Wars R Us
Just when most Amercans were beginning to think that part of our problem might be that we’re in too many wars, the Washington Ignoratti declare, with the characteristic oracular certainty that is their unfortunate hallmark, that the real problem is too few. After all, where’s our 9/12 spirit, now that all those hypothetically glorious wars from back then have grown so old, depressing, and tired? Karl Rove is already saying the our stunning success in Iraq (!) serves as a glittering example of what we can undoubtedly accomplish elsewhere, and therefore more and better wars are needed. (After all, war spending is one of the few bright spots in our plummeting economy….)
Iran, of course, is the current target, but does it even matter? Wars no longer function in the traditional sense; to be fought and won or lost, then ended. Wars today are media events designed to gin up false patriotism and media acquiescence, while enriching those who’ve invested in them. As Orwell predicted so presciently, they aren’t intended to be won, only to be permanent. Old wars, never to be won, but merely not ignominiously lost, must be out of necessity periodically rebranded, and when they finally get too shopworn for even that, the cheerleaders roll out the new season, with its same cast of suspiciously familiar villains, just like on Dragnet. What happens on the battlefield is immaterial; wars have become our televised bread and circuses, and the elites who plan and profit from them care little about such minutia, in the deliciously “heads we win, tails you lose” game they have going.
Dick Cheney is perhaps the apotheosis of this genocidal bet-hedging; the oil would be nice, but even if he doesn’t get it, it can’t hurt to get rich trying. Huge military contractors like GE “diversifying” into owning television networks is almost as transparent an outrage, but equally uncommented upon, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Though the Selling of the Pentagon is a practice, consuming an ever-escalating budget and ever more elaborate deceptions, that is as old as I am, it’s pretty hard to ignore the fact that it is so, well, out of the closet these days. The sell job has obviously worked entirely too well.
Today, Gen. McChrystal essentially defied the current and even prospective decisions of his ostensible Commander-in-Chief, and said that he would neither reduce troops or redefine the latest hothouse-cultivated “objective” in Afghanistan, because he quite evidently assumes that this is “his” war, Obama and the American people be damned. And the media gasbags, so overcome at the effrontery of Rep. Grayson’s impermissible truth-telling yesterday that they were still noticeably under the influence of smelling salts when a military coup like that just passed them by, are undoubtedly clucking in eager assent. Wars, you see, which will henceforth start when somebody says so and last until we’re told they’re over, are clearly no longer our business as Americans, who know what our pay grades, and theirs, mean.
This reality was disturbing enough when it could plausibly be attributed to a rogue administration that would inevitably be checked by our vaunted constitutional “system,” which would surely turn out the miscreants electorally, and prosecute them criminally in the fullness of time. (Like in Iran/Contra, right?) Now that we have found, with dumbfounding swiftness and finality, that it is no longer possible through mere elections not only to stop the current wars, but even attempt to prevent additional ones, you have to wonder whether it was worth the bother to participate at all. No majority is large enough to stop the wars, but no amount of PR hogwash will ever win them, either, so the only answer is to keep starting them, forever. And here we are. You’re next, Iran, but please don’t take it personally; we need you more than you need us.
It’s days like these that I wish I believed in the Rapture.*
*Somewhat differently configured…
War-related …
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/01/congress_gets_paid_veterans_get_shafted/?ref=fpd
Thanks, Dirigo. That Reickhoff is one of the few who proudly farts in church these days. More power to him.
Not to stir a pot of bile right now, but a guy like Rieckhoff has earned the right to cut a few, in church or out, unlike the chicken hawks.
Every once in a while, I check on the background of a politician (usually Republican) who waves the flag and tells everyone what’s what when it comes to being an American.
Like Jon Llewellyn (Old Four L’s) Kyl (who insulted Debbie Stabenow recently in the health care debate), and Dick Armey (leader of the subterranean anti-health care lobbying organization). Neither of these ol’ boys ever wore the uniform, unlike Rieckhoff, who served a year in Iraq in 2003.
None of then has ever “served” anything more consequential than a cocktail weinie…. That’s what makes them all “experts.”
A fine piece of writing, Hag. So many choice phrases, I can hardly choose my favorite, but if I could choose only one, it might have to be this:
Thanks, Karen. Words spoken out of bottomless annoyance are always more eloquent.
Time’s a wastin’! What are we, about 7 years and 5 countries behind on the PNAC plan? However, the ROI for the major players is probably right on track…
I hope you’re wrong.
What can I do to cheer myself up about all this? Well I could always go to boomantribune, where Obama is always playing eleven dimensional chess and always winning at it.
But maybe there really are some contrary indications.
One good sign is that there appears to have been a slight easing of US-Iran tensions today. Some right-wingers on the radio today seemed upset about that.
Also, too, and too, also.
Spencer Ackerman says the NYTimes “fucked up” the McChrystal story.
Oh, um, sorry about the obscenity.
Okay, here’s a dollar for the CHNN cuss jar.
I’ll try not to say NYTimes again.
Oops! I did it again!
Okay, here’s another buck.
Anyway, here’s Spencer Ackerman:
http://washingtonindependent.com/61989/latest-gop-stunt-on-mcchrystal-testimony-fails-and-the-gop-is-lucky-it-did
-and-
http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2009/10/01/stanley-mcchrystal-is-barack-obamas-general/
In this debate, Bernard Finel is correct, not Ackerman. How do I know this? Well, consider…since Clinton, we’ve had a power vacuum in Washington when it comes to foreign policy, and to its increasing usurpation by military policy. Clinton was clueless, GWB even more so, and Cheney was batshit crazy.
If I were a general, with troops at risk, logistical support iffy, credible policy guidance nonexistent, and diplomacy suddenly on my plate by default, I might very well reason as follows:
When General MacArthur decided on a China policy of his own, he didn’t have the excuse that the President didn’t already have a China policy — he just disagreed with it. Generals Petraeus and McChrystal are facing a situation in which policy is whatever they do which doesn’t result in us being run out of places where — for reasons which no one dares share with the American people — we’ve determined that we have to stay. No wonder they think that they can speak for the State Department; they’ve actually been encouraged to do so.
Now these two generals may be honest men, or they may not be. That isn’t what matters. What matters is that the military-industrial complex has swallowed up the civilian government, as surely as the Praetorian Guard swallowed the electors who traditionally chose Roman Emperors. That isn’t just confusing; it’s godamned dangerous, just as dangerous as a prima donna like MacArthur was in his day.
P.S.: With the Heel’s expert help, the article by Foreign Minister Genscher on the Prague embassy refugees has now been successfully Englished. I’ll make it available tomorrow and provide a link for those who’d like to read it.
I suppose that was my point, WT. I think Bush completed this process with his elevation of Petraeus to oracle status and fetishization of “the troops.”
Oh, definitely — i couldn’t agree more. The thing that shouldn’t be forgotten, though, is that this was the last link in a very long chain, the first of which was forged by the National Security Act of 1947. MacArthur’s hubris should have been a warning, but he was such a comic-opera figure that it was difficult for anyone to take seriously the notion that his grandstanding was indicative of a structural problem which would, over time, reduce our democracy to a shadow play.
To put it another way, we’ve made our bed, all of us together. From now on, President Obama, and most likely all future presidents, will have to lie in it with us.
Okay, for all of you dear colleagues in subversion who really, really want to read an honest man’s account of the day he made a difference, here it is in our very own language:
The Day of Freedom, by Hans-Dietrich Genscher
It’s a PDF file, five pages long, and will be available for thirty days. (Perhaps the copyright police won’t find it — or me — after all.
In my opinion, the contrast between Genscher’s understanding of what history actually demanded of him at a crucial inflection point, and the savagery our own foreign policy bureaucrats — think Henry Kissinger, or John Bolton — is nothing short of astonishing.
Many thanks to the Heel for bringing it to our attention, and for helping me with the translation.
Thanks WT and Heel! Printed and …. well, yeah.
What a wonderful story…. Thanks, WT, and Heel.
Again, thanks to WT and to Heel. Er, I thought that Google Translate had done an okay job with the original link, but reading your version side by side with it, it’s clear much was lost Google’s translation. For those who need a refresher course for the context of this article, Alan Nothnagle of Open Salon put up a piece on 9/30/09 commemorating it, and sets an historical stage. At the end of his piece is a YouTube of Genscher’s balcony announcement. Awesome.
Well, I suppose that’s relatively heartening, sysprog. Maybe Judy Miller is still phoning in NYT stories after all….
From Scott Horton at harpers.org …
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/10/hbc-90005812
War? You want war?
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gabler2-2009oct02,0,7817347.story
It depends on whom is subsumed under the rubric of “bureaucrat”.
I don’t put political appointees in that category.
Three of the four main characters in the movie “Julie and Julia” are shown as current or former (Julia) bureaucrats, and they’re all regular people, nothing like Kissinger and Bolton.
Not a great movie but Stanley Tucci (as bureaucrat Paul Child) is, as always, amazing.
Oy I meant to write “whom you subsume” (for the rhyme) but I botched it.
Using the word “whom” is so pretentious.
Whomever do you mean?
From Davd Sirota …
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/10/03/afghanistan/