I wrote this for an online diary, with the title, "a
bruise with a gun."
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I hate the war with Afghanistan. There really isn't a better way to put it, although, using the verb "hate" makes me sound less pacifist than I really am. I just think it's so sad that people actually think hasty military action is actually going to do anything in the way of stopping or reversing the terrorist actions. It's not. Negotiating may not have caused the Taliban to fork over Bin Laden, but bombing them isn't doing anything to that result, either, and while we were negotiating and not fighting we at least got more information. Now all the information I see is about how the attacks are continuing and how many people are dying -- and none of them are the ones we're after.
The United States government has essentially diverted all their attention overseas, and quite hastily at that. At present we are entering our second week of air strikes on the Taliban, which were, essentially, George W. Bush's impulsivity taking over and trying to get revenge (or "justice" -- it's not even thought out well enough to be justice.) I'm opposed to war in the first place, but war without a plan is even worse. The air strikes are building an incredible mount of international tension and distaste for US policy, and yet we don't stop because there's some hope that the bombs will destroy infrastructure.
Before the bombing started, it was bad enough, but things were starting to pick up. Now, however, someone is mailing anthrax to various large corporations in the United States. It's being spread on every media circuit except in the United States that this is presumed to be some American creep. I read CNN en español, for the different perspective and the language practice, and they had a headline stating, "Red Cross believes it improbable that anthrax is from overseas." Although my translation skills are not 100%, the article clearly implied that from the given information is is almost certainly someone American who is causing this. (It also seems rather obvious, if just to my internal logic, because not everyone knows that there are Microsoft offices in Reno. I certainly didn't, until this morning.) However, no one's focusing on that, either in the media or in the government, because we are poised to bomb the shit out of anyone in another country.
My dad is overseas right now, in Germany. He left before the air strikes started, and I figured that in a week and a half things would have picked up and I wouldn't need to feel worried about him flying. He's coming back tomorrow, and I'm nervous now, because our rashness with international politics has gotten the United States in trouble before and I wouldn't be caught flying right now (I would have before the air strikes. I really didn't mind so much then, I was just cautious.) I think in general I'm just bothered that our government can be so impulsive as to think this much violence is actually helping anything. It makes me sort of embarassed to have to identify with them, whereas two weeks ago I was feeling patriotic for the first time in my life.