Winter Holiday Musings and Analysis from The Scallion's Editor in Chief
Now that it's almost over, it's impossible to look back on 2003 without a certain sense of ... if not satisfaction, then relief—there, but for the grace of God, go I—at least for having survived it. A lot has happened this year.
Most recently in the provincial U.S. version of the global picture—tutti fruity terror alerts notwithstanding—Iraqi Kurds have obligingly captured U.S.-supported evildoer and ally Saddam Hussein and equally obligingly turned him over to the U.S. troops so that Bush can pretend his boys bagged the prize. That fantasy, of course, lasted right up until the moment the Kurds translated the Pentagon's official story of Saddam's capture and decided to divest Washington of its borrowed feathers. Why did the Kurds capture Saddam? Why not? When those he depended on drugged him and tipped off his captors-to-be, it was better not to ask questions: any personal vendetta will do when Providence presents such a useful bargaining chip. Personally, I am hoping that the Kurds hold out for the establishment of a permanent Kurdish state—a Kurdistan where Iraqi and Turkish Kurds can go live in peace and preserve their culture and traditions. Heavens, what would Chimpco think of such a radical suggestion? The answer: it depends. The Bush regime has proven time and again that there is no cause so petty that reward or revenge will not be swiftly and heavy-handedly meted out. Does the capture of Saddam Hussein make America one iota safer? Not according to Tom Ridge, who just upped the terror alert—mere days after Saddam's capture—from yellow to orange. So much for the “war” on terrorism. Kinda like the war on drugs that got noticeably worse after we captured our good buddy and friendly evildoing drug kingpin, Manuel Noriega. Win some, lose some.
So, “we” caught Saddam. What about Osama? Osama who? You know, Osama-the-guy-Bushco-says-masterminded-9/11 ... with Saddam's help, of course. Well, I can't see American troops trying too hard to capture Osama because the bin Ladens and the Bushes are simply too chummy for one patriarchy to pursue one of the other's sons. Not gonna happen. There's about as much of a chance that U.S. troops will capture Osama as there is of Ken Lay's being indicted. Don't tell me you forgot about Ken Lay and all the corporate ENRON HALLIBURTON BECTEL WORLDCOM GLOBAL CROSSING scandals, did you? Of course, that's what we have the media for: to make you forget what's important by distracting you with fluff. America's corporate scandal is a thing of the past—once we threw the book at Martha Stewart for her outrageous $43k jaunt, we gained absolution for Bush-buddy Lay and all his ilk. It was easier to overlook their meager offenses—they were, at least, male and therefore entitled to some unconditional forgiveness and understanding from the American public. Just like Rush Limbaugh.
Speaking of Halliburton and, perhaps, their subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown, and Root, isn't it just insane how the Pentagon and even some audacious members of the press are persecuting these wide-eyed innocents of bilking American taxpayers out of over $60M in overcharges for fuel imported into Iraq for reconstruction? It's a good thing Americans have such a short attention span. Otherwise, they'd be mighty pissed off ... not merely about being overcharged $60M but for having to fork over $83B in the first place (the other $4B of the funding bill's original $87B went to funding Miami police so they could beat up and torture protesters against the “free” trade area of the Americans—that's “multional corporate-sponsored indentured servitude” to you and me, not to mention impoverished Mexicans and South Americans) ... that's $83B for a reconstruction effort that Bushco “promised” would cost us less than $1B because it would be funded from sales of Iraqi oil. Yup, it's a good thing for this administration that Americans have forgotten all about news items like these ... and the revenge-exposure of ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife as a CIA operative. Heck, all Chimpco has to do is wink at the media, and they'll serve up a suitably distracting tidbit on Michael Jackson or any other imaginary but easily demonized foe of the sanctity and purity of American values—anything to get the public's attention off the real issues.
What I'd like to know is where the Democratic party has been during all of this. Throughout history, wars have been started for the sheer benefit of American big money—Hellen Keller denounced WWI as just such a war—but, even in those cases, every American president laid out a law reining in excessive (not all!) war profiteering. The invasion of Iraq is such an egregious exception to that practice—and such an unmitigated show of government-corporate cronyism and clear conflict of interest—that the Democrats are swimming in more political fodder than a blind donkey could shake a lame hoof at. Yet where is the outcry? Is Representative Henry Waxman the only elected official looking out for taxpayers' best interests? That reminds me: where is the public outcry anent official conclusions drawn that Bushco could and should have prevented 9/11 (conclusions drawn despite the administration's best efforts to hamstring the investigation)? Bush may be pitching woo to NASCAR dads and other less-than -well-to-do Republicans and potential Bush voters, but all he is selling is sentiment—not substance. Bush and his cheerleaders in the media—the Hannitys, the O'Reillys, and the Limbaughs—all pretend to identify with the common man. They pretend to be working-class stiffs who have failed at one thing or another, but, hey, they can still be president, famous, radio/TV personalities, et cetera, despite all those unfortunate, regrettable inroads made by women, Blacks, and others demanding equality and rights. They sell the sentiment that enforcing others' rights necessarily detracts from your own, and they foment the anger that stems from the frustration of watching your income dwindle, your social value erode, and your future wax downwardly mobile. They wail and moan of the horrors of women working outside the home while gleefully creating and reveling in socioeconomic circumstances that necessitate dual incomes just for survival—forget luxury. In their fondest utopia, the peasants get nothing but the inchoate aroma wafting from the feast—a feast they slaved over and paid for with their own blood, sweat, and tears—while only the fortunate sons enjoy the privilege of reclining at table and gorging themselves on countless delicacies. Where, I ask, are the Democrats to call their Republican counterparts on the carpet and take them to task for all the lies, exposing the fraud to the American people once and for all? Are they afraid that Rove will do to them what he did to Joseph Wilson and his family? Do they stand to benefit from watching the wealthy dismantle America like wild dogs on a carcass, running off to devour their booty? Is Big Money bribing or blackmailing them to keep silent? Are they so browbeaten and hopeless that they are biding their time until 2008, waiting for Hillary to swoop in and restore the party's former Clinton-bestowed glory with a landslide victory? Where is a good, strong, opposition—populist—party when you need one? If corporate media can't be trusted to hold government accountable (and why should they, since government and corporations are now one and the same gestalt entity?), and if the Democrats won't even step up to the bat, then who will expose the Republicans' lies and save American voters from themselves?
Speaking of Republican lies, here's the 2003 short list:
1. The U.S. needed to invade Iraq because Saddam had WMD (imperialism is such an ugly word—Americans hate it and would not knowingly support it. Now, the fact that Saddam had WMD “programs” is sufficient for retrospective saber-rattling).
2. Before the invasion, Iraq was an imminent threat to the security of the U.S. (Reagan said the same thing about Libya, too).
3. The administration is intent on liberating Iraq (funny, it seems to me like they're hell-bent on privatizing it and auctioning it off in bits and pieces to their friends and relations—again, where are the Democrats to raise the stink about these dirty deals?).
4. Saddam has ties to al Qaeda and has been implicated in 9/11 (it's all true on Fox World, Rupert Murdoch's home planet. Not sure they have oxygen up there).
5. The invasion was not about oil (it certainly wasn't about protecting or preserving the culture or the people, so, when oil ministries are protected at the expense of everything/everyone else, how can I conclude it was about anything other than oil?).
6. Tax cuts for the mega-wealthy somehow benefit the poor.
7. The poor benefit the most (have the greatest tax reductions?) from Bush's tax cuts.
8. The invasion will only cost American taxpayers $1B (I still think Bush should have paid the difference out of his own wallet).
9. Osama is responsible for 9/11 (not those in the U.S. government who knew about it and let it happen anyway), and we are trying to catch him (I'd still like to know why it was necessary to bomb Afghanistan when the perpetrators of 9/11 were mostly Saudis).
10. The U.S. pResident is all about substance, not politics or, heaven forbid, photo ops (except, of course, for pretending to fly the aircraft that landed him on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln back in May or, perhaps, when the plastic turkey posed with a plastic turkey in Baghdad in November).
11. Bush wants to be known as the education president (yet the proudly incurious bozo who can't seem to speak or read even American English gleefully implemented No Billionaire Left Behind while ensuring Lots of Children Left Behind).
12. Bush supports the environment (he fully supports opening up public lands for logging, oil drilling, gaming, fishing, off-roading, dumping, polluting, and any/every other activity that will desecrate the landscape, all in the name of fun and profit).
13. Bush is a Christian (too hypocritical even to comment on).
14. The economy is improving (how anyone can make that claim with a straight face when over two million American jobs have been lost is beyond me).
15. The administration supports soldiers and veterans (by sending them into immoral, illegal, strictly-for-profit wars, where they have to spend their meager pay to provide themselves with scant, woefully inadequate equipment, and then decimating their pay and benefits ... and by denying them the dignity of acknowledging the dead, as American presidents have done for decades).
16. The U.S. abides by the Geneva Convention (Bushco screeches bloody murder whenever an American prisoner is photographed or shown on TV, but, hey, it's OK to strip Iraqi men and film them being paraded through the streets ... and it's just ducky to treat a captured Saddam like a piece of meat, thus earning him far more sympathy and compassion than he would have received if he had been treated with respect and human dignity ... and don't complain to us about the more than 600 prisoners now languishing indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay without hope even of being charged, let alone a trial or [perish the thought!] release ...).
17. The Pentagon told the true story of Jessica Lynch's rescue (if you believe that, then you'll believe that the Black female private who was wounded alongside Private Lynch received equal pay, benefits, and medical attention before, during, and after the trip home).
18. Rush Limbaugh deserves clemency and compassion for his drug addiction, which is, after all, an illness like any other (it's only poor and Black addicts who are criminals—throw the book at them, not poor, pure, innocent Rush).
19. Saddam will have a fair trial, and all wrongdoings and their causes will be investigated (if the man doesn't conveniently commit suicide or suffer a mysterious fatal illness while in prison, then the Republicans will find some other way of shutting him up—can't have him blabbing about how the Bushes, Cheneys, Rumsfelds, Reagans, and other respected Republicans aided, abetted, and acted as accomplices to all of Saddam's evildoing ... at least, not during an election year).
20. Can you see Republicans' lips moving? Then, guess what—they're lying! If Bush claims he's ever done one blessed thing to benefit anyone or anything that is not Big Money from the minute the coup that landed him in office, then he is lying. It's just that simple.
And here's one from the Christian right: the newly-FDA-approved “morning after” pill is an abortifacient. It's not. An abortifacient causes an established pregnancy to abort; the morning-after pill prevents an egg from implanting on the uterine wall and does NOT affect established pregnancies. The FDA recommends that the morning-after pill be sold over the counter—as it should be in a sane world that treats women like people rather than chattel. It will be interesting in 2004 to see who wins this battle: big money pharmaceuticals or the Christian right. And I wonder which side Bush will choose: campaign funds or voter base. Of course, that assumes that wunderkind Karl Rove won't somehow wave his magic wand and win both for his boy by somehow convincing the losing side that they really won after all ...
Just for grins, here's a cute little white lie from the Brits, our allies in invading Iraq: British troops bring helpful experience from fighting terrorism in Northern Ireland to the occupation in Iraq. This concept is nothing short of farcical: as the British have proven, it was not martial law that brought decades of fighting to an end but diplomacy, compromise, and negotiation. Initially, suffering brutality from the Ulster government, Irish Catholics saw British troops as liberators. When the British perpetrated their own brutalities, the Irish Catholics came to see the troops as oppressors and sought to strike back. Their resistance was organic and could not be squashed by force. The British found that the only way to prevail was to work with rather than against the IRA: to mainstream IRA leaders, treat them as equals, and seek a political solution to the mess that Northern Ireland had become. There are notable similarities between the Northern Irish conflict and those extant in Iraq and Palestine. If the American/British coalition in Iraq or the Israelis in Palestine expect to win the day by sheer force, they are in for a rude awakening ... and many more years of endless war.
Thus ends another year of deceitful, hypocritical double standards, double dealings, and lies in U.S. foreign and domestic policies and actions. Here's hoping we have a real mobilization of our own grassroots, populist resistance to the abomination our republic—for we can't call it a democracy any more—has become. Experts agree that not even Diebold, using every Jeb-blessed Floridization trick in the book, can legitimize rigging a Bush win in 2004 if his opponent wins by a landslide. I'm not sure I agree, but I'd sure love to prove 'em right.
