We Were Warned

When President Eisenhower told us, in his 1961 farewell address, to beware of the Military Industrial complex, America ignored him, and built the most powerful group of private corporations ever to supply a military.

But way before Ike did his best to tell us what was going to happen if we weren't careful, another president gave a farewell address that warned us about George Bush:

Political parties serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

That's from George Washington's farewell address (h/t Scott Horton). Did you have to be a George Washington to figure this out: "...unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people..." I was physically attacked, made fun of, blacklisted by Republican co-workers who spread the word not to hire me, called a traitor and a commie, all because I tried to warn people, before he was even appointed by the Supreme Court, that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were unprincipled men who would subvert the power of the people.

Washington even tried to warn us that these men would start dangerous wars of choice with their out-of-control military. He prayed that we would...

...avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.

If my union is the main prop of my liberty, then shouldn't I protect my union from another Bush/Cheney "administration" in order to preserve my liberty? Shouldn't we, as patriotic Americans aware of our history and the admonishments of past presidents, work to avoid the necessity of an overgrown military establishment which is inauspicious to liberty? Do we not have a duty to past Americans who have fought and died for our rights to fight for the liberty of our descendants?

What would be the best way to stop future presidents from usurping the power of the people? Should we move on and not bog ourselves down in the bickering that would accompany trials of war criminals from the highest echelons of government? Will we signal to future presidents that they will be considered above the law as long as their partisans promise to bicker and complain that the prosecution is not deserved because it is being controlled by someone from a different faction?

If fear of political harm prevents the prosecution of criminals, then wouldn't criminals simply threaten political division and wrangling in order to avoid prosecution? Has political calculation won over an executive's duty to uphold the law and the constitution?

Listen carefully to the oath of office on Tuesday. The promise that President Elect Obama makes will be:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

This oath does not mention protecting Americans from terrorists no matter what the cost to liberty. It doesn't say anything about letting people avoid prosecution because it would be divisive or distracting. It doesn't even say anything about getting God's help. It says to protect and defend the Constitution, to the best of your ability. I know that the best of Obama'a ability is pretty damn good. I heard what his Attorney General Designate said about torture. I heard Obama say no one is above the law. He is capable of heeding the warnings of Eisenhower, Washington, and many other presidents.

As for how we managed to get to this place, it seems we just don't listen, do we? America has a long, rich history that we will be doomed to repeat if we don't study it, and prosecute those responsible for usurping the power of the people and ignoring the rule of law.

The Great Iraq Swindle

Bush didn't invade Iraq to find weapons. Hell, he was told there were no weapons there, and didn't care. He didn't even do it for the oil. He did it because the neo-cons orchestrated the largest swindle of American taxpayers in the history of the country.

Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam ­Hussein's Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush's war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government. In Iraq the lines between essential government services and for-profit enterprises have been blurred to the point of absurdity -- to the point where wounded soldiers have to pay retail prices for fresh underwear, where modern-day chattel are imported from the Third World at slave wages to peel the potatoes we once assigned to grunts in KP, where private companies are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they fuck things up.

And just maybe, reviewing this appalling history of invoicing orgies and million-dollar boondoggles, it's not so far-fetched to think that this is the way someone up there would like things run all over -- not just in Iraq but in Iowa, too, with the state police working for Corrections Corporation of America, and DHL with the contract to deliver every Christmas card. And why not? What the Bush administration has created in Iraq is a sort of paradise of perverted capitalism, where revenues are forcibly extracted from the customer by the state, and obscene profits are handed out not by the market but by an unaccountable government bureauc­racy. This is the triumphant culmination of two centuries of flawed white-people thinking, a preposterous mix of authoritarian socialism and laissez-faire profit­eering, with all the worst aspects of both ideologies rolled up into one pointless, supremely idiotic military adventure -- American men and women dying by the thousands, so that Karl Marx and Adam Smith can blow each other in a Middle Eastern glory hole.

Go read it. And then I dare one of you fucking Republican Bush lovers to come back here and tell me why this glorious clusterfuck is good for my children, who will be paying for it.

Over 80 US Dead in Iraq per Month for 5 Months Now

Arianna's excellent dissection of Republican Petraeus Praising Points (typical Republican tactic to alter plotlines to fit their political ideology) set me off like Hunter Thompson on adrenal extract. In her story, she mentions a little tid-bit that has apparently been missed by the main stream and tributary media (my apologies to anyone who already diaried this).

For the first time since the war began, we've just had five straight months with 80 or more U.S. fatalities.

And it's getting worse. Nine more soldiers were killed yesterday and today, meaning

April has been the deadliest month for U.S. soldiers in Iraq this year. The latest deaths raise to nearly 100 the number of U.S. soldiers killed this month.

I get sick thinking about it. Nearly 100 US Troops dead in April. That's a VT almost every week. If Iraq got half that coverage every week, we'd be re-deployed by now.

Instead, we have more BS from the obfuscator in chief, who the Fox Playback Megaphone and other co-conspirators hoist up, praising the brave men and women who are Making the Surge Work. As if Bill Moyer's didn't exist.

We have a team of liars, who have been at this Military Industrial Game for a long time now. The Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal is very adept at convincing Rubes to spend billions on military boondogles. They've had lots of practice. In fact, their life-long goal of privatizing the military has been met with Blackwater and Halliburton (et al). Now they can retire and fight little private wars anywhere, without answering to anyone. Corporations are taking over, and soon we'll have Rollerball to keep our minds off the annoying little things like statistics of military dead in faraway places, and how much those adventures cost.

No substitutions, no penalties... and no time limit!

The financial black hole of Iraq has provided enough US Taxpayer dollars to fund black ops until the Rapture, or at least Armageddon. Team B has succeeded in milking America for exactly what they need to continue murdering whoever they want, and this time there won't be any Iran-Contra scandal or Pentagon Papers to screw things up.

In light of all these putrid facts, which no one outside the progressive net roots seems to give a flying fuck in a rolling unarmored humvee about, I'd like to think about 80 a month for 5 straight months.

What are they dying for? If, as I heard Mitch McConnell saying on NPR yesterday, we are fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq, then why are they getting a pass in Pakistan? And if the answer is, well, we need to be smart about Pakistan, because we need Musharaff, then why isn't it the same answer for Iraq? Don't wee need to be smart about hunting Al Qaeda there too?

And didn't the Democrat's funding bill make an exception for going after Al Qaeda? I mean, hey, I just saw Flight 93 too. Made me cry. Made me want to kill the bad guys. Made me wish we had a smart government that would have gotten Bin Laden, no matter where he was.

But it didn't make me want to put American hands on the heads of two sides in a civil war and try to hold them apart like two well-armed 10 year olds. It didn't make me want to watch over 80 coffins per month come back wrapped in flags that will be carefully folded with military precision and handed to a mother or widow.

The McCain escalation in Baghdad has nothing to do with Al Qaeda. To go after those guys, we need special forces. We need allies. We need quick response teams. All the things the Democrat bill allows for.

So, we're not one signature from ending this war. We are one signature from putting the focus back where it needs to be: on the people who attacked us on 9-11. You know, like the one George Bush said this about:

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."

I think I'm going to hide in the mountains too, so Republican meat grinder feeders can't find my 12 year old son 6 years from now. I hear Colorado is turning blue and getting warmer...