Tag Archives: Bush

Political Rants

Let us prey.

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Couple of things to comment on this week. I’ll be brief – it’s a holiday, for chrissake.

Unforced confession. George W. Bush has been hawking his memoir for the last couple of weeks, proudly admitting that he personally authorized the use of waterboarding – a torture technique he considers legal because his legal advisors told him so. “I’m not a lawyer,” he told Matt Lauer in one interview. How far would that get any of us in front of a judge?

No one seems particularly bothered about this, but Bush’s proud admission, along with Cheney’s, is basically a declaration that our justice system is in a shambles; that the law applies only to the powerless and that cruel and unusual punishment is acceptable. Torture is a violation of U.S. statute and of international conventions to which the U.S. is both a signatory and a primary participant. Waterboarding is torture; it has been recognized as such since the days of Torquemada and before, I’ll wager.

Bush and Cheney have admitted their guilt; bragged about it, in fact, with the arrogance of men who know they are safe from accountability. The Justice Department should act upon these admissions without any thought to political expediency. That is not how the law is supposed to work. You break the law, you face justice – that’s how. Mr. Holder? Do your job.

Money rules. The results are in, and the winner of the 2010 election is corporate cash, by a landslide. The financial industry, health insurance lobby, and energy industry mad a massive investment in Republican candidates, both before the Citizens United decision and after, and they’ve certainly gotten their money’s worth. An astounding $3 billion was spent on composing the 112th congress; far more than in the 2006 cycle or even the 2004 presidential race. This piper will be paid, with interest, using the means at the disposal of any legislator; blocking, repealing, watering-down, stalling, inserting poison pills, defunding, delaying, and all of the tactics we’ve seen over the past two years.

Who are the winners? Just watch network or cable television for ten minutes and you’ll see them, preying on the public mind with their multi-million dollar ads about “our energy future” or what you should “ask your doctor” about. That’s who we need to defeat in 2012, and we’d better start working on it… yesterday.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Stranger than.

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Here is what I’m thinking about this week. Nothing too much out of the ordinary, frankly.

Another lie falls flat. Just listened to a harrowing story on Democracy Now!, about ten days old (I listen to the podcasts up here in nowheresville). Amy Goodman was talking to the wife of an Iraqi detainee – a partially disabled ex-general who’s been locked up by the Iraqis for about a year, tortured hideously, without charge or any prospect for release. The story is sadly familiar in its contours – you can find similar ones in practically every country we’ve ever “helped”. Listening to it, I could only think of one of the many justifications for the invasion of Iraq; that of protecting human rights, ending torture, etc. There will be no more rape rooms, George W. Bush promised to the Iraqis as he announced his unilateral, criminal war in March 2003.  Well…. there are rape rooms. Another lie bites the dust.

Not your monkey. It’s the economy, stupid, to be sure, but what about the economy? If a generalization can be made about the past three decades in U.S. economic history, it’s that the rich have done extremely well and the middle class and poor have lost ground… lots of ground. Someone no doubt has shouted “class war!” already, but friends, there has been a class war underway for thirty years now, and it’s being waged on us. And frankly, we’re losing. Part of the reason for that is that we are atomized, disorganized, and at war with one another. We are encouraged to be so from the moment we become aware of the world around us.

Look at the media / pundit reaction to the massive protests across Europe in opposition to austerity measures (to the extent that they’ve been covered, that is). Over here, the narrative is that these are spoiled workers complaining about nothing. Unspoken is the fact that, here in the land of the free, it is literally against the law to call a general strike (see: Taft-Hartley). What those folks are doing across the pond is something we are not allowed to do, with our constitution, bill of rights, etc. That’s because they’ve hung together and fought to hold on to their rights, whereas we appear poised to allow the true party of corporate power (rather than the second-choice party of corporate power) to run the game again.

When will we stop losing this class war? When we finally stand up and tell that top 3 percent that we’re not their monkey anymore.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

War’s end.

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President Obama delivered his second address to the nation this past Tuesday, this time on the subject of the “end of combat operations” in Iraq. Here – unsolicited by anyone – are my comments:

Turn the page. President Obama said it was time to “turn the page” on the War in Iraq. Um… not so fast, Mr. President. I know you are obsessed with looking ahead rather than behind, but if everyone took that attitude (say, local law enforcement), no one would be held accountable for anything. This war was caused by people in our own country – people in positions of authority. Your administration has neglected to even examine the record of those responsible for this disaster. This has emboldened them to the point where they regularly flaunt their guilt in public, secure in the knowledge that they will never pay a price for what they did.

Good intentions? At one point, the president said this:

This afternoon, I spoke to former President George W. Bush. It’s well known that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset. Yet no one can doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security. As I’ve said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it.

I won’t address the “patriot” issue, since that is such a loaded term. But I can most certainly doubt President Bush’s “support for our troops” without any resort to imagination. He sent them into Iraq to die by the thousand, for no legitimate reason, in pursuit of an illegal and immoral war – a war of choice, no less. He shipped National Guard troops overseas in the ramshackle vehicles they used back home, with no armor, no protection. He is no friend of our soldiers or military families. To suggest otherwise is simply obscene.

Dark creations. The president went on:

Along with nearly 1.5 million Americans who have served in Iraq, they fought in a faraway place for people they never knew.  They stared into the darkest of human creations — war — and helped the Iraqi people seek the light of peace.

This passage is worthy of his predecessor. Reading it, one would think we invade Iraq to help the Iraqis.  It also, like so much of Bush’s prose, seeks to cloud the notion of agency behind the initiation of the war itself, as if to suggest that our troops went to Iraq on their own initiative to do good works, as if they were Peace Corps volunteers. This is just a rhetorical cop-out, a between-the-lines attempt to deflect criticism away from those who plan the wars by keeping the focus on those sent to fight them.

His call to Bush reminds me of that closing scene in Animal Farm, when Napoleon the pig was having dinner with the farmer and the other barnyard characters, looking on, couldn’t tell one from the other. Such is our ruling class, I suppose.

luv u,

jp