On NPR this morning were sound-bite interviews with several man-on-the-street types regarding the current war in Iraq. The opinions fell distinctly into two categories: America Love It Or Leave It, and Down With the American Hegemony. The opinions of the country currently seem to run the entire spectrum between these two extremes.

I propose some lateral thinking. I say that it is not “America” that is involved in the war; rather it is “The Administration”. It is often overlooked that the country and the people running it are very seldom one and the same. Think about it: America has been around as a country for just shy of 227 years. The Bush administration has been around for just over two. In three more years, America will still be here and Bush will be back to jerking off on the electric chair.

I love my country a great deal; I can’t imagine that living anywhere else would be an improvement. This is why it pisses me off so much that my employee George W Bush is trying so hard to fuck it up for so many people. He is on track to rile up the rest of the world, get them pissed at us, then when he inevitably loses the next election, the next president will be caught in a shitstorm not of his own making.

I did a little reading about Saddam. The guy is as bad as Stalin ever was, and the world will be better off without him. That is not why we are at war. I have stated it before and will continue to state it until Bush Who I Regret I Pay With My Taxes admits as much: this is exactly and only about oil rights. It is a power grab by The Administration which labors under the ludicrous assumption that the USA belongs to them. The members of the administration only have as much power as we give them, and I get the feeling we have given them too much. There are too many appointees and too few elected officials. The gap between man-on-the-street and bureaucrat has widened to an unacceptable degree.

If any of you are involved in protests I say this: don’t turn your anger on the people who are involved in the actual fighting. They have a terribly hard job to do, and they need all the support they can get. They are Americans to be proud of. The despicable ones are the decision makers who brought this war about in the first place. The ones who tell other people to go out and die, without doing it themselves.

And we should leave off the French-bashing. They showed a lot of balls by not toeing the line with the US. French-bashing may be fun and amusing for the inbred rednecks which make up so much of America, but it distracts us from issues like the blatant over-ruling of so much of the constitution and bill of rights in the name of “security” and “patriotism”.

Peace out.