State of the What?

Oh, “union”, right. Thank goodness the word “union” in American English doesn’t imply anything relating to “unity”. It couldn’t possibly, or else GW’s speech last night would have had to have been called the State of the Conglomeration of Much Divided and Confused Folks speech. That even has a nice ring to it.

I didn’t catch all of the speech, just the last half-hour (the Iraqi stuff), and about an hour of the immediate commentary last night. I have also been listening to NPR for the past 3 hours. Good stuff. NPR, I mean, not the speech.

I’m going to reserve judgement on our Keebler-Elf-look-alike president’s rhetorical style, but I have to say, for a man that is supposed to be convincing Americans that “yes, a war is necessary” (and I personally am not so idealistic to think there is always another solution than war), he didn’t have a lot of hard facts. Well, not enough, maybe. We will have few allies (if any) if we jump the gun on this, as Bush seems to be straining at the bit to do (who’s holding the leash, you think?), and the crucial support of France (who has U.N. vetoing power) is very much in absence. I know, and GW (I think) knows that the Americans that remain unconvinced at this point want proof. Proof. That simple. They want evidence from the U.N. inspectors that Hussein is a very bad guy who’s out to get us. That’s not so bad; let’s not send our buddies and sons and daughters out to die/kill without good proof. My question: how much proof does it take? How many documents are enough? How many bombs and anthrax containers? How many hoops do you want to make our C average president jump through to prove that Hussein is out to get us? People keep regurgitating that they want “hard evidence that Hussein is even considering planning an offensive”. Uh, do you want the inspectors to look under his bed and find his diary, or should we send over Miss Cleo for a little telepathic reading? There are no certainties. None. Ever. You can’t prove anyone is currently thinking anything to the extent that some of these people want it proved. Especially in a government where one man seems to be running the show. It’s not even a committee decision! It’s all in Hussein’s sick little head. And the decision to go to war is in (generally speaking) our sick little president’s head.

Currently, I am neither for nor against the war. I’m not a punk for taking a backseat on this, I just want to watch how it unfolds without laying down some concrete opinion on the way this should go. Hell, I just turned 18 and am not yet registered to vote, so why should I have a say in GW’s policies? Hell, I didn’t vote for him.