Full Circle


I'm listening to Bob Menendez, Democratic Senator from New Jersey, speaking on the surge. He makes the point that the surge was intended to provide enough security for the Iraqi government that they could begin running the country, and that it has failed. Now Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, is talking (in a voice which makes my shoulders rise) about the success of the surge as a step to winning the war.

I listen astounded when the Republicans speak about winning, or losing, the war in Iraq. There is no war in Iraq. There is an occupation of Iraq by foreign troops. They went in under a new policy for America, one which allows us to pre-emptively strike other countries because of our suspicions. For example, we suspected that Iraq had chemical weapons which they might release to terrorists.

The reason we suspected this is that Saddam Hussein was taken off the terrorist A-list by Ronald Reagan which allowed corporations to sell chemicals to Iraq, with which deadly chemical weapons could be produced to use against Iranians. We didn't seem to mind how many Iranians were killed, but found it revolting that Kurds were hit by them. That's why Bush used, over and over again in his condemnation of Hussein, "He murdered his own people."

This plays on the taboo against waking up one day and murdering the fam. "Hussein is the Lizzie Borden of the Middle East, and if he is captured, I will personally put panties on his head and lock him in a closet with Mike Tyson."

So we have no real moral aversion to people being killed by chemical weapons so long as it advances our interests. Anything can be justified, which is why just cheating a little on the Constitution is like just a little hole in the dyke. Michael Mukasey says that torture is immoral, but that maybe it's legal to torture somebody who isn't in uniform, as for example a citizen in the resistance during an occupation, or somebody who may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and picked up in a sweep.

When there is an occupation some civilians resist. In our Revolutionary War, it was about a third of them. Another third were waiting to see which way the wind would blow, and there was the third, always with us, who always support the most authoritarian figure. Then it was the King, now it's the Unitary Executive.

Hussein was an evil man, but no more evil a man than other CIA assets on the global chessboard. He was evil when we needed him to be. It reminds me of Martin Mull's song, "I"m everybody that I've ever loved (I'm Charro with the brains of Irene Dunn)." We are every right wing, or in Hussein's case, socialist, dictator we've ever installed for business reasons. It always has blowback.

The most disgusting aspect of this Iraq war was the call to patriotism, as if we were defending ourselves instead of invading another country without provocation, and with the thinnest and most contrived legal cover. When there is a lot of flag waving and lapel pins and Freedom Fries, it always implies the administration is trying to legitimize something which can't stand too much logical scrutiny, and has to be defended emotionally.

Why on earth would anybody who isn't mentally ill shift allegiance to Iraq? It's like betting on a can of dog food racing a stallion.

"I'd like to be abused, please."

I shall never forget the endless supply of bullies parading around, threatening anybody who opposed it, at the beginning of this war, and proclaiming, "I support our troops." No shit? They are our troops after all. We depend on them as our defense, should we be attacked. And we were attacked, by a band of criminals holed up in Afghanistan. The question isn't whether we support the troops, but whether we support their being killed off in foreign adventures based on concocted evidence underpinning concocted legality. We needed them in a legitimate war, and we needed our National Guard for domestic emergencies. We didn't need our troops used to shore up Halliburton and save it from bankruptcy.

We made a great start after the September 11 attacks, mostly because the CIA was running a lean and mean response in Afghanistan. But this worried Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfeld at Defense, because it left them in the background and George Tenet in the foreground. So they had to take over the limelight by competing with the CIA, and setting up their own intelligence agency in Defense. This is a war fought to satisfy corrupt old men's (combat free) egos which, as it turns out, needed a black needle to stem further inflation.

The repeated assertions by Republicans that we are winning a war or losing a war is bullshit. Iraq has no navy or army or air force. All they have is resistance fighters. Some of them have joined Al Qaeda, but they weren't Al Qaeda before the occupation. That's why the idea of this war's being to fight terrorism is bogus. It is terrorism. What they mean by "winning the war" is simply that the occupation successfully imposes a top down order, which will then be taken over by a government which is acceptable to us, and which knows it will be removed if it tries to pull the same kind of shit Saddam pulled, like trying to shift from dollars to euros.

He was once a CIA asset.

So it makes me feel crazy that the people debating this issue on the Senate floor don't mention that there is not a war to win or lose. There is only an occupation to continue or abandon. We had no reason to have a war with the Iraqi people. We said if Hussein left the country there would be no war.

"All we want is the guy who sold it to you."

"Okay. He drove a green Buick."

I sent some money to Barrack Obama today for a simple reason, which is that I think he sees these things, and saw them up front, when the rest of the country was assuming the position. Iraq had been neutered before we went in to make sure there wouldn't be heavy casualties. The only real worry was the Republican Guard, which was expected to at least fight back. I remember a little balsa wood airplane that was put on display, before the war, as possibly being designed to carry chemicals through the air. I guess we'd have gone Chicken Little hysterical if we'd found a crop duster.

The only person in this Presidential race who saw through this crap was Obama. The rest of them folded like cheap card tables.

Our country was founded by irregulars who fired from behind trees, resisting an occupation by a powerful nation ruled by a Unitary Executive. Now, according to Mukasey, not being in uniform makes you fair game to be tortured.

Things sure do come around full circle.

Posted: Tue - February 26, 2008 at 05:07 PM