Monday, March 08, 2004

-God, Blair and the Bomb: A tentative search for moral clarity

by Eric A. Smith

LONDON, Mar 7—Well, now it’s official.

Blair has joined Bush in declaring their mutual global campaign a ‘war on
evil’, thus officially designating our bombs holy and the enemy’s evil,
should we have harbored any doubts.

So while we poison civilians with depleted uranium for the “greater good”,
our enemies are using (or were maybe perhaps planning to someday use)
exclusively evil Weapons of mass destruction.

Whoops, wait a minute; since Rumsfeld, Cheney, Reagan and Bush senior
SUPPLIED Hussein with Anthrax, Botulism, Cholera, Bubonic Plague, Gas
Gangrene and nuclear detonators in the first place, were THOSE WMD “holy”
until they arrived in Iraq, at which time they became tools of Satan? And
would that then make Rumsfeld, et al, “Satan’s suppliers”?

This raises other important moral issues, for example, at which point do
these weapons cross the line of sanctity? As soon as the sales receipts are
obtained? As they’re loaded onto our transport planes? After America’s
neocons have been paid?

The import of these answers far outweigh those of the “how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin” or the “if you listen to Stairway to Heaven
backwards does it really say ‘Satan hump me gently’” arguments.

And, hypothetically, if the Pope were to bless our “bunker buster” nukes,
would they become permanently holy? Would they not then be endowed with a
sort of teflon-esque holiness? If these papally-blessed nukes were then
delivered to, oh I don’t know, IRAQ, would they not then RETAIN their holy
essence? And would that holiness be violated if they were sold to a
Saddam-like dictator instead of merely detonated upon the heathen heads of
the enemy’s civilians?

God—and now perhaps Blair and Bush—only knows.

References:
Senator Robert C. Byrd —Senate Remarks:  “Providing a Cookbook for Iraqi
Biological Weapons”—September 26, 2002
http://byrd.senate.gov/byrd_issues/byrd_iraqi_bioweapons/byrd_sept262002/byr
d_sept262002.html

Wikipedia—the free internet Encyclopedia—entry “Halliburton”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halliburton

Global Policy Forum:
“Pentagon Iraq Contractor Has History Of Supporting Terrorist Regimes”
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/after/2003/0416pentagoncontr
act.htm

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/after/2003/0416pentagoncontr
act.htm

Eric A. Smith
Hot Damn! Design
81-03-3959-5371