a little of this and a little of that, simmer and voila!! you have a terrorist.
Hello, Tag! and Gruess Euch or something...my German is at this point, vestigial...this is Todd's state-side school-pal and fellow quasi-antipatriot. Here goes my attempt to prove that A is A. Also, that a terrorist is whoever "they" are. And that we, are "counter-terrorist"...which is to me the same damn thing but with bigger guns.U.S. says bomb hit wrong house in Iraq
Dependability of verity in matters other than carnage and melodrama aside (re: above cited link's origin) and despite the irony of the header "Transition of Power" (as though it were ever anywhere but out of the hands of the civilian population and [to me, axiomatically, as it is in any center of resources but not riches] dictatorial 'regime' or its not-just-symbolically-rear-entry-variety puppeteer being a totally moot, titular veneer and the work of assholes no matter the offered-up flavor and then without delay arises the parallel of the non-gamble in a forecast for an incessant putrid slush from any so-named party onto those below - so again, flavor) but so in sum I just mean in such sordid matters you can not only rely on the comedy surely but also in some aspects the verity of the reporting and also on the vile specificity of it. Opportunists (the media in this case) have no scruples, only an acumen of what could be made into capital or a funnel to it, through the assumption of public focus, or just the pulpy desire of Americans to see horrors, react to them, but only through a sort of tabloid mentality...it's almost like a caricature (the impression taken by viewer, I don't mean the salience of the issue...well except under supposedly globally educated and democratic duress or "scrutiny").I hope this introduction doesn't baffle or call out too detrimentally any scattered process I dub reason, or logic and well either way I welcome expository rebuttal or dissection or requests for further perspicacity or elaborated boobery. So now, to the bat-cave or the core of the political Döner-Kebab...usw.
After several weeks of grasping for a solid topic for a first deluge, I have taken instead the collage of a probably too-raw but nonetheless just thought-feeding opinion on a cycle; one describing our (as in American) participation in the for-this-week mission of whatever falsely evolved just-the-same-as-before-variety of imperial terror we're calling pro-democractic. This article, above - though brief - sort of clinched my atomized feelings about an obvious but unspoken issue, at least in my neighborhood, and for-the-love-of-Cod did it need a crotch to at once assemble this all-wood but trunkless fray of branches and tendrils.
Ahem, future reference I guess would allow an asterisk skirting all flowery bellestristic window drapery upon the aforesaid.
*
The important practical, current, and by focus nuclear (pardon the pun) concern is illustrated exactly in this most recent happenstance. It's almost without reproach that "58 strikes on Monday" is mentioned. We can just assume without even discussing quantity and just say that we're doing a lot of damage and prejudice is a loose and barely applicable term - to the tune of 30K-100K innocents killed. I guess that's progress; if they're dead they don't need security or well....anything. But so, in this episode of the "white death" we just OOPS! vaporized 66 percent of someone's family. I don't think they are calmly pondering the universal implications of this event and whether on the whole we didn't mean it because we're really trying to blow up the "terrorists" the "enemy" and other "Saddam loyalists" (so, likely, the neighbor who was so motivated by the eradication of his entire life the previous week or day or hour) and ensure the "transition to democracy" (which would be easily accomplished by withdrawal, removing the cannon we've installed that is perpetuating the entire fiasco and is just totally prima facie bullshit in its civic validity). Being bereaved absolutely, indentured even more firmly in their already years long plight, you have to wonder - judging by the pandora's box's worth of "insurgents" that just fly out of the woodwork mostly in the areas where we're fighting "them" - why there is any sensible differentiation between "the enemy" and "the Iraqi people" to anyone with any information.
I find the notion beyond gut-wrenching that no one in the "liberal media" questions the actual causality of our role in the (if memory serves) escalating cycle of death and doom in a(nother) country that in essence doesn't even know what the hell "Iraq" is...it's not like the national boundaries mean anything...the only coagulation even noteworthy is sectarian and fundamentalist and in no way are they feelin' skippy about our continued game of blindfold-on anti-darky laser-tag. I'd say the commonplace belief that America should be 86'd and a rudimentary and poorly aimed but nonetheless unilateral process in a grassroots fashion of the civilan population rising up to oust us despite the rhetoric spouted off to disguise the actual reality of our tyranny is a sign that the people that live there want things arranged and decided on their terms. The people should rule...as they choose, not as we do. Democracy isn't even present in our own country. The people are totally removed...and they have to be, or the anti-socialist gang bang wouldn't go on. In such places it is present (and it follows that these are the rare examples of nations that have extricated themselves from our hegemony, and hence, are in mainstream circles damned) it's subverted as some sort of "radical" government. Venezuela being a solid example of a nation with a popular movement that actually rose up and worked, in the case of the election then coup then re-election of Chavez.
I had this conversation (concerning the Iraqi civilian/after-atrocity-now-a-terrorist insurgent dichotomy) the other weekend with someone I consider fairly well-read and open to radical or orthagonal points of view. He just couldn't understand my equation of "the terrorists" with "plain old Iraqis"...one into the other with a brief dusting of white phosphorous...he kept returning to the "well, we're there now so, why should we just leave, what if another 'dictator' takes over"...you give people social security, keep greedy hands off their nation, and things will sort themselves out on their terms...it's their country and they can do what they choose with it. They are NOT a threat to anyone...it's the weakest country militarily in the region and you've got Big Brother the Unites States of Israel next door and they totally dominate anything.
Here's Noam Chomsky with his usual wit and plain-speak :
"The doctrine, to oversimplify, is that we have to believe the United States would have so-called liberated Iraq even if its main products were lettuce and pickles and [the] main energy resource of the world were in central Africa. Anyone who doesn't accept that is dismissed as a conspiracy theorist or a lunatic or something. But anyone with a functioning brain knows that that's not true—as all Iraqis do, for example. The United States invaded Iraq because its major resource is oil. And it gives the United States, to quote [Zbigniew] Brzezinski, "critical leverage" over its competitors, Europe and Japan. That's a policy that goes way back to the second world war. That's the fundamental reason for invading Iraq, not anything else."
And if cars ran on pickles and lettuce it would be so. The people mean nothing to Bush & Co.
We have simply begun a "pre-emptive" takeover of a weak defenseless peasantry sitting on the greatest patch of petroleum on the planet. Had we not done a thing, and restored humanitarian support to the region, Saddam would likely have been ousted on their terms (as he would have been prior to the 1st Gulf Conflict). Granted this may have also lead to a Shi'a majority annexing the oil fields in Saudi Arabia and then making a reticent, but better-than-nothing defensive alliance with Iran. With China basically unstoppable on the terms we prefer to operate (militarily) and the area already threatening to change its currency of trade from the dollar to the Euro, we had to make a schism in the form of a puppet regime operating and divesting its riches to us on our terms. It also serves as a trial run should/for when military motion against Iran become/s compulsory...at least to the masters of the globo-chemical economy. This administration has legitimized the "supreme crime" as it was classified at Nuremberg: aggression against a sovereign nation outside the specific instance of immediate and imminent threat or attack. That doesn't entail "perceived" imminence...it means, bombs are raining down just next door and we're next. Not, "well, you need to prove to us that the things we can't prove don't warrant a strike". That's just elementary morality. You don't say, we're going to fuck you up unless you give a reason otherwise. Innocent, until guilt is ascertained without doubt. That's democratic and moral. Morality isn't "what the Bible might mean"...it's what you choose to do to those beneath when you've reached the top rung and snatched hold of the smoldering fire-poker.
One can only shudder or feel the rising vexation at being without any representative co-efficient at the level of (and faced with the dormancy of) the impotent UN in other far greater and possibly globally dire military lethality.
It doubly-so sends a message to the remaining powers on the planet, as was the case with N. Korea: that you must arm yourselves, or be steamrolled, castr(o)ated and gentrified.
The cycle continues...and the mark of Ouroboros has a sort of omnious crescendo to it, as time elapses; it remains annular, succinct and not an indecorous (in its eternal cannibalism) nor inappropriate summation of the geopolitical kingpins' inevitable (or perpetual) likely ends.
posted by C-Mentat @ 13:04
4 Comments:
Great post, looking forward to some heated back-and-forth on these issues. Whether intentional or not, "in-the-name-of-Cod" brought an irreverant smile to my face. Hadn't considered invoking seafood as an oath, but I guess I can't rule it out now...
I think the most important thing you mention is that this is not something new. This is all a cycle which has repeated itself, not just in US history, but also centuries earlier with the British Empire and the Dutch East India Company. What is amazing is how those in power always find new and sneaky (in the case of Bush and cronies not so subtle) ways to decieve the public into believing that they have honorable and universally good intentions. What's clear is that power and money always will transcend morality. With language, media, and policy, 'they' (in this case our leaders) are rekindling a new (but historically very old) dichotomy of good and evil and convincing us that this new Civilizing Mission is ambivalent. This time, we're not civilizing the savage but indoctrinating those from 'non-democratic' nations. Shame on them.
Cod. Intentional. Smee!!! Haha.
http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/23/wirq23.xml
I'll expound on this later tonight after class.
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