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While sipping that water, I picked up a piece of a flattened globe laying about for use in a future art project. I instinctively put my finger through the hole at where the North Pole should be, and spun it around a few times. As it spun, I thought of two things - how a good mapmaker can make a world map using 5 colors so no adjoining country is the same color - and I also started to envision all the changing borders over time.
I saw the Roman Empire expand and collapse in a split second, I saw Germany rise, fall, rise and fall again. I saw Napoleon knock on Moscow's doorstep. I saw America push to the Pacific. Centuries of war and strife, rivers of blood, religions clashing, kings disagreeing - it all replayed over and over as the hemisphere spun on my finger.
And then it happened. Without thinking, without worrying, I saw the Middle East. I saw the Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, Egyptians, Persians all expand and contract. Israel was born, the nation states rose and fell. I saw an American flag superimposed over Iraq. And then it all made sense.
No one will care in twenty years, fifty years, two hundred years of what America has done in Iraq today. I've stopped caring. My voice is insignificant, sadly only the truest and most out of touch bleeding heart liberal still believes they have some say in changing global matters. The world is run by men who will do what they want, without fear, without regard, without a worry. Vietnam, a much more bloody and dirty affair, is thirty years old and barely warrants a mention outside anti-war advocates. In two
hundred years, people will jovially laugh at America's Middle Eastern Crusade, after all, who alive today remembers the shores of Tripoli?
Of course I'm saddened our esteemed President led us into this unseemly affair. I never supported the war and felt the whole debacle was doomed from the start. I'd wished we had spent the trillions of dollars on health care, education and problems at home instead of blowing up thousands of innocent and not so innocent folks in a desert half a world away. But in all honesty, the long and the short of it says this too shall pass.
So with those thoughts, I've callously decided now is the time to support the War in Iraq. Bombs away! Let the chips and bunker bombs fall where they may. Enough worrying about dead civilians, blown up marketplaces, suicide bombers and dead soldiers. In twenty years, none of this will matter and I'm sure we'll have a new, bigger, shinier enemy to deal with.
I applaud the efforts of the Democrats to try to bring a resolution to this depressing, horribly bloody affair. I also wonder where their backbone was five years ago when they should've fought harder for a better resolution.
So instead of worrying about the world, have faith in your leaders. The world has been run by numbskulls and rejects for thousands of years, rare is the Great Leader who has brought intellect, justice and wisdom to the table. With attention spans shortening each day, it may not even take twenty years to forget about this war. Unfortunately, most of Iraq may take longer, but hey, won't they come out better for it at the end of it all anyway? Democracy rocks! Sometimes the lesson is just hard.
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