Well & Truly

“First of all, I think it’s been totally consistent. But here’s what’s been consistent: We killed Soleimani, the number one terrorist in the world by every account, bad person, killed a lot of Americans, killed a lot of people.” Donald J. Trump

Another day in America, another nonsensical statement from King Donald I. Unhinged is the new normal in the nation’s capital. At the rate we’re going, it won’t be long before we see fistfights on the floor of Congress, as was common in the 19th century. Perhaps this isn’t a bad thing. I’d pay good money to see someone knock Mitch McConnell over the head with a walking stick. The man from Kentucky is a toad, and deserves a serious ass-kicking, as do most of the spineless members of the GOP’s Trump Cult.  

I was unaware that Qasem Soleimani was the No. 1 terrorist in the world. I thought that title belonged to Bibi Netanyahu. 

You have to admire the ingenuity of the US when it comes to naming unpleasant acts like assassination, torture and kidnapping. Targeted killing and enhanced interrogation techniques and extraordinary rendition sound more sophisticated. Upstanding nations like the US and Israel and Saudi Arabia would never engage in barbaric conduct like assassination, torture and kidnapping....

Believe that and you may as well believe every one of the more than 15,000 false and misleading statements that have tumbled from Trump’s mouth over the last four years. 

Call me naive, but I was astounded by the US response to the Iraqi parliament’s recent vote to expel all US military forces from the country. The State Department had the gall to make the preposterous claim that the US is a force for good in the Middle East. Try selling that line in Syria or Libya or Yemen. And then the US went full mob boss and told the Iraqi government that all its money held in US banks would be frozen if US forces were expelled. I was under the impression that Iraq was a sovereign nation rather than a US colony. Obviously, I was wrong. I forgot that the US never leaves. 75 years after World War II, US forces remain in Germany and Japan and Italy and Korea, ostensibly for the protection of these nations. Sure. And climate change is a hoax cooked up by the Chinese.  

I’ve never been to Iraq and have never met an Iraqi, but I started imagining a boy who was ten years old when the US launched shock and awe in 2003. To that point, his life revolved around his Baghdad neighborhood, his school, his family, and playing football with his friends. Then the US attacks. Cruise missiles and laser-guided munitions rain down, the ground shakes and fires burn across the city. He must remain indoors, away from the windows. His mother cries softly, his father curses Saddam, curses the US, curses his fate for being born in this country. The boy’s father wishes he could take his family to Canada or Sweden, someplace where it’s safe to venture outside and the electricity remains on. The father lived through US economic sanctions. He knows deprivation firsthand; he knows death, having lost a brother in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980’s. Saddam Hussein was a butcher, but at least under the regime food was plentiful and life had a semblance of normalcy and predictably. It was possible then to hope his son would have an easier life. What could he hope for now? The boy is terrified all the time, afraid to leave the house. 

Americans are conditioned to ignore the suffering of others. American lives matter more, have more value, so what if we kill half a million Iraqis? Or thousands of Afghans? American violence is always justified, cloaked in righteousness, for are we not the world’s champion of freedom and democracy? We’re the good guys. The red, white and blue avengers.  

Right. If only the historical record backed our rhetoric, but it doesn’t, not by a long shot. Haiti, Panama, Grenada, Guatemala, Argentina, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, the list of countries we’ve invaded or meddled in is very long and very bloody. Under the Trump regime we have achieved full rogue nation status. Trump broke the closet door and now we openly, brazenly, enthusiastically, side with tyrants, dictators and zealots. 

In the immortal words of Hunter S. Thompson, “We are well and truly fucked.” 

Back In The US of A

“Nationalism has again become a seductive but treacherous antidote to an experience of disorder and meaninglessness.” Pankaj Mishra, Age of Anger: A History of the Present

If I was struck by anything during our trip to Italy it was the concept of time, time measured in centuries, marked by monuments and statues, columns and frescoes, by monarchs and popes and princes, by invading armies, by rise and fall, by ideas that took hold in one place and spread to another. For an American, whose country is still a toddler by these standards, it’s instructive to walk along cobblestone streets that were laid long before Europeans discovered the New World. Walking those streets, standing awestruck in St. Peter’s basilica in Rome, one considers the continuity of the human species, and how from ancient times to now, human beings haven’t changed all that much. There have always been saints and prophets, men (and a few women) with an unquenchable thirst for power, artists and poets, and average people trying to eke out an existence. Always tension between the powerful and the powerless, questions of who should rule, and why? The church? The king? The military commander? The philosophers? One thing is certain -- in whatever nation, in whatever era -- the powerful are loath to share their power with the masses.

George Herbert Walker Bush, father of W, husband of Barbara, passed away while we were traveling. When I saw the news on my phone I knew an outpouring of hagiography would follow, as it always does when a former American president dies. The major media outlets, pundits and talking heads, of whatever political persuasion, close ranks and heap praise on the deceased leader, obscuring, or ignoring altogether, the deeds of the man. Thus, George H.W. Bush becomes a kindly grandfather, devoted father, collector of colorful socks, faithful and decent husband, friend to political foes, and solid servant of the American empire. But like his son, Bush Senior was a man whose hands were stained with the blood of innocent people, from Central America to Iraq, women, children, infants. Father, like son, lied to the American people. Broke the law and lied his privileged ass off. Father, like son, pardoned his co-conspirators. The Bush family yacht is anchored in a cove of blood. We shouldn’t forget this or allow the subservient media to whitewash history.

Leave it to the French to stand up to the neoliberal world order and declare, enough! Enough catering to the wealthy at the expense of the masses. Enough with a government that fosters economic inequality and makes the lives of ordinary, working people more precarious and difficult. I’m not a proponent of violence, but on the other hand, property damage and disruption of commerce seems to be the only way to get the attention of those who wield political power. Do you remember how much good the largely peaceful protests around the world did in 2003 when George W. Bush launched the illegal invasion of Iraq? Bush laughed, Dick Cheney smirked. I wonder if the French Yellow Vests, who are not tied to any recognized political movement, left or right, have spread seeds that will land and propagate in other countries wracked by neoliberalism. I wonder if a corner has been turned and if France has pointed to a way out of this disastrous wilderness of free markets, mobile capital, and privatization.  

During our travels I read Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino and was struck by this passage: “It is the desperate moment when we discover that this empire, which had seemed to us the sum of all wonders, is an endless, formless ruin, that corruption’s gangrene has spread too far to be healed…” Sounds like the United States to me.

We're Outta' Here

“As soon as we believe that we cannot be citizens of the world, we lose the world of which we might have been citizens.” Andrew Solomon

My wife and I haven’t been abroad since 1998, when Bill Clinton was president, the dot-com bubble hadn’t burst, and the Twin Towers in New York were still standing, representing American power, not an American tragedy, and my father-in-law, Guero, was alive. In the big scheme of things twenty years isn’t a long time, but America -- and most of the world -- is a different place now. Very different. Much more on the surface, tilting toward raw, racist, cruel, crass, and deadly. Twenty years ago climate change was far in the future, a whispered warning among scientists, a problem we had time to deal with. We could deny it, push it to the back burner, go on extracting and burning fossil fuels, polluting the oceans, rivers and lakes, pretend that endless consumer consumption was sustainable. Today there are those, like Donald J. Trump and his enablers in the Republican Party, who continue to deny the evidence in front of them, the massive hurricanes, floods, wildfires, sinkholes, and warming of the oceans, but the rest of the world understands that catastrophic climate change is real, and it’s happening right now. Trump, as stupid and incoherent as ever, surveys the devastation caused by the Camp Fire in California and declares that we will have “great climate,” as if the climate is a product that can be bottled and sold on the cheap at Target. Meanwhile, his lawless administration does everything it can to hasten our demise.

The US has been a belligerent military power for more than twenty years, but in the post-9/11 hysteria the belligerence was given a double dose of steroids by Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. The US invaded Afghanistan, ostensibly to hunt down Osama bin Laden and make it untenable for terrorists to use Afghanistan as a base, then the mission changed to rooting out the Taliban, building infrastructure and democratic processes, all of which have been spectacular failures. The Afghan people have suffered for 17 years, their country, not stable to begin with after years of war with the Soviet Union, is even worse off -- and the US remains, unable to win or find a plausible way to withdraw. I have lost count of the number of times I have asked my elected representatives to explain why we are still in Afghanistan. The responses are pathetic.

Then, based on a mountain of lies and false evidence, and with most of the world against them, Cheney and Bush invaded Iraq and set the Middle East reeling. The promised cakewalk didn’t happen, nor did Iraqi citizens line the boulevards and toss flowers at the feet of American soldiers. Iraq was torn apart, sundered by sectarian violence, corruption, and rampant death. It remains the greatest military blunder in American history, and as if that were not bad enough, the invasion and occupation also proved to the world that America wasn’t any better than other countries who murder, torture and destroy. Killed the myth, except in the US, where every last soldier, sailor, marine, and Air Force desk jockey was treated as a conquering hero. The full-US-PR monty, football stadiums, airports, everywhere, support the troops. Don’t ask what they’re doing or where, just support them, no matter what. Naturally, Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld and all the rest of the perpetrators have walked away, written books, made money as media pundits, or, in Bush’s case, painted portraits and had his reputation rehabilitated. Fifteen years later, the US remains in Iraq, in neighboring Syria, and Libya, and other places in North Africa, and, let's not forget, our role in Yemen.

Nearly two decades of non-stop warfare has had domestic consequences, not in rejuvenating the anti-war movement, but in nurturing hyper-militarism and hyper-masculinity, the dangerous notion that all problems can be solved by state violence, against unarmed black people, Mexican immigrants and innocent children. Hate groups are ascendant, fueled by the rhetoric of Donald J. Trump and the grifters on Fox News. Absurd conspiracy theories flourish, like the idea that immigrants and people of color are waging genocide on white people. America is now a place where facts come to die. The president makes up his own reality in which he is always the biggest winner, the strongest man, the tough guy, the guy who knows stuff because of his very large brain.

For fourteen of the past twenty years I have written about all this stuff, and more, on this blog, now more than 700 posts. Shouts from the Balcony was my wife’s idea; ironically, she never reads this blog. Neither do my kids, which is amusing because they were the main reason I wanted to record some aspect of our times, so they would know, one day, what their father was thinking about and doing to exercise some agency in the world, to raise his voice, no matter how faint or ineffectual, against injustice. Think, I tell them, about all the people in this world, today, as we speak, who have almost no say over any aspect of their lives. Every massive wildfire, every hurricane-induced flood, every report of melting glaciers, I worry for their future. As many countries in the world, desperately trying to cope with climate change and income inequality and refugees and aggrieved citizens -- all of which can be traced back to the death machine that is unfettered capitalism -- turn to authoritarian figures for solutions, I worry for their future. As I look at the economy, knowing that its fundamentals are all wrong and completely unsustainable, I know a reckoning is approaching and I worry some more.

And over it all, my entire life, the threat of nuclear annihilation.

But in the short run there is a trip to Italy to make, the trip we were supposed to make in 1991, before we started raising a family, when we were much younger and I had more hair and a dark beard rather than a gray one. I am so looking forward to being outside the US for a couple of weeks, away from the non-stop insanity and stupidity, the rampant ignorance and poisoned atmosphere. Who knows, I may come back with a story or two to tell.

POEM: The Wrong Interview

W is back
Hawking his memoir
With the same self-satisfied certainty
The same smugness
He had when he declared “Mission Accomplished”
Now he re-tells facile lies about the threat Iraq
Posed to the U.S.
Insists that invading was the only option
That it wasn’t a mistake
Because Saddam is gone and 25 million
Iraqi’s are free

The American media is interviewing the wrong
Man

Ask an average Iraqi citizen about shortages
Of water and electricity
Of neighborhoods destroyed
Of families and friends gone
Of lives forever upended

Ask an Iraqi widow if life is better for her now
Than it was before America unleashed its fury
Find out how she feels about her freedom
As she maneuvers around concrete blast walls
Security checkpoints
Shootings
Bombings
Carnage

Ask questions that matter of people
Who suffer the consequences of W’s monumental
hubris

Ask Iraqi’s who languish in prison
How they feel as days become years
With no charges filed or due process
Allowed

Instead of talking to W
Go deeper with people who cannot
Walk away from the war
Settle into a quiet retirement on the ranch
Down in Texas

Ask the American mother whose only son
Was killed in Fallujah
If W’s invasion was worth it
Ask the American father whose only son came home
From two tours of duty
A ghost of his former self
If W’s occupation was worth it

For W it’s all about talking points
Spinning a tale
Burnishing his image
Convincing us that we are safer now
Better off
Never about the death and suffering he unleashed
On thousands of human beings

The Somber Smorgasbord

ABC News described Obama’s Iraq speech as “somber,” and that’s certainly a fitting tone for a Commander in Chief calling an end to combat operations after seven years and more than 4,000 American soldiers killed and thousands wounded.

But it was also a carefully crafted speech that offered a little something for everyone. For military folks there were the standard platitudes about bravery, sacrifice and honor; for those who see the Iraq invasion and occupation as a colossal blunder based on fabricated evidence and false justifications, the President made the nexus between the cost of the war and the dearth of domestic investment in jobs, infrastructure and education that has millions of Americans facing a uncertain future. For the hawks and imperialists Obama promised to destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan and transform that ravaged land into a bulwark against the terrorists. For the benefit of Republicans, Obama even mentioned George W. Bush, the man who enthusiastically pushed the button that unleashed the horror of war on Iraq.

Call it a somber smorgasbord.

Missing from the speech was any mention of Abu Ghraib or the thousands of Iraqis who were killed during the shock and awe invasion and the long, bloody occupation. The New York Times reported that number as 100,000 dead – independent observers have pegged the number as high as 600,000. Americans should not forget the thousands of Iraqis displaced from their homes – either by the invasion or the sectarian strife that followed. I wonder if we have any idea of the number of Iraqis maimed, deformed or crippled as the result of our effort to free them from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, find Weapons of Mass Destruction or give Iraq the gift of democracy.

Obama referred to the Iraqis as our “partners” and noted our common interests though he didn’t elaborate on what those interests might be. Obviously, the United States has an abiding interest in Iraq’s oil reserves, though American multinationals didn’t fare well in the oil contract sweepstakes. The United States would love for Iraq to check Iran’s power and influence in the region, but that’s unlikely to happen given that Iraq cannot even form a government six months after holding elections.

50,000 American troops and thousands of private contractors remain in Iraq, housed in gargantuan bases that resemble small American cities. If the tables were turned, the world upended, if Iraq had occupied America, how would Americans feel if the end of combat operations meant that 50,000 Iraqi soldiers would remain on our soil?

Truth is a casualty of war, and in the years ahead America’s imperial adventure in Iraq will be spun and revised and retold as a heroic, altruistic campaign, undertaken with pure motives and the noblest of intentions. This won’t be a difficult undertaking since many Americans already believe – despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary – that Iraq was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Myth will become history and history will become truth. In a few short years it will be as if none of the horrible things ever happened, as if the Iraqi people greeted our soldiers with flowers and cheering, just as Donald Rumsfeld promised they would.

Victory was one thing Obama could not claim the other night because there was never anything to win by invading Iraq.

Ye Shall Know Them by Their Sacrifice

George W. Bush led and misled the nation into two wars and charged the costs – enormous costs – on the national Visa card. Barack Obama took office and continued the practice, racking up more millions in debt for future generations to deal with. The wars continue. After nearly seven years, Iraq has settled into a mire of internecine and sectarian conflict that could flare up at any time, but at least the death rate for American soldiers has declined.

We should celebrate that fact, right?

We don’t tally the Iraqi dead or dislocated. It’s their country but they don’t matter enough to count how many have died or fled since Dick and Junior unleashed the hounds of war.

Afghanistan is another story. We stormed in full of retributive rage, kicked Taliban ass, relaxed and congratulated ourselves while the Taliban regrouped; when it became clear the Taliban wasn’t going to fold, we found ourselves in a fight in a very inhospitable land. Obama has doubled down, sending in more troops, investing more money, changing tactics…

But the costs of the war are still out of sight and mind, off the radar of most Americans because no sacrifice is required of us; we are not asked to change our lifestyles to support the war effort, we are only asked to salute the “brave men and women who stand in harm’s way” on Memorial Day and the 9/11 Anniversary. No draft to frighten the wits out of suburban kids and make them think – really think – about the realities of war, about what constitutes a real threat to the nation’s security, and about what justifies sending American men and women to distant lands to fight and die.

No general sacrifice. No war tax to pay the costs. Business as usual with the wars as minor inconvenience, a remote event to check in on every now and then. No images of dead Americans on the tube every night. No protests on college campuses. No riots. No sit-ins or teach-ins.

Same tale in the energy sphere. As oil bleeds from the Gulf of Mexico I remember Jimmy Carter in his sweater, in the late 70’s, solemnly telling Americans that we had to change our profligate ways and learn to conserve natural resources. Thermostat down, sweater on; smaller, more fuel efficient cars; mass transit systems; regulations on polluting industries. To show how serious he was about energy conservation, Carter had solar panels installed on the White House roof. Carter was right but perhaps too far ahead of his time, too honest with an electorate rattled by the Arab oil embargo and a dragging economy to accept that even America, the chosen nation, had to face limits.

When Reagan had the solar panels removed politicians everywhere took note of the political lesson: don’t dare ask Americans to sacrifice – those JFK ask-what-you-can-do-for-your-country days are over. Promise the people small government and low taxes, cheap gasoline, easy credit, and, above all, preach non-stop the inherent beauty of the free market. Happy days are here again and will stay forever as long as Big Business is allowed to operate unfettered by Big Government.

Reagan had the lines and the delivery, the actor’s ability to make us believe in an impossible dream. One of the worst things we did was to allow the oil companies to consolidate and become bigger and more powerful than ever, with economic and political clout unseen since the days of the Standard Oil trust. Unfortunately, we do not have a Teddy Roosevelt in our midst to restore order.

We want cheap, plentiful gasoline and a clean environment, but the two are incompatible. Oil extraction is messy, dangerous and damaging to the environment no matter how much commercial time ExxonMobil or BP or Chevron buy to convince us otherwise. We can burn oil or have a semi-livable planet, but not both.

No sacrifice at the national level, no sacrifice on the local either. We demand good schools, smooth roads, fire and police protection, clean air and water, parks and open spaces, but we don’t want to pay the price for these things. We fall victim to talking points and mantras spoken by charlatans and posers: taxes are evil, government can do nothing right, privatize everything, leave the wealthy alone and the poor to fend for themselves.

The point of no return went by in a blur.

We are the United States of No Sacrifice.

Endless War Memorials

Nine years fighting in Afghanistan, seven years of occupation in Iraq, a trillion dollars spent, thousands killed, wounded and maimed, and the lives of hundreds of thousands forever changed.

Happy Memorial Day. Slap another burger on the grill, crack another beer, pass the potato chips.

Counting private military contractors paid for by the American taxpayers, and UN personnel, there are upwards of 150,000 foreigners in Afghanistan. In the middle of this onslaught, Stanley McChrystal, the American commander, claims that the safety of Afghan civilians is his top priority.

Memo to Stanley: Civilians are the first casualties of armed conflict. The more of them you kill, the more their survivors will want to kill you.

Iraq is now a “democracy,” but so fractured that a government cannot be assembled. The weakness of the government leads to anger or opportunism among the populace, which leads to shootings and car bombings and suicide attacks, which leads to calls for increased security. U.S. “combat” forces are due to depart Iraq this summer (wink, wink), but don’t fret, the Americans aren’t going anywhere – not with billions of gallons of proven oil reserves under their semi-permanent and permanent military facilities, not to mention the largest embassy complex on the planet.

As author Kevin Phillips said, the U.S. military is now an “oil protection force.” Spread your world map out and notice where U.S. military facilities or rapid deployment resources are positioned, and the correlation between oil supplies and America’s “strategic interests” become sickeningly clear. “Strategic interests” is a euphemism the U.S. employs to give itself the right to use force wherever it deems appropriate.

In other words, where there is oil there are U.S. forces. This is the true fight for freedom and the American way of life.

Our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are undeclared. Under the Constitution, only Congress has the authority to declare war. Dick Cheney still laughs about how easy it was to get around that minor stipulation.

Nine years in Afghanistan, seven years in Iraq. Do you feel safer? Has the sacrifice in blood and coin been worth it?

Meanwhile, the source of much of the conflict between the Arab world and the west is ignored: Israel and the Palestinians. Today, in fact, Israeli defense forces attacked a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, killing between ten and nineteen people depending on what news sources you believe. Naturally, the Israelis claim they were fired upon by the civilians in the flotilla, or battled at close quarters by humanitarian activists armed with knives and clubs. Right. We’re expected to believe that a group of humanitarian activists would choose to take on the Israeli army.

World leaders – with the exception of the U.S., of course -- have been quick to condemn Israel’s latest actions as disproportionate. This is the same condemnation that was leveled when Israel launched a brutal attack against Gaza in 2009. More than 1,000 Palestinians were killed and much of Gaza’s infrastructure destroyed during that campaign – the point of which was to demonstrate to the people of Gaza the futility of siding with Hamas.

Israel has since blockaded Gaza, exacerbating a humanitarian crisis that the world would not tolerate were it happening anyplace else, but when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, all bets are off, and the political and diplomatic justifications for saying and doing nothing become as contorted as the lengths taken to ignore all moral questions.

Spinning History

The spin of history has begun
Karl Rove claims George W. Bush
“Liberated”
25 million Iraqis
from the grip of a brutal dictator
freed
millions of Afghans
from Taliban fanatics

Has Rove ever spoken with an Iraqi or an Afghan?
asked them how it feels to be “liberated” by a foreign power
whose soldiers now patrol their streets and occupy their cities,
lay down laws and mete out justice

Spin it any way you want
but for the Iraqis and the Afghans
it’s the same tired story
whether told in the King’s English
Russian
or on the editorial pages of the
New York Times

46 Iraqis died in a suicide bombing in Kirkuk today;
Baghdad is a city of ruins and blast walls;
the Taliban is back in business
moving on Kabul
attacking at will and fading away

Is this Rove’s idea of liberation?

Peddle your snake oil somewhere else, Mr. Rove
sell it to the fatherless sons and widows
of Baghdad & Kirkuk
the orphans of Kandahar

But don’t be surprised when they don’t buy it
unlike Americans
they know the difference between
truth and lies
fiction and fantasy

They know because they carry the full weight
of your master’s
boundless hubris
and bottomless arrogance
on their backs

The Graveyard of Empires

Why is the U.S. in Iraq? Most thinking citizens realize that the Bush Administration misled the nation into a pre-emptive war based on bogus information and an aggressive PR campaign that used ex-military officers and a compliant, negligent news media to push the case for invasion.

As the situation on the ground in Iraq changed, when it became clear that the Iraqis did not want us in their country, our rationale for the invasion changed from finding WMD to spreading Democracy to rooting out terrorists.

For the record: we found no WMD; discovered that freedom and Democracy cannot be imposed on another country, particularly one lacking a tradition of political freedom; and created chaotic conditions that will undoubtedly produce more terrorists, not less.

Yet, like empires before us, we persist in thinking that our will can be imposed on Iraq, that we can coerce a weak, fragmented Iraqi government to sign a security pact with the U.S. that will allow U.S. bases in the country in perpetuity, and secure the grandest prize of all – exclusive access to Iraqi oil for multinational energy companies.

I was listening to a lecture by a professor of classics a few days ago and perked up when he said that through the ages the Middle East has been the crucible of conflict and the graveyard of empires. Americans don’t like to think of their country as an imperial power with an empire; we shy from linking the freedom and Democracy-loving US of A with the Romans, the Ottomans or the British, but the fact is that America often imposes its will, its culture and its values on other nations by force – economic, political and military. We need to believe that America only wages war when it’s absolutely necessary, and that other, less enlightened nations, choose to start wars.

But we made the choice for the world to witness, and no matter how President Bush or John McCain or the mouthpieces on Fox News spin the truth, the consequences have been disastrous. The Occupation of Iraq is a military, political and moral failure, and a humanitarian nightmare. When American politicians or generals talk about “Victory” in Iraq it’s obvious they have little idea what victory looks like. The corporate-controlled U.S. news media may ignore what’s happening in Iraq in favor of the latest celebrity gossip, but ignoring what we have wrought will not make it go away.

I read somewhere that the U.S. seeks as many as 50 permanent military facilities in Iraq. I wonder about the proximity of those military bases to oil fields or distribution facilities and major highways. When we slice through the rhetoric and the distortions and the bluster, one fact stands clear and alone: multi-national energy companies want to use the taxpayer-supported U.S. military as a security force for their private investments.

Access to Iraqi oil was, and remains, the ultimate objective of this war-of-choice.  

4,000, and Counting

George W. Bush sounded as dim-witted as ever when he said, upon hearing of the 4,000th American killed in Iraq, that our dead had laid a “foundation for peace.”

Remind me -- was there War in Iraq prior to the American invasion?

Was there chaos, violence, car-bombings, suicide bombings, sectarian death squads, ethnic cleansing, and a mass internal exodus?

Prior to the U.S. Invasion and Occupation, did the electric grid work, did clean water flow through the pipes, did raw sewage get treated and could Iraqis move about the country in relative freedom and safety?

The people who brought us the Invasion and Occupation told us – told the entire world – that the armed action would be brief, relatively bloodless, and monetarily cheap; they told us that everyday Iraqis would rise up and establish a glorious Democracy in the Middle East; they told us that the Americans would be welcomed as deliriously as the French welcomed Americans in Paris in 1944.

Intelligent people the world over knew that invading Iraq for its purported role in the 9/11 terror attacks was an insane foray into a vipers nest; intelligent people knew that there was no logical nexus between 9/11 and Iraq; and those same intelligent people were quite certain that no Weapons of Mass Destruction would turn up in Iraq. When Bush changed the rationale from rooting out WMD to “liberating” the long-suffering Iraqi people, intelligent people knew the President was full of shit.

If the sole point of the Iraq Invasion and Occupation was freeing people living under tyranny, when is the U.S. going to invade Cuba, North Korea, Pakistan or one of several suffering African nations? Aren’t the people in those places worthy of a gift of freedom from the U.S.?

No matter how we mourn 4,000 American dead – and all of us should examine our complicity in this mess, though none more than George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and a number of lesser arrogant assholes -- ordinary, innocent Iraqis have suffered many times more. Every Iraqi killed or injured is like the proverbial pebble in a pond, emanating outwards, touching dozens of lives – mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, nephews, nieces, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends.

The failed Occupation of Iraq may have vanished from American TV screens, but the consequence of our stupidity, hubris, and foolishness goes on, and on. We may bestow medals on the survivors of this grim exercise in imperial overreach, call them heroes, name streets and federal buildings in their honor, but none of that hoopla will erase the fact that this Invasion and Occupation was based on lies and propaganda and had nothing to do with keeping the U.S. secure.

Surge of the Status Quo

Tonight Bush will give us another serving of his Iraq jive.

More “stay the course” garbage, more lies about Iraq being the central front in his failed “War on Terror,” more gibberish about America’s “vital interests.”

The people’s elected representatives will once again suck it up and choke it down, then wipe their chins and justify their cowardice on Fox News and CNN.

The people won’t buy it, but then, it’s clear that our opinion doesn’t make a bit of difference.

Bush was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a platinum fork up his ass, and, in addition to believing that the Almighty speaks to him and him alone, he obviously believes the American people are dolts.

Bush’s ballyhooed troop reduction next summer merely brings us back to the same fork in the road where we stood in February 2007. The United States military will still maintain a gargantuan footprint in Iraq, and will still stand between numerous armed factions fighting for hegemony in a political vacuum.

Americans and Iraqis will still be killed, maimed, wounded, and displaced.

Our chances for success – whatever the hell that means – will be the same then as they are today: slim and none.

Face it, Americans never quit an Occupation voluntarily. Sixty-two years after the end of World War II, America still maintains major military installations in Germany and Japan. More than fifty years after Korea, we’re still hunkered down in the South. And if the government of South Vietnam had been less corrupt, we’d still be there, too. Vital interests, you know?

Bush’s troop reduction shell game buys time for his two primary neocon dreams to come true: the completion of permanent American military facilities in Iraq, and the passage by the Iraqi government of legislation that will give American oil companies access to Iraq’s reserves.

Once those objectives are accomplished, we’ll have to stay in Iraq forever in order to protect our “vital” interests, not to mention the investments of American oil companies.