Has your candidate turned you into an anti-war leftist neo-hawk?

DuctapeFatwa

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Wed Jan-07-04 11:28 PM
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Has your candidate turned you into an anti-war leftist neo-hawk?

Edited on Wed Jan-07-04 11:31 PM by DuctapeFatwa

The race for the Democratic nomination has spawned one of the strangest political creatures in recent memory: the leftist anti-war neo-hawk.

Suddenly, people who marched against the war, whose fingers ache from writing scathing rips of the bloodlust of the bush regime, find themselves on the bad acid side of the looking glass, dripping sweat onto their PEACE shirts squeezing arguments for continuing bush's imperialist crusade out of the turnip of their chosen candidate's conviction that he and he alone is the best executive administrator of America's new colony.

Yes, more Americans will die with mine than yours, says one, but less than with bush, but even if it is more, it is better than bush.

While some may believe that if their candidate wins, Iraqis will cease complaining when their relatives are murdered, serene in the knowledge that they were murdered by a real Democrat and not bush, it is unlikely that a great many Iraqis share this view.

To their credit, most neo-hawks steadfastly refuse to discuss this issue.

When asked point-blank how they justify their previous anti-war stance with their current position that their candidate is the best man to run the war, they may dismiss the question by pointing out that their guy's website doesn't call it running the war, but most of the time they just stick out their bottom lip, cross their arms and tell you that their candidate is the best and will win. So There!

Some look up at you, eyes racked with the pain of the heavy load of the white man's burden, and talk about America's responsibility to "finish the job," "clean up our mess." Ask them if someone comes into their house, trashes the place, beats up the kids, kicks the dog, how they would feel about that person moving in with them for a while to clean up the mess - wouldn't they say, "oh, please, you've done enough. really."

If asked whether they would fight if another country invaded the US, their brows almost furrow for a second, then they tell you, with a saucy toss of the head, that well, that would be "different."

People who interrupt the neo-hawk's earnest discussions of military strategy and weapons efficiency to ask such questions are troublemakers. They are disloyal, disruptive, divisive. Some even call attention to the candidates' own words about war. It's not easy being a neo-hawk, people attacking your candidate like that.

Some neo-hawks patiently try to explain why their candidate's plan for outsourcing the occupation is so nifty. Just don't ask them why war crimes committed by Belgian soldiers will be any less horrific for their victims. Don't ask why the US agent that went along with 12 years of devastating sanctions, sat still for the invasion and rubber-stamped the occupation will be seen by the Iraqis as angels of mercy. And don't ask why all the candidates agree that whichever countries are cajoled, bribed or threatened into sending their sons and daughters, wearing whatever color hat, to fight the Iraqi resistance, the US should be in charge of it all.

It's all for the Iraqi people, you see. All those deaths, all those kids without feet, hands, eyes, all those homes destroyed, all the families robbed of their little under the mattress cash and jewelry, all those people, kids included, tied up and forced to kneel and starve and rot in the "coalition camps," all those disappeared, all are for the simple, childlike Iraqi people, who need a firm hand. They may complain, but they secretly respect you for it.

Just don't call the neo-hawks colonialists. They don't like that one bit.

Candidate disclaimer: I do not support any of the candidates.