Carbomb Dating

I watched quite a bit of yesterday's Iraq hearing. It took all day for us to learn what we already knew: Iraq is an unsolvable mess.

Gen. Petreaus kept repeating that the "progress we have made is fragile and reversible"...this sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

A cautious, sober assessment from a military expert, right?

Wrong. It's complete bullshit. Anyone with a dictionary and a fifth-grade education can disprove it.

progress (noun):

#1 Movement, as toward a goal; advance.
#2 Development or growth: students who show progress.
#3 Steady improvement, as of a society or civilization.

In 2002 Iraq was a corrupt dictatorship. It was also modern nation with a modern infrastructure; most of the country had electricity, indoor plumbing and cars that didn't explode.

Today none of that is true. Goodbye dictatorship, hello foreign-led martial law. No more electricity, plumbing or infrastructure and the cars aren't nearly as safe as they used to be.
The average Iraqi is, by any measure, far worse off today than they were in 2002.
The U.S. invasion, which no longer even has a goal, hasn't produced any progress at all, only destruction, death and displacement.
The only way that we could reverse the 'progress' we have made since 2003 would be to build a time machine and travel back to 2000 and change the Presidential election results- and any fifth-grader knows that we don't have time machines.

Sometimes it feels as if I live in a deja vu machine. Listening to the conversation about what would happen should Iraq become a "failed state" was like listening to a debate on what would happen if the Ottoman Empire should collapse-I mean, when a nation measures it's monthly bombings by the hundred, it's hard to think of it as anything other than failed.
(I feel the same way when I hear the News clones speculating on whether or not we are heading into a economic recession. )

Each politician prefaced their questions with obsequious praise about the service of the General, the Ambassador, our troops ; how proud they were and what a great job they were doing etc etc...it would have been more appropriate to take 4,024 moments of silence, declare peace and go home.

One Republican suggested that our troops were following in the footsteps of George Washington and Abe Lincoln, comparisons that make no political, military or historical sense...in 1776, for example, George Washington was the leader of a rag-tag rebel militia comprised largely of ill-equipped civilians who were forced into war with an occupying force of overwhelming military superiority.
Washington's men were the insurgents, not the occupiers...during the American Revolution, the British employed quite a few mercenary contractors, the most famous of which were the Hessians, a group whose modern counterparts would be 'contractors' hired from for-profit armies such as Blackwater.

In 1776, George Washington handed the foreign mercenaries a resounding defeat at the Battle of Trenton. The mercenaries were hung-over and half-asleep when Washington's men surprised them on Christmas - imagine what today's politicos would say about armed, nationalistic rebels with the audacity to attack sleeping men during a Christian holiday.
They wouldn't call them patriots, but that's what they were.

Lincoln? He said Lincoln. How are our troops like Abe Lincoln?
In the same way that they are like JFK.
It's an unfortunate comparison to make.

The Cable Clones broke away from the Iraq Bullfest to switch over to a ceremony where Resident Evil was giving the Medal of Honor to the parents of a dead Navy SEAL. The young man had thrown himself on top of a live grenade, sacrificing his life to save the lives of two men with him.
The SEAL died in 2006; I'm sure the timing of the ceremony to coincide with the 2008 Iraq Report was purely accidental.

When the TV coverage returned, I saw General Petraeus in a new light. My anger at him had vanished. He is simply a soldier falling on a live grenade, sacrificing himself to protect others.
It's his duty.

The sad thing is, he's sacrificing himself to protect Resident Bush. That's like taking a bullet for Charles Manson.
No justice in that.

BushCo gives loud lip-service to " supporting our troops", but I'd argue that BushCo treats our military with a profound disregard and a deadly disrespect that has never been seen by any prior C-in-C. Asking our troops to die for a goal that cannot even be defined is sheer malevolence- asking them to die for someone else's profits adds a strong element of avarice and forcing our military leadership to explain the unexplainable throws a heaping spoonful of cowardice into the mix.

Evil. Greed. Cowardice.
Trifecta!

Picture this: It's 3 a.m. on an early winter morning, 1944. In Europe the Nazis are planning a counterattack against the advancing Allied forces when General Dwight D. Eisenhower's phone rings. On the other end is President Franklin Roosevelt.
"Ike", says FDR, "I need you to come home and explain to America why we are fighting."
That didn't happen. FDR made his own speeches.
BTW, we won that war and nobody had to explain why we invaded Normandy.

The military is already fighting Bush's war in Iraq and our Resident is making them fight his political battles at home too. That's a disgrace to the uniform and to the Office.

If we pull out of Iraq, Iraq might become a fractured, violent, unstable region with a population and leadership that strongly dislikes America.

Austria-Hungary might collapse.

We might lose the Alamo.

The U.S.S. Maine might sink.


Let's take that chance.

Spreading Freedom

I'm not the slightest bit surprised to learn that Iran suspended it's nuclear weapons program in 2003, nor did I raise a brow when I read that the U.S. has known this for years. Despite this knowledge, BushCo has been busily trying to lie us into attacking Iran under the pretense that they might be building bombs.

Bombs that aren't there.
Does that sound familiar?

After invading Iraq, we learned what was already obvious to anyone who paid attention to reality: Iraq presented absolutely no military threat to America. None.

BushCo should have been impeached, disbanded and jailed for starting that war, but instead there was a general consensus that well, maybe there weren't any WMD, but "the world is a better place without Saddam."

How? In what real, human terms has the removal of Saddam improved the world?

More importantly, BushCo has yet to provide a satisfactory reason for our invasion of Iraq.

Our mission is to spread freedom/democracy? Give me a fucking break. A 3rd grade history student could knock down that spurious claim:

The region now known as Iraq is home of one of the earliest civilizations in human history. The people who live there have had roughly 5,000 years to 'invent' democracy. They have had over 2,000 years to adopt Christianity and Western ideals. That they haven't done so speaks volumes as to what they want in their homeland.

Our hypothetical 3rd grader would point out that the Christian West has a long history of trying to spread freedom on the Muslim East and that it has always ended badly. Always.
Our imaginary student could use their cursory knowledge of world history to give true, supportable and specific examples; something that our real President seems incapable of. Our real President is painfully, dangerously ignorant of history.

He also seems oblivious to basic human psychology and motives. He apparently doesn't understand the direct cause-and-effect relationship between war orphans and suicide bombers.

I would wager that the odds of one of these kids growing up to be a suicide bomber increased dramatically the moment they started seeing body parts strewn about the streets of their neighborhood.


One of the many sad, overlooked facts in this whole debacle is that before the American invasion, it's quite likely that these kids liked America.
They wanted their MTV.
They wanted to play WoW.
Now they'd be lucky if they have two living parents, indoor plumbing and a roof.


You don't need to be a spy to understand why Iran doesn't have a nuclear enrichment program- they don't have one because they don't need one. If Iran really wanted a nuke, they could get one on the black market- if they haven't already done so...North Korea and Pakistan both have the bomb and the collapse of the USSR has led to some serious security concerns regarding nuclear warheads...the demand will inevitably create a supply. It will. The weapons already exist- it's merely matter of time and espionage until one falls into the wrong hands.

In the real world, it is extremely unlikely that Iran would ever launch a nuclear first strike against anyone- Israel included. The inflammatory rhetoric coming from Iran re:Israel is mere rhetorical demagoguery- American politicians do not have a monopoly on political bloviation and lies. The Iranian Mullahs are fully aware that to launch a nuke would spell the utter destruction of them and their nation. They would lose everything. Being in charge, they stand to lose a lot.

War orphans, on the other hand, have nothing left to lose. When Kris Kristofferson wrote, "freedom ain't nothing but another word for 'nothing left to lose'", he wasn't referring to the kind of freedom that we are spreading on Iraq, but he was right.

Unlike despotic heads-of-state, war orphans understand the liberating freedom of nihilism, even if they don't know the word. They understand that they have lost all hope and that just maybe if they wear this special jacket and press this magic button, they will have some part of what they have lost restored to them.
The technology has changed but the psychology has not. If you kill someone's family and destroy their home, the survivors will want revenge. That should be obvious. Violence begets violence.

Believe it or not, the #1 reason for Iran wanting the Bomb is to deter an American invasion- the Mullahs are very aware that we haven't invaded North Korea- a nation that sorely needs freedom if there ever was one...we haven't invaded because of Lil Kim's atomic deterrence and Iran knows that. The entire world, with the possible exception of 250 million Americans, knows this.

The next time a nuclear device explodes in a civilian area, it will probably be the work of individuals, not of nations. It's not unreasonable to speculate that the perps will be war orphans with the new freedom to have nothing left to lose.
Freedom that was spread on them by America.

If Bush actually wanted peace, he'd have greeted the belated 2003 security report with relief.
"Thank God", he would say," there is now one less threat to worry about. Now we can start concentrating on fixing our real problems without this additional distraction."
That is what a real leader would say.

This is what Bush said:

"“I think it is very important for the international community to recognize the fact that if Iran were to develop the knowledge that they could transfer to a clandestine program, it would create a danger for the world,” he said."

What he means is: We should start a war now because it's possible that at some future time Iraq may acquire a nuclear bomb. Or something. And that would be bad.
In any case, he's still hell-bent on beating the war drums...he's created a trillion-dollar for-profit war machine and peace would ruin all the hard work his cabal has done over the last seven years. For example,100,000 Blackwater mercenaries would be out-of-work. Those people are trained killers - I don't look forward to standing in the unemployment lines with them.

With any luck, this development will derail BushCo's war plans. The American people are growing visibly tired of endless, pointless war and it's unlikely that the average Iranian citizen has much interest in fighting yet another war-they know they will lose, and badly- given time, luck and a bit of clarity, both nations will eventually replace their leadership -from within.
We can do it here in 2008.

It may take a bit longer for the Iranians to make a wholesale change in their civics- if ever- but that is up to them, not to us. Normalizing relations with Iraq would be a possible first step. I am convinced that we could win more hearts and minds with Shrek DVDs, MySpaces and music videos than we could with depleted uranium shells, land mines and laser-guided smart bombs.

It would be cheaper too.

Rumors of War

June 28th, 1914. Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian Empire, made an unwise visit to Sarajevo, Bosnia. There was a growing Bosnian separatist movement, calling for Bosnian autonomy from the Empire and there had been numerous threats and rumors of violence directed at the Arch-Duke.

Ferdinand, intending to demonstrate that the Empire still had firm control of the region, kept his plan for an automobile parade through the Sarajevo streets.

Almost immediately, a hand grenade was thrown at Ferdinand's motorcade, killing an Austrian soldier in another car. Ferdinand's convoy changed course, but took an unfortunate turn and became lost- soon, his car was stopped by a man named Gavrilo Princip- according to some accounts, Princip was the same man who had thrown the grenade earlier. In any case, he took advantage of the chance encounter; Princip shot Ferdinand and his wife, killing them both.

And World War 1 began.

Austria accused Serbia of aiding the Bosnian rebels, specifically that they had sponsored the Black Hand Gang, a slavic nationalist society that had carried out the assassination.
Austria warned Serbia that it had had better get it's act together. The Austrian army began mobilizing in anticipation of an invasion of Serbia. Diplomacy failed when a 10-point treaty fell through over the issue of Serbian sovereignty. War between Austria and Serbia seemed inevitable.
Serbia, lacking the might to confront Austria-Hungary alone, asked it's long-time ally Russia for help. Russia obligingly agreed and began to mobilize it's own forces.

Austria, not wanting to engage the Russians alone, called on it's ally Germany for help. Germany agreed.

This alarmed the French, who called up their army.

Germany had been secretly working on the Schlieffen Plan, which detailed a two-front war against France and Russia in the event that Russia were to begin marshaling it's army- which it had just done. The German command believed that it had a six-week window of opportunity to conquer France (which was supposed to a cakewalk) before it would have to face the Russians.

On Aug. 14th, the Germans invaded France via Belgium;Belgium had a defense treaty with Great Britain and the 1839 pact was invoked- Britain began preparing for full-scale war. The rest is, as they say, history.

Clearly, the framework for this war was in place for years before the assassination of the Arch-Duke provided the catalyst, but one has to wonder what might have happened had Princip and his Black Hand Gang failed in their murderous plan.

It was WW1 that ended the reign of the German Kaiser, which led to a tumultuous period in German politics, a period from which Hitler's conservative National Socialist Party emerged triumphant, which of course led to World War Two- the second "War to End All Wars" waged during the first four decades of the 20th century.

An ill-advised visit. An errant grenade. A bad turn down the wrong street. A chance encounter between an assassin and his target. Two shots.
A series of accidents, violence and blunders that irrevocably changed the course of human history.

In that context, the fate of this man seems crucial to the current global crisis of violence:

Pakistani dictator General President Pervez Musharraf is no stranger to assassination attempts- his outwardly pro-USA stance has caused him to be quite unpopular with a significant portion of his own population...unpopular enough that Pakistan is currently under a state of military lockdown as Pervez struggles to remain alive and in power.

Should Musharraf fall, a number of things could happen. The possible outcomes run the gamut from 'so bad that I am afraid to write about them' to 'so bad that I am afraid to think about them'. What will the USA do when two or more of it's allies go to war with each other? Which side, if any, will the US support publicly? Will it be the same people that we support privately? It's very hard for us, as citizens, to know. This problem is compounded by the fact that we Americans, as a society, don't really care, despite 5,000 years of history that provide clear examples of what happens when the citizens of a powerful, overreaching empire become complacent towards their leadership- which they always do. Always.

Empires fall. Egypt, Greece, Persia, Rome, Ottoman,France, Russia, England, dozens more...all had one or more empires, all have fallen. I'm trying to console myself by thinking that America is not an Empire - but that's a lie and I know it.

These are interesting times.

Survival

Who are these guys? Taliban? PKK? Al-Queda? A Saudi rap group?
Nope.
They are NASA trainees, photographed after a Death Valley survival vacation.

This might be a good time to brush up on your survivalist skills- it seems as if the end times are just around the corner...what else is new, right?

The current state of martial law in Pakistan is troubling, to say the least. Pakistani president 'Pervy' Mushareef's sham government is teetering on the brink of collapse, with radical Islamic fundamentalists poised to take power- we know from our own history that when the religious lunatics take over government, the first thing they do is start wars. One need look no further than our current regime for an example of what happens when religious fanatics are put in charge of dangerous things like armies, prisons and nuclear bombs- just wait until the Islamic wack-jobs get their hands on the modern military equipment and atomic weaponry that the United States sold to Mushareef...oh and yeah, do you remember a guy named Osama? He's in Pakistan- the same Pakistan that has nukes and U.S.-built F-16s.

Then there's Turks and Kurds and Iranians, oh my. The Turks and Kurds are fighting each other, both sides are armed and supported by the U.S. , which is a wee bit dicey...things are complicated, to put it mildly. It seems that the PKK has kidnapped a number of Turkish soldiers and the Turks are pretty much determined to go to war to get them back- against the wishes of the White House. I imagine that a conversation much like this fictionalized dialogue has taken place recently:

Turks: "We are going to invade Iraq and get our soldiers back."

BushCo: "Please don't do that."

Turks: " Why? When Hezbollah kidnapped two Israelis, you guys gave Israel the green light to bomb the living shit out of Lebanon...the PKK nabbed eight of our guys and you are telling us to 'take it easy' and NOT to retaliate? Your foreign policy makes absolutely no fucking sense."

BushCo: "Um...well, if ya gotta go into Iran, would ya consider not using the guns marked 'Made in the USA'? We are trying to convince a skeptical world that Iran is a global menace and it just wouldn't look right if people found out that we are helping terrorists to kill Iranians..."

Turks: "You are talking to the wrong Turks. Go fuck yourself, cowboy."

Do you remember a while back when it was reported that the US in Iraq had 'lost' a huge shipments of arms and munitions, including RPG's, anti-aircraft missiles and nearly 200,000 automatic rifles? Nobody seems to know what happened to all those guns...coincidentally, the Kurdish PKK rebels have recently obtained a seemingly endless supply of modern weaponry, the source of which no one seems to be able to identify.

Fuckin' mysterious, man...one pile of guns vanishes, another cache materializes...hmmm. Obviously, the problem in the Middle East is this: Gun shortages.

The U.S. Defense industry cannot keep pace with the escalating demand for weapons that the BushCo foreign policy has created, which has in turn generated a great new profit center for the burgeoning Chinese War Machine...of course, BushCo doesn't wan't the Chinese to supply the Iraqis with weapons, since that will almost certainly lead to Iraq shipping more oil to China, which means less for the US and higher prices everywhere...I swear, if I didn't know better, I would speculate that the entire purpose behind the 'War on Terra' is simply to raise oil prices and increase arms sales.

Mission Accomplished, motherfuckers.

To make things even more complex, the PKK has a splinter group that operates in Iran, fighting against the Iranian government, often using terrorist tactics- and presumably U.S. aid- to carry out attacks on Iranian infrastructure- meanwhile BushCo , with the limp capitulation of Hillary Clinton and other Senate Dems, has labeled certain Iranians as 'terrorists', which, by default, gives BushCo the unconstitutional authority to declare yet another unilateral war of aggression...when viewed from a distance the situation is much like one of those grade-school word puzzles, except without the underlying logical foundation:

Q:All Sneets are Snoots, but not all Snoots are Sneets. Some Sneets are Snaaps, but no Snaaps are Snoots. What is a Sneet and whose side are they on?

A:Who cares? 9-11!

To Be Continued

I took the day off to attend to some personal business.

First, I took a cue from my long-time blogpal Sling and used my Blooger skills to set up a 'sample' blog that the radio station could use as a newsletter/forum, thus keeping our internal politics off-the-air and off our public website; things that have been a problem for us lately.

Then I spent a long time talking with my grandmother concerning my father's whereabouts- he's been MIA (Missing In Alcohol) for a couple of months now. He had almost 90 days of sobriety but he chose to go back to the bottle.

His last words to his mother:"Say goodbye to the cat for me."

So I did a little sleuthing. Don't ask me how.

I found that Dad's bank and credit card activity ends abruptly on May 7th. This activity is how I used to track him down- back when I still cared enough to bother- it's possible that he figured out that he can be tracked via his plastic and has switched to all-cash, but I think that's unlikely.

The most likely scenario is that he's been dead since May 7th. Or 8th.

It must seem awful cold of me to be able to write about it like that, but that's the way is with alcoholics. I have tried to help him, but he has made his choices and he'll die with them.

I've made my choices too.
My choices are not his choices.
I intend on living with mine.

Anyway, I expect the shit will hit the fan very soon. There's already a considerable amount of fecal turbulence in my neighborhood, so if I'm not around much, don't be alarmed. I'm doing what's needed and I'll be back soon.

Then again, I could post again in an hour.

I honestly don't know what's going to happen, I only know what's NOT going to happen.

-I am NOT going on a wild-goose intervention chase for my AWOL parent.

-I am NOT going to stop playing music, alone or on the radio.

-I am NOT going to quit writing.

-I am NOT going to take a drink.

Not giving in,
Allan

Them Bones