Papa Knows Best

It's not a reference to the just-passed Father's Day but to a letter Ernest Hemingway wrote to Esquire in 1935 on the coming world war. It's perceptive in a way that you don't tend to see today, when all of our major media outlets are owned, or at least controlled, by the same network of people and corporations who profit handsomely from wars and inflation. Highlights:

Not this August, nor this September; you have this year to do in what you like. Not next August, nor next September; that is still too soon; they are still too prosperous from the way things pick up when armament factories start at near capacity; they never fight as long as money can still be made without. So you can fish that summer and shoot that fall or do whatever you do, go home at nights, sleep with your wife, go to the ball game, make a bet, take a drink when you want to, or enjoy whatever liberties are left for anyone who has a dollar or a dime. But the year after that or the year after that they fight. Then what happens to you?

Or maybe, I dunno, there will be another awesome war this year! (And maybe another 9/11 just for fun, too.)

If there is a general European war we will be brought in if propaganda (think of how the radio will be used for this), greed, and the desire to increase the impaired health of the state can swing us in. Every move that is made now to deprive the people of their decision on all matters through their elected representatives and to delegate those powers to the executive brings us that much nearer war.

Substitute "Middle Eastern" for "European" and not much has changed in nearly 75 years, has it?

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

Inflation? What inflation?

War is no longer made by simply analysed economic forces if it ever was. War is made or planned now by individual men, demagogues, and dictators who play on the patriotism of their people to mislead them into a belief in the great fallacy of war when all their vaunted reforms have failed to satisfy the people they misrule. And we in America should see that no man is ever given, no matter how gradually or how noble and excellent the man, the power to put this country into a war which is now being prepared and brought closer each day with all the premeditation of a long planned murder.

Oh look, a very non-noble and non-excellent man is being given the power to start his third war in six years.

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

Or you'll just "be strong" and pass out water to little brown kids, or something.

Five Years

March 2008 is poised to enter the history books, and I would be remiss if I didn't stop to take note of the fifth anniversary this month of something rather momentous in the history of the world.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq? Well, no, I meant the establishment of this blog. Five years of Excellence in Bloviating – where does the time go?

But while I'm at it, there is the matter of the five-year-old Bush/Cheney/neocon hobbyist war that, to date, has wasted the lives of 4,000 American soldiers, physically and psychically maimed tens of thousands more, murdered as many as an estimated one million Iraqis, pissed away half a trillion (trillion!) dollars and counting of productive wealth, and turned the United States into a justly loathed pariah state.

Over the past few weeks, we -- the ordinary schmoes forced to absorb a fair chunk of the staggering costs of this most unnecessary evil -- have been treated to, on the one hand, numerous "The Surge Is Working!" proclamations from the moral and mental midgets who pushed this calamity on the world and, on the other hand, several "I Was Wrong" symposia featuring the less ideologically deluded but still monumentally dumb or dishonest (who knows which -- or cares, when the result is the same?) members of the professional commentariat.

In either case, the people who might provide the most interesting and penetrating insight into this disaster are seldom heard from: Those who opposed the war from the beginning.

Seriously, who the fuck gives a shit what some neocon "experts" from the Israeli American Enterprise Institute have to say in March 2008? They were and are all wrong, wrong, wrong. About everything. In a normal world -- one I find increasingly hard to inhabit, though I still deem the attempt to do so vital -- such people forfeit all credibility, and, if not run out of town on a rail, at least stop appearing on TV as "experts." I'm looking at you, Fred Kagan, Bill Kristol, and Robert Kagan, among many, many others. (Hey, even Dougie Feith, resigned Under Secretary of Defense currently Under Investigation for the bullshit he helped manufacture in support of invading Iraq as head of the "Office of Special Plans," has an important-sounding book coming out, no doubt explaining his murderous brilliance to us ungrateful plebes.)

Yo, George Bush, what happened to "Mission Accomplished"? Isn't Saddam Hussein out of power for, like, four years running now? What's the holdup in getting the fuck out of there? What's that? Oh, the real reasons for this war still haven't been made public? Despite a string of debunked fantasies -- from "weapons of mass destruction" to "implanting democracy in the Middle East" -- continuing to embarrass you and disgrace us?

Swell. As he leaves office -- scheming to start another war in Iran   -- George Bush may wonder about his place in history. Again, in a sane world, that place would be secure: in prison.

I don't take any pleasure in saying "I told you so," and I'm sure Orange County Register editorial writer Steven Greenhut doesn't, either, but as one of those critics-from-the-start who can provide the aforementioned interesting, penetrating insight, he is qualified to have the last word:

On April 6, 2003, I wrote in a column: "As I see it, this pre-emptive war is unjustified. There is no real threat to the United States, only a theoretical one based on faulty premises. It is unjust, in that it is not a war of last resort. It will kill lots of people. It will run up tens of billions of dollars in costs, and it will lead to the limiting of civil liberties at home. Furthermore, America will be managing Iraq for years, perhaps decades, and our presence there is more likely to destabilize than democratize the region. It's also a war based largely on the unrealistic Wilsonian sentiments that democracy can be imposed on people at gunpoint."

Later that month, I argued that the attack "will ignite the fires of Islamic fundamentalism and perhaps even prop up a neighboring Iranian fundamentalist regime that had been facing increasing domestic resistance." You get the idea. If we could figure it out, why couldn't the nation's brain trusts?

Indeed. And explain to me again why they aren't in jail yet.

Update 4/1: Oh, and by the way, despite the fact that the U.S. government spends hundreds of billions every year on "defense," almost as much as the rest of the world combined (think about that!), the director of the CIA basically says another 9/11 could happen anytime. Some defense! (Justin Raimondo has more.) Of course, the U.S. government doesn't actually care about American citizens, except insofar as we can be milked and exploited by the vampires who inhabit it.

Update II 4/1: More context on the Bush/Cheney planned assault on Iran. I wish this were an April Fool's joke, but all signs say it's coming, and soon. I can't wait to be told the Iranians hate us for our freedom, too.

Why I Do Not (And Will Not) Vote for President

Antiwar columnist Arthur Silber, in a, um, forthright essay entitled "Most of You Will Eat Shit Until the Day You Die," succinctly explains the reason I won't be one of the dumbasses voting for U.S. emperor this or any other year:

I'll be blunt, even rude: You can call it Republican shit. You can call it Democratic shit. You can call it progressive shit. It's still shit. It's still murder, and torture, and criminal war, and a growing surveillance state. If you vote for the Democratic or the Republican candidate for president -- and if you vote for almost any of the candidates for national office -- you're voting for murder. You're voting for torture. You're voting for criminal war. You're voting for the growing surveillance state.

Is that what you choose to do? Is that what you choose to support? Is it?

Without going to jail -- increasingly the place for any American with a conscience -- I can't stop financing murder, torture, and creeping totalitarianism. But by God I won't clap my hands and say "yeah" while doing it. Eventually voting for the emperor and his consuls will be made mandatory, but so long as it isn't I choose to disassociate myself from their crimes.

All that high school civics class bullshit is just that: bullshit.

Taxes Are the Price We Pay for Bullshit

I e-filed my taxes today. I can only hope that money goes to something worthwhile, like bombing some Iraqis, but I fear it will instead only go toward paying down Ted Kennedy's bar tab.


If taxes are the price we pay for civilization, is it fair to ask if we're getting more civilization every year?

Hagel's Philosophy of Right

It's no secret I hate politics and politicians. For the most part, I try to adhere to a strict "if we ignore them, maybe they'll go away" philosophy. (Pols are like spoiled children -- giving them attention is just giving them what they want.)

But I've been admiring Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel's outspoken criticism of Bush, Cheney, and their stupid war for a while now, and the prospect -- however remote at this time -- of his 2008 presidential candidacy gives me a sort of political thrill I haven't experienced in many years.

He hasn't said he's running, of course, and there's nothing really to say he will. And even if he did, I'm not sure I'd go back on my "don't vote, it only encourages them" vow. But if anyone could tempt me, it would be a guy who says stuff like this:

I took an oath of office to the Constitution; I didn't take an oath of office to my party or my president.

And this:

We have always been able to protect national security without sacrificing the liberties of the individual. Once you lose those rights, it's very hard to get them back. There have been arguments made that if we just give up a few rights, it will be easier to preserve our national security. That should never, ever happen. When you take office, you take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. That is your first responsibility.

Sending more troops to Iraq? That would be "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam." Slobbering all over Israel? That "need not and cannot be at the expense of our Arab and Muslim relationships." War as a solution to the world's ills? "If we are going to make it, we need a far greater appreciation and respect for others, or we're going to blow up mankind."

Hagel is like the anti-John McCain, that tiresome warmonger for whom I have an abiding contempt. And unlike current media darling Barack Obama, Hagel actually has substance. And balls. Watch him call his senatorial colleagues a bunch of pussies:



The guy's right, too. The majority party in Congress at any given time is the Spineless Douchebag Party.

Even better, though, Hagel has laid verbal beatdowns individually on clueless fucktard Condoallelozzzawhateverthefuck Rice and insufferable prick Joe Lieberman. I'd love to see more personalized tongue-lashings like that.

Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com has gone so far as to herald the "Return of the Old Right" in Hagel. I'm hardly that optimistic, but who knows? Maybe sometime in the not-so-distant future you'll see a "Hagel 2008" sign in front of my house.

Bonus points to any philosophy nerds who get the pun in this post's title.

Have We Won Yet?

President Bush gave a speech recently on his new Iraq policy. I didn't watch the whole thing, but the relevant part is up on good old YouTube.



Now, I'm no hotshot political analyst, but this seems like the same old Iraq policy to me. In fact, it seems like almost every other Bush policy, foreign or domestic.