hace cuatro años..

who was there, that time at cultural shift, when it was announced that the government had not received enough votes in the debate to be able to go to war..., any of you?
i'm sure oz and cate were there.....
i don't think i'll ever forget it. for a brief time, i allowed myself to think that it would make a difference. the massive protests in london and round the world were scheduled for the next day, and the combination of the two events meant that it seemed as though the invasion was going to be averted.
they say that people today in iraq believe themselves to be less safe, less provided for, than under saddam..i can believe that. i can also, however, believe the people who say they are happier to know that they at least have the option to vote, that the future is wider open than it ever seemed before. but i guess its like the whole of life, the more you open yourself up to joy, the more open you allow yourself to be to sadness..the more you allow faith to grow in you, the more disappointed you may be when it doesn't work out..the more you fight for democracy the more fighting you seem to provide space for..the less you know about what you're fighting for, the less you end up achieving. on that basis, the fact that we had no idea why we were going to war, really, pretty much means it was inevitable that in the aftermath, we would have no clue what we were doing.
the full extent of just how irresponsibly we went at it, knowing how little we knew about what to do once the statues were torn down, is what now stuns me the most. the naivete, the sheer stupidity, of looking at a country and saying, oh, we've figured out what your problem is, so we'll take him out of the equation, and see how you fare. oh, you don't want to behave? fine, we'll kill you, on a fairly steady basis, for probably a good ten years, and then see how many of you are left standing with which we can form a puppet government. Afghanistan. prime example.
i hate this, i hate how cross it makes me, i hate how much they didn't listen, i hate how no-one has still come up with a viable alternative to the way things are going. leaving now would mean exactly what it meant in afghanistan. a country left to self-mutilate for another couple of years until we feel threatened enough to be able to justify spending more on going back in to re-stabilise things.
what a load of shit
today is s sad day, if you ask me. which you didn't. sorry x