Out-Bushing Bush, one murder at a time...
Obama’s global Murder, Inc.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Just War Theory
In the 21st century, "Just War Theory" is, in a word, irrelevant. Even if we were to stipulate, for the sake of argument, that, in theory, a war could be "just," the conditions at the present time make such a theory untenable in practice. The problem is now (and, in my view, has always been) the profit motive. Profit achieved by means of fair and equitable trade is one thing; profit achieved by armed robbery is quite another.
War is big business. Arguments about "just war" are nothing but "language on holiday" as Wittgenstein would say.
War is big business. Arguments about "just war" are nothing but "language on holiday" as Wittgenstein would say.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Monday, December 19, 2011
Poem By William Heyen
Written about the First Gulf War:
13. (Conventions)
"This might be an oxymoron," says (I swear) a Pentagon spokesman
beginning to whine, "but why can’t we have a civilized war?"
Meaning, I suppose, that when an American airman
bombs your neighborhood, killing maybe a few dozen
& maiming maybe a hundred in body & maybe a thousand in mind,
& he’s one of the few planes hit & he has to eject,
& after you’ve done the best you could to drag
victims out from under debris & you’ve washed the blood
out of your eyes as best you could & you’ve captured the bastard,
you should treat him according to the Geneva Conventions,
as gentleman prisoner of war, a name & rank & service number
who deserves a shower & clean clothes. You must not,
as I would, as you should, I swear, if such a technician
killed your wife & children, you must not drive steel
splinters into his eyes until they reach his civilized brain.
13. (Conventions)
"This might be an oxymoron," says (I swear) a Pentagon spokesman
beginning to whine, "but why can’t we have a civilized war?"
Meaning, I suppose, that when an American airman
bombs your neighborhood, killing maybe a few dozen
& maiming maybe a hundred in body & maybe a thousand in mind,
& he’s one of the few planes hit & he has to eject,
& after you’ve done the best you could to drag
victims out from under debris & you’ve washed the blood
out of your eyes as best you could & you’ve captured the bastard,
you should treat him according to the Geneva Conventions,
as gentleman prisoner of war, a name & rank & service number
who deserves a shower & clean clothes. You must not,
as I would, as you should, I swear, if such a technician
killed your wife & children, you must not drive steel
splinters into his eyes until they reach his civilized brain.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
An Accurate Chronology of American History
Read it and weep:
1. Neolithic period
2. European colonialism and slavery
3. Revolution and the republican interlude
4. Civil War and manifest destiny
5. The Great War: Shine, perishing republic
6. American empire
1. Neolithic period
2. European colonialism and slavery
3. Revolution and the republican interlude
4. Civil War and manifest destiny
5. The Great War: Shine, perishing republic
6. American empire
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
The Reagan Legacy
It would be wrong to attribute the present state of our former republic to Ronald Reagan. Reagan did not start the republic's decline into imperial corruption, he just helped to shift it into high gear. But those of us who remember pre-Reagan America--an imperfect place, without question--cannot help but remark how Reagan's two terms in office changed the atmosphere of our civil society. By "changed" I mean poisoned. Our political process was not only flooded with money--there was nothing new about that--but the imperial presidency became the latest outlet for Hollywood's dream factory. Madison Avenue took over. The B-movie actor Reagan was emblematic of the transition. Real participatory democracy--which had already been on the ropes since the debacle of George McGovern's ill-fated Presidential bid in 1972 and Ted Kennedy's ill-fated challenge to Jimmy Carter in 1980--fled the scene. What took its place was collective self-delusion about a "new morning" in America. And the Democratic Party, in its final betrayal of the American people, signed on.
I say its "final betrayal" not because it was the Party's last betrayal, but because it was the Party's ultimate one.
Look no farther than the Presidency of Barack Obama. From what I hear, Obama reads biographies of Reagan and holds him up as his hero.
First time as tragedy, second time as farce.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
What Would Carl Sandburg Write Today?
He published his poem "Chicago" around 1916. Here we are, a century later:
Arms supplier to the world,
Net exporter of violence, debtor to the nations;
Best to bone up now on your Spengler and Gibbon,
This ship of militaristic fools is going down.
Bankrupted by the wholesale conversion of our economy to militarism, we depend on the rest of the world to supply our basic needs. When the precarious bubble of our rapacious capitalism finally bursts, who will pick up the pieces?
Arms supplier to the world,
Net exporter of violence, debtor to the nations;
Best to bone up now on your Spengler and Gibbon,
This ship of militaristic fools is going down.
Bankrupted by the wholesale conversion of our economy to militarism, we depend on the rest of the world to supply our basic needs. When the precarious bubble of our rapacious capitalism finally bursts, who will pick up the pieces?
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Monday, December 5, 2011
Dear Dr. Pangloss:
Don't get me wrong, I am encouraged by OWS, but it is just the first stirrings of discontent. So far, the militarized corporatocracy has nothing to fear. Remember: money buys time and the criminals we are up against have more money than god. Which is what they are counting on. They can wait out OWS. And winter is coming.
The next time the economy takes a nose-dive and unemployment in the U.S. leaps from 10 to 20 or 30%--that's when the real action is going to begin. But it will be desperate, not enlightened, action, and we'll see tanks in the streets of US cities. In the White House situation room, they are probably watching film footage of Tiananmen Square from '89 and planning their next move.
The late, great Chalmers Johnson's Dismantling the Empire is a bracing read. No, it's not Hegel's Panglossian Phenomenology of the Spirit, but Hegel was wrong. Brilliant, but wrong.
Johnson understood the problem quite clearly. We are in a new imperial age. And empires take centuries to run their course. So the question becomes: How do we conduct ourselves with integrity and plant seeds for the empire's eventual demise (long after you and I have passed from the scene)?
Shelter the flame of Jeffersonian democracy; recall the utopian ideals of lower-case "r" republican government; honor the Prophetic tradition; lead lives of prayerful decency and good will towards all.
And remember:
Friends don't let friends join the military.
Ask yourself:
What Would Whitman Do?
The next time the economy takes a nose-dive and unemployment in the U.S. leaps from 10 to 20 or 30%--that's when the real action is going to begin. But it will be desperate, not enlightened, action, and we'll see tanks in the streets of US cities. In the White House situation room, they are probably watching film footage of Tiananmen Square from '89 and planning their next move.
The late, great Chalmers Johnson's Dismantling the Empire is a bracing read. No, it's not Hegel's Panglossian Phenomenology of the Spirit, but Hegel was wrong. Brilliant, but wrong.
Johnson understood the problem quite clearly. We are in a new imperial age. And empires take centuries to run their course. So the question becomes: How do we conduct ourselves with integrity and plant seeds for the empire's eventual demise (long after you and I have passed from the scene)?
Shelter the flame of Jeffersonian democracy; recall the utopian ideals of lower-case "r" republican government; honor the Prophetic tradition; lead lives of prayerful decency and good will towards all.
And remember:
Friends don't let friends join the military.
Ask yourself:
What Would Whitman Do?
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Agency of Rogues
From Chalmers Johnson, Dismantling the Empire (NY: Metropolitan Books, 2010), p. 78:
Nothing has done more to undercut the reputation of the United States than the CIA's "clandestine" (only in terms of the American people) murders of the presidents of South Vietnam and the Congo, its ravishing the governments of Iran, Indonesia (three times), South Korea (twice), all of the Indochinese states, virtually every government in Latin America, and Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The deaths from these armed assaults run into the millions. After 9/11, President Bush asked, "Why do they hate us?" From Iran (1953) to Iraq (2003), the better question would be, "Why would they not?"
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