Anti-America and Uncle Sam

Have you ever been called anti-American? I have. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think it had something to do with my perspective on the Iran uranium enrichment debacle.

My view is that the most outstanding feature of the conflict is the hypocrisy of the West. It seems they want to be the only ones who possess and use nuclear weapons or should decide who can possess them. It seems fine for Israel to have these WMD's and to be slowly but consistently eating away at Palestinian territory.

But the idea that disagreeing with aspects of American foreign policy (or perhaps US banking oversight - emphasis on oversight) makes one anti-American is arrogant at best, fascist at worst (there I go again). The Bush/Cheney Admin made it easy to be 'anti-American'. I found it bemusing that they compared Al Quaida to the Nazis. A rag tag loosely associated group of religious radicals? The Nazi's were a well established, organized and centralized body with the suits and propaganda to match, set on targeting a specific group of people based on their religious belief. They took these people and corralled them into secret detention camps. You could say the Nazi's renditioned them off to these extraordinary camps. Sound familiar?

You know what I found strange? The reaction to the Dixie Chicks opposition to the Iraq War. Remember that? Folks trashed the Chicks CD's because one of their number expressed disdain of W. But by far the most in-your-face attack on the war, as far as music celebrities go was Green Day's American Idiot album (Eminem did say 'F**k Bush' in his pre-election Mosh). It was called 'American Idiot' - can you be more anti-American? I love that album. I love Green Day. Chant down Babylon boys. But they only got album sales (12 million worldwide I understand). Hmmm. Maybe the Dixie Chicks protests were all attended by paid protestors like the 'death-panel-healthcare-screaming-people-protestors'?

Anyway, I was suspect of Obama's UN speech on stemming nuclear proliferation and decreasing warhead numbers when it was quickly followed up by the Iran enrichment revelation. Mind you, I'm for nuclear disarmament, but we've forgotten about that now and it seemed to be a nice segue into 'let's get rid of the arms by dropping them on Iran' implication. Going too far? I agree.

The best approach would be to 'take the nuclear missile out of your own eye so you can see clearly enough to take the nuclear missile out of your sworn enemy's eye'. It's Scriptural.

The fear/war mongers who think that bombing people somehow 'protects' America, need to seriously rethink their...thinking. Making America intolerably savage and violent so that many begin to fear and hate them and then want to bomb the country - now that is anti-American.