Many War Protesters: I Want Peas|
I tend to keep an open mind, but the recent protests against the Iraq war were too much for me. While I saw protesters carrying signs that said "Bush is a terrorist!," I didn't see any signs mentioning Saddam's annihilation of 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in one day in the late 1980's. I also found all the exaggerated war prognostications to be ridiculous. For example, The UN predicted there would be 500,000 Iraqi civilian casualties in the war. 
This all reminds me of a great, old Simpsons episode. Somehow Homer ends up serving aboard a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine. One evening, the submarine captain invites Homer to share mess (dinner) with him. While the captain tries to carry on a serious conversation about world peace, Homer is totally focused on a bowl of peas on the dinner table, which he tries to reach with a butter knife. Here's the exchange: CAPTAIN: "Simpson, what do you want?" This time around, the so-called "anti-war movement" really turned me off. And now that the war is over, it seems many in this movement are grasping at straws to find some type of criticism of Iraq's liberation. Remember how they hyped up the "looting" news. At first we heard that "thousands" of archaelogical artifacts had be stolen from Iraq as a result of the fighting. Well, just yesterday, we found: that losses at the National Museum are less extensive than previously feared. For instance, Col. Matthew Bogdanos, a Marine reservist who is investigating the looting, said recently that Baghdad museum officials had listed only 29 artifacts as definitely missing. Some have even claimed that the anti-war movement is run by communists. Whatever. I'm not too worried. I just think back to that same Simpsons episode. At some point, the local Springfield news accusses Homer of being a communist. The newscaster interviews senile grandpa Simpson, who answers: ABE SIMPSON: "My son is not a communist... He may be a liar, a jerk, a pig, a communist, but he is NOT a porn star." |