The Iraqi occupation according to John McCain

Saturday, January 5, 2008

The Iraqi occupation according to John McCain

Why "they hate us."

At a town hall meeting in New Hampshire Thursday, Republican presidential candidate John McCain said he supports U.S. troops staying in Iraq for a hundred years or more "as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. It's fine with me and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintained a presence in a volatile part of the world..." McCain later told the Mother Jones "that U.S. troops could be in Iraq for 'a thousand years' or 'a million years,' as far as he was concerned."

"Fine with me?" "Fine with you?" Does McCain even care whether it's fine with the Iraqis? That was just rhetorical.

According to George Bush, most of the rest of the world "hates us" because "we" have "a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."

Well, he's partly right. "They hate us" because "their leaders" are often appointed by "us;" "they hate our freedom" to do whatever we want in their countries; "they hate our freedom to vote" on how many hundreds of billions of dollars we will spend on war with them; "our freedom to disagree with each other" over how long our troops occupy their land; and "our freedom to assemble" the machinery needed to strip the resources from their land and the dignity from their people.

That's why "they hate us."