Is the root of our foolishness nourished by the fact that 70 percent of
Americans actually believe there is a devil in hell? Given the
mega-church mentality, with its crusader zeal and apocalyptic vision
that has hijacked our generation’s collective conscience and political
discourse, it’s not a large leap of faith to believe that Lucifer can
turn his minions loose in Iraq or Iran or wherever.
And if that faith is cynically exploited by corporate-owned Neocons
bent on the conquest of the oil rich “Land of Evil” in the name of God
and freedom, is our goose-stepping off to war really such a conundrum?
President Bush raises the specter of World War III should Iran develop
a single nuclear weapon (the U.S. and its allies have thousands), just
as then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice conjured up imagines
of mushroom clouds in the march to war with Iraq.
Our attack on Iran could very possibly unleash WW III, but not for the
reason Bush imagines. Nuclear-armed countries such as China, Russia,
India, Pakistan and Israel, and all non-nuclear Muslim nations are
inextricably bound in a web of strategic, economic and religious
interests in the “Land of Evil” that cannot withstand our foolishness
indefinitely.
And the mushroom clouds we’ll see over Iran will not be from jihadist
suicide bombers, but from our tactical bunker-busting nuclear missiles,
which are an integral part of the military’s attack plan.
Lest we get fooled again:
People will die in this new war in Iran as they are in Iraq, as they
did in Vietnam — as people do in war — by the tens of thousands or
millions... one irreversible death at a time.
Families will be vaporized as they huddle together and cry and fowl
themselves in fear and pray to whichever god they believe is listening.
A child will die from a single bullet to the brain or in pieces. The
dead will become carrion and the dogs and the rats and the crows will
grow fat.
And when the bombing stops and the blood and pieces of flesh and
viscera are washed away and down the sewer, history will have been made
and the Foolish Generation will be indicted.
We will not be able to camouflage our culpability within the mottled
grey of words such as “terrorism” and “genocide.” We will have
committed the murder of innocent daughters and sons and mothers and
fathers on a massive scale. There can be no mincing of words. It is
mass murder. And our foolishness is no defense.
During his warmongering at the East Literature Magnet School, President
Bush stressed the importance of youngsters understanding history
because it gives them “a better sense of what it means to be an
American.” Imagine youngsters in Berlin in 1939 listening to a similar
speech by their warmongering Furher. Now imagine their sense of what it
meant to be a German in 1945, tainted as they were by the blood on
their parents’ hands. History has not been kind to those youngsters.
If our Foolish Generation cannot find a way to extricate itself from
the black hole of history into which it is plunging, our children’s
blood-spattered generation will face the court of world opinion with a
weak defense:
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me... and my issue in perpetuity.”
Robert
Weitzel is a freelance writer whose essays appear in The Capital Times
in Madison, WI. He has been published in the Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel, Skeptic Magazine, Freethought Today, and on popular liberal
websites. He can be contacted at: robertweitzel@mac.com
Writings 
In the 2002 run-up to the Iraq War, President Bush stopped for a photo-op at the East Literature Magnet School in Nashville, Tennessee. Using the opportunity to justify his impending invasion of Iraq to middle and high school students, he shared with them his mangled version of a Texas truism: 
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