Bill Moyers Journal Looks At Iraq Contract Fraud

WWII: War of Necessity vs. Today's War of Choice

WARNING: Immature Adult Content

Yes, immature, but in today's world, people don't really understand how screwed up things really are until you spell it out for them. FUBAR: Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition; that is America today. I've apologized a million times on this blog for my inappropriate language... but only because I know people in my family, and some of my parents friends would find it extremely offensive. This is the way I talk when I talk about politics. This isn't a newspaper or a magazine that the masses will read... it's not a thesis or a dissertation. It's not even a blog entry that 10 or 15 people will read. This is how I see things, and what I see is extremely messed up... but more specifically, it's FUBAR. It's crass, but it couldn't be any closer to the truth.

I've been watching the Ken Burns' WWII documentary on PBS this week. It's definitely not your typical boring documentary on Roosevelt and Churchill and MacArthur; it's a look at the war, and War in general from the bottom up. From the soldiers who actually experienced the pure hell that is War and are now telling their intimate stories of what they experienced with the rest of the world in the final days of their lives. The life lessons of these soldiers, and the reality of the national sacrifice that America undertook in WWII should never be forgotten, and has never been more relevant than it is today.

Bob Cesca also watched Ken Burns': The War this week, and here's his entry today on Huffingtonpost. He's one of the few political writers out there that really knows how to frame his argument from a macro, societal point of view and put today's events into a compelling historical context. Oh, and he uses the F word too.

----------------------------

I've been captivated by Ken Burns' The War this week and it struck me how awesome America used to be.

The prevailing attitude of the ladies and gentlemen featured in Burns' film, and by proxy all Americans of that era, was that if we had to fight a war, we had better do it right. Clearly and with little dissent, we had to fight that war, and without fail, Americans rallied together to do it really damn well.

People from every corner of the nation selflessly pooled their resources for the great cause of World War II, and I'm not sure about this one, but I don't think President Roosevelt ever once asked the country to sacrifice by going to the mall. And I'm pretty sure he didn't outsource the construction of tanks, Flying Fortresses, Hellcats and Thunderbolts to Mexico and China. That's a hell of a thing by today's standards, isn't it?

We've fallen so far from what we used to be, even as recently as thirty years ago when the comparatively liberal president Richard Nixon opened a dialogue with Red China, whilst Mao supplied arms to North Vietnam. One day long ago, it was okay to wish for an end to a war, without being accused of hating the soldiers who were fighting it. It was once a given that socialized public education, police, fire departments, roads, parks, national defense and the constitutionally mandated General Welfare & Domestic Tranquility were simply a part of the American way of life and would always be there.

And when our nation had to go to war, we would be there for her.

Conversely, when we crumble to the pressure of our reactionary and authoritarian elements, we get Japanese internment camps, the rise of the military industrial complex, and men turned away from service due to the color of their skin. Some of our greatest failures have been conceived when our irrationality, fear and lust for power overrule our traditional American ideals -- even during our finest hours as a nation.

And now, 50 years later, in our lives and times, we get President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney.

The Bush Years have been a monumental, cataclysmic failure on most fronts due to its inattention to what has, historically, made America great. The president and his thinning ranks of fawn-eyed Hannities don't understand this yet. They don't understand it mostly because they're too ignorant -- blinded by sloganeering -- to the very basic reality that Bush Republican style government, in practice, is about as successful and practical as a paper condom. It always has been.

Nowhere is this more apparent than when they compare the Bush Wars to World War II. It's a desperate notion, one that seeks to conflate our current president with greatness he doesn't deserve and an historical legacy he will never achieve. It's also meant to inflate our current "enemies" to Hitler status, and thus proving the case for war.

The comparison is pure horseshit. (Say nothing of the fact that it elevates Bin Laden or the late Saddam or the present Ahmadinejad to a level of villainy they also don't deserve. It's like saying a doofus villain like Solomon Grundy is the next Lex Luthor. I'm sure they appreciate being granted superpowers enough to take over the world, though.)

If it's so fucking important to stay in Iraq, and if it's so fucking important to invade Iran -- and if it's so fucking important to wiretap your phones and read your mail, and to shit all over your constitutional rights and the Geneva Conventions -- and all of it is part of a larger World War II style conflict, then why aren't the Bushies taking their metaphors seriously by demanding the sacrifices of World War II?

Did President Roosevelt cut taxes or ask veterans to pay higher deductibles? Did President Roosevelt outsource the army by hiring no-bid corporate mercenaries? (emphasis mine)

From the bombing of Pearl Harbor to the surrender of Japan, automobile manufacturers stopped making cars in lieu of manufacturing hardware for the war effort. Can you imagine, among all of the scrap metal drives -- the rationing of everything from gasoline to frying pan fat -- if Roosevelt had allowed SUV drivers to receive tax breaks in which sheer vehicular tonnage was rewarded at the peril of even one American G.I.?

If the quintessential symbol of the American character in World War II was Rosie The Riveter, the poster for the Bush Wars has to be that of an SUV driver receiving a tax break while sucking down enough Saudi oil to drive to a mall where he's expected to buy lead-tainted crapola manufactured overseas -- a yellow ribbon hypocrite magnet dangling just above his exhaust pipe and several inches from a fading W04 sticker. The caption: "The Bush Patriot Says: 'I'm On It, Mr. President!'"

The Bushies can't possibly take their own World War II metaphor seriously because they don't truly believe in the comparison.

They know, as you and I do, that these wars have little to do with stopping a new Hitler. If we peel back the layers -- if you look at what truly drives little childish men like Hannity and Cheney and Kristol, you'll find that it has little to do with liberating nations from an occupying Nazi force and ending a brutal holocaust. Beneath the pasty white surface of a typical Bush Republican you'll find greed, fear, ignorance, anger and a basic lack of understanding of America's place on the world stage. They're traits that drive nations into unnecessary wars. They're also traits that often breed cowardice.

To wit... Those of you demanding a war in Iran, I have one question for you. And no, I'm not going to employ the tired military service argument, but I must ask you this: what is the very minimum you're doing right now to prepare for your war? Are you refusing to support further tax cuts or pumping less "Islamofascist" oil into your SUV tank?

You're probably not doing anything because all you're expected to do is to say that you support the troops (what does that mean in practice?). And as long as you don't oppose the president as he dismantles the Constitution in favor of a corporate police state, then you've contributed to your president's war effort. That's the Bush Republican way. Oh, and to shop. You have go to Disneyland and buy shit you don't need at the mall.

How will the Ken Burns of the future portray the Bush Wars? I imagine that a large part of a future documentary about these times will detail what Rick Perlstein sublimely referred to this week as the destruction of America's character.

Whoever the future Ken Burns might be (hopefully, it'll be Ken Burns), he or she will have to dig deep into the destruction of our national character and detail the stories of torture and secret detention facilities; outsourced corporate thugs murdering foreign civilians; government scare tactics without substance -- it'll be a documentary in part about your non-military friends and family who supported this president's war but who sacrificed nothing in its execution.

So here we are in late 2007. The president believes that history will vindicate his efforts to destroy the American character and to bring about the ascendancy of neo-conservatism. After all, he fancies himself the new McKinley -- or is it George Washington? Is he Lincoln this week or Truman? Is he still fighting the Vietnam War or is it World War II? Korea or the Civil War? Goddamn him and his marble-mouthed horseshit. That's exactly why it has to be up to you and me to write the history -- the truth -- now. It won't be a proud endeavor because there has been little to be proud of, but we have to make sure that future Americans know exactly what happened in the Bush Years and in the Bush Wars.

The pendulum keeps swinging further to the right and seldom in our generation has it swung all the way back. When a president can look you in the eye and say he's going to veto healthcare for children, and his people are fine with that; and when the same sales pitch for Iraq is being employed for Iran -- and it's working, what else can you say about that fucking pendulum?

Drug-Addled Gas Bag Rush Limbaugh

Media Matters and MoveOn.org are reviled by conservatives because........ sorry I couldn't finish that sentence. Really, there is no good reason. Cons hate them because they're becoming more and more relevant within the political arena everyday. The scandal about the Petreaus/Betray-Us ad is a great example of how right-leaning the mainstream media news coverage has actually become. There is no scandal; General Petreaus was hired by the President for one thing and one thing only: to support His stance on the war, no matter how extravagantly the general had to fudge the numbers on statistics to make it look better than it actually is.

I can understand how some people might find publicly shaming an active general offensive, but it's nothing compared to the things that are spewed daily on the radio to millions of voters by conservative blowhards like Rush Limbaugh. Here's the difference:

MoveOn's attack is grounded in cold hard facts. For example, if you're shot from the front anywhere on your body in Iraq and you're killed, it's not compiled in the military's database as a sectarian death. Even if you're a Sunni, and you're shot by Shiite militiamen because of your ethnicity... still not a 'sectarian death'. If you're shot in the back of the head however, you're the victim of 'sectarian violence'. This is just another way to delay the inevitable withdrawal, and confuse politicians. It's a desperate attempt to put lipstick on a pig. Petreaus isn't God, he's an employee of the president, and he isn't infallible. Look for more examples of fudging the numbers on Iraq in this article from the washingtonpost.

On the other hand, Rush Limbaugh just this week said this on the air: (Via Media Matters)

Democrats "want to get us out of Iraq, but they can't wait to get us into Darfur," Limbaugh said.

He continued: "There are two reasons. What color is the skin of the people in Darfur? It's black. And who do the Democrats really need to keep voting for them? If they lose a significant percentage of this voting bloc, they're in trouble."

A caller responded, "The black population," to which Limbaugh said, "Right."

Limbaugh didn't stop there -- he continued by politicizing Democrats' support of Nelson Mandela's fight against South African apartheid:

"...So you go into Darfur and you go into South Africa, you get rid of the white government there. You put sanctions on them. You stand behind Nelson Mandela -- who was bankrolled by communists for a time, had the support of certain communist leaders. You go to Ethiopia. You do the same thing."

Rush Limbaugh's attack on Mandela and his attempt to exploit race, the ongoing Darfur genocide, and past apartheid in South Africa for political gain is deeply disturbing. To bring politics into these horrible human tragedies is beyond the pale, even for Limbaugh.

Limbaugh is once again using his position as the most prominent
conservative voice in America to exploit race and tragedy as a political weapon.

-----------------------
Agreed. These statements are not grounded in fact, not unlike 99% of the other statements Limbaugh makes on his show. They're racist, and beyond all reason and logic. God I hate that guy.