Locomotion

In this week's New Yorker [April 23, 2007, "Liar, Liar," by Jeffrey Goldberg], Clifford Irving gives new meaning to locomotive when he observes, “Everybody leads a fictional life. You make a commitment to an act that is self-destructive and you stick with it. It’s not only the Bush Administration. It was Vietnam, it’s a lot of things. You get on a train and you can’t get off because it’s going so fast. If you jump off, you hurt yourself and look stupid.” Then he concludes, "You can still say anything you want. There's a unanimity of gullibility out there." While feasible for some writers, this has always been true for politicians.

M-I-C, K-E-Y...

In commenting on “Bushed” [April 10, 2007], rosecoveredglasses offers an ominous snapshot of the military-industrial complex (MIC), apparently based on many years of inside experience, and suggests that our entire country may be in for a dive reminiscent of Enron’s collapse when this whole political business machine runs out of oil or sparks and seizes up. An article in last month’s Vanity Fair about SAIC substantiates his take on our national predicament. It goes well beyond a few politicians in the Capitol. By now, war (or at least military excursions) may have become one of our most insidious industries, supporting millions of people and seriously buttressing our GNP.

"Through a combination of public apathy and threats by the MIC we have let the SYSTEM get too large. It is now a SYSTEMIC problem and the SYSTEM is out of control. Government and industry are merging and that is very dangerous," says rosecoveredglasses.

In the end, the end... it's kind of like finding yourself at Disneyland whirling around in a parallel universe, parallel to many others that are all banging around and into each other from time to time and generally interacting like a pinball machine.

As Dick Cheney threatens us, for example, that if the Democrats don’t approve continued funding for the “war in Iraq," the troops will soon run out of the money they need to support their mission, not to mention their lives. The message, of course, is that it would be treasonous to do otherwise, and the war must go on. But you could suggest that Mr. Cheney send this bill to Halliburton, Bechtel, Blackwater, KBR, a few oil companies, and SAIC instead. It seems to be their war now; so let them pay for it.

Or, you may just think about moving to Amsterdam, at least until the water gets higher than you.

Bushed

Heard the news today, oh boy... or, rather, the president today threaten us with untold mass destruction by terrorists, both here and abroad, if we didn’t continue to support his military juggernaut in Iraq, his war against terror, against the terrorists who would make Iraq their training ground and come back and get us again. And everything he said he was fighting to save us from in Iraq—in the name of freedom and democracy—he has now actually created in Iraq with this war against… what? He doesn’t know. Our soldiers don’t know. Nobody knows. He might as well be waging war against the weather.

As far as anyone knows, there was no terrorist activity of any consequence in Iraq before he invaded and tore the country apart, plunging it into sectarian violence and civil war, and actually fostering a new face of terror in the Middle East, women. (Yes, that’s right. A Muslim woman blew up fourteen people in Baghdad just today.) The 9/11 terrorists were Al Qaeda originally from Saudi Arabia, not Iraq. Osama bin Laden, their Saudi leader, is still out there, alive and on the loose, somewhere between Afghanistan and Pakistan. None of the 9/11 invaders came from Iraq, and there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The evidence for this pretext we know now was forged.

Well, how could this happen, you might ask. How could our own government pull such a fast one on us, the American people they are charged with supporting and protecting? And where was the free press, the mainstream media, to investigate and question the motives, the evidence, the logic? That is another good question. In its own rush to war and journalistic valor, not to mention celebrity, the MSM (with a few exceptions but apparently not enough) has become a party to this war against peace, this insane campaign to promote instability, this crime against, yes, humanity. So, again, you may now ask, why?

At this point, the whole thing is very suspicious; it all smells very fishy, to say the least. More and more, after all is said and done, the only conclusion that seems to make any sense, or not, is that the president has used democracy and terrorism as a cover for his oligarchy’s own agenda of avarice. They are not fighting for freedom or democracy or to protect us from terrorists. Rather, they are fighting to bolster their own power and resources, i.e., the military-industrial complex, about which the people of America have long been in chronic denial. The only benefactors in this inane and illegal war have been big companies like Halliburton, other defense contractors, the oil companies, and assorted duck hunters whose interests seem to be served by disruption, discord, death and destruction, especially in the Middle East.

So the next time the president invokes his mantra of a war on terror, ask yourself who are the real terrorists here? Who has squandered our national resources, our federal budget, our domestic priorities, more than three thousand American lives, tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, many more wounded American GIs and Iraqi civilians, and untold destruction of property to achieve absolutely nothing, with no sign of peace or democracy, or even any end to the violence in any way whatsoever?