the Unwelcome Consequences of Radical Intervention
Two thousand American soldiers will have died in Iraq by the end of October 2005. With a nice round number like this, the American news media has decided to resume paying attention to the human cost of the Iraq war. While its belated criticism of the criminally incompetent regime of GW Bush and their disastrous Iraq misadventure is sign of a press finally beginning to do its job, it probably has more to do with anger over the imprisonment of Judith Miller than any desire to hold the administration to any sort of standard of conduct. The shame of this sudden resurgence of interest in the failing imperial policies of the New Primitives is that it has arisen so late in the game, after nearly 2000 American soldiers have given their lives away for nothing more than an attempt to secure a particularly valuable and diminishing fuel commodity. After playing a collaborator's role in the felonious lies dispensed by the Bush gang to a moronic, docile, and utterly gullible American public, the media now decides that it is time to take a step back to commemorate one of those totally meaningless statistical milestones that it celebrates so well.
Sober-minded individuals who contradicted the neocons' claims of instant victory in Iraq in 2003 were all over the political landscape (such disparate Americans as Noam Chomsky and Norman Schwarzkopf thought this war to be a figment of the administration's imagination that was brought to fruition by the careless use of fear-mongering lies); they were, however, studiously ignored by the mainstream corporate media as it served as town crier for the fictions put forth by the Bush administration. Republican stalwart (and former national security advisor to King George Bush the First) Brent Scowcroft has issued his sternest criticism to date of the second Bush's ineptitude--saying that the current mess in Iraq is an example of what he calls "the unwelcome consequences of radical intervention". This statement is important for a number of reasons: a high-powered intelligence and policy guy like Scowcroft is expressing some serious discontent and in all probability he is speaking for a large segment of the intelligence community in the US; additionally, he becomes one of the first Republicans to outwardly declare that GW Bush is a radical conservative. By extension, this statement harshly criticizes Bush's extremism in defense of supposed liberty while also indicating a certain eradication of support among a political group that once wholeheartedly supported the Fratboy President. Scowcroft's statement also uses a word fraught with significance when applied to a democratic system of government like the American system--he says that the administration uses tactics that "invade....threaten and pressure...(and) evangelize". Evangelization has no place in a political system based on the concept of separation of church and state, and Scowcroft's choice of the word was deliberate--he is identifying GW Bush and co. as politicians with a religious sense of their own mission. As such, the administration can be expected to maintain its tenuous grip on reality by clinging to its own failed policies rather than indulging in any sort of positive self-analysis that might yield some different results in Iraq.
At this point in time, how much more will it take to impeach GW Bush? This blog has recounted a number of different crimes that he and his administraton have committed (whether they were deliberate acts or crimes of omission and negligence), yet it seems that the more blatantly Bush fails at something the more he is excused by the same charlatans who served as the Empire Crew's publicists in the days leading up to the illegal war in Iraq. This lack of accountability is all the more stark when compared to the media's treatment of President Clinton--who was impeached for a blowjob and investigated for five years by a biased special prosecutor for an incident of financial impropriety that involved less than $100,000 (a pittance in a world that tolerated such sleazeballs as Al D'Amato and Charles Keating). If the same standards of criticism that once applied to Slick Willie were applied to King George Bush the Second, he would have been impeached and arrested before even having the chance to run for "re-election" in 2004.
And so things go merrily onward--without accountability, without regard for the laws of this land, without concern for human lives lost. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the mask finally fell away from this empty and callow cipher that calls itself George W. Bush; the only efforts to help the suffering citizens of New Orleans occurred when the Bush administration realized it was being embarrassed politically. Now that the magic 2000-killed-in-action mark is within range, this heartless murdering bastard who is allegedly the president of the US will mark this grim anniversary with much public grieving; behind the scenes, however, his only concerns revolve around himself and his pretty little plans for an energy empire. As his approval ratings plummet and his delusional grand scheme of easy conquest crumbles into dust, I predict that his response will be to seal himself off ever more tightly in the binding fabric of his religion. Even his selection of the egregiously sycophantic and spectacularly unqualified Ms. Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court is part of this same "solution", and it reveals Bush's ultimate aim to be the sabotaging the constitution of the US. Once his attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade is prepared, will he even notice that there are far more important matters of state left untended in his pursuit of sanctimonious and irrelevant religious goals?
Both Bush I and Bush II have overseen administrations that are and were relentlessly negative in their view of humanity; peace and prosperity are apparently considered by them to be contradictory and simultaneously incongruous conditions. The Bushes consider our population too dumb to handle the crises that life presents us, so they enshroud their activities in secrecy and construct elaborate lies and justifications that are straight out of the Cold War Playbook. They are the epitome of an evil and divisive superstructure in which the top 1% of the world's population manipulates the remaining 99% into violent sectarian and fundamentalist politico-religious conflict. When challenged on their well-documented record of blood and iron, the Bushes wrap themselves in the American flag and wave crucifixes around as proof of their Christian piety. One thing is quite true about both Bush administrations--they identify strongly with the Christian concept of self-sacrifice, although with a twist--they require that self-sacrifice to be performed by the help. Like the 17th and 18th-century nobility types they aspire to, they've got other things to tend to around their property, and they are far too important to risk their own physical safety in their exploitative endeavors.
Sober-minded individuals who contradicted the neocons' claims of instant victory in Iraq in 2003 were all over the political landscape (such disparate Americans as Noam Chomsky and Norman Schwarzkopf thought this war to be a figment of the administration's imagination that was brought to fruition by the careless use of fear-mongering lies); they were, however, studiously ignored by the mainstream corporate media as it served as town crier for the fictions put forth by the Bush administration. Republican stalwart (and former national security advisor to King George Bush the First) Brent Scowcroft has issued his sternest criticism to date of the second Bush's ineptitude--saying that the current mess in Iraq is an example of what he calls "the unwelcome consequences of radical intervention". This statement is important for a number of reasons: a high-powered intelligence and policy guy like Scowcroft is expressing some serious discontent and in all probability he is speaking for a large segment of the intelligence community in the US; additionally, he becomes one of the first Republicans to outwardly declare that GW Bush is a radical conservative. By extension, this statement harshly criticizes Bush's extremism in defense of supposed liberty while also indicating a certain eradication of support among a political group that once wholeheartedly supported the Fratboy President. Scowcroft's statement also uses a word fraught with significance when applied to a democratic system of government like the American system--he says that the administration uses tactics that "invade....threaten and pressure...(and) evangelize". Evangelization has no place in a political system based on the concept of separation of church and state, and Scowcroft's choice of the word was deliberate--he is identifying GW Bush and co. as politicians with a religious sense of their own mission. As such, the administration can be expected to maintain its tenuous grip on reality by clinging to its own failed policies rather than indulging in any sort of positive self-analysis that might yield some different results in Iraq.
At this point in time, how much more will it take to impeach GW Bush? This blog has recounted a number of different crimes that he and his administraton have committed (whether they were deliberate acts or crimes of omission and negligence), yet it seems that the more blatantly Bush fails at something the more he is excused by the same charlatans who served as the Empire Crew's publicists in the days leading up to the illegal war in Iraq. This lack of accountability is all the more stark when compared to the media's treatment of President Clinton--who was impeached for a blowjob and investigated for five years by a biased special prosecutor for an incident of financial impropriety that involved less than $100,000 (a pittance in a world that tolerated such sleazeballs as Al D'Amato and Charles Keating). If the same standards of criticism that once applied to Slick Willie were applied to King George Bush the Second, he would have been impeached and arrested before even having the chance to run for "re-election" in 2004.
And so things go merrily onward--without accountability, without regard for the laws of this land, without concern for human lives lost. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the mask finally fell away from this empty and callow cipher that calls itself George W. Bush; the only efforts to help the suffering citizens of New Orleans occurred when the Bush administration realized it was being embarrassed politically. Now that the magic 2000-killed-in-action mark is within range, this heartless murdering bastard who is allegedly the president of the US will mark this grim anniversary with much public grieving; behind the scenes, however, his only concerns revolve around himself and his pretty little plans for an energy empire. As his approval ratings plummet and his delusional grand scheme of easy conquest crumbles into dust, I predict that his response will be to seal himself off ever more tightly in the binding fabric of his religion. Even his selection of the egregiously sycophantic and spectacularly unqualified Ms. Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court is part of this same "solution", and it reveals Bush's ultimate aim to be the sabotaging the constitution of the US. Once his attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade is prepared, will he even notice that there are far more important matters of state left untended in his pursuit of sanctimonious and irrelevant religious goals?
Both Bush I and Bush II have overseen administrations that are and were relentlessly negative in their view of humanity; peace and prosperity are apparently considered by them to be contradictory and simultaneously incongruous conditions. The Bushes consider our population too dumb to handle the crises that life presents us, so they enshroud their activities in secrecy and construct elaborate lies and justifications that are straight out of the Cold War Playbook. They are the epitome of an evil and divisive superstructure in which the top 1% of the world's population manipulates the remaining 99% into violent sectarian and fundamentalist politico-religious conflict. When challenged on their well-documented record of blood and iron, the Bushes wrap themselves in the American flag and wave crucifixes around as proof of their Christian piety. One thing is quite true about both Bush administrations--they identify strongly with the Christian concept of self-sacrifice, although with a twist--they require that self-sacrifice to be performed by the help. Like the 17th and 18th-century nobility types they aspire to, they've got other things to tend to around their property, and they are far too important to risk their own physical safety in their exploitative endeavors.
posted by alyosha mcbain at 9:04 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home