As usual, Scott Ritter talks good sense -- in this case about the coming war with Iran, and the specious casus belli that the Bush-Cheney gang seem to have finally settled on: Iran's alleged "sanctuaries" for training and arming Iraqi insurgents. Ritter demolishes this argument, just as he crushed the lies in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. His truth-telling was of no avail then -- and it will likely be of no avail now. But go read the whole thing anyway.
Meanwhile, Juan Cole carries out some demolition work of his own, taking apart the ignorant mischief of Edward Luttwak, who was given a NYT pulpit to proclaim that Obama is an apostate Muslim -- and thus in danger of imminent death from one billion of his erstwhile co-religionists. (As if Luttwak and the Right are really, really concerned about Obama's survival.) What's most interesting here is not the defense of Obama, but Cole's learned insights into the Muslim world, which remains a minatory terra incognita (or should that be terror incognita?) to most folks in God's shining city on a hill.
Via the redoubtable Grandma Jefferson, at TomDispatch, Ann Jones reports on some small but effective counterattacks in the worldwide war against women -- a war which has united all classes, races, peoples and places down through the centuries. In Africa, a unique grass-roots program is giving women the chance to document the suffering and injustice that is the "normal" condition of their daily lives. The resulting photographs have produced some surprising results in places -- and some hard defeats as well.
Do you want hear Donald Rumsfeld telling a roomful of ex-brass now serving as Bush moles in the media that the only "correction" for the American people's "immaturity" -- exemplified by their giving control of Congress to the Democrats in 2006 -- is another terrorist attack on American soil? Then go to this site (via A Tiny Revolution), where, through the magic of audio, you can sit down with Rummy and the shills for a cozy, boozy lunch and settle the world's hash. There you can hear Rummy ruminate -- in his preppy whine -- on how some good old terrorist carnage would get everyone "energized" again for the sacred War on Terror.
Here of course Rumsfeld is merely regurgitating his long-held position on the efficacy of terror as a facilitator of one's political agenda. After all, he was one of the prime movers of the Project for a New American Century, which famously declared -- in September 2000 -- that PNAC's ambitious and aggresive plans for expanding American military dominance across the world would probably never be enacted -- unless the nation was hit by "a new Pearl Harbor" which would "catalyze" the American people into supporting the militarist agenda. And lo and behold, just one year later, the militarists got their new Pearl Harbor -- and immediately enacted almost the entire agenda laid out in PNAC's 2000 blueprint! Some people are just lucky, I guess.
But now they've just about run through the windfall of political capital they got from that amazingly incredible piece of luck, and are now openly yearning for that "energizing" lightning to strike again. Gosh, could they really be that lucky?
They cry peace, peace, but there is no peace -- not when American missiles are around to derail any talks that might hamper the profitable operations of the Washington war machine.
On Wednesday, missiles from an American drone destroyed a house in the Pakistani village of Damadola, killing at least 15 people, with women and children reportedly among the dead. The ostensible target was a gathering of Taliban fighters, who control the surrounding area in this border region with Afghanistan.
But the real target of the attack, no doubt, was the peace process now underway between the local militants and the new Pakistani government. As AP notes:
The explosions came as Pakistani authorities and Taliban militants exchanged dozens of prisoners in the latest step in a peace process that is stirring growing alarm in the West. NATO claims [that] militant incursions into Afghanistan have increased.
This is a familiar pattern of the worldwide Terror War launched by the Bush Administration. We saw it a few weeks ago in Somalia, when national unity talks between the government and insurgents were disrupted at a delicate stage by the "targeted assassination" of a rebel leader (and the usual assorted civilians) by U.S. missiles.
In the American imperium, subject nations are not permitted to work out their internal conflicts on their own -- especially if this involves a cessation of hostilities that leaves any group or faction disfavored by Washington still standing. Obliteration of the disobedient is the ultimate goal, as Hillary Clinton put it so well the other day. But the Terror War policy of disrupting peace talks has some short-term objectives as well. These include the continuation of the war profiteering that now greases the entire American system; and, perhaps above all, the ape-like show of dominance that gives such deep psychological satisfaction to the pathetic, stunted, needy wretches who control our politics and our political discourse.
What's going on in Lebanon? Nothing you haven't seen before -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Palestine and other places where "the United States is basically instigating and funding civil wars."
So says Professor As’ad AbuKhalil -- better known perhaps as the "Angry Arab," for his indispensable website of the same name. AbuKhalil was born and raised in Lebanon and has an intimate knowledge of troubled land's warring factions there -- and their external backers. Needless to say, the American media's framing of the current flare-up of violence in Lebanon is the usual sinister caricature of reality, with "bad guys" attacking "our friends" out of pure, malevolent, world-gobbling evil.
In fact, "our friends" in Lebanon are actually in league with our allegedly erstwhile friends Al Qaeda. The Hariri faction backed by the Bush Administration is drawing upon the most extremist Sunni armed factions in an attempt to counteract the power of Shiite Hezbollah. This is of course just a continuation of current American strategy in the region, as Sy Hersh outlined last year: giving arms and money to extremist Sunni groups allied with al Qaeda in order to ward off Shiite factions making trouble in our client regimes.
This in turn is part of a broader, more long-standing strategy, going back to 2004, as we noted in a recent report: a global program of arming and funding militias and other violent "non-state actors" to foment trouble where Washington wants trouble, and pressure recalcitrant regimes to bend to the imperial will.
And no, Washington is not "behind" every twist and turn in Middle East politics. But American interventions, direct and covert, are responsible for exacerbating and intensifying conflicts, enflaming sectarian and ethnic divides (or literally building giant concrete walls between them, as in Baghdad today), bolstering tyrannical and/or ineffectual, illegitimate leaders whose misrule provoke more strife, suffering and conflict.
In an interview this week on Democracy Now, AbuKhalil cuts through the corporate media cartoons to give a truer picture of the outbreak in Lebanon:
I think that people may remember, back in the 1980s, the United States government, for two years in the administration of Ronald Reagan, deployed troops from ’82 to ’84. And there was a civil war, and the United States was supporting the rightwing militias of Israel in Lebanon, and they used the discourse of supporting the central government of Lebanon.
Something similar is taking place right now in Lebanon, and this is very much similar to what’s happening in Sudan, in Palestine, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and Somalia. The United States is basically instigating, funding and arming civil wars in all those places. We hear a lot about this inability of the international community to tolerate armed militias. Of course, Hezbollah is an armed militia, but so are the pro-militias of the government. There’s a Los Angeles Times article today detailing the efforts by the United States and allies to create militias throughout the country. And the Washington Post indicated that this government of the United States spent $1.4 billion to prop up the administration of Siniora in Lebanon.
And basically, what happened in Lebanon in the last few days is a partial coup d’etat that was in response to a full coup d’etat that was engineered by the United States and Saudi Arabia and Israel from behind the scene back in 2005, capitalizing on the assassination of Rafik Hariri.
And things have gotten to this point because America basically is responsible, more than their clients in Lebanon. I mean, there were ideas of dialogue in Lebanon, and things were moving in that direction, and then, suddenly, lo and behold, the Assistant Secretary of State of the United States for the Near East, David Welch, shows up in Lebanon, and he basically wanted to stiffen the resolve of the clients and to basically prevent the possibility of dialogue. And then, Walid Jumblatt, one of the clients of the United States and Saudi Arabia and Lebanon today, escalated by deciding on taking the issue of disarming Hezbollah, which is supported at least by half of the Lebanese; and Lebanese parties, including clients of the United States, [had] agreed that the issues of disarming Hezbollah should be left for internal dialogue of the Lebanese themselves...
This [the current violence] is something that experts have warned the United Nations about. If you push things to that point, the other side is going to lash out, and they did lash out, even if one, like me, does not like the scenes of these militias and armed thugs running into the streets of Beirut and so on. But basically, we have to say that this is the doing of US foreign policy, and this is the true face of the Bush Doctrine in the Middle East.....
We have to say that this level of intense tensions and conflict and animosity is the product of a deliberate American-Saudi policy of instigating a Sunni-Shiite conflict, the likes of which Lebanon has never seen. I mean, even somebody like myself who comes from a split background—my mother is Sunni, and my father is Shiite—I mean, we’ve never seen anything like this. Saudi media, with the full cooperation of the United States, have been for three years mobilizing the Lebanese opposition, because that’s the only thing they have....They have been [doing] serious propagandizing to [split] Sunnis from Shiites in order [to] create a militia that can stand up to Hezbollah.
Back at his website, AbuKhalil notes:
What is quite ironic is that Lebanese Forces' media (like LBC-TV) are gleefully airing calls for Jihad... by (Hariri- and Saudi-funded) Salafite groups in North Lebanon. Do they not know what those groups' views are of Christians? They even refer to Lebanese Christians as "crusaders". These are clones of Al-Qa`idah, but the Lebanese Forces seem to be embracing them.
And so in Lebanon -- as in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia -- the policies of the Bush Administration have only produced more extremism, more terrorists, more violence.
Can we not discern a pattern here, a clear intention? The "War on Terror" produces terror; it's part of the "creative destruction" that the militarists used to boast about, when they dreamed that their crimes of aggression, torture and murder would lead future generations to "sing songs about us," in the immortal words of Michael Ledeen.
This quote is often attributed to Richard Perle, but it comes from Ledeen's call for "total war" in a speech at American Enterprise Institute on October 29, 2001. Ledeen followed this up with a piece on National Review Online in August 2002, when he mocked Brent Scowcroft's concern that an invasion of Iraq could turn the Middle East into a cauldron. Ledeen's response:
One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today.
Ledeen is no mere kibitzer on the rightwing gravy train. He is one of the architects and chief abettors of the cauldronization -- the slaughter and suffering -- we see across the Middle East today. As the Washington Post noted back in the glory days of 2003, when these bloodthirsty wretches were still strutting around beating their chests about their importance:
One [of Karl Rove's advisers] is Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, whose specialties include terrorism and the Middle East. His latest book, according to the official summary, asserts that "America must topple the regimes of the terror masters to eliminate the threat of terrorism."
The two met after Bush's election. "He said, 'Anytime you have a good idea, tell me,' " Ledeen said. Every month or six weeks, Ledeen will offer Rove "something you should be thinking about." More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas, faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric.
Nowadays, of course, Ledeen skulks around pretending he opposed the invasion of Iraq: the kind of astonishing lie one might have heard in a Nuremberg courtoom back in the day, and one easily refuted. (As is his current lie that he has always opposed an attack on Iran.) But he, Rove and all the other facilitators of the militarists bear a direct and substantial share of responsibility for the murder and chaos that continues to erupt across the tormented region.
UPDATE: And now Bush is proposing an even more direct U.S. military intervention in Lebanon. Speaking in Cairo -- on yet another one of his pointless trots* around the cauldron (maybe he wants another fancy sword -- or just some more good smoochin' -- from the Saudi king) -- Bush offered to help the Lebanese army "respond more effectively" to Hezbollah. He also took the opportunity to -- what else? -- blame Iran for everything happening in Lebanon, claiming that without the backing of the devilish Persians, Hezbollah -- which, as AbuKhalil noted, is supported by almost half of the Lebanese population -- would be "powerless."
So Bush will soon have yet another proxy war playground to while away his time before retiring to stick his snout in the same corporate trough that has so enriched his fellow war crminal, Tony Blair -- who has already made almost $20 million in corporate pork in less than a year after leaving office.
Who says crime -- especially war crime -- doesn't pay?
*Note. Some might think that Bush is touring the region to build support for an attack on Iran. But that kind of head-knocking and arm-twisting is left to Dick Cheney (who took an ominious swing through the cauldron not long ago). Junior is too witless for any hard-core dealing -- although no doubt he will bluster and bellow to his hosts about Iranian perfidy and "doin' God's will" and whatever else vomits up from his murder-rotted brain.
To divert from atrocity and anguish and political folly for a moment: over at the MySpace page, there are four new songs up, with more to come. These are demos, self-produced, rough-sketch possibilities for the second album, which, if all goes well, might be recorded this summer with Nick Kulukundis, the extraordinary producer, arranger and musician. There are also two songs from the first album with Nick, Wheel of Heaven (available through iTunes), still up on the page. Give 'em a listen if you take a notion.
Civilians are still streaming out of Baghdad's Sadr City, despite the announcement of a truce late last week designed to avert – or at least give the appearance of diverting – a major bloodbath from an all-out assault on the densely-populated area by U.S. forces and their local junior partners. Announced on Saturday, the deal was immediately eviscerated by U.S. forces, who bombed three neighborhoods in Sadr City that very afternoon, as dpa reports.
Oddly enough, when Iraqi government forces tried to enter disputed Sadr City quadrants the next day, they were attacked, the New York Times reports. The Times' intrepid correspondents, including the ever-reliable spin-funnel Michael Gordon, professed to be shocked – shocked! – at such rude behavior, which they presented as clear and unprovoked violations of the nascent truce. Naturally, they omitted any unseemly and unnecessary mention of the American bombing of the day before.
The fighting is Sadr City is concentrated along a demarcation line, Al Quds Street (Jerusalem Street), between areas loyal to nationalist cleric Motqada al-Sadr and areas now under the control of the violent sectarian factions backed by both the United States and Iran; i.e., the Iraqi "government." In addition to bombing residential areas and leading Iraqi government troops in attacks, American forces are also erecting a massive concrete wall, 12 feet high, along three miles of Al Quds street, in attempt to seal off the recalcitrant neighborhoods. Of course, it was considered poor form – or rather, an international outrage – when the Soviets did this kind of thing in Berlin; but in our brave new world, it is now an accepted, even celebrated policy. (Just like torture, concentration camps, aggressive war, warrantless surveilance, etc.) During the past 17 months, throughout the vaunted "surge," U.S. forces have been building ghettos all over Baghdad and elsewhere in the country, often turning over these enclaves to the tender mercies of "former" insurgents and terrorists who, now in the pay of Washington, rule them as private fiefdoms. This, you understand, is what is now known as "liberation."
Civilians still living in the slowly closing concrete trap say they are almost as fearful of a genuine truce as continued warfare. That's because a real truce would allow the violent sectarians empowered by Bush to operate with murderous impunity in their neighborhoods, replacing al-Sadr's draconian militia with something even worse, as McClatchy Papers reports:
Inside Abdul Hassan's home, furnished with colorful rugs and flimsy mattresses, Sakran and his wife hoped for calm after weeks of bombardment and gun battles, but they feared the worst is yet to come. "We just want peace," Sakran's wife, Suham Bresam, said, her eyes heavy from sleepless nights. "This agreement happened and I was up all night from the gunshots and strikes."
Her home was in the middle of the fight on the edge of the district where U.S. forces are holed up in abandoned buildings and the Iraqi Army has set up checkpoints, and she hadn't left it in weeks. A nearly completed wall built by the U.S. military isolates the area, and her modest dwelling is scarred by bullets and shrapnel…
Nowhere in Sadr City is safe from an air strike, Bresam said, but Abdul Hassan's home was safer than her own. At home, the Iraqi Army shoots erratically after a roadside bomb blast hit civilians, and when the Mahdi Army shoots rockets at U.S. aircraft, missiles rain on people's homes.
"It's just the civilians who get hurt," she said....
Before the battle began in late March, the area was peaceful…but they lived in an atmosphere of intimidation. When women were beaten by the Mahdi Army in her neighborhood or Sunnis killed, they objected quietly and never challenged the militia....
But they also fear the Iraqi Army. Videos captured on cell phones are being sent as messages from person to person. Abdul Hassan pulled out his phone to show a public hanging of three men. They stood on police trucks with nooses around their necks as a crowd of people looked on and then the trucks were driven away and the men were hung. Another showed men shot by the Iraqi Security Forces and then burned. In the background Iraqi soldiers spoke.
"Don't say in the name of God the most compassionate the most merciful. They are animals," one soldier said....
Abdul Hassan said the videos were shot in the southern cities of Karbala and Nassiriyah, and he worried that the same would happen in Sadr City if the Iraqi Army had free reign.
"We haven't seen a solution that will give us peace," he said. "We don't want it to be like Karbala or Nassiriyah. We don't want people executed in the streets."
But there will be no peace in Sadr City. The "surge" will continue along the Al Quds line. Bombs will keep falling from American planes, missiles from drone-craft operated by button-pushers bunkered in Nevada will continue to rain death on houses and apartment blocks, and the extremists embraced by George Bush will keep hanging and shooting people in the streets.
II. Meanwhile, civilians in Mosul are likewise fleeing or hunkering down in the face of a major assault by U.S. and Iraqi forces. Patrick Cockburn of the Independent reports that one of Iraq's largest cities has been turned into a "ghost town," as likewise fleeing or hunkering down in the face of an attack by U.S. and Iraqi forces. The latter have launched the attack because, they say, the city has been under the control of "al Qaeda in Iraq" for many months.
That's right; as Juan Cole notes, one of Iraq's largest cities has been in the hands of what is supposed to be America's deadliest enemies in Iraq – even while Americans has been bombarded with propaganda about the "success" of the surge. This is the same city, by the way, that is routinely trumpted as a "success story" in the glittering career of General David Petraeus, architect of the "successful" surge. Petraeus was in control of Mosul during the first months of the war, when he was regularly touted – by Michael Gordon of the NYT, among others – for his remarkable "counterinsurgency techniques" and peerless "nation-building skills." So "successful" were Petraeus' efforts that the current assault to dislodge "al Qaeda in Iraq" is a carbon-copy of a similar operation launched earlier this year, as Cole reports:
Reading news about Iraq is like watching Bill Murray's 'Groundhog Day' in which you have to live through the same day over and over again. So the US and Iraqi governments have announced a new campaign against Sunni radicals in Ninevah province, especially Mosul. Take a look at this article, published late last January: "Thousands of Iraqi army soldiers reached the northern city of Mosul on Sunday in preparation for what the government said would be a major offensive there against Al-Qaeda in Iraq, along with other Sunni militants."
Ninevah governor Duraid Kashmula admitted to Al-Hayat that Mosul "has come to dominated by the leaders of al-Qaeda as a result of the delay in the military operation in the city."
What??! Mosul is Iraq's second largest city at 1.7 million, and it is under the control of "al-Qaeda"? How long has this been the case? All this time? While the US press was reveling in the "calm" in the country?
Mosul was also taken over by insurgents in 2004 – while U.S. forces were destroying Fallujah. It has long been flashpoint for terrorist attacks, reprisals and strife throughout the war. And now, for the second time in less than a year, it is being subjected to a major attack to wrest it away from insurgents. This is the kind of "success" that has fuelled Petraeus' meteoric rise to his current perch in command of the entire "Central Command" of the Terror War.
But what is happening in Mosul today? Patrick Cockburn has the story:
Mosul looks like a city of the dead. American and Iraqi troops have launched an attack aimed at crushing the last bastion of al- Qa'ida in Iraq and in doing so have turned the country's northern capital into a ghost town.
Soldiers shoot at any civilian vehicle on the streets in defiance of a strict curfew. Two men, a woman and child in one car which failed to stop were shot dead yesterday by US troops, who issued a statement saying the men were armed and one made "threatening movements"....
I had been to Mosul down this road half a dozen times since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and on each occasion the military escort necessary to reach the city safely has grown bigger....
That's Petraeus' legacy of "success" in action!
There is no doubt that security in Mosul has been deteriorating over the last six months. Mr Goran, who in effect runs the city, said that 90 people were killed in Mosul last September compared to 213 dead this March, including 58 soldiers and policemen. The number of roadside bombs had risen from 175 to 269 over the same period.
The official theory for this is that al-Qa'ida in Iraq, which has only a limited connection with Osama bin Laden and is largely home grown, has been driven out of its bastions in Anbar and Diyala provinces and Sunni districts of Baghdad. It has retreated to Mosul, the largest Sunni Arab city and the third largest in Iraq.
This is probably over-simple. Attacks on US troops in Anbar province have restarted and in Sunni districts of west Baghdad al-Qa'ida appears to be lying low rather than being eliminated. In many cases in Baghdad al-Sahwa, the supposedly anti-al-Qa'ida awakening councils paid by the Americans, in practice have cosy arrangements with al-Qa'ida.
I was in Mosul on the day it was surrendered by Saddam Hussein's forces in 2003. Scenes of joy were succeeded within the space of a few hours by looting and gun battles between Arabs and Kurds. Five years later Mosul, one of the great cities of the world, looks ruinous and under siege. Every alley way is blocked by barricades and the only new building is in the form of concrete blast walls. The fact that the government has to empty the streets of Mosul of its people to establish peace for a few days shows how far the city is from genuine peace.
How far from peace…. There will be no peace in that tormented land now, because the ones who started the war, and keep it going, see no profit in peace – unless, as we've said before, it is the peace of the grave, with all resistance to their will, their interests, their agenda crushed utterly. There is no middle way for the war-and-dominion machine that bestrides our system. There is only the "obliteration" of resistance – or else, as in Vietnam, ignominous retreat after years of pointless death and ruin. But what do they care? In the words of Suham Bresam: "It's just the civilians who get hurt."
Life and Life Only: A Few Quick Takes [quote]...we richly deserve the judgment of that posterity, to say nothing of Nature, that awaits.
[/quote]
Perhaps so...
On the other hand I believe that most people are poor at killing.Soldiers must be trained to kill, and some studies show th...
Another Note Chris, you mention over at the My Space page you're kinda noodling for inspiration in developing the musical lines, and I immediately thought of Randy Newman's work,(a great, though I think unsung composer and orchestrator) since he takes "American" ...
Life and Life Only: A Few Quick Takes Antifa beautifully sums up the view from the precipice we're all hanging from. My only very minor disagreement is that IMHO, the race won't need another 100 years of historical perspective to divine what we were, it's perfectly obvious now. But if th...
Life and Life Only: A Few Quick Takes I an wearing my tinfoil cap at present and wonder if this is a set for the (attempted) assasination of Obama and who it will be carried out by. The scapegoat has probably already been selected and then Bush & co can wring their hands and say 'oh how...
Life and Life Only: A Few Quick Takes Unless you've got a knack for viewing your nation and your generation from the vantage point of a century after you're dead and gone, a proper assessment of what drove your generation, and what human values survived your life and times is out of reac...
Life and Life Only: A Few Quick Takes Hello Mr. Floyd!
Please pardon my rudeness for leaving this note within the comments to this post. I failed to find way through the EB home page to forward this to you privately.
At such time a technical enhancement of www.chris-floyd.com becomes ...
Life and Life Only: A Few Quick Takes Helena Cobban his just published an excellent article on current Middle East and Palestinian/Israeli affairs at the Boston Review, 'Hamas and the end of the two-state solution'. Much of her reportage in this article covers information I've not seen ...
"The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around." – Martin Luther King Jr., April 3, 1968.
I. We are told that in the weeks before 9/11, then CIA chief George Tenet and his colleagues across the intelligence community were so alarmed by the flood of reports about an impending major terrorist attack that they felt their "hair was on fire." God only knows what the truth of this self-serving, after-the-fact assertion might be, but it is indeed an apt term for a sense of imminent doom in the public sphere. And given the headlong rush to a new war against Iran, and the G-force acceleration into the tyranny of a lawless, all-encompassing surveillance state that is unfolding before our eyes -- not to mention the Democratic Party's complete abandonment of even the pretense of carrying out the people's mandate and opposing the Administration's maniacal, murderous, criminal policies -- anyone whose hair isn't on fire today is either brain-dead, bought-off, or an active, eager, conniving traitor to the American people, and the human race.
That latter designation covers all those who now willingly serve the interests of the Bush Administration: not only the scuttling worker ants of the Bush-controlled Republican Party, but also every so-called "conservative" commentator toting water for the Bushist agenda; every so-called "libertarian" lining up for war, tyranny, torture and corruption; every star-spangled general whoring himself with propaganda exercises on Fox News and deceitful testimony before Congress; every so-called "centrist" wringing their hands over the need for "bipartisan compromise" with the blood-soaked thugs and rapers of liberty who have seized the Republic. Call them out by name: Bill Kristol, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Leeden, David Petraeus, Fred Kagan, Glenn ("More Rubble, Less Trouble") Reynolds, Joe Leiberman, Jon Kyl, Gasbag Limbaugh, and on and on, straight down the line. Call them by name, and call them what they are: traitors, and yes, betrayers, leading the nation -- knowingly, gleefully -- into ignominy and ruin.
This is not the time for polite debate and "political positioning." This is not the time for "politics as usual" at all. The Bush Regime long ago took anything resembling "politics as usual" off the table. Get that through your head already. The current presidential campaign -- an utter farce, a multi-billion-dollar carnival of despair and deception -- is meaningless. Anyone who pays attention to it for more than two minutes a day is wasting their time. Do you think that any of the candidates -- yes, any of them -- are putting all their cards on the table? Do you think that anything that any of them is saying right now can be taken on trust, or will be translated into actual policy once they are in office?
If so, let me sell you some shares in all that "high-speed rail" Bill Clinton talked about building in 1992, when he was going to take the "peace dividend" from the end of the Cold War and beat a few of our redundant swords into gleaming ploughshares for American workers ravaged by globalization. Where did that dividend go? It went to the NAFTA boondoggle. It went to Halliburton (yes, the massive privatization of the American military -- the results of which we saw on the streets of Baghdad last week -- began under Clinton, who threw billions of dollars in fat contracts at Dick Cheney and other "military servicers."). It went right back to the Pentagon, with its "missile shield" scams, its "Space Command" plans, its new missiles, tanks, and planes, its ever-expanding global empire of bases. It went to the continuing strangulation of the Iraqi people (and the continuing enrichment of Saddam Hussein with the express approval of the US and the UK). It went into the bombing of civilians in Serbia and Kosovo in an illegal, undeclared, unsanctioned war that ended with the same settlement that was on offer before the US and NATO attack began. In short, it went -- as usual -- to the same murky conglomeration of arms merchants, corporate cronies, revolving-door contractors, energy interests, investment firms and elite institutions that hold the true reins of power, and will do so whoever gets elected in 2008, no matter what they say now, or even try to do afterwards.
"Oh, but that Dennis Kucinich," you say, "that Ron Paul, that Mike Gravel -- they're sincere about wanting real change." Well, maybe that's so; I have no way of knowing if it's true or not, and neither do you, but let's assume that it is. The brutal fact of the matter is that the more likely they are to actually change things in a fundamental way, the less likely it is that they will ever be allowed to take office, or come anywhere near it.
Already they are mocked, scorned and marginalized by the powers-that-be and their sycophants on both sides of the political aisle. And if by some miracle they managed to punch through this cordon sanitaire, and gather the makings of a mass movement behind them, we know exactly what would happen to them. The last person who broke in from the outside and spearheaded a mass movement that seriously questioned the social, economic and military underpinnings of the American Empire was gunned down in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Although he was long a controversial figure, long a target of government surveillance and dirty tricks, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed only after he began expanding his movement beyond the issue of civil rights (which many Establishment figures supported) to include opposition to the Vietnam War and economic justice for American workers. Remember: he wasn't in Memphis that day for a civil rights rally; he was supporting a strike by garbage workers.
No, this is not the time for fretting over who is or isn't allowed into some sham debate, or how much time they are or are not given to answer some witless question from a corporate hack. (And why would a genuine agent for genuine change want to be associated with such farces – and with such corrupted and compromised parties – in the first place?) This is not the time for endless noodling over the political horse race, for wondering if Barack can catch Hillary as they mud-wrestle in a sty of dirty money poured in by the same conglomeration that devoured the "peace dividend." Neither one of these powerful senators have called for the impeachment of the White House criminals, nor refused, as a matter of honor and principle, to treat with them, but instead continually "seek compromise" with the Bushists on the mass murder in Iraq, while echoing – even magnifying – the Administration's bellicosity toward Iran.
The only important issue concerning these two candidates, and indeed all the "serious" contestants, is not whether they are fit to govern the Republic – clearly, they are not – but whether they should be ranked directly with the traitors who beset us today, or simply be dismissed as fools or tools. In other words, are they among "Bush's willing executioners," like the bootlickers named above and all of the "serious" Republican candidates, or are they just moral cowards and craven climbers, willing to go along to get along, to compromise with evil, to acknowledge the legitimacy of a tyrannous usurper, in hopes of grabbing some of that same tainted power for themselves?
In a time of traitors, when the rough beast of another war is spreading its hot breath across the land, the political travails of a few moneyed moral cowards is not worth the proverbial bucket of warm spit. Let one of them step out on stage with their hair on fire, let one of them denounce the traitors for what they really are, let one of them denounce the White House criminality for what it really is – no word-mincing, no fancy-stepping, no weaseling, no insinuation – then, perhaps, they can be taken "seriously." Until then, let their campaigns be classed with the stories of Brittney and Lindsay and all the other celebrity sewage that floods the media today.
II. So what should be done? We addressed this question briefly a few weeks ago, but it bears expanding upon here. What we need most urgently is for national leaders to step forward with a massive, relentless campaign of non-cooperation with the Regime. Let those who have some leverage of power –and whose position provides them some measure of cover – boycott all dealings with the White House, all meetings with its criminals and accomplices. Let them vote – on principle, without exception – against every single appointee of the Bush Administration, and every single measure proposed by its supporters. Let them immediately introduce articles of impeachment against Bush and Cheney. Let them act immediately on de-funding the war. Let them launch a widespread public education campaign to inform the American people of the exact nature and extent of the Bush Regime's crimes.
There are of course hundreds of other actions that national leaders could and should be taking to begin cleaning out the filth of the Bush Regime – and the mountains of filth left over from the Regime's predecessors – but first let them end all recognition of these criminals as legitimate partners in government, and condemn them for what they are: traitors, tyrants, torturers and thieves. Take that first step, then we can move on to other measures.
But again, as we said before, we all know that nothing like this is going to happen. Because it would call into question the whole greasy system upon which all of our national leaders have slithered to the top. It would undermine the conglomeration in which our elites live and move and have their being.
Some cling to the idea that in the face of this moral abdication by national leaders, a mass movement can spring up from below, from the ordinary people, and bring change and renewal to the troubled land. But there is little cause for hope in this regard, little sign that the many flashpoints of dissent that flare up from time to time will catch fire and coalesce into something more sustained. I once entertained wan but not entirely fanciful hopes that the bold stand of Cindy Sheehan in the Texas scrub-brush would light such a gathering flame. But as we have seen, she too has been mocked, scorned, slandered and marginalized, often by those supposedly on her side. And there was a moment or two when it looked as though the outrage of a few TV talking heads at the atrocity of abandonment in New Orleans after Katrina would outlast a couple of news cycles and drive that brutal reality deeper in the American psyche; but we know that didn't happen.
Likewise, last week's peaceful rally against Jim Crow justice in Jena, Louisiana, was indeed heartening; but as we have seen, not even years of the civil rights movement at its strongest, widest and deepest impact was able to break the power of the conglomeration: the empire of bases kept growing, the militarization of the economy and society accelerated, millions of people were massacred in Indochina. (Who can forget Nixon's chilling orders on the bombing of Cambodia: "Anything that flies on anything that moves"?). The half-century of hope that dawned on a Montgomery bus ended with the illegal installation of George W. Bush and his bloodthirsty clique in the White House.
In any case, the history of the past six years has shown that the American people, as a whole, cannot be stirred even by the most brazen outrages. Not by the wholesale assault on their liberties; not by the rot of their roads, bridges, towns and cities; not by the massive perversion of their electoral system; not by the deaths of their sons and daughters, their friends and neighbors, in a war of aggression they were tricked into by deliberate lies; not by their government's embrace of torture, concentration camps, secret prisons, and death squads; not even by the murder – in their own name – of more than one million Iraqis. Not even this genocidal fury – powerfully evoked here by Arthur Silber and here by Lew Rockwell – has shaken them from the half-sleep of what Silber calls "our impenetrable national narcissism."
But there's nothing else for it. We must keep sounding the alarm, even in the face of almost certain defeat. What else is our humanity worth if we don't do that? And if, in the end, all that we've accomplished is to keep the smallest spark of light alive, to help smuggle it through an age of darkness to some better, brighter time ahead, is that not worth the full measure of struggle?
***
"And if, in the end, all that we've accomplished is to keep the smallest spark of light alive, to help smuggle it through an age of darkness to some better, brighter time ahead, is that not worth the full measure of struggle?"
So eloquently spoken and so true. I wish I could fully express how gratefull I am for your writings. You, yourself, are a light shining in the great darkness that surrounds us.
The beauty and strength of your voice makes these awful times more bearable. A thousand thank yous.
Very well written. I have just one disagreement. My hair is not on fire, and I feel lucky that I don't let emotion get the best of me. I learned from painful experience that anger and hatred get in the way of effective response. This is the most critical time in the nation's history. We need to be at our best. There is a way out of this madness, though I'm not sure what it is. The best understanding I have at this point is that the "U.S" is a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah. The simplest conversations tend to be fake, escapist, angular, and "loaded." We are reaching some kind of crescendo as a people. I'm old enough to remember the days after World War II. The seeds for all this were planted then. TV, the breakdown of the family, suburbs, the proliferation of consumer crap, the intensive destruction of the environment, the CIA, subversion of democracy worldwide - all these things have happened in my lifetime. It can't go on forever, and it wont. We may not be powerful enough to stop what is going to happen, but we can be at our best in the process. Maybe one of us will come up with a magic solution.
Sorry, Charley, but neither the Libertarian Party, nor Ron Paul (the only prominent Libertarian Republican) ever supported the war. There are a very few libertarians who supported it, but the vast majority of us denounced it, denounced the Republicans who started the push toward it, and denounced the Democrats who marched in lockstep with them.
The Libertarians are the only principaled defenders of freedom and the Constitution in America.
"The citizen lives in each of us. In the days of Brezhnev, Andropov, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, I was constantly trying to suppress the responsible citizen in me. I told myself that I was, after all, an artist. As a storyteller I was influenced by the Moscow underground, where it was common to be apolitical. This was one of our favorite anecdotes: As German troops marched into Paris, Picasso sat there and drew an apple. That was our attitude -- you must sit there and draw your apple, no matter what happens around you. I held fast to that principle until I was 50. Now the citizen in me has come to life." Vladimir Sorokin
That was some pretty good stuff, although I expect you're going to get another 100-post thread of people asking you what they should do, given that most Americans have no clue on how to set up a society, even when they can see the current society is failed.
Witness --
The Libertarians are the only principaled defenders of freedom and the Constitution in America.
As long as such fantasies have a hold on the conscience and intellect of even ONE American citizen, we will continue on the same course.
Libertarianism is a FANTASY that cannot work. It has never had a chance of working anywhere outside a small "Galt's Gulch" community where everyone knows each other and everyone shares the same set of values, morals, ethics. THAT is the only situation where libertarian thought can rule.
Libertarians commonly think that the only alternatives to corrupt Repub/Dem politics are "communism" and "libertarianism" and therefore they typically will say they hold the best alternative because communism is so evil.
Libertarianism is a fantasy, and the sooner libertarians come back to reality, the sooner they can help rebuild America.
The amazingly (after all these long years of Bush) few people I know who are informed enough to intelligently ruminate on the drama unfolding in our nation during our adult lives all agree on this: as a national entity
We. Are. Fucked.
From observing the behavior of those in politics, mass media, and industyt who wield power, and their gluttonously rich puppetmasters who actively orchestrate and then coldly scavenge from human disaster, it is clear that America is caught in the same exponentially downward spiral that led to the extermination of Nazi Germany and its myriad historic predecessors. That is, in order to be cleansed of its hubris, the USA with all of its citizenry will likely need to undergo total catastrophic defeat at the hands of those of the rest of the world it has foolishly provoked. This is a scernario which has been played out historically time and time again, and America will be no exception. We only do not know how quickly or by what means this will come about. And we can only wonder if the rest of humanity will not also be decimated in the process.
As for my personally "doing something about it" -- well, although I'm not a libertarian, I somehow (snark) live a principaled life. So I won't shut up. I'll continue to make my economic way independent of corporate structure. I'll decide what to do as sincerely as I can keeping the finest examples of compassionate humanity as role models.
Fellow musician Frank Zappa nailed it when he said that our government is the entertainment wing of the military-industrial complex. At least in these darkening days there are a number of honest writers who do deep connective informative research, unearthing the underpinnings of the ghastliness we face today. So we know very well who have been serving and continue to serve "the devil." Should the seemingly inevitable purgative destruction of our country and its people come about during our lifetimes, we can at the very least die smiling, as it were, with satisfactory understanding of our sad human situation, that we proles are experiencing the same blood-cycle as our benighted ancestors who suffered a similar fate.
I adore you, Chris. If we are all going down,at least it is together with the most well-spoken, clear-sighted individual in the country.Your rhetoric rocks! Also, we all deserve a pat on the back for even having the courage to stare these ugly monsters of truth in their drooling fangs as they close around us. If there is to be any hope, it will have to be won. For now, without it, we have no choice but to fight on in our efforts to awaken the rest. Reminds me of the Matrix, a bit.
Margaret - short & to the point, completely accurate.
pookapooka - more detailed, and equally accurate. If one chooses to remain an American citizen and/or resident in these times, one must minimize one's participation in the current economy. Such would be pure patriotism at its finest - refusal to support the treasonous bunch who have punched through the looking glass of history to create another Third Reich and its attendant horrors.
Going off-grid would be a smart move. Self-sufficiency is very patriotic, if you ask me.
I predict that a secondary underground layer of internet communication will have to be created by hackers, because this bit of e-space we now participate in, it's going to become another fascist state enterprise like Blackwater or DynCorp... privatized for the great economic privilege given a rare few, and the terrible loss of free speech and open citizen communication for the rest of us.
Patriotic electrical and software engineers would and should be working on that very issue right now.
China now has extensive investment in Iran. Putin’s hand was in the negotiations. The United States has a huge trade deficit with China. Another large blunder by This Bush administration. It is my belief that the current deficit with China is so large that it is unsustainable.
The United States and China share the most imbalanced bilateral trade relationship in the world. The United States imports more goods from China than it exports to a tune of $202 billion dollars each year. All told, China alone accounts for nearly 26% of the United States' $725.8 billion trade deficit. As of June 2007, the United States Debt to China is approximately 190 billion dollars.
Bush, and his low mentality, fiscally irresponsible, adolescent minded hacks, have used the most part of that money, to finance this Iraq boon-doggle-quagmire, so they can bomb Iran and steal their oil, in another detestable, atrocious effort to cause more carnage for no reason other than to feather their own pockets. Sorry Chris, ... I’m not in a good mood today. DIRECT REFERENCES USED IN THIS BLOG MAJOR REFERENCE DATA BASE :
******************************************* TRANSLATION FOR JOE SIX PACK: JOE : " What’s that about China ?? " BLAQFATHER : " We owe the Chinese close to 200 BILLION dollars now. "
Chris-thank you-i echo the above sentiments concerning your characteristically fine piece, but i have a question.If the fathers took up arms when faced with a tyrannical power arguably less malevolent than this one, then can you or one of your informed readers explain to me(or remind me- i am a pacifist) why this option is not a defensible alternative to hoping and waiting?
Amendment 2 - Right to Bear Arms. Ratified 12/15/1791. Note:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The fathers designed this as a last defense against tyranny.
At this point, our constitutional fathers would have approved of the removal of Bush and Cheney from office, by a well organized militia of American citizens. They would be slapped behind bars where they belong, awaiting sentencing on war crimes charges. The Speaker of the House, would be put in charge of the affairs of the nation, until the next election.
This is unlikely to happen in today’s world. Nobody would attempt it. 125 million Americans, disapprove of this war, but that does not seem to matter to Bush or Cheney. They are too busy counting the prospective millions in profit from Carlyle Group and other large defense contracts. After they leave office, they hope their millions will make more millions. All they see is oil money coming from an attack on Iran. They could care less what the people think. Greed is their best friend.
So how many people need to feel the death of a loved one in Iraq ? Where is the justification for the lost and slaughtered children, with their world ripped apart ? How many mothers will cry rivers of tears for their fallen brave soldiers ? How many fathers will carry their dead children out of their battered and smashed homes, only to lay them in the cold ground ? What is this teaching us as humans ?
I think the answer lies in the radically different disparity in military force. Back then the armament was fairly equivalent.
The firepower is radically different now, and we also have police who are armed like the military. So it's like having to confront two militarized arms of the government.
At some point some people will say "enough!" but I'm willing to wager that most Americans won't ever reach that point. In such situations it is always a "radical" group of leaders who show what must be done.
Expecting a mass of Americans to do something collectively is optimistic, perhaps fatally so.
We are told that in the weeks before 9/11, then CIA chief George Tenet and his colleagues across the intelligence community were so alarmed by the flood of reports about an impending major terrorist attack that 
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