I know many people who simply don't watch/read the news at all because they find it depressing. Oddly enough I find some of the most disturbing world news to be intensely interesting. Since before 9/11 I had an interest in terrorism, and after 9/11 I had a plethora of books on the subject to feed my fascination.
To me, keeping up with events in the Mid-East and Europe today is better than a trip to Disney World. *so is having a root canal....bad example* I'm always trying to figure out why people think the way they do. Based on the news coming out of the Mid-East, it's pretty obvious to me the Eastern brain and the Western brain don't come off the same assembly line.
I recently saw reports by journalists on the front line along the Iraq/Syria border, and another inside Jordan. In both cases a crowd was drawn to the TV cameras where average townspeople seemed to be all excited about the rapidly growing ISIS movement and said they would love to go join the fight themselves.
Were these sincere sentiments, or were they just wanting to be on the record as ISIS supporters because they can see the little white Toyota's with the machine guns mounted on top getting closer? (I thought the Jordanians were all up-in-arms over the ISIS murder of their captured pilot a few weeks ago?)
What are they thinking? "Oh wow! How cool is that? Lopping people's heads off....that's one bad-assed M____ F_____. THAT'S what I want to be! I want to walk down the street and have people nod at me and whisper to their kids, 'That guy is a head lopper. If you work hard and study diligently maybe someday you can be a head lopper, too.'"
I don't get it. It must be an East brain/West brain thing. I don't see the appeal.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Do you think George W. Bush is pacing around his Preston Hollow home in North Dallas these days saying, "OMG....what have I done?" Don't get me wrong. I'm probably one of the few who honestly believes W didn't deliberately lie to us to get us into war. I knew of him when he was the Texas governor and found him to be a decent, bipartisan, fair chief executive.
I can see him wanting to kick someone's butt after 9/11....it's just human nature when a sucker-punch attack happens on your watch. However I think he had some devious, sinister advisers, the most visible being Richard "The Dick" Cheney and his mafiosi sidekick, Donald "The Don" Rumsfeld.
They assembled the mosaic of available intelligence to show The Boss that a Mid-East adventure was justified. By the time W figured out (?) he had stepped in doo-doo up to his eyeballs it was too late. All he could come up with is "We're trying to bring democracy to the Mid-East." *snicker* It's hard to let go of a tiger when you're holding on to its tail for dear life, huh George?
The idea of bringing "democracy" to the Mid-East is, was, and always will be a farce. The last thing those backward people think about is democracy. Self preservation says you get all you can from where ever you can. Evil as Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gadaffi and the rest were, they did keep a lid on things in the region. There's something to be said for the status quo. Washington obviously missed that memo.
S
