Every now and then, something special happens in American politics. A creative idea, a balancing law, or just the amazement when someone actually appearing to be honest is running. Obama grabbed that baton in his Presidential race. And he did pretty well with it, and won. So why is he giving hope and honesty such a bad name politically? President Obama was basically elected to improve our economy. That meant bringing the middle class back into its position as a major foundational plank of the nation’s economy. The Trickle Down Lie is over; its time for it to be plugged. President Obama was elected because, unlike other candidates, he emphatically told us that one of the ways he planned on accomplishing that was getting us out of the Middle East War (there is only one real war we are in there, despite what we want to claim as otherwise; we are just fighting in different countries, like in WWII.). None of the normal GOP-Dem game ploys that guarantee a second term: “we are forming committees to look into this, and in my second term…”. No, Obama and Biden told us, right away; not in his second term; Seems like if we recall it, something about 6 months to a year was mentioned. It was a major concern, selling point, and focus of the campaign. End the War.
You know, the War his predecessor flew a S-3B Viking jet onto the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier ~ nearly five years before ~ to announce that it had been won, that all objectives had been met. Nearly five years before. Was that a lie? Was President Bush having a cocaine revved flashback to Daddy’s War? No, as that would have been an absurdly apparent lie and the world probably would have pointed that out. So why are we still there? What has happened that we just can’t go home? We can logically suppose that the Bush Administration, the Republican and Democratic Parties, and our military, just hadn’t quite gotten up the nerve to explain a little hidden agenda, because the true mission hadn’t quite been accomplished, or even announced. No voting for us on the additional, unannounced, misguided foolishness that is the plans for the democratization of the Middle East. And how is it planned to be accomplished? By forcing Afghanistan and Iraq to become what we prefer by intimidation and force. No more of this cleric stuff in politics. Hey, we are the winners and they are the losers–don’t we get to say what goes? Well, not really, since we claimed we only went there on the basis of Weapons of Mass Destruction that apparently were all over the place except where we could find one, or that Al Queda could hardly make a move without the Saddam Hussein stamp of approval. But it’s a fact that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan had attacked us. They could even both be described as our best allies in that sector of the world. Hussein was essential in battling the Ayatollah Khomeini and Iran when we were declared the Satan of the Known World by them, and it was American money and supplies to Iraq and Saddam who brought the fist shaking Ayatollah down. That’s right, amnesic America; Saddam Hussein fought our worst enemy in the Middle East and kicked his ass in the back alley between Iraq and Iran. He was our buddy. That great American subsidized victory was historically followed by Afghanistan defeating World Communism for us, again with our money and supplies, and especially our weapons systems of land to air rockets that could be individually launched. Sometimes called Charlie Wilson’s War for the Texas Congressman who wouldn’t give up on our commitment to the Mujahideen, the Afghanistan people rode their burros to glory for us against Russian tanks, and won. No more Soviet Premiers banging shoes and calling us names; communism was gone, and gone for good, thanks to our friends in Afghanistan. Pretty darn good.
But then, suddenly we were transformed into an occupational force even as we agreed that all of the goals the Bush Administration had set before the public about the purpose of the invasion had been met. Now the cause, the objectives, and every essential reasoning as to why we had gone there in the first place, were altered into a new set of lies, lies to keep the credibility of being there up, while having to break international law to get what Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld really wanted, in a manner that might seem acceptable to civilized nations and people. Why was that necessary? Truthfully, for the exact same reason these men, guilty of criminal actions against our former friends and allies, felt torture also was a necessity; because we have corporations and the men who run them deciding we ought to force the Middle East to adopt our culture and our way of governing, rather than their own, at gunpoint. You know, the new American way; at the point of a gun. Well, maybe its actually not so new. And why? Profits. We can say oil, but that’s just another cover story, also, as we have enough stored oil to last decades, and enough reserve fields under our own soil to last until someone wise enough announces that just like going to the moon, we are going to move our nation on something and in some manner that doesn’t require oil in ten years or less. Oil is just a profitable idea that we can’t seem to put down even as we know we have to. And, in the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld mindset, that weirdo Arab culture and their piddling clerics is all that’s keeping our hands out of their cookie jar. There is no other purpose besides getting an unobstructed corporate grab, kind of like The Bailout was to American taxpayers, of the Arab wallet (natural resources) Its just an extension of what Congress has allowed them with the American taxpayer‘s wallet. In their world, it’s the grip that counts.
The amazing fact is that very, very few Americans have protested. Why? There were no weapons of mass destruction. We created more terrorists than we’ve killed, and our own military says that civilians in these countries have borne the burden of most of the violence and death. People, who just a few years before saw us as their hope, a people willing to die for our freedom and our international principles, were now backpacking evil, pure and simple, from the eighth dimension. And, of course, regarding the oil, we as taxpayers aren’t sharing in the profits. Just the opposite, in fact, as we are guaranteeing its availability for the corporate structures on our dollar. And we know without lessons, unlike our Presidents, that it isn’t our way to come in with a gun and say, “Here is what you are going to be, here is how you are going to do it, so get busy or get shot.“ And for those with an education, kind of like torture, we were taught that America just doesn’t do it this way…not ever. We don’t just know it, but, even more, it is the heart of American freedom and democracy. The Constitution and Law say so. So why are we doing it? Especially when the majority of Americans want us to just cut the crap and get out, and when most sane military leaders say it’s a dead end street. It is even helpful that the rest of the civilized world feels we have made a terrible bonehead move and that we should cut our losses and leave. So what has kept us there? George and The Boys decided bunkering our own forces and keeping them there to die for the sake of another errant Bush concept was preferable to just being victorious and coming home? Anyone see anything harmful and illthought in that?
Hmmmm, well, yes; it is hubris beyond Oedipal stupidity and sort of bragging about being retarded reactionaries who would shoot our own foot off before admitting any error or blunders in killing someone for 9/11. Of course, it doesn’t hurt the economic reports that, rather than having an honest presentation of unemployment under the Bush and the current Administration, we keep a half million or so kids overseas for the sake of corporate gain: they certainly won‘t need jobs for awhile. Not ever, for some of them. It was a good stance for the last election. Let Obama or the Dems worry about the job nonsense and what to do with the war remnants. It not a GOP problem anymore; thanks to the great American blame switcheroo, its their problem, those lousy Democrats; its their fault now. Vote Republican and save ourselves. Somehow. And we did.
As the Bush Administration did with the critics who preferred the truth to the request for lies to substantiate going to war in the first place ~ especially when garnering exactly what the truth is would actually be their job, like Valerie Plame, a CIA agent ratted out by her own countrymen and the President, along with Presidential staff, while undercover, who had a job determining where and with whom real WMDs might be ~ doing it ethically and with honor was out of the question. And we have been emphatically lectured by President Bush that war is truly good for us, kind of like vitamins. Anyway. profits are up. Jobs are available. Do we want to end all that? Weaken America? Things were so economically fragile we had to give a trillion dollars to banks and corporations without supervision, and now we want to end the Endless war, too?
Well, yes, we do. And, again, why? Because we finally have figured out that we still have debt, huge debt, enormous and unbelievable debt, from Vietnam still owed, and have barely managed the payment for Korea, and now have every other military action yet to pay for that has happened since Vietnam. And there are lots of them, because, while war is bad, bad, bad for individuals, it is terrific for corporations who aren’t borrowing from banks to make it all take place (that would be the taxpayer). They’re just taking advantage of the fact that it is taking place. Isn’t that what America and Capitalism is all about? Opportunity? Even when you have to create it at the cost of the lives of the middle class youth ~ and this war is being fought by that group of Americans who are struggling the most ~ and the economic future of their own time to raise families? Bush and his cronies utilized the desperate job situation for the absurdly elevated cost of higher education to supply the war with folks willing to grab the tens of thousands of dollars falsely promised if they would just sign up and go do it. Heck, risk your life for a couple of years and maybe you would be able to afford college in America with the money given for that risk. How many Congressmen and/or Senators have children fighting for the noble reasons behind the war? Zero. -0-. Nada. How many sons and daughters of wealthy families have signed up for the Get Our $50,000 Grand Special for the new brand of patriotism(If you don’t have it, we’ll pay you to act like you have some)? About the same. World War II, Korea, even ‘Nam, these wars were different; athletes and the sons and daughters of the rich and the elected both fought and died in them. Not this one.
So, again, why are we in the war still? Why hasn’t the greatest leak in the economy been sealed off and the repair started; the war itself? Wasn’t this the last election promise by all of them, nearly every person running, all parties included?
Well, how about this as a possibility: because the money is pouring into the pockets of Blackwater and Halliburton and a few, very few, other firms, and Halliburton and Blackwater have big, big hands. How does a corporation, Blackwater Worldwide, that was founded in 1997, come to carry such taxpayer obligated financial weight? Wikipedia says: “Xe Services LLC (pronounced Ze) is a private military company founded as Blackwater USA in 1997 by Eric Prince and Al Clark. The company has a wide array of business divisions, subsidiaries, and spin-off corporations but the organization as a whole has aroused significant controversy. Iraq War documents showed that Blackwater employees committed serious abuses in Iraq, including killing civilians. Altogether, the documents reveal fourteen separate shooting incidents involving Blackwater forces, which resulted in the deaths of ten civilians and the wounding of seven others, not including the Nisoor Square Massacre that killed seventeen civilians. A third of the shootings occurred while Blackwater forces were guarding US diplomats.”
This is one of the most parasitically dependent on taxpayer income corporations on earth. And Halliburton isn’t any better; run Dick Cheney, greed and corruption, corporations and the war in any search engine and see what you pull up. Because that search will pull up article after article involving our ex-Vice President, trials, charges, and the war. Why? And why do we feel that protecting these criminals is more in our interest than prosecuting and putting them in jail? George Bush pardoned Dick Cheney’s devoted but corrupt assistant, Scooter Libby, before he had served even one minute of a 30 month sentence. A U.S. Court thought Libby should go to prison for over two years. Why? Are we like Russia, sending good and honest men to prison for being that way? Not hardly. Criminals go to jail in this country. Scooter Libby is a criminal, even if he has been pardoned by a partner in that crime, the President himself. Fox News couldn’t even discuss the happening and use the word crime to describe it, on instructions coming down from…where? YouTube has a hilarious segment of a reporter attempting to describe Libby’s guilt and not use the word crime. It has to be heard to be believed.
For what reasons are we tolerating these criminals and allowing our national wealth (our jobs) to be sent overseas, and our resources (our youth) to get shabby, absurdly expensive educations that do not result in lifetime employment, just lifetime indebtedness to banks? As even the illiterate know, most young people leave college now with far more than just the diploma they went there to get, as previous generations have done; they get the cost of a mortgage for a new home as a debt, but not the home itself. Didn’t they go to college to assure that they could provide a future family with a home? Why have we allowed banks and universities to devise this economic pitfall (true financial quicksand) for our children when we didn’t have to deal with such unethical greed as we left school? Why don’t we care? Why have we relinquished control of our own destiny under the dishonest guise that the destiny of citizens in the Middle East takes precedent over our own and our children’s? These are questions our children and grand children are going to be asking someday.
And just to make certain it stays that way, lobbyists and Congress and banks have the bed they share with a mattress made of trillions of taxpayer dollars to fall back on. They would like us to believe that it is getting to be too far, too distant, from having correctable circumstances, without the war. Way too far. And that is our fault. Yours and mine. We let it happen, and we let it happen to our children. We watched rich people getting richer at the expense of a healthy America, one with a bright future and a strong job and educational base. We must have desired this somehow, because its what we’ve gotten. They would like us to believe that. it’s the truth, and that’s just the way it is.
But, wait, BatFans: no. No, it isn’t. Unlike the pardoned Scooter Libby, we can put a few of those who have earned it in prison, and write regulatory laws that forever will prevent financial institutions from doing it to us ever again for the rest of time. Or, if they do, prison and a confiscation of their wealth is what they will get for doing it. And if Congress won’t pass those laws, or dare to discuss them intelligently, we can dump those individually who don’t actually represent us. We call it voting. Let’s do it! And this time, let’s promise to think about it before we do it. And then, instead of just saying it for kicks, that we’ve really thought it all out ourselves, we ought to actually try it the next election and every single one following. Forever. We can accomplish all of this within a few years, utilizing the electoral process our Forefathers wisely left us as the tool.
If we don’t, then we get to ask the final question ourselves, of ourselves. Final Jeopardy: the direct path to the permanent corporate sheep trough, the historical oblivion of America, just so the kids will know. Don’t forget to place your answer in the form of a question.
Ending an illegal war, fought on a bed of lies, that only profits corporations, and leaves debt to our children, a system that truly is not survivable for the American Dream and the economic well being of our grandchildren, and that breaks principles of world trust that the United States has been founded upon, should be a top priority of correction. It was during the Presidential election, but not after that election. If Obama is truly a leader and not just another lying, fraudulent politician, its time he stands up and proves it. At a time when the candle of freedom is challenged worldwide by a great and darkened storm, disengaging from the Middle East is like coming in out of the rain to stay dry instead of attempting to catch every raindrop before they hit us ~ and demanding that our children do all the catching for us.
Until we do, every single elected man and woman in Congress is dishonest and derelict in their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution of the United States. That would render them all a necessary removal to cure the economic cancer. Every single one of them. They have failed America contemptuously. None of them has worked for a nation where education is affordable without huge debt, where housing and medical are affordable without huge debt, where Americans wanting to work can find good jobs unencumbered by huge debt, and where getting out of huge debt does not require more misguided thinking that caused that debt in the first place; war.
This nation and our Constitutional Government never, ever was intended to have slick, permanent, professional politicians. And those men and women, who were never intended to be there, appearing as a housing union that is of, by and for attorneys that we call elected office, have created the largest conflict of interest, the largest criminal endeavor in the history of the United States; attorneys writing the laws they personally profit by. It wouldn’t be allowed without arrests in any other vocation in any other industry in America, because We The People are supposed to hold those elected offices. We The People are supposed to write the laws. And We The People are supposed to be an across-the-board slice of the American Pie, with different incomes, different jobs and different areas of expertise.
Of The People, By The People, For the People. Pretty simple, really. And in the last election We The People spoke loud and clear to end the war. Why isn’t it? Because we can’t heal the massive leaks in our economy until we clear ourselves of the war that punches holes in American health, wealth, respectability, and well being. Thinking that war is good for America and our economy is like thinking cancer is good for health because once it takes full effect, you’ll never have a cold again.
“The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible.
Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns.
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance.”
– George Washington
“There is nothing new under the sun.”
– King Solomon
I’m not certain Washington ever thought things would be as inefficient as they have been, nor would he have tolerated the levels of corporate greed we live under. None of our forefathers would have; they thought two cents a ton tax on tea was overly greedy. They went to war over it for independence from it. We just go to the grocery store and gripe.
Pertaining to the blog about the murder….
I find this all very fascinating and truely believe we have a great script here for a TV spin off of Hawai Five O. This whole thing can be spun over 13 weeks in the 5-O fasion and we just have to have a disclaimer that the characters although fictional, the show may resemble the actual truth!
Osmosis.
~d.
why not one about the war? it could never be canceled, just like the war, and literally go on forever, just…like…the…war… talk about job security…
we could be soldiers of fortune out to reap the osama bin laden reward of 26 million, but wind up making more by selling burros to Blackwater guys. i think it could be big, doug. emmy stuff. and we’d get to fly helicopters…
Hey, do you have the dates of the Naples 2011 Oceanic Rodeo? Little Minnie and I are thinking about coming out of retirement and making a comeback. Brett Fayre was in the gallery the other day, and as we were talking, he sort of, well, talked me into it. It seems he’s an expert on the subject. Anyway, please let me know so we can make the qualifers. Little Minnie wants to give the Five Mile Relay one last shot.
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God Bless you man. Have a nice day. Bye