NEO-CONTENTIONS VIII-

 

“Porter’s Complaint”

 

Neo-Con Republicans Circulate Soldier’s Story

Of Obama’s Snubbing U.S. Troops in Afghanistan

 

You’ve Gotta Read This One!

 

Story Capsule: DW Foreign Policy Editor, Dusty Schoch received an e-mail last week in which a conservative friend forwarded him a letter of an Afghanistan-Stationed U.S. Soldier. We are all receiving election-inspired things like this on the net these days and need to study this story as we need to study history—in order to keep it from repeating itself.

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In the following exchange, you will read first the message forwarding me the message of Captain Porter claiming that Obama—on this past Tuesday– had insulted U.S. servicemen in Afganistan in a way McCain certainly would not have. 

 

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This is followed by my reply “to all” Captain Porter’s complaint had been sent wherein I contend that if Porter had any legitimate complaint, it would be against the ones who sent him into Halliburton hell without a handbasket (which would be McCain and his Neo-Con Republican oil-war hawks).

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This in turn is followed by a barrage of heated hisses and damning disses from the Neo-Con wild bunch of indignant Republicans accusing me of everything from being disrespectful to their hero Republican soldier to being lunatic for taking issue with him. Several of these responses will be published verbatim, with only the profanity disguised by cryptic encodings such that words that might  rime with duck come out f- – - . The Neo-Con part of this section will be in red and Dusty’s responses will be in blue.

 

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Finally, as DW anchorman, Len Carrier weighs in with both his opinion of the soldier’s story and finally a shot of truth serum that I think you will all find most entertaining and

enlightening.

 

The moral of this story as it unfolds is that, when it comes to Neo-Con rantings in your e-mail and on the bloggosphere, don’t take anything for granted…until you double check the story with Urban Legends and other clearinghouses for truth in politics.

 

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Richard L. Tucker writes:

 

 

UNBLIEVABLE MESSAGE SCROLL DOWN……….FROM A SOLDIER (KEEPING YOU SAFE) ACTUALLY IN IRAQ—BABYLONIA.

 

FOLKS, WE CAN DO BETTER THAN THIS.

 

THAT’S EASY TO UNDERSTAND……THIS CLOWN HAS NEVER HAD A REAL JOB OR MET A PAYROLL DEADLINE A FEW HUNDRED TIMES WITH BORROWED MONEY OR ACCOMPLISHED ANYTHING. YOU SHOULD NOT BE PREZ. UNLESS YOU HAVE WORKED IN PRIVATE BIZ IN A FACTORY OR BEEN A CPA OR BEEN A SOLDIER OR FARMED OR WHATEVER. HE RUNS FROM SOLDIERS BECAUSE HE DOESN’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING; HE KNOWS THAT WITHOUT CUE CARDS HE CANNOT SPEAK WITH YOU SOLDIERS IN EVEN HALF WAY SENSIBLE MANNER. HE IS LIKE A PUPPET AND FEARS HAVING A CUT STRING.

 

WHAT A STORY THIS IS BELOW. SHOWS YOU THE REAL MAN. AMERICA DOES NOT HAVE A CLUE WHAT THIS GUY IS ABOUT. BE VERY AFRAID.

 

VOTE FOR A WAR HERO AND STANDUP GUY. VOTE FOR McCAIN !!!

 

Richard L. Tucker

 

 

I don’t know each of your personal political convictions, and apologize if anyone finds this offensive.  I thought it was important enough to share.  This is Jeff’s first hand view of Senator Obama. 

                                      ———- Forwarded Message ———-

 

Hello everyone,
As you know I am not a very political person. I just wanted to pass along that Senator Obama came to Bagram Afghanistan for about an hour on his visit to ‘The War Zone’. I wanted to share with you what happened.
He got off the plane and got into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area to meet with the Major General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram.
 
As the Soldiers were lined up to shake his hand he blew them off and didn’t say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General. As he finished, the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out in with weights) so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball. He again shunned the opportunity to talk to Soldiers to thank them for their service.
 
So really he was just here to make a showing for the American’s back home that he is their candidate for President. I think that if you are going to make an effort to come all the way over here you would thank those that are providing the freedom that they are providing for you.
 
 I swear we got more thanks from the NBA Basketball Players or the Dallas Cowboy Cheer leaders than from one of the Senators, who wants to be the President of the United States. I just don’t understand how anyone would want him to be our Commander-and-Chief. It was almost that he was scared to be around those that provide the freedom for him and our great country.
  If this is blunt and to the point I am sorry but I wanted you all to know what kind of caliber of person he really is. What you see in the news is all fake.

          
In service,
CPT Jeffrey S. Porter
Battle Captain
TF Wasatch
American Soldier

 

 

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DUSTY TO RICHARD TUCKER:

 

Richard-

 

No offense to either you or brave Captain Porter intended, but I’ve gotta say this:

 

I am not an “Obama supporter”.  I’m foreign policy editor for Democratswrite.com which is a communicative extension of a peace-oriented think tank (The B.E.A. – “Barristers et al”) I founded shortly after 9/11.  Since 9/11/01 I have researched the causes of (and crusaders for) U.S. military involvement in the Middle East.  I’ve written and published news articles, essays, made speeches, debated issues and written a short book on the causes for the war in Iraq (and Afghanistan) in the theater of which Captain Porter is presently on duty and under fire and constantly in harm’s way.  I am grateful for his commitment to and sacrifices made for his country and ours. At the same time, I know he is a young man and can glean with some degree of confidence from what he writes that his attitude toward Obama is tainted by his belief in the administration (Republican) party line– that our presence in Iraq is justified and in the best interests of America and the world. I believe, in fact, that he believes somehow, that he’s risking his life every day to help preserve for Americans their freedom (from terrorism).  In that belief, I believe he is—very unfortunately—mistaken. He is mistaken because, as we were in the aftermath of 9/11/01, grossly and egregiously  misled.

Fighting “for freedom”?  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I won’t belabor the abundantly and  long-established (even admitted by the Neo-Cons who started the war on false pretenses) facts that America and the world were lied to by Bush, Powell and the neo-con run Pentagon in order to gain Congressional nod to invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Since our preemptive invasions, we’ve caused in one way and another the deaths of over a half million non-military humans (civilians)  in those countries. The only logic presently justifying our presence in Iraq today is that an immediate and total withdrawal of troops would endanger those troops. There will be havoc among the warring Islamic factions upon our departure in any and all cases, just as there has been for hundreds of years, although under the reign of Saddam H, a totalitarian tyrant held that havoc in abeyance with tactics of rule by fear and fierceness.

Our presence in Iraq today is as criminal (under international law, from the ambit of which Bush shrewdly exempted the US—and himself as an otherwise chargeable war criminal– prior to the invasion of Afghanistan). Don’t take my word for it – read the sources summarized and cited in my on-line (free) book on the Iraq war and how a stealthy group of crazy Zionist Jews and fundie Christians combined to pull off a coup of the Pentagon that precipitated the mess in which  we’re now boxed in both those theaters (Afghanistan) wherein we have accomplished precisely zero of our declared causes de guerre (finding bin Laden and reducing “terrorism”). The project has bankrupted America, led us into the present depression (it ain’t simply a “recession”), and perhaps worst of all for many of us we hold dear, has jeopardized and cost the lives of thousands of innocent and patriotic Americans.

The book outlining both the facts and the time-lines of all events resulting in our invasion of Iraq is available at HERE.   We can all choose to either read and master the history or watch it repeat itself.  Your choice.

 

For any of you who want to more thoroughly educate yourselves on how and why the war in Iraq happened, and who was behind it, and thereafter want to hear what an independent foreign policy writer has tendered to his government as a solution to the problem of international terrorism (of which the U.S. in its waging of unprovoked and preemptive war is part and parcel),  one proposed “solution” for this so-called “war on terrorism” is outlined in another article which I’ll link here, entitled “The Onion of War: Peeling it to the Core and Declaring Peace” – Click HERE to read it!

I actually debated the Wurmsers*** (co-authors of “A Clean Break”) on the tenets espoused in that peace proposal.  As a bottom line, let me again stress that I mean no offense to Captain Porter.  It is our duty to support and defend our troops abroad, risking their lives every day under the command of our elected statesmen. The best way to do this is to get rid of the lousy leaders who put our troops there  in harm’s way without just (or rational) cause. Obama is in the process of doing just this. The sooner he’s elected and the sooner, after his empowerment, he succeeds in getting American troops out of that hell hole where, as in Nam, they are dying for reasons none of them can understand, much less articulate, the better. And I know Captain Porter will immediately and reflexively react to what I just said by saying “I am here following the orders of my commander according to the oath I took to defend America against all aggressors.” And he will likely add, that he is there, as are all his comrades in arms, watching each other’s backs.  And I will commend—and defend– him on both those accounts.  However, this time, his commanders—all the way to the chief– are dead wrong.  Iraq was not an aggressor nation in our regard and we became one in regard to it. We invaded and currently occupy two nations on entirely false and unjustified pretexts. There was reason to seek out and destroy bin Laden, but no justification for presently occupying Afghanistan as in-control imperialists. On the practical side, not even their giant next-door neighboring country (Russia) with 10 times the dedicated (and strategically local) ground and air power could conquer that clandestine conundrum of Islamic mountain beast. There was no reason for the invasion of Iraq. There we remain as internationally-despised invaders, for the first time in American history. We are, by way of natural resident reprisals (called “insurgents” instead of “resistance” or “underground” as French nationals were called when they chose to resist Nazi occupation in WWII) fueling  terrorism by our presence in Iraq rather than quelling it.  Captain Porter has—understandably– bought into false propaganda. No one wants to believe he is risking his life for something entirely lacking in noble purpose. But the fact remains – - U.S. troops are in fact not fighting for “freedom” of anyone in the Iraq theater. They are fighting to stay alive and to keep one U.S. corporate-selected sect of Islamic zealots (those who are more willing than others to keep Iraq’s oil reserves pledged to support American corporate game plans) in power. This is the game of regional hegemony, the game plan of which was concocted  (in 1998)  by a couple named David and Mayrev Wurmser *** in a document entitled “A Clean Break”,  the story of which is outlined in the free book first linked above.  My compassion and gratitude go out to Captain Porter for his brave and loyal service to his country. My never-ceasing support and Kudos will go out to the first politician who succeeds in getting Captain Porter out of that hell hole and back in the U.S.A. with  his family where he belongs. Every minute he is there, in harm’s way, they must suffer the unceasing angst of his endangerment. And they too—as he—crave to find purpose in his perilous mission.  It is my present intention to post Captain Porter’s letter about Obama on our website along with the present (as an open letter) e-mail.  The exchange and communication of ideas about these issues is vital—and I contend healthy—for America about this time when we are facing a much needed changing of our domestic and foreign military guard.  I invite any of you—including Captain Porter—to respond to the present letter with any views you want to express and have included in the article before it posts.  Please send your responses to me personally at the trailing e-mail address (Rschoch@triad.rr.com) instead of the contact link on the website.  I will wait a week (through Friday , August 1) to receive anything you want to express to me and have published along side Porter’s and my own (present) letters.  We censor out nothing except vulgar profanity and essentially-personal (ad hominem) attacks on people (including ourselves) contributing ideas to the site.  We invite all to critically attack (or agree with)  our ideas and issues we raise, but refuse to print attacks on people (by essentially unkind name-calling and the like).  Wishing you all the best, and with heart-felt gratitude and compassion, wishing for the safe and soon homecoming of Captain Jeffrey S. Porter, I remain sincerely yours, in  Peace. Dusty SchochJuly 25, 2007

  

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From: Jim Krauss [mailto:jimkrauss@preferredsources.com]
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 2:01 PM
To: R Schoch;  

What a pathetic and gushy gushy bleeding heart unrealistic disconnected evolutionary believing global pacifist LINE OF PURE S- – -  that I’ve ever heard — take this guy out and shake some sense into his retarded ass—PLEASE

 From: R Schoch [rschoch@triad.rr.com]
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 2:35 PM
To: ‘Jim Krauss’
Why don’t you do it?  (The retarded ass).  From: Norwood Jackson [mailto:norwood1stcoast@yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 3:15 PM
To: rschoch@triad.rr.com
Subject: modern day fairy tale  

Holy mackeral Kingfish, where did you get this fella? Is his middle name ostrich?

Norwood JacksonFirst Coast Realty/Realty WorldPOB 2829 (Crow’s Nest Shopping Center)Atlantic Beach, NC 28512

 

Once upon a time there was a company that needed a new president. A number of viable candidates were put forth but none seemed to fit the “New Age” look that the company was seeking. One of the board of directors suddenly exclaimed “How about the mailroom boy? You know he shows up for the staff meetings although he never contributes, he is just “present”. He knows his way around the company as he delivers mail to all the offices but he has not ever put a suggestion in the suggestion box. He has no employees under him so he has no enemies in the company. He has never really sided with any particular movement within the company. He is young so he will appeal to the young employees and he is black so he will appeal to the minorities.” One of the other board members said “What kind of experience does he have? Has he ever run a billion dollar company before or even a small company? Was he an officer or platoon leader in the military? What experience does he have to warrant going from mailroom boy to president of the whole company?” The other board member replied “I heard him in the break room state that he thought the company needed to change but he did not offer any solutions. But he did volunteer at the elections board and he has a college degree. That ought to count for something. After all, he would only be running a billion dollar company with thousands of employees and analyzing huge budgets plus negotiating with the heads of other billion dollar companies. How hard could that be? Plus he has stated he wants us to withdraw from certain areas of our business.” In response, one of the board members suggested “Maybe we could get a good V.P. to work with him that has large corporate experience.” So therefore the board voted the mailroom boy into the president spot. Epilogue:   Company went bankrupt due to mismanagement and poor decisions. Would you want your retirement dependent on stock in this company? Why should our country be any different?     EPILOGUE TO STORY (Or as Paul Harvey used to say….Here’s the rest of the story.)

   

From:] rschoch@triad.rr.com
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 3:15 PM
To: Norwood Jackson [mailto:norwood1stcoast@yahoo.com Subject: modern day fairy tale

  

Given that brief excerpt from the company’s corporate minutes, it would appear that the mailroom boy fell into a presidential spot by workings of the proverbial “peter principle” – i.e., that sooner or later, on most American corporate ladders of ascension,  a given worker gets promoted to a level beyond his level of competence. In this case, that was not the case. Examining the “rest of the story” one learns that the entire presidential promotional predicament was the result of a polarization within the company’s board that resulted in an evitable deadlock. The “liberal” side came up with the green candidate from the mail room; whereas the conservatives came up with their single candidate. The board therefore had only two choices and this resulted in the choice of the lesser of arguable evils.  The conservative candidate was an over-the-hill has been of a politician who nearly ran out of gas running for the conservative side’s endorsement. He had far more experience in the corporate business than his green counterpart, but most of his decisions in the past were—for the company counter-productive. He had voted in favor of his company’s backing a proxy fight  initiated by some foreign Jews who wanted to take over the board to expand their personal portfolios (they code-named “the promised land”) that had led the company to virtual insolvency. Moreover, the conservative candidate was still preaching the same sermon—in favoring the hostile takeover even if it took another 100 years. To cap it off, the Conservative candidate ran his election campaign on the sole strength of having –as a pilot---been shot down by corporate enemies and held captive by them for years (during which he admits saying and signing false things about the corporation that damaged the corporate image and PR considerably.)   Finally (and most saliently) it was discovered that the conservative candidate —at the unprecedented age of 72 was going to be statistically dead in his second year of service as corporate president.   So, when you read and understand the “rest of the story” it turns out the appointment of the green mailroom boy made really good sense. You know- in corporate America, it’s never easy….being green.

 DustyJ

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From: Leonard Carrier [mailto:lcarrier@charter.net]
Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2008 12:37 AM
To: R Schoch
Subject: Re: fyi  Dusty,  

I read Capt. Porter’s letter with interest.  I’m sorry he was disappointed that Barack Obama didn’t shake hands with soldiers at Bagram.  But that is not what he was there for.  He was there to get briefed on the military situation in Afghanistan and the Middle East by  top commanders in the field. He is running for President, and his priority is to gain as much foreign policy knowledge as he can.  His stated goal has always been to get our troops out of Iraq, and, hopefully, out of Afghanistan as well.  There will be plenty of time for hand-shaking when Capt. Porter and his fellow soldiers are again on American soil.  What was really curious, though, was Mr. Richard L. Tucker’s introductory disparaging comments about Obama and his praise of John McCain.  In Tucker’s eyes, McCain is a “war hero and a stand-up guy.”  Tucker’s claim is certainly false.  John McCain, the son of two Navy admirals, graduated fifth from the bottom of his class at Annapolis.  His fellow midshipmen remember him as a reckless rule-breaker.  His flying record shows him to be a mediocre pilot who crashed five U.S. aircraft, including he one in which he was shot down over Viet Nam.  According to his own book, McCain revealed information to the enemy that was used for propaganda purposes.  His claim that he was tortured to reveal it was disputed by his Vietnamese interrogator who claims that merely the threat of withholding medical attention was enough to get McCain to talk. The fact that the Vietnamese knew that McCain’s father was CINCPAC ensured that he would be kept alive. Many other POWs suffered more and said less.  So much for McCain’s being a war hero.  As for being a “stand-up guy,” this is a phrase that is often used by Republicans to refer to George W. Bush.  Whether it applies to Bush is highly dubious.  That it doesn’t apply to McCain is certain.  After several extramarital affairs McCain divorced his crippled wife to marry a billionaire beer heiress. It is a matter of record that he used the ‘c’ word to refer to his new wife in public.  That doesn’t translate into being any sort of  “stand-up guy.”  I conclude that when it comes to a question of character, it is Barack Obama–someone with a law degree who opted to work with poor, inner-city youth, someone who has always been married to the same woman, someone who has consistently said that he will get our troops out of the Middle East–who stands head and shoulders over John McCain.  

Best,  Len Carrier 

NEO-CON CROW EATIN’ TIME!!! (thanks to Len Carrier and Snopes.com)…

 

Dear “all” who have been deceived by that typically-rank Republican propaganda about “Captain Porter” ’s negative review of Obama’s ungentlemanly conduct in Afghanistan: Several of you gave me down the road for even questioning Captain Porter’s assessment of Obama and Richard Tucker’s taking the occasion to contradistinguish McCain as a war hero. The truth of the matter turns out to be this:  There is in fact a “Captain Porter” stationed in Afghanistan and he did write home (to his family) some falsely-reported rumors he’d picked up, not first hand, but through the military (mostly pro-administration, pro-ditto-headed Republican, pro-war) grapevine.  Having learned the truth, he has recanted his lies and asked that people quit circulating his letter on the internet both because of its gross inaccuracies and because sending such news along with his locale, name and rank violates military law. All in all, the Captain Porter story is what’s called in military  parlance a total “cluster f…”.  We have Democratswrite.com’s In-House Historian, Dr. Leonard Carrier, to thank for this factual wake-up call.  I will here trail his letter to me which supplies you to the link wherein you can read for yourself the history of the entire hoax. For those of you who don’t know, election-year propaganda like this blogger B-S can nearly always be checked for truth on the www.snopes.com website. The article link that Len furnishes us here makes it crystal clear how Republicans will grab up a sound byte (this time a paragraph from a soldier’s letter to his parents) and explode it into political mythology in order to counter the surge of popularity and sanity that is hopefully going to sweep the neo-con war mongers out of office.Porter totally regrets the careless lies he has told and asks all who have disseminated them to see that the truth of the matter gets told. That’s what I’m doing in writing to you all. Thanks, Len for the vigilance I can always count on you to maintain. This time, for some reason, I didn’t think to question the neo-con contrived crap. I’ll be much more watchful in the future. Now for those of you with the courage to admit you’ve been fooled, I give you Len’s letter which will supply you with the link to the truth of the Captain Porter story which  you need to (slowly, carefully and with reflection) read. The same people who 7 years ago convinced you there were WMD’s in Iraq are–with tripe like this–trying to steal another election through the corruption of truth in order to prolong two stupidly catastrophic wars and launch a third.  I have to say, finally- Richard Tucker said one correct thing in the letter with which he circulated the Porter myth…it was in fact an “unbelievable message” (his words).

 LEN’S LETTER: (AND LINK)

 Dusty,  

After my last email to you, I decided to scope out Capt. Porter and his letter.  It now turns out that what Porter said was false, and that he has retracted his statement and asked people not to forward his letter.  Check it all out on Snopes below.

 http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/afghanistan.asp  

 All those die-hard Republicans who were cursing you out should be eating lots of crow when they discover that Porter’s letter was a bunch of baloney.

 Cheers,  Len 

PARTING ADDENDUM 

The DW editors and staff want to make it clear that none of us blame Captain Jeffrey Porter for all this disinformation.  He made a careless mistake in quoting unsubstantiated (and it turns out false) press on Obama and, perhaps because of his own naïve politics, made a worse mistake in trusting his correspondents not to publicize a personal letter to his family. The lesson here is, however, a serious and solemn one, in spite of the Republicans-eat crow outcome. We are involved in a war in Afghanistan and Iraq because we Americans have been conned over and over again by the Neo-cons about the truth and realities of both foreign and domestic affairs.  We are seeing Orwell’s 1984 fiction enacted in nightmarish reality before our very eyes in the media and  on the internet where Republicans, frenetically fearful of losing their grip on the Pentagon and our tax dollars, are doing everything they and their propaganda spin masters can contrive to obfuscate the truth of their disastrous leadership with lies and slick-sounding talking points.I personally fell for this one until Len took the time to research the truth on Snopes.com.  Let’s thank Len for his vigilance on our editorial parapets and adopt his skepticism and resourcefulness as a paradigm for future considerations of and contentions with these soon-to-be sidelined Neo-Con Republican saboteurs of besieged American democracy.

 Dusty SchochJuly 27, 2008 It was a happy birthday btw.   

When Will We Ever Learn?

 

Pete Seeger asked the Question Long ago…

 

Peter, Paul and Mary echoed it…

 

Bob Dylan answered the question and

 

Today, DW College Contributor, Brad Clinard

 

Asks us again…

 

From Viet Nam to Iraq, how far have we come?

 

Have we learned anything? And … finally…

 

Why not?

 

Preface: By: Dusty Schoch, DW Foreign Policy Editor:

 

Before you read young Bradford Clinard’s thoughtful and provocative diatribe against the present war in Iraq and those who are sponsoring it,  brought fearfully in focus by his having soon to say his goodbyes to a friend now destined to serve in that “current” theater of American-generated war, let’s all take a look at what might be the only glaring difference between our war “against the Reds” in Nam a half century ago and our present “war on terrorism” in Iraq…

 

…the music, and our cultural historians who asked the perennial questions with the perennially-obvious answers that,  perennially,  none of us ever seems to heed…

 

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

 

Composer: Pete Seeger

Performers: Peter, Paul and Mary

 

 

 

Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the young girls gone, long time passing?
Where have all the young girls gone, long time ago?
Where have all the young girls gone?
Gone for husbands everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the husbands gone, long time passing?
Where have all the husbands gone, long time ago?
Where have all the husbands gone?
Gone for soldiers everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the soldiers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the graveyards gone, long time passing?
Where have all the graveyards gone, long time ago?
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Gone to flowers, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

 

Bob Dylan Had Two Answers:

The First was:

 

THE ANSWER IS…

 

BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND

 

(Dylan’s Second Answer follows

Brad’s essay…because it Echoes

What Brad says)

 

Composer: Dylan

Performer: Dylan

 

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, n how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, n how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before theyre forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind,
The answer is blowin in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, n how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, n how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind,
The answer is blowin in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before its washed to the sea?
Yes, n how many years can some people exist
Before theyre allowed to be free?
Yes, n how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesnt see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind,
The answer is blowin in the wind.

 

 

Brad Clinard’s Take on America’s

Democracy and Its Wars

 

 

Make Love, Not War ! This sign held by up a hippie caught my eye and captivated my attention the other day. Thinking about the simplicity but parallel depth of this concept I began to wonder:  The majority of people throughout the world have very similar dreams, desires and needs. One of the most universal desires is for Peace. Why then, in a world in which democracy has “won”,  is this peace not found?

 

Many of our leaders would like “us” to believe it is because the jihad suicide extremists are going to be on your doorstep to punch you in the face, and thus they must be preemptively thwarted from “evil”. Let me just ask: How many of you have ever seen a terrorist or even anybody being shot for that matter? I would venture that with the exception of media coverage, war veterans, and public police servants,  our society in America has very little exposure to real world-class violence. Granted there are occasional incidents such as 9/11, Virginia Tech, and gang violence, but compared to worldwide death tolls for other inhumane deaths, (i.e. starvation, dehydration, and easily curable diseases) we are very safe and I might  venture, spoiled.

 

If we are relatively safe then why are we not a more peaceful country as the people want? I propose there are two distinguishing characteristics that have lead to our country’s current sickness: Greed and Fear.

 

First, a word on democracy. I understand and notice regularly that I am a very small pawn in the chess game our country plays, politically. However, there is something wrong with our Democratic system if the will of the people is not heard. The  muted shout of the people is clearly a desire for universal peace. Since recently reaching voting age, I now feel responsible to hold accountable the people who represent me and subsequently run our country through policy creation or by non-action. Clearly, the people have been misrepresented and we should be mad. The major issues our country and world face should be the prime concern of our politicians. They should not waste their “talents” deciding what office wallpaper should be, what pork barrel project can be passed, whether steroids in baseball are illegal, and every other ridiculous issues they fret over to appear busy until the next election. Exactly how this occurs  is a very complex question, but one that must be addressed before social change can proceed.

 

As a student of economics I am confronted with a dilemma. Economics teaches us to place a value on everything, even peace. The price of peace or the price of forgoing war may be very costly for some, especially if daddy owns stock in the  military industry (think USA). On the other hand, peace can be equally profitable for a larger group as it creates stability that allows global business and free trade to flourish. Regardless, in a democracy, society’s desire for peace should triumph regardless of economic consequences of a few.

 

Ironically, it was one of the greatest five star generals our country ever had, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who tried to warn us about the danger of our military growing out of control. He coined the term,  “Military Industrial Complex” to describe the dangerous state we find ourselves in today, wherein corporate special interests groups buy politicians and our country wages war after war after war.

 

I calculated  our 2008 budget for Military and Homeland Security to be approximately 665 Billion dollars. (^{http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/budget.html}) By comparison, the rest of the world combined will spend only slightly over 500 Billion. Our economy as we know it survives on the fact that we are the leading manufacturers, hence purveyors of war.

To discover why we are fighting is relatively simple in theory… Follow The Money. Who is profiting off war in our country? Halliburton and Blackwater come immediately to mind. Trouble is these firms are the most strategically positioned entities  in Washington with lobbyists, congressman, labor unions, and financial investors (not to mention inside fifth-column employees like Dick Cheney) all giving an open ear to imperialistic agendas.

 

Fear has become a way of life in daily America. The “Fear Culture” we are enslaved to makes us more vulnerable to propaganda and thus the agenda of the greedy. The all-pervasive propaganda that we see today has accomplished  its calculated goal with  anesthetizing the populous into a state of confusion and, from the overuse and abuse of “9/11”, mindlessly championing “freedom and democracy”, the “war on terror” and my personal favorite–the color-coded terror warning levels.

 

The most dangerous thing I can think of is someone or a country afraid  of everything. This has long been one of the contended bases for why we have one of the highest murder rates in the developed world. The most disturbing part is the results of the propaganda machine. With an at-best ambiguous enemy and No Possibility for “victory” in its Middle Eastern campaign, our incumbent administration  has become unaccountable and can not be challenged. This is a violation of our basic civil liberties.

 

The anomalously-named “Patriot Act” successfully removes many of the protections we were guaranteed by our founding fathers to ensure our country would remain the land of the free. Maybe there is a reason to be afraid. It has long been said, “People should not fear their governments, governments should fear their people.” It is clear this idea has been lost and I am sure our founding fathers would be appalled—I surely am. It is also perfectly clear this is the time my generation needs an old fashion revolution, at the least a loud protest. Yet the call to action is silenced and pushed to the background by the deafening noise of reality TV and the busy non-relenting quest for an illusion known as success. 

 

In closing, I must confess the subjective motivation of my ranting.  In three weeks, a good friend of mine will be sent to Iraq—assignment: “road patrol.” (a.k.a. “insurgent target practice”)  While I have the utmost of admiration for the courage he shows in fighting for good old Uncle Sam, I am sad inside for the loss he will certainly face—if not his life then surely his gentle temperament. War is Hell for all it touches, and in today’s global society it touches all.

 

 

BOB DYLAN LYRICS

“Masters Of War”

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks.

You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly.

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain.

You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion’
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud.

You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins.

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do.

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul.

And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand over your grave
‘Til I’m sure that you’re dead.

 

 

 

 

In passing..…

 

Echoing Brad’s sentiments, Dylan’s and our own, let’s get busy and realize that it’s never too late to start changing these times…..

 

The Times They Are A Changing

By: Bob Dylan

Come Gather round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.

 

 

 

 

 

The Hole=

 

We’re in the Midst of

A Presidential Race

 

The Doughnut=

 

We are a nation at War

And We’re on the Wrong Side

 

And bin Laden was—and is– “Right”

 

 

By: Dusty Schoch, DI Foreign Policy Editor

11 30 07

 

Just to put things in perspective…since we are all now so concerning ourselves with important, politically-platforming issues like abortion, gay marriages and the marital and extramarital habits of our perennially-posturing politicians, there is still a war going on now my friends, both in Afghanistan and Iraq.  This is a war our President and his Neo-Conservative A.E.I. cronies in the Pentagon waged on false pretenses, and a war they are presently plotting to spread into Iran until our oil interests in the Middle East are deemed (by Exxon Mobile, Halliburton, Blackwater and other corporate puppeteers), secure.

 

All the debates, and all the issues being debated (other than war) are the hole, and the war in the Middle East, which began in 1948, which we escalated massively and fascistically shortly after 9/11/01, remains the doughnut that might easily become our nation’s undoing as democratic paragon and leader in the free world.

 

Why do I pick today to make this obvious observation?  Because today, Osama bin Laden (whose act of terrorism triggered the war) was the subject of an AP article that made it abundantly clear what the war is about,  why it started, and why is persists.

 

Before I quote from–and heartily agree with–bin Laden’s most recent VHS-video press release, I have to exonerate myself first from the appearance that I am sufficiently naïve to believe that he is alive.

 

 No man of bin Laden’s wealth and resources would continue to speak to the world through the crude, distorted and out-dated VHS hand-held video  recorders bin Laden’s present imposter is employing. You know- that black-bearded stand-in actor purporting to be, in fact, the same Islamic demagogue who in all probability was  blown to smithereens (along with his dying kidneys) on the first day of mountain carpet bombing in Afghanistan.  Any wealthy  imbecile who wanted to establish that he is still in fact alive, would send some lackey into Circuit City and purchase a camera that would show sufficient close-up details of his face and hair to verify his present sentient  being by providing current exemplars of anatomic  details for comparison with previous photographic evidence.

 

It’s not happening. Also not happening is any intelligence whatsoever percolating up from either our military  or other governmental agencies (not to mention our presently deceased investigative media) to establish the obvious facts that bin Laden is much more valuable to Bush and the war-mongering Neo-cons alive than dead. If bin Laden were as dead as Saddam, what would they use to fuel their fear-based war propaganda?  Saddam was never the “ace” of terrorist spades; he was a joker that Bush and the neo-cons slipped in the game from out of their sleazy sleeves. Bin Laden (dead or alive)  was and remains the ace of terrorist spades, and without him, Bush and Cheney would have to fold their hands and end this bluffing game they dubbed the “War on Terror”.

 

 Collective Pentagon and “Coalition” intelligence forces should clearly  be proclaiming  that the total absence of any photographic proof of bin Laden’s …vivacity…along with the yet-unexplained failure of the strongest military and intelligence forces the world has ever known to locate him in going-on 7 years clearly confirm that this Islamic desert rat is long gone.

 

With that obvious disclaimer (of my naivete’) out of the way, I will now quote for you the words of “Osama bin Laden” as reported to (and aired on Al-Jazeera TV today, 11/30/ 07): 

“Bin Laden Urges Europeans to Stop

Helping U.S. in War”

 

“CAIRO, Egypt (AP) – Al-Quaida chief Osama bin Laden called on Europeans to stop helping the U.S. in the war in Afghanistan, according to excerpts of a new audiotape broadcast Thursday on Al-Jazeera television.

            Bin Laden said it was unjust for the U.S. to have invaded Afghanistan for sheltering him after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, saying he was the ‘only one responsible’ for the deadly assaults on New York and Washington.

 ‘The events of Manhattan were retaliation against the American-Israel alliance’s aggression against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, and I am the only one responsible for it. The Afghan people and government knew nothing about it. America knows that’, the al-Quaida leader said…”(Emphasis added)

 

So here’s the gist of the doughnut we Americans must, if we are to survive this shameful episode in our otherwise (more) honorable history, ingest:  Bush and the neo-cons with their pretensions of Afghani responsibility for bin Laden’s attack, and their pretensions of Saddam’s complicity and Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, were—and remain factually and morally wrong, as a result of which our wars being still waged in those countries are just  as assuredly…wrong.

 

The shameful, embarrassing truth of the matter, which makes the doughnut so horrendously difficult to chew, must less swallow, is that every single thing either bin Laden or some imposter just issued to Al-Jazeera TV and the AP isONE HUNDRED PERCENT RIGHT (i.e. accurate).  We allied ourselves with Israel for the oil—as opposed to any pretended Judeo-Christian brotherhood per Abraham,  and we’re in Iraq, rattling sabers at Iran for the same reason.

 

God, deliver us from the Neo-cons… and please help us accomplish this deliverance in time to enable us thereafter  to  save our malignantly-warming globe, this precious earth we inherited, which the multinational corporate neo-cons are industriously contriving to destroy.

 

So far in the debates, I have heard many contenders on both sides speaking in favor of bringing our troops home from the Middle East. I have heard many recant their earlier endorsements of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of them, however,  want to talk in terms of wanting to do the best they can to solve the problems that “inconveniently” exist because of American occupations of two Islamic countries. Thus far I have heard only one man advocate America’s assumption of moral and fiscal  responsibility for having launched an immoral and invasive (euphemized “preemptive”)  war. That man is Dennis Kucinich.

 

 

As a bottom line, then, let’s view all our presidential contenders on the basis of how much they are truly—and morally–concerned with the doughnut of my recent rant, as opposed to its irrelevant and unpalatable hole.

NEO-CONTENTIONS  VII

 

WAR

 

 

The Pro’s and Cons of Continuing America’s

So-Called “War on Terror” in the Middle East

 

Dear DI and B.E.A. staff, and friends,

 

In this open letter, I’m sending you the face of the “beast”. The beast with the #666 on  its head. The featured essay (neo-con side)  is the most persuasive argument in favor of our pursuing—and “winning”—Bush’s preemptive war on terrorism I have ever read. It is so frighteningly seductive in its references to the origins and seeming inevitabilities of wars in general, citing the causes and “solutions” to WWI and WWII that I classify it as among the finest pieces of (low-brow) neo-con-artistry (propaganda) written since 9/11/01.  It’s “low-brow” propaganda that always decides wars and presidential elections, so don’t discount this forwarded sermon on the basis of its puerile intellectual prowess.

 

I addressed this letter to DI’s in-house historian and philosopher, Dr. Leonard Carrier, and transmitted it to the DI and B.E.A. Staff, contributors and friends for the purpose of provoking dialogue and soliciting  comments in return. I will, by way of preview of Len Carrier’s essay on the war in Iraq and Iran share with you only this: (What I wrote to him after he responded with the wonderful essay that trails the initial (neocon) piece by Kraft:

 

Dear Len: This is—without doubt—the most beautifully concise—and comprehensively accurate–statement concerning the neo-cons’ war in the Middle East I have read to date. You should write more when you’re “ticked off”, my learned friend.

Bravo and kudos!  Dusty

 

 

Back to you DI and B.E.A. readers and friends:  I invite you (again) to reply to me at my e-mail address (Rschoch@triar.rr.com). I will collect and collate your replies and publish them all—without censorship– on the DI website in the order received, so that they will be added to the article here posted. Please don’t hesitate to reply just because you don’t consider yourself a history or foreign policy expert. All our opinions matter. In fact, our opinions (as Americans) are the only thing that really matter because war in the Middle East will continue…even to the end game of Armageddon unless we the people somehow develop, communicate and execute a consensus of opinion propounding peace.

 

The beast in this scenario has an appealing face.  The writer–Raymond S. Kraft–is a neoconservative lawyer living in northern California who is one of the “30-percenters” who still believe that George W. Bush and Richard Cheney are correct in pursuing their wars in the Middle East. His pro-war sermon is seductive because he makes the notion of escalating the war in the Middle East seem attractive in comparison with the “history of our future” which he projects as forthcoming if we don’t heed his warning and his rallying call to …WAR!

 

If any of you want first to read my own account of how we got INTO this on-going war in the Middle East in order to read this call for its escalation in the context of its origins, please click on and review the “Free Book” on this site by clicking here.

 

If you’ll scan the cable TV programs now, and your own newspapers, you will find—everywhere—references to the call for escalating war from the ubiquitous pulpits of fundamentalist Christian evangelicals across our dumbed-down, neo-con-propaganda-brain-washed nation, making Bush’s “surge” in Iraq and his saber rattling towards Iran appear to be nothing short of GOD’S WILL.  The American public (red state portion) is being herded , sheep-like to the brink of losing all resistance to the call for war in the Middle East, because the war against “jihad Islam” is being painted as the “End-Times War of Armageddon” as forecast in the New Testament.  And the scary thing is that both Democrats and Republicans are so afraid of losing the votes of these Christian Fundies that none of them will dare take a stand and say that their call for Rapture through a call for escalated war is as Anti-Christian as any proposal since the snake’s beckonings in Eden.

 

Combining the Old Testament mythology about God’s promising Jews all the land between the Nile and Euphrates with  the Jews’ (the theological basis for the 1948 Declaration of Statehood for Israel in the heart of Islamic darkness) and  Gentiles’ John (of Patmos Isle fame) forecast of an end-time war of Satan and God, and New Testament promise of Jesus’ Rapturous return thereafter (along with infidels being “left behind”)  you have a formula for disaster.  International disaster because, in truth, just as Raymond Craft warns us, end-time nuclear war machines are in fact at large…and are now capable of fulfilling Biblical prophesy—quite literally.

 

But that possibility—I insist—and beg you to believe along with me—is not God’s plan…and it has certainly never been the plan of Jesus Christ who professed until his earthly departure that  He came to save us…from each other and ourselves.  

 

The trouble is, that most of these doomsday weapons (nukes) are in American hands, and it’s Americans who are gearing up to use them…preemptively…(e.g. limited-yield bunker nukes) in order that the same nuclear power will not be used in the hands of Satan (which would be the Wahhabee-Jihad Islamics…those alleged Satanic bugaboos of the Christian Fundamentalists’ call to preemptive war. )

 

Now, Len (I’m directing the following questions to Dr. Leonard Carrier, professor of History and Philosophy, of Asheville, NC), I’d like you (and the rest who receive this communication)  to respond, in what ever order you choose, to both Kraft’s piece and what I will hereafter write as further predicate thereto.

 

Kraft contends that the only way to prevent this alleged Islamic Fascist force (albeit a tactic as opposed to either a nation state or either  visible or corporeal organization) from conquering and/or simply destroying the world (I suppose with suitcase nukes well placed) is to continue to escalate and “win” the war on terror which Bush began in the Middle East.  This guy is literally—and skillfully–advising us to resolve to consummate the restructuring of the Middle East by conquests of Iraq, Iran, Syria etc…just as called for in the widely-unknown  Jewish Mein Kampf treatise I argued constitutes the blueprint and animus of Bush’s preemptive invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, which would be the paper entitled “A Clean Break” penned by A.E.I. and PNAC members David and Mayrev Wurmser (and other Jews) which is described again in my little free book mentioned (and linked) above.

 

Len, what I’d like to hear from you, in addition to your response to Kraft’s proposal, is in essence this:

In fact has there been in the past century more than one war?  Aren’t the martial monikers “WWI”, “WWII” , “Korean Conflict”, “Viet Nam War” , “Bay of Pigs” , “Desert Storm”, “War in Afghanistan”, “War in Iraq”, “War on Terror”….all synonyms or sub-chapter titles for the same, perennial and on-going conflict, with only a few changes of guards and rallying cries? Aren’t all these “events” simply karmic dominoes in the same stupid quest for power and dominance in a world turned from agrarian tribes to industrially-globalized and greedy conglomerates?

 

 Isn’t there a strong historic case to be built for the argument that there has, in industrial times, been only one war…and the wager (the pre-emptive instigator) has been only nominally a leader or a leading nation, and in fact has been the group who have risen to power in order to defend themselves against the ones who had more power before them and abused them with it?  Isn’t it simply a matter of the victims becoming oppressors once they have achieved the power to counter the oppression of their own predecessor  bullies?  Isn’t it the same circular karma that led the perpetrators of early genocide (Old Testament Jews traversing Arab territories in pursuit of god-promised real estate and en route killing “every man, woman, child, 4-legged animal and chicken” standing in the way…to wind up themselves victims of genocide in Europe—and now the Middle East–4000 years later?).

 

Haven’t the “victims” of WWI and WWII (the English with their American, Russian and French allies) become oppressors of the Middle Eastern (and all weaker) states…simply as a natural result of first acquiring the power to defeat the power of their “fascist” oppressors only to fall victim to the absolute power that corrupts absolutely, and becoming fascist in the process? Don’t’ forget- Russia invaded the Middle East first (their failed invasion of Afghanistan).

 

 At the close of WWII, Americans were victims (yes, we remember Pearl Harbor) first, strengthened victors second, and finally industrial and nuclear powerhouse of the universe.  Only Russia’s nuclear arsenal can (and) did subdue and temper America’s use and abuse of its nuclear power, making the recent (and still—no matter what they say– simmering “cold war”) the least destructive episode in the century of war…given the potential for destruction and international mayhem.

 

Len, has there been more than one war this Century? Hasn’t war been the rule and peace the periodic illusion?

Weren’t the Depression years in U.S. history simply a cease fire? Aren’t Afghanistan and Iraq simply an historically amorphous new chapter in the same old  war?  And isn’t the only solution to the present war the same solution that always was the only solution to the game of war…where ( in the Hollywood movie “War Games”) that wonderful computer finally instructed us with poetic profundity that …”In a game of trans-global thermo-nuclear war, the only way to win is …not to play.”

 

Len, is there any way to head these crazy Judeo-Christian crazies away from their belief that nuclear holocaust is inevitable because it’s God’s will? Any way to convince them that “getting the other side first before they get us” is the axiom for the institution  of hell on earth?  Any way to convince Christians  …in fact and in deed to become “Christ Like” and do the only thing an Islamic enemy can neither anticipate nor successfully combat—that being to love him in spite of the fact he may never either accept or love us in return?

 

 Any way to convince us all of the absolute fact that war is our only enemy, and that the power to win a war is never an excuse to begin one…because the war which has begun, according our most recent century’s history, will never end…until for the first time in history , a people with absolute power, resist the temptation, impulse and opportunity to become absolutely corrupt?

 

Awaiting with anticipation your (all of your) thoughtful and creative responses, and wishing you the

 

Best,

 

Dusty

11 17 07

 

PS – I thank our DI correspondent, Bob Sheets,  Naval Air Corps, Retired, Sembach, Germany, for the article herewith forwarded.

 

NOW, SCROLL DOWN FOR THE “LESSON IN HISTORY”…

 

 

                                     Lesson in History:  By Raymond Kraft

SOME OF YOU ARE NOT OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THAT NEARLY EVERY FAMILY IN AMERICA WAS GROSSLY AFFECTED BY WW II MOST OF YOU DON’T REMEMBER THE RATIONING OF MEAT, SHOES, GASOLINE, AND SUGAR. NO TIRES FOR OUR AUTOMOBILES, AND A SPEED LIMIT OF 35 MILES AN HOUR ON THE ROAD, NOT TO MENTION, NO NEW AUTOMOBILES. READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT HOW WE WOULD REACT TO BEING TAKEN OVER BY FOREIGNERS IN 2007.

This is an EXCELLENT essay– Well thought out and presented. Historical Significance

Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat. The Nazis had sunk more than 400 British ships in their convoys between England and America taking food and war materials.

At that time the US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war.

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 , and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan , and the following day on Germany , who had not yet attacked us It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.

France was not an ally, as the Vichy government of France quickly aligned itself with its German occupiers. Germany was certainly not an ally, as Hitler was intent on setting up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe . Japan was not an ally, as it was well on its way to owning and controlling all of Asia .

Together, Japan and Germany had long-range plans of invading Canada and Mexico , as launching pads to get into the United States over our northern and southern borders, after they finished gaining control of Asia and Europe .

America ‘s only allies then were England , Ireland , Scotland , Canada , Australia , and Russia That was about it All of Europe, from Norway to Italy (except Russia in the East) was already under the Nazi heel.

The US was certainly not prepared for war. The US had drastically downgraded most of its military forces after WW I because of the depression, so that at the outbreak of WW II, Army units were training with broomsticks because they didn’t have guns, and cars with “tank” painted on the doors because they didn’t have real tanks A huge chunk of our Navy had just been sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor.

Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England (that was actually the property of Belgium ) given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler (a little known fact).

Actually, Belgium surrendered on one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day just to prove they could.

Britain had already been holding out for two years in the face of staggering losses and the near decimation of its Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later. Hitler, first turned his attention to Russia , in the late summer of 1940 at a time when England was on the verge of collapse.

Ironically, Russia saved America ‘s butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years, until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany .

Russia lost something like 24,000,000 people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow alone . . . 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but also more than a 1,000,000 soldiers

Had Russia surrendered, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire war effort against the Brits, then America. If that had happened, the Nazis could possibly have won the war.

All of this has been brought out to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. Now, we find ourselves at another one of those key moments in history.

There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants, and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world.

The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs — they believe that Islam, a radically conservative form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world. To them, all who do not bow to their will of thinking should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel , and purge the world of Jews. This is their mantra . (goal)

There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East — for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation, but it is not yet known which side will win — the Inquisitors, or the Reformationists.

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, the OPEC oil, and the US , European, and Asian economies.

The techno-industrial economies will be at the mercy of OPEC — not an OPEC dominated by the educated, rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis. Do you want gas in your car? Do you want heating oil next winter? Do you want the dollar to be worth anything? You had better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.

If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away. A moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.

We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i. e. the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda and the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We can’t do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle at a time and place of our choosing . . . . . . . in Iraq Not in New York , not in London , or Paris or Berlin , but in Iraq , where we are doing two important things.

(1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades Saddam is a terrorist! Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, responsible for the deaths of probably more than a 1,000,000 Iraqis and 2,000,000 Iranians.

(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq . We have focused the battle. We are killing bad people, and the ones we get there we won’t have to get here. We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq , which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed.

WW II, the war with the Japanese and German Nazis, really began with a “whimper” in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor . It began with the Japanese invasion of China . It was a war for fourteen years before the US joined it. It officially ended in 1945 — a 17 year war — and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again . . . a 27 year war.

WW II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year’s GDP — adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars. WW II cost America more than 400,000 soldiers killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.

The Iraq war has, so far, cost the United States about $160,000,000,000, which is roughly what the 9/11 terrorist attack cost New York. It has also cost about 3,000 American lives, which is roughly equivalent to lives that the Jihad killed (within the United States ) in the 9/11 terrorist attack.

The cost of not fighting and winning WW II would have been unimaginably greater — a world dominated by Japanese Imperialism and German Nazism.

This is not a 60-Minutes TV show, or a 2-hour movie in which everything comes out okay. The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain, and sometimes bloody and ugly. It always has been, and probably always will be.

The bottom line is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away if we ignore it.

If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq , then we have an ally, like England , in the Middle East, a platform, from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East . The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates to conquer the world.

The Iraq War is merely another battle in this ancient and never ending war. Now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless somebody prevents them from getting them.

We have four options:

1 . We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.

2 . We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran ‘s progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is).

3 . We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East now; in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America .

OR

4 . We can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and possibly most of the rest of Europe . It will, of course, be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier.

If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.

The history of the world is the history of civilization clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.

Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.

Remember, perspective is every thing, and America ‘s schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.

The Cold War lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989; forty-two years!

Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany !

World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan World War II resulted in the death of more than 50,000,000 people, maybe more than 100,000,000 people, depending on which estimates you accept.

The US has taken more than 3,000 killed in action in Iraq . The US took more than 4,000 killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944 , the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism.

In WW II the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week — for four years. Most of the individual battles of WW II lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.

The stakes are at least as high . . A world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms . . or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law) .

It’s difficult to understand why the average American does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis.

“Peace Activists” always seem to demonstrate here in America , where it’s safe.

Why don’t we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran , Syria , Iraq , Sudan , North Korea , in the places that really need peace activism the most? I’ll tell you why! They would be killed!

The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc.

Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy!

 

Raymond S. Kraft is a writer living in Northern California that has studied the Middle Eastern culture and religion.

 

 

Esther for ESTHER’S NEWSMEMO 

 

LEN  CARRIER’S RESPONSE

 

 

 

      Raymond S. Kraft is a neoconservative lawyer living in northern California who is one of the “30-percenters” who still believe that George W. Bush and Richard Cheney are correct in pursuing their wars in the Middle East.  I say “wars” because they don’t want to stop with Iraq and Afghanistan.  They want to take the attacks into Iran and Syria.  According to Kraft, this is a good idea, because we are battling the forces of “Islamofascism,” a cumbersome term that was coined by warmongers who were ignorant of its meaning. Someone who believes in Islam believes in a religion.  Someone who believes in fascism believes that big business and the government should, in concert, run the country.  So fascism has nothing to do with religion, even though fascists employ religion to get the people in line, as Mussolini did in Italy in the 1920s..

 

    Kraft and his idolater, Marvin Parchman, think that they can conjure up images of World War II to make it seem as if that conflict

could make our brutal invasion and occupation of Iraq seem honorable.  Any rational person can see that it is not the same thing.  Hitler invaded Poland and then the U.S.S.R.  Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.  We fought back.  Fast forward to 2003. In response to a criminal attack on the World Trade Center, mainly by Saudis and Egyptians, we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq — countries that had nothing to do with the hijacking of airplanes and flying them into our buildings.  More than 200 Yemenis died in that attack on us, as well as hundreds of others who were not Americans.  So the Bush/Cheney response to that attack was not only ill-conceived, it was ill-concealed.  That means that the Bush Administration was intent on attacking Iraq, and the attack of disaffected Muslims on our territory was the perfect excuse to grab for Iraqi oil.  We all now know that this was the intent.  The nonsense about “weapons of mass destruction” was a lie fed to the Congress and the American public so that the Bush and his corporate cronies could gain control of the oil in the Middle East. 

 

    This is also why these same corporate warmongers want to find an excuse to attack Iran.  It’s all about the oil. People like Kraft, Parchman, and Norman Podhoretz, try to make it sound as if we are in some gigantic ”clash of civilizations,” and that if we don’t fight the radical Muslims, we will be submerged.  This is blatant propaganda. Radical Muslims form a minute part of Islam, although our invasion of Iraq has gained many more fighters to their cause.  The reason is simple. If you demonize a religion, then there will be plenty of those pushing back against the demonization. There is also another, even more sinister reason, for people like Kraft and Podhoretz to try to convince the American public that we are in a “war on terror.”  This is because they support the imperialistic policies of Israel, and its attempts, not only to be the only nuclear bully in the Middle East, but to occupy all of the West Bank and to dispossess the Palestinians of land that is rightfully theirs.  To further these efforts, the effective Israeli lobbying machine, AIPAC, has cowed our Congress so much that they acquiesce to every demand made on behalf of Israel, despite the fact that Israel refuses to make peace with the Arabs, and lies about it by saying that Arab initiatives are never enough. It is curious that certain Christian fundamentalists are allied with Israel in their imperialistic ventures — not because they want the Jews to control all of Palestine, but because they think that this will lead to Armageddon and rapture.  This is again, blatant nonsense, and people who fall for it are hopefully few, because if very many people were to fall prey to such a con job, there would really be no future for the human race.

 

    No, despite all the religious mumbo-jumbo, and all the scare tactics employed by people such as Kraft, Parchman, and Podhoretz (as well as the Kagans, the Libbys, the Boltons, and all the other neoconservative vermin), the simple fact is that this smokescreen about a “clash of civilizations” is simply meant to cover up an imperialist grab for the resources of other countries. The American people need to wake up to this fact, to rip away the prattle that the lackeys of war and profit use to seduce the citizenry, and to tell these greedy, corporate drones that we can see through their deceptions.  It’s time to take back our country, to stress cooperation rather than conflict, and to dismiss the purveyors of greed and war back into the shadows where they belong.

 

IS THIS WORLD WAR IV OR…STILL WW I?

 

 

As for Dusty’s question about war in general, and specifically whether I see the war in the Middle East from the historical standpoint as merely the current chapter in the same war story begun at the turn of the 20^th Century, I’ll do my best to respond in a manageable number of words.

 

With so many examples to the contrary, it’s probably naïve to say that humans are rational animals.  Another account seems more plausible, which is to say that humans are classifying animals.  Aristotle led the way in this endeavor. We like to sort things out into neat pigeonholes, so as to try to understand them better.  We do the same with wars.

 

Since just before the turn of the century, classifiers have sorted out wars with names like the Spanish-American war, World War I, World War II, the Korean War (which the Chinese call the Sino-American War), the Vietnam War, the Cold War, Gulf War I, the Afghan War, the Iraq War (the last two conveniently described as mere battles in the ongoing War on Terror)—and these are only the wars that the United States has fought in. There have been others, such as the 1905 war between Russia and Japan, the several wars fought between Israel and the Arab States starting in 1948, and the numerous wars fought in Africa among rival tribes.

 

 

Aside from the fact that in all these wars people killed and were killed, is there any common thread that ties all these wars together?  Simply put, I think that in each case there has been an aggressor and one who has been the recipient of aggression. The reasons vary, whether it was our ridding the Caribbean of Spanish influence in 1898, Serbian unrest during the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the brutal demand for lebensraum by Hitler in the 1930s, or the lust for Iraqi oil that led to our invasion of Iraq in 2003.  In each case, some countries wanted what others had, and were willing to fight and die to get it.  So, if we like, we can say that from 1898 to the present time, there has been but one war with pauses between its episodes.

 

Norman Podhoretz has made it even simpler by classifying our World Wars for us in the pages of Commentary magazine.  World Wars I and II we’ve already classified.  World War III is the Cold War.  World War IV, according to Podhoretz is our present “War on Terror,” which is also described as a clash of civilizations between the West and the radical followers of Islam.  According to Podhoretz, this last war is one that promises to continue for a long time, and it is one that the West cannot afford to lose.

 

Andrew Bacevich uses Podhoretz’s classificatory scheme, but has a more realistic interpretation.  According to Bacevich (“The Real World War IV,” The Wilson Quarterly,Winter 2005), Jimmy Carter started World War IV in 1980, when he declared the Middle East to be a region of our national interest.  This was after the oil shortages of the late 70s, and in contrast to Carter’s earlier statements that we needed to conserve energy and live within our means.  In other words, according to Bacevich, World War IV is a war for oil.  The Kuwait War was a battle in that war, and so was our invasion of Iraq.  What has helped to fuel this war has been an increasingly militaristic attitude adopted by our leadership, starting with Ronald Reagan.  We have used more and more of our tax dollars to increase our military budget; and, what’s worse, we have borrowed funds from China and Japan to finance our war, leading to a precipitous drop in the value of our dollar.  In fact, the dollar has dropped so much that OPEC countries are now thinking of pegging oil to the euro. If that happens our dollar will no longer be the world’s reserve currency.  If the Chinese and Japanese decide to dump our bonds on the market, it will lead to hyperinflation, and subsequently to an economic depression.

 

The best way to end World War IV would be to hearken back to Jimmy Carter’s advice before he decided to initiate a war for oil.  Get over our addiction to oil.  Develop alternative energy sources.  Cut back on military spending.  Institute, as Dennis Kucinich has urged, a Department of Peace that uses diplomacy to resolve international conflicts.  Above all, do not act as if the rest of the world exists only to enhance our creature comforts.  In any case World War IV will not be resolved on the field of battle. To think that it will, as Podhoretz seems to think, is to be subject to delusion.  To insist that military force will prevail, and to keep borrowing and spending for weapons of war, will bring World War IV to another sort of close, one in which our nation is impoverished and diminished in strength and stature.

 

 

– Len Carrier

 11 17 07

   

 

Patrick Morton comments:

(Patrick is DI’s Science Contributer)_

11 18 07

 

As though by Biblical prophesy, once in every generation the beast is loosed in the streets of Bethlehem. Put another way by a one-liner reply in Red Dawn about the reason behind yet another world war, “I guess somebody just forgot what it was like.”

 

Not only do  acts of war seem an integral part of the human genome, but as time spirals outward from its own history so apparently do the better parts of humanity seem to be deselected from human kind’s genetic expression.

 

Oh, sure, some of us tend to evolve and aspire towards a more conscientious and sentient being, but by and large we (as a race) are de-evolving into apathetic creatures more suited for waging war than waging peace upon each other, our neighbors, our kind.

 

It is alarming that the state of being at war no longer polarizes our nation, but rather puts us at odds with one another. But this is no more frightening than the fact that we placed, or tolerated, an ignorant cracker from Texas, a college wash-out, to attain the highest office of our once unanimously beloved nation; it persists as an error gone unchecked for nearly two terms. E.g. HR333.

 

No, I’m not a historian by any means, but I stand in great appreciation of what the past attempts to instill within us. It seems that both world wars erupted in the back drop of global disputes and along the lines of civil unrest about Europe and Eurasia, give or take a few hundred kilometers. What begins as a seemingly benign contest of urinating for distance,  goes through the gamut of penis envy, then the really big guns come out.

 

Am I wrong, or is this pretty much the gist of modern, global warfare?

 

My take, as a scientist:

 

As long as mankind allows its smaller head to perform its thinking we are all in trouble.

 

I am a Star Trek fan, not for the weird clothes and space battles, but for the science and the fascination over what we could become.

 

However, until we completely STOP haggling over our differences we will be no better than the apes from which  humanoids may have descended. (Actually, chimpanzees hunt and kill other monkeys with a little tree-leaf salad on the side, so the notion that primates are docile is bunk!) My pet theory is that evolution and creation are events that have co-existed since the days of Adam and Eve AND there is plenty of evidence to support this claim…. add to the plethora of ancient human archeological evidence the introduction of Cain’s wife into Judeo-Christian lore, if you please.

 

Pointedly, we’ve been wallowing around in the mire of human existence for thousands of years still striving  to “get it right”, some more diligently than others. Although exemplified by some successful societies (successful until they were slaughtered by genocidal maniacs, like the American Indians), we still refuse to make our important decisions with the future generations in mind.

 

Did you know there is a vortex of pure garbage twice the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific ocean, grinding up mostly plastic from every Pacific Rim country and washing up in Hawaii as entire beaches of plastic pebbles? If we cannot work together and solve really important issues, together, as one race, then God help us!!!

 

This is not a plug for ecology, although a vital issue. It’s not the matter of whether the earth will survive what we, as humans are doing to it.

 

The matter at hand is whether we will survive our own evolution!.

 

 

 

 

Charlie Chimes In…

(Charles Crotts: Thomasville, NC Resident

Artist, Printer and Viet Nam Veteran)

11 19 07

I remember a few years back Iraq had a  nuclear reactor.  Now they don’t.  Good old  Israel blew the s— out of it.  They didn’t talk about blowing up the reactor they just did it.  Israel didn’t then and doesn’t now give a dead rat’s ass if anyone liked what they did.  They just DID IT.  There were those who wanted the UN to take sanctions against Israel.  The UN did not take any.  Now, why is that? Everyone was glad to see the reactor gone.  Even France who behind closed doors said so.  They also were the ones who built the reactor.  Fortunately they were already handsomely paid. 

 

 

Stop the President
from Attacking Iran!

ATTENTION ALL DI READERS:

Dear DI readers and democratic friends everywhere: 

Let’s make sure we keep that old aphorism (the one Bush continues to mutter but always mangles it) in mind— “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me three times, shame on ….US!”

We let ourselves and our Congressmen get sucked into wars we’re now clearly losing both in Afghanistan and Iraq because we fell asleep at the switch and didn’t bother to question what the Neo-cons were telling us to make us think this “war on terror” was a “mission possible” in terms of waging pre-emptive war against sovereign Islamic nations, when terror is a tactic and not a corporeal enemy, much less an enemy state.

We can hear the sabers rattling more menacingly every day, and the fascist neo-cons are carefully constructing more mythology to justify yet another invasion in the Middle East. This time, let’s urge our Congressmen to nip it before it buds. If we don’t, it will certainly be primarily our fault.

Senator James Webb and Rep. Mark Udall have introduced a bill, S. 759 / H.R. 3119, to prevent President Bush from attacking Iran without Congressional authorization.

You can use the tool (web link) below—quite easily–to ask your Senators and Representative to support this legislation.

Also, please ask your Senators and Representative to oppose over $90 million for rapid development and deployment of a 30,000-lb “bunker buster” (called the Massive Ordinance Penetrator) that many fear the administration might want to use against Iran.

 

HERE IS THE WEB LINK TO USE:

 

DI Editors wish to thank Leonard Carrier for the preceding link….along with all DI staff, editors, contributors and readers…for immediately using it.

 

Best,

 

Dusty

11 13 07

 

 

---

 

Is “Islamofascism” an Oxymoron?…

Or is the Oxymoron really

“Preemptive Defense of Democracy”?

An Analysis of American foreign policy as
Imperialism by Dr. Leonard Carrier, DI In-House
Historian and Philosopher
11 5 07

 

Ever since the end of World War II, we have needed an enemy to confront. First it was communism, and the red scare took us through two wars and numerous meddling in the affairs of other nations on the pretext that we were holding the line against the socialistic menace. Our toppling of the democratically-elected regime of Iran’s Mossadeq in 1953, and our subsequent support of the tyrant shah Pahlavi (and his notorious SAVAK) was just one example of such meddling, as was our toppling of the Allende regime in Chile.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, we invented a new enemy–one with no real borders–labeled “Islamofascism,” an oxymoron if ever there was one. Our invasion of Iraq was about control of their oil, not the trumped-up charge of Saddam’s having “weapons of mass destruction” and his cooperating with Al Qaeda.

Iran was supposed to be the next nation to fall into line, but Iraq didn’t turn out to be the “cake walk” the Bush Administration expected. Yet now we get the same, tired rhetoric about Iran’s nuclear threat, and how we have to do anything–including the use of tactical nuclear weapons–to prevent Iran’s potential for atomic weapons. This, of course, is dangerous nonsense because it might completely destabilize the Middle East. Far better to negotiate with Iran, using other nations as go-betweens as we used China to negotiate with North Korea.

What our government needs to realize–and it doesn’t make much difference whether it’s Democrat or Republican–is that the old way of making the world safe for capitalism (which was the real reason behind our meddling) doesn’t work anymore. If you really are committed to a global economy, then you can’t assume a purely nationalistic political stance. If the United States continues to behave like an empire, using any means at its disposal to feather its own nest while fouling the nests of other nations, then it will suffer the fate of other empires–such as the Roman Empire–with all taxpayer money going to fund far-flung military adventures, while the rot eats its way through the social fabric at home.

War in Iraq:

 

America Loses

 

Corporations Win

 

By DW Foreign-policy Editor, Dusty Schoch

 

It’s all over – all except for 16 more months of “face saving” inevitably to flow from Bush, using his military patsy (Petreus) to betray us into believing it’s not all over.

 

The saving “surge” is clearly a failure. More Americans and Iraqi’s are dying on all fronts. So how can I contend the corporations are “winning”?  Just look at the numbers—that is the dollars and sense:

 

Ever asked yourself why there is virtually no news coverage on the issue of Iraq’s only source of revenue…oil?  Regardless of the question, the answer is NOBODY KNOWS…for sure. For everybody’s information, although Bush promised us that laws would be enacted in Iraq whereby oil revenues would be shared by all citizens of Iraq, this has not happened and is never likely to ever happen. The question is…what has been happening for the 6 years we have occupied Iraq? Where have the billions in oil revenues gone and where will they go in the future?

 

The only SURE thing is that as America’s armed forces and so-called “insurgents”  continue to die as the war continues to wind down,  we all know it’s just a matter of time before American troops are withdrawn, and hell will break loose in this land of warring Islamic tribes.

 

And in the meantime, American dollars (ours) will continue to flow into Iraq, where the only ones profiting from our presence there are the American and British oil companies (and Halliburton-type “reconstruction” enterprises, and “Blackwater USA-type paramilitary corporations…all on our taxpayer payrolls.)

 

How big are those numbers?  You might think we’re paying just for the 170,000 military troops we presently have over there. But we’re really paying for nearly twice that. There are now 137,000 “contractors” (Blackwater type paramilitary) we’re also paying….such that our  total military occupation (civil and military) numbers 307,000…and that, my friends is one out of every thousand Americans.  Do the math. One out of every thousand of us are now in Iraq, making war.

 

What is that war costing us on a per-capita basis? Well, figuring only what Bush has just asked Congress for the next year ($190 Billion of our money)  it amounts to $633 from every American for next year alone. Money we’re spending on a war we’re losing.

 

But not the Corporations. Halliburton and Blackwater are still raking it in, and will continue raking it in until the bitter end of our inevitable withdrawal, upon which Bush will certainly declare that our soldiers had victory in their grasp but are “stabbed in the back by the peacemakers back home, yadayadaydada”  echoing the same lame lines the politicians handed us when we withdrew from our equally ill-advised war in Viet Nam.

 

But, as much as the Corporations are successfully war-bucking in Iraq, we can also look to their cash flow for the very signs that, while they are “winning” the dollars, we are losing the war. Most salient in the “dollar signs” out there is the story of Hunt Oil.

 

Ray L. Hunt, C.E.O. and President of Hunt Oil Company (of Dallas Texas…surprise, surprise!!), just last month (August, 2007) signed an oil-sharing production deal with Kurdistan.  Think about what that means.  Do you think maybe Hunt Oil has some “inside intel”…and that maybe that “inside intel” is that there will be no Iraq Government, per se, when we leave…and we are certainly in the process of leaving. Even Bush is comparing Iraq to Viet Nam now, though he scoffed at such parallels for each of the first 5 years we were at war in Iraq.

 

Is it just a “coincidence” that this same owner of Hunt Oil in Texas is a member of Bush’s  “Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board” (and therefore, clearly a friend and crony, because everyone knows Bush hires only cronies)?

 

The fact that Bush cronies are now transacting oil business with provisional governments in Iraq OTHER THAN THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT WE ESTABLISHED, clearly shows the war to establish and empower that “democratic regime” is LOST.

 

But not “lost” in terms of corporate profits and ultimate bottom-line “out-come”. 

 

At this moment (2:20 PM, Sept. 27, 2007), Halliburton, Blackwater and Hunt Oil are raking in huge profits…in the billions, while you and I are paying billions ($633 apiece for the coming year alone) to enable these war criminals to continue their blood-for-oil profiteering.

 

Before writing this piece, I looked and looked for more exact information on who’s been making money from Iraq oil since the American armed forces seized possession of it and the Islamic country in which it is located.  For those interested in digging further into this slimy corporate oil trade…for those of you who remember, as I do, that Halliburton was still doing business with Iran long after Bush declared it part of the “Axis of Evil”, you can look at a few sources of information that corroborate what I’m here contending.  Click here.

 

This is an article written by one Sarah Meyer entitled “Iraq Oil Reality vs the NY Times”.  Sarah Meyer is a researcher living in the UK. She is on the BRussels Tribunal Advisory Committee. This article can also be read on the BRussels Tribunal

I have no prediction to make regarding the future “success” of the corporate quest for oil and other war profits in Iraq when we finally withdraw American troops.  One thing to consider is that if 170,000 of our military troops were withdrawn today, 130,000 American paramilitary troops would remain. Wouldn’t this be sufficient to secure Hunt Oil’s oil deal with Kurdistan?  At present, neither President Bush nor General Petreus have any control over what the paramilitaries do, although they claim they are “working on it”, since recently reported cases show that wholesale murder is part and parcel of their general corporate modus operandum in Iraq.

 

There’s little doubt that Bush and the corporate-driven Neo-cons planned to enter Iraq and commandeer their oil in perpetuity. The diplomatic conclave American Forces constructed in Iraq is the largest and most secure of its kind in the world.  It was not built at the war’s inception because Bush was that determined to democratize Iraq and save its abused women and poor from a tyrant.

 

Let’s celebrate what Hunt Oil has shown us has occurred in Iraq: The war to establish a democratic government is lost.  Let’s celebrate the loss because it means there will soon be an end to American occupation of a foreign country, invaded on false pretenses and with fascistic brutality, a war killing over 4,000 American soldiers and over 600,000 non-militant Iraqi’s.

 

While we celebrate, lets mourn,  and then condemn the corporations who are still, even as I write….winning.

 

Dusty

9 27 07

 

C h I l d h o o d

 

A Viet Nam Warrior’s Ruminations on the

Paradise of Childhood…Lost in a Perceived

Eternity of war

 

By: Michael K. Murphy*

 

          They used to say when you turned seven you’d reached the age of reason.  Now, some people will argue with that proposition.  Some will say that today’s kids reach that watershed event earlier, much earlier than that, maybe as early as six.  Others will argue that in our culture of much delayed and indulgent adolescence that “can” gets kicked down the road to eight or so.  No matter.  Seven is close enough.

 

          On September 11, 2008 — only about a year from now — children born on the same day that terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center will reach that magic adolescent milestone.   All of their brief lives into the threshold of “reason” they will have known only war.

 

          On September, 11, 2001, those kids who turned seven that day as they sat transfixed in front of their parents’ TV sets (or a parent’s TV sets in this most fractured society we have created for ourselves) when those terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center are now thirteen, old enough to have their reason formed by war and threats of war and their judgment tempered by war, only war;  “war” — actual, metaphysical, it makes no difference — war has become their primary emotional and intellectual frame of reference for themselves and to place others in the community of man.

 

          I remember the documentary films of WWII and the faces of those children of Europe.  They would, undoubtedly, be marked by that war all of their lives.  But Hitler committed suicide. The War ended.  And Europe got on with re-building itself.  But despite the positive end to that war those children had their childhood marked by war permanently and they would not forget it.  Never.

 

          Our children may be very different from the European children of WWII.  Worse off.  Much worse off.  Our children may be born, reach the age of reason, and grow to maturity and settled judgment — all with war as a constant presence in their lives.

 

          Many things will transform people from one thing to another,  poverty, great and sudden wealth, persistent discrimination – racial and otherwise — to name a few of the more obvious but I think all of those things will pale in comparison to spending one’s whole life in a state of war.

 

          It may not be the great debate of our times but what is to become of the millions of American children who are now becoming not only children “of” war but “war children” — and soon “war adults” — young boys and girls who will in their immaturity and under social pressure choose up sides early and hold those choosings fast ‘til death?  Will we become a modern “Sparta” or modern “Athens” or neither?  Whatever they become, though, not only will today’s “jihadist” children will carry the marks of a warrior into the next generation; our children will be there too.  And if our children come to match them tit for tat then strive as they must, as all children do, to best them from where will come the wisdom to put a stop to it all?

 

          I have a persistent and depressing image of a young and perfectly normal American warrior a decade from now using computer gaming skills she’s learning today to pilot an unmanned aerial vehicle over some Middle Eastern desert simply looking to kill someone.  And if you are not terrified by that image you are already there and have chosen sides.

 

Mike

 

*Mr. Michael Kevin Murphy is an attorney in Virginia, and a B.E.A. correspondent  of long standing. Mike served with the U.S. Army in Viet Nam during the period which straddled the 1968 Tet Offensive. He was commanding officer of an infantry rifle company in the Mecong River delta and  his badges and decorations  include the U. S. Parachutist Badge, the U.S. Combat Infantryman’s Badge, the Vietnam Ranger Badge (Biet Dong Quan), the U.S. Bronze Star Medal, thirteen Air Medals, and the Vietnam Gallantry Cross.