blargblog

How Many Sides Can You Be On?

A couple weeks ago Israeli helicopters assassinated a half-blind wheelchair-bound elderly cleric as he was leaving religious services at his local mosque. Now U.S. marines have waged battle in an Iraqi mosque that military officials claim is a compound for "the enemy", that multi-headed beast whose name changes every day. The main target it turns out is a 31-year-old cleric—full-sighted and quite ambulatory, in case you were wondering—who has mobilized his own militia to violently resist occupation by invaders of his homeland. And we thought "clash of civilizations" was just a right wing pipedream.

I guess we're long past the planning stage now. If you feel there is information missing in the above accounts—if, say, you might object that the half-blind wheelchair-bound elderly cleric was also a blood-thirsty religious zealot who played a part in the deaths of innocent Israeli and likely Palestinian citizens—I would agree, and add, "Now you know how an arab feels watching CNN. Nevermind FOXNews." One might also describe Muqtada al-Sadr as nothing more than a dangerous anti-American demagogue misleading his followers down an ultimately self-destructive path, a quixotic resistance against inevitable democratization (or some facsimile thereof).

Mmmmaybe. I don't know the guy. But I do know one thing. If the United States were invaded by a powerful alien race who used overwhelming military force to overthrow my government—even the odious one we currently suffer—and to reorganize my country's social infrastructure and appropriate its natural resources to enrich some distant intergalactic oligarchy; and if the most forthright resistance leader willing to lead a rebellion against the occupation with a disciplined force of patriots turned out to be Pat Buchanan—well, I might just set aside my many, many political differences with the noxious hatemonger and sign my ass up. Of course, once the invader is repelled, I'll turn around and join the anti-Buchanan side of the ensuing civil war. But we'll burn that bridge when we get to it.