pikabot: (Default)
Peter MacDonald ([personal profile] pikabot) wrote2004-04-23 09:47 pm

Not everything is related to Iraq.

I've had it up to here with people high-jacking the letters page to rant about the war in freeking Iraq. I mean, jesus christ, not everything is related to Bush and the war.

Case in point: Paul Martin, Prime Minister of Canada, has recently announced that he will be meeting with the Dalai Lama. Naturally, the letters page had a few letter congratulating the PM on this, and for having the courage to stand up to China. That's fine. I have no problem with that. However...

Now, see, this paper has long stopped printing Iraq letters, because they started to get extremely repetitive and increasingly abrasive. So we have seen an increase in jackasses disguising their Iraq rants as discourse on a completely unrelated topic. For example, one letter on this page advertised itself as being about the Dalai Lama meeting was in fact a very thinly veiled tirade about the apparently very terrible things that are happening in Iraq.

It began fine, congratulaing the PM on his visit...and then things turned sour. It said something along the lines of 'Canada had the guts to keep out of this farce of a war in Iraq' and alarm bells started blaring in my head. I could see where this was going, but I read on regardless. And, sure enough, it evolved piece by piece into a rant bashing everything Bush has ever done.

Now, there are a lot of things Bush has done that I don't agree with. The war on Iraq was a good thing in my opinion, but that's beside the point. If you're going to rant about Iraq, that's your prerogative. But advertise it accurately. Don't insult our intelligence by hiding it behind other topics.