Jefblog: January 2005

Friday, January 28, 2005

Walking Wounded

From the American Conservative magazine, which has been succinct and scathing in its criticism of the neo-facists now running the country....

For a brief moment perhaps the casualties will believe, then try desperately to keep believing, that they did something brave and worthy and terribly important for that abstraction, country. Some will expect thanks. But there will be no thanks, or few, and those quickly forgotten. It will be worse. People will ask how they lost the leg. In Iraq, they will say, hoping for sympathy, or respect, or understanding. The response, often unvoiced but unmistakable, will be, “What did you do that for?” The wounded will realize that they are not only crippled, but freaks.

The years will go by. Iraq will fade into the mist. Wars always do. A generation will rise for whom it will be just history. The dismembered veterans will find first that almost nobody appreciates what they did, then that few even remember it. If—when, many would say—the United States is driven out of Iraq, the soldiers will look back and realize that the whole affair was a fraud. Wars are just wars. They seem important at the time. At any rate, we are told that they are important.

Yet the wounds will remain. Arms do not grow back. For the paralyzed there will never be girlfriends, dancing, rolling in the grass with children. The blind will adapt as best they can. Those with merely a missing leg will count themselves lucky. They will hobble about, managing to lead semi-normal lives, and people will say, “How well he handles it.” An admirable freak. For others it will be less good. A colostomy bag is a sorry companion on a wedding night.

// posted by The Commander @ 7:04 AM 0 comments

Monday, January 24, 2005

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: Fascist America

""The biggest threat to American democracy is corporate power," Kennedy told us. "There is vogue in the White House to talk about the threat of big government. But since the beginning of our national history, our most visionary political leaders have warned the American public against the domination of government by corporate power. That warning is missing in the national debate right now. Because so much corporate money is going into politics, the Democratic Party itself has dropped the ball. They just quash discussion about the corrosive impact of excessive corporate power on American democracy.

// posted by The Commander @ 8:14 AM 0 comments

Sunday, January 23, 2005

Dying for Sycophants-Counterpunch

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

Being an administration that protects delusion with sycophancy, Bush operatives have cleared knowledgeable people out of the State Department and CIA, just as they cleared out the generals who predicted correctly that Iraq was not going to go according to the cakewalk plan.

Facts, analysis, morality and common sense are totally against the neoconservative jihad against Islam. The neocons respond by ignoring facts, silencing analysts, and closing down debate. Delusion is astride power, and America will dearly pay.

Condi is "with us." She toes the line and meets the necessary qualification to be Bush's Secretary of State. Listening to her babble on about the great things the US is doing to bring democracy to Iraq, I marveled at the insouciance with which Condi covered up Bush's strategic blunder and illegal war with the Jacobin claim that liberation is the aim of America's naked aggression.

// posted by The Commander @ 2:01 PM 0 comments

This must be our mantra, even as we work harder every day:

"A little patience," Jefferson wrote, "and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolved, and the people recovering their true sight, restoring their government to its true principles. It is true, that in the meantime, we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war, and long oppressions of enormous public debt. ... If the game runs sometimes against us at home, we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost. For this is a game where principles are the stake."

// posted by The Commander @ 11:29 AM 0 comments

Saturday, January 22, 2005

HEIL !!

Good ol' Al Cockburn...so witty and succinct! It must be that perfumed Mendocino air:

How bitterly Harry must regret not dressing up as Captain Cook. Then he could have had an enjoyable Tour of Contrition to the Antipodes and the Pacific region, apologizing to the Maoris and Hawai'ians for insensitivity to genocide. Who wants to go to Auschwitz at this time of year?

Of course the leaders of major Jewish organizations have had a field day, broadcasting their shock and dismay on an hourly basis and telling Harry to jog round the Auschwitz perimeter another couple of times. Moral reprobation from these folk about fancy dress looks threadbare in an age when Israeli soldiers force a Palestinian to play his violin at a border crossing.

How come Sharon didn't send those soldiers to Auschwitz to apologize for having forgotten that it's only sixty years since Jews with fiddles in Eastern Europe were being told by genuine Nazi murderers to hop about and play a few tunes. How come Sharon doesn't have to apologize for anything?

// posted by The Commander @ 10:08 AM 0 comments