And the linkage deceptions still go on. In Bush's Annapolis speech the other day, he correctly laid out the three main components of the Iraqi insurgency early: "The enemy in Iraq is a combination of rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists. The rejectionists are by far the largest group. These are ordinary Iraqis. ...The second group...contains former regime loyalists who held positions of power under Saddam ...The third group is the smallest but the most lethal: the terrorists affiliated with or inspired by al-Qaida." But throughout the rest of the speech, he often used the term "terrorists" to describe all those fighting the U.S. occupation.
In other words, to deflect attention away from the true nature of the bulk of the Iraqi insurgency -- nationalists and ex-Baathists angry at being invaded by foreigners, and enraged by an occupying army that brutalizes and tortures Iraqi civilians at will -- the insurgency suddenly is given the rubric of "terrorists."
But the situation in Iraq, in the world, is much more complex than labels, with all sorts of competing tribes and clans, and those representing diverse economic, political, religious, and ethnic interests. To understand those complexities, and devise equally as nuanced responses to them would take real creativity and hard work. It's much easier to simply divide Iraq and the world into black and white categories, "those who are with us and those who are against us." The latter category is given the hated title "terrorists," and the propaganda flows much more easily from that designation, aided enormously by a generally quiescent, at times cooperative, mass media.
(Speaking of cooperative reporters who abdicated their journalistic responsibilities, mostly recently it was Bob Woodward of the Washington Post. Once an outsider press hero doing battle against the Nixon bullies, Woodward for years has been a shameless insider protecting the powerful; he knew of the intelligence community's doubts about the Bush Administration's broad WMD assertions -- three high-level sources told him about the deceptions -- but he kept silent, apparently in order to guarantee total access to Bush for the book he was writing about the run-up to the war. For shame!)
MURTHA SPEAKS FOR THE GENERALS
Not much changes over time, only the justifications, the spin. Now Bush, trying to avoid culpability for the disaster that is the Iraq War, is trying to deflect criticism by (as usual) blaming others: It's the CIA's fault, or, in essence, the American public's fault, since they re-elected him during wartime, and Congress' fault since they voted to authorize the war in the first place. The administration spinmeisters claim that Congress voted for the war based on the same intelligence that Bush saw -- an assertion that is patently false, since the White House provided only summaries cleansed of all doubts and caveats having to do with the supposed stockpiles of WMD.
Finally, belatedly, even with blood on their hands, some Democrats are speaking up forcefully against Bush's war policies: the deceptive way we were led into the war, and the gross incompetencies of the Occupation -- and so the entire history of that war is once again Topic A for public discussion. Recent reports that the Vietnam War decades before (where millions died) also rested on lies, exaggerations and deceptions, sheds new light on the current situation.
Rep. John Murtha, who earned his bravery medals in 'Nam, spoke with great force the other day, calling for the U.S. to withdraw quickly from Iraq before more senseless slaughter occurs. What is plainly apparent is that Murtha is not speaking only for himself in his denunciation of Bush policy and in calling for a speedy American withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Murtha, a militarist hawk for decades with close ties to the officer corps, also is speaking for those generals inside the services who revealed their strong disagreements with Bush's Iraq policy openly to him but who are afraid to voice their objections in public, lest they be fired or otherwise have their career-advancements closed off.
So where are we? Though there are differences in emphasis and approach, there is a wide, strong opposition to the continuing U.S. presence in Iraq, coming from supposedly disparate groups: Officers inside the military, Establishment conservatives, liberals and radicals and mainstream Democrats, the peace movement, nearly two-thirds of the American people. But, even with all this opposition, Bush&Co. remain in power and, if Bush's Annapolis speech is to be taken seriously, the Iraq War will continue until some vague, undefinable thing called "victory" is obtained. Which is to say the 12th of Never.
Bush may make a few accommodations prior to the 2006 election -- withdraw thousands of Guard and Reserve troops, for example, and promise more withdrawals -- in order to seem to be in line with the public mood. But the war will continue, with bombing from the air taking the place of any boots missing on the ground, and the imperial goals of dominating the region and controlling the energy fields will remain operative. No matter how long it takes, Bush is willing to sacrifice the lives of U.S. troops and spend the treasury into bankruptcy for "the mission"; he believes the war against radical Muslims is his holy work and he won't back down unless absolutely required to do so. Besides, keeping the American citizenry on a constant fear-boil, Rove believes, provides openings through which to slip Bush&Co.'s domestic agenda.
In short, it's long since time for us to respond to the bullies in charge of our foreign and domestic policy, to remember the lessons of history when insecure leaders are not confronted early enough -- Hitler in Europe, Presidents Johnson and Nixon enlarging the disastrous Vietnam War, Sen. Joe McCarthy running roughshod over Americans' civil liberties in his mad hunt for supposed "communists" in 1950s America, et al. We have the proper role models: Fannie Lou Hamer taking on the segregationist Mississippi Democrats, Edward R. Murrow and Joseph Welch finally taking on Joe McCarthy, John W. Dean and the Washington Post stepping forward to reveal the lawless Richard Nixon, Daniel Ellsberg making sure the Pentagon Papers got published about the Vietnam debacle, and other such brave souls, Cindy Sheehan speaking truth to power about the shameful lies that continue to fuel the slaughter in Iraq. They stood up to the bullyboys when it was vital that they do so, and we all are the better for their fortitude.
So, if we American citizens truly want to get the U.S. out of its Iraq War quagmire before more thousands of U.S. troops are killed and maimed, along with thousands of Iraqi civilians as "collateral damage" -- before America has to get out of Iraq anyway years down the road -- we simply must organize our opposition and confront our own bullies head on.
PRYING THEIR FINGERS OFF POWER LEVERS
We don't have a parliamentary system in this country whereby a vote of no-confidence can remove incompetent, corrupt or ideologically dangerous fools from office. The only way to pry their fingers off the levers of power is to either vote them out of office or to impeach them and send them packing, either with a conviction or with their resignations. Both take lots of time, and the current election option is plagued by a voting and vote-counting system that is easily corruptible and has already demonstrably been corrupted.
One would hope Bush&Co. would see the handwriting on the wall and, for the good of the country, would resign their offices now, but we know these power-hungry zealots are not going to go willingly. So we -- progressives, moderate conservatives, libertarians, right wingers, leftwingers -- must join together and put our efforts into passing laws mandating honest elections and hand-counted votes, and then sweeping enough Republicans out of office in the House and Senate next November so that the proper investigations finally can be conducted that will lead to impeachment and removal.
We can work long-range toward either drastic reform of the Democrat Party or the founding of an electable alternative party. But our immediate goal, our immediate job -- because the stakes are so extraordinarily high -- is to do everything possible to close down this war, to ensure honest elections, and to protect the Constitution from further ravaging. We can do this.#
In other words, to deflect attention away from the true nature of the bulk of the Iraqi insurgency -- nationalists and ex-Baathists angry at being invaded by foreigners, and enraged by an occupying army that brutalizes and tortures Iraqi civilians at will -- the insurgency suddenly is given the rubric of "terrorists."
But the situation in Iraq, in the world, is much more complex than labels, with all sorts of competing tribes and clans, and those representing diverse economic, political, religious, and ethnic interests. To understand those complexities, and devise equally as nuanced responses to them would take real creativity and hard work. It's much easier to simply divide Iraq and the world into black and white categories, "those who are with us and those who are against us." The latter category is given the hated title "terrorists," and the propaganda flows much more easily from that designation, aided enormously by a generally quiescent, at times cooperative, mass media.
(Speaking of cooperative reporters who abdicated their journalistic responsibilities, mostly recently it was Bob Woodward of the Washington Post. Once an outsider press hero doing battle against the Nixon bullies, Woodward for years has been a shameless insider protecting the powerful; he knew of the intelligence community's doubts about the Bush Administration's broad WMD assertions -- three high-level sources told him about the deceptions -- but he kept silent, apparently in order to guarantee total access to Bush for the book he was writing about the run-up to the war. For shame!)
Not much changes over time, only the justifications, the spin. Now Bush, trying to avoid culpability for the disaster that is the Iraq War, is trying to deflect criticism by (as usual) blaming others: It's the CIA's fault, or, in essence, the American public's fault, since they re-elected him during wartime, and Congress' fault since they voted to authorize the war in the first place. The administration spinmeisters claim that Congress voted for the war based on the same intelligence that Bush saw -- an assertion that is patently false, since the White House provided only summaries cleansed of all doubts and caveats having to do with the supposed stockpiles of WMD.
Finally, belatedly, even with blood on their hands, some Democrats are speaking up forcefully against Bush's war policies: the deceptive way we were led into the war, and the gross incompetencies of the Occupation -- and so the entire history of that war is once again Topic A for public discussion. Recent reports that the Vietnam War decades before (where millions died) also rested on lies, exaggerations and deceptions, sheds new light on the current situation.
Rep. John Murtha, who earned his bravery medals in 'Nam, spoke with great force the other day, calling for the U.S. to withdraw quickly from Iraq before more senseless slaughter occurs. What is plainly apparent is that Murtha is not speaking only for himself in his denunciation of Bush policy and in calling for a speedy American withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Murtha, a militarist hawk for decades with close ties to the officer corps, also is speaking for those generals inside the services who revealed their strong disagreements with Bush's Iraq policy openly to him but who are afraid to voice their objections in public, lest they be fired or otherwise have their career-advancements closed off.
So where are we? Though there are differences in emphasis and approach, there is a wide, strong opposition to the continuing U.S. presence in Iraq, coming from supposedly disparate groups: Officers inside the military, Establishment conservatives, liberals and radicals and mainstream Democrats, the peace movement, nearly two-thirds of the American people. But, even with all this opposition, Bush&Co. remain in power and, if Bush's Annapolis speech is to be taken seriously, the Iraq War will continue until some vague, undefinable thing called "victory" is obtained. Which is to say the 12th of Never.
Bush may make a few accommodations prior to the 2006 election -- withdraw thousands of Guard and Reserve troops, for example, and promise more withdrawals -- in order to seem to be in line with the public mood. But the war will continue, with bombing from the air taking the place of any boots missing on the ground, and the imperial goals of dominating the region and controlling the energy fields will remain operative. No matter how long it takes, Bush is willing to sacrifice the lives of U.S. troops and spend the treasury into bankruptcy for "the mission"; he believes the war against radical Muslims is his holy work and he won't back down unless absolutely required to do so. Besides, keeping the American citizenry on a constant fear-boil, Rove believes, provides openings through which to slip Bush&Co.'s domestic agenda.
In short, it's long since time for us to respond to the bullies in charge of our foreign and domestic policy, to remember the lessons of history when insecure leaders are not confronted early enough -- Hitler in Europe, Presidents Johnson and Nixon enlarging the disastrous Vietnam War, Sen. Joe McCarthy running roughshod over Americans' civil liberties in his mad hunt for supposed "communists" in 1950s America, et al. We have the proper role models: Fannie Lou Hamer taking on the segregationist Mississippi Democrats, Edward R. Murrow and Joseph Welch finally taking on Joe McCarthy, John W. Dean and the Washington Post stepping forward to reveal the lawless Richard Nixon, Daniel Ellsberg making sure the Pentagon Papers got published about the Vietnam debacle, and other such brave souls, Cindy Sheehan speaking truth to power about the shameful lies that continue to fuel the slaughter in Iraq. They stood up to the bullyboys when it was vital that they do so, and we all are the better for their fortitude.
So, if we American citizens truly want to get the U.S. out of its Iraq War quagmire before more thousands of U.S. troops are killed and maimed, along with thousands of Iraqi civilians as "collateral damage" -- before America has to get out of Iraq anyway years down the road -- we simply must organize our opposition and confront our own bullies head on.
PRYING THEIR FINGERS OFF POWER LEVERS
We don't have a parliamentary system in this country whereby a vote of no-confidence can remove incompetent, corrupt or ideologically dangerous fools from office. The only way to pry their fingers off the levers of power is to either vote them out of office or to impeach them and send them packing, either with a conviction or with their resignations. Both take lots of time, and the current election option is plagued by a voting and vote-counting system that is easily corruptible and has already demonstrably been corrupted.
One would hope Bush&Co. would see the handwriting on the wall and, for the good of the country, would resign their offices now, but we know these power-hungry zealots are not going to go willingly. So we -- progressives, moderate conservatives, libertarians, right wingers, leftwingers -- must join together and put our efforts into passing laws mandating honest elections and hand-counted votes, and then sweeping enough Republicans out of office in the House and Senate next November so that the proper investigations finally can be conducted that will lead to impeachment and removal.
We can work long-range toward either drastic reform of the Democrat Party or the founding of an electable alternative party. But our immediate goal, our immediate job -- because the stakes are so extraordinarily high -- is to do everything possible to close down this war, to ensure honest elections, and to protect the Constitution from further ravaging. We can do this.#
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