My Vote

In Al-Jazeera today is an article that chills me to the bone - A detailed plan of attack on Iran for 2006 (Happy New Year, huh?)

If the issue is Iran developing nuclear weapons - well then, what an utterly blatant hypocrisy!

The United States has been building nuclear weapons for decades, without apology to the rest of the world.
Is the American government more entitled to weapons of mass destruction than the rest of the world, the Middle East in particular?

What is it about a Muslim nation holding it's own that so intimidates us?
Don't offer me the anti-terrorism argument, because I won't buy it.

The United States has waged it's own veiled terrorist attacks on the Middle East and other countries since its birth - and the Universe is balanced - so none of us should be suprised by the rampant hatred for America, and manifestation of that anger in violence.
And after watching what US forces have done to Iraq, is Iran really so out of line in exploring a system of protection from the same kind of abuse?

Islam is a religion of peace, as is virtually every other religion on the planet.
The lowest common denominator of any major religion is love. It is the political and economic agendas of the few that skews the reality of these philosophies and twists the words of believers everywhere into a war cry.
When are we going to stop accepting these decisions, made to protect and fund the bank accounts of a few corporations; decisions that suffer and murder the innocent on both sides?

Last time I checked America was a democracy...but who's voting the yes-or-no of this war, or the next? No one asked me to clip a chad with my opinion.

Well, consider this my vote -
N.O.

I vote NO on further deaths, American, Iraqi, Persian or otherwise. I vote NO on making excuses to wage war out of fear of the understandable progress of smaller nations. I vote NO on expanding the American dream outside the borders of America. I vote NO on families-accidentally-in-the-line-of-fire. I vote NO on using Israel, America's little-darling, as the arms with which to launch American bombs.

I vote NO.
Period.
But no one's counting.