the defeatists!

Hysteria in the face of reality

Never been a big Glenn Greenwald follower and frankly I think that everyone on the Left/Right/floating in the ozone needs to take a deep breath on this one. An enemy combatant had taken up arms against the US, and oh yeah, he had been born here. I personally would have loved to see him captured and tried in a military court and hung -- yeah, hung -- at Fort Leavenworth. A trial and a supermax would have been ok too. But, the guy represented a clear and present danger in the war zone -- he wasn't trying to surrender, he wasn't trying to calm things down. He was going from point A to point B in Yemen. If he'd been doing this in Alabama, using a Predator to take him out would have been wrong. He wasn't. He was doing it in fucking Yemen. Advocate war against the United States -- not like Jane Fonda but like Benedict Arnold, and it really doesn't matter what passports you're entitled to carry. You're a valid target. 

LIfe sucks in war. It's a danagerous business. This guy was a totally legitimate target. He thought he as an Islamic Warrior waging jihad against the west in general and the United States in particular. Waste him. Huffington Post, Greenwald, Wonkette for Christ sake!Get over it. In fact, be happy the bastard is gone. 

Umm, about that whole Zionist-Baal thing...They don’t want you to see. Congress doesn’t know, governors don’t know, Red Cross, ACLU, National Geographic. Nobody knows, man.

Hardison: Oh, no. All this construction is goin’ on underground. Under, beneath the eyes. The eyes of the world, man. They don’t want you to see. Congress doesn’t know, governors don’t know, Red Cross, ACLU, National Geographic. Nobody knows, man. Nobody, man. They’re puttin’ terrorists in your backyard. Terrorists under your backyard. “Hey, little Billy, go outside. Dig in the sandbox. Ooh, klang. What’d ya find, little Billy? What’d ya find? It’s a terrorist. It’s a bunker full of terrorists, man.” Bunker, man.

Monica: What other sources do you have besides tin foil hat over here?

Hardison: Hey, hey, hey, man. Bein’ a tin foil hat, that’s better than bein’ a lap dog for the four corporations that control the global media, man.

Leverage--Three Days of the Hunter Job

  I get emails. I get comments. At times that the Tin Hat Brigade of both left and right wing nuts and assorted loonies are out to amuse me. There's really no other way for an adult to respond to some of this stuff. There is no answer sufficient, no proof adequate. The best response, the most telling one I've seen that illustrates this paranoid function in America -- and anywhere else -- was a comment to the effect that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were forgeries by the Czarist Secret Police doesn't matter, because if the elders had written down their protocols, this would be what they'd say... So getting this email in one of my professional accounts was interesting, amusing and kinda, sorta sad. It sums up in some ways the very nature of our debate today -- between ideology, superstition, and ignorance fighting for the main tent in the three ring circus of the downfall of western Culture and the United States as we know it. (And, don't get me started on the right...heh, heh.)

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Subject: WOE TO THE WORLD! Rothschild N.W.O Illuminati EXPOSED!!! > Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2011 22:44:44 -0500 > > N.W.O. EXPOSED! > > WOE TO THE ROTHSCHILDS! WOE TO THE FREEMASONS/ ILLUMINATI! WOE TO LUCIFER! > > PLEASE RESEARCH THE ILLUMINATI/FREEMASON BOHEMIAN GROVE CONNECTION! > > THE THIRD JEWISH TMEPLE TO BE BUILT SOON! > > http://www.squidoo.com/templejerusalem > > THE ANTI-CHRIST IS NEAR! REPENT AND KNOW ALL WILL BOW BEFORE THE LAMB OF GOD JESUS CHRIST. > > WATCH, LEARN, PRAY & PASS ON PLEASE! > > Rothschilds/Illuminati/Bohemian Grove Exposed!: > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2E_HP97Rzc > > http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/bloodlines/index.htm > > http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/bloodlines/rothschild.htm > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icKIWW1EcuY > > Bible: > Revelatinos Chapter 11 > > The Two Witnesses > 1. I was given a reed like a measuring rod and was told, “Go and measure the temple of God and the altar, with its worshipers. > > 2. But exclude the outer court; do not measure it, because it has been given to the Gentiles. They will trample on the holy city for 42 months. > > 3. And I will appoint my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.” > > 4. They are “the two olive trees” and the two lampstands, and “they stand before the Lord of the earth.”[a] 5 If anyone tries to harm them, fire comes from their mouths and devours their enemies. This is how anyone who wants to harm them must die > > 6. They have power to shut up the heavens so that it will not rain during the time they are prophesying; and they have power to turn the waters into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they want. > > 7. Now when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them > > 8. Their bodies will lie in the public square of the great city—which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt—where also their Lord was crucified. > > 9. For three and a half days some from every people, tribe, language and nation will gaze on their bodies and refuse them burial. > > 10. The inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and will celebrate by sending each other gifts, because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth. > > 11. But after the three and a half days the breath[b] of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and terror struck those who saw them. > > 12. Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here.” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, while their enemies looked on. > > 13. At that very hour there was a severe earthquake and a tenth of the city collapsed. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the survivors were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. > > 14. The second woe has passed; the third woe is coming soon.... > > Galatians 1:8 written in 50 A.D. > "But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!" > > 33rd Degree Freemason Oath: > Albert Pike- > "That which we must say to the crowd is:* 'We worship a god, but it is the god one adores without superstition.' > * To you, Sovereign Grand Instructors General [a 33rd Degree Mason], we say this ... you may repeat it to the > Brethren of the 32nd, 31st, and 30th Degrees ... The Masonic religion should be, by all of the initiates of the high > degrees, maintained in the purity of the Luciferian doctrine ... Yes, Lucifer is God, and unfortunately Adonay is also > God ... the doctrine of Satanism is a heresy; and the true and pure philosophic religion is the belief in Lucifer, the > equal of Adonay; but Lucifer, God of Light, God of Good, is struggling for humanity against Adonay, the God of > Darkness and Evil." [Lady Queenborough, Occult Theocracy, p. 220-221, quoting a letter from Albert Pike to the > 23 Supreme Councils of the World on July 14, 1889]... > > THE LAMB OF GOD JESUS CHRIST WINS THE BATTLE OF ARMAGEDDON! > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2E_HP97Rzc

Reply: > Date: Mon 19 Sep 2011 0925-0926

Ok, well err...good luck with that. Whatever I can do to help you out with this one...

Mike

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Now, I remain unconvinced that Israel had anything to do with 9/11. I'm willing to be convinced; I'd like to see the actual surveillance tapes from the Pentagon, for example. The failure of the government to release everything they can is just stupid.  Into that vacuum oddities arise. However, that aside, there is an important difference between not being convinced that the world is about to end in some Jewish-Freemason-Illuminati-Bohemian Grove rhapsody and being able to look at evidence that should make you wonder. Thomas Friedman is not one of my favorite thinkers. In general, he falls into the category of establishment-moderate twits who has to keep his credentials polished. Maureen Dowd mentioned once on The Daily Show that someone had said that the issue for the Times Op-Ed was going to be the contest between Friedman and Safire for the soul of Maureen Dowd. Well, I think her soul has stayed pretty much her own, Safire is gone but  occasionally Friedman gets something very right. It's simple -- Israel is not primarily our friend -- in fact, there is some question in my mind as to whether or not Israel is its own friend.  In his Sunday column, Friedman writes:

The crumbling of key pillars of Israel’s security — the peace with Egypt, the stability of Syria and the friendship of Turkey and Jordan — coupled with the most diplomatically inept and strategically incompetent government in Israel’s history have put Israel in a very dangerous situation....O.K., Mr. Netanyahu has a strategy: Do nothing vis-à-vis the Palestinians or Turkey that will require him to go against his base, compromise his ideology or antagonize his key coalition partner, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, an extreme right-winger. Then, call on the U.S. to stop Iran’s nuclear program and help Israel out of every pickle, but make sure that President Obama can’t ask for anything in return — like halting Israeli settlements — by mobilizing Republicans in Congress to box in Obama and by encouraging Jewish leaders to suggest that Obama is hostile to Israel and is losing the Jewish vote. And meanwhile, get the Israel lobby to hammer anyone in the administration or Congress who says aloud that maybe Bibi has made some mistakes, not just Barack. There, who says Mr. Netanyahu doesn’t have a strategy?...Israel can fight with everyone or it can choose not to surrender but to blunt these trends with a peace overture that fair-minded people would recognize as serious, and thereby reduce its isolation...Unfortunately, Israel today does not have a leader or a cabinet for such subtle diplomacy. One can only hope that the Israeli people will recognize this before this government plunges Israel into deeper global isolation and drags America along with it.

Which leads me to another thought...Bibi Netanyahu bears a striking resemblance to the John Boehner and Mitch McConnell in his ability to get the United States down rabbit holes and dark allies we really shouldn't be going down. While it's great to see Obama acting a bit like Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, going out to call down the psycho bullies intent on ruining the polity and civil society we kinda, sorta have in this country most of the time, one realizes that there is no John Wayne character off in the alley, waiting for the guns to go off to cover his rifle shot taking out the evil and enshrining the good. Far from it...Obama is in this one alone. Not unlike the Stewart character, Obama has truth, justice, law, common sense, economics and the laws of mathematics behind him; the Lee Marvin stand-ins -Johnny-Mitch-Eric-BoehnerMcConnellCantor III have a majority in the house, the cloture rule in the Senate, and a gleeful allegiance to chaos and disorder to maintain their self-interest.

Lonesome Rhodes: This whole country's just like my flock of sheep! Marcia Jeffries: Sheep? Lonesome Rhodes: Rednecks, crackers, hillbillies, hausfraus, shut-ins, pea-pickers - everybody that's got to jump when somebody else blows the whistle. They don't know it yet, but they're all gonna be 'Fighters for Fuller'. They're mine! I own 'em! They think like I do. Only they're even more stupid than I am, so I gotta think for 'em. Marcia, you just wait and see. I'm gonna be the power behind the president - and you'll be the power behind me!

A Face in the Crowd

To a large extent, this sort of statesmanship goes a long way toward explaining the Tea Party -- America's Likud -- and the capture of the Republican Congressional Delegation by it. Now, most of the people in the caucus are not certifiable wing nuts. Hell, most of them are mid-level functionaries in the Military-Industrial-Financial Complex. The theory was that with Boehner as Speaker, the Rs would make a lot of noise but not do anything to hurt the country or at least it's economic interests. Well, hah ha, hah ha, hah ha. Fooled us. Then, there's the slate of candidates vying for the nomination. Dear God -- in order to stay in the race and yet appear sane -- remain electable -- the adults in the room, Huntsman and Romney, have had to stake out positions so far to the right of the flat earth that they've embraced that they're hanging on by their fingertips. Huntsman has at least taken the principled and courageous position of endorsing science...now, as a child of the 60s, I remember when the Left was anti-technocracy, science and math. One of the criteria to be a long-haired hippy commie freak was to not be good at math or, if you were, to be mildly ashamed of it. The Science and Math and Computer types were kind of oblivious to politics, but if they did deign to look at it, they were interested in the Republicans as the party most likely to endorse research into Science, Math and Computers. Well, isn't today a turn around...

I have to wonder how Newt Gingrich, freaking Phd, can walk into the faculty club of any respectable college campus without blushing or hiding behind a raincoat based on his performance in the Iowa debate alone. Romney is an android whore, and so his anti-science positions are kind of in keeping with the rest of his character. His greatest accomplishment in Massachusetts -- health care reform -- is something he runs from, while he babbles about job creation when the historical record is pretty clear -- as a capitalist, he created jobs in the Third World at the expense of American workers; in Massachusetts, he didn't have a respectable competitive record on job creation. So, the logical thing is to run away from your strengths. Rick-a-Dick Perry went to the pre-eminent Technology School in Texas, and admits that four semesters of Organic Chemistry made a pilot out of him. Well, it made pilots, teachers, lawyers and a variety of other things out of other people -- there's no shame in bumping into the wall between Med or Vet School that is Organic and Inorganic Chemistry. But, he appears to have gotten a D in meat...compared to Bush's Gentleman's Cs, this is kind of scary. More to the point, he's packed the State Board of Education with right-wing, anti-science, anti-research and anti-history lunatics who would embarrass the PTA in Incest Springs Arkansas. Texas depends on technology, engineering and geology to a tremendous extent -- how do you develop new and safer approaches to drilling for oil by ignoring science in Geology?

As for Bachmann-Palin overdrive, wow. WOW. While I'm going to pass on Mikki the Monkey right now, they're both worth considering. Batshit crazy, of course, if the bat is a fox. Occasionally, they both get off some good lines -- I'd like to think that Palin's line about polls being for strippers as a witty use of satire and homonym to take a pun and bitch slap it out of the park. (How's that for mixing up the old metaphor salad?) However, I'm pretty sure she doesn't get the subtlety there, and didn't intend it. When Keith Olbermann jokes about "Lonesome Rhodes Beck" referencing the dark study of celebrity "A Face in the Crowd," he really is talking more about Palin. We forget at our peril that she really wanted to be an entertainer, a sportscaster. Had the WNBA been around in her Sarah Barracuda days, she's have been trying to get on the court to be her generation's version of Sue Bird, without the talent, but with all the crazed desire possible. I hope she gets into this -- the media will eat her up, and she'll totally screw up whatever the R's look like, act like and try to think like. Like Journey or Paul Revere and the Raiders, she'll keep doing her revival tours on the rubber chicken circuit so long as she can. A number of years ago, I was in my least favorite city -- Las Vegas -- and in the hotel hosting the conference I was being bored at, Englebert Humperdink was appearing. I thought he was dead...but, this wasn't the Hard Rock or Bellagio, and I guess the slot machine crowd there was demographically correct. In a few years, Palin will be doing shows in Branson and Knotts Berry Farm. She might get a gig at Dollywood, except that Dolly is a pretty smart woman, and recognizes fraud and stupidity far away. Sarah can't see it when it's in the mirror.  

Now, the hatchet job that my fellow alum Joe McGinnis did on Palin requires comment. The revelations in the book appear to be pretty trite -- Palin was the Alaska version of a scene-whore and the Wassilla version of a Yuppie. She has a lot of kids, a long-suffering spouse, and a trail of silly, trite and nutty behavior that isn't worth anyone's attention. In a better time for the Republican party, she'd be a fringe candidate at worst; I suspect the adulation she found on the campaign trail with McCain made her crazy for attention, for the perks, for the love and adoration that she seems to seek. Let's remember, she wanted to be a sportscaster, and failed at it. She's found a way of getting the attention, and the money and will do whatever it takes to do that. Ride into the Republican convention on a White Snow Machine so she can save the day, again? Sure, why not... Now, McGinnis has an interesting career, chronicling cheats, liars, criminals and so on beginning with Nixon and Roger Ailes in 1999's The Selling of the President. 1968. He could have done an interesting take on the Palin phenomenon, building on President by comparing how the media and political operatives had morphed into something as powerful while incompetent as to propel Palin onto the national stage. Instead, he made the story about himself and the venal silliness of the Palin family. I think he missed the point. Frankly, the only one in that saga who seems to come off well is Todd -- he seems to defend his family and be pretty much a regular guy thrust into something he didn't want. McGinnis wrote a book 30 some years ago about spending a year wandering around in Alaska called Going to Extremes. I think he should have remembered that book and the people there...and possibly, re-read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail...he'd have done a better and more interesting job. Now, he's the Kitty Kelly of Holy Cross alumni, and comes off not as chronicler but scold. The Palin tale deserves a Mencken with a bit of Budd Schulberg ( after all, Schulberg wrote A Face in the Crowd) and McGinnis, for better or worse, produced a piece worthy of Penthouse, only without the vanity shots.  

Raining on the parade...

Some Americans are opposed to releasing these photographs, since making these photos publicly available is what Sarah Palin wants, on Twitter, or something. There’s actually only one good reason to release a photograph of Osama’s mutilated corpse, but it’s reason enough. The people of Afghanistan need to see this photo. They need to see this photograph more than anyone — more than the families of 9/11 victims. Every mother in Afghanistan should be able to sit down with her children, and point at that photo.

“Do you see this photograph, children? This is the mangled corpse of Osama bin Laden. The Americans invaded our country ten years ago because they said we were protecting him, that he was hiding here. They found Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. They shot him in the head. He was unarmed. The Americans are still unsatisfied, though. They want more. And that is why they are still occupying our country.”

Every mother in Afghanistan should be able to point at that gruesome photograph, and say to her child, “The Americans still want more.”-- Riley Waggaman, Wonkette, 5/5/11

If a sign of genius is being able to hold two diametrically opposed ideas simultaneously, then the shooting of bin Laden is bringing out the genius in me. Seriously, I am not of two minds about this one -- I'm of about seven. And, here is why -- I know SEALS. I know Rangers. I know guys from Delta. I know guys from SF. I was a light infantryman. It's simple -- nobody was scared of bin Laden. They shot the bastard because they could, and it probably is understandable. It just doesn't make it right.

Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."--Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural, 3/4/1865

Did he deserve to die? Yeah, no kidding. Some of my colleagues over at Veterans Today have chosen to go down the 9/11 Truther and the "Bin Laden has been dead for years, they had to thaw his body out" rabbit hole and are traversing the wilderness of mirrors that represents. Well, much as I respect them, their position is as illogical and misconceived as the Birthers...when confronted with conflicting theories, without absolute knowledge, use Occam's razor and DON"T MULTIPLY CONCEPTS. While the success of 9/11 required only fanaticism on the part of these guys as well as various levels of bureaucracy, incompetence and negligence to succeed, the success of the vast conspiracy to take down the towers either with shaped charges, explosives, nukes or Thor's fucking hammer requires all of the above plus a level of competence at levels where everybody has passed their Peter Principle point several promotions ago.

So, the bastard declared war on us and deserved to die. At some point we'll get a clean after action report that clarifies what happened and in what sequence. However, to have claimed that the firefight took 40 minutes indicates that all those clowns charging the cameras to explain what happened are REMF and idiots. This was a raid on a fixed location by world class fighters against clowns. Shit, hadn't these guys even watched the Delta Force movies? While the idea of Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin saving the world blessed by Fr Arthur Kennedy and cheered on by Joey Bishop and friends is silly, there were some pretty clear things. It took 2-3 minutes max from the time they entered the compound. The rest of the time was processing and deciding what they wanted to take besides one dead body.Getting it palletized and secured. Getting it done. Efficiently, quietly and as quickly as possible. Remember, these men had just pulled off a raid, with helicopters, in an area potentially as utterly unfriendly as the market in Mogadishu, but within shouting distance of organized and effective military, covert operations and security forces belonging to an Ally that they could hardly have expected to accept this fait accompli.

My problem is with the dead body. When Bush said "They hate our freedom" he was probably talking about our ability to have over 50% of children morbidly obese and leading the world in adolescent type II diabetes. However, what they hated was the system that let us get this crazy -- the consitution, the rule of law, the idea of justice. I'm not sure blowing the left side of the guy's head off really helps reinforce that vision either internally or externally. Rather, we are saying we can do what we want to do because we can do it.

Now, if the bastard drew a weapon or a knife or threw a fucking Koran at the SEALs, then all bets are off. But, they could have captured him. There is a geopolitical piece here, of course; it would have been interesting to get the names of the Pakistanis, Saudis, Omanis and Kuwaitis who financed him and supported him. Interesting, but kind of hard to ignore the consequences of learning that Prince Ali Raghead, 2500th in line for the Saudi Throne brought him a bag of gold coins with a personal note from the Grand Mullah of Mecca saying something to the effect of Sock IT To 'EM, BRO!

I have no issue with anyone on the mission. I have no issue with the decision to shoot -- I wasn't there. I'm not sure why they weren't throwing flash-bang grenandes everytime they turned a corner, but I wasn't there. I would have liked this to be as clean as possible, and killing this dogshit bastard sullies it.

I know that there would have been logistical problems with him and a trial and an interrogation. Well, our Saudi friends could probably have worked out a way to have him condemned for heresy against Islam and treason, and had him horrifically killed and then buried someplace in the trackless desert. Or, our Russian and Ukaranian friends could have buried him next to the mausoleum at Chernobyl -- really close to ground zero. He commited crimes against humanity, and caused an incredible amount of suffering.

Ultimately, the Serbian and Kosovar war criminals that SEAL Team Six lifted in the former Yugoslavia were far more deadly than bin Laden by himself surrounded by his crew.

It could have been done; it appears we chose to stack the deck against doing it. That blemishes an incredibly timed, executed and accomplished mission. But, to the extent that shooting the SOB in the head was the preferred solution, it blemishes the United States. We are the nation that says we believe in the rule of law. We ought to remember that...

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Terry Jones is to Charlie Sheen what Afghanistan is to Detroit

As a college student in the 60s, there was a lot of concern that we were going to lose the war in Vietnam because of the home front – that Jane Fonda and Abbie Hoffman were giving material comfort to the enemy. I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking about that, and the nature and extent of Free Speech, as well as about the nature of personal responsibility. When the Founders wrote the Constitution, they were under a set of assumptions based on the thought of people like John Locke, Thomas Paine and Hobbes. Paine as the citizen of the world was arguing from the point of view of maximum freedom with a strong dose of personal responsibility. Locke, the philosopher looking at the world from the point of view of post-Restoration, Protestant England, was seeking balance and responsibility for individuals. Thomas Hobbes wrote a bit earlier than Locke, and he wrote against a background of chaos, fear, war and the attendant issues of the 16^th Century. Hobbes was less interested in personal freedom as in the need to control that freedom, and was firm in his belief that a lot of people really can’t be trusted to think for themselves…unless you like war, chaos, fear and the attendant issues.

We seem as a culture to have mistaken license for the balance of freedom and personal responsibility. The American Philosopher, Richard Weaver, wrote a treatise that echoed both CS Lewis and Albert Camus in 1948 —Ideas Have Consequences. While it’s a treatise against the modern world, the decline of the west and William of Occam, the title sums it up. Freedom without personal responsibility is a denial of the possibility of consequences.

I wrote last week about an online video called Obey the Walrus that I didn’t understand and found disturbing. Now granted, there’s a lot of stuff on the Web that I don’t understand and there’s probably more disturbing content there than not. But, I was wondering that if by linking to it, was I contributing to some level of cruelty that I don’t get. As the T-Shirt says, “My idea involves midgets and porn – Ask for details.” The video had turned up on a relatively benign site, This Picture is Unrelated, which I recommend to anyone with a sense of the ironic and strange. I found it a logical transition to a discussion of a variety of music videos.

Then that weird Mephistoplean  Rednecked Preacher with the Walrus Sideburns/Mustache and the somewhat dubious ethical and criminal history in Gainesville decided it was a good time to burn a Koran. Hilarity in the Muslim world ensued, particularly in our hottest war. General Petraeus presents a fair and balanced response through the Wall Street Journal. And, of course to make it special, Hamid Kharzai decided to make it a big deal. As it obviously is – 22 dead so far.

The Taliban just needs to surf along on the rage of the Afghani people. In Afghanistan’s troubled history, about which I’ve thought too much in my lifetime, lots of people have had great ideas for the future of that conglomeration of tribes with a flag. Most of them – hell, all of them – have shuddered to a halt because of a basic lack of understanding of the terrain, both physical and human. The English got to conquer it three times because of that failure to get it; the final time, they basically declared victory and left. The Soviets had such a wonderful time that they basically said, Pogue Mahon, and left. General Petraeus has an excellent idea of the terrain both human and physical – and he knows that a few more incidents like this, and the whole Counter-Insurgency thing will go the way of Vietnamization and the Sunni Awakening and the banning of white settlers from the Black Hills.

“Every security force leader's worst nightmare is being confronted by essentially a mob, if you will, especially one that can be influenced by individuals that want to incite violence, who want to try to hijack passions, in this case, perhaps understandable passions," Gen. Petraeus said in the Sunday interview. "Obviously it's an additional serious security challenge in a country that faces considerable security challenges."

Back in September, when Terry Jones of the World Dove Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., first announced his intention to burn Islam's holy book, Gen. Petraeus publicly urged the preacher to abandon the plan, saying it would be exploited by the Taliban and endanger the lives of American soldiers. Rev. Jones's church shelved the idea at the time. But then he reversed course and his church held a "trial" of the Quran and incinerated the book in a videotaped ceremony March 20.

"This was a surprise," Gen. Petraeus said. The Quran burning in Florida, he added, was "hateful, extremely disrespectful and enormously intolerant."

The murder of UN Peace Workers and Nepalese Guards when security measures went south in a previously peaceful part of the country is kind of a wakeup call. For us. If we want to allow people like this Jones dweeb as we have the Phelps dweeb and the Trump Dweeb and the Bachmann-Palin-Overdrive Dweebs to do things that are outrageous to the Afghani people and the Muslim world, we need to say, “My bad. Later, Gator, and get the hell out of that benighted place.

While it may seem a reach, this guy Jones really reminds me of Charlie Sheen. Not so crazy as it seems; in fact, Sheen’s current masturbatory tour bears a striking resemblance to the whole Terry Jones and Congregation “Gonna Burn Me a Koran!”Magical Mystery Tour and hatefest. It’s about shock and ego because I can. You’re not the boss of me!

Sheen is a danger to himself but probably no one else. However, Terry Jones and his Love Doves are a danger to our soldiers in Afghanistan and the rest of the Muslim world as well as presenting a material danger to US interests. I don’t think that Paine would be down with declaring the publicity seeking demagogue a terrorist threat and shipping his ass off to Guantanamo. But, I’m pretty sure Locke, Hobbes, Madison, Hamilton and Jay would be. We might as well get some use out of the goddamned place – certainly the Muslim world regards it as a terrorist act, and what the hell…it is.

Or, declare victory and get ourselves and our allies the hell out.

 

murder now the path called "must we"

Oh Capn, My Capn

American Power is not a mythical tale.  it's not a story.  it's not a transformational capability or capacity. it's not freedom.  it's not a beacon of hope in this world.  it is fucking ordnance.  

how many multiples of 10 is Obama worse than WBush?  I'd like to know.  WBush wore the cloak of Myth that is American Power like a ten dollar suit; it did not fit him and he just looked bad in it.  yes this is to accept that such a thing does fit a human being, but no this does not justify it.  Obama is the full silk Italian suit, and he's pissed if it doesn't look good on him.  people complained that WBush was a crony, that he was somehow a false leader, because he was just working for his pals at Halliburton and Enron, his daddy, the Saudis, etc. et al. ad. inf.  look at the language that was put forth: WBush abused, misused and made a mockery of the power bestowed upon him.  he wasn't cut for the throne, he was a hack, a C student at best who was a failed businessman that rode his family's coattails wherever they would take him.  WBush was callous,  a former drunk.  he was a rank amateur dressed up in big people garb playing a big person part.  well what's worse, that, or someone that fully believes in the rightness and necessity of American Power?  someone that rightly fills the part?  WBush used the power for his own devices, his own wars, his own debauchery, for his own constituency and his own people.

CHANGE.  

Obama uses American Power because it is American Power.  he doesn't need a reason, an excuse, because there is no justification for it, and that's all a Dear Leader needs to know.  he's the worst - and by that I mean the biggest - purveyor of the falsehood that is American Power.  I'll take the former WBush over the L-D Obama any day.  when you embarrassed WBush, he looked a fool.  when you took a peek under the cloak, he'd hide and grin sheepishly, covering his nuts with his scrawny, chicken-shit hands.  Obama on the other hand gets pissed off and comes back at you for revealing his naked self.  Obama is a worse purveyor of the mythology and singular teleology that is American Power and Primacy in this world, because he's a wholesale believer in it, and because he was popularly elected by a bunch of folks that want to believe in it, and that do believe in it.  he's no skeptic of American Power.  neither are his supporters.  neither was WBush.  but Obama is a worse leader because he wholeheartedly believes his own bullshit.  WBush just thought it was a joke, like everything else: it was just a job, the best job he could get given his background, connections, and talents.

it's like your view of belief, Capn: 

'Belief is, at its core, an emotional commitment to some claim or view.'

we have all this ordnance, now we must rationalize its very existence. we must now create the arguments for its existence, and its continued existence.  hence the President and his Speechifying.  

but it's just ordnance.    

America may have saved those poor fucks (flaps arms) in that Libyan town that day, but honestly, America has only deflected the violence into other forms, and in other directions.  people that want to kill each other want to kill each other.    

what America is doing in that region in the first place, is all you need to know about American Intention.      

 

 

What exactly should I say about Eygpt?

When it comes your time to go, ain't no good way to go about it
Ain't no use in thinking bout it
You'll just drive yourself insane
There comes a time for everything
And the time has come for you to shut your mouth and get your ass on the plane

What should I say? Well, I got nothing.  Maureen "Dulcinea" Dowd says Cleopatra would be rooting for the people in the streets, which shows that hot flashes make one silly since Cleopatra would have had a lot more in common with Moubarak than the people in the streets, and she was a goddamn autocrat plopped on the throne by a Superpower. Paralells, anyone?

The American Press is unhappy that Anderson Cooper has been beaten up -- well, OK, about that? Although he seems to have it in perspective, we should reflect. Journalists take risks, unfortunately, and the thugs supporting the current regieme are out to spread fear and terror. Tossing molotov cocktails into the Museuem of Antiquities is pretty goddamn serious; beating up journalists, even from CNN, is actually pretty much par for the course. Cooper says he's staying away from Tahrir Square because it's not safe. More interestingly to me, he says the Army stood there and watched the thugs whale on him and his crew. Oh, and he says he's never been punched in the head before...really?

Well, from Crusader AXE's point of view, we've been down this road before. Hasn't ever really worked out all that well for US Realpolitik. Or, US ethical approaches to state craft. It's really pretty simple -- if you hang around long enough for a popular revolution against you, expect bad things to happen to you. And, of course, to your allies. Since we're his most important ally, we can expect bad things, unless we get out in front on this. Which will probably require a pole vaulting metaphor at this point, since we're behind the power curve.

Of course, Rush Limbaugh makes it all about himself...uh, Rush? If the President made himself into a Pharaoh, you'd be feeding crocodiles with your legs at the moment. And Glen Beck devolves into lunacy, but that's a pretty short devoltuion -- hell, maybe I should say evolves into lunacy.The Egyptians aren't doing this about us, or Israel, or about Islam. They're doing it because they are poor, and they want to be better off; they're doing it because they're sick of being exposed to daily reminders of corruption, thugocracy, and so on. What we're forgetting is that Egypt is actually a pretty damn big country...

Now, if I were President, I'd probably just tell the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to send Air Force 2 to Eygpt and then have this number by the Drive By Truckers translated into Arabic as important American poetry about the inevitable...but, that's just me. And, having secured landing rights for him in advance in Ryadah or Rio or Finland or someplace, resolve the whole thing by a coup de main. I'd then get as much food into the country as is reasonable in the next 72 hours. Of course, I'm not president, and I guess this probably explains why I never could be. However, any opportunity to tie the Drive By Truckers to political upheaval is ok with me. In the immortal words of Mike Cooley, shut your mouth Hosni, and get your ass on the plane...

“Drop everything, cross that river, help your brothers.”

It is easy to take valor for granted when you don't need valor to live, survive or keep from going mad. It is easy to take valor for granted when you are valorous, trying to save friends and do you job. Those of us who do not need valor to live have no right to take it for granted; those who are immersed in it, who display it to an amazing degree, have no choice but to take it for granted or else they become bullies and fools. We are blessed to have valorous young men and women; we waste them at our peril. We are blessed to have valorous young men and women who step up and do the impossible, the dangerous and the gut-wrenchingly horrible things to serve us. But, they don't do it for us; they do it for each other, for their friends without thinking and because it's what they'e there to do. And, they have the right to be angry at the world that doesn't comprehend that, and can't give them back their friends, their limbs, and their ability to sleep calmly, without nightmares and the feeling that they failed their friends who died, who were maimed, who are crazed and demented while they must carry on...the true hero is the one who rejects his own heroism and says that those who are not there are the heroes...

We wasted a lot in the Global War on Terror; blood, treasure, and future. And, as Elizabeth Rubin describes in her piece in this morning's New York Times and as Sebastian Junger explains in WAR or shows in RESTOPO, perhaps for nothing except for valor. Certainly, the geopolitical piece has a major disconnect. Jefferson's comment about the tree of liberty being watered by the blood of patriots and tyrants may be widely misunderstood...but the valorous water it daily, and we all benefit.They may get a mention, a pension, a medal. We get to sleep safe at the cost of their blood, hearts and memories.

And then Giunta said, “All my feelings are with my friends and they are getting smaller. I have sweat more, cried more, bled more in this country than my own. These people,” he said, meaning the Afghans, “won’t leave this valley. They have been here far before I could fathom an Afghanistan.”

“I ran to the front because that is where he was,” Giunta said, talking of Brennan. “I didn’t try to be a hero and save everyone.”

On Tuesday Giunta will become the first living soldier to receive the Medal of Honor since Vietnam. He has said that if he is a hero then everyone who goes into the unknown is a hero. He has said he was angry to have a medal around his neck at the price of Brennan’s and Mendoza’s lives. It took three years for the Pentagon to finalize the award. And it is puzzling to many soldiers and families why the military brass has been so sparing with this medal during the last decade of unceasing warfare.

As for the Korengal Valley, Giunta was right. The Korengalis would never leave or give up. Last April, after three more years of killing and dying in that valley, the Americans decided to leave the place to the locals.

The Americans decided to leave the place to the locals...how about that? If this is a god, and I am comforted today that I do not believe in one, may his blessings shower the valorous, and shame the rest of us who wasted their gift. Giunta's syllogism is correct with some clarification  -- if he is a hero, and he is, then everyone who goes into the unknown for his friends, his duty, because it's his job and he's good at it, is a hero.

Christian charity? From "Christians?" You on drugs? Must be great shit!

Reasonable people can agree to disagree; unreasonable people need to be exposed to reason. Eric Wattree and Johnny Punish do so and they deserve to be read.

Every now and then I come up things that I wish I had written.  "On his last duchess" by Robert Browning. The opening riffs to Layla. The Declaration of Independence. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Two things on Vets Today hit me that way. The first is this piece on the Tea Party by Eric Wattree...

Let me ask you the above question again. Do You Trust the Republicans to show you Christian Charity? Many of you need to think about that, because when you hear those Teabaggers out there screaming that they want their country back, their corporate masters are depending on the fact that they’ve done enough damage to our educational system where many of you won’t know what that really means. In fact, many of the Teabaggers don’t know what it means.  If they did, they wouldn’t be out there.

What many Teabaggers don’t seem to realize is that corporate conservatives are using them like pawns to promote their own enslavement.  They’re using the bigotry of many of the social conservatives to carry out an agenda that they’ve been embarked upon since the end of the Great Depression – to undo the New Deal, which brought about all of the safety nets that serve to protect the economic lives of the poor and middle class...

Do you get on your knees every month and pray that God stop the utility company from cutting off your lights? No you don’t – you don’t have to, because God answered your prayers in advance by blessing you with the common sense to go pay the light bill.

*

The same is true of your freedom. It’s not going to do a bit of good to get on your knees and beg God to protect your civil rights if you don’t vote. God helps those who help themselves. So if you don’t use the common sense that he gave you and vote to protect your rights, the lights of this free society are going to be shut off just as surely as the lights in your home will be shut off if you don’t pay the light bill.

*

Thus, all of our childrens’ tomorrows may be directly dependent upon our gettin’ up off our asses today.

Brother Wattree has nailed the situation. Impeccable logic, and an honest, short exigesis of how we got to the point where the party of Lincoln advocates the end of economic freedom for all under the rubic of "local", and "privatization." Back in the day when rural children had to read things in school like "The Jungle" and "the Illiad," these idiots would not have gotten away with this. I'll stipulate that Chris Coons and Chrissy "Not Hynd" O'Donnell was not exactly Lincoln-Douglas or Darrow-Bryan, but come on. She went to a sleep away camp on masturbation and the constituion, and people take her seriously? We're ignorant. Here's a question -- ask Sarah Palin to explain the context of Jefferson's remark about the tree of liberty.

Johnny Punish is a artist, activist and provocateur. He should probably be a Defeatist, except Mr. Fun would be upset because he has better hair than Mr. Fun. Anyway, he takes the decline of American Freedom back to 1982...in a piece worthy of Richard Condon or Robert Scheer at their most conspiratorial or Hunter S. Thompson at his most trenchant.

In 2010, many believe that freedom is on the decline in the USA. Many seem to believe that this decline started on 9/11. With the Patriot Act passage and all the homeland security surveillance, that would seem logical but it would be very wrong. I mean most Americans have no clue on when the assault on their freedoms started. It was way back during the Reagan Administration. Welcome to reality!

Yes, 9/11 was a huge major event. Like any major earthquake, it moved the freedom fault off it’s axis but it was NOT the shot that started the decline. No-sir-ree, the shot heard across the known world that truly launched the end of freedom was made by a tiny thin lady with all the good intent of your own grandmother who just wanted to save our kids from falling into the ditch.

There was NO way that this grand dame of America could have foreseen the massive avalanche that she launched when, in 1982, she said that little phrase “Just Say No” to little schoolgirl in trying to give her advice on what to do when someone offered her drugs. She, like our own mothers, was just trying to care of our kids. Opps!

One of the problems that I face daily is dealing with rage. Most of us veterans do. We miss the camaradarie and trust that we had in the service; we miss the belief that someone has our backs. Brothers Punish and Wattree appear to be trying to cover us, if only we will let them.

Your flag decal won't get you into heaven anymore...

I've been listening to the MSNBC coverage of the last Stryker Brigade to leave Iraq. Interestingly, Stryker Fighting Vehicles are named after two enlisted Medal of Honor Winners, one in WWII and one in Vietnam, and Stryker Avenue on Fort Lewis is one of the main drags through the area where the Brigade -- 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division -- calls home this days. Keith Obermann and others on MSNBC kept talking about how big these things are. They're not all that big--22 feet long, about 8 feet wide, and weighing in at about 16 tons. If you want size, find an Abrams Tank. Or a tank recovery vehicle...

Other friends of mine have speculated that there may be a lot of fun brewing in Iraq. The Brigade goes, and there's only 50,000 or so US types. Well, as Col Jack Jacobs, a Vietnam era Medal of Honor Winner pointed out while I was listening, when he was an adviser with the Vietnamese Army after US Combat Operations were officially over, he was in combat every day. In fact, his biography, "If Not Now, When?"Duty and Sacrifice in America's Time of Need he tells of calling for artillery support one night when they could see a huge North Vietnamese Army convoy coming south, and the only thing available was...the Battleship Missouri. I don't really know of anyone else in Vietnam or anyplace else since possibly Korea who was able to call for and adjust naval gunfire on  target of opportunity. Normally, when you say "Fire For Effect" as Jack points out, the supporting fires are multiple volleys of multiple guns. In this case, the ship's FDC fired one turret and four rounds. Nothing left. The book is a good read, by the way. Jack was a little guy, a ROTC guy and deserves a lot. He fought to get out of a dream assignment -- Command of a Student Officer Candidate School Company at Fort Benning -- to go back to combat. We are reluctant to have our heroes expose themselves multiple times.

So, all those Army guys who are left come with guns. All the advisers come with guns. All those trainers come with guns. All those logisticians come with guns. The Chaplains and the Doctors probably don't come with guns, but they have lots of guys and gals around with guns. The State Department has hired an additional 7000 "Security Contractors" to help out. While definitely not XE(Blackwater), this is also a bunch of guys with guns. I suspect things in Iraq will be quiet until about January 2, 2012 -- by quiet, I mean about the same level of fratricidal madness that's going on now. If the government there can't get it's act together by then, the place will light up like Mogadishu on a Saturday night after the dope harvest has come in...

Another take on the whole Afghanistan thing...

For a left-wing commie, pinko lesbian Rachel Maddow is pretty pro soldier. However, she made excuses tonight for the failure of the military to have VIPs at the opening of a trauma center, saying that this was because the military is in chaos over the McChrystal Balls-up. Sorry, doesn't fly -- Afghanistan Command has a perfectly competent commander with three stars who can run things until the congress gets around to confirming the Four Star who used to supervise McChrystal and dreamed up this counter-insurgency nonsense anyway. Bethesda is a pretty short helicopter ride away from the Pentagon, the White House and the VA. The best way to assure the world that everything is normal is to act like everything's normal. Because it is -- if McChrystal had a brain anyuerism on one of his ten mile daily runs, do you think this same level of nonsense would be going on? Generals are important, but not that important...

COIN is starting to feel a lot like Vietnamization, and if you're not familiar with the term, I recommend re-reading David Halberstram's The Best and the Brightest. Or reading it. Read Street without Joy too, while you're at it. Or, read some of the stuff about the Soviet adventure...

However, as I have mentioned before, in an alternative existence I write for another site under another, assumed name. It is not Gordon Duff. Gordon is more of a legitimate journalist than I could ever conceivably be. I'm not a journalist; I'm not sure what I am, but I'm not one of them. He writes well, and has spent a fair amount of time on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan and in other mid-eastern and Asian Garden Spots. His take on this particular goat rodeo/snake fuck is evolving, but worth looking at and considering for perspective and insight. He also reminded me of something...

McChrystal held on, for awhile at least.  With the billions in drug money floating around, floating into so many pockets, buying everyone in sight, no report will come out, certainly not from Holbrooke nor especially from the CIA.  Wouldn’t it be nice to hear, “I coudn’t take it anymore.  I didn’t sign up to be a security guard at a whore house.”  But that isn’t true, that is exactly the job Stanely McChrystal did sign up for.  With a bit more talent, he could have played piano.  If being a “Special Operations” guy working for Dick Cheney with his personal death lists, doesn’t make one immune to the smell of sewage, I can’t imagine what would.

Gordon's point is one that I find troubling. He seems to think that McChrystal set this up as a way of getting fired -- going to Obama and Petraeus and admitting that the whole thing was a total clusterfuck for which he bore some of the blame and that he couldn't work with Holbrooke and Eichenberry because they were clueless, egotistical clowns and that after 10 years of holding Karzai's dick, the guy still couldn't piss straight. He makes a pretty salient point about COIN and where we are in Afghanistan at the moment -- the only Afghani we're sure isn't Taliban is Karzai.

Gordon reminds us that MickeyC led the cover-up on the Pat Tillman affair. While I think his conspiratorial view of how that particular tragedy happened is a bit paranoid, I have to remember who the ultimate master of disaster was -- Dick Cheney and the Bush propaganda machine. I don't think Tillman's own unit would have killed him; but, who the hell knows. It was a friendly fire incident; they did really screwy things to cover it up; there was a lot of lead flying around.

I'm sure the General's memoirs will be interesting.