all water under the bridge, right? Iran was cool with the U.S. now and vice versa. I just smiled at my new friend and with friendly mid-western gusto, I said stupidly, “That’s great!”

  You know, it really would be great if my assumption that Iran and the United States are chummy friends were true. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not so stupid as to believe that the United States is the friendly, peace and freedom promoting sugar-daddy it pretends to be, but it is getting to the point where, even as a jaded skeptic, it is shocking for me to hear of yet another nation that the United States has utter disrespect for. It’s gotten to the point where there are so many nations that I as a “patriotic freedom-lover” am required to hate (remember kids-you are either for us or against us!), that it’s actually hard for me to remember all of them. So, lets take a moment for a refresher course of, “The Nations we Love to Hate.”

  Nation #1: Iraq
  After joyfully destroying Iraq, our power hungry president and his freakish conservative lackeys are dragging their feet about picking up their mess like bratty little titty-babies being told to pick up their room. Who needs running water when you’ve got freedom? I hear that democracy is even better than food and that peace can cure you better than hospitals. Electricity is a complete bore next to the good feeling you get of having a friendly Halliburton neighbor sucking you’re your country dry of all it its resources and profit! Sure, Sadam is gone, but who needs him to fear when you’ve got the stupidity of George Bush to terrify you at night? If only freedom could provide as much as Bush imagines it could. If only there were actual peace and freedom. It makes my stomach turn.

  And by the way…where the hell is Sadam these days? I seem to vaguely remember a trial of some sorts starting. Why didn’t this trial coverage dwarf the Scott Peterson trial? Why do I know more about that insignificant domestic murder than I do about the trial of a man who murdered thousands and instilled fear into the cultural identity of an entire country? Why have I unconsciously memorized the many hair makeovers Scott Peterson underwent during his trial, and I can only conjure up one grimy, raggedy image of Sadam, fresh from the Spider hole? He must have gotten a haircut since then—at least a trim! I need updates, goddamn it.

  Nation #2: Afghanistan
  We disrespect Afghanistan so much that our mainstream media doesn’t even cover what ever the fuck is going on there. I guess this makes sense since advertisers will purchase air time on shows that minimize violence in dusty nations, and maximize stories on haunted grilled cheese sandwiches, blood thirsty black people, and of course, weather and traffic. Since Iraq seems to promise future money shots of oil ejaculating onto Dick Cheney’s face, who can blame the news channels for choosing Iraq as the dusty violent nation to cover? As far as our mainstream media is concerned, Afghanistan is only comprised of bearded men who hide in caves and trash talk Americans. Obviously, the events of 9/11 tell a more complex story of Afghanistan’s Al Quaeda rebels, but why report it, when its always more fun to hate what you are jealous of—Iraq and its plentiful springs of profit-giving oil.

  To be fair, the main stream media did report Afghanistan’s supposed “elections,” but I wonder if media outlets would have found it to be note worthy if the puppet leader the U.S. put in place after we overthrew their government hadn’t been the champion. After all, a story about converting a heathen nation into a peaceful, freedom-loving democracy seems to be the only thing that gets America off these days.

  Nation #3: Israel and Palestine (U.S. Involvement Helps Kill Everybody!)
  The United States is unfortunately represented almost exclusively by politicians who are white, Christian, and chronically suffering from “white guilt.” They perpetuate the holy war between Israelis and Palestinians by siding with Israel. The way these white church-going dudes figure it, they’ve got a whole lot of constituents who are Jews, and they’ve got to make sure they look like they give a shit about Jewish issues. There ignorance on what these issues are inhibits the politicians from comprehending the polls that consistently show modern American Jews wanting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. It’s a shame that these polls seem to be the only ones that politicians aren’t obsessed with, since these poll-taking Jews feel that a the only way to achieve peace is through the establishment of a Palestinian governed Palestinian state. It seems that American Jews feel that the little strip of Gaza really isn’t worth all those death-by-car bombs after all. Too bad our white Jesus-freak politicians can’t see it that way! They continually supply troops and funds to help perpetuate violence and keep peace far, far away. What would Jesus do? Promote peace? Fat chance!

  Nation #4: Cuba
  Why can’t I go there? Why all the fines and federal prison time for visiting what looks to be a perfect Sandals Resort destination? Why all the sanctions that do nothing to hurt the leader we are in a philosophical political disagreement with, but that economically damage the people who live there? What’s up with that? It just makes me want to rip out my Che Guevara T-shirt (made in China) that I bought for $14.99 hard-earned American dollars (available at Walmart!) that I acquired after I received a much-earned raise at work, and wear it to the next WTO protest I attend.

  Nation #5: France
  Freedom fries. Need I say more?

  Nation #6: All of Africa (I’m too American to keep the individual countries straight)
  Sometimes I stumble upon these really horrifying accounts by independent journalists of all the terrible shit that is going down in Africa. If the U.S. were really the freedom crusaders we pretended at, we’d get our asses down to Africa and straighten some things out amongst tribes who don’t even permit the freedom of a woman’s right to have a clitoris. And female genital mutilation is gentle in comparison to the constant brutal warfare between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes, the AIDS epidemic, and famine. If it weren’t for Christian charities holding up dirty babies with fly encrusted eyes, pleading for five cents a day on TV, then most Americans wouldn’t even know Africa had any problems at all.

  Nation #7: North Korea
  With Kim Jong Il openly creating nuclear weapons with the help of teaming concentration camp workers, the U.S. seems to be passing up their chance to steal another country’s weapons of mass destruction. But I guess another countries weapons aren’t fun toys if you don’t get to steal their oil while you’re at it. So, screw all the North Koreans suffering in concentration camps manufacturing nuclear warheads. Screw all the Japanese people who have had North Korean missiles fired into their waters, just missing the islands by a hair. It’s just no fun without the oil.

  Nation #8: Everyone Effected by the Tsunami
  Once the news coverage dies down, and the photo ops run out, we’re out of there! That’s right, American troops and aid will be skidattling out of the areas devastated by the tsunami shortly. What—it’s been a few weeks, the pacific islanders are over it, right? I’m just grateful that our president didn’t decide to go to war with the Tsunami—it seemed like we just narrowly escaped a war on hurricanes this past summer.

  Nation #9: The Entire World
  A couple months ago, I heard Bush’s environmental cabinet member (no, I don’t even know her name, that’s how much press the environment gets!) on NPR, basically denying the fact that global warming was a scientifically proven outcome of unregulated emissions. She was skeptical of it, and until global warming has been “proven” (yes, I too thought that already happened), it was justification enough for the president to revoke the Kyoto agreement signed by President Clinton that would pledge to the world reduced emissions in the United States. But, to Bush’s defense, I guess science is a difficult subject to grasp for someone raised in schools that inform students that dinosaurs are scientists fiddling with chicken bones, and that the first woman on earth was not an evolved monkey, but instead sculpted by her boyfriend out of a chunk of his own rib. Go figure.

  Now, we come to a critical juncture in our lesson of “Countries We Love to Hate.” Our next country is the trendiest distain the U.S. has to offer its citizens! It’s the hottest hatred around! That’s right ladies and gentleman…

  Nation #10: Iran
  It wasn’t until our president with a boner for democracy (“I am a freedom lover!”) and his creepy sidekick Cheney, gave his bone chilling inaugural speech and subsequent interviews this week, that I remembered my new friend’s hesitant admission to her Iranian heritage. Apparently, Iran has some weapons of mass destruction, and that just isn’t the type of thing that a good freedom lover has. According to Mr. Cheney in an MSNBC interview, “We don’t want a war in the Middle East, if we can avoid it. And certainly in the case of the Iranian situation, I think everybody would be best suited by or best treated and dealt with if we could deal with it diplomatically.” Hmm…that sounds eerily familiar. That’s exactly how we pretended to handle the situation with Iraq in the beginning. Accuse them of having weapons they don’t have, and when they don’t turn them over (because they don’t have them), invade them to steal their oil and overthrow their government.

  The thing is, if I were Iran, I’d have a shit-load of weapons. Iran is situated between Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s a lot to contend with as it is, and now they’ve got the U.S. ogling them like the oil perverts we are. And since when did it become a crime to have nuclear weapons? We’ve got them, and so do plenty of countries. Sure, the world would be a better place if the damned things had never been conceived of, but what’s done is done. Iran even has a president, so you can’t even say that its only “bad” if you run an undemocratic society and have nukes. If we invade Iran, we don’t even have “freedom and democracy” as a scapegoat. Our president and his minions will simply be blatant in their randy lust for oil.

  What is really scary is that, if Iran does indeed have nukes (which would be wise on their part), our government is putting U.S. citizens at real risk. If our president invades, or sanctions Iran, they would be justified in the game of war to use their weapons to defend themselves. We would die. Our politicians would wonder why. If you poke a beehive with a stick, you’ll get stung. If you put your arm in a snake den, you’ll be bitten. How many stupid animal analogies do I have to use? It’s simple. Don’t piss people off. How hard can that be?

  Perhaps the new trend with hating Iran is only to make sure that the entire Middle Eastern area is under U.S. control. Right now, Iran is sandwiched by the born-again freedom lovers of Afghanistan and Iraq. If Iran “converts” to U.S. control as well, we’ll have a dandy little freedom sandwich. A ménage-et-trois of freedom, if you will.

  With any luck, the hugely conservative house and senate will not allow Bush to get carried away with himself. After all, they can get reelected still. Bush cannot.

  Besides learning about a new country to add to my list of “Countries we Love to Hate,” I was infuriated in another way by an arrogant statement that our president made in his inauguration speech. Bush stated, “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.”

  Wow. In a nation where my reproductive rights are perpetually threatened, where I earn 70 cents to every dollar a man makes, where my gay and lesbian friends have to settle on “union ceremonies” instead of marriages that grant their deserved rights, where underprivileged young black men fill our prisons, where I am forced to be a killer with the federal taxes taken from my paychecks and used to fund wars I do not believe in, where freedom of speech applies only to those who speak freely of their love of our conservative capitalist government, where the options of the kids in my neighborhood are so fucking slim that they gear up in military uniforms after graduation, willing to die or loose their limbs just to have access to a college education—my president wants me to blame these oppressive forces on other lands?

  I am thankful for the freedoms I do have. But it seems to me that the more we blame and punish other countries for our own problems (primarily the price hike of imported oil), the less I get to enjoy the liberties that make me love this country in the first place. I only wish someone could make our president understand that his choice of the word survival is completely accurate. But we will not survive if we continue to invade other countries and force feed phony ideals to their citizens while we steal their resources. We will die. These citizens will become outraged, and sick of paying the high price of U.S. “freedom.” Our survival depends on U.S. forces stepping off, and our politicians taking care of the United States for a change.

  • 4:53 pm
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