From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Sat May 05 2007 - 22:00:11 EDT
The American polity is full of lies, lies, lies. Now that the full implications of the horrific effects of the Bush-Cheney-Blair Middle-East policy are becoming clearer, a lot of Yanks and Brits run for cover, claiming the Yankee equivalent for "wir hab'n dass nicht gewusst" [German for "we did not know of it" - said in reference to the Holocaust] and blaming "faulty intelligence" (discounting the plain common sense of decent men, and jurisprudence), while yet others engage in an autopsy of the lunatic Bush-Cheney imperialism, showing who said what and when to whom, and what the effect of that was. Dick Cheney himself, of course, still prides himself on having annihilated the Hussein regime, and "fuck you, mate" if you don't agree with him. He is, after all, still the vice-president, and in control of something (a dickhead). One day in future, I hope, he will have so little power, he will be begging for mercy from ordinary folks to have his humanity accepted. At least, if we live in a just world by then. As in Bob Dylan's song, "Like a rolling stone" or "Times are a changing". An example of current Washington controversies is conservative journalist Charles Krauthammer (b. 13 March 1950), Washington Post Columnist and Fox News commentator as well as former psychiatrist and GW Bush admirer. It bears a mention, if you want to follow me, in pondering the perfidy of the American polity. In a Washington Post column (Friday, May 4, 2007) the target of Krauthammer's bile is ex-CIA chief George Tenet (who just released his autobiography), and Krauthammer wants to defend Bush against Tenet, which is of course his "constitutional right" (personally, I prefer CIA Tenet to Krauthammer, though my ethics are quite different). Slating Tenet pretentiously, as a yawn who warms up old news, and twists the facts, Krauthammer postures that: "Tenet writes as if he assumes no one remembers anything. For example: "There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat." Does he think no one remembers President Bush explicitly rejecting the imminence argument in his 2003 State of the Union address in front of just about the largest possible world audience? Said the president, " Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent" -- and he was not one of them. That in a post-Sept. 11 world, we cannot wait for tyrants and terrorists to gentlemanly declare their intentions. Indeed, elsewhere in the book Tenet concedes that very point: "It was never a question of a known, imminent threat; it was about an unwillingness to risk surprise." Tenet also makes what he thinks is the damning and sensational charge that the administration, led by Vice President Cheney, had been focusing on Iraq even before Sept. 11. In fact, he reports, Cheney asked for a CIA briefing on Iraq for the president even before they had been sworn in. This is odd? This is news? For the entire decade following the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Iraq was the single greatest threat in the region and therefore the most important focus of U.S. policy." Blah blah blah, and and so on (this guy is really pretentious). Mr Bush was talking "pre-emptive... anything". Bob Woodward highlights the salient point: Tenet writes in his autobiography that the Bush-Cheney administration's war cabinet on Saturday, Dec. 21, 2002 (three months before war, where Tenet made his famous "slam dunk" comment), was "essentially a marketing meeting" to decide what intelligence could be made public to prove Iraq had WMDs. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/03/AR2007050301893_2.html?hpid=topnews The war politics was just a fucking "marketing", which is what Americans forget. The Yanks also tried to bribe the UN for their war mania. The essence of the matter is quite simple. In response to 9/11, the Yankee elite wanted BLOOD. They wanted a war, and they wanted a war that they could win. Any excuse would do, and any bribery would do. They wanted to assert the superiority of their own values. The problem they have now, is that they did not win the war they picked, and that is really their only important problem, as far as they are concerned. The fact is that they didn't win it. That is the scar. Such melancholy. Such sadness. Such schmalz. The pretzels are going stale, darling. For the average Yankee... truth is ultimately bullshit. Winning, that's the thing, especially "if I win myself". Like in a basketball game. Nobody wants to be a loser. After 9/11, the Yanks wanted to hit back at something. Emotions are one thing. The "chessgame" of geopolitics (Brezezinski) is another. On the one hand, Americans expected the president to do something decisive. But on the other hand, juridically, the self-suiciding Saoudi terrorists really left nothing at all to hit back at, except Allah. And you cannot really hit back at Allah, because Allah is everywhere, and he's still there, even if you hit at him. And Allah will hit back, because Allah knows you better than you thought you did yourself. That is, how Allah (or God, or whatever your description of fidelity to the Good) is, insofar as he demolishes every lie you ever entertained about yourself eventually. You might have nuclear bombs. Allah might have disposable razors. And you'd lose, even although you have nuclear bombs, and Allah only razors. Well, meantime....bit of fresh air... this is Realpolitik... why not turn some bad shit happening into an opportunity, and advance some plans that had been sitting in the Washington policy cupboard for a long time (as Krauthammer admits), such as getting rid of the Saddam Hussein regime, and tidying up Afghanistan a bit, all with a view to letting the oil pipelines carry the oil to where it ought to go, i.e. America ? Redrawing the global political map, as it were? Fostering a bit of democracy (it has recently slid down the list of geopolitical priorities, as the BBC acknowledges)? And, at the same time, teach those "dirty Arabs" a lesson about "who's the real boss", around here ? The unwritten assumption, as always, is that America has the God-given right to intervene militarily and politically anywhere in the world it bloody well chooses, law or no law. This racist imperialism is not just a theological error, it is also an important political error and a moral error. The American imperialists should go home, and stay home, and sort out their own domestic problems, rather than tell the world how to behave. Who wants the American murders and poison, in their own country? Nobody does. Who wants America to export its poisonous problems? Nobody does. As the National Geographic indicates, the majority of the American public is woefully IGNORANT about international relations - they couldn't even find Iraq on a map if they tried - and even if they aren't, the majority of them couldn't even give a shit about a few million Iraqi's dying yesterday, now, or later someplace far away, as result of America's meddling in their country (the CIA had its role in bringing Saddam Hussein to power!). What is worse, they are ignorant of their own country - a country that claims to lead the world. Insanely enough, more of the Yanks are concerned with turning so-called "Islamics" into good America-loving Christians, with Bible imports and evangelists spreading the good word, even as masses of Iraqi people (and even christian missionaries) are being blown apart by Buda Wagons (borrowing Mike Davis's terminology). (What fucking morons, no other world is possible?!). I just read James Risen's book "State of War" (2006) and it's a gas - he shows how the competition between federal bureaucracies meant that there really was no clear plan for what to do, after Saddam Hussein's power had been smashed... God bless America, nobody else does, and they just make it up, as they go along. Even Hilary Clinton wonders explicitly about the stupidity of federal politics, specifically the failure to plan for post-Hussein Iraq. Okay, you might say, this polemic of mine is all too negative, and so what about the *positive* side of America, the healthy side of Americans. People love hearing about positive things, they hate negative things. And yep, you're exactly correct about that. Because, despite the political termites in the Yankee political termite heap, there *are* also a whole lot of good Americans (yep), and they are also doing a whole lot of good in world affairs, isn't that so (yep)? This is not neoconservative scumtalk, this is Marxist talk, socialist talk, communist talk, the talk of people's reality, nevermind the propaganda. So okay, let's do a bold communist Karl Popperian "though experiment" to balance this thing out. Let's imagine that America really "led the world", rather than destroy it with its bombing, torturing, short-changing, self-enriching and ethnic cleansing campaigns, gobbling all the world's resources it extracts from the rest of the world, and holding the world to ransom with its financial chicanery (this is me, being utopianist). How would America - if it was not deeply corrupt, and morally contemptible - lead? What would they lead with? America would lead with its most advanced sciences (from anthropology to zoology). It would lead with its most advanced technology (which isn't necessarily Microsoft). It would lead with its most advanced understanding of the arts... It would help countries to get out of debt, instead of profiting from their debt. The media would not be dominated by Rupert Murdoch, but by people who had the true interests of humanity (its true values, survival values and optimal values) at heart. In other words, America would lead with the best of the knowledge and know-how it has, by example and practical proof, showing the world the things that it knows are practically possible and best for human to achieve, that are within its reach, that people who dream of it can reach, if they have the resolve and will to reach it. It would lead that way, with the knowledge that ultimately you cannot cheat with what is really true, and what is really valuable for human beings. America would not claim it had all of the truth, only some of the truth. It would lead, without any military weapons or threats, without holding the world to ransom, without tricky Israeli rip-offs and lies, it would lead, because it had arguments and ideas that convinced the world with rational and practical proof! This contrasts with leading the world with torture, murder, swindles, threats, rape, bribes, lies, and fraud. But how could it "lead", without even understanding the insights gained by many other cultures? How could it possibly lead, when it "conveniently" hides the brutal poverty and misery inside America itself? How America pisses on its own "pipple"? How America pisses on the truth? If you are materially rich, it is easy to be arrogant like neocon Paul Wolfowitz, with his World Bank money, with a few million dollars stashed away. It don't matter if he loses his job, he can still live off the fat of the land. He doesn't end up, having to do workfare. He can prattle about "world poverty" all he likes, as he enriches himself from taxpayers money. It's easy to think you know qualitatively and quantitatively more, than if a poor person "thinks". Well, we might be poor, we might not be rich "academics" and bureaucratic "advisors" and cognoscenti, but we can think! And often, we can think very well, as a matter of fact. We might think better than you rich academics. Fuck you rich bastards, academics and scum who say we cannot think! We hope your expensive yachts will suffer shipwreck, and that you will drown in the sea you "love so much" blah blah blah. What do you know about the sea... the sea you rape, with your dragnets. One day, we turn the tables on you. If you want to know, what we think, it is this: Lies, dripping off your mouth like dirt Lies, lies in every step you walk Lies, whispered sweetly in my ear Lies, how do I get out of here? Why, why you have to be so cruel? Lies, lies, lies I aint such a fool! Lies, lies in my papas looks Lies, lies in my history books Lies, lies like they teach in class Lies, lies, lies I catch on way too fast Fire, fire upon your wicked tongue Lies, lies, lies youre trying to spoil my fun Lies, lies you dirty jezebel Why, why, why, why dont you go to hell? Why, why you think me such a fool? Lies, lies, lies honey thats ya rules! Lies, lies, lies, lies, oh my lies, ... - Rolling Stones, "Lies"
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