NOTES FROM SRI LANKA.
(June '05)
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6/5/05
All find ye.
If I were not before the bar, something else I'd like to be! If I were not a barrister, and engine driver, me! With a chuff-chuff here, and a chuff-chuff there, and a chuff-chuff all day long! With a.... oh what's the bloody use? Lousy British jurisprudence!
It's
the law, my friends -- that's what Big Green
is all about this week, make no mistake about it. No sooner had I gotten back
from my little 
sojourn
at the ______ Marriott (meeting with Major ____ de Coverly) than I found myself in the dock alongside my longtime companions Matt
(a.k.a. "Ted" Mann...you know, of Manfred Mann), John (Texas flyboy),
Mitch Macaphee (the world's most colossal brain), Marvin (my personal robot
assistant) and Lincoln (emanci-mother-fuckin-pater of the slaves) answering a
long list of charges from aiding and abetting criminal trespass to harassment,
inciting a riot, supporting international terrorism, and plotting the virtual bi-section of the planet earth from pole to pole like an enormous honeydew
melon. Serious charges, am I right? I turn my back for five minutes, and
the whole damn hammer mill goes to hell in a hand basket. (And it's not even one
of those fireproof hand baskets that the kid from the Fantastic Four uses
when he goes shopping.) Jeezuz.
Okay,
so what happened exactly? Well...I'm not entirely certain because I have it all
second-hand. Marvin makes a kind of transcript of everything that occurs in the
Cheney Hammer Mill as a matter of common robotic practice. (I've often thought
he should work for Homeland Security...and have come away wondering if he
actually does...). It's not a very complete record, but from the almost
unintelligible series of squeaks, clicks, and buzzes, I was able to reconstruct
what transpired during my absence. It seems our friend Lincoln had been spending
a fair amount of time over at our neighbor Gung Ho's paramilitary compound,
talking with some of the mercenaries and breaking bread with their junior
officers. Inevitably the conversation turned from the various calibers of Gung
Ho's artillery pieces to the rights of man and the 
principles of emancipation.
Well, as you might expect, one thing led to another and before you could say
Carl Sandberg, Lincoln had motivated these indentured warriors away from their
surplus K-rations and over to Gung Ho's main bunker where they set up an
impromptu picket line. Their demands went beyond fair wages and safe working
conditions. They were demanding something far more fundamental: wages
.....and working conditions.
Well,
to say that Gung Ho took the heat would be understating the matter just
slightly. In fact, you might call what happened next a classic over-reaction.
First, our militant neighbor sent in his own squad of strike-breakers. (Even
though some of his goons were on the picket line, he still had plenty in
reserve.) There was a big clash with fists and billy clubs, plus the occasional resort to howitzers and heavy bombers of unspecified provenance. (I told
you Marvin's transcripts were incomplete -- what the hell do you want out of me,
blood?) After the strikers had been dispersed, the goon squad followed
Lincoln's trail back to our front gates, where they set about causing something
of a spectacle, holding torches high and chanting, then playing loud heavy metal
music in an attempt to drive Lincoln from his warren. (Lincoln, being a man of
the 19th Century, did not connect the sound 
of Slayer with the concept of
music... which, of course, makes him a lot like the rest of us.) The thugs
pulled out after a few hours, having run through their record collections and
burned out all of their Bic lighters.
As you have no doubt surmised, that was not the end of it. The bailiffs showed up the very next day with a warrant. The Cheney Hammer Mill was searched stem to stern, and a barrier wall was built around the perimeter to keep out the curious. (Curious? Stay away!) We were then directed to appear before the local magistrate this morning....a bit unnerving, since our only legal representation is Lincoln himself (the lawyer of the group). If we were a mid-19th Century railroad instead of a 21st Century "pop" group, I'd feel better about this.
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
What
Works. This week a doctor and a musician -- both US citizens -- were
arrested on terrorism charges and held without bail. Specifically, according to
the AP, they were accused by prosecutors of having "sworn a formal oath of
loyalty to al Qaida as they conspired to use their skills in martial arts and
medicine to aid international terrorism." I will admit, the doctor part is
scary (our own local quacks have buried some of my best friends,
presumably without the support of uncle Osama) ...but martial arts?
You're at some club in New York and one of the guys in the jazz combo corners
you in the can with a "God is great! Hi-YAH!!" Hmmm... sounds like
another successful terrorism round-up to me, right up there with keeping the
fanatical Cat Stevens out of the country. So, if these two highly dangerous
characters don't cop a plea, might the government opt for its ever-handy
"enemy combatant" 
option rather than risk a trial and shift the
prisoners to the legal black hole that is Guantanamo or the even more literal
black hole that is one of our many nameless detention centers in torture-loving
countries around the globe?
Indeed, this is the sword that dangles over everyone's head -- particularly foreign nationals and naturalized citizens from Arab countries.... but really everyone. It is the threat of Gitmo that has garnered the government its few high-profile convictions, as with those kids from Lackawanna, NY. As Naomi Klein has pointed out, this is the utility of torture and extra-judicial detention. It doesn't garner useful information, that much is clear (not that that would be any justification for boiling people alive). But it does intimidate the living hell out of people and makes them think twice about raising their voices or taking action that might be inventively construed as "supporting international terrorism." For an administration that loathes criticism as much as this one, this is one executive prerogative made to be abused. Plus it undermines any endeavor that does not fit in with their rigidly right-wing ideology. With laws and practices currently in place, you really have to look carefully at any organization you consider supporting and ponder whether any of its members may ever have, say, carried a gun or belonged to a group loosely affiliated with Hezbollah. In these circumstances, most will choose not to give. Better to be sure, right?
Of
course, the administration is tied in with some of the most ruthless people in
the world -- killers from Colombia to Uzbekistan to Indonesia and scores of
other places no one ever talks about. They have CIA front organizations that use
our tax dollars to fly prisoners to torture cells in distant lands. They are
working to build a Murder, Inc. internal security force in Iraq along the same
lines of those they created in Central America and Southeast Asia in bloody
decades past. They are quite above board about these goals, in fact. So the 
righteous indignation over Amnesty International's report on US abuse of
detainees is simply a kind of public relations jiu-jitsu move, throwing the
focus back on those reporting the crimes and away from those actually committing
them. (The thief who yells "Thief!") It's a maneuver that can work
largely because there is zero public expectation that any serious action will be
taken by the government to account for and correct these abuses...and because
the press is just all about reporting what the administration says and how they
say it, not how credible it is. (I heard one ABC journalist last night
commenting on how the Pentagon was really going to mount a serious
investigation of prison abuse...because they told her so.)
The truly amazing news every day of the week is the fact that Rumsfeld still has his job.... and that Bush isn't being dogged by a special prosecutor.
luv u,
jp
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6/12/05
Dzango!
That means "greetings" in a language the man-sized tuber just made up. The more formal greeting is "kazaz," but I believe he reserves that for rajas, pashas, and other potentates with whom he seldom if ever communicates. Hey -- they don't use instant messenger, okay? Not the vegetable's fault. Anyway, if you ever get a pop-up from the M-ST, the appropriate reply is "mmbowbow." Good to know.
Where
did we leave off last week? Ah, yes. The trial of the century. As the Daily
Show has so usefully pointed out, that only comes once every couple of
years. And while our appearance before the magistrate alongside former president
Lincoln was hardly the stuff of front-page courtroom drama, it 
was
the only trial in town that week, so it did raise a substantial amount of
attention within the confines of our little village. Hell, the local shopkeepers
shuttered their storefronts most of the morning so that they could get in the
visitors section and jeer at us. (Did I say jeer? I meant leer.
They'd never gotten a good look at us before, except when that Christo wannabe
wrapped the mill so tight we couldn't get in the front door.) Even some of our
competing virtual independent rock bands showed up to gloat at our misfortune,
like Nixon's Son-In-Law, Trenchfoot, and our most determined
arch-rivals, Ion and the Lodestones. (They never miss an opportunity to
put us down, man.) It got so bad that Marvin (my personal robot assistant)
draped an open newspaper over his head when he emerged from the courthouse.
(Nobody was out there at the time, but of course...he couldn't see that.)
Gung
Ho's attorneys were successful in convincing the judge that our man Lincoln had
violated Gung-Ho's property rights by inciting a labor action amongst our
militant neighbor's indentured servants. I'm not surprised, frankly -- military
lawyers to a man, they were, each in full-dress uniform with an additional
prosthetic arm locked in a permanent salute. The judge was ex-military himself,
it seems. (Bootlickers!) In any case, the judgment went against us and Lincoln
might have gone down for a considerable stretch had it not been for his
impassioned speech prior to the sentencing phase. Something about "last
full measure of devotion..." or whatever. I didn't write it down, you know.
(Hell, he was reading it off the back of an envelope, for chrissake.) By
the time he was finished, he had cleared the 
courtroom...absolutely.
Just him there. The sentence came by mail a couple of days later -- a lenient
six-month community service hitch. Smooth talker, that Lincoln.
So
Lincoln jawboned us out of that one. But what about that community service, eh?
The more we thought about it, the more onerous it began to seem. Six months
of doing good works? That might make an honest man out of old Abe... then
where would we be? The judge was sufficiently impressed with the man from
Illinois to give him the option of choosing his community service project,
thereby opening a massive loophole through which we could game the punishment
into meaninglessness or -- better yet -- turn it to our distinct advantage.
Lincoln thought this unwise, but who the hell cares what he thinks? I
mean, what is he...president or something? So we threw around a few
ideas, then Trevor James Constable reminded us all of the time warp created by
his spare orgone generating device, conveniently 
located
in the basement of the Cheney Hammer Mill, where we live. Perhaps this
was the key.
Hey, I know what you're going to say, but lookit - hizzoner said the sentence was unrestricted, right? So why can't Lincoln complete it in another time or era? Why can't he, say, go back to the early Pleistocene and help out some struggling shrew-like creature....or travel forward in time and straighten out what ever it is we're fucking up royally right now? Isn't this more valuable than picking up litter with a pointed stick? I should bloody well think so. Crank up the OGD, Trevor James. Oh, Liiiiiincoln!
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
Truth
& Consequences. After putting the blame for America's bad name in the
Muslim world squarely on the shoulders of Newsweek, the scrupulously honest
folks who brought us the Iraq war were compelled to release some internal
records on Koran abuse at the various extra-legal detention facilities they've
created. No, the story about flushing the Koran wasn't in there. But there were
incidents in which the Muslim holy book was purportedly dropped, stomped on,
doused with water, and pissed on by a guard. So let's see....flushed in toilet,
no...but dunked, kicked, dropped, and pissed on, yes. I can see why the
administration would become so exercised over that distinction. Certainly
Muslims the world over will rethink their anger at the US in light of these very
different desecrations. 
And
after all, the guard who soaked the book with urine was apparently pissing
though a vent in the cell and probably meant to hit a human being -- he
might not have even considered there was a Koran inside the cell with the devout
Muslim prisoner. What the hell -- haven't you ever pissed through a vent
at a captive and inadvertently hit an object of deep religious and cultural
significance?
Once again, we return to the plausibility factor. Used to be that administrations would have to work up some kind of plausible deniability to cover embarrassing facts and outright crimes; nowadays, simply denying everything works well enough...or engaging in some of the most ludicrous hair-splitting I've ever witnessed (their playing around with the definitions of torture and abuse puts Clinton's mincing over the word "sex" to shame). There is no one to call them to account, certainly not in the corporate press, which was so lax in their reporting of the "Downing Street memo" that they very nearly didn't cover it at all. I think they've most definitely moved on from what constitutes a criminal misrepresentation of the facts leading up to the war in Iraq, as if one of the great crimes of our times doesn't merit so much as an inquiry. Of course, there have been a number of smoking guns on this topic. The administration's intention to invade Iraq was clear from the moment they launched the "product" in September 2002, and even earlier -- activist circles had caught wind of regime change plans in early 2001, which is when we now know they began discussing it seriously.
The
upshot is, the media went along for the ride on Iraq. They did a lousy job
reporting on the run-up, and have even admitted the fact in retrospect. They
share in the culpability, just as we all do to some extent. Right now, something
like 70% of Americans find the number of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq (now
nearly 1,700) to be unacceptably high and more than 50% believe the war has not
made us safer. But what is the tipping point, here? Was it worth it up to 1,500,
but not past that number? If the Pentagon were to ask, "Is victory worth
one more American life?" how many Americans 
(besides
Ann Coulter) would say yes? And if the generals then added, "Oh...and that
one more life is yours," how many (besides Ann Coulter) would change
their minds? As a people we have become so nonchalant about the expenditure of
other people's lives and limbs, it's sickening. Polling figures on the war are
still a bit like ratings for a reality show -- there is no palpable sense of
urgency, so long as most of us are shielded from the real pain and sacrifice. So
you with the magnetic yellow ribbons on your SUVs, hold your heads up high.
Coulter's Last Stand. Read the funny papers this week? Ann Coulter portrayed her hero Richard Nixon as a kind of frustrated savior of the Vietnamese and Cambodian peoples, subverted from defending them by his threatened impeachment. (She's come a long way from her Marxist youth days, pictured here.) I guess if General Coulter had been in command back then, we'd still be fighting that war today...too.
luv u,
jp
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6/19/05
Glory Hallelujah!
Wasn't that from a song? He makes the little joke, no? Everybody knows that's from "Lookout Joe" on Tonight's The Night, Neill Young's burnout masterpiece. Glory hallelujah, he'd sing, I lay my burden down. Not a bad middle eight for a Reagan man...but of course, that was later, after even more decay. Oh, then of course there was that other song that Lincoln keeps going on about.
Speaking
of the Great "E", who skillfully emancipated himself from the fickle
hand of justice last week, we (that is, the members of Big
Green's greater entourage) came up with a great idea for how he could
discharge his community service obligation and really make an enormous
difference. (Actually, it was Matt's idea, so I'll let him tell you. Matt? MATT!
Oy, Matt? On sabbatical? Arrgh.... very well...) Here's how it works:
-
Lincoln goes back in time to the 1860s using Trevor James Constable's orgone generating device turned up to eleven.
-
He uses his influence and wiles to allow the U.S. south to secede from the union and form its own racist/fascist state.
-
Lincoln returns to a more congenial "now", relieved of the burden of 150 years of southern politicians fucking things up. Community service completed!
Okay,
here's a surprise: Lincoln doesn't care for the idea. Not...at...all. In fact,
he put his foot down, obstinate old chief executive that he is. I and my
illustrious brother reminded him of the depredations of southern presidents,
from Wilson's cynical campaign to railroad the US into World War I to Dubya's
glorious crusades. "Think of Bill Clinton's hideous little Jerry Falwell
smile," said I, "and tell me this isn't worth doing." But Abe was
firm on this point -- the Union must be preserved. Oh, sure -- you and your 
old
"Union". Don't friends count for anything, eh? EH? We thought about
maybe sending one of us back, but reasoned that back in the 19th Century we'd
probably be ignored or, worse yet, rendered into some foodstuff that ends with
"pone". Then John suggested Marvin (my personal robot assistant) don a
phony beard, travel back in time, and bid the Confederacy farewell, but
no....they'd just make a beehive out of him. (Beehive. I'll beehive
them!) Our eyes rolled around the room, finally coming to rest on the man-sized
tuber, who suddenly remembered a chiropractic appointment in Colombo that he was
late for. Arrrghh. Will no one be our anti-Lincoln?
The
concept of "anti-Lincoln" got Mitch Macaphee's brain clicking in that
funny way it sometimes does when it starts a-think-a-latin'.
"Anti-Lincoln," he muttered to himself. "Anti-Lincoln." He
wandered like a somnambulist into his makeshift mad scientist laboratory with
its bubbling test-tubes and the portable magneto thingy (you know, two antennae
with an arc of static electricity rippling up at regular intervals) and started
marking up long equations on the chalkboard. Now, those of us who've known Mitch
for a number of years know enough to leave him alone when he goes into one of
these states, so I had Marvin pull the door closed behind him and we moved on to
a discussion of what our next tour would look like. (Yeah, probably another
interstellar job. It's been a while 
since
we've darkened the stages of the galactic hinterlands.... and a pop group not
often seen is too soon forgotten, even on the planet Kaztropharius
137b). I was just at the point of slamming my fist
down on the conference table when we all heard Mitch Macaphee's voice exclaim
"Yes! Yes!" from within the confines of his laboratory.
Okay, sure -- there could be a lot of reasons for such an utterance. Many of you will probably assume that Mitch had encountered some intriguing new element as yet unrepresented on the periodic table. Others will picture some kind of tawdry liaison with a lab assistant. But if we are indeed dealing with an infinite number of possibilities here -- as Mitch himself has so often reminded us -- we cannot exclude from consideration the chance that Mitch may have been exulting over the discovery of how to procure a genuine anti-Lincoln....the kind that will do our bidding. Yes! Yes!
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
Bound
For Glory. Another British memo surfaced this week describing policy
discussions well in advance of the Iraq war that indicate our Dear Leader's
determination to attack come what may. Another top-secret document that confirms
the obvious. I suppose if we had a stack of them 100 miles high, we could all
climb into orbit....but I think the point of this lawless war is that our
leaders have applied the imperial logic that our innate righteousness elevates
us above the need for plausible justifications. We have a little problem here,
you see. These folks have invaded a country under the flimsiest pretexts, gotten
more than 1,700 of our military people killed, and been re-elected in the
process. Not good. Like I said before the last election, if Bush wins, expect
more of the same -- more wars, more attacks on civil liberties, more everything.
The Downing Street memos, 
damning
though they should be, will not remake the monolithic political complexion our
own electorate has cast upon the institutions of government.
Predictably, the administration is continuing its assault on any form of public information that doesn't fully promote their point of view. PBS/NPR is getting skewered (I wonder if anyone there regrets having been so bloody cautious these last 15 years?). The AP is so intimidated that it just never ran the Downing Street memo story at all, even though it was producing headlines all over Europe. Ditto the major newspapers and networks. But their silence speaks to more than intimidation -- they were co-conspirators in the whole Iraq war project, and have proven poor stewards of information on its aftermath. They share the same fundamental policy assumptions that provide the foundation for the war; so do the establishment Democrats, tactical nuances notwithstanding. At least we get to see Tony "the wonder dog" Blair squirm a bit under the mounting revelations. Pity the same can't be said for Dubya. But this is a culture in which the depredations of Guantanamo can be adequately defended by vouching, in essence, that our military feeds the prisoners in between waterboardings. (I'm not kidding -- some congressman was reading the gitmo menu and holding up pieces of fruit on TV, while Ann Coulter offered an updated version of the famous "Twinkie" defense.)
This
is kind of reminiscent of the Reagan administration in the way that the
president is usually given a pass on issues that would blow a democrat right out
of the White House. There's this expectation that Dubya won't get it right, and
that it's unfair to expect him to -- almost like he's developmentally disabled
or something. So whether he's explaining gitmo or Iraq or his Social Security
"solution", he can give a lame-ass answer and it generally gets
reported without any indication that it's, well, fucking wrong. He is truly Dear
Leader, son of Great Leader, and we must all behave like good imperial
playmates, always letting him have his way, never being overly critical or
insensitive about his myriad shortcomings, always walking on tiptoe through a
minefield. Think about the dress-up routine in spring 2003 on the USS Lincoln,
when they turned the ship around so that the cameras wouldn't show the San Diego
skyline in the background and spoil the "action figure" atmosphere. It
was a Rovian propaganda photo opp, for sure (all thumbs if you ask me), but it
had that "little Lord Fauntleroy" feel to it --- Ooooh, get the
Navy to turn the world half-way 'round! We wouldn't want to ruin little
Georgie's picture!
Why, that boy could destroy the whole empire simply by strolling through it.
luv u,
jp
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6/26/05
Hello...
Got that ringing in my ear again. It's those cymbals, most likely. The old boom-crash! boom-boom-crash! of primitive minimalist rock music. Will we never tire of it? Just thinking about Big Green's first recordings -- some covers and a Ned Danison song called Name and a Face. I'll post them sometime....then your ears will ring, too.
Well,
I can't say I wasn't warned. No, indeed -- when I saw our mad science advisor
Mitch Macaphee disappear into his laboratory, I knew very well that he was
determined to create an antimatter Lincoln -- the anti-Lincoln, if you
will (or if you won't, even) who would be more inclined to carry out our
plan for a drastic revision of U.S. history... one that would result in the
secession of Georgia, Alabama, and all them thar states. (And everybody knows
about Mississippi, Goddamn!) We had it all thought out... well... not
exactly, but we did have a vague idea of how our plan might go down. That's why
we let Mitch work his evil alchemy. Bad omens plagued us. For instance, the
shadow of the village clock tower fell across our front gate at a sharp
angle...THE SAME WAY IT DOES EVERY MORNING!!! Then there was that mysterious
dark cloud that passed over us and emitted small globules of moisture, soaking
us to the skin. Finally, just yesterday morning, Marvin chalked a cryptic
message of foreboding on his black board. What could it all mean? What
was to become of us?
When
the laboratory door swung open, the first to emerge from within was not Mitch
Macaphee. A man... a strange, Lincoln-like man. No beard. Oh, yeah... and mean
as a snake. (Not that snakes are all that mean, once you get to
know them.) Mean as a real, real nasty, mean person. I don't know, there's just
something about that anti-Lincoln that rubs you the wrong way. Like when he came
over and kicked me in the ass -- that was kind of annoying. Then he took the
man-sized tuber's lunch money. (Looks like frozen potato in a cup for him
again.) A little later, Mitch emerged from the lab, a smile on his lips.
"Well?" he said, looking from Big Green
face to Big Green face. Matt shrugged.
"Just one thing," Mitch said, wiping the 
dilithium
magnatate (a rare element) from his hands, "Keep him away from the
real Lincoln. There's a chance the universe will explode if the two of them come
into contact with one another." Good to know. Not only is this antimatter
Lincoln more belligerent than Dubya Bush's chief diplomatic team, he's
potentially more destructive, too. Total annihilation of all matter in the
universe would be an enormous inconvenience at this stage in our careers, when
we're just approaching an important turning point in our musical canon.
(Neighbor Gung-Ho once had musical cannons -- he played them at one of Marvin
(my personal robot assistant)'s award ceremonies over at the local
constabulary.)
John,
Matt, and I thought it wise to dispatch Marvin to run interference between the
two Lincolns so that no such unpleasantness might occur. I gave Marvin his
instructions and, after whirring and clicking for a moment or two, he trundled
off in the general direction of the abandoned shop floor where quality hammers
were once forged and assembled. As the day wore on and the universe continued to
exist, we all reasoned that Marvin was probably making a pretty good job of it.
Then, late that afternoon, our automatonic cohort turned up de-activated in the
east wing. Clearly the work of that nefarious anti-Lincoln. Damn! I personally
told the man-sized tuber to locate the real Lincoln and report his
whereabouts to yours truly. 
An
hour later, tubey was found in the back garden, planted like a carrot. Oh, the
depredations of this evil doppelganger! Can't this man Lincoln ever be
serious?
It was about then that somebody (Matt, I think) said they smelled smoke. Not a figment of his imagination -- there was a fire on the third floor, in what was once the foreman's office (but is now the room where we keep our collection of rare flammable objects and open buckets of kerosene). Now, I don't tend to be the suspicious type. Neither do I jump to conclusions ordinarily. But I would have to say that the individual who took a blow torch to our ricepaper origami sculptures was some kind of hateful freak. And the only truly hateful freak I know of in these parts is that nasty fellow who goes by the name of .... anti-Lincoln!
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
New
U Every Day. The CIA has spoken -- Iraq is now officially a more potent
training ground for al Qaida-type terrorists than Afghanistan was back in the
eighties, when we were actively supporting the same jihadists we now claim to
abhor. What a great place to train for car-bombings and urban warfare. This news
shared the week with a report about how Saddam Hussein misses the days of
Reagan, one of his primary benefactors in the 1980s. (Finally -- the elusive
Saddam-al Qaida connection has been found... Ronnie Reagan!) Ordinarily
one might think this news should be a source of consternation for those who've
invested so much overblown rhetoric into this Iraq enterprise.... but then, this
is America, and we are all about constantly re-inventing ourselves, to the point
where every day we're 
born
anew, no memory of what came before. Past inconveniently incriminating? Wipe the
slate clean! Then you can write whatever suits you in the empty space we call
history. Nixon was a champion of the Vietnamese and Cambodian peoples! Reagan
won the cold war! Dubya invaded Iraq to make its people free! Oh, yeah!
I know it will be cold comfort for those of you who have been against this heinous and stupid war from the beginning, but it would be hard to imagine a more total vindication of the antiwar stance than what we have seen over the last 27 months. Honestly. Think about it-- the peace movement was right essentially across the board, from WMD's to the al Qaida connection to the disastrous occupation that followed. (Pity they weren't allowed on TV in the run-up to the war.) Now something like 60 percent of Americans agree with our basic premise that this war was a bad idea from the start. And while Bush stonewalls and postures and reads the pugnacious little lines that Karl Rove feeds him, Congress is starting to get a little ragged around the edges as that supermajority of folks who dislike this war start complaining to their representatives. House members and Senators are beginning to see this war as a growing liability with respect to the next election cycle... and that's just about enough to get their attention. As the numbers of US deaths in Iraq pushes upward, the war touches a broader segment of Americans through the complex matrix of family, friendships, and social interactions. (Think of how many people knew someone who died in the World Trade Center, and you get an idea of how this works.)
The
administration's best defense is ignore the obvious and forget
yesterday -- a tactic that applies well beyond the war issue. The
legion of conservative columnists, bloggers, and broadcasters have been pushing
the party line on everything from CAFTA to Guantanamo. Charges of abuse in the
latter instance are decried as "liberals" blaming America first.
Forget all the confirmed reports (and photographs!) of torture, mistreatment,
and death in custody that have emerged from our string of extra-judicial
prisons and detention centers for hire -- that was all yesterday, okay? Never
mind that people everywhere are rejecting the prerogatives of corporate
globalization and investors-rights agreements en masse -- "free" trade
is the poor family's friend! Through the liberal application of blather, they
hope to do what that recently departed administration official (now working for
Exxon-Mobil) literally did with the international scientists' declaration on
global warming -- just change a few words, take out a phrase here and there, and
voila... the problem is all fixed. We can keep ignoring...I mean, studying
climate change for another election cycle.
It takes real single-minded dedication to declare victory in the midst of such colossal failure. Stalin would have been green with envy.
luv u,
jp