Don't Look Back

Seer. n. 1. One that sees. 2. A clairvoyant. 3. A prophet.

From Tiresias to Nostradamus, from Cassandra to Jeane Dixon -- a seer for every age. I'd like to propose adding another name to the long list of prophets: Bob Dylan. On the basis of what, you ask? The following, a stanza from his song "Clothes Line," off the 1967 Basement Tapes:

The next day everybody got up
Seein' if the clothes were dry.
The dogs were barking, a neighbor passed,
Mama, of course, she said "Hi!"
"Have you heard the news?" he said, with a grin,
"The Vice President's gone mad!"
"Where?" "Downtown." "When?" "Last night."
"Hmm, say, that's too bad!"
"Well, there's nothin' we can do about it," said the neighbor,
"It's just somethin' we're gonna have to forget."
"Yes, I guess so," said Ma,
Then she asked me if the clothes were still wet.

Thus our latter-day Tiresias anticipates -- by forty years! -- the present moment, the moment wherein the public shrugs its collective shoulders and, taking the advice of the Obama administration, decides to "move forward," to "look ahead, not behind," in other words to just forget about the madness of Dick Cheney.

And how did that madness most forcibly manifest itself? In two contexts: in the treatment of war prisoners held in our detention facilities across the world and in the illegal surveillance of American citizens by the National Security Agency.

Madness, indeed, that, in the wake of the attacks of 9/11, Dick Cheney -- a walking allegory of rashness -- rushed to "take the gloves off," to "turn to the dark side," in other words to utilize torture. An understandable misstep taken taken in the heat of the moment, you say? If so, why, despite the fact that no intelligence of value was produced by this coercive interrogation (as any expert on torture could have predicted -- torture being a notoriously unreliable method of eliciting truth), and, despite the fact that the torture the Bush administration authorized, once revealed in the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs, incited countless young Arab-Muslim men to fight and kill hundreds of American soldiers -- why, in the face of these hard facts, and against all reason, does Cheney continue to defend this policy today? To defend the manifestly indefensible? Our ex-Vice President, now the world's foremost proponent of torture. Madness.

Again, Dick Cheney, as leader of those implementing the NSA warrantless wiretap program, become Eavesdropper in Chief! Why worry, America, that Uncle Sam is listening in on your phone conversations? That he is perusing your email? That he has set up a peephole camera in your privy? After all, he's doing this to protect you, not violate you! As long as you are doing nothing wrong, what do you care that a benevolent government (a kind of big brother, as it were) is keeping a close eye on you? Ought you not to be grateful?

The above argument is that of an incorrigible peeping tom representing himself as a guardian of public safety and virtue. Insanity.

And yet, again, what is the public response to this madness? "Well, there's nothing we can do about it . . . It's just somethin' we're gonna have to forget." It's embarrassing for America to admit that, for eight years, our country was run by a man who ought to have been fitted for a strait-jacket, whose "undisclosed location" should have been a rubber room. It is particularly embarrassing for the mainstream media, which, rather than admit its error in taking this monomaniac seriously for so long, continues to give both him and his daughter Liz (who appears to have inherited the lunatic gene, is like her father an outrageous, pathological liar) as much air time as they wish.

Yes, that is the most insane thing of all: that not only do we not prosecute Cheney for his many crimes against humanity and the Constitution, but the media continues to be willfully blind to his madness, to take him seriously as a statesman!

Do I exaggerate? On August 31, 2009, the venerable Wall Street Journal, without apparently an ounce of irony, opines that, if the war on terror continues (as it surely will, this "forever war"), then the best man to serve as the next Commander in Chief may well be -- you guessed it -- Richard B. Cheney.

As Mr. Dylan might put it: Mama, spruce up the tricorn hat.

Transparency versus Secrecy

About the Obama administration's view that we should not try terrorism suspects in our federal courts because it might jeopardize national security. This argument is based on the commonly-held assumption that our leaders know "stuff" that allows them to keep us safe, stuff we don't know and can't know. If we knew it then we would be less safe. So better to leave it alone.

A real leap of faith here. Kinda like saying, in the face of some personal catastrophe, that God's ways are not our ways, that He has a plan that we can't possibly fathom, so better to just not worry our tiny little heads about it and place our trust in God. "He won't give you any more suffering than you can bear." Yea. Right.

Very convenient for politicians, of course, who more often than not are up to no good behind our backs and so have every reason to discourage transparency in government. Yes, let's not try these alleged terrorists in public, lest we discover that many of them are innocent, have been treated abominably, and that the officials responsible for this travesty are known.

Response to Mr. Cohen

In today's Washington Post, an editorial by Richard Cohen entitled "On Higher Ground, but Not Safer'" wherein he argues that Obama's announcement that we will not longer torture does not make us safer from terrorism. At the following link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/27/AR2009042702692.html

My response:

Mr. Cohen obviously adheres to the view that radical Muslims are absolutely evil and only understand the argument of the club. Therefore our ceasing to torture will have no effect on their behavior. It will not make us safer.

Never mind that according to our most expert interrogators a good many of the young men who came to Iraq to kill Americans did so because of their outrage over the Abu Ghraib snapshots, that this evidence of torture radicalized them -- weaponized them, as it were. Never mind that. Mr. Cohen knows ceasing to torture won't make us safer.

Never mind that a good many of our potential allies have refused to work with us because of the sleaziness of Bush administration interrogation methods, and that this refusal on their part obviously makes us less secure overall. Ceasing to torture does not make us safer.

"If the threat of torture works -- if it has worked at least once -- then it follows that torture itself would work." Very logical, Mr. Cohen. Yes, torture always works. It always works to degrade and ultimately harm the people who authorize it and the public that countenances it. That's how it always works.

"They can't all be fools and knaves." Oh really? Why not?

The claim that the Clinton administration did nothing to provoke anger on the part of militant Muslims, therefore we can conclude that they will hate us and try to kill us no matter what we do -- this claim is so ludicrous as to stun one into not even attempting to answer it. I’ll ask one question and leave it at that: Did the Clinton administration continue the Reagan/Bush policy of supporting unconditionally the Israelis in their ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians?

"If Obama thinks the world will respond to his new torture policy, he is seriously misguided. Indeed, he has made things a bit easier for terrorists who now know what will not happen to them if they get caught."

Thank you, Mr. Cohen, for stating so clearly what many of us have thought from the start: that the Bush administration was using torture not as a tool of interrogation but as a weapon of terror -- sending the message to the rest of the world not to mess with us or else. Cohen here assumes we can terrify potential enemies into submission by threatening to torture them. Idiocy.

"The horror of Sept. 11 resides in me like a dormant pathogen. It took a long time before I could pass a New York fire station -- the memorials still fresh -- without tearing up. I vowed vengeance that day -- yes, good Old Testament-style vengeance -- and that ember glows within me still."

Thanks again, Mr. Cohen, for the confession. For confessing that torture appeals to you, not as a means of collecting intelligence, but as a means of revenge. Making the bastards pay. The same reason most people favor capital punishment. Lex talionis, the old eye-for-an-eye kind of justice.

Say, Mr. Cohen, have you ever heard of the Rule of Law?

It's clear that Mr. Cohen is in the camp of those who would oppose prosecution of the Bush torture crew. He probably sees the call for prosecution as purely partisan -- a get-even on the part of the Democrats. I'm sure that there are a great many Dems out there who would relish seeing Dubya and Dick get their comeuppance. Yet this is not a partisan issue; it is a question of, once again, the Rule of Law, of crime and punishment. Those who broke the law need to be brought to justice, period.

What if a Bush administration official had been filmed pouring gasoline on a ten-year-old child and setting him on fire? Would there be people who would characterize the demand that this criminal to be brought to justice a "partisan witch hunt"?

You can bet on it.

droning on and on and . . .

From today’s NYTimes, an article on high-tech war:

Air Force officials acknowledge that more than a third of their unmanned Predator spy planes — which are 27 feet long, powered by a high-performance snowmobile engine, and cost $4.5 million apiece — have crashed, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pilots, who fly them from trailers halfway around the world using joysticks and computer screens, say some of the controls are clunky. For example, the missile-firing button sits dangerously close to the switch that shuts off the plane’s engines. Pilots are also in such short supply that the service recently put out a call for retirees to help.

But military leaders say they can easily live with all that.

***
Sure, we can afford to drop 4.5 million here and 4.5 million there, as long as we are killing an endless succession of terrorists – I say an endless succession, because every time one of our “surgical” strikes kills innocent men, women, and children (more often than not, it seems), we create a fresh batch of terrorists.

How about taking that 4.5 million here and 4.5 million there and using it as economic aid to the Afghan people, to give them some incentive not to turn to the Taliban? But no. As the old saying goes, Give a man a fish, he eats for a day; blow a man to smithereens, and he no longer annoys you

From today's NYTimes:

Between platters of lamb and rice, Mr. Biden and two other American senators questioned Mr. Karzai about corruption in his government, which, by many estimates, is among the worst in the world. Mr. Karzai assured Mr. Biden and the other senators that there was no corruption at all and that, in any case, it was not his fault.

The senators gaped in astonishment. After 45 minutes, Mr. Biden threw down his napkin and stood up.

"This dinner is over," Mr. Biden announced, according to one of the people in the room at the time. And the three senators walked out, long before the appointed time.

There once was a leader named Karzai
Whom diplomats caught in a fat lie
This ended the feast
All aid quickly ceased
Which led to that poor Afghan's banzai.

smokescreens about smokescreens

From Haaretz.com:

A medic's imagination is stalked by two things - What you've seen already, and what you hope you never will. What was going through my mind was one thought alone: Let it not be phosphorus. They taught us to dread zarchan [from the Hebrew root to shine or glow]. They taught us, as medics, that if we treated a phosphorous wound, prepare for the worst. It doesn't merely burn, they taught us, it burns first through the skin, then through the soft tissue, until it reaches bone. They taught us to take an instrument, or, in its absence, a stick, to dig out the phosphorus crystals from the flesh, or the burning would go on and on. --Bradley Burston


From today's London Times:

After weeks of denying that it used white phosphorus in the heavily populated Gaza Strip, Israel finally admitted yesterday that the weapon was deployed in its offensive.

The army’s use of white phosphorus – which makes a distinctive shellburst of dozens of smoke trails – was reported first by The Times on January 5, when it was strenuously denied by the army. Now, in the face of mounting evidence and international outcry, Israel has been forced to backtrack on that initial denial. “Yes, phosphorus was used but not in any illegal manner,” Yigal Palmor, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, told The Times. “Some practices could be illegal but we are going into that. The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) is holding an investigation concerning one specific incident.”

The incident in question is thought to be the firing of phosphorus shells at a UN school in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip on January 17. The weapon is legal if used as a smokescreen in battle but it is banned from deployment in civilian areas. Pictures of the attack show Palestinian medics fleeing as blobs of burning phosphorus rain down on the compound.

So: lie, retreat, qualify, and, as a last resort, self-investigate.

Is Dick Cheney advising the IDF?

Which will it be, Barack Hussein Obama?

From today's Washington Post:

Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel's largest newspaper, published a front-page opinion column Tuesday by senior writer Eitan Haber, in which he reflected the trepidation many Israelis have for Obama. "We, in our little corner here in the Middle East, are anxious to see whether you shall continue the tradition of American presidents in recent generations and view us as an ally, your front-line aircraft carrier in this bloody region of the world," Haber wrote. "Or whether, heaven forbid, you will see us as just one more nation among all the others."

Yes, will you continue to employ us as the bloody truncheon with which you threaten mangy Arab countries into cringing submission (as well as continue to support us in our ongoing pesticide against the Palestinian cockroaches), or will you reject the example set by American presidents in recent generations and, heaven forbid, require that we behave like a civilized nation, abiding by international humanitarian law?

The Gaza Massacre

Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. . . . And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?" -- Kurt Vonnegut

The Gaza Strip is essentially an open-air prison. Twenty-five miles long and seven miles wide, with 1.5 million inhabitants, it is among the most densely-populated areas of the world. Over half of the population is under the age of sixteen. Gaza is also -- as one aid worker put it -- a room full of children.

The Israeli Defense Force pounded Gaza with bombs, rockets, and artillery shells for twenty-two straight days. The result was approximately 1300 dead, half of the dead civilians, and over 400 of those children. It is impossible that the Israeli leaders did not anticipate this result. They must have known that they would be slaughtering children by the score. They didn't care.

"Sad," you say, "but what has this to do with me?" Among the planes that were bombing these children were American-supplied F-16s. The helicopters that were attacking these children were American-supplied Apache helicopters. The bombs and rockets that were blowing these children to shreds were American made and supplied. The Israeli army that invaded Gaza, that prevented ambulances from reaching distressed infants lying for days alongside the dead bodies of their mothers -- that army is bankrolled by America.

During this "war" (better to call it what it was, a massacre), the United States Senate and House of Representatives offered resolutions in support of the Israelis. These resolutions passed unanimously. Your elected representatives rose as one to applaud this pitiless slaughter of innocents. They did so in your name.

History is full of horrible ironies. Here is one: the children and grandchildren of those Israelis who were the victims of genocide at the hands of the Nazis are themselves practicing genocide against the Palestinians. And our government aids and abets this awful crime.

Gaza and Analogy

From today's NYTimes:

The writer A.B. Yehoshua, who opposes Israel’s occupation and promotes a Palestinian state, has been trying to explain the war to foreigners.
“ ‘Imagine,’ I tell a French reporter, ‘that every two days a missile falls in the Champs-Élysées and only the glass windows of the shops break and five people suffer from shock,’ ” Mr. Yehoshua told a reporter from Yediot Aharonot, a Tel Aviv newspaper. “ ‘What would you say? Wouldn’t you be angry? Wouldn’t you send missiles at Belgium if it were responsible for missiles on your grand boulevard?’ ”

Let's try another analogy. Suppose that a large tribe of Native Americans are defeated in battle by the white man and forced onto a tiny reservation. The whites refuse to allow any Native Americans to leave the reservation, and they control all imports, allowing just a trickle of food and other necessities--this to punish the inhabitants for electing as political leaders members of a militant, anti-white group. By way of demonstrating their objection to their permanent incarceration (for that is what it is, essentially), some of the young male Native Americans occasionally shoot flaming arrows across the border -- a few of which actually hit white settlements and do some damage. In retaliation for these arrows, the whites bomb the hell out of the reservation for days, killing hundreds of men, women, and children, and then invade, continuing to kill and destroy as they go. When the world responds with outrage to this genocidal act, the whites reply, "Well, did you expect us to put up with these flaming arrows forever? This is self-defense!"

From today's NYTimes:

The Iraqi journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, 28, a correspondent for Al Baghdadia, an independent Iraqi television station, stood up about 12 feet from Mr. Bush and shouted in Arabic: “This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!” He then threw a shoe at Mr. Bush, who ducked and narrowly avoided it.

Representatives of the International Kennel Club today lodged a protest with the station manager of Al Baghdadia TV. Their complaint: that reporter Muntader al-Zaidi's recent reference to President Bush as a "dog" was an insult to canines the world over. "Dogs may be coprophagic," remarked IKC spokesman Dirk Begalovich, "but there is some shit that dogs should not be made to eat."

Walters the Warrior

From today's NYTimes, an article about the massive drug-related violence along the Mexican border:

During his visit to Mexico last week, Mr. Walters [our drug czar] heaped praise on Mr. Calderón for his “courageous leadership” in taking on the cartels. But he also expressed concern about the spillover effects of the drug war on the United States.

“Some of these groups not only engage in crime and violence in Mexico, but they come across, kidnap, murder, carry out assassinations,” he told reporters, noting that the intensity of the violence was still much higher south of the border than north of it.

“Our goal is to reduce the period of suffering as rapidly as possible by bringing these people to justice,” he said. “That’s what this is all about on both sides of the border.”

Mr. Walters, a vehement opponent of drug legalization, backed a proposal by Mr. Calderón not to prosecute people caught carrying relatively small amounts of illegal narcotics, including cocaine and heroin. Under Mr. Calderón’s plan, addicts would be treated differently from traffickers and would avoid jail if they agreed to undergo treatment, not unlike similar programs in some parts of the United States. “I don’t think that’s legalization,” Mr. Walters said.

What hypocrisy. If Walters was really concerned to "reduce the period of suffering" the answer would be simple: legalize pot, coke, and heroin. The Mexican black market, which is built upon demand for drugs in the U.S., would disappear and the violence along with it. Some of the millions we are wasting fighting a futile war on drugs could be directed toward treatment of addicts and education of the public about the dangers of drug abuse. That makes too much sense, apparently.

smearing all the way

From today's Washington Post, an article on the McCain campaign's ads attacking Obama:

The sex education ad referred to legislation Obama voted for -- but did not sponsor -- in the Illinois Senate that allowed school boards to develop 'age-appropriate' sex education courses at all levels. Kindergarten teachers were given the approval to teach about appropriate and inappropriate touching to combat molestation.
The McCain advertisement calls it 'Obama's one accomplishment' in education: 'legislation to teach comprehensive sex education to kindergartners.'
'Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama, wrong on education, wrong for your family,' the ad concludes.

Does it get any dirtier than this? Obama votes for a bill that is intended to protect children from sexual molestation; what the McCain ad implies is that Obama was voting to encourage sexual precocity in children, to destroy their innocence, to deprave them. Obama as child predator.

And today Obama has to shake hands with McCain at a 9/11 memorial event. I'd wear a rubber glove if I were he.

fearful symmetry

From today's New York Times, an article about Russia claiming its own sphere of influence:

"Mr. Putin appeared on Russian television on Sunday from the nation’s far east, where he was inspecting progress on a trans-Siberian oil pipeline to China and the Pacific Ocean, a clear warning to Europe that Russia could find alternative customers for its energy exports. He was later shown in a forest, dressed in camouflage and hunting a Siberian tiger with a tranquilizer gun."

Couldn't we just decide this Georgia thing by having Vlad Putin and Dick Cheney square off for a rousing game of laser tag?

Romancing the President

Recently, while discussing the state of the war in Afghanistan with military personnel, President Bush remarked, "I must say, I'm a little envious. If I were slightly younger . . . I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. . . . It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks."

The president’s use of the term “romantic” is very suggestive. There are essentially two ways of looking at combat: the Romantic and the Realist. The Romantic view represents combat as an opportunity for the soldier to prove and improve his character. Combat, if it does not kill the combatant, will only make him stronger—will lift up and transfigure him. The experience of combat will transform a boy into a man, a man into a Superman.

This Romantic view is given classical expression in Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth, in the famous speech the king gives to his troops before the battle of Agincourt. Henry tells his men that they should not be downcast because they are outnumbered by the French, as the glory of victory will be all the greater for this: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; / For he to-day that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother. . . . And gentlemen in England now abed / Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, / And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks / That fought on Saint Crispin’s day.”

That the Romantic myth of combat is still compelling today, four hundred years after Shakespeare wrote those lines, is evident from how military recruiting ads attempt to borrow the Bard’s rhetorical fire: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers” echoes distinctly in “The Few, the Proud, the Marines.” Recruits are encouraged to think that with proper training they can become “an Army of One.” Young men (and now women) are still lured into military service by the promise that combat is a “trial by fire” that will raise them up, transfigure them, turn them into Heroes.

Such is the Romantic viewpoint. There is, however, another view: the Realist. From this perspective combat is seen not as an opportunity but as a disaster. Rather than improving one’s character, the experience of combat is likely to injure it, in many cases ruin it. Exposure to combat is like exposure to a toxin: it does not transfigure so much as disfigure. What does not kill us may leave us wounded, maimed, or wishing we were dead.

It is the Realist view that comes to the fore in discussions of PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This malady has been illuminated by Dr. Jonathan Shay in his groundbreaking Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. In Shay’s view, the veteran with PTSD is unable to “turn off” the survival skills he or she learned in combat, which skills are inappropriate in a civilized context. This contradiction exacerbates a host of problems associated with the original trauma: intrusive thoughts (“flashbacks”), social anxiety, insomnia, depression, violent rages, and substance abuse.

A particularly tragic case of PTSD has been in the news lately: that of former Army medic Joseph Dwyer. Dwyer became famous during the first week of the war when a photo of his rescuing a wounded Iraqi child was published on the cover of USA Today. He was an instant hero. When he returned home, however, he brought the war with him – suffered from paranoid delusions that the enemy was all around him, turned to huffing solvents to find relief from his demons. He died from substance abuse at the age of 31. He left behind a wife and daughter.

A recent study by the RAND Corporation found that approximately one in five of those who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan – that’s 300,000 souls -- are suffering from PTSD. Unfortunately, many of these soldiers are doomed to lead lives of quiet desperation, as their Romantic conception of what a warrior should be--that is, tough and uncomplaining--prevents them from seeking psychological treatment.

Given that 1,000 veterans receiving care at the VA try to kill themselves every month, we can begin to see the heavy cost of indulging in Romantic conceptions of warfare (such as that held by our present Commander in Chief). War is not glorious. On the contrary, as General Sherman realistically remarked, “War is all hell,” and for too many of our combat vets, hell is where they’ll live for the rest of their lives. Perhaps we should take this into account when we decide to send idealistic young men and women off to do battle.

Gitmo strays

"American Progress's Ken Gude has put forth a five-phase plan to close Guantanamo over an 18-month period. The plan includes bringing 'a small number of detainees into the United States to stand trial in regular federal or military courts,' rather than under the flawed Military Commissions. It would create 'a resettlement and rehabilitation program in partnership with allied countries and international organizations to find homes for detainees that can't be returned to their home countries' and transfer the remaining detainees to stand trial in the United States."

This is Ahmed. Ahmed is a Guantanamo detainee. There's not enough evidence to put Ahmed on trial, and his country of origin no longer wants him. Please open your heart and your home to Ahmed or to some other unfortunate detainee. All have been spayed / neutered and given their shots. They are waiting for your love! Call now.

Antonin "Crazy Tony" Scalia gets even

From today's New York Times, on the Supreme Court decision to allow Guantanamo detainees the right of habeas corpus.

"Of the two dissenting opinions, Justice Antonin Scalia’s was the more apocalyptic, predicting 'devastating' and 'disastrous consequences' from the decision. 'It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed,' he said. 'The nation will live to regret what the court has done today.'"

And he went up from thence unto Washington: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth out of the city Breyer, Souter, Kennedy, Ginsburg, and Stevens. And they did mock him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in The Name of The Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare the five of them.

Cheney Commits Suicide

WASHINGTON (AP). The White House has reported that Vice President Dick Cheney has committed suicide, apparently by shooting himself with the same shotgun with which he shot Harry Whittington. Cheney left a short note explaining that he had become so utterly despicable that he could no longer stand himself, and, since impeachment was "off the table," this appeared his only recourse. President Bush, upon hearing the news, turned to his aides and, tossing his hands in the air, exclaimed "What now?"

In a related story, the Wall Street Journal reports that the "undisclosed location" to which the Vice President retreated in the wake of 9/11 has been identified as an apartment complex outside of Toronto, Canada. It appears, therefore, that after 9/11, while not in-country, Mr. Cheney was in-continent.

I've fallen and I can't get up

From Saturday's Washington Post:

Officials said they do not know the number of service members cremated at the Kent County facility, which is identified on a billboard as Friends Forever Pet Cremation Service.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates found "the site and signage are insensitive and entirely inappropriate for the dignified treatment of our fallen," Morrell said. "The families of the fallen have the secretary's deepest apology," he said.

A grotesque story. But on second thought why not in a pet crematorium? Four thousand of our soldiers have been turned into dogmeat by a war that is absolutely grotesque --unjust and indefensible. Why sublimate these deaths? Let the lamp affix its beam.

The Post article continues,

Military culture instills that showing respect for the fallen is an extremely important and solemn duty. Funerary rituals such as removing flags from military caskets and presenting them to the deceased's family are carried out meticulously, while other demonstrations of respect include personally delivering news of the loss of a loved one to the next of kin.

It is so very easy to be bullied into silence by the cult of the Fallen. "All uncover, please, and cast eyes downward. Now kiss the flag." The same old bullshit, the same old lie.

Look at the way, for example, our government represented Pat Tillman as a figure of romance rather than as a pathetic dupe to romance rhetoric. Let's forget the fact (or suppress it, as our government did) that he got his head blown off by his fellow soldiers in the usual dark comedy of errors that war is. Instead it's "When can [his] glory fade! Honor the charge [he] made!" The Pentagon misrepresenting his death to try to lure in a few more, to collect some more cannon fodder.

Ted Rall was disappeared from the pages of the Washington Post for telling the truth about Tillman in his cartoon strip. Such is the fate of the truthteller in wartime.

another modest proposal

It appears the Pentagon is having trouble finding enough bodies to wage our President's glorious War on Terror. Word has it, in fact, that the services have started accepting almost anyone, including convicted felons and near-imbeciles, to fill the ranks.

Here's an idea. Since it is the people who voted Bush into office who are ultimately responsible for this war, why not set up a draft especially for them? I'm thinking in particular of those male retirees who voted for Bush in both 2000 and 2004. Since they are retired they are nothing but a drain on society anyway, so why not ship them off to Iraq and Afghanistan? They could be blown to smithereens as well as young men and are more easily spared.

I mean, if they are true believers in Bush and his war, why not give them the opportunity to prove it? To put their money where their dentures are? To limp the limp?

searching for a metaphor

"The Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy magazine released their third edition of the Terrorism Index in August 2007. The survey of over 100 national security experts from across the ideological spectrum found that an overwhelming 84 percent disagreed with the statement that 'the United States is winning the war on terror.' The persistent threat of Al Qaeda seven years after 9/11, as shown in the State Department’s report and by other U.S. government professionals, only reinforces these opinions. The Bush administration has failed to advance comprehensive strategies for preserving American power, security, and leadership in the world and eliminating the real terrorist threats we face in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Iraq, and in the broader counterterrorism mission."

A metaphor for our war on terror and its failure: the United States a dog attacked by fleas. The dog's solution is to scratch itself raw, bite at itself until it is exhausted. The fleas are encouraged by the dog's futile efforts, continue to breed and multiply. For every flea killed a half-dozen spring up to take its place. The dog is finally driven mad by the itching, proceeds to eviscerate itself.