Have been feeling too heartsick to post much lately. Am feeling a lot like I did on Sept 11, 2001. Except in slow motion now.
Article of the Day: “Of course we’ll win on the battlefield, probably with ease. [...] What frightens me is the aftermath – and I’m not just talking about the problems of postwar occupation. I’m worried about what will happen beyond Iraq – in the world at large, and here at home.” — “Things to come” by Paul Krugman.
For the record, I’ve never doubted that we’ll win against Iraq– or rather, that the Bush administration will declare victory in Iraq before the dust settles, and our media will move along to the next vital story, the latest Michael Jackson shocker or whatever. Supposedly we’re victorious over Afghanistan, but we’ve still got people over there, and a lot of chaos, and it’s not likely to settle for a generation.
“‘We haven’t seen a failure of diplomacy, we’ve seen a failure to even exert diplomacy,’ said Duke University professor Bruce Jentleson, a foreign policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton.”
from Why diplomacy failed to keep peace by Marc Sandalow and James Sterngold.
“An associate of mine, a former political appointee, recently spoke to a Republican friend of his who serves in a senior position in what has become the Office of Homeland Security. He reports that this official, along with many of his colleagues across the political spectrum within the apparatus of government, are absolutely terrified of George W. Bush. According to this official, the consensus is that Bush has completely lost touch with reality, and is bringing us to a place where politics will no longer matter.” from Into the darkness by William Rivers Pitt.
“At last we have found a way to restore the cosmic balance thrown so badly out of whack in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved like Dorothy’s Wicked Witch, leaving America to face an awful vacuum where once stood the Evil Empire. [...] It took more than a decade, but we’ve finally hit upon a solution to repair the metaphysical rift. If the former Soviet Union is no longer willing or able to serve as the exemplar of What a Free Society Doesn’t Look Like, then by God we must reconstruct the Soviet Union right here in America.” from
Back in the USSR by Jack Gordon.
GOD IS AN AMERICAN GENERAL
God, in the knowledge of how good and just America is, we ask you to give special help to our brave pilots if any of their bombs blow up a schoolhouse in Iraq. Please make our pilots know that they are not to have some bad feeling just because they kill a lot of children in the schoolhouse. They should feel good that we at least hit something and didn’t waste the bomb hitting the ground. If the children get their bellies blown open and they go running around with their hands trying to stuff their intestines back into them, we ask you to make sure the pilots don’t have bad reactions about it. On account of we need them to bomb again tomorrow and they have to be prepared to hit a school by accident again.
Please let us remember that little girl in Vietnam running naked down the street after being hit with napalm. Her young little body was flaming. She was wailing so much, they said it would bother our boys forever. Well, God, well, Our Lord, I haven’t heard one person bring that little girl up at this time. I’ll bet the pilot who dropped that napalm and burned her all up hasn’t heard anything either.
Oh Lord, our America is so just that we allow people to worship in any church. We don’t restrict people to one church. But these mosques they have, they’re not churches. They tower up in the sky, and they are not churches. Some man up in a tower calling out prayers that aren’t prayers, just yelling from a steeple. Well, Lord, I think we all can be safe in bombing those mosques right into sand. And we shouldn’t even blink if we see a lot of bare feet flopping around after the bomb. In fact, what’s so bad about it? They were worshipping a false God and that is in your Commandments, “Thou Shall Not Have False Gods Before Me.” They are pagans and there is nothing wrong with bombing them. If they pass from the bombing, then they pass.
Oh, Lord, we understand that babies burn up. They do it fast because they are so little and the fire don’t have so much to cover. Then some little boy is going to be squatting there with one small leg blown off. Holding the stump. The mother next to him screaming her head off. Lord, you have to help our boys get over that because we are right and just. We who worship you here today know it is probably for the good because when the boy dies he won’t be able to be the father of any boys to threaten us someday.
Besides, Oh Lord, we want our boys to go in there at the real enemy, the Iraqi adults, we want our boys whoopin’ and hollerin’ and we want to feel that way too when the boys go in to blow these people right smack out of the desert.
Please allay any fears that we are doing something wrong because we have planes and the Iraqis do not. We need the planes to drop the bombs.
If we are killing women and children then, dear Lord let us realize that’s what our boys are supposed to be doing, killing everybody, so why worry if you kill children with a woman and leave her weeping in the ruins. Nothing we can do about it. It’s war. It’s every man’s game. Don’t let crying mothers get in the way. She shouldn’t have been out walking with children to begin with.
Lord God, Heavenly God, when our tanks go smashing and thrashing into some town, let them drive right through some building and we don’t care if they mash families. Because that’s what a tank is supposed to do and oh, Lord, we hope they drive that tank with a real big thrill, like we get watching it on television.
Oh, Lord, we are not like the Germans, we are not invading countries and occupying them. We can’t be doing anything bad because we have you on our side. You are the one most holy, you are the one who blesses our every effort. You know that we are good and everybody else is Evil. You are on our side and that is why we are just. Thank you, Lord. Amen.
(from here)
“What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace – the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living- and the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children- not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women. Not merely peace in our time, but peace for all time.” – John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in his commencement speech at American University, June 10, 1963
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