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Illustration: The Decider works to stave off Impeachment, not realizing that there is no real move to impeach him unless Cheney goes first.
The latest major outrage committed by the Decider, Inc., was the commuting of “Scooter” Libby’s prison sentence. Republicans try to defend it by pointing out that Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, but then Libby was the attorney for Rich in the deal so that does not go very far. Liberals are furious. How could he do this???!! I will tell you.
I was not a bit surprised. See, if “Scooter” (named after his hero, Phil Rizzuto) went to prison, he would talk about Cheney and Rove and their role in this crime. He was no Gordon Liddy. Nope, he was the Scooter. Furthermore, if he were pardoned right away, he could no longer continue the appeals process and plead the 5th even if Congress gave him immunity. So, keep him out of prison, but do not pardon him until Bush and Cheney and Rove are out of office – made perfect sense to me. Where is the surprise?
Of course, if you think the Decider has a sense of right and wrong, then you will be surprised. But then, you probably would not be reading this, either.
One of the networks quoted a Palestinian as being happy to become a citizen because “Now I have a home.” Her name was something like Luzyinski.
More Republicans are deciding that maybe the war in Iraq was not such a good idea and saying so (elections, don’t you know?). No worries, however, as now Generals are supporting it on the air. I am growing increasingly weary of the fat bald one – but then I have a remote, so no worries here either.
Following are two interesting articles, both of which are wonderful examples of the Absurd. The first is by the great Robert Fisk, who now resides in Lebanon and speaks Arabic fluently, on Tony Blair as the “point man” on peace in the Middle East. I did not think that justice could be done to this nonsense, but Fisk pulls it off quite well.
The second is about jingoism (“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”) and the whole flag nonsense. About the best comment I’ve heard about this inanity was by the late comedian Bill Hicks. He describes an encounter with an angry audience member who tell him “My father fought for that flag for years in Korea!”
The reply was “Really? I got mine for $3 at K-Mart and it is made in Korea.”
*ZNet | Mideast*
*How can Blair possibly be given this job?
Here is a politician who has failed in everything he has ever tried
to do in the Middle East *
*by Robert Fisk; The Independent
<http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2697832.ece>; June 27, 2007*
I suppose that astonishment is not the word for it. Stupefaction
comes to mind. I simply could not believe my ears in Beirut when
a phone call told me that Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara was going
to create “Palestine”. I checked the date - no, it was not 1
April - but I remain overwhelmed that this vain, deceitful man,
this proven liar, a trumped-up lawyer who has the blood of
thousands of Arab men, women and children on his hands is really
contemplating being “our” Middle East envoy.
Can this really be true? I had always assumed that Balfour,
Sykes and Picot were the epitome of Middle Eastern hubris. But
Blair? That this ex-prime minister, this man who took his
country into the sands of Iraq, should actually believe that he
has a role in the region - he whose own preposterous envoy, Lord
Levy, made so many secret trips there to absolutely no avail -
is now going to sully his hands (and, I fear, our lives) in the
world’s last colonial war is simply overwhelming.
Of course, he’ll be in touch with Mahmoud Abbas, will try to
marginalise Hamas, will talk endlessly about “moderates”; and
we’ll have to listen to him pontificating about morality, how
he’s absolutely and completely confident that he’s doing the
right thing (and this, remember, is the same man who postponed a
ceasefire in Lebanon last year in order to share George Bush’s
ridiculous hope of an Israeli victory over Hizbollah) in
bringing peace to the Middle East...
Not once - ever - has he apologised. Not once has he said he was
sorry for what he did in our name. Yet Lord Blair actually
believes - in what must be a record act of self-indulgence for a
man who cooked up the fake evidence of Iraq’s “weapons of mass
destruction” - that he can do good in the Middle East.
For here is a man who is totally discredited in the region - a
politician who has signally failed in everything he ever tried
to do in the Middle East - now believing that he is the right
man to lead the Quartet to patch up “Palestine”.
In the hunt for quislings to do our bidding - ie accept even
less of Mandate Palestine than Arafat would stomach - I suppose
Blair has his uses. His unique blend of ruthlessness and
dishonesty will no doubt go down quite well with our local Arab
dictators.
And I have a suspicion - always assuming this extraordinary
story is not untrue - that Blair will be able to tour around
Damascus, even Tehran, in his hunt for “peace”, thus paving the
way for an American exit strategy in Iraq. But “Palestine”?
The Palestinians held elections - real, copper-bottomed ones,
the democratic variety - and Hamas won. But Blair will
presumably not be able to talk to Hamas. He’ll need to talk only
to Abbas’s flunkies, to negotiate with an administration
described so accurately this week by my old colleague Rami
Khoury as a “government of the imagination”.
The Americans are talking - and here I am quoting the State
Department spokesman, Sean McCormack - about an envoy who can
work “with the Palestinians in the Palestinian system” to
develop institutions for a “well-governed state”. Oh yes, I can
see how that would appeal to Lord Blair. He likes well-governed
states, lots of “terror laws”, plenty of security - though I’m
still a bit puzzled about what the “Palestinian system” is meant
to be.
It was James Wolfensohn who was originally “our” Middle East
envoy, a former World Bank president who left in frustration
because he could neither reconstruct Gaza nor work with a “peace
process” that was being eroded with every new Jewish settlement
and every Qassam rocket fired into Israel. Does Blair think he
can do better? What honeyed words will we hear?
I bet he doesn’t mention the Israeli wall which is taking so
much extra land from the Palestinians. It will be a “security
barrier” or a “fence” (like the famous Berlin “fence” which was
actually called a “security barrier” by those generous East
German Vopo cops of the time).
There will be appeals for restraint “on all sides”, endless
calls for “moderation”, none at all for justice (which is all
the people of the Middle East have been pleading for over the
past 100 years).
And Israel likes Lord Blair. Indeed, Blair’s slippery use of
language is likely to appeal to Ehud Olmert, whose government
continues to take Arab land for Jews and Jews only as he waits
to discover a Palestinian with whom he can “negotiate”, Mahmoud
Abbas now having the prestige of a rabbit after his forces were
crushed in Gaza.
Which of “Palestine”’s two prime ministers will Blair talk to?
Why, the one with a collar and tie, of course, who works for Mr
Abbas, who will demand more “security”, tougher laws, less
democracy.
I have never been able to figure out why the Middle East draws
the Balfours and the Sykeses and the Blairs into its maw. Once,
our favourite trouble-shooter was James Baker - who worked for
George W’s father until the Israelis got tired of him - and
before that we had a whole list of UN Secretary Generals who
visited the region, frowned and warned of serious consequences
if peace did not soon come.
I recall another man with Blair’s pomposity, a certain Kurt
Waldheim, who - no longer the UN’s boss - actually believed he
could be an “envoy” for peace in the Middle East, despite his
little wartime career as an intelligence officer for the
Wehrmacht’s Army Group “E”.
His visits - especially to the late King Hussein - came to
nothing, of course. But Waldheim’s ability to draw a curtain
over his wartime past does have one thing in common with Blair.
For Waldheim steadfastly, pointedly, repeatedly, refused to
acknowledge - ever - that he had ever done anything wrong. Now
who does that remind you of?
*ZNet | U.S.*
*Put Away The Flags*
*by Howard Zinn; http://www.Countercurrents.org; July 03, 2007*
**
On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and
all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its
anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America
to be blessed.
Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a
boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great
evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?
These ways of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated
from childhood on -- have been useful to those in power, and
deadly for those out of power.
National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and
lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion
(Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation
like ours -- huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass
destruction -- what might have been harmless pride becomes an
arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.
Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different
from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral,
expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization,
liberty, democracy.
That self-deception started early.
When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in
Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into
war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as
approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible.
The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: "Ask of me,
and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and
the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession."
When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men,
women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said:
"It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought
down to hell that day."
On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared
it our "Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by
Providence." After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York
Herald announced: "We believe it is a part of our destiny to
civilize that beautiful country."
It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country
went to
war.
We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war
in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it,
"to civilize and Christianize" the Filipino people.
As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at
least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu
Root, our secretary of war, was saying: "The American soldier is
different from all other soldiers of all other countries since
the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice,
of law and order, and of peace and happiness."
We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have,
perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq
civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of
brutality, of torture.
Yet they are victims, too, of our government's lies.
How many times have we heard President Bush tell the troops that
if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it
is for "liberty," for "democracy"?
One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense
of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor
becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the
justification for killing tens of thousands of people in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to
be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading
two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail
in 2004 that God speaks through him.
We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from,
morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.
We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to
any one nation.
* *
* *
*Howard Zinn*, a World War II bombardier, is the author of the
best- selling "A People's History of the United States"
(Perennial Classics, 2003, latest edition). This piece was
distributed by the Progressive Media Project.
1 comment:
Good points!
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