Pierre: The "Read the rest..." link seems to be missing.
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Another lie is the media's claim that the Beltway divides up neatly into two camps: the surgers and the withdrawers. (Sorry for indulging in Deciderspeak.)
Hillary unwittingly clarified the matter when she announced she'd stay in Iraq indefinitely. Not a peep from Obama, Biden, Edwards, or anyone else.
The truth is that the divide in Washington is between people who want to rearrange the chairs of the Titanic and those who argue that our highest priority should be to change the wallpaper. As is always the case in matters of Interior Decoration the debate is sharp, passionate, sometimes intemperate.
But at least there is a consensus (so strong in fact that no one has to state it explicitly) that we must stay in Iraq (say, with >70K troops) forever.
Yeah, yeah, we keep hearing that withdrawing is not a matter of if but when.
Ant it's true: will it be in 2100 or 2200? No one really knows?
Saperlipopette! bon, c'est fixed. Merci Bernard.
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Which brings us back to the original sin of this old-Eden invasion: it has always been about oil and the strategic tastiness of owning Mesopotamia, title to which land every empire since Gilgamesh's time has wanted to call its own.
So...when do you think the duly elected Iraqi government will ask us to leave? What happens if/when we don't? And, if we don't leave, will we still have the neocons telling us we're spreading freedom and democracy in the middle east?
Jim: That's a very good question. I guess the US could pull a Bill Clinton and ask for the true meaning of "leave." Does moving to Peshmerga country or settling into biospherical bases constitute leaving?
But I suspect that, by definition, a duly elected government of Iraq will never ask us to leave, because we always seem to manage to get a duly elected prime minister who understands that his life very much depends on the proximity of the 82nd Airborne. Open heart surgery patients rarely wake up in mid-operation and ask their surgeons to go home.
I suspect leaving is going to prove very hard.
Bastards, bastards, bastards, bastards.
I am so fucking sick of this god-forsaken war.
Good Morning BC, hail & hello - 2 things,
1. "....very much depends on the proximity of the 82nd Airborne." Read Blackwater or CACI mercs funded by the American Taxpayer at over $100k/yr per merc. Thank you Reichs Marshall Rumsefeld. Didn't the Romans privatize their armies when they couldn't field one of their own?
2. "I suspect leaving is going to prove very hard." Not hard, BC, impossible. The monkey has his hand in the jar and he won't let go his prize, even if it kills him. We've already seen what the new Overseers have in mind. Blather, blather, blather, more of the same for Master.
We will not take this country back until millions and millions of Americans are willing to bleed and die in the streets for it. Citizens standing up against bayonets and the men who are prepared to use them.
No different then & now, except that our slave holders are the paymasters for the men with the bayonets. They also pay the torturers in Master's dungeons. Posse Comitatus is dead. Actually, since we produce all of Master's wealth for him, we are paying for the bayonets, the torturers, and the dungeons that will be used against us. Ironic isn't it. A house divided...and that rot.
You can answer for yourself if and when you think Americans might be prepared to stand up. Voting is no longer on the table. Master owns the Ace Faces, the poling machines, and the people who count the votes. They've done "a heck of a job". Hocus pocus - no more Citizens. You're a Subject of the Empire.
As you know, peaceful protest even by millions means nothing and the Police State is about ready to open those MCA camps Haliburton is building in West Texas for all us miscreants and disturbers of the King's peace. But I don't think our fall first as an empire, then as a nation state will ensue from insurrection. I think it will come from chaos & entropy.
I think this is what it feels like to go insane one day at a time for 40 years. The threads run back to Truman and before him to Manifest Destiny and all the genocide that went with it. No golden age for the US.
Our history is corpses all the way down, millions upon millions of them screaming all the time. People have held the pieces but now the great collage assembles itself just in time for the Great Shattering: Continuous, cascading non-linear catastrophic consequences.
I suspect it will be much like watching the Hoover dam collapse from an expanding pin-hole leak. First one spot, then larger, then another spot, then huge gaping wounds, then total collapse as the unchained chaos goes where it will. “Apre moi, le deluge.” That Louis the XV really had a way with French, didn't he? Hell of a way to get a bath.
Peace.
Hey Frere, you're quite the optimist this morning!
I like the Louis XV - Bush II analogy. Of course, I would have preferred Louis XVI-Bush II. But if that means we'll have to wait for Bush's successor to see heads roll, well let's just be patient.
BC, my compliments as always...
I save up all my optimism for Sunday and then I have an orgy. I listen to The Moody Blues, & Donnie Marie & Osmond, & John Denver, & Abba, & The Carpenters, & The Association all day long, over and over, until I believe it. As a kicker I play the Otis Reading song, "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay - sung up-tempo by George Hamilton - for three hours. And then at some particular moment, suddenly I start shaking all over and everything goes white and I disappear somewhere for hours and hours and when I come back, my butt hurts.
Optimism is very expensive.
And no, my optimism doesn’t extend to seeing heads roll even after the drooling cretin is replaced by a nicer talking, softer walking less vituperative Overseer. That is of course if we are allowed to have elections again. I do see how a few of the current crop of monsters might be sold to the European Union for trial at the ICC, for a couple of tankers of crude and some debt forgiveness. After the break-up of course. States and domestic trading blocs will be armed with Federal Arsenals by then and cutting their own deals accordingly. We will sell anybody if the price is right.
Will you be living in one of the future Nuclear States of America? Or, will you be living in one of the Have-Not states? That’s all right. If you’re not nuclear, you’ll soon be merged with one that is. We have always been a practical people when it comes to force of arms and the willingness to use them. When we encounter people that don’t have enough weapons or are ineffective in their use, they get to be our slaves. If they resist, we kill and torture a fair few, forcing the rest into submission. Especially the women. Always worked before. And you said I wasn’t an optimist…
Of course I am a total optimist. This Empire will dissolve, shatter, break, become dust, and burn away, wash away, blow away into the Earth. SBIG.
Sooner, would be better rather than later. For all our sakes. There is nothing even remotely human or humane about the way we live right now and its worse most everywhere else on this planet in large portion because of the actions of our government and our Ruling Caste. Do you see any possible return to the Roosevelt Legacy in your lifetime? Would you even desire it? All that leisure time. Two & three & four week vacations every year and you still have a job when you come back. Single earner can supply the financial needs of a family of 4-5 with a 35 hour work week. Never being in debt except for a modest mortgage. Quality schools and health care from cradle to grave. A Life without Fear.
Honestly, do you desire it? Speak the truth, shame the Devil. Do you believe that any of Master’s Overseers will restore the Legacy or the Republic or allow into the game anyone who would? Oh yeah, I’m very optimistic. The rigid hand is a dead hand (Miramoto Musashi, Book of Five Rings).
But then again, I might be a totally unreliable source. How could you know? I might be a covert triple-agent spreading confusion and malaise in the general population by repeating our actual history, while driving the RNC, the DLC, and the DNC farther and farther to the Right so that America might give herself ever more fully to our Masters thus accelerating our collapse (Like junkies, Masters have no self-restraint, never did). Although, with the Patriot Act, the MCA, the elimination of Posse Comitatus, the elimination of the estate tax, the elimination of the Bill of Rights & the Constitution, and having made human torture accepted American behavior both at home and abroad, my work is largely done. From here on it’s mostly gravity. You work with what’s there and you never sell the customer something they don’t want, you make them want what you’ve got. The rest is just selling. We’ve all been sold one time or another. Except for al_Donal of course. He’s a REpublican.
Peace
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