I want to start this column on a bit of a personal note. For those of you unaware, last weekend was Guilford’s yearly party, Serendipity.
I can only speak for myself, but I wanted to say that I had an absolutely wonderful time and in my four years at Guilford, I cannot remember one where I had more fun. At risk of forgetting somebody, I won’t mention names, but everyone who worked on Serendipity deserves a big round of applause for all of their hard work. Thank you for a great time.
Last week I wrote about indecency, and this week and I wanted to expand on that idea a little bit more. I made the point that I would not want anyone, let alone the government, telling me what is appropriate for me to hear over the airwaves.
So imagine my shock when the government, or more specifically our President, offended me. Now, at the time, it was not at anything specific he was doing overseas or here. I was just offended by what an astounding prick this guy is.
Every year, there is the traditional Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner, and it has evolved into a show where a politician, most notably the president pokes fun at himself, or is done so by others.
Most years the shows are good-natured ribbing and are a night of brevity in our nation’s capital.
This year’s event was going as usual, but then the president broke out a slide show, which should have sent off an alarm to begin with. We all hated listening to our relatives tell us about their trip to see the world’s largest kumquat, so why should this be any different? But I digress…
What the president did though, and what was so offensive was that several of the slides showed the president looking all over the White House for the illusive Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction. At one point the president remarked, “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere,”
“Nope, no weapons over there … maybe under here?” Bush joked.
I do not know for sure if the president bailed out on his military service when he was younger, but clearly our president has never been in the middle of anything more intense than trying to figure out how to match his socks in the morning.
I am sorry if I sound really angry at all of this, but honestly I am. He told us that we needed to go to Iraq so we can get these WMD and make the world safer. One year later, no WMD and the reason we went to war is now a joke for the president. I am worried because our president seems more offended by gay marriage than the fact that we went to war for no apparent reason.
So don’t give me the, “Well Saddam Hussein is a loser and we had to get him out of power.” Of course Hussein is an evil guy, but that’s not the reason we were told we were going to war, and it is not a good reason to go to war.
We can’t just go around invading all of the countries we feel have evil leaders; it would be nice if we could, but in today’s world we cannot.
This should outrage Republicans and Democrats alike, but most of them won’t care and for those who are offended, most will just use it as a talking point for a few days. Which makes perfect sense since it is not their sons and daughters dying in action everyday.
Maybe if they were, we wouldn’t throw around lives so easily.