Of Broken Pottery and Broken Kneecaps

Turns out it's a fallacy: Pottery Barn never had a "You broke it, you bought it" policy. Wiser business minds than that ran the Pottery Barn.

If only wiser minds were serving as apologists for our country's foreign policy, particularly our continued military occupation of Iraq. With the other justifications for that occupation having gone the way of all lies, the apologists are clinging desperately to the last and the lamest: "We broke Iraq, now we are obliged to stay and fix it."

Sounds all grown up and responsible, don't it? But how about the first Gulf War? We broke the hell out of Iraq then, didn't we? Did we fix it? No, we did not. In fact we imposed through the U.N. very severe economic sanctions to make sure that Iraq stayed broken. We wanted it broken, badly broken, so that the Iraqi people would be so miserable that they would be compelled, in desperation, to overthrow Saddam and his thugs.

And emiserate we did. Infant mortality rates soared. Tens of thousands of innocent children died of malnutrition or inadequate health care. The poor of Iraq were devastated. Only Saddam and his boyos continued to live high off the hog -- this from kickbacks for selling oil through loopholes in the sanctions, loopholes we deliberately left open for the sake of some of our oil-poor friends. We knew, through regular reports to the Security Council, that Saddam was getting these kickbacks, yet we did nothing about it. All of our attention was focussed on his WMD programs -- which programs, it turns out, did not exist.

The lamest of the lame. A better analogy for our occupation of Iraq would be a protection racket. You know, when the mob offers a small businessman "protection" from criminals, competitors, and corrupt cops -- all of this for a nominal fee? And if the businessman says "Thanks, but no thanks; I can protect myself," what happens to him? He gets his kneecaps shattered by his would-be protectors. The offer, it turns out, is one he can not refuse.

The American forces are presently supplying Iraqis with protection they can't refuse. And what is the price? That the Iraqis put in place an America-friendly government, one that can guarantee a steady flow of inexpensive oil our way for the next half-century.

And if they balk at our magnanimous offer -- as the worshippers at the Najaf mosque did yesterday, hurling their shoes at the head of one of our favorite puppets, the ex-Baathist thug / ex-CIA asset Iyad Allawi? Well, those ingrates had better watch their holy kneecaps.

Which kneecaps, if we break, we will most definitely NOT feel obliged to fix.

John Prine on the torture question

Some lyrics from John Prine's song "Some Humans Ain't Human," from his recently released Fair & Square.

Some humans ain't human
Some people ain't kind
You open up their hearts
And here's what you'll find
A few frozen pizzas
Some ice cubes with hair
A broken Popsicle
You don't want to go there . . .

Some humans ain't human
Some people ain't kind
They lie through their teeth
With their head up their behind
You open up their hearts
And here's what you'll find
Some humans ain't human
Some people ain't kind

Although not directly a commentary on the Bush administration torture policy, this song might serve as such. When we condone torture, we essentially have given up our humanity -- this because we've given up on humanity. We've given up on the idea that human beings can be redeemed, that people can be good. And once we've done that, what's the point in going on?

To state it differently: what keeps Dick Cheney from slicing his throat? If you have that much contempt for humankind, why not just cash in your chips?

I know Dick, I know: I can't handle the truth . . .

paid propagandists

A New York Times headline:

"U.S. Is Said to Pay to Plant Articles in Iraq Papers," . . . A covert campaign is under way to plant paid propaganda in the Iraqi news media and pay Iraqi journalists monthly stipends.

Why should we expect that Iraqi journalists should be treated any differently than our own? Armstrong Williams got a paycheck from the Bush administration for being in favor of No Child Left Behind, right? Why shouldn't Iraqis be paid to write articles favoring the U.S. backed government?

The difference is, of course, that Williams was not signing his own death warrant by supporting No Child Left Behind. Iraqi journalists might well be doing this if they allow their name to appear as author of what will be perceived as a pro-U.S. article in their papers. So give them some combat pay as well.