Safety dance.

Sleep soundly, America. George W. Bush is keeping you safe. Safe from World War III (by threatening yet another war in the world's most volatile region). Safe from socialized medicine or "government run healthcare" (by vetoing even the modest health care initiative passed by a spineless congress). Safe from terrorists (by terrorizing the accused and the extra-judicially detained). Don't you feel better now? This has been another busy week for the administration, what with the launch of yet another in their long series of reasons why we invaded Iraq and why we must also confront (and perhaps attack) Iran. Yes, we are literally there to prevent World War III - that is what might happen if we back down now. This is the long awaited sequel to:

  1. We must disarm Saddam
  2. We must bring democracy to ordinary Iraqis (who yearn for freedom)
  3. We must catch Saddam (thereby ending the insurgency)
  4. We must stand up an Iraqi army (so that we can then stand down)
  5. We must prevent a civil war
  6. We must keep the civil war from getting worse
  7. We must fight the terrorists over there so as not to fight them here
  8. We must capture / kill Zarchawi (thereby ending the insurgency)
  9. We must secure Baghdad first (by digging a trench around it)
  10. We must send more troops (so that the Iraqi government can have time to do our bidding)
  11. We must fight Iranian influence in Iraq (bastards have no business being there!)
  12. We must punish the Iranians (for killing Americans sent to fight their influence)
  13. We must support the Anbar Awakening (and consequent ethnic cleansing of thousands of Shi'ite families)

I'm certain I've left a few out, but you get the idea. Flavor of the week. My particular favorite is #7 - the "fight them there rather than here" bit. As if there were a finite number of terrorists in the world who would follow us to wherever we choose to fight them, then once they've been defeated, they're gone for good. Safe!

Since they managed to convince us to tolerate the commencement and further prosecution of this war, they probably think we'll swallow anything.

Talking Turkey - Per news reports and Juan Cole's blog, somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 Turkish troops are massed along that nation's border with Iraq. As Iraqi Kurdish leaders and the folks in Ankara prepare for war, our Defense Secretary (per Cole) has said that we will take action against the Kurdish PKK (Workers Party), the Turkish faction allegedly being harbored by Iraqi Kurds. Told you we'd throw them over the side.

luv u,

jp

Comments

Anonymous said…
Well said.
November 10, 2008 at 1:41 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

R.I.P., uber rich lady atop killer empire

Image
When the queen of England died last week, I felt bad for the 96-year-old human being that she was, a lady about the age of my late mother. I take no joy in the death of anyone, even people I’m not crazy about, so all due condolences to her family who, I hear, are planning a quiet little funeral. Did I say little? I meant large … in fact, six billion pounds worth of funeral. Such is the institution of the British monarchy – still crazy after all these years. No, I’m not a fan of “The Royals”. I watched The Crown on Netflix or whatever, and it was mildly entertaining in a slightly nuanced gossipy kind of way. (They went way too easy on Thatcher and made Robert Kennedy look like a cheap wing man for his wife-beating brother the President.) But generally I avoid T.V. dramas about royalty mostly because it bores the living piss out of me. Then there’s that small matter of imperialism , but let’s try to keep our thoughts positive, eh, what? They’re changing the guard at T
Read more

Pulling the plug is never as easy as it looks

Image
I don’t know. I’m effing sick of this. Are you effing sick of this, too? You are ? Wow … okay. For how many years? Damn …. why didn’t you say so? I was just doing this to keep YOU happy! Well, you learn something new every day. Or at least every week. Except last week – I was kind of too busy to learn anything. It gets like that sometimes. Anyway, let’s just agree to say that you learn something new every little once in a while. Maybe every time Sylvie brings you some water. Like in the Leadbelly Song . But I digress. What the this is The “this” we’re kvetching about is this thing called blogging. We’ve been doing it for twenty years, and somehow – seemingly unnoticed by us – the world has kind of moved on. Now everything is social media, social media, etc. A few still blog, outside of the corporate shills, but it’s not really a thing anymore, and well … that’s a shame. Still, blogging has its place. I just don’t know whether or not its place is here, exactly.
Read more

Stop hiding your light under that bushel.

Image
Well, Trump started channeling QAnon in a big way this week at an Ohio rally. I’m assuming anyone who reads this blog knows what QAnon is. It’s basically the blood libel, updated for the modern age. Some idiot posted some random shit on 4chan (which happens basically every second) claiming that s/he is a secret intelligence operative and was spilling tea on upcoming FBI raids on Trump’s political enemies. It was supposed to happen in 48 hours and, of course, it didn’t. That failure, however, didn’t stop the true believers. These people must be total knuckleheads. Who would earnestly believe this crap? Of course, people have a tendency to believe whatever places them in a positive light. Whatever the case may be, QAnon has a lot of followers , and they are apparently laser-focused on the conspiracy theory. Trump is their greasy, corpulent pope. It makes total sense that he would pull those people close – they are the scrum who never left him. What they think they’re
Read more