(Note to literalists: the Watched column presently contains only a smattering of 'warblogs' because the facilitator of the template-change--Dr. Menlo--is not very familiar with them, and will be adding more as they are sent to him. Also, this blog may contain areas of allusion, satire, subtext, context and possibly even a dash of the surreal: wannabe lit-crits beware.)
Control
[Watch this space for: Pentagon and Petroleum, The Media is only as Liberal as the Corporations Who Own Them, Wash Down With, and Recalcify]
WARBLOGGER WATCH
Friday, May 14, 2004
There's an interesting piece by Naomi Klein today. And by interesting, I mean people who were intelligent enough to see the folly of the war before the pictures, general mayhem, and puppet governry that are all too apparent right now. Besides, the usual suspect warbloggers are just, well, totally incoherent at this point.
Naomi Klein, who made what I thought was a suicidal mission to Iraq to see what was happening for herself, has this interesting take on the working class stiffs behind the prison scandals. She makes the case for something called the "NAFTA draft". Here's an excerpt:
There's something else connecting the sorry state of the U.S. job market and the images coming out of Abu Ghraib. The young soldiers taking the fall for the prison-abuse scandal are the McWorkers, prison guards and laid-off factory workers of Mr. Bush's so-called economic recovery. The résumés of the soldiers facing abuse charges come straight out of the April U.S. Labor Department Report.
There's Specialist Sabrina Harman, of Lorton, Va., assistant manager of her local Papa John's Pizza. There's Specialist Charles Graner, a prison guard back home in Pennsylvania. There's Sergeant Ivan Frederick, another prison guard, this time from the Buckingham Correctional Center in rural Virginia.
Before he joined what prisoner-rights advocate Van Jones calls "America's gulag economy," Sgt. Frederick had a decent job at the Bausch & Lomb factory in Mountain Lake, Md. But according to The New York Times, that factory shut down and moved to Mexico, one of the nearly 900,000 jobs that the Economic Policy Institute estimates have been lost since NAFTA, the vast majority in manufacturing.
...And that's where the U.S. military comes in: The army has positioned itself as the bridge across the United States's growing class chasm: money for tuition in exchange for military service. Call it the NAFTA draft.
I think that's the one thing the warbloggers fail to understand is that the election is more than just about the war, it's sort of about whether the American economy is turned into a hallowed-out, Third World reality...It will be great for the Wal Marts and Dells of this world, lousy for the rest of us who actually have to live here. I'm not wildly enthusiastic about Kerry (I'm a former Dean supporter.). But I do think that he's a competent man. At the very least, he'll run a bad war with some small measure of efficiency and panache....
Ted owns that of course. By the way, this is his newest outrage, along with his most recent column. I don't think either are that outrageous to be blunt about it. How intelligent is it to not only to sign up to die, but to kill people who do not pose a threat to you? What possible career upside could counter those downsides?
Here's the first graph of Ted's column:
AN ARMY OF SCUM
Or, We're Looking For a Few Good Homosexual Rapists
NEW YORK--Now it's official: American troops occupying Iraq have become virtually indistinguishable from the SS. Like the Germans during World War II, they cordon off and bomb civilian villages to retaliate for guerilla attacks on their convoys. Like the blackshirts who terrorized Europe, America's victims disappear into hellish prisons ruled by sadists and murderers. The U.S. military is short just one item to achieve moral parity with the Nazis: gas chambers.
I was inspired to build this quiz when I noticed that comments on Littlegreenfootballs.com (a popular warblog) tended to be indistinguishable in tone and content from the writings of Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and the other architects of the "final solution."
Always indistinguishable? Well, maybe not - but close enough and often enough to be pretty disturbing. Yes, the quotes I've used here are all "cherry-picked" - from LGF and the Nazis both - but since the webmaster patrols LGF pretty thoroughly it's fair to say that his site is as defined by what he allows (e.g., calls to "sterilize" the "subhuman" Palestinians) as it is by what he doesn't (e.g., criticisms of Israel or George W). [more]
A WALK AROUND THE OLD NEIGHBORHOOD. Betcha never thought you'd see me again. But here I am, with a purpose.
I am a former contributor to this site (Comrade Olivier said I "traded down" back in March 2003 to run another rag- and bone-shop of the heart; let history judge, old friend) who recently grew nostalgic and took a jaunt through the WBW archives.
What I saw cheered me. Not only because the contributions of Mssrs. Menlo, Shropshire, Olivier, Blair, et alia, still fall pleasingly upon the retina, being sturdily-composed and well-aimed brickbats in the finest tradition of truth spoken to power, though good writing is always a pleasure.
No, it was gratifying to see how far we had all come. Back in the early, dark days of WBW, the internet was inundated with seas of spittle drooling from the chops of dumbasses and plug-uglies so numerous that it seemed (it may now be admitted) a bootless, even Quixotic, task to monitor and confront them. Those were the heady days of war fever: anticipation of a worldwide wog holocaust drew countless sub-literates to the blogging board, and at times it seemed as if the internet itself had gone mad with bloodlust.
But now look: one by one by one, a thoroughly encouraging number of our betes noir have skedaddled from public view.
Some, true, have gone on to other atrocities. But their old warblogger triumphalism seems to have drained from them. They talk about "culture" as if they knew what it was, or revert to their native geek behaviors, or otherwise trawl the less gunpowder-scented backwaters of domestic policy.
Are the reasons not obvious? The jig is nearly up. Their Fearless Leader plummets in the polls, and prays for NASCAR and anti-gay backlash to haul him back into the seat of power come November. What a falling-off is here, for the onetime presumptive Emperor of All Arabia!
Many idiots still ply their web trade, but the kill-craze of their glory days has passed. They struggle feebly to connect Democratic frontrunners with salacious interns, and gnash their teeth.
All told, I'd say we did a wonderful job. I see that Mr. Shropshire seems alone at the bridge now, and that he has not made a log entry in some time. That's fine. The worst of the storm is past, and we appear to be headed into more peaceful waters. But be assured, brave helmsman, that if the seas should rise again, you will find plenty of salt-cured hands on deck. -- RE
Phil, Phil, Phil...How insightful you are. Don't worry about the "local draft board" here (I'm already defending you). Dean has about as much chance of winning ass (sic) McGovern did against Nixon (the reason most Conservatives are actually rooting for him).
Herc142 | 12.17.03 - 6:56 pm | #
I'm looking forward to your despair in '04 when Bush is re-elected, that should be a sight to see Amos | Email | 12.29.03 - 7:38 pm | #
Here's the news Freeper scum who populate our comments sections. Dean is only five points back and the campaign hasn't even started yet. At this rate, Dean will lead by May and have a commanding margin of victory by September. You ask what Americans against the war will do. Americans will work to throw Bush out of office. Tell me again how it's Bush in a landslide? I guess everybody doesn't watch FOX news. Or as the Instapundit says, I think we know which way the wind is blowing.
Since they really don't care about American troops and they don't further the George Bush Jr. reelection campaign, expect never to see pictures of our war dead over at the Instapundits and Pejmanesques of this world.
Army Spc. Uday Singh, 21, of Lake Forest, Ill.; assigned to C Company, 1st Battalion, 34th Armored Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, based in Fort Riley, Kan.; killed Dec. 1 when enemy forces attacked his patrol in Habbaniyah, Iraq. • • • • •
"Sounds like more evidence of which way the wind is blowing."
Army Pfc. Jason G. Wright, 19, of Luzerne, Mich.; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), based in Fort Campbell, Ky.; killed while on security duty Dec. 8 when his vehicle came under fire from a passing vehicle in Mosul, Iraq.
Killed: December 08, 2003
Don't worry. Pejman "Our man in cyberspace" Yousefzadeh is on the case. Here he is, just like Juan Cole, struggling with the difficulties of the occupation. Or, perhaps he's writing about why he thinks Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is a really really good show. Yep. This is the kind of intellectual we want watching Noam Chomsky.
TARIQ ALI: In fact, if Saddam Hussein died a natural death or was captured and killed or whatever, the resistance far from dying down would actually increase, because many who are not coming out at the moment fearful that Saddam might come back, would then join the resistance. I have absolutely no doubt of that. So the notion if we just captured the headman, classic colonial talk, capture the head man, get rid of him and the natives will be on side.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: But nobody is saying that.
TARIQ ALI: No, no. Lots of people have been saying it. The key problem is to capture Saddam and destroy him. That's not going to work. I do think it's without importance that Saddam Hussein be brought to justice. I very much hope that you, like me, wish to see him on trial. In fact, it's one of the vices of the coalition policy, one that I have pointed out myself several times that no indictment of Saddam Hussein was ever issued. Though, the ingredients for the indictment could be wheeled right off the shelf in Cambridge.
SADDAM HUSSEIN CAPTURED. First, good riddance. I have nothing but contempt for corrupt American puppets. I hope he gets a trial where he can talk at length about his relationship with the United States. He'll probably get a trip to Gitmo. Remember: The Bush admininstration only rarely doesn't do the most evilest worstest thing imaginable. Like Tariq, I also think that his capture actually helps the resistance. Now, you can't say it's some insidious Baathist plot hatched by Saddam in his underground lair. I would hope that now your usual crew of jingoist, objectively pro imperialism, pro communist (a big faction of the coalition government's coalition) Sullys and Instapundits could define the resistance as being home grown. Subsequently, we should address their valid concerns. Give them a vote if they ask for a vote. Give them control of their oil revenues. That's what decent people and countries do. Don't fantasize and call people with legitimate concerns evil doers or "terrorists". We're a country that used force to get what we want. The "terrorists" have the same right. There is no high ground here.
By the way, if you're playing the Imperialism 2003 Home Game, here's how you decide whether you should or should not take up arms against the occupation government. Do you have a right to vote? Do you have any say over the mechanisms of the vote, such as census taking and the writing of the constitution, which will determine what kind of "democracy" you will end up with? Does the occupying country have a long bloody history of supporting dictators and killers and thugs at the expense of democratic institutions and to the favor of the United Fruits and Halliburtons of this world? Are Iraqi companies allowed in the bidding process? Is it clear that the occupier is resorting to death squads, a tactic that was very successful in El Salvador at wiping out all meaningful democratic opposition? Does the occupation use nonlethals or do they shoot anything that moves? Has the occupation set up its exit strategy as part of its reelection strategy or are they clearly concerned about "democracy"? Does the occupation respect any aspect of international law or the rule of law period?
Now, if you find that the US is on the wrong side of most of those questions, you should have an understanding as to why the resistance fights. Let's see what happens in the next several weeks. As always, we'll be watching.
