Sanctity of Human Life
Published by marco on
CNN is reporting that Bush declares National Sanctity of Human Life Day. Hey, didn’t we just have one of those last summer? Or has it really been a year already? Or does Bush get to declare many different days “Sanctity of Human Life Day”? I don’t think there’s a gambler in the world who’d take odds that he gets the irony of talking about the sanctity of human life at the same time as mobilizing almost 100,000 troops (is it that many? The numbers are so confusing…) that are getting ready to carpet bomb and kill as many as 500,000 to 900,000 Iraqis* (as estimated by the UN) in a war emphatically being waged for a reason that does not exist.
Seriously, he said we should all “rededicate ourselves to compassionate service, and to reaffirm our commitment to respecting the life and dignity of every human being”. Does he even understand English? Or can he just sound out the words? That was near the end, though, where he was slipping or the teleprompter was getting blurry, because he started strong with a much more Bush-like phrasing, saying we should “reaffirm the value of human life and renew our dedication to ensuring that every American has access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Ah, that’s more like it, no? It’s not hypocritical at all to talk about sanctity of human, American life. Hell no! That’s the way God intended, no? Off the record, of course.
I think even if you explained to him the irony of what he’s doing in short words and with a lot of pauses and question-and-answer sessions and vacations and tall, cool drinks, he still wouldn’t see it. You’d just be faced with that squint in his eye as he’s pretending or trying to understand, but then the faraway, king-of-the-world look comes back and you’re no longer there for him. If you’re lucky, you might scare him into the deer-in-headlights look for a second before Ari Fleischer tells him to knock it off and look more regal.
Perhaps he’s so dead set against abortion because it helps poor people not have too many kids. That means fewer soldiers, no?
*I went to look up what the UN estimate was and found A question of casualties in Iraq on the Chicago Tribune, which estimated that “about 50,000 Iraqi lives” would be lost. That’s an astoundingly low number, considering we took out almost 200,000 all told (including civilians who form the lion’s share of that number) in the first war and that wasn’t even taking the battle on the ground in the cities where the deaths would really start to mount up. The UN number is unnattributed and taken from an “The Fix” email newsletter by Mark Morford.
Also in that article, I found this neat quote:
“The United States won the Persian Gulf war with fewer than 150 American dead, a low number when compared with previous American wars that had losses in the tens or hundreds of thousands.”
Gee, is that really a low number? How the hell can you just write that without any superlatives? Like, “an astoundingly low number” or “a ridiculously low number” or “such a low number that it’s not even right to call it a war, is it? it’s more like a 30 year old kicking the living shit out of an 8 year old.”