POSTED COMMENT TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
Gee, I do think recalling what the term "carpet bombing" actually means, this use of language is utterly stupid and brutal.
BP has "carpet bombed" an oil slick with oil dispersants.
America has carpet bombed several million people to their deaths in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, sending countless thousands of others to lives without limbs.
Oh, it also left a toxic sea of Agent Orange - millions of pounds of the horrible stuff - oozing in the soil of Vietnam to cripple newborns for generations.
No daily headlines and melodramatic language was used by the press during those utter savageries.
I really think this use of words tells us something not very pleasant about Americans.
If you kill so much as some American shrimp or soil a beach, it is terrible, unforgivable crime, but America reserves the right to barbeque, blow-up, and poison all the people it wants anywhere it pleases.
And does anyone doubt the fact that because BP is a "foreign" company, it is so savagely attacked? BP certainly recognizes this: their new CEO is an American.
Of course, the final irony in all of this is that this kind of industrial accident could happen any day to any operator in the Gulf, a certain level of risk and danger being inherent in deep-water drilling.
But Americans suck up energy the same way they do drugs. If Americans stopped buying lumbering trucks and SUVs and stopped buying houses on the desert with three-car garages, you wouldn’t need these operations.
