What can you do when your leaders want war?
Iraq Watch
When I started writing last spring, it was a last ditch effort to try to keep my sanity. My country had been driven over a rhetorical cliff by the madmen at the top, and all I could do was watch. Writing about it a few times a week was a way to stay in touch with other people, organize my thoughts, and try to make some sense of a situation in which too many of my countrymen and women, especially those in the ever-gullible media, had swallowed the administration's line about fighting against that most dangerous of threats, Iraq.
No one in the national spotlight ever spoke up and mentioned the fact that the military-industrial complex had gotten itself elected to the highest office in the land, and that now the MIC was driving the car. What would be a policy goal for the military-industrial complex if they were in charge? Peace? Not in this lifetime. There is no profit in peace, at least not enough. The MIC wanted a war, and by god, they started one, against the will of the people in the world, against international law, against the "Powell Doctrine", against the interests of national safety, against the urgency for wise policies to counter fundamentalist Muslim terrorism, against all the evidence, and against concern for American lives or treasure. Well, actually, they did have a concern for American treasure; namely, how much they could funnel into their own pockets. Dick Cheney, our de facto President, still has a bundle of stock options with Halliburton, and our Republican congress kindly has been allocating money to the "war" with little to no oversight. And gee, Halliburton's stock is way up! And so is Bechtel's! So there is lots of profiteering and corruption, as there is in any war, I suppose, but occasionally I'd like to think that someone has an issue with all of those tax dollars going right into the pocket of the people who started the war.
George the Puppet's Daddy makes oodles of money when America is in a war, so he is growing his inheritance nicely whenever he says "stay the course". That's right, America. Go back to sleep. Trust us.
People wonder if the planning for this war was really as totally incompetent as it seems to have been. I used to wonder that too, but I truly believe now that the people in charge just didn't care how big a mess they made, how big a fiasco they created. To them, a larger war just means more profit, and if they inflame the billion or so Muslims in the world indiscriminately, well at least we have a new, never-ending enemy to fight.
Election Watch
And so we come to the next big crisis for the American people. Will we reward this mis-administration with legitimacy, and allow them four more years of driving us straight into the ground? Or not?
The Democrats have chosen their candidate. I suppose it is a measure of how serious they take this election that they have chosen the most solid, slow-moving, leaden candidate out of the bunch. No sudden movements from John Kerry. No surprises, most likely. No excitement - just the deadly serious business of being there when we pry these traitors' fingers off the national reins. And what a mess he will be left with, god willing.
President-in-Exile Watch
It's funny. As much as I can't stand to listen to Bush, with his sibilant, halting drawl, I never could stand to listen to Gore's voice either. Something about the way his words were shaped made him sound slightly retarded to my ear, and I have to say that Kerry's voice doesn't sound much better to me. I guess I'm too much of a critic.
But last week, I heard Gore speak and it was incredible. He gave a blistering, heart-felt, excellent speech to Move On in New York, full of the outrage, passion, and sense of loss many of us have been feeling. It was one of the best political speeches I've ever heard. You can still watch it on your computer, at http://www.c-span.org/, called "Fmr. Vice Pres. Al Gore Speech on Iraq Policy under "Most Watched Video". It's about an hour long, so if you have something else to do, like knitting or washing dishes or whatever, pull it up and let it play in the background. It is not to be missed.
When I started writing last spring, it was a last ditch effort to try to keep my sanity. My country had been driven over a rhetorical cliff by the madmen at the top, and all I could do was watch. Writing about it a few times a week was a way to stay in touch with other people, organize my thoughts, and try to make some sense of a situation in which too many of my countrymen and women, especially those in the ever-gullible media, had swallowed the administration's line about fighting against that most dangerous of threats, Iraq.
No one in the national spotlight ever spoke up and mentioned the fact that the military-industrial complex had gotten itself elected to the highest office in the land, and that now the MIC was driving the car. What would be a policy goal for the military-industrial complex if they were in charge? Peace? Not in this lifetime. There is no profit in peace, at least not enough. The MIC wanted a war, and by god, they started one, against the will of the people in the world, against international law, against the "Powell Doctrine", against the interests of national safety, against the urgency for wise policies to counter fundamentalist Muslim terrorism, against all the evidence, and against concern for American lives or treasure. Well, actually, they did have a concern for American treasure; namely, how much they could funnel into their own pockets. Dick Cheney, our de facto President, still has a bundle of stock options with Halliburton, and our Republican congress kindly has been allocating money to the "war" with little to no oversight. And gee, Halliburton's stock is way up! And so is Bechtel's! So there is lots of profiteering and corruption, as there is in any war, I suppose, but occasionally I'd like to think that someone has an issue with all of those tax dollars going right into the pocket of the people who started the war.
George the Puppet's Daddy makes oodles of money when America is in a war, so he is growing his inheritance nicely whenever he says "stay the course". That's right, America. Go back to sleep. Trust us.
People wonder if the planning for this war was really as totally incompetent as it seems to have been. I used to wonder that too, but I truly believe now that the people in charge just didn't care how big a mess they made, how big a fiasco they created. To them, a larger war just means more profit, and if they inflame the billion or so Muslims in the world indiscriminately, well at least we have a new, never-ending enemy to fight.
Election Watch
And so we come to the next big crisis for the American people. Will we reward this mis-administration with legitimacy, and allow them four more years of driving us straight into the ground? Or not?
The Democrats have chosen their candidate. I suppose it is a measure of how serious they take this election that they have chosen the most solid, slow-moving, leaden candidate out of the bunch. No sudden movements from John Kerry. No surprises, most likely. No excitement - just the deadly serious business of being there when we pry these traitors' fingers off the national reins. And what a mess he will be left with, god willing.
President-in-Exile Watch
It's funny. As much as I can't stand to listen to Bush, with his sibilant, halting drawl, I never could stand to listen to Gore's voice either. Something about the way his words were shaped made him sound slightly retarded to my ear, and I have to say that Kerry's voice doesn't sound much better to me. I guess I'm too much of a critic.
But last week, I heard Gore speak and it was incredible. He gave a blistering, heart-felt, excellent speech to Move On in New York, full of the outrage, passion, and sense of loss many of us have been feeling. It was one of the best political speeches I've ever heard. You can still watch it on your computer, at http://www.c-span.org/, called "Fmr. Vice Pres. Al Gore Speech on Iraq Policy under "Most Watched Video". It's about an hour long, so if you have something else to do, like knitting or washing dishes or whatever, pull it up and let it play in the background. It is not to be missed.
posted by ProfessorPlum | 7:00 AM
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