Liberals propagate tired arguments

Those of you who read this newspaper from week to week know that I am one of the only conservative columnists on staff, and I am fine with that. I believe this page serves as a melting pot of ideas, and it is always good to see two (if not more) sides of the story on a particular issue. Much of the time my column is run alongside a liberally-minded column, and as I said before, that's fine with me and even though I am always right, I must give the liberals kudos for trying. Last week, however, a column was printed that was so off base and ignorant that it got my blood boiling.

"America's warmongering spurred by oil," which ran Oct. 7 in the Online Forty-Niner, was not only offensive to me, but to any American who actually does love this country. The article basically asserted that the United States is a prime culprit in terror and that oil is the cause of the world's problems. More importantly, the article points out several arguments (if you can even call them that) that the liberal world uses day in and day out as some kind of trump card to degrade their country.

In one part of the article, Bracke says, "Our government is the single largest terrorist group in the world and has done more to promote and inspire terrorists around the world than a hundred Osama bin Ladens." I have only one question to Daniel Bracke: if you think that this country is so abhorrently run and that we are actually a terrorist nation, why do you still live here?

Surely you and the other liberals who say that the United States is a terrorist nation could move to another country that isn't run this way. In fact, since you seem to think that this country is somehow run worse than Iraq or Afghanistan, why don't you move to one of those two countries? They both have prime desert real estate selling for pennies on the dollar, literally.

In another part of the article, Bracke states, "The Sept. 11 attacks were the catastrophic event that gave Bush's cabinet the catalyst that was needed to start a war for control over the world's oil." How long are liberals going to say that oil is the cause of the current war? Yes, we all know that Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton and receives money from the company to this day, but so what? The United States is fighting the "War on Terrorism," keyword being "terrorism," not the "War to Take Your Oil and Run." Bracke also relates the war to Vietnam, saying that the "soldiers have no real enemy to fight." I suppose insurgents with RPGs and suicide bombers who are willing to die in the name of Islamic fundamentalism don't count as a "real enemy."

Bracke goes on to say the United States is suspending civil liberties with the Patriot Act (never mind the fact that it passed with virtually no opposition in Congress) and that "our own president and his cabinet are war criminals." Give me a second to get this straight: Bush, Cheney and their cabinet are war criminals, as were Heinrich Himmler (the leader of Hitler's SS), Rudolf Hess (who was appointed by Adolf Hitler as deputy leader of the Nazi Party in 1933), and Josef Mengele (Auschwitz's "Angel of Death)"? I cannot, for the life of me, see how anyone would subscribe to this line of thought.

It is truly a sad day when an American citizen accuses his president of being a war criminal, and when one has such little pride in his country that he would propagate lies for the sake of propelling his own illogical argument. I must digress, however: if you truly think that the U. S. is a terrorist nation run by war criminals, then by all means exercise your right to pack up and get out. It is doubtful that anyone would miss you.

Gerry Wachovsky is a senior broadcast journalism major at CSULB and the Diversions Editor for the Online 49er.