And so it goes

People amaze me.

Sometimes that can be a good thing; occasionally news will pop up of one person or a group of people performing some extraordinary act of heroism, kindness, goodwill, etc.

More often than not, however, it is the persisting stupidity and ignorance of people that tends to crop up so much more often.

Take this war for example. Just about everything that can said about it has been said...about three-quarters of the country agrees that we need to haul ourselves out of the Middle East, tails between our legs or no. It is severely disrupting our economy. It is wasting lives. It is making us look like fools on a global scale.

Still, I am absolutely flabbergasted when I hear someone, in this case a media pundit, go on the air and insist that, if we leave Iraq, our enemies will come after us.

No they won't.

They never wanted us there in the first place...they never really wanted anything do with us. It morbidly amuses me that some folks still think that THEY were the instigators in this entire situation. We've been ravaging their lands, either physically or economically, for a little under a century, for a few centuries if you count Britain.

9/11 is still by no means excusable...don't get me wrong.

But for years we have been exploiting the people and resources of those nations, and it gets little to no media coverage. Of course that should come as no surprise, considering that most of big media is in someone's pocket, providing little more than minimal coverage on real issues, and otherwise serving as a distraction from the world's real problems.

Why do you think Paris Hilton is on MSNBC and CNN?

And then the minute that they attack us on our own soil, as retaliation for all that we've put them through, we're SURPRISED?

And yes, it is fanatically and religiously motivated...but economics and foreign policy is intricately weaved throughout their motivations as well. For a good deal of the population of that region, the two are inseparable.

Our BS just gives them a more tangible reason for a jihad.

Both sides are at fault, to be sure. I'd just appreciate it if we'd each start to own up to our responsibilities.