Democrats: Time to stop the wars

In 2006, American voters elected a majority of Democrats to both houses of Congress so that they would stop Bush’s wars. They didn’t.

In 2008, American voters elected Democrat Barack Obama to the presidency so that he would stop Bush’s wars. He hasn’t, and in fact is escalating the war in Afghanistan and advancing it into Pakistan.

So, Democrats, what next? Now that you have the power in the White House and Congress, are you going to stop Bush’s unconstitutional, unjust, and unconscionable wars?

Maybe.

Tom Hayden

Tom Hayden, the former 1960s anti-Vietnam War protester, says “Doubt will turn into dissent” in an interview with Der Spiegel:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: As a veteran of the protests against the Vietnam War, you know a lot about public resistance, and now you’re promising a “storm of protest” against the US war in Afghanistan. What will that entail?

Hayden: The emotion that people are feeling is deep disappointment over the Afghanistan policy of Barack Obama and the US Congress, which now registers as a surprising 70 percent disapproval rate for the war among Democrats. Doubt will turn into dissent; it will manifest in congressional districts. The Democrats will find it hard to ignore their base. The slightest loss of support from the 2008 antiwar base will be very threatening to their electoral success.

Ironically, Obama may be able to continue Bush’s wars only if Democrats lose their control of Congress, and Republicans — who remain pro-war even though backing Bush’s wars got them booted out of power by voters — give him the support he needs. Maybe Obama should just become a Republican. After all, he’s almost exactly like Bush.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why is this disillusionment already so deep?

Hayden: Obama is caught between the social movements that made his presidency possible, including the anti-Iraq-war movement, and the Machiavellians, who are accustomed to running everything with little or no interference from the voters.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You seem to be saying that Obama should be careful about taking the support of the left for granted. How are you planning to remind him of that?

Hayden: We are currently organizing in about 75 congressional districts, where people still hope the president listens. The dissent in 75 districts will turn into 150 and keep growing when next year’s request for war funding is presented in January. At this point, we have a unique situation in which huge numbers of people want Obama and the Democrats to succeed domestically — but will not be silent about the war.

Nam then, Afghanistan now

What’s different about the anti-war movement this time is that there’s no draft. In the 1960s and early 1970s, guys got drafted and sent to Nam to die face-down in the mud, then come home in a body bag.

Even though President LBJ and Secretary of Defense McNamara didn’t believe the war could be won. These war criminals sacrificed 58,000 brave young American boys and 3 million Vietnamese on the altar of their political ambition.

I still argue with some conservatives who say, “We could have won in Vietnam.” But how can you win a war the two top leaders think can’t be won?

What that pointless war really was like was described today by Fred Reed, a wounded Marine from the Vietnam War, who still suffers from what earned him a purple heart. (All of Fred’s writing is worth reading.) A 30-year war correspondent, he writes:

Then there are the enlisted men. In these hobbyist wars, and to an extent even in peacetime, it is crucial to keep the enlisteds from thinking. In some three decades of covering the military, I saw this constantly. If I went to Afghanistan today as a correspondent, I could argue in private about the war with the colonel. If I suggested to the troops that they were being suckered, the colonel would go crazy. Next to keeping the public quiescent, keeping the troops (and potential recruits) bamboozled is vital. If a high-school kid saw what awaited, if he saw the cartilage glistening in wrecked joints, he wouldn’t sign.

After a while, the kids caught on and protested in the streets, burning their draft cards. The anti-war movement died down in 1973, when the draft ended and American troops were withdrawn from Vietnam.

Hey, Hey, Obam-A…

Even though there’s no draft, today’s Vietnam Wars – in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and maybe Iran — need to be opposed. Today, the new anti-war movement needs is a slogan. He’re’s one I came up with:

Hey, hey, Obam-A,
How many kids did you kill today?

Why isn’t Michael Moore attacking Obama?

Michael Moore’s 2004 documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” was a searing indictment of Bush’s unjust and unconstitutional Iraq War. Unfortunately, his new movie, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” looks to be more leftist agitprop, like his last one, “Sicko,” he paean to Soviet medical care, and the anti-Second Amendment “Bowling for Columbine” before that. (“Sicko” is ably skewered by John Stossel here.”

Here’s a question: Will he interview people who have accurately described what happened during the meltdown, such as Rep. Ron Paul in his new “End the Fed”  and historian Thomas Woods in “Meltdown“? They have described how the Federal Reserve Board, under chairmen Greenspan and Bernanke, goosed the economy to pay for the Iraq War. The chairmen inflated the dollar and kept interest rates artificially low. The result was the mid-2000s boom, followed by the mega-bust we’re suffering now.

Moore  Obama

A clue to what Moore is up to can be seen in a recent interview:

THR: In your opinion, what’s the single worst legacy of George W. Bush?

Moore: That he has yet to be arrested for committing the worst crime the leader of a nation can commit: lie to the people and convince them to invade another country and kill its people with absolutely no provocation. There are 8,662 parents who might better answer this question.

He’s referring to the 4,331 Americans being killed in Iraq. And he’s right: Bush should be arrested for his crimes and put on trial, along with Cheney, Condi, Rummy, etc.

So, does Moore then goes on to attack Obama for continuing Bush’s Iraq War, expanding Bush’s Afghan War, and even starting a new war in Pakistan? Nope. Instead, he wallows in his love for the new Boss:

Moore: I’m still in a stupor of stunned ecstasy that Obama won. And I approve of most everything he’s done, from apologizing to the Iranians for America overthrowing their democratically elected president in 1953 to appointing Kumar (actor Kal Penn of the “Harold and Kumar” movies) to a White House position. He is doing the best he can with the mess he inherited, and I and millions of others are counting on him never to forget that he came from the working class and that his people need him now more than ever. As for the congressional Democrats, what a bunch of losers — weak, scared, stupid. They had better get a clue pretty quick or the Dark Forces will return.

Obama = Bush

He doesn’t see that Obama = Bush. After all, Obama has kept in power Bush’s Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, and just re-appointed Bush’s Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke. In Obama’s 7 months in office, there has been no change at all. It’s, Meet the new boss, same as the old boss — once again.

And just as Bush’s economics team was headed by Hank Paulson of Goldman Sachs, so Obama’s team includes Goldman Sachs guys Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, and Robert Rubin. Not surprisingly, with both Republicans and Democrats tied in with Goldman Sachs, the company just posted a record profit — while the rest of us suffer unemployment, bankruptcy, and destitution.

End the Fed

The only way to end this crooked domination of Wall Street over government is to abolish the Federal Reserve Board, as Ron Paul has proposed. Then we can have honest money again — that is, money backed by gold. Honest money means the government can’t pay for wars by robbing the people through inflation, thus making long wars — like those of Bush-Obama — impossible.

So, the only real question about “Capitalism: A Love Story” is whether Moore will call for abolishing the Fed. I doubt it.

Moore also should do a sequel to “Fahrenheit 9/11” — call it “Fahrenheit 9/12” — attacking Obama’s continuation and expansion of Bush’s wars, and pointing out how the Republicans, whom he calls the Dark Forces, are the same as the Democrats — as Pat Buchanan once put it, they’re the two wings of the same bird of prey.

But Moore won’t do that, either. He’d rather have his delusion of “Change you can believe in.”

Another Bush Iraq War lie disproven

Why President Obama is continuing President Bush’s Iraq War is a mystery. The whole mess was a lie from beginning to … well, when will it end?

One of the lies the Bush regime and its Neocon propagandists used to excuse the war was that Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher, a pilot lost over Iraq in 1991 during the first President Bush’s Iraq War I, had been held captive ever since by Saddam. Here’s what Secretary of Defense Donald “RummyDummy” Rumsfeld said in March 2002, as the Bush regime was gearing up its propaganda offensive to invade Iraq:

The Bush administration voiced deep skepticism today over a reported offer from Iraq to discuss the status of an American pilot who was shot down there in 1991.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that Iraq’s supposed offer to discuss Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher had been reported only through news media outlets and not through formal channels between the countries.

”I don’t believe very much that the regime of Saddam Hussein puts out,” Mr. Rumsfeld said. “They’re masters at propaganda.”

Actually, of course, Saddam was an amateur at propaganda. The professionals were Bush and the Neocons.

Speicher located

Lt. Cmdr. Speicher’s remains just were found:

WASHINGTON — Navy officials announced early Sunday that Marines in the western Iraqi province of Anbar had found remains that have been positively identified as those of an American fighter pilot shot down in the opening hours of the first Persian Gulf war in 1991.

The Navy pilot, Capt. Michael Scott Speicher, was the only American missing in action from that war. Efforts to determine what happened to him after his F/A-18 Hornet was shot down by an Iraqi warplane on Jan. 17, 1991, had continued despite false rumors and scant information.

Conflicting reports from Iraq had, over the years, fueled speculation that the pilot, promoted to captain from lieutenant commander in the years he was missing, might have been taken into captivity either after parachuting from his jet or after a crash landing.

But the evidence in Iraq suggests he did not survive and was buried by Bedouins shortly after he was shot down.

Wasted lives

Of course, the First Iraq War, like the Second Iraq War, never should have been fought. Speicher’s life was wasted, along with all the thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died in the Bush Crime Family’s obsession with Iraq and Saddam, whom they once — let us remember — supported with foreign aid.

Here’s Bush flunky Rumsfeld meeting Saddam in 1984 to give him American military equipment for Saddam’s war against Iran. At least back then, under Reagan — Bush I was vice president — America wasn’t so stupid as to put its own ground forces into the Middle East in long, bankrupting wars.

Remember the Vietnam MIAs?

And one more thing, fellow Americans, the Bush family used Speicher’s unfortunate fate — his supposedly being missing in action and held captive by Saddam — as a propaganda tool. But what did the Bushes ever do to get back the American MIA’s from Vietnam who still could be over there?

For you youngsters out there, Vietnam was the war that young W., the future President Bush II, avoided when his daddy got him into the Texas Air National Guard, in which he heroically kept the Viet Cong from invading Galveston, at least when he wasn’t going AWOL and getting drunk.

Sorry, TheLiberalOC Blog, the economy ain’t improving

There is no instance of a nation profiting from prolonged warfare.

–Sun Tzu

TheLiberalOC.com Blog posted Obama’s weekly video address from YouTube.  The summary on the blog:

WASHINGTON – In this week’s address, President Barack Obama said the newly released GDP numbers are an indication that the Recovery Act is working, but that long–term investments in innovation are needed to ensure our nation’s long-term economic growth. By training the highest skilled workforce in the world, reforming the health care system to free business from spiraling costs, and building a green energy economy, we will create a new foundation that will encourage the innovation needed to move America forward.

The War, The War, The War

It’s understandable that liberals, such as TheLiberalOC, and other Democrats would hope for the best under Obama, and would believe his words.

But actually, the recession — really the Bush Depression — isn’t ending, and won’t end until Obama, or a successor, ends the massively expensive wars Bush started.

Wars are incredibly wasteful. George Stiglitz, a liberal Democrat himself and Nobel Prize laureate in economics, pegs the costs of the Iraq War at $3 trillion — and possibly up to $5 trillion. That’s $5,000,000,000,000.00.

The wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which Obama is vastly expanding, will cost trillions more.

Hey, TheLiberalOC, didn’t Obama win by running as the peace candidate?

Imperial Bankruptcy

Within living memory of many readers here and at TheLiberalOC, the Vietnam War bankrupted America, bringing on the “malaise” 1970s. The Soviet Union’s earlier Afghan War bankrupted them.

The Spanish Empire was bankrupted by the long Dutch Revolt, which the Dutch won. The British Empire was bankrupted by World War I and World War II. The French Empire was bankrupted by their involvement in Vietnam, ending in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu, and their troubles later that decade in Algeria, from which they also withdrew.

And here’s one analysis of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire:

The Roman Empire produced few exportable goods. Material innovation, whether through entrepreneurialism or technological advancement, all but ended long before the final dissolution of the Empire. Meanwhile the costs of military defense and the pomp of Emperors continued. Financial needs continued to increase, but the means of meeting them steadily eroded. In the end due to economic failure, even the armor of soldiers deteriorated and the weaponry of soldiers became so obsolete to the extent that the enemies of the Empire had better armor and weapons as well as larger forces. The decrepit social order offered so little to its subjects that many saw the barbarian invasion as liberation from onerous obligations to the ruling class.

Sound familiar?

It’s pathetic that South Korea, an outpost of the American Empire, still occupied by 30,000 U.S. tropps, can produce a car company like Hyundai, while General Motors and Chrysler go bankrupt. But that’s what happens when an Empire sends its capital overseas to support its legions, instead of at home on domestic industries.

Obama = Bush III

Obama promised “Change you can believe in.” But all he’s produced so far is More Bush You Can’t Believe In. He’s Bush III.

Another hallmark of crashing empires is an inability of the ruling elite to change, and to get somebody new in power who can make the necessary changes. That’s obviously what’s going on here.

Bush paid for his wars with inflation and wild domestic spending to buy support in Congress. When the crash hit hard in 2008, Bush panicked and gave us “bailouts,” the main ones of GM and Chrysler and the Wall Street banks, paid for by Main Street.

Obama is continuing the same disastrous policies, with GM now a part of the government, and Chrysler essentially given to Fiat, an Italian company. Both companies, basically, are dead. Hummer, that symbol of Yankee vehicular machismo, now is a Chinese company.

Like the antique Romans, we can’t even build our own goods. Even our flashy iPods are made in China, along with practically every doodad sold in Wal-Mart.

War bankrupts

Consider again the words at the top of this blog, from Sun Tzu, the greatest military strategist ever: “There is no instance of a nation profiting from prolonged warfare.” It’s too bad Obama, and Bush before him, seem never to have read Sun Tzu’s classic, “On War.”

Read it yourself and find out what war is really about. (My favorite translation is that by Thomas Cleary, highlighted at right. Amazingly, it’s ranked 1,206, as of this writing, on Amazon’s list of best-selling books. Not bad for a book written at least 2,500 years ago.)

As a result of our leaders’ ignorance, it’s looking like the only way the American Empire will end is a major shock to the system, a Dien Bien Phu in Afghanistan or Iraq: a catastrophic defeat of our overextended forces. If it happens on Obama’s watch, Republicans will blame him, and reap election dividends — even though Republicans remain the main culprits of American collapse because of their subservient support of Bush for 8 years.

Meanwhile, our domestic economy will keep collapsing. There is no recovery. There is only more of the Bush Depression.

Bush’s destructon of Iraq

Imagine if, in the last 6 years, 75 million Americans were dead or displaced. That’s the equivalent of what Bush did to Iraq.

Since his aggressive, unconstitutional, unjust, and unconscionable invasion in 2003, here are the numbers:

1.3 million Iraqis dead.

2.7 million Iraqis displaced inside Iraq.

2 million Iraqis exiled to other countries.

Total: 6 million Iraqis dead or displaced. That’s about 1/4 of the country’s prewar population of 24 million.

(In addition, 4,223 Americans have been killed — so far — and 30,000 to 100,000 wounded.

The war, as everyone now knows (and as I knew before the war started, and wrote about it), was totally based on lies: the lie that Saddam held “weapons of mass destruction,” the lie that he had delivery vehicles for the weapons that could reach America, and the lie that he had ties to al Qaeda.

Bush, Cheney, Condi and the other mass killers soon will be gone from office. They’ll be writing their memoirs for millions of dollars and collecting $100,000-plus speakers’ fees. If there were any justice in this world, they would be arrested and put on trial for aggressive war and mass murder, found guilty, and jailed for the rest of their lives. But there is no justice in this world.

However, there is nothing but justice in the next world.

Bush should stay in Iraq and command the troops

President Bush just flew into Baghdad for a farewell to the troops. He should stay there and lead them.

Like Napoleon or Alexander the Great, he should personally lead his troops into battle against the enemy. He should put on a helmet, pick up an M-16, and order his troops, “Follow me.”

It’s been 5-1/2 years now since his infamous “Mission Accomplished” victory celebration aboard an aircraft carrier. No victory is at hand even now.

What the Iraq War needs is its Commander-in-Chief on the scene, leading. Bush still has five weeks in office in which he could lead the troops to victory. In that time in 1944, Gen. George S. Patton, with far less powerful forces, gutted the best army Nazi Germany threw at him.

Napoleon and Alexander, also with much less powerful forces, won battles in a matter of hours, or days.

Bush, who avoided combat service during the Vietnam War, now has a chance to prove he’s not just a sniveling coward, a chickenhawk.

His second-in-command would be, of course, VP Dick Cheney, another chickenhawk, who got 5 draft deferments during the Vietnam War.  He never put on a uniform. Now is his chance. Put him in the driver’s seat of a Hummer, with Bush riding shotgun and barking orders.

Let Bush and Cheney lead America, finally, and personally, to victory in Iraq.

Bush still lying about the start of the Iraq War

With just 50 days left in his disastrous regime, President Bush is worried about his legacy. He’s trying to palm off on us the idea that bad intelligence led him to believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, when it didn’t. He said in an interview with Charlie Gibson:

A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn’t just people in my administration. A lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington, D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence.

I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.

Actually, there was a lot of intelligence — not just secret, but out there in the public arena — that indicated Saddam did not have WMDs.  So Bush clearly is lying.

In August 2002, six months before Bush launched his unconstitutional, unjust, and unconscionable war, here’s what I wrote in an editorial for The Orange County Register, where I then worked:

Saddam Hussein, though brutal, does not pose an immediate threat to his neighbors, nor to America. And despite a year of the government looking for proof, it has not shown any indisputable connection between Saddam and the 9/11 terrorists. Even National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, one of the hawkish members of the Bush administration, in a notably hawkish speech on Aug. 15, was cautious. “This is an evil man who, left to his own devices, will wreak havoc again on his own population, his neighbors and, if he gets weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them, all of us. [It] is a very powerful case for regime change … Clearly if Saddam Hussein is left in power doing the things that he is doing now this is a threat that will emerge, and emerge in a very big way.”

We added the italics to emphasize that even she doesn’t see this as a threat that exists today, but could develop in the future. There’s still time to find means other than war to defuse the problem.

Unfortunately, Bush did not choose “means other than war to defuse the problem.” Instead, he launched the Iraq War — without a declaration of war from Congress, as mandated by the U.S. Constitution. The war’s cost was paid for with debt and inflation, which in turn bankrupted the country, bringing about the current economic meltdown.

Somewhere in a hot corner of Hell, Saddam Hussein is laughing.

Sometimes macho is stupido

We’re witnessing the deserved demise of two politicians who boasted how tough they were, but now are humiliated by their own excesses: President Bush and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Seven years ago, Bush stood atop the world, the commander of the most fierce military machine the world had ever known. After 9/11, the world was tuned in to whatever Bush needed to do to get Bin Laden and the other terrorists who perpetrated the atrocities of that day.

The Neo”conservatives” flattered Bush by calling him “The Conquerer.” Every tough-guy American, including a lot of Rambo wannabees, urged Bush to “kick b*tt and take names.” His Second Inaugural Address, in 2005, was a call to America to force democracy on the rest of the world.

Today, America is a burned-out, bankrupt hulk of its former self. Even a Goliath, Americans have found out, can be brought down by dozens of Davids, if Goliath is foolish enough to keep challenging them on their own turf.

Sun Tzu

It’s unlikely Bush ever read, or even heard of, “On War,” by Sun Tzu, the greatest military strategist ever. Sun urged that the best way to defeat an enemy is to find a non-military way of doing so. That way, you win, and you keep your army. Fighting, especially at long distances, drains resources and bankrupts a country. (Sound familiar?) Fighting also reveals how capable, or incapable, your military is. The Iraq and Afghan wars showed that the U.S. military still is fighting World War II, and has almost no inkling that these are Fourth Generation wars. Bush’s Neocon strategists — Perle, Wolfowitz, Libby, etc. — are even more ignorant.

Sun Tzu advised that, if you know yourself and your enemy, you will always win. But if you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always lose. Bush and the Neocons are the most ignorant “strategists” America has ever suffered under, so it was inevitable that America would lose.

It’s too bad so many “macho” regular American patriots were so gullible about Bush, the Neocons, and the supposed invincility of American arms. History is littered with empires that stretch too far: Athens and its Sicilian Expedition, Rome at its height in Teutoberg Forest, the British Empire at its height in Afghanistan.

This is why prudence is a more important virtue that fortitude.

Gov. Steroid

Another example of macho hubris is Gov Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger.  Building on his steroid-fueled stardom in bodybuilding and movies, Arnold projected himself in his 2003 election campaign as Conan the Governor. He would pound into oblivion the state’s chronic overspending, deficits, and high taxes. One male letter writer, who perhaps had seen too many Arnold action flicks, wrote to The Orange County Register, where I then worked, that as governor, Arnold would “lift the state on his broad shoulders.”

Once in office, he attacked the Democratic leadership in the Legislature as “girly men.” He tried to slam through a badly designed reform package on the ballot in November 2005.

When he failed, he turned the state government over to his wife, Maria, a Kennedy with high-tax, Kennedy-spending ways. He is the most uxorious governor I’ve ever seen, in any state.

The result: record deficits, soon to be made even worse by tax increases that will not raise more revenue, but instead chase more businesses from the state.

Back in 2003, I tried to warn people that Arnold was a Hollywood phony, that if you withold the anabolic steroid injections, he’s just a 99-pound weakling. But few listened.

Now the state is in a downward spiral leading to bankruptcy.

In 2003, voters had a chance to choose the real deal, state Sen. Tom McClintock, who understood the budget better than anyone in the state. Typically, voters chose style over competence and integrity. They thought Arnold would “terminate” the state’s problems.

Conclusion

Two fake-macho men, Bush and Arnold, fooled people into giving them power. Both wrecked the polities they never should have been allowed to govern, America and California.

And we’re all going to pay for their folly, and that of their supporters, the rest of our lives.

Chickenhawk Ben Shapiro’s propaganda film

A McCain voter (but not supporter) sent me this video by Ben Shapiro, who’s a chickenhawk. As I’ve noted, Shapiro is just 23, so he easily could join the U.S. Marines. A smart fellow, he could learn Arabic and help G.I.’s in Baghdad talk with the locals.

The video tries to get Christians to oppose Obama, but does so by being obsessed with warmongering. It wrongly identifies Ahmadinejad as Iran’s leader, when his post of “president” is not the top job, which is held by a mullah.

“Christianity is not pacifism,” the video intones. True, but Christianity believes in Just War Theory. Both the Iraq and Afghan wars violate Just War Theory because, to cite just 3 reasons:

a) They were not begun by the legitimate authority (the U.S. Congress, the only body the Constitution authorizes to declare war; it didn’t), but by the president.

b) They were not begun with a just cause. The Iraq War was justified because Saddam supposedly had WMDs and ties to al-Qaeda. That was all just lies, as some of us pointed out even before Bush launched the war. The Afghan War was begun to get Osama bin Laden, a just cause, but quickly turned aside from that to “nation building,” which is not just, especially in an area that has repeatedly expelled every invader, from Alexander the Great to the British Empire to the Soviet Empire. Osama still is out there, maybe not even in Afghanistan anymore.

c) They were not begun as a last resort. Saddam was cooperating in weapons inspections. The Taliban were only party cooperating in the hunt for bin Laden but, in any case, could have been circumvented to go after him. Taking down the whole Taliban regime was not necessary, especially in a tribal country with a weak central government.

No wonder both popes of this decade, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, opposed Bush’s aggressions. That’s the true Christian position.

Obama not a dove

Chickenhawk Shapiro’s video goes on to maintain that Obama is a pacifist who would dismantle the U.S. military. This is just pro-McCain propaganda. As Justin Raimondo points out, war suppoeters now are flocking to the pro-war Obama campaign.

The video attacks Obama for wanting to negotiate with Iran’s government. But now Bush is actually doing that. It tries to get us afraid of Venezuelan boss Chavez, the Caribbean pipsqueak.

Enough. The Shapiro video quotes Orwell, but is itself Orwellian.

I again invite Mr. Shapiro to become Lt. Shapiro, USMC — and not as a JAG  lawyer, but as a front-line jarhead. The Marines are still looking for a few good men.

He now practices law in Los Angeles, so here’s a link to a local Marine recruiter.

Why the “surge” is “working”

In 1258,  Mongol leader Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis, captured and sacked Baghdad.  Up to 200,000 people were killed. The city took centuries to recover. (Siege shown at right, from an ancient manuscript.)

I never thought the American government would do something so cruel, despite the total destruction by bombing in World War II of Dresden and Hiroshima, Hamburg and Nagasaki. At least, I thought, the government wouldn’t have its ground forces do that, only the Air Force.

But it has. That’s the reason the “surge” is “working” in Iraq: Bush, egged on by murderous Neocon ideologues, has destroyed Iraq. William Blum explains:

Allow me to point out that while there has been a reduction in violence in Iraq — now down to a level that virtually any other society in the world would find horrible and intolerable, including Iraqi society before the US invasion and occupation — we must keep in mind that thanks to this lovely little war more than half the population of Iraq is either dead, crippled, traumatized, confined in overflowing American and Iraqi prisons, internally displaced, or in foreign exile.

Thus, the number of people available for being killers or victims is markedly reduced. Moreover, extensive ethnic cleansing has taken place in the country (another good indication of progress, n’est-ce pas?). Sunnis and Shiites are now living more in their own special enclaves than before, none of those stinking mixed communities with their unholy mixed marriages, so violence of the sectarian type has also gone down; and the powerful movement of Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr has had a cease-fire in effect for many months, unconnected to the surge. On top of all this, US soldiers, in the face of numerous “improvised explosive devices” on the roads, have been venturing out a lot less (for fear of things like … well, dying), so the violence against our noble lads is also down. Remember that insurgent attacks on American forces is how the Iraqi violence all began in the first place.

Just imagine — If the entire Iraqi population over the age of 10 is killed, disabled, imprisoned or forced into exile there will probably be no violence at all. Now that would really be victory.

No American should be allowed to forget that Iraqi society has been destroyed. The people of that unhappy land have lost everything — their homes, their schools, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their health care, their legal system, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their security, their past, their present, their future, their lives. But they do have their surge.

But there’s a warning from the Mongol days, too. The Mongol Empire was the largest ever, spanning almost all of Eurasia, was overstretched. Two years later, the Mongols were defeated by the Mamluks at the Battle of Ain Jalut.

In 1274 and 1281, Kamikaze — which means “divine wind” in Japanese — typhoons destroyed Mongol fleets invading Japan. From there, it was all downhill. Today, Mongolia is a minor country in central Asia, a shadow of its former self.

(Although Genghis, the biggest rapist in world history, left behind the largest “genetic footprint” of anyone yet identified by modern DNA research. Genghis is pictured at right.)

Americans should take heed and just dump our Empire. Bring our troops home — all of them. Empires never last, and always bankrupt the home country — as we’re seeing with America’s ongoing financial meltdown.

Genghis Khan and his cohort should not be an example for America.