Taking a big step back and trying to see the big picture
     re: possession of WMDs as a justification for war

While half-assedly listening to last night's State of the Union address, I starting thinking back to January 2003 and the build-up to our war in Iraq. I remember listening to the leader of the free world spend 20 minutes lying to America about the danger posed by Iraq. I didn't KNOW he was lying at the time, but I also was not really buying the shit he was shoveling.

But there's something else I remember about that speech. I remember not being scared of Iraq. I remember being strongly opposed to the war before it started. I remember sitting on the couch and crying while watching the news on the night of our attack. And I remember thinking "Even if Iraq has WMDs, so what? We've got at least a few thousand nuclear warheads in our arsenal. Who are we to complain about another country having weapons?"

So there's the big picture: even if we were NOT misled by Bush, the war in Iraq would still be a blunder. It is still unjustified because we have a stockpile of nuclear weapons. And in case that was not enough to blow us off the moral high ground, there's also that other little discussed fact -- we have used them. Hiroshima was arguably justifiable. Nagasaki only a couple days later??? Not so sure about that one.

And even beyond our lack of moral authority on the issue, I still say going to war over mere possession of WMDs is ridiculous. It is absolute insanity to think that we can really stop other nations from developing them in the long run. Take a moment to look back a thousand years. Would it have been a realistic proposition for the Chinese or the Muslims to think they could stop the Europeans from learning the secrets of gunpowder? Of course it wouldn't. And that's what we're talking about today. How can anyone stop a country from progressing technologically? At some point in our future, nuclear weaponry will seem just as simple as gunpowder weaponry has seemed for the past 500 years.

We should probably stop focusing so much on what the other kids on the block (Iran) have in their pockets. Instead, we should be focusing on creating a world where fighting is not looked upon as a first option. A white Christian nation (us) invading an Arab Islamic nation (Iraq) without true provocation was not a good start.


Now switching gears a bit to one specific portion of last night's address that baffled me:

Keeping America competitive requires us to be good stewards of tax dollars. Every year of my presidency, we've reduced the growth of non-security discretionary spending, and last year you passed bills that cut this spending.

Why on Earth should we be applauding the President for reducing the growth of "non-security discretionary spending?" And which dumbass speechwriter put that awful bureaucratic-babble in the address? Doesn't that line basically mean we haven't been able to spend as much money at home because we are too busy blowing our wad on the war in Iraq?