WAR

I oppose the war.

I don’t know what bothers me most about it — the anti-Americanism it will stir up around the globe, the scores of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians who will die, or the fact that if it starts on schedule tonight, it will pre-empt Survivor.

Does that make me a bad person? Well, maybe. It’s just that none of this war stuff seems real to me. George W. Bush doesn’t seem like a real president. Those green-tinted night-vision cameras that will broadcast our bombings have never seemed real. Even Saddam Hussein’s lunatic rants are translated on “60 Minutes” by an American actor PRETENDING to have an Iraqi accent. I thought the trend was that television was becoming more like reality, not the other way around.

Sure, it’s true that shows like “Survivor” are as manufactured and manipulated as anything else on TV, and you can’t take everything you see at face-value. But should there even be a debate as to which is more believable — the US vs. Iraq or Tambaqui vs. Jaburu?

Given the American military’s massive firepower, which is comforting to us and terrifying to the rest of the world, we’re surely going to win this war — that is, if you can call it winning when we’ve already lost NATO, the UN, half our allies around the world and the term “french fries”. But it seems like George Bush’s confidence in victory has overshadowed any rational contemplation of what the aftermath of that “victory” will be. We’re launching an unprovoked attack that will completely redraw the rules of political engagement in our world. And even though we’re going up against a guy who gases his own citizens, to a majority of people on this planet, we’re the bad guys.

Sure, my opinions on this are worth about as much as anyone else’s. Nobody can say for sure exactly what the fallout of Gulf War II will be, but we could start finding out the answers today at around 8PM.

Or we could find out whether Christy manages to win over Butch and Roger and oust that wicked bitch Heidi from their tribe.

I know what I’d rather be watching.