Stoopid Stuff

Surge, Lies and Patriotism

2008-07-25T08:57:00.000-07:00

It is now an article of faith in the American political discourse that "the surge worked". Of course, anyone with better than passing familiarity with the situation in Iraq knows beyond a doubt that the surge most certainly didn't "work". When announced, the escalation of the number of American combat troops in Iraq, primarily centered around Baghdad was described as having the purpose of reducing violence in order to provide the Iraqi leadership the "breathing space" to create political reconciliation and provide the Iraqi population with desperately needed services. Now, at the end of this so-called surge, violence is certainly down. There are clearly a number of factors contributing to that salutary outcome, but it is certainly fair to say that the additional American troops is one of them. Of course, Iraq is still a basket case, locked in polirtical chaos, without any clear path to becoming a functioning society. And violence, while "down", is still horrendously high, with close to 600 Iraqis killed every month in internecine warfare between at least six different factions. No. The surge didn't work. In Iraq, nothing works.

But the interesting thing is not the broad acceptance of this blatant falsehood. The lies, and the baldly transparent agenda behind them, are every day a greater part and parcel of the political conversation in America. It is a sad, dysfunctional condition, but one we become more inured to every day. Rather, the interesting thing is that our dialog has become so poisoned that it is utterly impossible to state the obvious truth. The wisdom among politicians, press and pundit alike is that the surge worked. In spite of the obvious fact that it did not, nothing even weakly challenging this blatantly false position may be said. It's this collective blindness that prevents the American political process from actually doing it's job, solving problems and addressing events in a rational and realistic manner.

Similarly, there is the unquestioned "knowledge" that the nation of Iran poses a very serious threat to the United States and her interests. This is obviously not the case. Iran has no capacity to threaten the US, and Israel has a quantitative military advantage in addition to 300 nuclear weapons. The accepted wisdom that Iran constitutes a genuine military threat to the US is clearly grounded in the well-documented necessity of an unpopular and authoritarian political leadership to have a terrifying external enemy to justify unpopular, undemocratic and unconstitutional actions at home. Iran is nothing more than "the boogie man", but it is expressly forbidden to say so.

One wonders how we let ourselves get to this point. A point where recognizing or even simply commenting on reality is disallowed from the discourse. This is madness. What could be more important than matters of war and peace? And yet it is in this very arena that lies and distortions carry more weight than the actual analysis and recognition of reality. A political historian, if one were willing to destroy her career to document this descent into fantasy, would probably find deep roots. To me, it goes back to political debates over crime and drugs. No matter how wasteful and ineffectual the program, if it involved criminalizing more activities and harshly punishing offenders, it was politically desirable. Contrarily, no matter how effective alternatives might be, if they could possibly be portrayed as "soft on crime" (think for a moment about how ridiculous that phrase is) they were to be avoided as political suicide. So it began to be necessary to take positions that were utterly antithetical to effective governance, yet all the while proclaiming them to be the polar opposite, paragons of effective leadership. As the years went by, perhaps the clanging discord of these statements began to fade, and we have come to accept the conventional wisdom uncritically.

Today, in the through-the-looking-glass world of bush/cheney/rove political dialog, we are inundated by perfectly mad statements of utter falsehood. Statements that are routinely picked up but the media and repeated until they take on a patina of reality. And of course, with movies and American Idol and Mixed Martial Arts to distract us, it has become too much of a daily challenge to think these things through on our own.

What will it take for America to begin to accept the insertion of reality in her political debates? It may be far too late for that, but there was a certain hope that a President Obama would speak to Americans as adults, in complete sentences, dealing in truths rather than political expedient distortions. Alas, with his perfectly ludicrous positions on Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and al-Quaeda, he has demonstrated that not even he has the political will to tell his constituency the truth.

Ultimately, it is necessary for us, as citizens, to try to find a way to inform ourselves. And in many cases, this requires nothing more than thinking carefully about the things they are saying, rather than accepting them at face value...

You can identify a thing by its nature...

2008-07-22T14:36:00.000-07:00

War. We know what war is. Intuitively, almost instinctively, the knowledge is as much visceral as it is cerebral.

We know that five years after we invaded another nation, defeated it's military on the field of battle, deposed it's political leadership and occupied it's capital we cannot still be at war with that nation.

We know that it is not possible to be at war with an enemy you can only describe as non-specific and amorphous. We also know that if this enemy does not have soldiers, a conflict with that enemy can be many things, but it cannot be a war.

It is very clear that calling it a "war" as an explanation or excuse when we chose it, started it and are now perpetuating it is disingenuous and self-serving.

What is happening in Iraq is many things. None of them are war. It is not our country. We could end our involvement in any combat in that nation by bringing our occupation troops home. I can guarantee you that no American active duty military forces will be killed by Iraqi insurgents or Shiite militias if they were in America instead of Iraq.

What is happening in Afghanistan might be arguably substantially closer to a war. At least it is the case where an argument can be made that having American combat troops there might actually be contributing to American security, and there are actual military forces deployed against them. But there has to be a minimum threshold where at some point the size of a military deployment, even one that includes combat with specific enemy forces, is so small that it does not rise to the level of "war". And as long as poverty and corruption are the norm, and the entire country outside the capitol is ruled by warlords with no national loyalty and no willingness to operate out of anything but personal greed and the perpetuation of their own local power, there will never be an end to the Islamic Fundamentalists that we currently narrowly describe as our enemies in that blighted place.

It is also important to understand that borders, particularly that of Pakistan, prevent the prosecution of anything even remotely resembling war. We can only place our troops in harms way and wait until the forces opposed to them decide to attack them. It should be obvious that this state of affairs utterly precludes a military solution, but to the mindless, predatory, criminal leadership in Washington DC there is no other expression of American power than bombs and bullets.

Ultimately, we know it. We are not "a nation at war". This is not "a time of war". A part of us is embarrassed when we make the claim. Some people say this is true, but it is only a technical truth, merely the case because there has been no formal "declaration of war". This misses the very important larger point. We are not a nation at war because nothing we are involved in, no military endeavor we labor at, can reasonably be described as a war. It is a politically self-serving delusion, propaganda to support the worst crimes of a deeply authoritarian government. We have allowed our government, post 9/11, to bamboozle us with martial talk, illegal invasions and stupid, wasteful, destructive occupation into allowing them unlimited extra-constitutional powers. The sad thing is that it is entirely unclear why they so deeply and venally desired these unnecessary authoritarian powers. Other than conducting illegal surveillance on their political opponents, the outrageous new powers they have claimed do not empower them in any meaningful way.

Torture, indefinite detention without due process, rendition, bribery, murder, mercenaries - none of these things has yielded positive outcomes, despite vague bleating to the contrary. They could have done a much better job of managing the threats to America after that September day without any of it, and America would be significantly better off politically, diplomatically, militarily and economically.

We have all been ill-served by allowing and enabling the "wartime" fiction. It has been used against us, not to our benefit, and we cannot allow it to survive into the next administration. These lies have have cost so many lives, so much treasure, so much power and prestige - let us reject that contention, and pull away the cloak that "war" gives our government to act in criminal and counterproductive ways. Only by speaking the truth can we force them to acknowledge the truth.

And then there were...

2008-07-21T18:23:00.000-07:00

Ariel Sharon in a coma. Henry Kissinger living high, enjoying his sunset years. Mladić is still free, but he is merely the thug, the triggerman, ultimately just a coarse murderer who doesn't matter. I suppose, in the fullness of time, we'll add the names of George Bush and Dick Cheney to the list of the brutal genocidal killers not of people, but of generations, to this sad list of late twentieth and twentyfirst century madmen. But tonight, Radovan Karadžić is in custody, en route to The Hague to stand trial.

No, not Feith, Wolfowitz, Yoo or Powell, enablers have to occupy a lower rung on the ladder of responsibility and accountability. There are many with blood on their hands. They are legion, and we are angered by the unseemly rush they indulged in to murder, to torture, to rape. Like Mladić, they carried out the horrible crimes, they led their men to put the muzzles of their rifles against the necks of their unarmed countrymen and shoot them over open mass graves, but they have an order of magnitude lesser responsibility.

For these decisions, these strategies, are formulated not in the mud of the field, but rather in paneled rooms, over polished oak conference tables, with telephones and PowerPoint presentations.

No. It is the design of these crimes, the decisions to bring them to fruition, the hideous calculation that it is murder, and forced displacement, and torture and rape that will yield the desired outcome that must be challenged, and called to account. It is for others, later, to hunt down and punish the murderers, the rapists, the torturers. For if our society is to mean anything, if it is to be seen as something other than a protective veneer for our most base instincts, it must stand up and speak a resonating NO to those that would use our civilization as nothing more than a cover for their ugly, predatory hatreds.

Politics and public policy are the way we, as humans, have come to understand how we define and advance our societies. They are frequently in conflict, and often are utterly incompatible. Sometimes those disagreements and incompatibilities result in conflict. All these things, stupid and wasteful though they are, are part and parcel of the modern way of life we have established.

But there are lines. And the extent we collectively allow those lines to be crossed is a very good way to define and describe the healthfulness of our global society.

Tonight, I'll sleep well knowing this architect of brutality of the highest order will not be living unchallenged, in wealth and comfort, but rather in a cell in the Hague, contemplating not just his crimes, but his impending mortality.

Sharon sleeps. Kissinger laughs. Justice waits.

But Radovan Karadžić has lost his freedom. It's something...

No More Clinton, No More Bush...

2008-06-08T10:18:00.001-07:00

Bush. Clinton. Clinton. Bush. Bush. C'mon, what is this, a hereditary dynasty? That's 20 years, TWENTY years, 1989 through 2009 where two families dominated american politics. What does this say? What meaning can we deduce from it all?

I have no idea, but I will say this. I have a general sense it is very much for the best that this alternating familial hand off of American power will not continue.

Americans are weird birds, no doubt about it. All the while espousing the most egalitarian, democratic ideals, Americans seem to desire at the most visceral level some kind of monarchy, a dictatorial, iron-fisted presence in DC. The same people who vocally support free speech, but seek to silence speech with which they do not agree. The same people who believe in the fourth amendment, and yet are willing to toss it away at the slightest provocation. The same people who believe we're all equal, and are more than willing to rush in and try to find a legal avenue to prevent some people from merely getting married.

I've been an American all my life, and I don't pretend for a moment to understand the mixed motivations of these people. Some of them seem so twisted, so invested in hatred and bigotry, they seem like people I don't even know. And yet, another day, they are us. How to understand, how to integrate?

But here's what I know. The downward trajectory for American society has been in play for decades. The whole IT/technology marketplace has concealed some serious systemic flaws, but underneath it all the US was plunging ahead on an utterly unsustainable path.

And it was only making it worse that the same set of DC Insiders continued to control the levers of power. It's going to be dramatically better, and better for all of us, to have new blood in power in DC. And please. Shall we never, ever again allow just two families to take ultimate control. It's what the worst dictatorships do, and it always fails, for all the same reasons, over and over again....

...and Everybody Gets a Share

2008-06-07T09:43:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure this is not a good sign.

More and more non - governmental, non - sovereign entities are fielding political, diplomatic and yes, even military organizations. They have no allegiance to any nation, they operate across international borders, and their funding sources can be quite diverse, indeed, can be the most effective of criminal organizations, not to mention governments either sympathetic to the ideological causes they espouse, or more sinister, paying tribute to avoid becoming a target.

Now, sure, guerrilla armies and political militias are nothing new. But now we're getting into a new creature altogether - less shadowy, more capable, well funded with complex political and propaganda operations. It's a combination of post-colonial, post-modern politics, ethnic identity movements, terror as a political tool, globalization, the internet, satellite communications, air travel - indeed, it's as if every advance of the last fifty years has been designed specifically to contribute to this trend.

When a small, well-funded transnational organization was able to launch a devastating attack against the United States on September 11th, 2001, a new era began. Military threats that could neither be deterred nor retaliated against militarily. Somewhat parallel to global climate change, it is the law of unintended consequences writ large, with every possibility to change the world on a massive scale.

Here you have the next logical step. The US has decided, at least over the last ten or so years, to be an imperial power. But in a prosperous society, without conscription, you cannot put enough men under arms to support an empire, no matter how efficient and lethal your combined arms forces might be. The solution? Again, private armies.

So now, the next step in the trend. Blackwater, one of America's private mercenary armies, is now purchasing fighter planes. A private corporation, right here in America, will now have ground attack/close air support capability. The chilling question that hangs over this entire endeavor is Why? Under what circumstances can you imagine Blackwater requiring strike aircraft? Border operations? Riot control?

Bear in mind, that entirely unlike American military and police forces, these people have sworn no oath to the nation, it's constitution, it's people. They are merely a corporation, beholden only to the contract, and always available to the highest bidder.

To try to imagine the world of 20 years from now, or 50, is nearly impossible, for we are seeing so many unsustainable paths that lead to dystopian horrors of global proportions, so many interwoven dynamics that cannot be controlled, outcomes that could never be predicted. Climate change, economic collapse, food, water and energy shortages, religious fundamentalism, atomic weapons, desperate, sick displaced people challenging the safe and greedy for a chance at a future for their children.

Indeed, we have crossed so many Rubicons by now it's hard to judge the significance of any one event. But it's at least possible that a historian in some future world will look back at the day that Blackwater decided they could buy an air force and say "at that point, that civilization was finished"....

Is this stupid beautiful or WHAT?

2008-06-06T18:55:00.000-07:00

Crazy. I gotta say, the train has a LOT to recommend it.

Crazy Train - A Retrospective

2008-06-02T13:52:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd share a few quick pictures from the Flapdoodle so far.

Leaving San Jose

En Route - Operational on the Coast Starlight, Northbound into who knows what

Arriving in Portland, the Accommodations were a little nicer than I'm used to

Oh. And guess who was on the train

Yep. That's him. I think he shot Conductor Andy in the face.

Operational Intellignce

2008-06-01T22:31:00.000-07:00

OK. I've done the initial recon. Couple of things leap out.

First. Y'gotta pay attention. There's a bogus, decoy Ringlers on Burnside. Too small and too hoity, not to mention toity to be our destination. Just sayin...

Second. There's some open tables in the front, and some more all the way in the back. The rest are booths or pool tables. Whoever gets there first needs to secure those back tables.

Kinda QED...

mikey

For the Last Time, Dammit, the Reason is BECAUSE

2008-05-31T14:19:00.001-07:00

People keep asking me why I'm taking the train to Portland. Instead, I suppose, of a plane.

I could explain how planes are a necessary evil, this trip is neither of those things, but rather a chance to relax and have fun.

I could explain that, when traveling alone, it's nice to be able to talk to the people around you, maybe get into their heads a little, without being suspected of any and all sorts of bad intentions.

I might even explain that you just never know if you might find a friendship or a romance on a train, along with a chance to think things through.

But mostly? It's because you get to SEE STUFF!

Let the adventure begin...

Clusterfuckers

2008-05-28T16:09:00.000-07:00

When they were originally deployed, cluster munitions solved a serious problem. It was impossible to use unguided iron bombs from fast - moving ground attack aircraft against small discrete targets like tanks, or to effectively deliver ordinance against larger area targets like airports or massed vehicles. Even the guided missiles of the period lacked the accuracy and power to be effective.

At that time, the primary anti-tank aircraft, the A-10, designed specifically to kill Soviet tanks crossing the Fulda Gap, was designed around a special 30mm cannon as it was well known that no aerial delivery weapon could be delivered with the necessary accuracy and power.

The solution was the Cluster Bomb. A large bomb would be dropped on target, and on it's way down it would split open and distribute hundreds or even thousands of "bomblets" over a given area. Tanks, vehicles, distributed buildings, massed troops, all of these were effectively destroyed by the Cluster Bomb.

Of course, the downside of the Cluster Munitions concept was that after all was said and done, you had thousands of unexploded bomblets just laying around, waiting for someone to disturb them enough to cause them to explode. And they might very well lay there for years, even decades. And who's likely to find these fascinating little lethal bits of half-buried technology in the middle of nowhere a few years after the end of hostilities? Pretty sure you can expect that to be children.

So now over one hundred nations of the world have gotten together in Dublin, Ireland and, at the end of an extended process, adopted a treaty banning the manufacture and use of cluster munitions. The kind of decision that spurs hope, that makes me think that just perhaps the human race might survive it's own bloody-minded cleverness.

Of course, the United States refused to sign the treaty. Along with the Bush/Cheney administration's ideological fellow travelers, Russia, China, Israel, Pakistan and India. The stated reason was that Cluster Bombs have a proven "Military Utility". Duh. Gee, you think if they didn't have a military utility anyone would use them? That a ban would be required to curtail their use? That's probably the most stupid example of recursive logic I've ever seen.

The idea here is that maybe the military has to work a little harder to accomplish it's goals. Maybe it even takes some additional casualties. Because the current decision, that the US cannot forgo the use of Cluster Bombs because it puts American soldiers at risk, taken at the proven cost of hundreds or thousands of dead and maimed civilians, mostly children, is as ugly and disgusting a choice any nation could make. What kind of heartless military/police state would make this decision? The world becomes more sane, tries to find a way to edge away from humanity's most base tribal urges, and America becomes more militarized, more inhuman, more inhumane.

Nations ban capital punishment. They find ways to do law enforcement without torture. They make it an important goal that their citizens get health care. When natural disasters strike, they don't see it as nothing beyond a profit opportunity. And now nations begin to try to move to a post-warfare age. But the US won't go. Ban land mines? Nope. Cluster Bombs? Not a chance. We need to continue to build as many fiendishly clever machines of death as we can possibly invent, for there are more wars looming, more nations to invade, more regimes to be changed, more bombs to be dropped in the failed application of nineteenth century coercive diplomacy.

The more America lashes out, the more she isolates herself and declares that she will go her own way under force of arms and bellicose threats, the less sustainable a path we find ourselves on. When finally, economically, politically and morally bankrupt, the US finds herself prostrate at the feet of an angry world, there's going to be a cost required of her. And that cost only gets higher.

I'd Always Rather be Lucky than Good

2008-05-27T11:22:00.001-07:00

Some people just live right or something. I don't know from Portland. Been there a couple times, always had some other things on my mind, like bikes and weapons and money and, well, you know.

So I check out the recomended hotels. The Ace has this cool vibe. I'm not even sure where it is, but it's got the flapdoodleing kind of sensibility that just seemed right, so I didn't give it a second thought.

I didn't know where the actual Sadly meet-up was going to happen, but people kept telling me you can get around Portland easy, don't really matter.

Hokay. I'm in.

So then the decision gets made. It's Ringlers. Hey. Works for me. So now I plug the addresses into Google and imagine my self-satisfied smirk when I saw that the Ace Hotel and Ringlers Pub are all of three blocks apart. This is going to not only be fun, but easy.

And I couldn't have done a better job of it had I had one and a half clues about what I was doing.

Say it again, with me.

Yee Hah...

Fifty Ways to Get Away with Murder

2008-05-24T13:50:00.000-07:00

I know I'm late, but I want to talk about Sean Bell. For a while, just thinking about it would leave me in an impotent rage, and I have to say I'm a little disappointed that the community hasn't reacted to this brutal authoritarian miscarriage of justice at all strongly enough, but with a little distance I think now I can have my say in a way other than screaming obscenities and hurling rocks and bottles.

I'm sure you know the story as well as I do. Sean and his friends were out on the town the night before his wedding. Unarmed, just a couple young guys hitting a strip club and partying before the marriage. A more innocent, American story you cannot tell.

Something happened. There was a confrontation with plainclothes cops, somebody panicked, and FIFTY rounds were fired. All by the police at a car full of unarmed citizens who had every right to be there. Sean Bell was killed, two others were wounded.

Three of the cops went on trial. Surely there must have been something criminal in their actions. On the face of it, strafing a car full of the very people they are supposed to be protecting, slaughtering an innocent civilian, it's clearly a case of lethal misconduct.

The Police Officers were acquitted of any wrongdoing. Walked out the courthouse door, back to their lives. A life Sean Bell no longer had, and a life Nicole would have to find a way to put back together.

Now this happens far too often in America. The cops get a pass for guessing wrong and killing innocent and unarmed citizens because they were frightened, because they THOUGHT the victim had a weapon, because something startled or distracted them, because they were enraged. Fear and anger, never a justification in it's own right, have become the perverted cover story that allows court after court, judge after judge, to allow murderers and thugs to walk free.

This is clearly wrong. Yes, that job is inherently dangerous. But we must be honest here. The attraction of the job to young men and young women is the excitement, the action, the adrenaline. Car chases, foot chases, shootouts - this is the stuff of storybook cops and robbers, and part of the draw. The Police must NOT then be permitted to unleash deadly force on someone who frightens them. They need to ACCEPT the risks and wait it out, knowing they are exposed, knowing they are at risk, and make the right decision EVERY TIME. If they are unwilling to accept that risk, they should find another line of work.

Just as cops cannot be judge and jury, they cannot take someone's life just because he makes them feel at risk. They wear body armor, carry a variety of weapons and have a lot of support. They need to make sure that if they deploy deadly force, they are killing someone who poses a GENUINE risk to themselves or others. That there was not even a gun in Sean Bell's car, that NO rounds were fired by anyone except the police makes this such an egregious case of homicide under color of authority that the acquittals are bitterly laughable.

The other point in this case is the ridiculously excessive firepower deployed. Fifty rounds. Fired by three cops from three angles, into a car. Fifty rounds. Sometime stop by a shooting range and listen to the gunfire, counting fifty. You'll be appalled at what fifty shots is, what it means.

One cop fired 31. Let me translate that number for you. The double action autos they carry, whether they be Glocks, Sigs or Smiths, carry a double column magazine that holds 15 rounds. These magazines are now illegal for you and I to own, but the police get an exception. Along with this fifteen round mag, there is a round in the chamber. So when that cop drew his weapon that night, he had sixteen rounds hot and ready to go. So the shooting starts. This cop runs through his entire first magazine. Now bear in mind, he is NOT under fire. There is no hostile fire at all. Nonetheless, does he stop, evaluate, consider? Does he shout, holler, ask questions, try to determine the situation? Nope. He slaps in a full fifteen round magazine, releases the slide and pushes all additional fifteen rounds downrange into that car full of young black me, out for a night's bachelor party the night before the wedding. 31 rounds. Two full mags, with a reload. He was acquitted of any wrongdoing.

Our country is at grave risk today. At risk of becoming something else. An authority worshiping, highly militarized police state. And so many of our institutions are contributing to the slide. How can we look at Sean Bell's death and not just KNOW this is wrong. This is not us. This MUST not be allowed to stand. How can we allow a judge to make such a biased judgment to support law enforcement over the very people law enforcement is supposed to be protecting?

Sure. Sean Bell's case is just another symptom of what's wrong with America in the early years of the 21st century. But when the symptoms get this bad, this ugly, the disease may very well be terminal...

Democracy in Action

2008-05-24T13:27:00.000-07:00

So yesterday it occurred to me that I would be in mid-Flapdoodle when election day rolled around. See, California only moved it's presidential primary up on the calendar. The rest of the election, still called "The California Primary" because to call it "The guys who are too inconsequential to care about election" would have been politically incorrect in every possible sense, remains on schedule for the Traditional first Tuesday in June.

Well. Imagine my consternation. What's a Flapdoodler to doodle doodle do? I got on the blower to the Registrar of Voters, expecting a bureaucratic runaround, but instead was immediately offered a solution: Early Voting. You can go to the Registrar's office during business hours, even on weekends, and cast your ballot! What WILL they think of next? So, in my daily travels, I stopped down on Berger in industrial San Jose this morning.

As I pulled into the parking lot, I was struck by an ominous sense of deja vu. But it was real. I HAD been here before, and not in a good way. See, the same complex houses the county "Department of Revenue" where you come to negotiate and pay fines, probation costs, reperations, any of the economic sanctions that can be levied by the county or state.

I shook off that ugly sense of impending interaction with the county criminal justice system and strolled into the registrar's office. It was a busy place, as you'd expect one week before an election, but as it turned out I was the only person there for the early voting. And as they were doing lots of pre-election training, there were a large number of people to assist me.

And that was it. In and out in ten minutes, my civic duty done, I can now proceed down the path that beckons me, the path of Flapdoodle...

And So it Begins

2008-05-20T21:05:00.000-07:00

I'm calling this trip "The Great Oregon Flapdoodle" in honor of Gavin and all that has gone before. I'll be taking the Amtrak "Coast Starlight" up to Portland, or "PDX" as all the cool kids say, and then enjoying the company of many PacNW Sadlys, and any helpless strangers and small animals that happen by.

How did all this come to pass? I'm not sure. I was planning a train trip to Seattle to get my head straight and just get out of the freakin valley for a while, when this opportunity arose.

Y'see, I've met a lot of people out there in Left Blogistan. And some of them are pretty special. And I've really valued the opportunity to interact without having to reveal my sadly mundane, truly banal self. But there's one. Gavin. Probably the BEST fucking writer operating on the 'tubes in complete anonymity, Gavin can do things with the english language that will make you laugh, make you jealous, make you understand and give you a righteous boner.

Gavin is the other side of the coin I occupy. Gavin is a bright, clever dancer, a fencer with words to my blunt instrument. I always felt we were finding different ways to say the same thing. And Dr. Ms. soontobemrs Marita. That's a woman to address politely, and with a respectable amount of awe.

So, whatevs. I can't pass this up. Train leaves on 5/31. Stay tuned, kiddies. This might just be messy, and madness always lurks just outside of sanity, but the Flapdoodle is ON, and the train keeps rolling all night long...

My Message to Senator Clinton on the Night of her Victory in W. Virginia

2008-05-13T18:09:00.000-07:00

Thanks for playing.

We have some lovely parting gifts for you.

So?

2008-03-20T08:33:00.001-07:00

CHENEY: On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success.

RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.

CHENEY: So?

RADDATZ So? You don’t care what the American people think?

CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

There you have it. In perhaps the most searingly honest statement in the history of this foul regime, the architect of it's most soul-dead atrocities sums up in one succinct sound bite their overarching worldview.

Just in case you somehow still labored under the quaint notion that you lived in a representative democracy, Dick Cheney clearly disabuses you of such Pollyanna-ish thoughts. If somehow you have lived through the precipitous decline in quality of life and liberty that is the United States in the first decade of the new millennium without noticing the fundamental changes in both government and governance that have taken place, with a single word, our malignant VP slapped some clarity into your vision.

And so, this is what it has come to. Economic decline, endless war, authoritarian government and a bloated plutocracy. And when asked for a bit of concern for the cares, dreams, hopes and aspirations of the population, Dick Cheney has his "let them eat cake" moment.

So?

With Apologies to Night Ranger

2008-03-14T10:53:00.001-07:00

Spitzers Kristin
Oh you got the cash
Now the media needs to hear the trash
From you, Its true
When eliot took off his suit and tie
What did he do
What did he want to try
Please say. OK?

You're tattelling
What's your price to tell
You've got your story to sell
You were just State Personnel

Babe you gotta do a news broadcast
Your agents worrying your fame won't last
For long. Its wrong
Spitzers Kristin
There's so much to know
You gotta tell us if you suck or blow
Come on
He's just a John

Tattelling
What's your price to tell
You won't go straight to hell
You're an angel who already fell

I'm back. And I'm PISSED!

2008-03-07T19:55:00.000-08:00

Hey America. Comfortable? Lemme get you a pillow.

How bout that argument in Washington about Iraq. Man, those people fucked it all up, huh? But they're getting it right now. Right?

Fucking sick ghouls. Wake UP! Your goddam criminal invasion and occupation NO DIFFERENT than the Nazis invasion and occupation of France in 1940 and every bit as illegal, set in motion a thousand thousand movements and actions that nobody in the sad, sick, brutal bush administration ever bothered to think about.

It infuriates me when pundits and politicians in total safety sit and pontificate on how the "surge" has made things better. How we're "winning". Sorry. That's fucking obscene. And you, YOU are complicit.

Instead of a horrendous bombing every two and a half days, now there's one every six days. You wouldn't choose to live like that. But you'll choose it for the Iraqi people, because you are bloodthirsty, inured to the brutal violence your criminal leadership unleashes on the world every day. YOU ARE COMPLICIT.

The blood of a million innocent Iraqi men, women and children is on your hands. Because you allowed this "experiment' in coercive regime change. Democracy at gunpoint, damn all the consequences.

Every single Iraqi citizen would gladly go back to the time of Saddam. Does that tell you anything about your "gift"?

You have allowed your government to take a vibrant, secular society, doing ok despite living under a dictator, punished by cruel, inhuman economic sanctions, and condemn then to a world of death, disease, displacement, poverty and ignorance. No school. No hospitals. No electricity. No hope. No future. Nothing. Thanks to you.

Hey, America. Feel safe? Or under this paranoid, warmongering regime, are you scared all the time?

You are a sick, helpless, mindless embarrassment. What do you know of safety, America? Could you live in Baghdad, Diyala, Faluja,Basra? Could you live trapped between the militias, the mullahs, and the corruption? Stripped of your wealth, your possessions, your very identity, what would you do? Where would you go. I'll go ahead and answer that, America. You would DIE. Or you would choose sides in a corrupt bargain with the devil, and YOU would be the one with the handcuffs, with the electric drill, on the nighttime visits to your former neighbors. Because you could not live in the hell you have unleashed on other people, people you don't know, and refuse to care about.

Could you live in Syria or Jordan, leaving behind your possessions and history, ALL of it, and grovel for enough of a handout to keep your kids from starving?

Would you join the insurgency, having nothing left to live for, needing money more than life, having no future and no hope? And here, America, we react with anger and shock that Iraqis might support killing American soldiers. What would you have them do? You sit in your safe suburban kitchen and worry about the quality of the remodel, or will little Jessica get into university. Can you even imagine the decisions you have forced on millions of people just like you?

Just as Germany has had to come to terms with the holocaust, America, some day you will have to find a way to live with your complicity in the crime of the new century. What you have done, in the name of your own "safety", in the name of a your nameless night sweating fears, will not be forgotten. No longer can you look to China and say "you are not living up to your highest ideals". For that matter, how can you say to Iran, "you are a rogue nation with imperial desires"? You will have to learn to live in a world where you are not the "shining city on the hill", but rather just another criminal military power, with nothing to offer the world but fear and death.

So, tell me, America? Are you proud? Or are you a little sad, for all the death and horror, for the futures robbed, for the widows, for the orphans, for the terror and the madness and all the things you've taken from an entire people and can never give back? Do you feel? CAN you feel? Or is it a simple equation - we have to be safe, no matter what the cost in other lives? How do you make that calculation? If there was not enough food, would you shoot your neighbor's children? Would you and your neighbors burn the next neighborhood in order to kill them? No? How certain can you be, when you stood by and allowed this?

If you could actually allow yourself to think about what it is you are responsible for in Iraq, you would lose your mind. You could not go forward, you would have to do something. You could not allow such suffering for such a sad, sick, selfish reason, right? Sorry. Your guilt is written in your history, and in a few years your children are going to hang their heads in shame and ask "why?" Why did you allow an atrocity of this magnitude to be carried out in your name, after all your pretty words and outrage? While you cried out "remember Rwanda" and "end the suffering in Darfur" your leadership was waging a criminal occupation that has ruined millions of lives. While you dispassionately argued the political merits of "staying or going".

I can't believe we haven't risen up as a people and said "we're better than this". And put an end to it. I'll never understand how you, America, decided you're the good guy. You're the worst of the criminals. I am not a religious man, but if I was a Christian, I'd despair for your souls.

Actually, I'd rather talk about football or American Idol

2008-01-12T17:45:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted anything in a while. Let's just say that life got in the way. So here's a few random thoughts and dispatches from the the depths of despair and pessimism. A collapsing economy, and a national political conversation in full swing that refuses to allow the participants to address the real problems, root causes, and identify genuine solutions. Hope you've got an exit plan and a decent bunker.

The American Evangelical Christianist Theocrats and the Muslim Fundamentalist Islamists want exactly the same thing. Why is no one allowed to say this? They want to rule their constituents by the laws they glean from their sacred texts, they want to cover their women, they want to discriminate against homosexuals and atheists, they want women to be subservient, they want their religion to be the dominant power. And yet, with all the obvious parallels, you never see anyone with a real role in the national conversation make the comparison, and whenever someone, a blogger or author perhaps, tries to point out the obvious similarities, he or she is accused of moral equivalence. Fascinating response, really. Like when a single payer universal health insurance program is proposed, the response is the plaintive wail "socialized medicine"! As if this is all one must say to dismiss the government's responsibility to take care of it's citizens. It's interesting that at no time do they explain why moral equivalence or socialized medicine are BAD, they just invoke the words like some kind of magic spell that will ward off evil spirits.

I'm fascinated by the clear fact, that judged strictly by his words, George Bush is far more concerned with the Iraqi people than he is the American people. He speaks firmly on their behalf, lobbies intensely for money for them, and puts everything America cares about on the line to try and make their lives a little better - at least according to him. At the same time, he vetoes money for health care for American children, and insists on limiting domestic spending in order to free up money to spend on Iraq. If you were watching from the point of view of a space alien in outer space, you would think George Bush was the president of Iraq, not America. Does anyone mention this, wonder about it, ponder it's significance? I haven't seen it.

Items produced from bits of cloth are nothing. They are bits of colored cloth. Whether they are head scarves, flags or kerchiefs, they are nothing but inanimate bits of colored cloth, imbued only with the significance we award them. They are symbols, nothing more, emblematic of beliefs and ideals, but not sacred containers FOR those beliefs and ideals. No one ever died for a flag. They might have willingly sacrificed their life for the ideas and ideals REPRESENTED by that flag. You might say the flag is a bit of shorthand, a way of summing up and representing a community, a tribe and a way of life. And yeah, sometimes that's worth dying for. A flag? A mere bit of colored cloth? Not so much.

If a woman wants to wear a head scarf, we have to be willing to allow it. We have to find a way to get past the tribal hate and fear and recognize that, as has been said so eloquently before, it is not a zero-sum game. By wearing her desired bit of cloth, she doesn't take anything from the rest of us. Indeed, by empowering her to follow her wishes, we empower us all to do the same. So much of how we view the world is driven by a tribal fear of the other, but the other is only a threat to the extent he feels threatened. By unwinding the tribal nature that might well have served humanity well forty thousand years ago, by getting past the fear and racism and sexism and hatred that drives and informs so much of how we deal with the rest of the world, we have a chance to move into a new kind of culture, and with the challenges of a global interconnected economy, peak oil and global warming, may well be the only chance humanity has for survival.

Blindness to the Madness

2007-11-18T12:43:00.000-08:00

It's crazy. It's the craziness that's crazy. A kind of circular, meta-crazy that nobody seems to notice. It's like having an unwashed wino staggering around your cocktail party, vomiting on the buffet and coughing great, hacking gouts of phlegm in the punch. And the people, intelligent, elegantly dressed, merely step gingerly around the puddles and the ranting madman and pretend that it's just another cocktail party, like all the cocktail parties before.

The US is on an utterly unsustainable course, completely out of step with the 21st century world, where nations compete and partner on the basis of economic growth and increased quality of life. A global inter-connectedness fueled by digital and satellite communications and global trade not beholden to national borders, time zones, cultures or languages has created a world where what was long held to be impossible, the end of war, is not only possible, it is the only logical, obvious path. It is only America, the lone superpower in a unipolar world, that continues to cling to the outdated and discredited model of military power projection as the methodology for influencing international affairs.

This has gotten to the point of absurdity, the point where the president of the United States can insist on 200 billion dollar appropriation to sustain the military occupation of a desert nation halfway around the world and veto a 40 billion dollar bill to provide health care to American children. And that's not even the crazy. The crazy, the circular, meta madness in all this is nobody in America is outraged, at least not for the right reason. Let's put it in very simple terms. America could cut her ridiculous military spending in half, immediately, without a single ill effect. But Americans are so conditioned to a paranoid distrust, indeed a genuine fear that all manner of existential threats lurk just off our misty shores, and if we don't simply accept the necessity of a trillion dollar defense budget that includes massive expenditures on strategic weapons we will certainly be overrun, conquered and subjugated in mere weeks.

When examined dispassionately, this is obviously not the case. But to simply propose that America could fund much of it's internal needs in education, health care, infrastructure and entitlement programs by gutting the defense budget is political suicide. If we are not allowed to have the conversation, there is no hope of changing the course, and America will certainly continue her slide into irrelevance. The amazing thing is we have had the opportunity, over the last half dozen years, to see all of this clearly demonstrated. The lessons have been taught, clearly and with audiovisual support, but they have not been learned. The data provided, the wrong conclusions drawn.

First, what has the Iraq debacle taught us about the effectiveness of "hard power" in the twenty first century? Since the end of the second world war, America could always influence world affairs by projecting "soft power" around the globe. A carrier task force, the quiet rattle of the saber, the forward deployment of a bomber wing, and the world stood up and listened. Why? Because, like any good work of fiction, the threat was perfect, while the execution never is. President Bush actually used the American military against a crippled, bankrupt third world regime. And the world saw how limited military power, no matter how mighty, actually is. The vaunted American armed forces, despite unlimited financial support, could not pacify that small, impoverished nation. And now, while most nations understand that America's military has the capability of defeating their armed forces and toppling their government, America has learned a more important lesson with the world watching: That most any nation can, nonetheless make that too painful and costly an endeavor for America ever to undertake anything like it again.

Second, the other side of that coin, the world has learned that in a global economy, with instant communications and any capital no more than a dozen hours away, building and sustaining an insurgency that can bring a superpower to its knees is neither difficult nor terribly expensive. Funds, weapons and fighters flow across seas and borders, easily provided to virtual organizations that can share knowledge and expertise with sympathetic organizations all over the world. And a well-funded insurgency with popular support cannot be defeated by any military, no matter how powerful.

Building a military does not contribute to a nations wealth. Sure, it can create jobs, but that's a chimera. The money contributes nothing, builds nothing, and adds nothing to the future. And if it is then demonstrated for all to see that that horrendously expensive, inflexible military cannot even accomplish the one thing it is expected to accomplish, the imposition of your will on other nations, then there is no reason, no excuse, for building it.

America is in real trouble. The economy is built on shadows, smoke and China, the debt is over 9 trillion dollars, energy costs have gone through the roof, the dollar is in free fall. The US economy is a service economy. We don't make anything. We invent, and then have other nations build and profit from our developments. Other nations have learned to work together, live together, and prosper together. They do not fear different cultures, they do not base their worldview on paranoid fantasies of enemies seeking their destruction and domination.

A sustainable future is built on peaceful coexistence, economic trade and development, and a careful, balanced use of resources. There is no place left in the world for an angry, rogue giant with delusions of conflict and great military victories. The time has come for humans to put down their weapons and begin to think about the future. The world needs peace and cooperation, and people need governments that care about their health and well being.

But the madness is not the insane militarization of American society in the face of a future that has clearly passed her by. The madness isn't even in the fact that it is political suicide to propose peaceful coexistence as a sustainable strategy for international relations. No, the madness is that we are utterly prevented from even having the conversation. We must base our policies on fear and paranoia, and we must never question the value and efficacy of a military larger than all the rest of the nations of the world combined. And to say that money would be better used at home, to make the lives of Americans better? Treason, of course.

Madness...

Graeme Frost Nipping at Your Conscience

2007-10-11T12:22:00.000-07:00

As near as I can tell, the Right's argument here, the reason they are so viciously attacking a badly injured 12 year old child, is not exactly about government providing support and care to those citizens who are in need. No, they are gleefully gathered together in a gang mugging of a family that truly represents all the best American values, you know, the ones so often espoused and held up by the Right as "Heartland America" because they feel that family didn't deserve the benefits of the SCHIP program.

If only they had been more clearly destitute, perhaps homeless, on welfare, food stamps, perhaps if the father, instead of working for a living, was in prison, the mother a drug addict, perhaps then their children might have deserved the largess of the people's tax dollars. Honestly, the intellectual dishonesty and logical inconsistency of the arguments provided by the American political Right gives me a headache.

Do everything they demand, live a particular kind of life in a particular kind of way, according to the gospel of Coulter and Goldberg and if you come up wanting, if your life spins suddenly out of control, if your children unpredictably have desperate needs you simply cannot provide, tough. You must spend all of your life's accumulated assets, your home, your car, the very things you will need even more when the crisis passes. If, however, you are all the things these very so-called "conservatives" rail against, if you live your life in a manner of which they not only do not approve, but feel strongly you should be subject to legal and social sanctions due to your lifestyle, well then, please, feel free to accept the benefits of a social safety net provided by government and taxpayers.

How does this make sense? What are they serving, what goals do they seek, except to be against anything that Bush is against, anything that their most hated natural enemy, "Liberals", might be in favor of?

Here's the real question. And I do not pose it to them, for in their case I already know the answer. It's the source of that queasy feeling in my stomach. But it's critically important that the rest of us see this, and similar questions from capital punishment to universal health care, framed in these terms.

The question is about us. America, and the citizenry that not just inhabits, but constitutes and informs the ideas and ideals that ARE America. Who are we? What do we believe? What kind of society do we want to have? And if you believe, as the polling numbers tell us so many do, that America is moving in the wrong direction, if you think that that a cold, uncaring, Randian, corporatist authoritarian theocracy is exactly NOT what America should be aspiring to, if you believe that a majority of our collective money should be used to improve the lives of Americans, to lift up the powerless and protect the vulnerable, instead of being used to create and deploy the machines of death and domination, then you likely have no issue whatsoever with some tax dollars being used to save and then rehabilitate the lives of the Frost children.

Honestly. Read the front page of your newspaper tomorrow, then ask yourself "How did we get here?" How did we run so far off the rails? What is this place where killing on an industrial scale is "honorable" and trying to help the least among us is "weakness"? And what does it say about us, that in order to make a political/economic point, a large segment of our society is willing to attack, smear and if possible destroy a family just like theirs?

Ultimately, sadly, it's about fear. Fear of the other, slavishly devoted to an authoritarian government's need for an external enemy to provide the excuse for their abrogation of the Constitution in order that power be concentrated in the hands of the wealthy elite. Fear of Muslims, of Mexicans, of Homeless, of Blacks and Jews and even Graeme Frost, fear that he might be getting something and that in the process you might just be deprived of something. When you can demonize a badly injured child, you can easily convince your ideological fellow travelers that in order for Graeme Frost to "win", you have to lose. Once you give away your soul, you have no good way to navigate back to your humanity.

Wild Bill Yeats saw it coming, quite clearly:

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

It's a long time since we saw the shore, here, but it's time for a mutiny. It's time for us, people, American people, not "liberals" or "conservatives", just people, to stand up and say no more. No more hate. No more unnecessary war. No more squandering our wealth on weapons and the foreign adventures they empower. Let's take care of each other, and be proud when we do...

Maggies Drawers

2007-09-21T14:58:00.000-07:00

As we watch our nation continue to make stupid, counterproductive decisions in it's self-described "war on terror", every now and then we get a glimpse of the reason there are so many people in the world who hate us enough to die trying to force us to just leave them in peace. Certainly, America's activities in the rest of the world, even in those rare occasions when her motives were pure, have consistently been arrogant, ham-handed and culturally insensitive, and have very often resulted in alienating and angering the very people they were intended to help.

It's a tragedy how poorly the US government has targeted the actual aggressor, and in many cases have actually knowingly responded to external threats by attacking the wrong target. The greatest example of this is Iraq. How is it that, once attacked by a Sunni Egyptian/Saudi organization, the greatest minds in America retaliated by invading Secular Iraq? Clearly, these were not actually our greatest minds.

So now we have Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, visiting New York. The frantic, hateful response to his expressed desire to go to Ground Zero was far beyond embarrassing, to the point of being cringe inducing. And yet, from every corner, all walks of American punditry, all you hear is voices raised in concert, decrying the very thought of such a loathsome possibility.

Why would this be? The Iranians did not attack us. And whatever hostility they may show toward America, perhaps at least some of it might be explained by the fact that our government is having an debate, right out there in the open, about attacking them without provocation. If another nation, say Brazil, had a fleet of warships off our coast, was occupying Mexico and was openly discussing whether it would be a further excellent idea to bomb our nuclear reactors, I wonder if we might feel something less than brotherly love for them?

But the hue and cry raised against this "outrageous" visit to that sacred ground in lower Manhattan is representative of so much that has gone wrong with American society. Apparently we have become so fragile, we cannot allow a head of state to visit ground zero, taking from it whatever he might, saying what he might. It is especially odd that we still allow the Ku Klux Klan to march, we allow white supremacists to sell records full of hate, but we do not have the cultural fortitude to allow a visit by the Iranian Head of State, and perhaps have our feelings hurt by what he might say. And it saddens me that our venal, criminal government has been so effective in demonizing a people who are not, or at least should not be, our enemies.

The only people who should not be allowed to visit that sensitive memorial to our losses on that day would be bin Ladin and Zawahiri. And for that matter, were they in custody in America, I would like to take them in irons down to that site and rub their nose in the death of innocents. I believe that in spite of whatever bravado they might show, what humanity they have would recoil from the thought of the horror they caused on that summer morning.

It isn't just Americans that harbor such generalized, ignorant racism. Certainly, in places as widely separated as Germany, France and China, the people hate the "others", people who are not like them. But somehow it is Americans who have perfected a kind of insouciant racial hatred, a sense that they can't be bothered to learn the difference between Persians and Arabs, Japanese and Chinese, Mexicans and Salvadorans. It is sad that we live in a nation that can make the calculation "Muslims attacked us, Iranians are Muslims, therefore Iranians are our enemies". Or even more simplistically, "Muslims attacked us, we need to kill all Muslims". This racist, militarist mindset will ultimately bring America down, because you cannot sustain eternal warfare against half the world's population, but to so many Americans, purity of hatred may not be watered down by pragmatic concerns over morality, economics or the judgment of history.

Well, Thank Goodness for That!

2007-09-20T10:28:00.001-07:00

So, they couldn't end the Occupation of Iraq. They couldn't restore Habeas Corpus. They decided they actually supported torture, indefinite detentions without due process and eavesdropping on American Citizens without judicial oversight.

But in the grand scheme of things, what matters is protecting Military Leaders from criticism or insult. And when it came to an opportunity to grandstand without actually accomplishing anything, the Senate outdid themselves today with a Condemnation of a paid advertisment run in the NY Times, an action of precisely zero consequence.

This is so disgusting, so silly, so embarrassingly inconsequential, so blatantly a political game, it gives me gas. It's come to this. The legislative branch of the US Government has lost the ability to have any effect on events. They are clearly powerless in matters of state. And they are reduced to ideological pedagogy of the most flaccid kind.

The Republicans are just playing a game, fiddling while Rome burns. The Democrats have no spine, no heart, no soul and cannot find a way to even try to be relavant. The US is facing some of the most serious challenges in her history, and this is how the government responds. Never mind the eyes of the world, Senator. History will not judge you kindly.

My Other 9/11 Post

2007-09-11T16:25:00.000-07:00

Men can live together, in peace, without butchering one another.

How is that so fucking goddam hard to understand?

Why isn't it obvious? Respect your neighbors, barter, don't steal, and fer crissakes don't kill them because you just can't think of a better idea.

What's it Going to Take?

2007-09-11T11:59:00.000-07:00

The images are permanently etched in our collective conscience. The heartbreakingly clear blue sky. The city in the summer. The orange fireball, the confusion, the fear. The second impact, so much more ominously terrifying than the first. The collapse. The stunned, dusty survivors, the frantic search for victims, the final count both amazingly small and overwhelmingly huge.

Where were you on 9/11? A moment in our history that will go down with The Maine, Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination. It was an event that simultaneously demonstrated our best natures and our shared psychoses. As Americans, we wanted to share our grief and help our fellow citizens hurt by this monstrous attack, but all of that was somewhat obscured by our desire, or perhaps more accurately our desperate need to hit back. Hard.

So here we are today, looking back on six years where much of our lives, our politics and the way we view the rest of the world is shaped by the events of that summer day. Our government's response was to launch military invasions and subsequent occupations of two different Muslim nations. To turn their backs on our legacy from Nuremberg, on our steadfast belief in human rights, in our commitment to our constitution and the kind of liberal democracy it defines. Put simply, they killed 3000 of ours. We have killed close to a million of them, and still so many Americans do not yet feel they can call it even.

Of course, the stupidity of a military response to an asymmetrical attack is almost too massive to describe in useful terms, and virtually every action America has taken as a result of the 9/11 attacks has been counterproductive at best, and outright helpful to those who would attack us at worst.

They say 9/11 changed everything. I'm not sure that's true. But it is certainly true that six years after the attacks, virtually everything has changed. But much of that is a result of America's ham-handed, blundering responses to the attacks, rather than the attacks themselves. America is hated and feared in the world as she has never been before. Sure, American interference in the sovereignty and internal affairs of other nations throughout history is well documented, but illegal aggressive invasions, military occupations, indefinite detentions without due process, torture as an instrument of policy and a bullying, coercive form of diplomacy by the nation once called "the shining city on the hill" is unprecedented. A few small, cowardly little men of little imagination and even less courage happened to be in charge that day, and it is they that took us down this ruinous course. But it is us, of course that allowed it to happen. If you are still here, and have not yet been named an "enemy combatant", there is blood on your hands also.

There was a kind of balance in the Middle East and Gulf region, achieved after years of political juggling, proxy fighting, wars, near wars and cold wars. Every force was balanced, offset by an opposing force. The American-Israeli alliance was actually an exception to that, in that Israel was allowed to play a role all out of proportion to her actual political, economic and military role in the region. But while Israel was allowed to run roughshod over her neighbors, offending and angering the nearby nations, there was just enough restraint to keep it from getting out of hand most of the time, and things were kept roughly in parity. The lynchpins to this regional balance were Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and Iraq. Secular, highly militarized Iraq served to deter both Shiite Iran and intensely theocratic Sunni Saudi. It was messy, and sometimes violent, but it was, by and large, working.

Then the US invaded Iraq, toppled Saddam and deposed his government. When the US found it had nothing to put in it's place, Sistani brought pressure to bear for national elections, and the Shi'a majority took power. The result was not just chaos and bloodshed, but chaos and bloodshed that served as a proxy for the region. The balance was smashed, and every nation now must reexamine it's influences and alliances. The Shiite Iran/Iraq alliance on the gulf is now the major power, and Egypt, Turkey, Saudi and even Israel must now consider where they are in a hierarchy of belligerent powers. And they have the US to thank for this condition.

So now we have a Global War on Terror, a Department of Homeland Security, and a surveillance state that is only one attack away from being a police state. al Quaeda attacked us, but in our fear, our anger and our need to lash out we took over for them. bin Laden is sitting in his house in Warziristan, laughing. Because all he has to do is produce media now. Americans have taken the job of destroying America, and they are doing it much more effectively than he could ever have hoped for.

Look. This is very simple. al Quaeda can kill American citizens, and can destroy buildings and Landmarks. We know we can survive all that without suffering any real impact. But in our reaction to this amorphous, assymetric threat it is us, our Leaders and Lawmakers and Pundits, who will bring about the end of America. al Quaeda only had to get the process started. Six years on, we've taken on the job and are accomplishing it with that vaunted American effectiveness. And for what it's worth, I don't see a way to reverse the trend...