Alas, Baloolapalooza will finally get an insight into the mind of Matt Van Dam. Just for all those that know me from the PWF you will already have your head in your hands waiting for whatever grandiose and egotistical bullshit I can possibly come up with…
Well you are wrong. My intention is purely nothing more than to offer those readers of BaloolaPalooza an English spin on life in the world as we know it… or sometimes don’t. I will however add that my writing will pull no punches and will have no limitations to the possible controversy it may unravel. I will not write with the intention of pleasing other people, I write merely to amuse myself but you are all welcome to join the ride.
So what has being happening in the world lately? For me, the overwhelming topic is the War against Terrorism. Nearly 3 years on from 9.11 the world is still being plunged into chaos and catastrophe, namely by a number of mislead and impressionable individuals who are killing the innocent in the name of their God(s). Now, the whole world gets the US prospective on this situation, Bush will continue to send Americans to die, fighting to keep a country stable that seemingly cannot be saved from it’s own wrath and he expects the rest of the co-illation to do the same. But are we right to continue fighting a war we cannot win?
For me, Vietnam comes to mind when i think of what is currently going down in the Middle East. It was a case of the US forcing its own political agenda onto a nation divided by not only war, but by civilisation. Vietnam in the north and in the south is a country lost somewhere in the Ancient and the Modern and simply were not ready for what western civilisation was bringing to the table. America (or should i say its leaders) in their infinite wisdom sent hundreds of thousands of men to Vietnam to die in order to give this deeply eastern culture a shimmer of Western life… they failed.
It is reported that around 14% of the entire population of Vietnam was lost in the conflict, for the sake of politics is this something that we can just take on the chin and forget about? For me it can very easily go the same way in Iraq. Americans die, Britons die, Italians die, Japanese die and you better believe Iraqis die. My question to you all is this… should we continue to police the world and forsake our countrymen in the name of world peace when they clearly do not want us there, or should we simply police our own lands better? Crime, death, sickness and poverty are real, not just in parts of the world we can do nothing about, but in our very own Countries, Cities and Neighbourhoods. Should we really act god for the world when such things are happening on our own shores? We’ll all have a different answer to this as no particular answer is the right one, i personally feel the co-ilition should remove it’s presence from Iraq and allow them to live their own life, weather they choose to do it in peace or not.
Thanks for your audience, MVD.
7 replies on “Enjoy the Silence 1”
hey, i read this in the staff forum and liked it. the grammar changes are good and the article is very strong. there are still a few grammar errors but all in all it is an excellent article.
i totally agree with you on the Iraq thing. I hope you continue to write for us, I would love to hear more from you.
Great article Matt, and I couldn’t agree more. They’ve captured Sadam, now it’s time to pull our troops out of there. No reason to keep them there, allowing our young men and women die each and every day, for nothing.
Strong first entry my friend
can’t wait for the next one
love the idea of throwing in a foreign perspective, i’ve never wanted this to be just a US site and i’m glad you want to help us broaden our audience and appeal. In addition to that it’s refreshing to see someone honestly non-partisanly tackle a social or political issue, i know that’s not all you plan to do but i think it’ll be excellent from time to time.
great job
There was a guy on Dennis Miller not long ago talking about how Iraq was turning into another Vietnam situation. I think you(and him) are quite right about that.
I’m in agreement with you Matt. I think that pulling out of Iraq would be a great idea. In fact, it will happen once Bush is not re-elected coming this fall. However, I just keep thinking that this reeks of imperialism on the part of the US. It’s happened many times before with many countries.
A country will go in to take over and set up their own puppet state for the sake of gaining resources. During the exploration of the new world, Spain’s motto was “God, Glory, Gold”. With Bush in office, I believe that the word Gold can be replaced with Oil. The whole country knows his agenda in the Middle East, whether they care or not is another story though.
I haven’t been a big supporter of the idea of this war, but way too many young men from this country are over there right now and I’ll be damned if I don’t support my troops. It’s not their fault that they are in Iraq, it’s Bush’s.
By the way, since the capture of Saddam, I haven’t heard a damn thing about him. Does anyone know what’s up with that situation?
See I think we need to get out, but at this point we’re in too deep, i was always aginst the war to begin with but now we’ve fucked up people’s lives over there worse and created more enemies… i think we need to seek the support of the international community and lock the place down as a military state for a little while to restabilize it, otherwise things will get worse and the anti-american sentament will get worse over there no matter what we do. The people need to have structure again, they need power, food and jobs, and we need to stop the crazy amount of violence and destruction that goes on over there. I was never in support of this cause but now we’ve made it worse… we need to fix it. Unfortunatly bush is an ass and has refused to grant lucrative business contracts to any country that didn’t help in the invasion (which to me proves this is imperialism), and worse yet the other nations won’t come in unless they have that incentive. So we’re stuck pretty much alone until our president changes or changes his policies. And as much as I feel what we’ve done is really fucked up and i want everyone home. We, and the people of iraq, would be worse off if we suddenly left right now. An anti-american fundamentalist regiem would have little trouble getting itself set up in there if we turned tail now, and terrorist groups would have a field day harnessing all of the hatred towards america and recruiting.
We need to fix our mess not abandon it now, for the good of the world, the problem is bush has no desire to do it the right way, just to do it his way.
And as for saddam… they announced the other day that he is to be tried by the iraqi governing council and that the US can have nothing to do with the trial, other than just oversee it.
I’m glad people are taking an open mind to the column, this is an extremely sensitive issue not just for Westerners but we must remember that if we stay or if we go a nation is in turmoil, i don’t know what the right answer to fix it all is, i just don’t believe the current course of action is what is required to bring peace to Iraq. Thanks for discussing the topic though and i hope you all enjoyed my insight to something that has troubled me since it began.