For you just have to look at some of these things that this courageous country has done these last four years to see something different. To start out with, they flat-out lied to the American people to go to war to begin with. All this balderdash about how Iraq had Weapons Of Mass Destruction and how Saddam was actively aiding and abetting terrorists has not been proven yet, even though it has been well over one year since America took over Iraq. It has gotten to the point where Washington is now admitting that it was mistaken about all that, but that makes zero difference now, because the takeover has been completed. The White House wants everyone to think that they were just honestly mistaken on this and felt that they had to err on the side of caution and go to war just to protect themselves, and of course, this is a ludicrous proposition to begin with. Washington has the wherewithal to have all sorts of information about anything and anyone that matters on the planet, and to think that they did not realize that what they were saying was a lie is ridiculous. Washington knew full well that Saddam did not have any of these weapons, they were watching the dude and everything that he did so closely that they knew how often he shit and pissed, so they knew that he did not have any of these weapons at all, and was nowhere near Close to developing any either. Yet, the lied to the American people no end, telling them that Saddam was basically getting ready to destroy the world like the CCCP never got a chance to do, and they would not cease this call until they got what they wanted, war with Iraq. It took very little time to see that the claims that Washington made were false all along, but by then it was too late, America was in charge in Iraq. They wanted to be in charge there too, and not to destroy and weapons programs or to free any oppressed people, but for one reason only, and that was to make money for Mr. Businessman, and lots of it too. That is precisely what America has done ever since they came into Iraq, make Mr. Businessman obscene amounts of money, exactly what they wanted to do. But they knew that they could not come right out and say that to the American people when they wanted war, because that would not have gone over very well, and the people would not have liked or supported it, so another story had to be concocted. Washington had to scare the shit out of the American people with lurid tales of how Saddam was aiming for their total destruction through his illegal weapons and his training and aiding of all the crazies like those 19 fuckers that caused so much trouble in America on September 11th, 2001, and since so many Americans were still freaked out so much over the events of that day, it was rather easy to do that, and Washington went for it big-time and used that fear to pressure everyone into giving them what they wanted right away and with no strings attached, and that has resulted in disaster for everyone except Mr. Businessman, the only one that was supposed to benefit from it in the first place. Washington was not straightforward or honest with the American people on this issue, nowhere close, and that does not look like the actions of a "nation of courage" too much at all. It would take courage to be honest with the people and tell them the real reasons why you want things, even if those reasons don't come across too well, and Washington does none of that, they do the opposite and make up lies and fabrications and stories, and hide behind these and use them as excuses to do terrible things to others.
Another way that you can measure this courage that the Republicans are all blathering about this week is through the way that America is fighting the war itself. All week long, we will hear speeches and stories from those aforementioned veterans, and every story will be full of American courage, heroism, and bravado, and those in attendance in Madison Square Garden will eat it all up and go crazy with applause. However, there will be other sides to these war stories that will not be told to the appreciative delegates (including the Alderman of my ward here in Chicago, how does that fucker rate going there I don't know), sides that will not be so good for propaganda purposes. Like the fact that Washington refuses to publish or even keep a record of how many people that they are killing in this war, they don't even keep a record of the soldiers that they kill. Over and over again, we hear Washington recite the numbers of people that were killed in New York City and Washington DC on September 11th, 2001, and they never stop reminding us of how many of these people were women and children and just ordinary people, and how the tragic events of that day forever destroyed families and so many lives. Yet, when asked, the Pentagon cannot even give you a ballpark figure as to how many people have been killed on the enemy side since the war started on that day, in fact, they get downright testy with you if you even ask, and they huffily claim that it's not their business to keep count of that, and if you want to know that, go ask someone else. The Pentagon's story is that they have more than enough to do in keeping accurate track of how many American soldiers get wounded or killed in the war, and they just don't have the time or resources to keep adequate track of the other side. Of course, this is another lie. Washington knows exactly how many people they have killed, and they know who they are as well. Despite their claims, they have to know this, otherwise they could not accurately plan their strategy because they would not really have any way of knowing how they were doing, because after all, war is about killing people, and the side that kills the most usually wins a war, so America has to keep accurate records of how many and who they kill to see how they are doing, a scoreboard of sorts. They have other reasons for not making that public knowledge. The fact of the matter is, America has thus far killed many times more than the number of casualties from September 11th, 2001, they surpassed that figure long ago. Washington does not want the American people knowing how many they have killed, because that would lead to some tough questions for them to answer. The numbers would be so great that anyone could see that these could not possibly all be soldiers in the enemy army, if they had that many men, they'd be a much more formidable fighting force then they are now. That would leave only one possible reason for these huge numbers, and that would be that many, many civilians have been killed in this war by America. There is just no question that America has killed countless women and children and ordinary citizens and ruined families and lives far more than the terrorists did in 2001. Washington does not want people realizing that because then these people would not support the war blindly like they do, and people would see that America is really no better than the terrorists when it comes to maiming and killing non-combatants and civilians. Washington makes all kinds of excuses for this shit, and rationalizes and justifies it in all sorts of ways, the most hideous being the claim that American forces cannot distinguish between soldiers and civilians in Iraq because the enemy uses these people for its purposes, and that makes everyone over there a potential adversary. With that sweeping generalization, Washington paints every man, woman, and child in Iraq and Afghanistan and everywhere else as an enemy soldier, and that means that they are subject to being treated as such, and America has dome just that in the war, Iraq is littered with the corpses of women, children, and civilians as testament to that. America is just going into places and eliminating everyone that might not like that fact and saying that they are all soldiers when the vast majority of them are nothing close to that, they are just ordinary people caught up in this maelstrom. It does not take much courage to kill some little kid or a Muslim housewife or some old man, but America is doing just that and covering it all up with yet more lies and bullshit, not being courageous and admitting to everyone exactly what they are doing.
Yet, this is the "Nation Of Courage" that the Republicans will be touting all week long, a nation that in reality is not very courageous at all, and is actually very cowardly in its ways. The "Courage" that the Republicans will be crowing about all week is actually selfishness and bullying and conceit, for that is what George W. Bush and his Administration have been doing ever since September 11th, 2001, not these brave and noble things that they claim. The courage is nothing more than a slogan, a mantra for Americans to repeat until they themselves believe it as truth so that Washington can cover up and hide behind things in order to evade the consequences of their reckless actions these last four years. The frightening part of it all is that the American people are very likely to accept this mantra/slogan as the truth, and think that they are part of a nation of courage that is changing the world for the better. Washington knows that many of them just do not want to believe that America is killing babies and slaughtering civilians indiscriminately in Iraq, so they will do their best to convince them that this is not so. That is as much a part of the convention agenda this week as crowning Bush as the party's standard bearer and promoting their platform is. That is why They are pushing the image of Bush as the Great Warrior, battle hardened and tested in ways that John Kerry can only dream of, vietnam service or no. They know that they have to keep the American people thinking that they are on the side if strength and courage and not let them know that the reality of it all is something considerably less than the macho image displayed at Madison Square Garden this week. No one that is behind the war has much of any courage at all, that is why they resort to the underhanded bullshit of war to begin with, because they see it as the only way to get what they want. They do not have the courage to stand up and be straightforward and honest about things and accept what they get from that, no, that is not good enough for them, they must have more, they must have it all. That shows not courage, but greed and selfishness, and the only character trait that those two emotions ever have anything to do with is cowardice, courage has nothing to do with that sort of shit, it is nowhere to be seen actually. So, the Nation of Courage that the Republicans are bragging about this week is a myth, like the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus, it is just a catchphrase designed to bamboozle the people yet again, and make them believe things that just are not true. The real agendas and platforms that will come out of the convention this week are anything but courageous, they are short-sighted, greedy, and very cowardly, and unfortunately, that is what America stands for a lot more these days that that courageous shit.