Why do I mention this? It is not just that I am concerned about the loss of life in Iraq and wonder just how long we will continue to buy oil with the blood of soldiers. We claim to honor the commitment that brave - if ill informed - young people make as they promise to place their wellbeing second to that of their comrades and country. The question that vexes me is how we can justify the death of one soldier so we can drive SUVs and act as if oil were an American entitlement?
The president lied to the nation. That is clear and incontrovertable. What is more troubling is that we are as guilty as he for the deaths of our sons and daughters.
We are guilty for buying into an economy that requires us to use fuels that are environmentally contraindicated. It is not only the method of extraction of crude that violates the pristine earth from which we all originate. It is also the by-products of its combustion that are odious. But more than that, we are buying oil with blood. Wars since the First World War had the acquisition of oil as a goal of battle. But most damning is the fact that we are willing to believe the lie to sustain an unsustainable dependence on oil.
The only reason that Bush can control the past, and with it the future, is because we let him pass off lies as truth and make no effort to hold him accountable. There is passive guilt and active guilt. Active guilt would be the person that commits an action. Passive guilt is that which allows something to happen without saying a word or lifting a finger to stop the harm from happening.
We are as guilty as Bush. Bush lied, but we support the lies by demanding bigger and more powerful machines that consume more gas. Is it not in our self-interest to divorce ourselves from oil and learn to use power that is greener and therefore less apt to require wars with all of its terror and destruction to obtain?
Ah, but I am only a fool...
