Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Boxer: "The Biggest Foreign Policy Mistake --EVER!"

The Iraq war is a bait and switch war that has strengthened terrorism, diverted resources, and weakened the US militarily and economically. The war was and remains an immoral war crime against a civilian population. It is characterized by heinous torture outlawed by every international injunction. Sen. Barbara Boxer speaks for millions when she calls it the "biggest foreign policy mistake --EVER!"

The US has lost the war in Iraq because it was never what Bush said it was. It was never about al Qaeda, it was never about WMD. It was, in fact, about oil! [See: BBC, Secret US plans for Iraq's oil ]

The following story from the Washington Post is a tiny indication of what happens when parties fail to take a moral stand.

Democrats in Box on Iraq War Legislation

By ANNE FLAHERTY, The Associated Press
Wednesday, September 12, 2007; 3:20 AM

WASHINGTON -- Democrats are in a box on the Iraq war debate, lacking the votes to pass legislation ordering troops home by spring but tied to a support base that wants nothing less.

Two days of testimony from Gen. David Petraeus, the military commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador there, seemed only to harden positions among lawmakers. GOP conservatives said real progress was finally being made and more time was needed, whereas Democrats said the absence of a political deal in Baghdad meant the strategy failed.
Democrats could have positioned themselves to capitalize on Bush's inevitable failure in Iraq. But when a united chorus might have swept this failed presidency away in a political tsunami, Democrats find themselves neither here nor there, just "almost" morally right. Instead of demanding withdrawal, Democratic opposition seems too little, too late. Bush will have achieved his goal: a permanent presence in Iraq. Politically, he will have gotten it all on the cheap.


Feingold: Iraq War a "Diversion"!

Now --if Bush could have been opposed as effectively as Sen. Barbara Boxer has done all along, we might have avoided what is, in fact, the beginning of the end of the American "empire". The Republic was lost when Bushies got away with stealing the election of 2000. The war against Iraq was lost when it became clear that Bush was waging a brutal campaign against a civilian population who had nothing whatsoever to do with 911. Again --because of evil or incompetence or both, the US fought the wrong war.

Guantanamo Detainees Tell of Abuses

By ANDREW O. SELSKY

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Detainees flinging body waste at guards. Guards interrupting detainees at prayer. Interrogators withholding medicine. Hostility and tension between inmates and their keepers at the Guantanamo Bay prison are evident in transcripts obtained by The Associated Press.

These rare detainee accounts of life inside the razor wire at the remote US military base in Cuba emerged during Administrative Review Board hearings aimed at deciding whether prisoners suspected of links with the Taliban or al-Qaeda should continue to be held or be sent away from Guantanamo.

The Pentagon gave the AP transcripts of hearings held last year in a trailer at Guantanamo after the news agency sought the material under the Freedom of Information Act.

Amid the tensions, the transcripts also show a few relaxed encounters between detainees and their guards and interrogators.
When the GOP focus groups told Bush and/or Rove that the old line about fighting "terror" in Iraq was no longer working, the reasons for attacking and invading that nation changed, conveniently, to fit Bush's political needs of the moment. It became a war for freedom. Jimmy Breslin puts that lie to rest.
So I got in the subway and went home. Where the torture of watching this general and his friend, Crocker, had me looking for a rope to cling to. Watching them was far more difficult than running six years later on the same legs.

What I saw and heard was Crocker being asked something about how long he thought we were going to be fighting in Iraq. He said, and you could look it up, that we poor, unschooled and impatient fools ought to look to our past. We fought for this nation, he said. We won our independence by fighting for it. We didn't have any large army coming in to help us. The Iraqis now don't fight for their nation. They want us to fight for them. And that is exactly what we are doing and will do for years.

Why, then, don't we give Iraqis the same opportunity our people had here, to fight for their freedom and win it?

--JIMMY BRESLIN, Running in place in Iraq

I wrote years ago that Bush's policies in both Afghanistan and Iraq made terrorism worse, and, in fact, they have. Bush hasn't put a glove on terrorism. Bush's ham fisted, fucked-up war crime against the people of Iraq is what it is: a heinous war crime whose perps --Bush and his henchmen --should be tried for high treason, capital crimes, and mass murder.

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Tuesday, September 11, 2007

It's never too late to do the right thing

"If the people knew what we had done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us."

- George H.W. Bush
In an ABC documentary that intended to lay to rest "conspiracy theories" about the murder of President John F. Kennedy, anchor Peter Jennings said of all theories, "most theories are wrong".

Except the correct one.

Thanks to entrenched orthodoxy, Americans, even those suspicious of the circumstances of JFK's murder, seem confused about the very word theory. Simply, anything posited to explain in more general terms a specific and observable fact is a theory. Perhaps, most theories are wrong but so what? That in no way discredits the process of theorizing which is, in fact, an essential ingredient of the scientific method:
  1. the careful observation and description of observable phenomenon;
  2. the construction of a theory to explain it in more general terms.
Since the emergence of our species, we have known that things thrown up fall down. Later, Galileo would observe that all falling bodies accelerate at the same rate, regardless of weight and he calculated the rate of that acceleration.

It was left to Newton to propose a "theory" that embraced the orbit of the moon, literally, "falling around the earth". It was left to Einstein to find in this work yet another likeness --the curvature of space-time itself. Theories, all!

Of course, most theories may be wrong. Some fundamentalists believe the earth to be some 6,000 years old though some Egyptian hieroglyphs are considerably older. Yet --Darwinists are called "theorists". Of course, "most" theories are wrong. We are interested in the correct ones and in the process of inquiry that is most likely to result in correct theories. I am not interested in flawed processes that result in either dogma, itself "bad theory", or psuedo-science like "intelligent design" --creationism with big words.

What are the characteristics of a correct theory? A theory has but one job and that is to explain a finite set of observable facts. Galileo's formula expressed an observable fact, but it was Newton's theory that explained that description in terms of an unseen force. His contemporaries must have thought Newton a crazy "theorist".

Newton's theory held sway until Einstein replaced "force" with the very curvature of space-time. Still, Newton is correct. As Klaato in The Day the Earth Stood Still might have put it: Newton's math will get you from the earth to the moon and safely back again and --one day --to the planets and back. Journeys to stars are the province of Einstein. But firing up the rocket is pure Newton: for every action there is an opposite but equal reaction. Theories rule!

Since JFK was murdered in Dallas on November 22, 1963, a certain mentality in the US has tried to demonize the word "theory" as they have demonized the word "liberal" --both perfectly good words. I might posit a "theory" about why the right wing, in particular, is afraid of the word "theory" just as it is afraid of the word "liberal". I suspect that they fear both words for the same reasons. Both words threaten conservative orthodoxy, itself a theory but a wrong one!

The following video does a great job of debunking an "official" theory, a "cover story" promoted by those who may have an interest in throwing up a lot of expensive, highly paid flack around the truth.


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Sunday, September 09, 2007

The Five Years Future: Bush's Viet Nam Redux in Iraq

It was properly called the "self" coronation of George W. Bush.
Even now, the White House is being redecorated for President Bush's second term - or at least one room, the Lincoln Bedroom. The famous long bed will remain; so will the original Emancipation Proclamation in its glass case. But dominating the room, above the bed, will be a large carved crown from which will flow, ceiling to floor, royal purple satin drapes. The crown has been sent to be gilded with gold in anticipation of Bush's triumphant return from his campaign.

--Truthout.org

That Bush has imperial ambitions has been clear since his "triumphal" landing on an the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln to announce "mission accomplished". That was four years ago and it is clear that not only has nothing been accomplished, things are worse. The Middle East is a much more dangerous place. The world may be but a single fuck up away from nuclear war. If Bush doesn't blow us up, he will bore us to death with stupid remarks and his phony hayseed accent.


Sen. Ted Kennedy About How Bush Has Failed to Learn the Lessons of History

Much has changed since Maj. Michael O'Halloran, USMC wrote "A Kill is a Kill: Asymmetrically Attacking US Airpower", his thesis presented to the faculty of the school of advanced airpower studies, Maxwell Air Force Base.
In the spring of 1991, following a great victory, American generals lead a parade of their own in the nation's capital. Held ostensibly to honor the men and women who participated in Operation Desert Storm, the parade clearly celebrate two additional accomplishments: first that the American military had finally rid itself of the Viet Nam self-doubting shackles; and second, that the country now stood alone as the world's only superpower.

The American military had once again arrived at center stage and was reveling in the moment. In the din of congratulations and emotion, Rome's slave would have needed a bullhorn to issue any warnings and, as the ensuing decade has unfolded, US forces have continued to prepare for war in a manner that largely anticipates Desert Storm redux.

But if the rest of the world learned anything from that conflict, it was precisely that the US should not be fought along conventional lines.

--A Kill is a Kill: Asymmetrically Attacking US Airpower

It's a safe bet that GWB, comfortable strutting gaily on aircraft carriers, did not read the Major's thesis which goes on to conclude that just as David would not have confronted Goliath with sword and shield, "future enemies" will not confront US power on "our" terms. The US, the major warns, will ignore at its own peril the realities of what was then "future" war. Thanks to a man who dares crown himself, a man who assumes dictatorial powers, a man who gets his orders directly from God, the future is now and has been for 5 years. The US is fighting the Viet Nam war all over again and getting the same result: quagmire and defeat.

The Major describes the "Triumphs" that were accorded Roman emperors for more than a thousand years. At least 320 triumphal processions took place since the beginning of Rome till the reign of Vespasian. It was in 403 AD that the emperor Honorius enjoyed the last truly Roman triumph.

Military types almost always overlook a simple fact lost amid the pomp. Simply, power derives from truth. In its absence there is only temporary brute coercion. Machiavelli was dead wrong. Ethics cannot be separated from the practice of politics and morality cannot be divorced from the practice of war.

As every tyrant fails, death awaits every living being. The meanings of our lives are bound up in each fleeting sentient instant. A life spent devising death without question is a life wasted. As Socrates would have put it: "The unexamined life is not worth living."

George W. Bush should take into consideration the fact that his life has thus far been squandered in the pursuit of vainglorious empire, ego gratification, and cheap kicks. That might have been forgiven were it not purchased with the lives of innocents who gain nothing from Bush's infantile ambitions.

Victorious Roman Generals and Emperors were granted triumphal processions upon their return to Rome. Gen. George W. Patton, who read a bit about this sort of thing, described the triumphal parade.
"For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting."

- Gen. George C. Patton

An audio update:

To Hold Bush Accountable for the Iraq War, the Democrats Should Listen to Richard Nixon

Tip of the Black Hat to BuzzFlash
"An unpopular president [Johnson] was prosecuting an unpopular war, which was despised by more than half the American people. His political opponent [Nixon, although Nixon actually ran against Humphrey, Johnson's Vice-President] knew that the best way to take him down - and ultimately to take down his entire Party - was to simply say out loud what everybody knew to be true. To call out the President. To declare him and his war a failure. To call on the American people for truth and honesty in government, and an end to war. Here's a quick clip composite, sent along to us by a listener (I'm sorry, I don't remember whom) a year or so ago, of Richard Nixon at the 1968 Republican National Convention..."

-- Thom Hartmann in an e-mail to BuzzFlash
Play:
Artist: Richard Nixon
Title: Lyndon Johnson Has Been a Failed War Leader
Length: 1:04 minutes (501.47 KB)
Format: MP3 Mono 44kHz 64Kbps (CBR)
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