A Jack and a Joker: Obama Calls

President Obama Considers the Future of the Bush War in Afghanistan

MeanMesa has never been much of a country western music fan (a childhood in 1940's Kansas permanently cured me of that possibility ...), but when we look at the President's agonizing decision concerning what to do next with the failed war in Afghanistan, certain lyrics seem to flood into even this geriatric, Depeche Mode saturated mind.

Johnny Cash: The Gambler (lyrics -- the music isn't bad either ...)

Written by Don Schlitz.
( Writers Night Music.)
From "Gone Girl", 1978, CBS.

About 20 years ago, on a train bound for nowhere,
I met up with The Gambler; We were both too tired to sleep.
So we took turns a starin' through the window at the darkness.
Til' boredom overtook us and he commenced to speak.

He said: "Son, I've made a life out of readin' people's faces,
"And knowin' what their cards were, by the way they held their eyes.
"And if you don't mind my sayin', I would say you're out of aces;
"And for one taste of your whiskey, I will give you some advice."

So I handed him my bottle, and he drank down my last swallow.
Then he bummed a cigarette; then he bummed a light.
The night got deathly quiet and his face lost all expression.
He said: "If you're gonna play the game, boy, you better learn to play it right."

"'Cos ev'ry gambler knows that the secret to survival,
"Is knowin' what to throw away and knowin' what to keep.
"And ev'ry hand's a winner, just like ev'ry hand's a loser.
"And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.

"You got to know when to hold 'em; know when to fold 'em.
"Know when to walk away; know when to run.
"You don't ever count your money while you're sittin' at the table.
"There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin' is done."

"You got to know when to hold 'em; know when to fold 'em.
"Know when to walk away; know when to run.
"You don't ever count your money while you're sittin' at the table.
"There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin' is done."

And when he finished speakin', he turned back t'ward the window.
Put out his cigarette; faded off to sleep.
And somewhere in the darkness, the gambler he broke even.
But in his final words I found an ace that I could keep.


"You got to know when to hold 'em; know when to fold 'em.
"Know when to walk away; know when to run.
"You don't ever count your money while you're sittin' at the table.
"There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin' is done."

"You got to know when to hold 'em; know when to fold 'em.
"Know when to walk away; know when to run.
"You don't ever count your money while you're sittin' at the table.
"There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin' is done."

"You got to know when to hold 'em; know when to fold 'em.
"Know when to walk away; know when to run.
"You don't ever count your money while you're sittin' at the table.
"There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin' is done."

(Listen to Johnny Cash sing The Gambler:
http://s0.ilike.co/play#Johnny+Cash:The+Gambler:170919:s28178616.8078318.2233175.0.1.6%2Cstd_e9d3147dc7f77abdfad3742d19ea5471 )

The United States has a rather checkered history of "putting up" with unsavory characters we have encountered as "sponsored autocrats" during our global military adventures. For example, during the Viet Nam War no outrage executed by the current dictator of that unfortunate country was grievous enough to elicit so much as a momentary hesitation in our war making appetites. When the Diem brothers were captured, dressed as nuns, trying to flee Saigon after their rather brutal -- and greedy -- autocratic habits emerged into the light, our local military commanders simply waited until the next morning's dawn for the next dictator to take over the wreckage of what was left of the country. Was there a lull of "uncertainty" in the conduct of our war there? Not so much as a single minute.

Dictators everywhere knew that our national, public memory was short. If the United States military was in their country, defending it from the Red Devils, those dictators knew that we would be too busy in our infatuation with combat to be particularly troubled by anything they might do, that is, "do" to their people and usually even "do" to us. The U.S. Homeland was inundated with carefully groomed, unexamined, unquestioned media management which constantly propped up a standing justification of absolutely anything necessary to stop the Russians from taking over the world.


Questions of patriotism were not allowed. There could be precisely one foreign policy, and that single policy would dictate every international presence of the U.S. Period.


For MeanMesa visitors who were not alive to experience the period, the best lit stage was filled with H-Bombs. That terrifying geopolitical script unfolded primarily in Washington D.C. and Moscow. However, in every dusty corner of the world beyond the nuclear capitals, Soviet Bloc influences and NATO American influences met in conflict. It wasn't always soldiers, either. Every possible tactic of threat, bribery, deception and subterfuge was played out in the single minded obsession of the time. Ideology was everything.

Naturally, we found ourselves "embracing" some rather stinky governments. No matter in which dirty little corner of the world one might find himself, there were usually some equally "stinky" players right across the border -- folks like Angolans, Cubans, East German intelligence and frequently the old KGB/OGPU creepies. It seemed there was never a shortage of Cold War creepies. Never.

As such matters unfolded, the media necessity of "rehabilitating" the dictator also became a fairly common outcome. Credulous Americans demonstrated a remarkable tolerance for alliances of necessity with nasty dictatorships to start with, but the State Department and the media would occasionally have to gang up to "reframe" the most difficult cases.

A few -- easily understood -- American ideals would be trotted out as "conditions" of our continuing support or bribery. Massive news headlines would be generated for a day or two. Distant "promises" of better behavior would be extracted, then the news machine would be silenced (more likely distracted by the next crisis somewhere else) and conditions would return to "normal" in that lavish, foreign Presidential Palace. By the way, "normal" fairly often meant that more arms and legs were, once again, being routinely ripped off by our "friendly ally" there.

After all, that Palace was going to pay the electric bill in either dollars or rubles next month anyway. If it turned out to be dollars, we were winning.

The duty of "real Americans" in those days was to simply "forget" the extracted promises as quickly as possible and return to more of the famous "H-Bomb" nights. Keeping up with ideology was task enough. Keeping up with actual foreign policy was taxing, suspicious and socially, too intellectual for the martini soaked bar be que pit discussions of the day.

Our opinions were carefully lubricated. The current inhabitant of that Presidential Palace was often characterized to us as a steadfast supplicant of every Western dream. He was the very "salt" of every idea we had been taught to hold dear and close to our hearts. The courageous people of wherever it was were painted as peace loving, democracy dreaming, freedom fighters no less committed to "all that was good in the world" than the brave men at Valley Forge themselves. (The stage ws being set for Viet Nam, founded on public relations experiences suffered in Korea.)

Our job as media consumers was to quickly forget. Whatever difficulties we might have had with the practices of that old dictator were assuaged back to a state of mind numbing comfort, a state of acceptance and forgetfulness. The war was everything. Details about what was actually happening in wherever it was meant nothing.

Now, to Obama and Afghanistan.

The war mongers such as McCain and the Witch of Alaska have found a new mantra -- or at least they have resurrected an old, weary Bush mantra -- about "listening to the Generals on the ground." The chorus has been joined, of course, by drug addled gas bags, ridiculous junior Congressmen and every other half-wit with a microphone. "We have to add 40,000 more U.S. troops to the fray! Bush W's incompetence must be exonerated at any cost!"

By the way, we are supposed to forget that the W fired all the "Generals on the Ground" who dared disagree with him as he plunged headlong into one half-baked military disaster after another.

However, there is a geopolitical "fly in the ointment." Obama is clearly not satisfied with a paper mache' version of corruption fighting, war lord taming and heroin poppy replacement. He actually expects the dictator (Ooops! Mr. Hamid Karzai was a carefully chosen Chevron Oil executive picked out by the W himself to usher in a new decade of "democracy" in Afghanistan.) of that unfortunate country to make some improvements there.

However, Karzai is playing from an entirely different script. He was promised a nice quiet, profitable, lingering autocracy by the W -- one which might be able to have actual elections or, maybe not. Making a few empty "promises" to the new guy in Washington was presented as a painless matter, certainly nothing to lose sleep worrying about. The initial plan was to "promise anything" and then wait for the American tax payers to forget it and expect a war infatuated President to conveniently ignore it.

There are unquestionably many reasons for the President's delay in his decision, but this doesn't mean that we should overlook one of the brightest and most promising among them. Obama is not a "war drenched" pragmatist who sees the military combat as an exciting appliance having no consequences beyond being another domestic political advantage. He is a formidable idealist who seems quite comfortable demanding that someone like Karzai do the very best he can. Should that materialize, it would be a new component of the W war in Afghanistan.

The Cheney called it "dithering." The war junkies, both inside and outside the military, said the delay was endangering the troops. Neo-cons are circling above the decision room in the White House like vultures. Because these unlikely mouths are the ones our wholly owned media trots out for our consumption day after day -- whether we are actually interested or not -- it might seem that the "going concern" required some reckless increase in troop commitment.

MeanMesa doesn't see it this way. Obama has made a heady mix of Commander in Chief, conscience and idealism so new to Washington that these moribund pundits have no scheme to effectively attack it. Karzai will learn Obama's lesson. So will the Generals. War is real. It is expensive and tragic. The Presidential visits to Ft. Hood, Dover and Arlington reveal a new, sincere appreciation of the consequences of his decisions. Yes, veterans and military families can take heart from the gestures, but people like Karzai and the Generals also have to watch.

Apparently, that old Cold War program ain't happenin'!

This new Problem President insists that a continued American presence in Afghanistan will require actual domestic progress. Yes, the reason we are there is to somehow extract ourselves from the W's War on Terror, but Obama is not willing to entirely divorce that mission from his ambitions to improve the lot of the Afghan people and to honorably fulfill his elected duty here. Such a divorce would have been de rigeur during the old Cold War days, but now things are different.

In fact, things are becoming quite different! Obama, unlike the war oriented Presidents before him, is not hypnotized with this mythical conflict. He has no appetite to be a "Wartime President." The country he represents is broke, in debt. Its military is taxed to the breaking point after a decade of combat securing the Iraqi Hydrocarbon Treaty for, wait for it, wait for it, Chevron and its friends. Worst of all, for the McCain-Limbaugh crowd, Obama is simply not another "bullet jock!" He will not be egged into anything remotely similar to the W's lurching, rambling, global "Church of Death."

In any event, MeanMesa isn't at all that sure the W's flight suit would fit him -- with or without the cod piece!

"You got to know when to hold 'em; know when to fold 'em.
"Know when to walk away; know when to run.

MeanMesa's compliments to the President.

For a updated account of what's being said about increasing the troop levels in Afghanistan, Christian Science Monitor:

Obama Afghanistan troop surge decision may come soon

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1015/p99s01-duts.html

and, in Times On Line:

US ambassador warns against Afghanistan troop surge

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6913759.ece

Comprehending Iran: The Nuclear Power

Does this look like the beginning of President Obama's Iran problem? Read on ...

George Bush, "Master of Disaster," and the "gift" that just keeps on giving. 96

MeanMesa finds too many of our younger acquaintances dangerously unfamiliar with the recent history and the geopolitical challenges President Obama must face with the Iranian nuclear situation. Consequently, this long post hopes to fill out that understanding with at least a few of the more important aspects of the puzzle. If you are already comfortably informed about the situation, just relax and wait for the next Short Current Essay after this one! Otherwise, spend a few minutes coming up to speed on the Iranian situation in preparation for President Obama's speech to the Islamic world this week in Cairo, Egypt.

Elections have consequences. So do revolutions. President Obama faces a troubling Iran (and a troubling Pakistan, a troubling Afghanistan, a troubling North Korea, and others, but this post is about Iran) which seems intractably intent on developing its own nuclear weapons.

As with many of the events of the Bush autocracy, public opinion about Iran’s ambitions has been tragically diverted from any sort of informed, rational understanding to the modern equivalent of an invitation to a dog fight. The well crafted misrepresentation sacrificed U.S. national security interests for the sake of political advantage with domestic opinion. This claim could be no more than another lambast at George Bush if the stakes weren’t so high.

However, as it stands, the psychopathic ambition of George Walker Bush and his opportunistic servants has now grown to such a grave severity that merely pointing to the autocrat’s failings is, probably, far too generous. What confronts President Obama and this country is now a blood feud, and some of that blood may well prove to be American blood, that is, more American blood than has already been shed because of it.

Let’s take a MeanMesa look at it from three different perspectives. First, we can review the inflammatory, Bush Presidential Lies and their outcome both on public opinion and on national security. Second, we can consider what this looks like from the point of view of Iran. And, third, we can consider what possibilities may yet exist for a successful conclusion to a shocking, pointless and reckless provocation on our part.

A Quick Overview of Iran in 2009

There is no such thing as a brief history of Iran. An historical survey would begin earlier than 7,000 B.C., roughly the date of the first written history of the place. Our glimpse into the background of this matter will, of necessity, deal exclusively with far more recent events. First, a little geography. This is a good point to disabuse ourselves of any idea that Iran is somehow similar to Iraq.

Size: 18th largest country in the world, 1,650,000 square kilometers.
Population: 70 million (Iraq has a surviving population of 22 million)
Neighbors: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia,, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey and Iraq.

The southern coast of Iran abuts the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The Strait of Hormuz where significant shipment of the world’s oil passes in tankers is bound on the north by Iran.

The country is now the Islamic Republic of Iran. The government came to power after the overthrow of Shah Pahlavi in 1979 when the U.S. Embassy in Teheran was taken and its staff held hostage for 444 days, ending with the election of Ronald Reagan in the United States. Current "conspiracy history" in the United States claims that Reagan, in a political move to discredit the then former President, Jimmy Carter, asked the Iranians to keep the hostages until the day of his inauguration, which they did.

Current government officials:
- Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
- First Vice President Parviz Davoodi
- Chairman of the Assembly of Experts and Expediency Discernment Council
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
- Speaker of the Majlis (Parliament) Ali Larijani

Part One: American Blood -- The George W. Bush “Church of Death”

The Government of George W. Bush, deeply entrenched with private oil interests in the U.S., openly invaded Iraq where approximately one fifth of the proven reserves of the planet are located. We all know this part of the story. After six years of criminally bad military policy, those oil interests signed the Iraqi Hydrocarbon Treaty with western oil companies, making the invasion a “success.” In 2009 it has become sickeningly apparent that every alternative pretense offered to legitimatize that invasion was entirely fraudulent. U.S. combat fatalities are currently around 4,500 and combat injuries around 25,000. Iraqi deaths resulting from the invasion are estimated by Lancet (British Medical Journal) at 1 to 1.6 million.

Naturally, George Bush and his friends were interested in further military conquest of Iranian oil. Iran has proven reserves of approximately 10% of the planetary supply.

After 911, the government of Iran assisted the U.S. in the invasion of Afghanistan. However, even before George Bush began his criminal conspiracy, Iran already had a very suspicious outlook on the U.S. The country of Iran had been treated badly since World War II. In 1941, Britain and the USSR invaded Iran, forcing the ruler, Shah Pahlavi (Sr.) to abdicate in favor of his son, Shah Pahlavi (Jr.).

In 1951 Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh was elected prime minister. As prime minister, Mossadegh became enormously popular in Iran after he nationalized Iran's oil reserves. In response, Britain embargoed Iranian oil and, amidst Cold War fears, invited the United States to join in a plot to depose Mossadegh, and in 1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized Operation Ajax. The operation was successful, and Mossadegh was arrested on 19 August 1953, returning the monarchy of Shah Pahlavi (Jr.) to power.

That was the last open election in Iran. Shah Pahlavi (Jr.) and his secret police, SAVAK, began a reign of terror happily sponsored by U.S. and European oil interests. Shah Pahlavi had expensive habits for such a poor country. His “Birthday Party,” held shortly before his overthrow, was an extravaganza in the Persian desert estimated to cost $3 Bn. (U.S.). He was replaced by Ayatollah Khomeini who returned to Iran from exile and founded the Islamic Republic.

During his reign, Shah Pahlavi (Jr.) managed to torture and maim every Iranian who was not his “friend.” His “friends” prospered incredibly. After the revolution, most of them moved into mansions in Beverly Hills. Ayatollah Khomeini managed to torture and maim everyone who was not his “friend” after he took over the country. He stopped all oil shipments to the U.S. in retaliation for what the CIA had done to his country and its citizens -- which, it turns out, was quite a bit.

Ayatollah Khomeini, the first Supreme Leader of the Iranian theocracy, nationalized Iranian oil (again). When he died, the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came into power.

Enter George W. Bush. Although Iran had been a U.S. ally in the invasion of Afghanistan, he quickly added Iran to his famous “Axis of Evil” in his State of the Union address. Everyone was listening, and everyone, including the Iranians, heard him.

It was a “perfect storm.” The Iranian theocrats found themselves in charge of a dangerously wrecked economy. All their oil wealth was, as usual, directed to the elite while the rest of the country had to make do. The madman in the White House had begun to make regular threats of military action against them through his Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, his Secretary of State Rice and his Vice President, Dick Cheney. The Iranians could see what the Americans had already done in neighboring Iraq, so they took all of this very seriously. The Iranians knew that when George Bush (Jr.) looked at their country he was dreaming of another very profitable Hydrocarbon Treaty in the near future. Their near future.

There were complications. The Iranians had just finished an awful, eight year war with Sadam Hussein. This war was extra stinky. Iranians are mostly Shi’a Muslims, and Iraq also had a majority of Shi’a citizens. Sadam had been violently brutal in order to get his Iraqi Shi’a to fight their Iranian Shi'a neighbors. Iraq, under Sadam, was run by Baathists who were from the minority Sunni religious population in Iraq, even though they ran the country -- especially the Iraqi Shi’a -- with an iron fist.

Often compared to the military profile of W.W.I, the Iranians lost approximately 700,000 combat dead and the Iraqi’s lost about 500,000 combat dead. Both sides invested roughly one half trillion dollars (US) in the conflict. The combat losses are interesting when translated into respective proportions of the populations of each country and then calculated with respect to the US population.

Having a well equipped, modern military has its advantages.

The Iraqi military under Sadam was generally regarded as one of the most powerful in the world thanks to its far superior equipment and weapons. The United States had also helped Sadam by selling him poison gas bombs which he dropped on both the Iranians and some of his own citizens, the Iraqi Kurds. These sales were, initially, the basis of the famous “weapons of mass destruction.” Bush’s additional claims about Sadam’s nuclear arms development were all lies. In any event, the Iranians faced very bad equipment disadvantages -- tanks, artillery and air craft -- thanks to the US sponsored UN sanctions which embargoed most military resupply after the embassy incident and the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Worse, after the revolution huge numbers of Iran’s brightest and most successful had fled the country. This exodus was partly due to the rather unpleasant attitude of the new government toward everyone who had done well under the Shah, and partly due to the nearly collapsing Iranian economy where opportunities had been vaporized by the cost of the war with Iraq and abysmally poor economic planning by the theocracy.

But then, George Bush, enthralled by the possibility of owning a fifth of the world’s oil, turned on Sadam, making him one of the three players in the “Axis of Evil.” The unelected psychopath in charge of the world’s greatest military force had already decided that the Afghans who resisted the United States were both evil and criminals (no P.O.W.’s for this nut case -- Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib) and he effortlessly marched ahead to condemn Iranians with the same “broad brush.”

The Talaban running Afghanistan had refused a pipeline offer from Chevron apparently hours before the 911 attack. And Sadam’s secret police had attempted to assassinate George Bush’s father while he was celebrating the victory of his “liberation of Kuwait” with the Sheik, the owner of that country. That assassination attempt on his father had spurred an extremely unhealthy adolescent “family pride” crisis between Bush (Jr.) and Sadam which ultimately sealed the fate of that Baathist dictator. Naturally, George Bush was searching for a similar avenue in his military threat gambit with the Iranians, and they knew the gravity of the threat by watching what had happened to their neighbor.

Part Two: The Terrified Iranian Theocracy Responds

After every revolution there is always a lot of “cleaning up” to be done. The Iranian theocratic government immediately took strong, violent domestic steps to secure the country which was still well populated by Iranians who had done well under the Shah. The war with Iran had cut deeply into the middle aged male population, leaving the new government with the problem of an unusually large percentage of young men. Revolutions are seldom beneficial to local economies, and after this one there were far too few jobs for such a large number of young people, making the exercise of government control even more difficult. The average age of the population of Iran today is around 25 years, as mentioned before, thanks largely to the war with Iraq.

Further, the half a trillion dollars ($500,000,000,000) spent to conduct the war had flattened even the oil rich revenues of Iran. Now, the young Islamic theocracy found itself with roughly the same military obstacles which had prevailed when Sadam’s Iraq had first invaded Iran in 1980 at the start of the Iran Iraq War. Although there were plenty of young men in Iran to enlist in an army, there were terrible shortages of just about every kind of military equipment and supplies.

To make matters even more threatening, the US autocrat and other voices in his government were now consistently intimating that “there was simply no way a military strike on Iran could be avoided.” Here in the United States, the “talk on the streets” was firmly anchored on the question, “Will we invade Iran?” The reactionary media, along with the neo-con talk show hosts pumped that theme daily for a number of years during the Bush autocracy. In addition to that constant harangue, every effort was being made to blame Iraq for 911.

Although Iran had nothing to do with 911, and, in fact, had assisted the United States in the invasion of Afghanistan, the fire brands had managed to escalate the public suspicion of all Muslims to a fever pitch. The Iranians saw the obvious. As for US public opinion, facts meant very little. The cheaply fabricated Iraq-911 connection had already sold like “whores in a lumber camp” amid all the uninformed US voters long enough to initiate the conquest of Iraq’s oil. They knew that a similar fabrication, this time lubricated mainly by resurrected memories of the embassy take over and gleefully spiced with claims of the murderous involvement of Iran in the IED’s killing American troops in the Iraq invasion force, could place Iran in the same predicament that Sadam had so unsuccessfully faced.

The theocracy dragged out their ancient Persian chess board and sized up what possible strengths remained in their severely handicapped geopolitical position. Iranian sponsorship of Shi’a troublemakers such as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon was quickly stepped up, generating the quite predictable psychotic response from George Bush, Jr. and fomenting even more inflammatory statements and policy in the US. For an example of how this worked, Iran began to pump primitive rockets to Lebanon through Syria to be used on Israeli targets. This finally resulted in the bloody war between Israel and the Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

“Somebody” assisted the Syrians with what was claimed to be a nuclear bomb factory, and the Israelis flew a unilateral air attack to destroy the facility. The Iranian sponsored Hamas in the Gaza strip found a ready supply of their own primitive rockets arriving daily through the tunnels they had built across the Egyptian border in the south. At first, Israel provided a surrogate target for Iranian hostilities which would have been made more directly against the United States if they had simply had more military stuff which could be used against the US invasion army now hopelessly stuck in the Iraq war next door.

Israel’s relationship with Iran occupies the road weary axiom of being “driven into the sea” based primarily on the very modern hybrid model of Israeli Arab relations which was carefully groomed by each aspirant colonial power since the 1940’s. However, Israel bombed Sadam’s reactor before the first Iraq War and Syria’s reactor within the last few months. The Jewish State, even though globally famous Jewish physicists have assisted every present day nuclear power with their engineering and design, is an unannounced nuclear member with very credible bomb inventories and delivery systems.

Unlike various other “bomb” holders, Israel also boasts a very effective and well equipped conventional force, the IDF. Military experts agree that Israel could dependably destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities with an air attack. And, just as Iran has publicly stated that it intended to “wipe Israel off the face of the earth,” Israel has publicly stated that a nuclear armed Iran would never be tolerated.

In the previous Israeli attack on Sadam’s reactor, the war planes flew over Saudi Arabia, which although armed, was unable to stop them. However, an attack on Iran would either take that Saudi route or a shorter one over Iraq. Although Iraq could not stop that over flight, its American invasion force might accomplish that. Any Israeli attack would be a sudden, decisive affair executed without warning. The situation is further complicated by Israel’s nuclear capability, presenting to the rest of the world the unpleasant choice of either a preemptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear future soon or a war of retaliation between the two states after the Iranians accomplish more progress on both their bombs and their short to intermediate range delivery systems later.

Naturally, George Bush’s “dance with disaster” not only spurred the Iranians to take whatever defensive or retaliatory measures possible, but placed two very large American armies within very credible range of those Iranian weapons.

However, for the Iranian theocracy, the “elephant in the living room” was the ugly combination of Bush’s domestic lie campaign inciting hatred of Iran in the American public and that same, now 150,000 strong, American invasion army a few miles away in Iraq. Quite aside from the Israeli difficulty, that mix could promise only a very unhappy outcome if the odds could not be changed somehow in favor of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Enter uranium enrichment. With technical help from Pakistan’s nuclear arms genius, Munir Ahmad Khan (trained as a nuclear expert in the United States), and well staffed with plenty of well educated technical scientists (Iran is one of those forty countries with an educational system producing superior outcomes to the United States), the Islamic Republic “opened the flood gates” for a maximum effort at developing a nuclear bomb.

Only with this concrete advantage accomplished, they thought, could they withstand the daily increasing threats of the Bush autocracy. Such an American attack and invasion could have been called the “Rush Limbaugh War.” A successful nuclear counter strike against the incoming troops would have placed Iran, although still the unavoidable loser in the conflict, on a pedestal among all the other Middle Eastern states who also hated America thanks to the work of our own autocrat.

The Iranian hope was that if this actually ever happened, “All hell would break loose.” It was not a bad strategic gamble given their unfortunate situation, although foreign policy disasters seemed never to bother the Bush while he was obsessed with taking someone else’s oil.

Part Three: America Returns to Stable Mental Health

Although the entire world literally breathed a sigh of relief after our election in November of 2008, the Iranians breathed slightly less than most others. Without the menace of the Bush psycopathy, they were stranded in an awkward spot of their militarization schemes where both their hoped for nuclear threat was more or less “stuck in the swamp” and their Holy War sworn enemy had suddenly disappeared from view on his tragic journey to the “dust bin of history,” most likely some place in Dallas.

Instead, they now found themselves facing an incredibly competent and popular Obama. Even the Limbaugh - Hannity crowd seemed to be slowly losing some of their righteous medieval steam in the face of a new maturity among the electorate. Here, we must frankly note a very interesting paradox. On the one hand, a half-witted U.S. invasion of Iran fired on by radio talk show hosts had probably been avoided. On the other hand, the sanctions initiated against them because of the nuclear effort, and, frankly, the cost of the effort itself, had only served to further aggravate their failing economy and their growing youth unemployment problems. Even their oil revenues were jumping up and down, out of control in a environment of OPEC fear of their threat and a global economic collapse which had gutted oil use -- and sales -- in every developed country.

What had once been a very useful threat from “Great Satan America,” was now becoming a really rotten investment. The Iranians, only recently inebriated with nuclear bombs and $160 a barrel crude, were now paralyzed and exhausted by a worn out jihad screaming forward in a frenzied dance -- now absent its traditional mean spirited enemy -- around what turns out to be a trailer park inching along on $50 a barrel oil. Worse, the new American President had very visibly and openly invited them to “talk.”

Frankly, Iran may actually develop a nuclear bomb with a few years. They may detonate it “North Korean Style” somewhere in their copious desert territory. Given even more time, they might finally perfect their intermediate range delivery missiles to a somewhat dependable state.

But then what?

They had invested heavily to promote themselves to the half wits in the Bush autocracy as totally suicidal Islamic extremists, completely willing to suffer any retaliation to attack Israel or the US invasion army in Iraq and to their Middle Eastern neighbors as the only state with enough resources and political moxy to stand up to George Bush's petroleum colonization plans. This re-imaging of theirs was a predictable response to the “long, sharp teeth” odor of crazy Bush war mongering, but, is there a coherent retreat scheme available to them now? One that might preserve some of their highly expensive efforts to get this far with their regionally selective portrayal of themselves?

As Americans, we are left with the matter of Iran nestled along with far too many others in the nest of calamities which are the legacy of the Bush autocracy. To make much headway in our effort to “get through” this one will require an astonishing advance in our national maturity.

And, there will be a price. It won’t be the “death of the White Christian World at the hands of Islamic fascists” price which was so fervently promoted by the Bush, but even in its most reasonable and rational form, what now confronts us will not become one of our past favorites, a “Winner takes all.” Pastor, coach, talk show host and reactionary will have to relinquish the national driver’s seat to make way for a serious, thoughtful, competent, adult rescue effort.

The previous “directors” such as Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bremmer will have to be prohibited from making any additional, explosive, antagonistic public remarks from their prison cells.

So what does “Iran: the Nuclear Power” actually look like from our seat here in the United States? Right off the bat we can assume that the more credible Iranian nuclear arms become, the less interested in ridiculously inflammatory voices such as that of the current Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the nation’s policy elite will become. With the exception of North Korea, that reassuring drift has been the model for recently nuclearized states such as Pakistan and India, for example.

More bombs, more maturity. More security, less ideology.

Further, although attaining nuclear arms is rather expensive, once they have been created, maintaining them is a real bargain. (See: H-Bomb Love Sonnets, Part One and Part Two, this blog) Once the cost savings are realized when compared to the price of sustaining a million man army, that military economy seems to spread to other issues, primarily, to a realization that very many social projects can be accomplished with the money being saved by those “nukes” parked in low maintenance silos.

The “more maturity, less ideology” concept will probably also quiet down the Iranian diplomatic rantings to a semi-cogent level as time passes. Even the “state suicide” proclamation will subside. The Iranians may well prove to be difficult ascendant leaders in the Middle East, but they will definitely move away from the “We all have bombs strapped to our chests and we’ll kill you because we don’t care what happens to us” image in favor of a more participatory international role, especially one which can result in increased employment and improved trade balances. Some “quiet time” will almost certainly see Iran having a growing interest in domestic manufacturing (other than H-bombs and missiles), better living conditions, a more stable and respected currency and even better profits from their belabored oil industry, now suffering technologically from the country’s isolation. Yes, there are already actually Iranians who, although they fundamentally support the theocracy’s investment in nuclear arms, can also begin to see that more H-bombs mean fewer sewers, schools and agriculture.

Completely crazy, suicidal Islamic Fascists? Not really. Although Bush Jr. and the United States seemed intent on instigating a nuclear attack on Israel and the US army in Iraq, the more any nuclear power has to lose, the more reluctant they are to launch such a first strike.

The most likely scenario is that this new nuclear power will quietly transform into a “nuclear poker game” role where there may continue to be clashes in the conventional weapons range, but the satisfying comfort and confidence of having those H-bombs will, in time, exert a moderating influence. There will certainly never be another Iran - Iraq war. There will almost as certainly never be some screwy, reckless American military invasion to effect an oil takeover.

All the parties are learning important lessons in “Exactly what’s worth what.” Including us.

Still, the New York Times, May 24, 2009, offered an editorial under the title “Have We Already Lost Iran?” “Already lost Iran?” Some of us are learning at different rates.

Obama is no one’s dummy. He is intent on assisting the electorate learn as quickly as possible the reality of possibilities with respect to our ideas about Iran, patiently sifting out the lies and liars who, for a while, were running around like cock roaches. He is also constantly offering the Iranians every incentive to return to a more objective stance, now that we have. They will require the time to pursue exactly what Obama is working on here. The conflict has gone beyond the rumbles of outright military aggression thanks to the introduction of possibly better alternatives for both parties.

Now, all that’s left is for us to grow up enough to accept the choices we actually have and rationally ponder our next decisions.

As usual, Wiki has extensive material available on all aspects of the Iranian situation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_minorities_in_Iran
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Iran
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Iran

and, anyone interested in the New York Times story can find it here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/opinion/24leverett.html?_r=1

For more photos of GWB drunk at the Olympics,

http://www.fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/government/fraud/gw_bush_ghw_bush/news.php?q=1218479857

Google has endless articles and editorials about the subject. Be Informed!

A Visitor to MeanMesa! Enjoy!

A quick note of introduction from MeanMesa: The following is an absolutely delightful comment posted on Thom Hartmann's web by my respected friend "antifascist." That avatar is highly suitable once one gets to know him. He provides a link to the website of the material's initial origin and its author.

It is included here because it is simply too thought provoking to just abandon, leaving it where I encountered it.

“Facts Are Stupid Things” (http://badattitudes.com/MT/archives/2009/02/facts_are_stupi.html)
badattitudes.com
February 21, 2009

The title above is a quote from Ronald Reagan at the 1988 Republican National Convention. He was trying to access a John Adams quote, “Facts are stubborn things,” but something more appropriate to the man and the occasion popped out.

The essay below is from my neighbor Jim, more of whose stuff can be seen here (at the site in the link).

Compare and contrast:

1980 may seem kind of arbitrary as the jump off for the end of empire, but the economics bear it out. Under Reagan, government disbursements and revenues, as a share of GDP, jumped a full six percentage points. More, if you include his unfunded moral hygiene mandates.

All the Republicans talked Rand, Friedman, inter alia, but they acted like straightforward right wing military Keynesians. Military Keynesianism is of course nothing new in the US. But prior to 1980 there was a dominant Bismarckian consensus (have I dropped enough names yet?) that it had to be matched by social spending, otherwise the exercise of hard power would eventually become financially unsustainable.

You cannot extract surplus value — i.e. have capitalism — in great heaping bushel baskets unless you have a government willing to exercise single payer monopsony power over basic human needs, basic scientific research and renewable sources of the energy needed to drive all this. Lo and behold, the exercise of hard power is now done on credit, with only the threat of mutually assured destruction holding our creditors at bay.

I suppose one could point to a cultural shift in the eighties, as there certainly was one, but I prefer a bit more systemic determinism.

The political economy of capitalism is easiest to manage through psychological terrorism. It’s a cheap and effective way of outsourcing the quotidian enforcement of corporate feudalism to vigilante moral panic artists. There’s no shortage of people willing to enforce for free. Hell, they’ll even pay for the dubious privilege.

People become inured to this, querulous and rebellious, and the terrorism has to be stepped up. Red scares have to be coupled with ethnic scares, drug scares, satanic child care scares and so forth. Going against that, as Carter did in an achingly minuscule way, is a positive step for capitalism and a negative step for capitalists. Their enforcement costs look to climb. People who aren’t constantly depressed and frightened get a little feisty.

Under Reagan, the “clever” work-around was burgeoning unfunded mandates to make the states take on domestic psychological terrorism, and yanking the social safety net away, while the central government threw surplus value to the cretinous capitalists, hand over fist. It’s been down hill ever since.

I can’t see why anyone would want to be president after Bush. It’s not a sane thing to do. I thought, and still think, that the Democrats would have been better off throwing the election. McCain would probably not have lasted four years and right wing military Keynesianism would have been discredited for a good long time. Getting stuck with cradling the appalling, ghoulish offspring that are roving mindlessly over a dying empire would have ruined him, and the most cretinous of the cretinous capitalists.

The Democrats could have trotted out old social democratic wine in new bottles and enjoyed thirty or forty years of crowing from the top of the DC shit hill. So it goes, I guess. And my goodness, doesn’t Carter look like a saint in comparison to every asshole that’s come since.

The Presidential Pardon Party -- Happy Holidays!

The last act of the strange dark drama in the White House?

Don't count on it.

Think of it as a office gift exchange. 74

Two almost identical young men stood waiting outside the Oval Office in a line with several dozen more, every one an almost perfect copy. All aspiring young attorneys from K Street or elsewhere, they seemed to have arrived from a call to central casting. The hair cut of each one was conservative, identically short and stylish. The well scrubbed, boyish faces all emphasized the overpriced, tailored suits and the multi-hundred dollar silk ties. The practiced mood of subdued reverence was one obviously mastered for missions such as this one.

“Are they doing this in alphabetical order?” the younger of the two asked, turning to face the man next to his position in the line.

His slightly older friend whispered an answer. “Sort of alphabetical, I guess. They started at about 10 AM with Jeb, Harriet Meiers and a list of secret pardons from Cheney. A big bound book of Wall Street names took an hour after that -- we’ll never know who was in there. They did Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham early this morning, than a bunch of rapid fire ‘B’s’ -- you know, Bolton, Blackwater, Blackwell, and Brownie, et cetera. Giuliani and Rumsfeld came as twin drag queens.”

“Michael Scanlon and Tom DeLay’s attorney were here early yesterday. But, after those two, they did Bob Ney and Ralph Reed. An attorney even got the gay guy, Gannon, pardoned. His lawyer didn’t have much of a cash bundle, so I figure they must have had a little dirt of some kind. I guess the male prostitution business isn’t so lucrative anymore.” he continued.

The door opened momentarily to discharge a small group of the previous supplicants. The line inched forward as another small group of the young attorneys entered. The younger of the two quietly peeked through the crack for a glimpse at what was awaiting him when his turn arrived.

The scene was a surreal theater.

All the normal furniture of the Oval Office had been removed, replaced with garish things suggesting screen props from an 1950’s version of Alice in Wonderland. The place was filled with potted ferns and roses. Geese, goats and gerbils seemed to be rushing around in the open area, each contributing its voice to the clamor. Providing background music, a quartet costumed as Cheshire Cats with banjos and harps struggled along with a faint timbre of what might have been some cheerful Transylvanian folk dance had it been produced with more suitable instruments.

A single drummer, dressed as the traditional hooded figure of “Death,” beat out a melancholy, yet consolidating rhythm on a solitary snare held by a suspiciously decorated leather strap around his neck and shoulder. His drumming seemed to inspire the animals, at least the geese, to attempt to synchronize their squawking with the beat.

The President was seated at one end of the room on an elaborate sort of medieval chair. He was dressed in a theatrical lime green tuxedo with tails. Obviously inebriated, even though still early morning, he slumped with the detachment of a depressed imperial indifference to the events in the room. He wore a great, green top hat, probably made of foam rubber, adorned with rhinestones and peacock feathers in a long flowing plume.

A troop of immense, bare chested wrestlers had just completed their performance. Staffers were hurriedly ushering them out the far door. A dance team of young women dressed as Vestal Virgins waited impatiently for a signal to begin the next entertainment act. Some had already begun to throw rose petals onto floor at the center of the room.

Several young men from the same waiting line were in the Oval Office moving respectfully around what seemed to be a Bush administration version of the “stations of the cross.”

Wide eyed, the young lobbyist attorney again turned to his more experienced acquaintance, puzzled. “What in God’s name is going on in there?”

His friend answered calmly. “Relax. If you’d been here last time, you would understand everything. I spoke to a guy from the Chief of Staff’s office yesterday. It seems that the Bush wanted to avoid the Berlin Bunker atmosphere for the pardoning ceremony. The President choreographed this whole thing himself.”

Again, the first young lawyer stumbled. “But what does all this mean?”

His acquaintance answered. “In 2004 the motive was the Crusades. This year, it’s the Mad Hatter. Didn’t your boss tell you anything about this?”

The younger man responded, glancing down at the huge suitcase of 1,000 Euro notes handcuffed to his wrist, “All he told me was to make sure that the currency counting machine was stopped after the batch before me before I put all these Euros in it. He said it might not look like it, but that the exact amount of cash was important. He said it was something like a contribution to the Presidential Library Fund or something.”

His friend offered, “Well, it’s good that you’ve got that part straight. What happens in the room is simple enough. You go directly to the Attorney General -- he’s the one dressed in the Supreme Court robes. He will give you a parking ticket with your boss’s name on it.”

“After that, you take the ticket to the tall guy over by the windows. He’s playing the role of the Great Confessor. He’s the one dressed up as a medieval abbot. He’ll ask you if your client wants to voluntarily confess to the charges on the ticket. He means your boss, of course. You raise your hand and say ‘Yes, Great Confessor. My client confesses that he is truly guilty as charged.’ At that point, all the judicial stuff is done.”

“Then put all your Euro’s in the currency counter in front of Paulson.”

He could see Secretary of the Treasury sitting on a great wooden throne, elevated above the remainder of the room. Costumed as an extravagant courtier, he was heavily made up with bizarre cosmetics. Flamboyant lipstick had enlarged the outline of his mouth to reach from ear to ear suggesting a threatening psychopathy. Every detail of the man’s appearance was darkly grotesque.

“Let his little elf there in front of the throne run all the cash through the counting machine. When it’s done, he will whisper the amount in Paulson’s ear. Paulson is the one made up as the Exchequer for the Queen of Hearts. They’ll throw your boss’s, uh, donation in that big pot, and the ‘Exchequer’ will nod at the President.”

Astonished, the first young lawyer asked, “And then?”

His friend answered, “And then the Mad Hatter will wave his hand and the bunch from the Justice Department will issue your boss’s blanket pardon. You want to slowly and reverently back away -- withdraw ceremoniously toward this same door. Bowing subserviently wouldn’t hurt.”

The newer man asked, “What’s the parking ticket’s part in all of this?”

His more experienced associate responded, “That’s important. Blanket pardons can’t be issued without an admission of guilt. Now, we both know that the exact details of the, uh, ‘guilt’ involved here could hardly bear the light of day, so confessing to the parking ticket is a way to cover everything. Think of it as a symbolic act of contrition. Once you confess in your boss’s behalf, the pardon becomes legal. Of course, it centers on the confession to the parking violation, but, once that’s in the bag, the blanket pardon covers everything else. Slick, huh?”

The young man whispered back, “This is nuts. Does anyone on the, I mean, on the outside have any idea what’s going on here?”

His friend answered, also in a low voice, “No, of course not. You’d better believe it’s better that way. This has been going on a for a couple of days now, but the news black out is holding. Murdoch and the rest of the media CEO’s are scheduled for later today.”

He continued, “I plan to record as much as possible on this belt buckle I got through the security screen. I’ll blackmail my boss if his pardon goes through. I’m sure he’s already budgeted enough to pay me off. After all, he is a K Street lobbyist, right?”

“Wow. I work for an investment banker. They’re a little meaner than K Street guys. You know, a little more violent and pragmatic.” He paused for a moment, clearly deep in thought, then continued. “Gosh. All these people getting pardons. They’ve been running everything for eight years.” He mused pensively. “If they’re all gone, you know, pardoned and everything and gone on back to their regular lives, who’s going to run the government?”

This post proves that pardons can be fun! If you'd like to try it yourself -- with just a few actual facts -- link away!
http://news.muckety.com/2008/11/27/in-final-days-bush-likely-to-pardon-more-than-turkeys/7551

The Collapsing American “Sphere of Influence.”

Pretending Everything Ugly Is Actually Only Temporary 67

A few words of a CNN, sub-editorial news report called for more attention. Among the now well worn list of the new President’s priorities was the inclusion of Chinese and Russian Federation diplomatic and economic entries into the Caribbean and South American countries of Cuba and Venezuela. You know, countries which we are supposed to “own” under the Monroe Doctrine.

The CNN report characterized these incursions as challenges to American leadership. If they weren’t challenges would that mean that we were either so strong or so threatening that we might have avoided them?

Are these incursions challenging our hegemony? Was our idea of a good time to never have any of these subservient Southern nations even so much as flirt with our ideological, international competitors?

Please.

We are quite possibly more bankrupt than industrious China or petroleum rich Russia. Any traditional military advantage is now “on the table” with the Russians, that is, no, they can’t take us, but, yes, they can project power pretty convincingly now that George Bush has so savagely consumed our own military pursuing his “oil war” in a devastating leadership vacuum and our infuriated alliances with his cheap, irritating ideology.

We won’t recover from that damage any time soon. We should probably try to get a little more comfortable with photos of the Chinese Premier visiting Fidel Castro or Russian war ships lazing off the coast of Venezuela.

Bush’s childish “cat fight” over his empty scheme for U.S. missiles in Poland reveals a whining, toothless, embarrassing, over weight giant, not a respected leader of the Free World.

We have a new President, but he, and we, still have a terrible reputation. Our toxic debt has fairly thoroughly poisoned the water world wide. We can ponder a graceful approach to our collapsing sphere of influence while we pay down Bush’s ten trillion dollar balance for the next few decades.

What exactly did we buy, again?

”Evil:” New Directions

How a bumbling, ambitious President bamboozled the nation with medieval hobgoblins.
More than an innocent Halloween prank. 65

Semantics tend to remain fairly academic issues until the rifles come out. There is very little particularly troubling when one considers, say, historians debating the specific meaning of a few words they have encountered in some ancient text. During the course of justifying the $700 billion plan, whatever it may turn out to be finally, the term “bailout” was discarded in favor of the term “rescue.” After all, the subtextual implications of the first term contradicted some carefully groomed assets of the word masters concerning, for example, the activity of the morning retrieval of some embarrassing uncle from the local drunk tank.

Unhappily, there have been some incredibly more damaging terms thrown around lately. Perhaps the most sinister will be the disastrous choice of the word “evil.” Its appearance as an “Axis of Evil” in George Bush’s now infamous State of the Union speech was probably no more than an attempt to resurrect a few drops of living blood from Reagan’s memorable “Evil Empire” of the 1980’s.

The textual and conceptual validity of the word is quite parasitic. Preachers and priests have already done all the “heavy lifting” in the matter. “Evil” is a fundamental asset to their franchised “death fear” business. They have been quite successful in devising thousands of various forms, implied meanings and examples for the idea, repeatedly presenting these to their respective “flocks,” and reaping the rewards of their despair based, tax free avarice.

For politicians, the practice apparently “grew legs” as a necessary ingredient to some more modern, neo-con recipes. Always envious of the pedestrian thrall of these dirty shirt evangelicals, the neo-cons presumed that property rights to some of the word’s utility was, somehow, transferred to them. You know. By Divine Right or some grotesque 21st-century fabrication of it. After all, it was certainly consistent with their well-managed and highly propagandized political claims to being the righteous ones among the current choices.

Now, because we seem to have chosen a more rational approach to matters previously defined by the word, “evil,” we must carefully examine both its previous, destructive use and select some more modern concepts for the path forward. Frankly, although momentarily effective in manipulating public opinion, we now face more permanent results not dissimilar from a perpetual, medieval toothache.

First, an ambitious tautology. Let’s conveniently agree that the essential nature of such utterances by politicians bifurcate into two fundamental categories. The first will be that of phenomenology. It will be contrasted by the second which will be categorized as that of the logical proposition. Since such abstractions may appear a bit “scratchy” at first blush, we can immediately introduce some examples.

The phenomenological argument is: “The Iranians are evil. They are a part of the Axis of Evil.”

The logical proposition is: “Iranian ambitions make them our adversaries. Their interests conflict with our interests.”

The “evil” classification, aside from requiring a tacit acceptance of external authority, is based on a judgment beyond question. Copius statements derived from religious mythology imply that “evil is evil,” and further, “one aspect of evil is its interest in convincing the righteous (the non-evil) that it is not actually ‘evil.’” As a consequence, once something has been convincingly called “evil,” any disagreement with such a verdict only implies that one has “been convinced by ‘evil’ that this something is not actually ‘evil.’”

The phenomenological choice at this point is clear. Would you rather agree with God that this something is “evil,” or would you prefer to foolishly question such an argument because you have already been deceived by this “evil?” Further, the implied mythological treatment of “evil,” at least for nations beset with either of the most agressive and violent religions -- Christianity or Islam, is that “evil” is an eternal presence which can never be overcome by earthly powers.

That’s right. Both “No Exit” and “No Victory.”

What a wonderful invitation and justification to endless war and other unexamined insanity which simply presents itself without any rational, secular solutions. When one adds the justification of all sorts of specific atrocities, each made necessary by the needs of the moment, a “free pass” is injected into the equation for actions “evil but necessary.” Actions which might have been “evil” if taken against, any other, “less evil” enemies, become both necessary and, well, somehow slightly more justifiable, that is, slightly “less evil” when those actions are our response to these materially “evil” enemies in actual combat, The matter becomes a cosmic tort case for a negotiated divine dispensation.

Can you believe it? We bought this drivel hook, line and sinker.

The propositional alternative is attractive. This would be precisely the alternative which served John Kerry so poorly in the last election. His losing proposition was, simply enough, that our adversaries were exactly that, adversaries. His was the losing argument. The winning argument was, of course, that they were “evil doers,” not simple adversaries.

Adversaries, enemies, even, competitors, can be beaten by effective worldly approaches. Struggles against these worldly opponents can actually result in quite worldly successes. Struggles against “evil,” on the other hand, are only rehabilitated by divine judgment. No matter how ineffective and destructive such “anti-evil” struggles might be on earth, such bothersome details fade in the blinding light of the Savior’s imagined favor for having “fought the good fight.”

Not too troubling so long as one hasn’t had to bury his son as a result.

The “evil” idea progressed nicely to become the concept that these enemies, particularly the ones we “captured or purchased,” you know, the ones in Guantanamo, were criminals not combatants. The suggestion that anyone daring to fight us was “breaking the law,” was almost more convenient and useful than the “evil” designation. Since we were “fighting evil,” no one on the other side could possibly be, honestly, an outright enemy. Because , under this new line of thought, it was “against the law” to oppose us in any way, these “opposers” necessarily became criminals subject to “extraordinary rendition,” apparently President Bush’s contemporary version of the Inquisition. (See note above regarding justifiable “atrocities.”) The unspoken adjunct here was that these "opposers" were actually, of course, "evil-doers" in their day jobs.

The exquisite subtleties of history augmented this madness. Our opponents apparently had decided that we were the “evil” ones! “Egad! How incredibly wrong!” This made it quite important to constantly suggest that this was not simply a modern form of the Crusade. (GWB slipped up on this count in Jordan just before his invasion.) Planetary Muslims seemed remarkably more comfortable with the Inquisition idea than with the Crusade idea. During the Inquisition, the Christians were ripping Christian arms and legs off their Christian brothers.

“Evil” presented as, however unlikely, a feature of some logical proposition is validated by existential falsification, that is, such a position might be debated, and through that debate, disproved. The “ideological or religious underpinnings” of the phenomenological alternative cannot be disproved. In fact, even the most well behaved academic challenge is, frankly, heresy. It is a neo-con axiom that all kinds of good ideas and other advantages emerge when all debate is suppressed. (e.g. “Stay the course.” “Cut and run.” “They hate our freedom.” Did anyone notice actual, rational alternatives to any of these "pop-ups" as they were being discussed?)

It is not the substance of the counter argument these thoroughly modern reactionaries find so troubling. It is, specifically, the counter argument itself as it once again insinuates that old, disruptive existential falsification problem into the mix. If the “burning question of the day” can be transformed into a hysterically persuasive issue of “evil,” so much the better.

The breathlessly anxious introduction of the word “evil” into our national debate has led to nothing positive. George Bush’s choice of such an embarrassing term to validate his, now obviously, ill advised military schemes and his less than patriotic taste for national division to promote his political ambitions has actualized very concrete disasters for us. For you. For me. For our neighbors. For our soldiers. For our elderly. For eveyone who had anything he, or his friends, could take.

His dangerously weird Presidential dream of joining the list of Old Testament “Good Kings” has collapsed into a dreary dust bowl of incompetence and greed. This is, perhaps, and, hopefully, the final episode of this injection of religious mythology into the very real and consequential world of politics or policy. It was trotted out again in the last election, but the legs on the thing were too tired, too road weary to have traction with an exhausted and despairing electorate.

At this point, we have to suppose that fighting “evil” has no future, at least no future for those who would like to win.

"One might say that evil does not exist for subjective man at all, that there exist only different conceptions of good. Nobody ever does anything deliberately in the interests of evil, for the sake of evil. Everybody acts in the interests of good, as he understands it. But everybody understands it in a different way. Consequently, men drown, slay, and kill one another in the interests of good. The reason is again the same, men's ignorance and the deep sleep in which they live."

Ouspensky, P.D., In Search of the Miraculous. Chapter XIII. (quoting George Gurdjieff)

Sheer Paranoia: Outrageous but Entertaining

A Meeting in the back room of the White House. 60

Karl Rove barks at the administrative attendant (A G-12 Civil Servant): “Hey, boob queen! Fetch me another cup of coffee! Now!”

Treasury Secretary Paulson hurriedly enters and seats himself at the table, still completely consumed reading the papers he carried into the room. He looks frightened.

The Chief of Staff is placing copies of the agenda around the conference table. Two or three other Presidential Advisors are speaking secretively in the background.

Suddenly, the door is opened again. Two Secret Service agents quickly take their places on either side, suspiciously glancing around the meeting room. One, holding the door open, states in a loud voice, “The Vice President.” Dick Cheney skulks into the room to take his seat. It is suddenly silent.

“Where the hell is Georgie boy? Get his ass in here. We’ve got some work for him to do -- some stuff for him to say. I haven’t got all day!” Cheney grouches. A staff member rushes frantically out of the room, reappearing moments later with a disheveled George Bush.

“This is your chair, Mr. President.” the staffer offers politely as he pulls out the President’s seat.

“Hey! Texas! Are you tellin’ me that you don’t have time to get to my meeting on schedule? What a loser! God!” Cheney booms at the President, disgusted.

Addressing everyone at the table, the Vice President begins. “Okay. It’s no surprise, but we’re dumping old what’s-his-name. Hasn’t got a chance. Recoup all the money we can out of his campaign coffers.” glaring at Josh Bolton, the Chief of Staff. “You got that?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll get people right on it, sir.” The Chief of Staff makes a note in his day planner.

The President, seeming confused, interrupts Cheney. “Uh, does that mean I won’t get to give more speeches? You know, campaign stuff for McCain?”

Cheney fires back. “Just do as you’re told. If they tell you to give a speech, give one. Now, shut up. We’ve got important business here.”

The Vice President turns to Henry Paulson, Secretary of the Treasure. “Hank, how far down are you today with your Goldman Sachs' paper?”

Paulson, still looking bewildered, mumbles, “Another 55 million, Dick. This sucks. I thought the market wasn’t supposed to tank until just after the election!” He continued, “I’m getting phone calls. The one percenters don’t like this. They don’t like this one damned bit! You know what that means.”

Cheney booms back. “Don’t threaten me, you bookie! It’s your job to keep the billionaires happy! You can just get your ass on the phone and quiet ‘em down.” The Vice President glares at the National Security Advisor, then turns to Karl Rove. “You said you had a new plan. Something about the Treasury.”

Karl Rove stood, organizing a few sheets of notes in his hands. “We can still turn this disaster to our advantage. This place is going to be crawling with Democrats in another couple of months, so if we’re going to strike back, we need to do it now.”

“Yeah, we’re going to be sliding out of power, but there’s still time to gut this bastard before we lose George Bush’s legal cover.” He turns to Attorney General Mukasey. “I assume that the Justice Department is still with us? I sent you a list of Republican nobodies you can prosecute if you have to prosecute someone.”

“Dick is right when he says we may as well dump McCain. That whole campaign is self-destructing as we watch. But that means we have to walk away from all the schemes we had for the next four years, no more no-bid contracts and K Street is going to get castrated by these populist do-gooders. That means no more free money for favors.”

“We’ve got to get what we can while the gettin’ is good. That’s where my plan comes in. We can resurrect the same ‘scare team’ we used for Iraq, only this time the new threat will be another Great Depression. I think if we hammer the public into a state of terror for a couple of weeks while Congress is paralyzed, we can ramrod a huge bail out scheme through and be done with it before the election.”

Secretary of Defense Gates offered to help. “I can stop all the expenditures for new military procurement. That will leave a few billion in the defense budget for a snack.”

Cheney responds in a short tone. “Yeah, yeah. Tidbits like that are okay, but we have to think big. We’re going to have to last through the next term on what we can get right now. A few billion defense dollars would normally be interesting, but we have to go for the big one this time.”

President Bush looked more and more confused, but remained silent.

Rove continues. “We can jam a $700 billion dollar bail out through in a couple of weeks. We’ll keep going public with the idea that the details are too complicated to explain, ratchet up the fear card with Depression talk ‘till the public is crazy. We can even throw in some patriotism crap or something. We can contract the Wall Streeters to administer the whole thing. They will be able to loot enough dough from that to stay loyal to us until we’re ready to come back.”

“Plus, this plan has another bonus. If we bankrupt the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, that Democrat son-of-a-bitch won’t have any cash to pay for all of his promises.”

“Face it, gentlemen. We have lost power. We can either stand here and let the poor people get all this money for their goddamned roads and schools and crap or we can funnel it into some pockets that know how to help us later, pockets with good memories of who gave them what.” Rove pauses for effect.

“Dick has decided that we’re going to do this. He expects all of you to tow the line. Yes, there is a little risk once the Democrats have a new Attorney General, but, if everything goes according to plan, we'll be sitting somewhere else with our take before they can do anything about it.”

“Page six of the agenda is a list of countries without extradition agreements along with the names of some banks. I suggest that you make arrangements for travel and moving right away, get your families ready.” He went on, joking. “Don’t steal any famous art, either!”

“This doesn’t have to be the beginning of the end for us. Dick and I like to think that this will be the end of the beginning.”

“President Bush. Anything to add?” Rove turned, condescending, to face the President.

Cheney suddenly stands, gathering his notes as he prepares to leave. The Secret Service agents, still at their stations, swing open the conference room door for his departure.

Senator Barack Obama for President

My Unabashed, Straight Ahead, No Holds Barred Explanation
Why Barrack Obama Must Be Our 44th President 42

For most of my life I have voted for Republican Presidents. I am old enough that I have seen a good number of Presidents and a good number of elections. Right now, though, I need to talk about why I am going to vote for Obama. I need to talk about exactly why I think he is going to be a great President.

That means, I have to say why I think he is a good choice, how he is going to be different from what we have now and how he is going to compare with some of the past Presidents I liked and didn’t like. I have to “size up” Obama on pretty much three important ideas. Those ideas are completely involved in campaign politics right now. They are:

National Security
Economics
and, Leadership.

I lived through what we called the “Cold War,” and that experience really made the National Security issue a big one for me. It was a frightening time, and while it was going on, it really had a lot to do with who we chose to be President. We were always looking for someone we could trust to tell us what was happening. The stakes were very high. We were continuously, day and night, ready to have a thermonuclear war with the Soviet Union. That went on for years.

But, during that time, Americans really did know quite a bit about our situation. We were included in the whole affair, and that meant that we had a good grip on what was going on. Our leaders didn’t always have good news for us, but we had the feeling that we could trust what they were saying and understand why our country was doing what it was doing.

This really changed during the Viet Nam war. During those times, much of what we were told was simply made up to make things appear to be something they weren’t. At first, we believed what we were told, but as time went on, it got so far out of hand that most Americans couldn’t believe it anymore. This happened during the term of both a Democratic and a Republican President, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. It got so that it didn’t seem to matter what we as citizens thought, that war just kept going and going for decades.

Now, we are having more wars and, one more time, we don’t really know what is happening. We were lied to to get us into Iraq. Our War on Terror is full of secret reasons and secret plans. We have been told over and over that we have to fight, but we haven’t been told much about how it’s going.

I don’t really have a good idea whether we are winning or losing. The government is not being open about these matters. They are keeping everything secret. I have to believe that the government doesn’t really trust us, the people. If it did, it could be much more open about what it was doing, figuring that we would agree with it and support it.

We may be doing very well with this “War on Terror,” but we also may not be doing very well at all. For example, we haven’t had another attack, but does that mean we have stopped all the attacks since then or does it simply mean that there haven’t been any attempted? What’s the big deal about telling us what is happening?

I like Barack Obama for President because I think he is much more open. I think he will be much more honest with us. There are plenty of Generals to take care of the war-fighting if that comes up, but we need to have a President who will take care of that job and that includes being much more open and honest with us. We must know what is happening so we can be included in the decisions.

As for the economy, I have lived long enough to experience both good and bad times. During the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s wages went up every year. By the way, there were both Republicans and Democrats running things. People paid their taxes and, as always, complained about it. Some people grew rich, but most people like us had money and pretty good lives.

Now, things seem suspiciously different. The average wage in the United States has actually fallen lately. The very richest people have gotten richer, but middle class people have gotten poorer. Prosperity at our level has been sacrificed so those at the very top could get even more.

So, does the President control all of this? Not entirely, but when the President’s incredibly rich friends just seem to always get richer and richer no matter what they do while we seem to not even be able to hold our own, I have to think that maybe who is President makes a difference. Quite a few of the rich friends of this President have, in fact, gotten richer and richer because of decisions he has made -- decisions that should have included us and our interests but didn’t.

In my memory, I have never seen incredibly rich people pay so little in taxes while folks like us, again, are having trouble holding our own. As has always been the case, everyone complains about taxes and government inefficiency, but our real complaint is about what is being done with our tax money. What we are buying for the whole country. Things like roads and bridges and dams and schools and hospitals. I have watched the current government spend roughly eight trillion dollars of borrowed money on something, but I can’t see anything they bought! All I see is rich people getting richer and the rest of us getting left out.

Part of that eight trillion dollars was spent in Iraq, part went directly to subsidize oil companies. Part went to greedy bankers who got caught in the mortgage crisis. Part went to war profiteers who are friends of the President and Vice President. The problem is that part of it didn’t go to us! Our part in this amounts to just having to pay it back in taxes for the rest of our lives. Our ideas about borrowing all this money and our ideas about what it was spent for didn’t make any difference. No one was listening to our common sense. We were not included and we damned sure weren’t respected.

Now, our gasoline costs four times more, our dollars are worth half of what they used to be worth, our houses, if we are fortunate enough to own one, are worth 80% of what we paid for them, the stock market is getting lower and lower every day and our pensions and 401K’s are going down with it, our health care is costing more and more and our wages are getting less and less. A big bunch of money seems to just be evaporating, but it is going somewhere! In the middle of all this, President Bush’s friends seem to just be getting richer and richer.

President Obama is going to include us and our interests in his Presidency. Things may not get better over night, but at least we will have someone in the White House who has actually lived like we live. He will know what things are like down here. He will understand what we face every month when we pay our bills. And our taxes.

President Bush is the son of a President and the grandson of a banker. John McCain is the son of an admiral and the grandson of an admiral. Neither of them has ever had to scrimp and budget to buy groceries or pay for a doctor. Barack Obama has. Maybe all the economic stuff going on now makes sense to someone like George Bush or John McCain. Neither one of them has ever had to pay off a student loan.

Senator Obama knows better. He just finished paying off his student loan.

That makes him a lot more like me, and I like that. That makes me trust him to be loyal to someone like me and my interests. George Bush has been very loyal to his rich oil friends for the last eight years. John McCain is already on the hook to be more loyal to his rich campaign contributors and the lobbyists running his campaign than loyal to someone like me. I don’t think I deserve to be left out. Quite frankly, I can’t afford to be left out like that for another four years of a McCain Presidency.

That goes for everyone I know, too.

The most important of the three things is leadership. Again, during the Cold War we really counted on Presidents like Eisenhower and JFK to lead us through it. We trusted them and they trusted us. We all knew that we were in that mess together and, that if we were going to get through it, we were going to do that together, too. Those weren’t times famous for “getting a good night's sleep,” but our worries weren’t about whether or not we could trust the President. Our worries were about the Russians and the missiles and the bombs.

Thank God, we had leaders we could trust. Whether we voted for them or not, we prayed for them and we loved them and we followed them and we supported them. That was our job as Americans. We could do that because, again, whether we voted for them or not, we trusted them to be loyal to us.

I can trust President Obama to be loyal to my country, to my safety and to my interests. I’m not completely sure why I trust him, but I do. In fact, my trust for him grows every time I hear him speak.

Trust in our leaders is a national value. With it we are richer, without it we are poorer. With it we are much stronger, without it we are much weaker. We are all going to decide who we can trust in November. I am placing my future in the hands of Barack Obama. That is not based solely on the incredible lack of trust I have for John McCain and everyone else who wants more of President Bush’s special favors, that is based on Barack Obama, the man. I trust him.

It is not political maneuvering that can put us back together as Americans. It is not going to be some sort of really clever trick of politics or policy. It will be trust. It will be about honor and loyalty. It will be about hope. Our path back to a strong, unified country is going to start with trust, honor, loyalty and hope. The Republicans can't say much about those things without lying.

You know. It is just going to start “feeling better.” It’s time.

It’s time for America to do better. It’s time for President Barack Obama.

We're Democrats. We live here!