Okay, let’s take a wildly hypothetical situation. Let’s say thatyou hate George W. Bush.
Crazy, I know, but just bear with me.
Let’s say that you, as an American citizen, are fed up with him.He takes away the freedom of his own people, he detains, deportsand tortures both citizens and immigrants alike with flagrantdisregard for not only his own laws, but also the Geneva Accords,and is easily guilty of crimes against humanity. However, due tocorruption in the government he is not held accountable.
A country on the other side of the world sees this. Australiaknows our plight. They truly feel for us. They also just happen tobe running out of Freon, which our country has plenty of. Australianeeds a lot of air conditioning units to keep its people happy, andAmerica is the only place left with large, undiscovered Freonmines.
But that’s beside the point. The real point is that theAustralians want to come to our aid. They want to help us. They trytelling the world community about how George Bush was neverelected, that he seized power illegally and he is torturing his owncitizens through a nefarious scheme called “The Patriot Act.”
Furthermore, he is brainwashing all Americans to believe in himas their one supreme leader. The Americans must be saved, the goodPrime Minister of Australia says. At the UN he cries out, “Who’swith me?”
Nobody. They ignore him. So, he decides to invade our country onhis own.
Upon entering, the first thing his army does is secure all theFreon reserves. All the Freon is safely in Australian hands. Hethen battles our army, and deals us a crushing victory. Finally hecaptures George Bush, in a spider hole in Crawford. Remember, thisis a hypothetical situation, and you hated Bush. So his capture ispretty nice.
But then, the Australians don’t leave. They all stay holed up inWashington, D.C., and the rest of the country is pretty much leftto fend for itself, governmentally. There are plenty of Australiantroops out and about to keep order, kill civilians and the like,but all of the leaders are back in Washington.
So what should we do, now that we’re a liberated people? Well,we try and hold elections, to elect a mayor for Portland. We electone, and he starts the water flowing and he gets the lights turnedback on. But the Australians come over to Portland and arrest him,saying that we’re not ready for elections yet.
Meanwhile they tell all the people back in Australia thateverything is going along great here in America.
But you, living here, have had your life take a turn for theworse. There is no money, no food, no water and no electricity. Youcan’t travel because the Australians have set up checkpointseverywhere. Somebody here in Portland throws a grenade over abarbed wire fence and takes out a few Australian troops. So theAustralians retaliate, sending in an air strike to “quell theresistance.” While you were out they bombed your home. Your entirefamily was inside. You are all alone. What should you do?
As an American, what would be the patriotic thing to do? Sure,we’ve had a bad leader deposed, but we have also had our ability tolive our lives taken away from us. And the Australians don’t carewhether you were a Republican who supported Bush, or if you were aGreen who was working to get him impeached. To the Australiansoldiers, we are all dirty Americans. We are all potential enemies.And we are all sitting on top of their Freon.
We’re talking hypothetically, but what’s going on Iraq isreal.
Iraqis may have been “freed from the regime of a brutaldictator,” as our own brutal dictator likes to repeat ad nauseum,but they are unable to live a life under our occupation. If I werean Iraqi, I’d fight against the Americans too. I’d fight againstanybody who invaded our country.
Case in point: I would like nothing more than to see Bushdethroned. But if anybody did it but the Americans, I’d be ready tofight.