baslog

getting back....

I am getting a bit worried about being allowed into the United States on my way back. As required, I have my letters of employment with me, to show customs officials that I have a job in the United States, and convince them that I will not have to take advantage of the country’s generous welfare program. I won't use up any cardboard boxes to make a bed out of and I will not take up any valuable space underneath the city's bridges.

I once gave an older man a ride to his house, there was a torrential downpour and the guy was getting soaked at the bus stop, so I offered him a ride. I told him that I was studying here and was looking for a job, and as he got out he said to me: “well, as long as you have a job, that’s fine, but don’t just stay to take advantage.” I wanted to tell him that if I wanted to be taken care of by the government, Belgium would have been a better place than Bushmerica, but I just wished him a good night and made a mental note not to be nice to rained out old men anymore.

But even though my visa seems to be in order, there may still be some trouble for me, as Belgium is getting a bed rep recently from conservative America. The Washington Post ran a bizarre editorial about the “Many faces of Belgian fascism.” (Regardless of the content of the piece, I find this gratuitous use of the term fascism somewhat shocking, shouldn’t one be a bit more selective with the use of the term “fascism,” lest we forget what it really stood for?)

And a while back, Fox News’ john Gibson wrote a book entitled: Hating America: The New World Sport. A book in which a bully complains about being bullied, and one of the nations that is at the receiving end of Gibson’s vitriolic tirade is Belgium. One of the chapters of his book is called “The Axis of Envy: North Korea, Canada and Belgium.” I did not read the book, but was able to collect some quotes from the author and the book.

"Without the reins of international justice, Belgium is no more than Nova Scotia: pleasant, cold, and completely irrelevant."

"Now that the Iraq deal is over, let’s invade Belgium,” Gibson prematurely declared about a month into the Iraq invasion (4/28/03). “It may be a small country, but, man, is it annoying. . . . Isn’t it time to invade Belgium, just knock some sense into them and give the Frenchies next door a scare?”
(http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2863)

“Belgians are proud of their higher consciousness, their at-all costs pacifism, of a sense of world morality they cling to regardless of circumstances or risks.”

With all this stars and stripes inspired backlash against Belgium, I am afraid I will be on a transfer flight to Guantanamo bay before I can say “Geneva Convention.” But allow me to take issue with Gibson: A sense of world morality? Does losing wars give us the moral high ground? At-all costs pacifism? Has this guy read King Leopold's ghost? What this colonial power did in The Congo is best described as a Holocaust. We stole its resources and killed its people in the most cynical and atrocious way. Higher consciousness? This country has also been selling arms to despotic regimes just to make a dime.

We can also be cynical, self serving and ruthless in foreign relations, we just might not be as good at it as the US. But our intentions are pure and at heart we are also an evil hegemonic empire who is ready to obliterate everyone who does not like the way we do things. We are only still in training. If I can convince customs of this I might still be back in the States by next week….

Posted by vana0047 at August 23, 2006 06:07 PM