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July 31, 2006

"Our Vice President of Our Iraq"

On the way into work this morning I flipped through a couple radio stations during commercials and landed on Paul Harvey's morning news commentary just in time to hear him express outrage that "our vice president of our Iraq" had dared to criticize Israel for committing massacres.

I grew up listening to Paul Harvey and have all my life believed him to be the voice of reason – until recently. This comment today was stunning. It reminded me of how the entire story of our actions in Iraq have changed since we first invaded.

Initially, we were liberating the Iraqis from the oppressive regime of Saddam Hussein, remember? They were our friends. They would greet us with candy and flowers. We were their liberating heroes. We loved our friends, the Iraqi people, and wished to bring them democracy.

Over time, things slowly changed. Because the war on terror was used as an excuse to secure America's oil interests by taking out Saddam Hussein (remember Cheney's comments about the "very significant" oil reserves in Iraq?), people have confused the entire situation. Bit by bit we began to view the Iraqi people as terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. The war "in" Iraq became the war "on" Iraq (even Rush Limbaugh calls it that on his show now).

And Iraq's democratically elected vice president is now "our vice president of our Iraq."

Posted by Becky at July 31, 2006 08:57 AM