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Failed policies of fear
Oct. 25th, 2007 03:39 pmSo, we spent twenty years fighting a "war against drugs," destabilizing governments in Central and South America, putting black men in prison in droves.
Then some guys flew some airplanes into some skyscrapers, and people went, "Ooh, er, maybe we should have caught that." And maybe if we'd spent the money we'd spent on the war on drugs training people to, I don't knows, speak languages that weren't Russian and Chinese we might have.
Now we're fighting a war on terror. Piles of money are going toward fingerprinting everyone who wants to come the the US, filling the coffers of Halliburton and Blackwater, and finding way to decrease civil liberties and freedom of movement and limit immigration, in the name of "protecting the *cough* homeland." We're doing things Americans once whispered happened in the Soviet Union and Chile (tortures, disappearences) and people are telling each other they have nothing to be afraid of if they're not guilty of doing something wrong.
Meanwhile, on the home front, we've had rolling power blackouts, the complete destruction of a major US city by well-anticipated weather problems, the collapse of a heavily used bridge in another major city for no reason at all and now the southern coast of California burning up in uncontrollable wildfires.
You just wonder, should we maybe be spending our money on improving our infrastructure, dealing with natural disasters, and improving the state of The States rather than waging a "war" in a foreign country and a, er, war against the civil liberties of people at home and across the world?
You just gotta wonder, I say.
Then some guys flew some airplanes into some skyscrapers, and people went, "Ooh, er, maybe we should have caught that." And maybe if we'd spent the money we'd spent on the war on drugs training people to, I don't knows, speak languages that weren't Russian and Chinese we might have.
Now we're fighting a war on terror. Piles of money are going toward fingerprinting everyone who wants to come the the US, filling the coffers of Halliburton and Blackwater, and finding way to decrease civil liberties and freedom of movement and limit immigration, in the name of "protecting the *cough* homeland." We're doing things Americans once whispered happened in the Soviet Union and Chile (tortures, disappearences) and people are telling each other they have nothing to be afraid of if they're not guilty of doing something wrong.
Meanwhile, on the home front, we've had rolling power blackouts, the complete destruction of a major US city by well-anticipated weather problems, the collapse of a heavily used bridge in another major city for no reason at all and now the southern coast of California burning up in uncontrollable wildfires.
You just wonder, should we maybe be spending our money on improving our infrastructure, dealing with natural disasters, and improving the state of The States rather than waging a "war" in a foreign country and a, er, war against the civil liberties of people at home and across the world?
You just gotta wonder, I say.
