The Rise of UnAmerica
 

It's very difficult to know where to start this rant. It seems that the past three years have been culminating to this moment. That this was to be the day of our triumph. The day that we could finally be allowed a sigh of relief and the peace of mind of living in a slightly-less-insane world. That didn't happen. It all came out topsy-turvy, backwards, twisted like the face of some story-book character gone mad from Alice.

	America: bringing freedom to Iraq.

On November the second of this year, 2004, Americans went to the polls and gave President George W. Bush a second mandate in office. It wasn't enough that he led Americans on a false war against a country that posed no threat to America. Nor was it enough that he lied to the American public about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. It was not enough that the bombs that fell on Iraq killed civilian men, women and children with little more precision than a blunt club. One would have thought that seeing Iraq prisoners brutally beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted, and utterly humiliated would have stirred some sort of sense of empathy and shame. And if nothing else perhaps the sensibly selfish fact that 1,000 American troops have died needlessly, while countless others have been permanently crippled both psychologically and physically would have done something to make voters act appropriately.

But no: Americans went to the polls and they voted for these things. They voted for war, for torture, for occupation, and for the needless squandering of American and Arab lives.

As Canadians, it is impossible to divorce one's life from Americana. It's part of our culture, our lifestyle. We drink Starbucks Coffee, watch Simpsons and Family Guy, and of course I'm using American-manufactured computer technology to write this rant right now. It's very difficult no dislike something that is so much like you. These days, though, I find I don't have much in common with most Americans anymore. When a country acts the way American has been acting, the responsible thing to say is that you are not upset with the people, but that you are upset with the administration. It seems, however, that the people of America support their administration ho-heartedly. So what is one to think of Americans?

Americans seem to be living in a dream world. They need George Bush to protect them from terrorism: something that is more than ten times less likely to kill the average person than a car crash. You're three times more likely to commit suicide. You're more likely to die of cancer than you are to die from terrorism. Imagine if we took just a fraction of the Pentagon's 40 billion dollar annual budget and put it into cancer research or peer counselling, we could save lives rather than taking them away.

	The reaction by the rest of the world to Bush's re-election has been less than complimentary.

The terrorism argument doesn't hold. America does much more to compromise the security and peace of the world than any other country or power. Bush supporters live in a world where everything America does is right. America makes such a to-do about third world countries possessing nuclear weapons. Of course, no one should own such horrible weapons, but the United States is in no position to preach. The U.S. owns more nukes than everyone else put together, and the only country to ever use nukes against an enemy was America in WWII. AND they were used against civilian populations!

There are many, many cases of the U.S. funding and training terrorist groups for use against countries it didn't like very much: the contras, the bay of pigs, Osama Bin Ladden (and we all know how that last one turned out). I could go on, but there's no point, because all the Republicans have already stopped reading and have started writing angry e-mails to me.

If America were a small country, it's leaders would be on trial at the war crimes tribunal at the Hague for all the horrible things they've done. Military leaders would be telling international judges why their troops violated the Geneva conventions for handling prisoners of war. But America doesn't follow the rules, it just enforces them. America wants to bring democracy to the world, but when all the nations of the world went to the U.N. and democratically say "NO" to attacking Iraq, the U.S. went and did it anyway.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I saw the second tower of the World Trade Center collapse before my eyes, live on television. In that moment, I fell to my knees and wept, knowing that innocent people were dying as I watched. Had I known that America would choose to send tens of thousands more innocent people to their deaths, including Iraqi civilians and their own soldiers, I might have saved some of my tears for the future. I would have saved them for people equally deserving of tears, but whom don't seem to receive any because they're Muslims who don't speak English.

It's only a matter of time before Bush is dropping bombs on another small country, killing poor people in the name of freedom and democracy. The American people support their president, and in so doing they support his actions. Shame on you, America. Shame on every last one of you who supported George Bush in this election in any way shape or form. Shame on you who voted for war, torture, and profit. At most of all, shame on those of you who didn't take the time to get off your asses and stop Bush by exercising your god-awfully cherished right to vote. What the hell good is your freedom is you don't bother to exercise it?

Be happy with the leader you have chosen. I will be here years from now to say "I told you so".