The Rag Blog

Commander In Chief Emeritus

It’s just not enough for me that Bush will go down as the Worst President Ever. That’s good, but not enough.

Source

Meese of Arabia and the Baker Group’s Grab for Black Gold
Written by Chris Floyd
Thursday, 07 December 2006

Listen, if you start listening to actual Iraqis, you might as well hang it up right now. Because poll after poll shows that actual Iraqis overwhelmingly favor a single option for the U.S. military forces in their country: cut and run, the sooner the better. That’s what they want; but of course, they’re just like children, aren’t they, the precious little primitive critters. And everybody knows you can’t give children everything they want. It’s not good for them. So we have to hold the Iraqis’ hands until they can toddle on their own — and we have to slap their hands if they don’t do what we know is best for them.

Read the rest, including significant updates and additional reading, here.

Cargo Cults

[snip]

Our modern culture and economy, our current ability to sustain six billion people, is the result of the one time opportunity to burn all the fossil fuel that has ever been created on the earth. It isn’t because we are technologically advanced, clever, or receiving the bounty of God. It’s because we are burning up fossil fuel. It was fossil fuel that put a man on the moon, brought about the ‘Green Revolution’ which increased the world’s food supply six fold in twenty years, brought about the great urban and suburban centers, and made it so a culture and economy could exist with less than a fourth of one percent of its population being farmers. Not only are fossil fuels responsible for all that supposed “progress” but it came about as the result of every increasing rates of use.

Read the rest of it here.

Several days ago, a woman who posts at a pro-cannabis web site I attend, received a call from the military.

She was initially told that her son, the youngest of three children, and a soldier in Iraq, had been ‘shot.’

She spent the next two days in limbo, first being told that he’d be fine, then being told that it was an IED blast and that he was in critical condition and intensive care.

This morning or last night he died.

Corporal Jonathon XXXXX. He and another corporal in his unit both passed away from their injuries suffered in that blast.

Another death putting blood on the hands of GW and the PNAC.

She is on a limited income, prefers to use cannabis as pain-reliever, but can rarely find it or afford it, and can’t afford the pills that the Docs give her instead.

She is a single, working mother, having raised three children.

She is representative of the lower-middle-class core of the extended families of those in uniform right now; under-privledged, lower incomes, and few resources. The military persons who finally spoke with her yesterday evening told her that they could offer counseling, and would pay for half of her son’s burial, though she’s apparently unaware of her son’s basic life insurance policy, issued by Uncle Sam, that might cover some of these expenses.

For what ever reason, the effect of this has been profound.

I haven’t written any quality poetry in some time now, and don’t know if this is suitable. I won’t give it to her yet, as she’s not ready to read this, in my biased opinion.

————————————
Tokin’ Mom of Three 12/06/06
_____________________________
There’s a hole in her heart
That the Doctor can’t fill
She can’t find the weed
And she doesn’t want a pill

There’s a vacuum of memories
Swept away by a blast
She thinks of his voice
From when he called last

She looks at his face
From early school days
The little hand print
And his buddies all at play

The empty room’s bed
Where he used to sit and read
Where she tucked him in at night
And tried to hear his needs

The old baseball glove
and little football cleats
Next to framed prom pictures
And clean satin sheets

Folded on the chest
Where his clothes used to be
Next to the spot
Where he’d kneel on one knee

Saying bed time prayers
As a tiny lil’ guy
Hoping for his family
And pleading with the sky

Books on his night stand
Dr. Seuss and Old Yeller.
He died a young man
But she mourns that little feller.

Dirk Nelson

The last couple of days have indeed been a tipping point in the conceptualization of the Iraq War in the American mind as reflected in the mainstream media. First, new “Defense” Secretary Gates baldly states in his Senate confirmation hearings that the US is losing in Iraq. Then the Baker Commission report openly states that current policy is a failure. Pundits flail about in vain for a viable direction toward something they might be able to call success, all starting from the assumption that the current situation is a disaster growing steadily worse. The Baker Commission report is delivered to Bush like a death warrant on his legacy. But George W., with everything to lose, will almost certainly, given his shortcomings and insecurities, once more futilely exert his ever-shrinking manhood against these harbingers of defeat.

Today, 10 more US soldiers were killed in combat in Iraq. Tonight the cable news commentators exhibit unvarnished contempt for Bush. They question his ability to even comprehend the depths of his dilemma. The ubiquitous assumption is that the policies (and lies) of George Bush that led the US into Iraq have resulted in catastrophe for US power and influence and the process of extrication from this morass will cost much more. This is now conventional wisdom. Look for Bush approval ratings falling into the 20’s. It’s fast heading toward only Laura and his dog, Barney, standing with him and he shouldn’t count on them.

It is the dawn of the Iraq syndrome era, a public backlash against the type of policies that drug the US into this quagmire. One obvious potential characteristic of this era will be a repudiation of American militarism on a historic scale. Iraq is such a fiasco for the US’s ability to dominate the world by military force that mere defeat within Iraq with the attendant humiliating retreat might be the least horrible option for US militarism. Far worse would be a spreading regional war possibly stretching from Afghanistan to the Gaza Strip, which the US has little or no power to seriously influence. Recently, the Saudis, Syrians and Turks (all majority Sunni) have all warned that circumstances might draw them into the fray in Iraq, especially if the US unabashedly allies with the Shiites to slaughter the Sunnis as Bush’s Monday White House guest, Shiite cleric and death squad leader Hakim suggested.

The Vietnam syndrome is credited with exerting a restraining influence on US aggression for at least a few years – until 1980. Iraq syndrome has much more potential to effect future US foreign policy. Vietnam was not a war over seriously strategic territory or resources. Iraq is. Vietnam only spilled over into Cambodia and Laos only due to the US bombing campaigns. Iraq may spill over in every direction regardless of every US effort to stop it. Furthermore, never was the Vietnam War as universally discredited as the Iraq War has already become. There may not be throngs marching down the streets, but the antiwar position never had such good poll numbers as that position has now in the US and virtually everywhere else as well.

Objective conditions clearly indicate that the period between now and the next presidential election will provide the most fertile period ever for an anti-imperialist, anti-militarist critique. The most powerful way this critique could manifest would be as part of a independent presidential campaign by charismatic left leaders who espousing anti-militarist and other popular policies (e.g., universal healthcare, end the drug war) outside the conventions of capitalist party politics. Regardless of the corruption of the electoral process, it is the venue for debate provided and the capitalist parties are very likely to cooperate by nominating candidates with long histories of supporting now discredited policies.

David Hamilton

Military Commissions Act: A Precursor To Tyranny?
By Chuck Baldwin
Food For Thought From The Chuck Wagon
December 5, 2006

Ladies and gentlemen, please wake up! Under the leadership of President George W. Bush, rights and freedoms that have been lost to you include your right to an attorney, your right to know the charges being levied against you, the right to a speedy trial, the right to trial by a jury of your peers, the right to not be subjected to torture, the right to not have your home and personal items searched and seized without warrant, the right to not have your personal conversations (including letters and email) intercepted without court order, and the right to not incriminate yourself, just to name a few. And now we learn that our government has authorized and is planning to build “concentration camp facilities.”

Read the rest here.

* Note: TTT = Trash-Talking Thursday

Fine Print in Defense Bill Opens Door to Martial Law
By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor

Yet despite such a radical turn, the new law garnered little dissent, or even attention, on the Hill.

Read the rest here.

This post requires some explanation. We used to live in Redmond, Washington, which is famous for a bastion of corporate Amerika named Microsoft. This has nothing to do with Bustopher except for the fact that he would’ve been termed one of the Microsoft rabbits because that’s where he lived before coming to live with us. Prior by some months to when the great rabbit roundup began, Bustopher moved to our neighbourhood, which was just a couple of miles from the main Microsoft campus. So as all of Bustopher’s sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles were being unceremoniously caught and hauled away to Sultan to a rabbit concentration camp, Bustopher lounged contentedly in the Grasslawn Park neighbourhood of Redmond, quietly munching grass and dandelions, and other delicious bulbs and flowering plants that we had generously festooned our yards with, all for his benefit of course.

He lived there happily until the end of his days, which someone said came under the wheels of an environmentally insidious gasoline combustion vehicle. I don’t know about that as I didn’t see it, and I certainly hope it isn’t true. Nevertheless, Bustopher befriended us, probably because I gave him pistachios all the time. And he even occasionally let me ruffle his ears, but he always winced a little. He weighed in around 20 pounds – he was a hearty rabbit. And he brooked no nonsense from the cats in the neighbourhood, charging them gallantly and growling until they backed away and left him to his snoozing. Just the sort of pet I’d always wanted – there to say hi, but never to be pesky. And rabbits are exceptionally appealing and gentle little animals. Richard Jehn

Bush denigrates Iraqi leader in Spanish

New man to sit in Maliki’s chair when the music stops?

Washington, DC
By Paul Crassnerd, NY Times Washington Bureau

In an apparently unprecedented public show of cynicism for a sitting US president – and some say, of bad taste – George Bush appeared on last Thursday to slander and to crudely dismiss current Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, calling him in Spanish a “pendejo” who was “already gone yesterday”, apparently meaning gone from the political scene, said a journalist today who covered the November 30 meeting.

“Este pendejo is ya se fue ayer,” said Bush, in a comment picked up by New York Times reporter’s boom extension microphone. Bush apparently believed reporters had not yet set up their gear, and that none spoke Spanish, said one reporter also at the meeting.

Asked by veteran Washington-beat journalist Robert Martinez, who speaks Spanish, about the comment, Bush said his comment had not been meant to be overheard and was “all in fun between I and the Prime Minister.” Bush did not respond when asked if Maliki spoke Spanish.

Martinez said on Tuesday that “the word pendejo has no literal translation into English.” But many people along the border “think it means a pubic hair, a kind of a sweaty pubic hair,” said Martinez. “It’s like a pubic hair with something still on it from sex, but dried,” he said. “It’s not a compliment,” he added.

Martinez said he was shocked at the time, but thought the comment had no real significance until Monday, when he also covered a meeting between rising-star Iraqi Shia leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim and Bush.

“It was so heavily scripted, that I honestly have never seen anything like it, even with Bush,” said Martinez, who said Bush had a Teleprompter several feet away from which he appeared to try to read with some difficulty.

First, Bush praised the Shia leader, whose militia until last year fought and killed US soldiers before he joined the Iraqi government more recently.

“I’m proud of the courage of the Iraqi people, but we’re not satisfied with the pace of progress in Iraq,” said Bush, with a smiling Mr. Hakim sitting next to him.

Then, Mr. Hakim, apparently also reading from the Teleprompter in halting English, said, “Iraqis should resolve problems by themselves, but I would like American troops to remain in the country,” said Martinez.

The sequence of statements – Bush saying he is not satisfied with progress in Iraq, and Hakim saying he wanted US troops to stay in Iraq – made Martinez think of the earlier meeting in which Bush apparently belittled the unaware Maliki, said Martinez.

“Then you throw in the ‘leaked’ memo the other day, saying Maliki can’t cut the mustard, and it all makes sense,” said Martinez, who has covered the Bush presidency since 2000. “It’s like they’re looking for a ‘new fool by the Whirlpool’ in Iraq, he noted.

A memo from White House security advisor Stephen Hadley became public last week was apparently what Martinez was referring to. In it, Hadley questioned whether PM Maliki fully understood or could control events in Baghdad, and by extension, the rest of Iraq.

Martinez said his biggest shock, which caused him to go public with a story that he says could end his White House access, came when Bush left the meeting with Hakim. Bush, apparently leaving attached to his suit lapel the cordless microphone that had picked up his earlier comment, was met by Vice-President Cheney immediately outside the meeting room, and was heard to speak disparagingly of Hakim as well.

“Dick, I don’t know if either of those two [Iraqi leaders] you found could [defecate] and breathe at the same time,” Bush was heard to say to Cheney.

The Vice-President’s reply was equally shocking. “I could give a [care],” said Cheney. “The troops stay, the ones that live for a while get fed. They get fed, Halliburton gets paid. HAL gets paid, I get paid,” said Cheney. “Six more months and HAL will be out of the hole and my HAL options will be worth something. Now go work out, or better yet, practice reading,” Cheney was heard to say as the two parted.

Services were planned on Thursday for Martinez, whom Homeland Security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity said had died suddenly late Monday night in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after apparently mistaking a small amount of polonium 210 for a recreational drug he is believed to have bought soon after what would be his last meeting with White House security officials seeking to clear up questions about whether Martinez was “authorized to make or release the Hakim and Maliki meeting recordings.”

The official said the memorial service might have to proceed “before the actual body is actually returned,” since custodial officers “apparently had lost track of it for now.” “Now there’s no habeas corpus, some of the guys aren’t that careful any more with the bodies,” said the source. “If there are any bodies,” he added.

Paul Crassnerd

“FIDELISMO” Means Never Having to Say, “You’re Too Late”

News this week that Premier Fidel Castro didn’t attend his delayed 80th birthday celebration has further stoked barely-repressed official U.S. jubilation that perhaps, soon now, the iconic Cuban leader’s time on earth will end. Bush & Co. are rooting for cancer as Castro’s secret diagnosis, something intestinal, they hope, probably involving pain and bloody stools.

I cannot join the vultures’ anticipatory fiesta.

Whatever anyone thinks of Castro’s policies, of his influence, of his rule, this is a man, a human being, and he is hurting.

I lived with my gentle mother in the final two years of her life, cruelly cut short by a cancer which jumped across demographics and lifestyle factors, robbing her family and community of a leading light. We were fortunate that she did not suffer much pain, and could feed, clothe and clean herself — those basic indicators of independence — until the very end. Dying in her own bed, surrounded by love and borne up in her faith, this was nonetheless a cruel end, and cruel to watch as red blood cells were daily replaced by imposters and my vibrant, energetic, strong Mom was replaced by a pale, tired shadow.

Seventy-five or 80 years is not enough, you know, for one who loves living.

A few weeks ago, Alice and Thorne and I visited our old opponent, former Austin Police Department Lt. Burt Gerding, so that Thorne could satisfy the Texas Observer’s desire that he interview Gerding before they published Thorne’s piece on police spying on radicals here in the 1960s. Knowing Burt from old as a consummate gamesman, three of us went together just to be sure that no one let slip the latest plans for The Revolution. We found an old man on a walker, whose home shows the unintentional neglect of one who moves now only on circumscribed paths through his own life, still the gamesman at heart but betrayed by his body, his habits, his sins. A feisty little terrier, Asta, is a bright spot there, as the cardinals we fed on the front lawn, and her elderly cats inside, were warm places in Mother’s that last winter. I found myself still wary of Gerding’s half-truths, but believing him when he said he no longer viewed us — the 60’s rads upon whom he’d spied and played a multitude of tricks — as “the enemy”.

No. The only real enemy is the Grim Reaper.

I wanted to get people to send get-well cards and letters to Fidel, to counter the death energy being projected towards him by our government. Death comes soon enough to everyone, and it is wrong to cast el mal ojo on another’s life. But I am reliably informed that mail to Cuba from the U.S. is held up, scanned, and mostly never delivered. There must be some way to achieve this notion — perhaps through friends in Mexico? — but time may be short. So, for Fidel, that bearded, defiant, laughing, virile, devil-may-care, chicken-bones-in-Harlem and guerillas-in-the-mountains revolutionary hero, I have lit an 8-day candle, to burn until el dia de la Virgen, for courage and for strength.

Fellow Austinite and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong strongly criticizes the U.S. government’s lack of commitment to cancer research and care. Fellow blogger David pH recently wrote about what could be done with the $500 kazillion we would save annually just by becoming peace-loving citizens of the planet.

If U.S. citizens must have a war, a war on cancer (and poverty, illiteracy, homelessness, and everything else David mentioned) would be a most righteous jihad.

Hasta la victoria siempre,
Mariana

Conversion from a military dependent society.
How to save $500 billion annually and human society in the process.

Iraq was a trap that America imperialists could not resist. That trap has sprung and the result will be US defeat. Regardless of all talk in Washington and elsewhere of what is to be done next in Iraq (e.g., Baker’s Iraq Study Group), the essential fact is that those doing that talking will have very little or no impact on the situation developing in Baghdad. There basically exist only two options for the Bush regime: 1. Stay and bleed and cause greater suffering among all others. 2. Leave, so as to mitigate further damage. The latter course, may cause an escalation of the civil war, but one is reminded of how for years it was claimed that our leaving Vietnam would trigger a blood bath. It did not. This is a different situation, but Sunnis and Shiites are more likely to eventually reach a modus operandi if the US military isn’t in their midst.

If Bush and his handlers had half a brain between them, they would order the Green Zone government to “insist” on our withdrawal. But they don’t. Since the Bush regime cannot yet swallow option 2, it will stay with option 1, the horrendous status quo, which gets ever worse as the contradictions continue to manifest at an accelerating pace. Besides the human damage, the greatest damage will be to US diplomatic power and to the political power of those who lied to justify and continue what has become “the greatest foreign policy debacle in American history”. This likely consequence is the silver lining.

What would be the economic consequences of abject defeat in Iraq for average US citizens? Outside of those who might own large holdings of stock in Hummer or other similar capitalist ventures associated with the military-industrial complex, the economic consequences would very likely all be very positive. Just the supplemental appropriations for Iraq alone are hundreds of billions annually that your tax dollars wouldn’t necessarily be wasted on. That would be thousands of dollars per American household that each taxpayer could hypothetically keep. Alternatively, those savings could be spent on pressing domestic needs, such as universal healthcare, which would be an economic boon to almost everyone except insurance company executives. But we need not stop there. If the US citizenry had the same attitude toward war and the proper use of one’s national military forces that Europeans have, we could save half a trillion dollars a year.

Nearly constant warfare was a staple of European history for millennia. From Athenians vs Spartans through the Hundred Years War to Waterloo and eventually to Hitler’s bunker, European internecine warfare was endemic and almost perpetual. But the technology of slaughter became so overwhelming that after WWII some incredibly prescient individuals in France including Charles de Gaulle decided that further punishment of the Germans would be counterproductive in the long run and that a new era of relations must be initiated, subordinating nationalism. They inaugurated multi-national boards to jointly conduct their mutual rebuilding and reindustrialization. The French-German rapprochement involved reaching out to old enemies and seeking means of to a cooperative and integrated future. The European Union, the world’s most successful experience of transcending nationalism, was the eventual fruit of this process. As a result, there has not been a war between European nations since 1945, despite the Cold War, a historically unprecedented achievement. Now, such a war is hard to imagine.

In the course of its development, a corollary foundational belief has become deeply entrenched throughout Europe; that war is not a legitimate means of conflict resolution between nations (nor a legitimate means to enrich your ruling class). An extension of this corollary is that it is not legitimate to station large numbers of your nation’s soldiers outside your national boundaries unless they are requested by international authority. These European attitudes towards militarism were learned through centuries of experiences so gruesomely bloody as to dwarf anything in American history, culminating in the over 40 million European casualties in WWII (over 100 dead Europeans for every American killed in that conflict) along with immense destruction of vital infrastructure and cultural treasures. The resultant anti-militarism now manifests in their near complete reliance on diplomacy and international authority to resolve international issues.

These anti-militarist attitudes on the part of Europeans stands in dramatic contrast with attitudes of Americans who believe it is quite normal to use force to achieve foreign policy objectives, who belittle international authority and who consider having one’s military personnel stationed all over the Earth as quite normal. The most central objective of any effort to reform the US must be a huge diminution of US military power, including the unilateral disarmament of 99% of the US nuclear arsenal (and the rest through negotiation) and the closing of all US military bases in other countries. This is not some radical socialist idea. Name any other country that has bases scattered all over the globe as does the US. There is no comparable example.

Demilitarization would also free up hundreds of billions of tax dollars annually for more useful purposes that actually benefit the great majority of the US population. We could have universal healthcare, massive infusions of money in public education, bolstering low income public housing stocks, and the development of environmentally friendly energy sources and public transportation systems, just to mention of few alternative expenditures that would become possible. The amount saved would be so vast that the US could end global hunger as a side line. No argument would remain against the US endorsement of the International Court and the rule of law in international affairs.

Adopting the attitude toward war held by the overwhelming majority of Europeans would not be such a radical idea. We would not be asking everyone to convert to being socialists. But such a conversion would provide the funds for many other desirable alternatives. It would also remove the US form the top of the list of pariah states and lead to the reestablishment of the US as a respected global citizen.

David Hamilton