Tannishblog

I’ve blogged about this before. Time progresses, congress digresses, fiscal responsibility regresses.

$8,822,470,731,125.59

‘Nuff said.

Support The Troops!

Hasn’t that been the rallying cry of warmongers? For years they have tossed these words against someone of opposing position who dares speak out. It was the mantra of the 2004 presidential election and a glue to both cement a solidarity of support for the Iraqi debacle and adhesive to gum the lips of Moonbat Peaceniks.

Support the Troops!

We recruit young impressionable people with limited prospects, offer them promises of schooling, housing and all the benefits of self-discipline. We seduce them with signing bonuses. Then we ship them off to war - still in ignorance - without necessary equipment or well-defined goals. We extend duties beyond recruitment promises, shorten well-earned leave, change the rules of engagement. So doing, we disrespect the families who believe in America so much they offer one of their own to such mistreatment.

Perhaps their loved one gets killed. The family’s grief is carefully orchestrated, muted for the media; hidden from sight. Most Americans will not see. Some might argue the dead ones are luckiest.

More likely the young soldier is damaged. Unfit for duty, the military reluctantly ships her home stealthily, lest hounding reporters catch a scent, and closeted in dilapidated hotel-cum-hospitals resembling the war-torn buildings they left half a world away. Most Americans will not know. It is within these crumbling walls that our bravest molder in neglect, disinterest and bureaucracy while their loved ones and their country remain ignorant.

Support the Troops!

Yet some know. The people who bandage the soldiers, provide meals, encouragement: they know. They work in the same conditions. The supervisors know, too, as does the next level of management. However removed the bureaucratic strata may become, the squalor is known to someone. All the way up to the Department of Defense, to the White House someone must have known.

Government employees are used to keeping secrets. That is how they keep their jobs. Through the necessity of self interest the bureaucracy keeps mum. Until one soldier remembers his courage, his humanity and his dignity and musters the strength to speak out. Soon everyone knows. Soon we learn the problem is systemic. Now we watch the resulting circus to see who is in support of whom.

Reflexive back pedaling, political posturing and feigned regrets are the response. This situation might need two scapegoats hung out to dry.

sup·port       /səˈpɔrt, -ˈpoʊrt/
–verb (used with object)
1.    to bear or hold up (a load, mass, structure, part, etc.); serve as a foundation for.

Structures cannot remain without mutually tenable support. This goes for bridges as well as social constructs. Soldiers uphold our nation, the government supplies the troops, and the people support the government. The structure has broken.

2.    to sustain or withstand (weight, pressure, strain, etc.) without giving way; serve as a prop for.

Support must be able to bear great pressure.

3.    to undergo or endure, esp. with patience or submission; tolerate.

The military cannot tolerate criticism from within. It will not listen to criticism from without. This makes the system unsupportive of the people, the soldiers and ultimately of itself.

4.    to sustain (a person, the mind, spirits, courage, etc.) under trial or affliction: They supported him throughout his ordeal.

5.    to maintain (a person, family, establishment, institution, etc.) by supplying with things necessary to existence; provide for: to support a family.

Likewise, modern militarism is run much like a machine. Machines are inconsiderate of families, insensitive to human dignity, blind to its own shortcomings. Militaristic machines are incapable of supporting the human condition.

6.    to uphold (a person, cause, policy, etc.) by aid, countenance, one’s vote, etc.; back; second.

Americans have begun to awaken to the forced ignorance their government has enforced through media blackouts. They’ve begun to show support for the troops by voting in a coalition determined to bring this catastrophic war to a close. The media is awakening and remembering its duty to humanity by uncovering what has lain hidden.

–noun
10.    the act or an instance of supporting.
11.    the state of being supported.

What better supportive action can we take but to keep our soldiers alive? To keep their families informed? To aggressively pursue rehabilitation for the wounded?

What a concept!

Ever see a cockfight? I haven’t. Nonetheless, my overactive imagination can envision two proud-plumaged, two-legged beasts each eyeing the other warily while preening themselves and showing off to whomever is watching their display of magnificent, fearless war readiness.

One is a black-plumed Siyahe Kantony, the pride of Iran, scratching at the dirt like a stallion. Facing him is an American Bantam tossing his red neck feathers defiantly. Each too arrogant to admit the futility of ensuing battle, each too proud to back down. If they ever begin, the hen yard will be destroyed. But begin they will, eventually: there can only be one, right Highlander?

Too much testosterone hereabout. Do roosters have testosterone?

Thanks to ddjango, writing at at Sinsquanon's Journal, I learn two things: first, On February 6, 2007 Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced in the US House H.R. 808 [PDF], which would establish a cabinet-level US Department of Peace and Nonviolence; second, The Peace Alliance Campaign to Establish a US Department of Peace has been recently formed. From the web site:

Department of Peace. There is currently a bill before the U.S. House of Representatives (HR 808). This landmark measure will augment our current problem-solving options, providing practical, nonviolent solutions to the problems of domestic and international conflict.

Domestically, the Department of Peace will develop policies and allocate resources to effectively reduce the levels of domestic and gang violence, child abuse, and various other forms of societal discord. Internationally, the Department will advise the President and Congress on the most sophisticated ideas and techniques regarding peace-creation among nations. Learn more…

What a beautifully ludicrous idea! I say that because, as is quoted in ddjango's article:

Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

— Hermann Göring

Especially considering the Bush administration's propensity toward ignoring informed council and enforcing the will of POTUS upon all. My inner-Christian, despite all the medication he's on, sometimes causes me to ponder if GWB is the anti-Christ. I'm not the only one, either.

But peace, however unlikely, is an option. Governments have been overturned before, and will be again. Hold on: I'm not advocating violent reform in the name of peace. That would be waging war to produce peace, which in which the United Stated is already involved. But putting peace on the negotiating table, giving it the legitimacy it deserves, is a great start…

What's that I hear, a growing rumbling from the political right? Those who would argue the methods and tactics of Iraqis: how twisted and violent they are; how they would just destroy America one terrorist attack at a time if we change course; are spouting well-established, yet unsubstantiated innuendo. How can anyone be so sure peace won't work it it is never attempted? I submit that the naysayers may be correct, to not discuss all options - especially peaceful resolutions - is to Danse Macabre at the Apocalypso Rag Ball.

Vladimir Putin says the US is destabilizing the world and forcing an escalation of nuclear proliferation.

The world, he said, is now unipolar: “One single center of power. One single center of force. One single center of decision making. This is the world of one master, one sovereign.”

[…]

“It has nothing in common with democracy, of course,” he added. “Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations — military force.”

“Primarily the United States has overstepped its national borders, and in every area,” said Mr. Putin, who increasingly has tried to re-establish Russia’s once broad Soviet-era influence, using Russia’s natural resources as leverage and defending nations at odds with the United States, including Iran.

American military actions, which he termed “unilateral” and “illegitimate,” also “have not been able to resolve any matters at all,” and, he said, have created only more instability and danger.

John McCain challenges Mr. Putin, as does Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman. What would you expect?

Meanwhile, Nuclear Arms talks with North Korea has broken down and Iran reiterates its resolve to pursue nuclear technology. Indeed.

Dahr Jamail offers a unique view on Iraq by wondering if coalition troops aren’t being toyed with:

The slaughter of 263 people in Najaf by Iraqi and U.S. forces Jan. 29 provoked outrage and vows of revenge among residents in and around the sacred Shia city in the south. The killings have deepened a split among Shias. Iran is predominantly Shia, one of the two main groupings within Islam along with the Sunnis. Iraq has for the first time a Shia-dominated government, comprising groups that have been openly supportive of Iran.

The people killed were mostly Shias from the Hawatim tribe that opposes the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq as well as the Dawa Party. These two pro-Iranian groups control the local government in Najaf and the government in Baghdad. The Najaf attack has provoked strong reactions among members of the Hawatim tribe and among other Shia groups who are not loyal to Iran - and who became the target in those killings. An attack on a local tribal leader led to an assault on members of the tribe by U.S., British and Iraqi forces. The tribe was described by government officials as a "messianic cult."

Abid Ali who witnessed the Najaf fighting told IPS that a procession of roughly 200 pilgrims from the Hawatim tribe had arrived in the Zarqa area near Najaf to celebrate the Ashura festival. Following a confrontation over the procession, Iraqi army soldiers at a checkpoint shot dead Hajj Sa’ad Sa’ad Nayif al-Hatemi, chief of the tribe, as he and his wife sat in their car. Members of the tribe then attacked the checkpoint to avenge the death of their chief.

"It was after this that the Iraqi army called in the Americans, and the planes began bombing civilians," Ali said. "It was a massacre. Now I believe the internal Shia fighting has entered a very dangerous phase."

Ali added that most people in the area believe the U.S. military was told by Iraqi security forces loyal to the pro-Iranian government in Baghdad that "terrorists" or the "messianic cult" was attacking Najaf. They say the misinformation was intended to mislead occupation forces into attacking the tribe.

Many Shias in the southern parts of the country and in Baghdad now say they had been fooled earlier by U.S. promises to help them, but that the Najaf massacre has dramatically changed their views. Significantly, the Association of Muslim Scholars, a group of Sunni Muslims headed by Dr. Harith al-Dhari, issued a statement condemning the Iraqi-U.S. military attack in Najaf against the Hawatim tribe. The statement, which seeks to bridge a Shia-Sunni divide, denounced the killing of dozens of women and children and added, "It was an act of vengeance and political termination."

"They (the United States) were misled, and their last move in Najaf shows how the smart Iranians are leading the Americans deeper into Iraqi sands," Jaafar al-Jawadi, a political analyst from Baghdad told IPS.

"I really admire the way Iranians are dealing with the situation in a professional way while the Americans are walking with their eyes closed. They are losing the last Iraqi fort they were hiding behind, and that was the peaceful way Arab Shias were dealing with occupation."
(c)2007 Dahr Jamail.

As bumbling as our administration is, this scenario seems possible. In a top-down organization based upon secrecy, how are the grunts supposed to make a informed decision? In such a convoluted situation who can tell who the enemy is? (rhetorical question; the enemy is us.)

Also, America’s anti-Iran propaganda gets a nudge from a new report linking the manufacture of explosively formed penetrators or E.F.P.s, to Iran. These are munitions designed to send blasts of molten copper through the armor of nearby troops. Almost half of our casualties are a result of this technology. Speak after me: "Weapons of Mass Destruction." Yep, we’re almost to Tehran…

No wonder they’re starting to quote William Butler Yeats.

The Second Coming - W.B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I look at my last few posts and I see the Week of the Geek. So, I turn again to politics, news and such, and am sucker-punched by my muse. I guess she’s been feeling neglected lately…

Looking more like Global Warming soon must be addressed.
Thunder clouds again are forming. Debaters acquiesce.
Threatening a greater storming in the East and West.
See the death of misinforming; are we truly blessed?

Another type of storm is brewing in the desert sand.
Culture wars, resentment stewing, blame the High Command.
Homeless hunger lines are queuing outside no man’s land.
Prince of Peace is sadly viewing, cannot understand.

While people are killing each other across the globe (what else is new?), famine, AIDS and more warfare in Africa, Mudslides in Jakarta, and all the other wonderful happening on this beautiful Earth, my fellow Chicagoans are stoked about the Super Bowl. (phew! What a sentence.) I guess it’s a matter of priorities…

Meanwhile, today’s headline is - brace yourself - yet another study on climate change and its causes. You’re sitting down, right? he culprit is… humanity! I know you were surprised by that one. CNN headlines a study by French climatologists (is that a word?) placing the blame squarely on everyone’s heads.

"The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice-mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that is not due to known natural causes alone," said the 20-page report.

Human-caused warming and rises in sea-level "would continue for centuries" because the process has already started, "even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized," said the 20-page report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Wait! It get better…

[A] 2001 report projected a sea level rise of up to 35 inches.

Many scientists had warned that this was being too cautious and said sea level rise could be closer to 3 to 5 feet because of ice sheet melt.

But despite losing on that battle, scientists said the report is strong.

"There’s no question that the powerful language is intimately linked to the more powerful science," said one of the study’s many co-authors, Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria, who spoke by phone from Canada. He said the report was based on science that is rock-solid, peer-reviewed, conservative and consensus.

"It’s very conservative. Scientists by their nature are skeptics."

So what exactly are these skeptics implying must be done?

"What you’re trying to do is get the whole planet under the proverbial tent in how to deal with this, not just the rich countries," Mahlman said Thursday. "I think we’re in a different kind of game now."

[…]

On the war front, a different report illuminates the difference between theory and practice as applied to training Iraq’s "military." Games are being played here, too, and the US of A doesn’t have an updated playbook. Via TPM Muckraker, McClatchy Washington Bureau kindly explains how those pesky Al-Sadr insurgents train their people - with US help. Regarding the Iraqi government’s finest:

"Half of them are JAM. They’ll wave at us during the day and shoot at us during the night," said 1st Lt. Dan Quinn, a platoon leader in the Army’s 1st Infantry Division, using the initials of the militia’s Arabic name, Jaish al Mahdi. "People (in America) think it’s bad, but that we control the city. That’s not the way it is. They control it, and they let us drive around. It’s hostile territory."

These people aren’t stupid. Infiltrate your enemy, get issues their weapons, learn tactics and inside information of strategic significance, then join the other side. Brilliant! Why didn’t the US forces countermand this technique? Political pressure upon the generals.

In hindsight, many American officers said there was too much pressure to give Iraqi army units their own areas of operation, a process that left Iraqi soldiers outmanned, outgunned and easy targets for infiltration and coercion.

"There was a decision … that was probably made prematurely," said Lt. Col. Eric Schacht, a 42-year-old battalion commander in east Baghdad from Glen Mills, Pa. "I think we jumped the gun a little bit."

Al-Sadr’s militia has taken advantage of the chaos.

Iraqi soldiers, for example, often were pushed into the field by Iraqi commanders who didn’t give them adequate food, clothing or shelter, said Etienne, a 1st Infantry Division platoon leader.

Etienne was on patrol one day when he saw Iraqi soldiers eating fresh vegetables and meat. The afternoon before, the same soldiers had complained that they had only scraps of food left. Who’d brought them their meal? It had come courtesy of Muqtada al-Sadr.

OH, the games people play!

I feel the need to say something snarky about "Winning hearts and minds." Give me a minute, it’ll come to me…

Yesterday in Boston, the city was shut down. CNN reports a bomb scare occurred throughout the area that literally closed the city down. A man was arrested in connection with the placement of several "suspicious objects" found in prominent areas of the Boston, described as "circuit boards with blinking lights." State police responded, news spread at the speed of pixels, and statewide panic ensued. On CNN’s video clip of the incident, comments by the governor illustrates the level of fear experienced.

What happened? A "guerilla marketing campaign" by Turner Broadcasting System backfired. The devices were depictions of a new cartoon character on Adult Swim, done in LED lights in a similar style to the old lite-brite games.

Is this a bomb?
Would anyone really plant a bomb that flashes with this many lights?
What kind of idiot could possibly think that this is dangerous?

Have we gone that far? When did we get so fearful? Here is a textbook example of the effects of political propaganda in the Internet Age. We in America have been conditioned to believe in the over-hyped, bludgeoned to death and ceaseless coverage of "the War On Terror ™." Despite the disinformation, bogus reasoning and the political, economic and social fallout, the belief in our post-cold-war boogie-man is palpable, destroying our reasoning capacities. Despite the education and reasoning of a whole metropolitan populous, a few dumb-looking devices ignites the fear and loathing of America.

We’ve all seen enough TV news coverage to imagine how the media first-responders can whip up a situation, sensationalizing for the camera, without bothering to gather facts - let alone check them. Milliseconds later, the vacuous reporting in in living rooms across the globe. Instant panic. This illustrates how the terrorist responsible for 9/11 have won.

Conservative supporters of our president ( all eight of them) will likely scoff my reaction. Let them. They’ve been wrong the whole time. Once again, I lay at the feet of our leaders the consequences of  a failed leadership built of social distortion, negative propaganda, fiscal irresponsibility, and an attitude of contempt of the law and disdain of the political process.

We average people, represented by the commuters and businesspeople who reacted illogically in Boston, just want to feed our families. We want our leaders to lead us into a good place, not to where we stand right now. We wish for a comfortable retirement, and a safe future for our kids. Although nothing is certain in life, what we’ve been seeing lately is daunting, and our uncertainty grows. Perhaps it’s not terrorists we should be fearing , it’s our leaders.

The NY Times today has an editorial by a (sort of) neighbor of mine, Garry Wills, professor emeritus of Northwestern University, in Evanston Illinois (the next-door suburb.) He straightens out a yet another wrinkle in our propaganda machine’s depiction of our warmonger president. simply put, our aggrandized Commander-in-chief is not in command of the people.

WE hear constantly now about “our commander in chief.” The word has become a synonym for “president.” It is said that we “elect a commander in chief.” It is asked whether this or that candidate is “worthy to be our commander in chief.”

But the president is not our commander in chief. He certainly is not mine. I am not in the Army.

We’re being conditioned into a militaristic mindset to accept without question the actions of elected officials who operate covertly and increasingly fail to represent either the populous or Democracy.

When Abraham Lincoln took actions based on military considerations, he gave himself the proper title, “commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” That title is rarely — more like never — heard today. It is just “commander in chief,” or even “commander in chief of the United States.” This reflects the increasing militarization of our politics. The citizenry at large is now thought of as under military discipline. In wartime, it is true, people submit to the national leadership more than in peacetime. The executive branch takes actions in secret, unaccountable to the electorate, to hide its moves from the enemy and protect national secrets. Constitutional shortcuts are taken “for the duration.” But those impositions are removed when normal life returns.

But we have not seen normal life in 66 years. The wartime discipline imposed in 1941 has never been lifted, and “the duration” has become the norm. World War II melded into the cold war, with greater secrecy than ever — more classified information, tougher security clearances. And now the cold war has modulated into the war on terrorism.

There has never been an executive branch more fetishistic about secrecy than the Bush-Cheney one. The secrecy has been used to throw a veil over detentions, “renditions,” suspension of the Geneva Conventions and of habeas corpus, torture and warrantless wiretaps. We hear again the refrain so common in the other wars — If you knew what we know, you would see how justified all our actions are.

Of course America is awaking from the dream of Imperial Sovereignty into the nightmare of military dictatorship. We’re finally asking the right questions about our current ordeal, questioning the caliber of our leaders or, as Mr. Wills aptly phrases it:

We used to take pride in civilian leadership of the military under the Constitution, a principle that George Washington embraced when he avoided military symbols at Mount Vernon. We are not led — or were not in the past — by caudillos.

Indeed.

The NY Times reminds us of basic math, unimaginable sums and mistaken priorities, as it remarks on the cost of the Iraqi Quagmire. Read: What $1.2 Trillion Buy? I’m reminded how America is borrowing money from the rest of the world, how impossible it will be to pay back, how long that is likely to take, and what a good idea it might be to teach our children Cantonese or Mandarin.