Against Annihilation of the Spirit: Let Us All Become Cowards

[I originally published this essay on May 22, 2007. I offer it once again in its entirety because of its ongoing relevance. The journalistic details of day-to-day events have never been of great interest to me. Such details are largely meaningless; for a long time, it has been almost impossible to remember them from one screaming, mindless news cycle to the next. Tragically, this particular essay passes one of my tests for my own work with terrible, bleeding colors: the inexorable, increasing brutalization of our culture renders these issues more significant with each passing year.

In the opening section, I pay tribute to Paddy Chayefsky's The Americanization of Emily. If you have never seen this remarkable film, you have missed what may be Chayefsky's finest work. His best-known film is probably the brilliant Network. But The Americanization of Emily cuts still more deeply, and goes directly to the heart of particularly cherished, particularly American myths. I have long thought that it is because Emily is so disturbing and unsettling that it has never been as popular. Many Americans, at least those who prefer to think of themselves as intelligent and well-informed, are willing to laugh at their own idiocies. They are not so ready to admit that their desperately loved self-conception, an idealized view of themselves and their country that they cling to with the neurotic terror of the criminal who fears exposure at any moment, disguises a fact that has assumed awful, overwhelming clarity to much of the rest of the world: that Americans are among the most vicious killers who have ever lived.]

Gentle readers, to provide a proper acknowledgment of the upcoming Memorial Day, I give you Charlie Madison:

War isn’t hell at all. It’s man at his best; the highest morality he's capable of … it’s not war that’s insane, you see. It’s the morality of it. It’s not greed or ambition that makes war: it’s goodness. Wars are always fought for the best of reasons: for liberation or manifest destiny. Always against tyranny and always in the interest of humanity. So far this war, we’ve managed to butcher some ten million humans in the interest of humanity. Next war it seems we’ll have to destroy all of man in order to preserve his damn dignity. It’s not war that’s unnatural to us – it’s virtue. As long as valor remains a virtue, we shall have soldiers. So, I preach cowardice. Through cowardice, we shall all be saved.

...

I don’t trust people who make bitter reflections about war. ... It’s always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a Hell it is. And it’s always the widows who lead the Memorial Day parades … we shall never end wars ... by blaming it on ministers and generals or warmongering imperialists or all the other banal bogies. It’s the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers; the rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widows’ weeds like nuns and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices. My brother died at Anzio – an everyday soldier’s death, no special heroism involved. They buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud.

...

[Y]ou see, now my other brother can’t wait to reach enlistment age. That’ll be in September. May be ministers and generals who blunder us into wars, but the least the rest of us can do is to resist honoring the institution. What has my mother got for pretending bravery was admirable? She’s under constant sedation and terrified she may wake up one morning and find her last son has run off to be brave.

Charlie Madison is the protagonist of an extraordinary film, The Americanization of Emily. The astonishing screenplay is by Paddy Chayefsky.

If we were genuinely concerned with honoring those who have died in war, we would make it our sacred task to eradicate the causes of war. Of course, many Americans -- including most notably our leading politicians -- couldn't care less about truly honoring those whose guts have been ripped out, whose limbs have been bloodily and painfully mutilated, whose minds have been destroyed. For the state and its enablers, the war dead are props used to purify and sanctify the ongoing and future campaigns of slaughter, in an endless procession of slaughters throughout history. The war dead are especially useful, since they have been rendered forever mute; they are unable to tell us the truth of what they endured, or about the lies for which they died.

In February 2006, I offered an appreciation of Chayefsky's notable achievement in The Americanization of Emily, in "Against Sentimentality, and In Praise of Cowardice." In part, I wrote:

Chayefsky's target is the one identified by Charlie: it is the glorification of war, and the countless ways in which all of us "honor the institution." We build statues of our war heroes and name streets after them; we erect shrines to the dead. We insist on the "ideals" for which we fought, and the "goodness" of our intentions. Many of us do this in the misdirected and destructive search for "meaning" in our lives: our own stunted souls prevent us from finding fulfillment and happiness in our individual lives, so we look for "glory" by climbing over endless piles of corpses.

And what is lost in all of this is the unbearable horror and pain inflicted on individual human beings, and the particularized, specific costs of our quest for glory, or meaning, or "national greatness," or honor.

Almost every war in every era could have been avoided, if the majority of men were not motivated by the basest, most repellent and petty of factors: the lust for power, greed, and the pathetic search for "meaning" and "glory" in one's life by killing the designated "other" of a brief historical moment. I recall that, several months ago, there was some discussion on various blogs about a particularly awful aspect of the obvious propaganda campaign leading up to the invasion of Iraq, and the public's eager willingness to believe all of it, or at least their notable failure to resist it. It was suggested that we had lost our "horror" of war, on the assumption that we had in some other time appreciated the monstrousness of the slaughter of human beings. This is an utterly naive and grossly mistaken rewriting of American history, one that proceeds directly from critical aspects of the mythology we tell ourselves about ourselves: that we are unique in all of history, that our form of government is the greatest and best possible to mankind, toward which all others should and must strive, and that our national character is predisposed toward compassion and peace.

Lies on top of lies, on top of still more lies, all of it. As Robert Higgs notes in the passages excerpted here:

No one should be surprised by the cultural proclivity for violence, of course, because Americans have always been a violent people in a violent land. Once the Europeans had committed themselves to reside on this continent, they undertook to slaughter the Indians and steal their land, and to bullwhip African slaves into submission and live off their labor—endeavors they pursued with considerable success over the next two and a half centuries. Absent other convenient victims, they have battered and killed one another on the slightest pretext, or for the simple pleasure of doing so, with guns, knives, and bare hands. If you take them to be a “peace-loving people,” you haven’t been paying attention. Such violent people are easily led to war.

While Americans have always had a thoroughly sickening love of violence and cruelty, there is one kind of horror that they have never understood: the absolute, mind-obliterating insanity of war in the modern era. The explanation for this failure is obvious: the wars of the last hundred years have always been fought "over there," never here. As long as our noble warriors were dismembering the Evil Hun or disemboweling the Yellow Jap "over there," which geographic displacement conveniently allowed us to avoid contemplation of the details smeared with entrails, our complacency continued undisturbed. But then came 9/11. We reacted as any deeply neurotic narcissist bent on world domination would, in the manner of a violent nation suffering from "superpower syndrome" as described by Robert Jay Lifton: "You can't do this to us! You can't attack us here! We kill you bastards there, and we love it, but you can't come here!"

Today, rather than seeking justice, many Americans still want revenge for this challenge to their delusions of invincibility, to their belief that we are entitled to inflict violence on anyone else at all, even if they do not threaten us in the least, but that no one else may dare do the same to us. In our endless quest to sate our national rage, any target will do. Why not Iraq? Why not, indeed, as soulless monsters like Jonah Goldberg maintained.

In an essay written some time ago, I quoted Paul Fussell at length, on "The Culture of War, and the Culture of Chickenshit." Fussell has written at least two indispensable books: The Great War and Modern Memory, about World War I, and Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War. In Wartime, at the opening of the chapter, "'The Real War Will Never Get in the Books,'" Fussell writes (highlights added and footnotes omitted in all the following excerpts):

What was it about the war that moved the troops to constant verbal subversion and contempt? It was not just the danger and fear, the boredom and uncertainty and loneliness and deprivation. It was rather the conviction that optimistic publicity and euphemism had rendered their experience so falsely that it would never be readily communicable. They knew that in its representation to the laity what was happening to them was systematically sanitized and Norman Rockwellized, not to mention Disneyfied. They knew that despite the advertising and publicity, where it counted their arms and equipment were worse than the Germans'. They knew that their automatic rifles (World War One vintage) were slower and clumsier, and they knew that the Germans had a much better light machine gun. ... And they knew that the greatest single weapon of the war, the atomic bomb excepted, was the German 88-mm flat-trajectory gun, which brought down thousands of bombers and tens of thousands of soldiers. The Allies had nothing as good, despite one of them designating itself The World's Greatest Industrial Power. The troops' disillusion and their ironic response, in song and satire and sullen contempt, came from knowing that the home front then (and very likely historiography later) could be aware of none of these things.

The Great War brought forth the stark, depressing Journey's End; the Second, as John Ellis notes, the tuneful South Pacific. The real war was tragic and ironic, beyond the power of any literary or philosophic analysis to suggest, but in unbombed America especially, the meaning of the war seemed inaccessible. As experience, thus, the suffering was wasted. The same tricks of publicity and advertising might have succeeded in sweetening the actualities of Vietnam if television and a vigorous uncensored moral journalism hadn't been brought to bear. America has not yet understood what the Second World War was like and has thus been unable to use such understanding to re-interpret and re-define the national reality to arrive at something like public maturity.

The truth today is still worse, for we have significantly regressed. Even as our governing class remains absolute in its determination to avoid the central and most fundamental lessons from Vietnam, it has remembered and applied certain lessons very well indeed. The horrors of Iraq, including the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent Iraqis, never even enter the consciousness of most Americans. The dead and horrifically injured Americans are shuffled offstage without ceremony. The great majority of Americans continue in their preferred mode of existence: intellectually ignorant and lazy, spiritually fat and self-satisfied, and completely oblivious to the unimaginable suffering their government inflicts in other parts of the world.

Our national media remain cowed and intimidated, and they refuse, a few honorable exceptions aside, to provide details of the daily and hourly horrors in Iraq to the public. A single major newspaper could provide a noble and invaluable service: if they gave a damn at all about unnecessary death and suffering, they would select the most awful and horrifying picture they could find -- a body with its guts falling out, a bloody corpse shorn of arms and legs, a mutilated face made unrecognizable -- and fill up their entire front page with it, a new one every day. Perhaps after a month or two, enough Americans would demand that their government stop butchering people who never harmed us. [To achieve the sought-for effect, the pictures obviously should be of Iraqis, and only Iraqis. The Iraqis had no choice about our criminal war of aggression, and the endless destruction we have unleashed; the United States did -- and does, even today. We could leave, as we quickly would if we had any remaining decency and humanity, but we won't.]

Most Americans have no idea at all what happens in war. I certainly don't pretend that I do, either -- but I read a great deal on the subject, and I try to learn. From Fussell's Wartime again:

What annoyed the troops and augmented their sardonic, contemptuous attitude toward those who viewed them from afar was in large part this public innocence about the bizarre damage suffered by the human body in modern war. The troops could not contemplate without anger the lack of public knowledge of the Graves Registration form used by the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps with its space for indicating: "Members Missing." You would expect front-line soldiers to be struck and hurt by bullets and shell fragments, but such is the popular insulation from the facts that you would not expect them to be hurt, sometimes killed, by being struck by parts of their friends' bodies violently detached. If you asked a wounded soldier or marine what hit him, you'd hardly be ready for the answer, "My buddy's head," or his sergeant's heel or his hand, or a Japanese leg, complete with shoe and puttees, or the West Point ring on his captain's severed hand. What drove the troops to fury was the complacent, unimaginative innocence of their home fronts and rear echelons about such experiences as the following, repeated in essence tens of thousands of times. Captain Peter Royle, a British artillery forward observer, was moving up a hill in a night attack in North Africa. "I was following about twenty paces behind," he says,

when there was a blinding flash a few yards in front of me. I had no idea what it was and fell flat on my face. I found out soon enough: a number of infantry were carrying mines strapped to the small of their backs, and either a rifle or machine gun bullet had struck one, which had exploded, blowing the man into three pieces -- two legs and head and chest. His inside was strewn on the hillside and I crawled into it in the darkness.

...

Sometimes damage to the body was well beyond endurance, for those perceiving as well as those damaged. Once in the Normandy battles a British major accompanied a stretcher party searching for a wounded man earlier parties had missed. "Sure enough," he says,

we found a poor little chap with both legs blown off above the knees, moaning softly and, I remember, he was saying, "Oh dear! Oh dear!" The stretcher-bearer shook his head and, I thought, looked pointedly at my revolver.

And there's an indication of what can be found on the ground after an air crash in one soldier's memories of a morning after an artillery exchange in North Africa. Neil McCallum and his friend "S." come upon the body of a man who had been lying on his back when a shell, landing at his feet, eviscerated him.

"Good God," said S., shocked, "here's one of his fingers." S. stubbed with his toe on the ground some feet from the corpse. There is more horror in a severed digit than in a man dying: it savors of mutilation. "Christ," went on S. in a very low voice, "look, it's not his finger."

Toward the end of the same chapter, Fussell writes about "Eugene B. Sledge's memoir of a boy's experience with 'the old breed,' the United States Marines," which Fussell describes as "one of the finest memoirs to emerge from any war." Fussell says the tone of Sledge's book is "unpretentious, unsophisticated, modest, and decent." Fussell continues:

But for Sledge the worst of all was a week-long stay in rain-soaked foxholes on a muddy ridge facing the Japanese, a site strewn with decomposing corpses turning various colors, nauseating with the stench of death, "an environment so degrading I believed we had been flung into hell's own cesspool." Because there were no latrines and because there was no moving in daylight, the men relieved themselves in their holes and flung the excrement out into the already foul mud. It was a latter-day Verdun, the Marine occupation of that ridge, where the artillery shellings uncovered scores of half-buried Marine and Japanese bodies, making the position "a stinking compost pile":

If a Marine slipped and slid down the back slope of the muddy ridge, he was apt to reach the bottom vomiting. I saw more than one man lose his footing and slip and slide all the way to the bottom only to stand up horror-stricken as he watched in disbelief while fat maggots tumbled out of his muddy dungaree pockets, cartridge belt, legging lacings, and the like. . . .

We didn't talk about such things. They were too horrible and obscene even for hardened veterans. . . . It is too preposterous to think that men could actually live and fight for days and nights on end under such terrible conditions and not be driven insane. . . . To me the war was insanity.

And from the other side of the world the young British officer Neil McCallum issues a similar implicit warning against the self-delusive attempt to confer high moral meaning on these grievous struggles for survival. Far from rationalizing their actions as elements of a crusade, McCallum and his men, he says, "have ceased largely to think or believe at all":

Annihilation of the spirit. The game does not appear to be worth the candle. What is seen through the explosions is that this, no less than any other war, is not a moral war. Greek against Greek, against Persian, Roman against the world, cowboys against Indians, Catholics against Protestants, black men against white -- this is merely the current phase of an historical story. It is war, and to believe it is anything but a lot of people killing each other is to pretend it is something else, and to misread man's instinct to commit murder.

Accounts of this kind are unknown to the American public. Most Americans are unaware of any and all such details; most Americans do not want to know them and will stop you, should you try to tell them. To the extent our political leaders are cognizant of such facts, they do everything in their power to prevent them from reaching the public. After all, our governing class might undertake the next campaign of slaughter any day now; if Americans knew what that slaughter actually entailed, they might not go along with the smug complacence they have exhibited on all such previous occasions. In an identical manner, if the ignorance of the American public were penetrated to any significant degree, they might demand an immediate end to the pointless murder in Iraq. But our governing class must maintain its prerogatives; as Higgs notes, it would not do to let the inmates run the asylum.

So the myths prevail. Our wars are always noble, fought for the purest of motives. Our warriors are similarly noble, engaged in a high-minded crusade. They butcher and slaughter, and are butchered and slaughtered themselves, so that "civilization" might be preserved. Never mind that many of the warriors themselves would not agree. Never mind that the front-line soldiers know that war is insanity, and only insanity. Never mind the overwhelming, senseless, futile, endless horror of what actually happens in combat, and the details that never reach the public.

Chayefsky rejects the myths in their totality. He implores us to embrace cowardice. I beg you to follow his advice. You can be certain the cries for war will rise again, if not against Iran, then against North Korea, or in ten years' time against China, or against a country not now in the news, but which will fill the role required by the vast machinery of war. And when those cries overwhelm all facts and make reasonable argument impossible, and when they are amplified once again by an ever-compliant, always docile and obedient media, plead cowardice. If you value the sanctity of a single life, it is the only sane course to take, and the bravest.

On to the Main Event

The rumors of my death are but mild exaggerations. This has been an awful, sometimes terrifying time. I've experienced a bit of improvement over the last week, and I now find myself thinking about reengaging with the world. I don't feel remotely "good"; I haven't known what it is to feel "good" physically in years. But at least I don't feel that each day, or each hour, might finally be It, i.e., The End. So I'm able to reflect on certain matters in a sustained manner, at least to some extent.

If I'm able to do it, I think I need to return to themes and subjects that have concerned me for some time; I also need to clarify and further explain a number of complex connections. In that effort, I will address political issues and controversies, but primarily as they are related to underlying patterns of thought, emotion and behavior. If you wish to understand what's on my mind, I recommend reading "Meaningful Connections," and following at least a few of the links. In particular, I would suggest looking over the four articles on tribalism (one, two, three, four). This passage from the first of the tribalism essays identifies where I place politics itself among my concerns:

This series will examine some of the many ways that love goes wrong, the ways in which love destroys the genuine vitality of another soul. All too often, which is to say in the case of almost every person, the pattern of this destruction is set in early childhood. Once the pattern has been embedded deeply enough, it will be dislodged later in life only in the rarest of circumstances. For the great majority of people, the destruction is carried from generation to generation.

The same pattern also becomes the basis of the political systems we establish, and of the specific manner in which those systems function. (See "When the Demons Come" for examples of how and why this happens.) Political systems are not devised or operated by individuals who supposedly manage, always by some unspecified means, to set aside or rise above those motives and concerns that dominate the lives of those they rule. In terms of certain underlying human dynamics, rulers and ruled are fundamentally alike, for better or worse. Throughout most of human history, it is almost always for worse; consult any one of numerous history books for the frequently terrifying evidence, and consider how rare the exceptions are and how briefly they lasted. (I should note that certain critical differences between the ruling class and those they rule can be identified; you will find some of those differences analyzed here.)

This is one of the great problems with political commentary: politics is only a symptom of a more fundamental condition. Unless we address these more fundamental concerns, the symptom will never be altered in a lasting way. Yet we (and I) spend so much time on political matters because politics affects our lives so dramatically and with such immediacy. Because politics has the power to alter our lives so profoundly and, far too frequently, even to end them, some of us fiercely resist the especially destructive aspects of its operations. Yet this will never be enough by itself, as history, including our recent history and ongoing events, prove repeatedly.

I will rephrase the idea of that last paragraph to express the thought more forcefully. It is not simply that politics is a symptom of more fundamental factors. Politics, in itself, is a sideshow, a distraction, a camouflage. Politics is the means by which power is wielded over human beings. That is all it signifies; that is all it has ever signified. A few of the critical questions are: Who wishes to wield such power? Why? To what ends? And, why are so many people willing to submit to the demands of power?

When we begin to understand the answers to those questions (and many related ones), we begin to see the outlines of what ought to concern us -- where, if you will, the real action is. Political developments are the final result of these underlying dynamics. To focus on politics alone is to engage in the futile rearrangement of derivative elements. This is also why politics is so endlessly repetitive and stultifying, and why a focus on politics alone is so sickeningly boring, when it is not horrifying. Today, it is usually both. "Oh, God! Another horror! How awful!" If you pay attention, you realize that all the horrors you note are the same horrors that occurred a year ago, half a century ago, 200 hundred years ago. This is true even in periods of tragically temporary revolutionary change; see "Concerning the American Change in Management" for an extended consideration of how the American "Revolution" quickly abandoned genuine revolutionary change and instead resurrected age-old patterns of exploitation and oppression. The American "Revolution" ended immediately after it had begun.

If by some series of miracles (none appear to be on offer), significant change were to occur in the American polity, there might be a short-lived victory -- but as with the original American "Revolution," the victory would vanish before it could be enjoyed. The underlying dynamics would reassert themselves once more; the specific forms of exploitation and oppression might be somewhat different, but exploitation, brutality, oppression and death are humanity's constant companions. To concern oneself with politics alone is to deaden one's soul, and to permit the horrors to continue beyond the horizon.

Yet it need not be so. So we must examine why it has been so in the past, and why it is so today. And then we must see how we can change it, finally.

So my work is far from done. I hope my health permits me to do some of it. It may be slow, so I ask for your patience and understanding. As I work on longer, complex pieces, I may occasionally post a few quick items concerning events, or books, or films, whatever, that I find of interest, or that amuse me. Fun is important, especially for me at this moment.

Well. I hope a few of you are still out there. Assuming the present state of affairs continues, I'll be back in a few days or early next week with -- well, we'll see. It may be a surprise, even to me.

Thanks, Regrets

Many thanks to those who responded with such generosity and kindness to my last plea for donations. I'm deeply grateful. For the moment, I don't have to worry about basic living expenses, which is an enormous relief.

Unfortunately, I have to report that my health has taken a severe turn for the worse. It's very bad, and it makes it almost impossible for me to do anything. Last week, I couldn't make it to the corner store. I got halfway there and had to turn around, make my way home very slowly, and then collapse into bed. I guess my condition merits calling 911, but my experience with all that and with the hospital a year ago was so incredibly awful, that I simply can't make the call until I'm convinced something very extreme is about to occur momentarily. It appears I haven't quite reached that point, although I suppose I might any time now. Of course, I have no means to access ongoing medical care, so now I wait to see what happens. Hopefully, I'll feel at least a bit better sometime soon.

I offer my gratitude once again, and I'll get back to writing as soon as I'm able. All good thoughts are appreciated. I'll keep you updated as I can.

Help Needed

I need some help in two areas. Once again, now that I've paid the March rent and a couple of other first of the month bills, I'm almost flat broke. And this time, I mean flat broke. In a little while, I'll go to the corner convenience store, to pick up a few staples (milk, eggs, bread, etc.). I'm posting this now because that errand will exhaust me for most of the rest of the day. Over the last several years, even that brief trip has become harder and harder for me to make. I have to rest two or three times in the course of walking a single block. That's what a worsening heart condition will do to you -- a rotten heart which steadily worsens in the complete absence of medical care, when I can't even afford basic heart medication (as I haven't been able to afford it for the last nine months, after the prescription from my last emergency hospital stay ran out). I remarked to a couple of friends earlier today that I have a particular reason for hating Andrew Breitbart: that bastard stole my heart attack. I sometimes fall into very black moods -- gee whiz, I simply can't imagine why, what with my superlative health and tens of thousands of readers eager for my every stray thought (hahaha) -- and a quick end to this extended misery seems enormously attractive. But I'm assured by mysterious powers that there is an unlimited supply of fatal heart attacks. Hope springs eternal, even for bloggers whose "significance" shades into invisibility.

After I buy those staples, I'll have about 50 bucks left. That's it. Since I'll need that 50 bucks to avoid starvation week after next, I won't be able to pay the internet bill that's due in nine days. Then, this exhilarating experience will be over. And to think I've been working on some complicated articles dealing with resistance movements, the particular factors that motivate the resister, the loss of perceived legitimacy in our government and the effects of that loss, and many related issues. I've been thinking about some of these articles for the last several years, and I briefly had been looking forward to publishing them at long last. Oh, well; sorry to disappoint the 30 of you who give half a crap. In any event, if a few of you care to make a donation, however small, perhaps my wondrous existence can be extended a bit longer. And I do offer my sincere thanks for your kindness, despite my current bleak mood. I suppose it will lift somewhat, as it has before. Or perhaps I'll be dead. Choices, choices.

But here's something that might cheer me up a bit, or at least give me an interesting project to think about (besides all those great essays that tens of thousands of people just can't wait to read). I've concluded that no one with a platform much larger than mine is interested in even discussing the suggestions I put forward here. I've also concluded that it was remarkably stupid of me to think that anyone who enjoys such a larger platform would do so. All of the "dissenting" writers who might have done so (all of whom belong to the type I call "The Obedient Dissenter") are very successful in the system as it currently exists. They enjoy lives of privilege and affluence (certainly in comparative terms, and often in absolute terms as well). Why on earth would they do anything to imperil the advantages they currently enjoy? It's extraordinarily rare for people to act in major ways against their own self-interest. And these "dissenters" are part of the Establishment. Yes, they push at the edges, but they do so within the limits of what the Establishment itself permits.

But that's not at all the idea behind my ad suggestion. My suggestion was conceived as a direct challenge to and attack on the Establishment, and particularly on the Establishment conception of the United States itself. We can't expect those who are part of the Establishment, even a "dissenting" part of it, to help us in this effort. Here, I use "we" to refer to those of you in my small audience who might want to advance my suggestions. And as I've often said in this connection, if you have different and/or better ideas, tell us about them! But with regard to the ad idea I came up with: is there anyone out there who's skilled in assembling videos and who would be interested in putting together a video along the lines I outlined? If there is, we can make the ad ourselves. I'll help to whatever extent I can. I've already written part of the script; I'll write the rest if a few other people with the needed skills come on board.

And when we have it made, we'll put it on Youtube. Then we'll drop links to it everywhere we can. And we'll see what happens. Could be interesting!

The vast majority of people in any time are simply dead weight, in the sense that they passively absorb ideas and attitudes from the culture in which they live. They sometimes will challenge one or two prevailing ideas; they almost never will systematically challenge -- and reject -- the prevailing ideas of their time in their totality. As part of this largely unquestioning acquiescence, most people wait for other people to do something. Even if they hope for significant change, they still wait for other people to bring it about.

To hell with all that. Let's try to do it ourselves, or at least start the process. If this particular project fails, so what? It's not as if we're headed toward Paradise in the absence of even trying to effect desperately needed change, on however small a scale. If we do nothing, it's more than likely that events will continue to get worse, possibly much, much worse. Trying to alter that course is not a cause for condemnation or ridicule (although critics will assuredly offer both reactions). Besides, I thought that trying to change events in this way was what some of you wanted to do. Maybe I was wrong about that, too.

Okay. There are two main ways in which I need some help. Over to you. Thanks for your time.

They Won't Stop Until There's No One Left to Kill

The awful Drudge links this:

The Pentagon is readying for the possibility of intervention in Syria, aiming to halt Syrian President Bashsar Assad's violent crackdown on protesters, the newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported Saturday, citing a US military offical.

According to the official, the intervention scenario calls for the establishment of a buffer zone on the Turkish border, in order to receive Syrian refugees. The Red Cross would then provide the civilians humanitarian aid, before NATO crews would arrive from Turkey and join the efforts.

The measure would pave the way for the US to declare an aerial blockade on Syria.

The intercession is to be modeled after NATO's efforts in Kosovo, which brought an end to the Serbian control of the region. NATO's plan of action included prolonged aerial shelling.

Therefore, a brief memo to all the intellectually incompetent and/or lying bastards who supported and propagandized for the intervention in Kosovo, or in Libya, or in ... at this point, fill in almost any country of your choice. And the memo states only this:

YOU HAVE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS, MOTHERFUCKERS.

"Modeled after NATO's efforts in Kosovo..."

"Oh, we did a wonderful, noble thing! We stopped a genocide!" No, you did not:

I've written about the Clinton administration's Balkans policy, in the second half of "Iraq Is the Democrats' War, Too," and in "Liberal Hypocrisy in the Name of 'Humanitarianism'."

I suppose it might be advisable to remind you that the major excuse employed to this day by many liberals to "justify" the bombing campaign -- "But a genocide was going on!" -- was a lie. Yes, it was a lie. Read Diana Johnstone's book, Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions, and read her article from February [2008], "NATO's Kosovo Colony." You should read the entire piece, but here are a couple of brief excerpts from the latter...

And about "the prospect of a ‘second Srebrenica’ or even ‘another Rwanda’ in Benghazi" that provided the excuse for regime change in Libya?

Also a lie.

In the present case, I do not doubt that the Syrian government is brutal and murderous, nor do I doubt that it is committing various atrocities. Nonetheless -- and I realize this is astounding and staggering news to many Americans -- whatever may be going on in Syria is no goddamned business of the U.S. government. And to believe at this perilously late date -- after more than a hundred years of slaughters around the world, in countless countries, leading to an immense pile of corpses that numbers in the millions -- that the United States government and its military are dedicated, to any extent whatsoever, to the exercise of brutality in the name of "humanitarianism" ... well. If we are talking about the limits of understanding, we need a word far stronger than "stupid." And if we're talking about lies ... then damn them to hell.

Speaking of murderous regimes and goddamned liars, this part of the story almost caused me to throw up:

In his most forceful words to date on the Syrian crisis, US President Barack Obama said Friday the US and its allies would use "every tool available" to end the bloodshed by Assad's government.

"It is time to stop the killing of Syrian citizens by their own government," Obama said in Washington, adding that it "absolutely imperative for the international community to rally and send a clear message to President Assad that it is time for a transition. It is time for that regime to move on."

It is Obama who claims the "right" to murder anyone in the world, including American citizens, whenever he chooses, for whatever reason he wishes. He further claims that his "right" is absolute, subject to no review or check whatsoever. This is the claim to absolute power.

And Obama has done it. He's ordered the murder of people for one reason alone: he decided to murder them.

So Mr. Obama, and I say this with all the respect you have earned: It's time for you to stop your own killing. It is time for you to move on.

Just get out. Leave. I don't give a damn where you go, just go away so that decent, civilized human beings never have to hear one more word from you.

I am forced to conclude that we are not dealing with a U.S. ruling class made up of genocidal murderers. We need an additional adjective: we're dealing with a U.S. ruling class made up of compulsive genocidal murderers. They won't stop until there's no one left to kill -- or until events force them to stop.

No such events appear to lie in the foreseeable future. This ends the news for Sunday evening.

The United States of Gary

When I was 11 or 12, I was stopped by one of the neighborhood kids as I walked home one day. Gary was in my grade; even at that age, I knew he was remarkably stupid. He was also much stronger than I was. Gary was very athletic; I was not. He had a sizable group of friends; I did not. I was overweight, and I knew -- everyone knew -- that I was "different" from most other kids in at least several ways. Gary and I had never had much to do with each other; that day, for some reason, he decided that he had some business to conduct with me.

"Where have you been?," he asked, in a manner suggesting I'd answer if I knew what was good for me. I told him I'd been at my piano lesson. He looked at me with a puzzled expression and thought about it for a moment or two. "I don't want you going to piano lessons any more." Gary said it as a simple declaration of fact: this is what he wanted, and it would happen. I looked puzzled in my turn; I wondered what on earth he meant. Gary noted my expression, and he took a step closer to me, his face tightening with distaste and disapproval. "You aren't going to any more piano lessons. If I catch you going to one, I'm going to beat the crap out of you."

I looked down at the ground without speaking. I couldn't make sense of what he was saying. I understood the words, but why did this have anything at all to do with him? Why did he even care? After a few moments passed and I still hadn't said anything in response, Gary said: "Do you understand what I'm telling you?" He was leaning into me by this time, and his threatening manner convinced me that the first beating would take place then and there if I didn't answer. "Yes," I said. "I understand." "Good," he replied. "No more piano lessons." And he turned back toward his house, dismissing me.

I didn't mention the incident to anyone. There was no one I could talk to about it, or about anything else that concerned or worried me. My parents treated me as an invisible child; if I wished to continue living in their house, my primary task was to never call attention to myself in any manner at all. I was absolutely never to have problems that required my parents' involvement. But I loved my piano lessons. I wasn't about to give them up, but I also knew that, if he chose, Gary could definitely beat the crap out of me. So I devised a few different routes to my piano teacher's house, routes where I thought it very unlikely that Gary's path and mine would cross.

I avoided my old route to piano lessons for several weeks, and I never met Gary. Then I grew annoyed, even angry, but my anger was primarily directed at myself and at the fact that I'd made even that much of a concession. I also concluded that Gary didn't actually care a great deal whether I went to my piano lessons. I saw him at school and in other places; he never mentioned it again. Without yet understanding the psychology involved, I sensed that Gary had delivered the threat simply because it pleased him in some manner to bully me that day. Then he forgot about it. He probably went on to bully other kids about other things. But he seemed to be done with me. So I went back to my old route, and I never met Gary on my weekly trips.

I have no idea what became of Gary. Sometimes I wonder if he joined the police, or the military. Bullies are frequently drawn to such professions, where they are provided official approval for their preferred behavior, where they are encouraged and invited to be bullies almost whenever they wish and whenever there is the slightest pretense of "justification."

Occasionally, I think of the United States government as Gary. They're both remarkably stupid, and they both derive enormous pleasure from telling others what they may and may not do. And they both deliver threats of destruction to be incurred by their victims if the victims dare to disobey them. To make the comparison more accurate, I imagine Gary holding a machine gun which he points at me. By his side is a large pile containing many more guns, together with a huge number of knives and other weapons. I also have to imagine that Gary has already murdered 10 or 15 neighborhood kids (or more), and no one has done anything to stop him. Gary murders whomever he wants, whenever he chooses. It's just the way things are in our town. Nobody questions it; it sometimes seems that no one even notices.

Here is a story from two weeks ago:

NATO-led forces in Afghanistan said on Monday they had mistakenly killed a group of children in an air strike that has enraged the government, and said their deaths may have been linked to an anti-insurgent operation in the area.

The air strike took place last Wednesday near the village of Giawa, in eastern Kapisa province, and followed similar bombings that have stoked tension between the government and NATO over a civilian death toll that has risen annually for five years.

The children were killed as NATO aircraft and ground forces attacked insurgents on open ground in the Najrab district of Kapisa, said Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, a spokesman for NATO’s 130,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

“At this point in our assessment we can neither confirm nor deny, with reasonable assurance, a direct link to the engagement. Nonetheless, any death of innocents not associated with armed conflict is a tragedy,” Brig. Gen. Jacobson told reporters.

Afghan government officials showed gruesome photographs of eight dead boys, and said seven of them had been aged between six and 14, while one had been around 18 years old. They were bombed twice while herding sheep in heavy snow and lighting a fire to keep warm, they said.

“Where were the rights for these children who have been violated? Did they have rights or not? Did they have rights to live as part of the world community?” said Mohammad Tahir Safi, a member of parliament sent by President Hamid Karzai to investigate the air strike.

This is only one of recent similar stories. These are the stories we know about. How many more stories like this are there, and that we will never know about? The necessary logic of the situation tells us there must be many such additional stories.

Last week, the New York Times published this story, written by Alissa J. Rubin. Remember that name. The story focuses on "protesters angry over the burning of Korans at the largest American base in Afghanistan this week." Almost at the end of the story -- how many readers follow the story almost to the end? -- we read:

Protesters in Kabul interviewed on the road and in front of Parliament said that this was not the first time that Americans had violated Afghan cultural and religious traditions and that an apology was not enough.

“This is not just about dishonoring the Koran, it is about disrespecting our dead and killing our children,” said Maruf Hotak, 60, a man who joined the crowd on the outskirts of Kabul, referring to an episode in Helmand Province when American Marines urinated on the dead bodies of men they described as insurgents and to a recent erroneous airstrike on civilians in Kapisa Province that killed eight young Afghans.

“They always admit their mistakes,” he said. “They burn our Koran and then they apologize. You can’t just disrespect our holy book and kill our innocent children and make a small apology."

Hotak pays NATO and the U.S. a compliment they have done nothing to deserve: "They always admit their mistakes." No, they most assuredly do not. But even if they did, Hotak's point stands. Murder is absolute and final. Apologies about murder are entirely without meaning. They may be of occasional interest in a work of fiction contemplating the delicate shades of conscience and spiritual regeneration. In the world of facts, and when the critical fact is the systematic commission of murder on a vast scale, apologies -- and most particularly "small" apologies -- are another wound. It is an especially awful and cruel wound, given that the murderer has no intention of stopping his murders.

The NYT story from four days ago excerpted immediately above -- the story by Alissa J. Rubin -- identifies the ongoing murders as a key factor in explaining the protests and riots in Afghanistan. Today, a mere four days later, in a story written by Graham Bowley and the same Alissa J. Rubin, we read:

Rioting continued across the country on Sunday as anger over the burning of Korans by the American military continued unabated, putting the relationship between Afghanistan and the United States on shaky new ground.

If we follow the story to the end -- yes, we read the entire story this time, too -- we see this theme reinforced and repeated:

About 4,000 protesters massed in the city on the sixth day of protests around Afghanistan since first reports of the Koran burning at another NATO base appeared last week.

And:

The Koran burnings and the subsequent unrest is complicating relations between the United States and the Afghan government at a time of critical negotiations...

Gone are references to the murders of eight Afghan boys, or to American Marines pissing on dead bodies. All "the subsequent unrest" is the result of "the Koran burnings."

This recasting of events is, of course, fully embraced by U.S. officials, as the latest NYT story indicates, again near the end of the article:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday expressed regret for the incident involving the Korans but said it should not derail the American military and diplomatic effort in Afghanistan.

“We are condemning it in the strongest possible terms,” she said in Rabat, Morocco, “but we also believe that the violence must stop, and the hard work of trying to build a more peaceful, prosperous and secure Afghanistan must continue.”

Clinton is not referring to "the violence" perpetrated by the U.S. and NATO. Loathsome person that she is, she refers to the violence of the "unrest" of the Afghan people -- "unrest," we are now implicitly (and often explicitly) told is entirely the result of the "primitive" beliefs of an "uncivilized" people.

Aside from the consequential fact that this rewriting of events that occurred within the last week is entirely false, this is a remarkably idiotic criticism for Americans to make. If we wish to speak of the "primitive" beliefs of an "uncivilized" people, let's instead talk about Americans' pathologically neurotic attachment to a piece of cloth. It appears that most Americans need to be reminded that it was not until 1989 -- 1989, you remarkably stupid people -- that the Supreme Court ruled that flag desecration is a constitutionally protected form of free speech. Moreover, the Supreme Court decision was five to four, not precisely an overwhelming majority opinion. In his dissent, Stevens wrote:

The ideas of liberty and equality have been an irresistible force in motivating leaders like Patrick Henry, Susan B. Anthony, and Abraham Lincoln, schoolteachers like Nathan Hale and Booker T. Washington, the Philippine Scouts who fought at Bataan, and the soldiers who scaled the bluff at Omaha Beach. If those ideas are worth fighting for - and our history demonstrates that they are - it cannot be true that the flag that uniquely symbolizes their power is not itself worthy of protection from unnecessary desecration.

Now that, baby, is primitive.

And a lot of Americans -- and a lot of legislators -- still hold these "primitive" beliefs with enormous enthusiasm. In protest against the Supreme Court decision in 1989, Congress almost immediately passed the Flag Protection Act. The Supreme Court stuck it down. The swollen ranks of "barbarian" Americans were still not done:

Congress has made seven attempts to overrule the U.S. Supreme Court by passing a constitutional amendment making an exception to the First Amendment in order to allow the government to ban flag desecration.

Thus, the United States of Gary: remarkably stupid, vicious, cruel, and murderous without end.

Here's a suggestion. If you wish to show your solidarity with the "primitive" and "uncivilized" people of Afghanistan -- and of Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, of Iran possibly in the near future, and many other countries around the world -- if you want to demonstrate that you choose to side with all those who protest the United States' unceasing drive to American global hegemony, get an American flag.

Set it on fire.

Never let it be said that we advocate irresponsible action. We would never want the fire to spread. So put it out.

Piss on the burning flag.

Everybody happy now?

When "Antiwar" Means "Start the Bombing!"

Given the attention it is receiving from those who are nominally opposed to the United States' foreign policy of criminal, aggressive war and intervention, it is understandable that unwary readers will view Peter Beinart's article, "The Crazy Rush to Attack Iran," as strongly opposed to an attack on Iran. And while Beinart's piece may very superficially appear to oppose such an attack, opposition of this kind is no opposition at all. And it is far worse than that: Beinart accepts the entire framework of those whose warmongering he criticizes, and he thus makes an attack on Iran more likely, not less. As I recently observed about a similarly flawed example of faux-dissent: "The propagandists in the media and in Washington are laughing with delight, for they could not ask for more. With opposition and dissent like this, they can begin the next war this afternoon, and nothing will stand in their way."

We'll begin where Beinart does, with his opening paragraph:

The debate over whether Israel should attack Iran rests on three basic questions. First, if Iran’s leaders got the bomb, would they use it or give it to people who might? Second, would a strike substantially retard Iran’s nuclear program? Third, if Israel attacks, what will Iran do in response?

Beinart's article is structured around the answers to these questions. It is a measure of the overwhelming intellectual bankruptcy of our public debate on this (and every other) question that I am compelled to state the following. Read the first question again: "First, if Iran's leaders got the bomb..." If. That is, this entire discussion focuses on a non-existent threat, on a threat that may never exist. With regard to this particular issue, at present and for the foreseeable future Iran represents no threat at all.

That necessarily leads to only one conclusion: to speak of an attack on a nation that represents no threat at all, is to speak of launching a criminal war of aggression. How can we further characterize a criminal war of aggression? We needn't look far for the answer, as I recently had occasion to note. As part of the script for an ad which hopefully would alert the somnolent American public to the true nature of an attack on Iran, I proposed this language:

After World War II, the U.S. was a key member of the Nuremberg Tribunal, which rendered judgment on the crimes of the Nazis. The Nuremberg Tribunal condemned Nazi Germany for waging aggressive war. It called aggressive war "essentially an evil thing," and said that "to initiate a war of aggression ... is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

It is no small historical irony that the U.S. and Israel now consider committing precisely the same heinous crime for which the Nuremberg Tribunal condemned the Nazi regime. Yet somehow Beinart fails to mention this indisputable and hugely significant fact in his analysis. In the rest of his article, Beinart purports to weigh various factors in deciding whether an attack on Iran is advisable in purely pragmatic terms -- but the fact that he is evaluating whether or not to commit the supreme international crime escapes his notice entirely.

If we were genuinely civilized in any meaningful sense, this failure of Beinart's would exclude his article and all similar articles from any and all further consideration. It is obscene to discuss whether committing the supreme international crime is, in effect, "a good idea under the circumstances." This is the perspective of murderers on a mass scale -- of murderers like the Nazis. This is where we are in America today.

There are several additional points to be made about Beinart's article, but I must stress that everything that follows is in the nature of a postscript. For the reasons I've just stated, I consider this entire discussion to be disgusting in a manner that defies description. And the quality of Beinart's analysis is exactly what you would expect from someone who is completely unaware that he is discussing the "advisability" of committing a heinous crime on an international scale.

Beinart is a well-known writer and commentator; he regularly analyzes national and international events. That might lead you to think that he would have formed some first-hand judgments, and that he would have exercised a minimal degree of intellectual independence. But if you think that -- about Beinart, or about any other well-known writer -- you would almost always be wrong. Beinart begins his analysis with a confession of impotence and ignorance: aw, shucks, I don't have "the expertise to answer" these goldanged important questions, I don't have "secret sources." How can you expect l'il ol' me to figure this stuff out? Fear not, for he has a solution to this awful dilemma: "we decide which experts to trust." And which "experts" does Beinart trust? "Experts" from American and Israeli "military and intelligence agencies."

I've written about this phenomenon at great length. Here is how I once summarized the key issues involved:

The continued insistence by virtually everyone on arguing about "intelligence" arises in large part from the reliance on authority that is drummed into all of us, usually beginning in early childhood. In Part II of "Fools for Empire," I set out several notable examples of what is wrong with relying on intelligence in the manner most people do. One of those examples is from Barbara Tuchman, and here's part of what she said (writing about Vietnam in The March of Folly):

The belief that government knows best was voiced just at this time by Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who said on resumption of the bombing, "We ought to all support the President. He is the man who has all the information and knowledge of what we are up against." This is a comforting assumption that relieves people from taking a stand. It is usually invalid, especially in foreign affairs. "Foreign policy decisions," concluded Gunnar Myrdal after two decades of study, "are in general much more influenced by irrational motives" than are domestic ones.

And in making the connection between that passage and how we are all taught to rely on authority and to obey, I wrote:

To connect Tuchman's argument to my ongoing discussion of the crucial significance of Alice Miller's work, I will rephrase Tuchman's statement, "This is a comforting assumption that relieves people from taking a stand...," as follows: Mommy and Daddy [and usually, especially Daddy] have special, secret knowledge that I can't possibly have or understand, since I'm just a kid. So when it comes to most things, and particularly when really big questions are involved, I have to do what they say. Mommy and Daddy know best. I have to obey them.

About "intelligence" specifically, I offer the following passage from -- let it be noted -- an article published on December 4, 2007, "Played for Fools Yet Again: About that Iran 'Intelligence' Report":

I therefore repeat my major admonition, and give it special emphasis:

NEVER, EVER ARGUE IN TERMS OF INTELLIGENCE AT ALL.

It is always irrelevant to major policy decisions, and such decisions are reached for different reasons altogether. This is true whether the intelligence is correct or not, and it is almost always wrong. On those very rare occasions when intelligence is accurate, it is likely to be disregarded in any case. It will certainly be disregarded if it runs counter to a course to which policymakers are already committed.

The intelligence does not matter. It is primarily used as propaganda, to provide alleged justification to a public that still remains disturbingly gullible and pliable -- and it is used after the fact, to justify decisions that have already been made.

In addition to "Played for Fools Yet Again," you can find these issues discussed in detail in "You, Too, Can and Should Be an 'Intelligence Analyst,'" and in the further articles linked in those two pieces.

An additional aspect of these problems must be mentioned, in connection with Tuchman's (and my) argument that reliance on authority amounts to nothing more than "a comforting assumption that relieves people from taking a stand." In the second part of "Fools for Empire," I wrote:

All of the facts concerning Iran's activities lie in plain sight in the public domain. Here's an additional fact: the same is true of the overwhelming majority of information that is allegedly so vital to intelligence work. That is not my contention; it is the observation of Ray McGovern, who worked for the CIA as an analyst.

Two examples from Beinart's article will demonstrate the validity of this argument. Beinart writes: "Start with the first question: whether Iran would be suicidal enough to use or transfer a nuke." I must add -- although Beinart does not -- that would be "a nuke" that exactly no evidence suggests even exists. Beinart then proceeds to answer the question from his fully prone position: he quotes several military and intelligence "experts" for the proposition that "Iran is a rational actor," that "Iran is unlikely to initiate or provoke a conflict,” and so on.

That's funny. That's exactly what I said in an article from May 2007 titled, "So Iran Gets Nukes. So What?" (ha! in fact, this excerpt is from an article almost one year earlier):

Once again, the decision is one of policy and judgment, and the intelligence will have nothing to do with it. Even if Iran had nuclear weapons in five or 10 years [or even sooner], many factors strongly argue against the likelihood that they would ever use them against the United States [or Israel]. There is no evidence to suggest that Iran's leaders are entirely suicidal: any attack that could be traced back to Iran would surely result in the large-scale destruction of that country. They know that, so do we, and so does everyone else. Given our current foreign policy of attacking and occupying any country on earth that our current leaders take a strong dislike to -- whether that country constitutes a threat to us or not -- it is hardly surprising that Iran and other nations want a nuclear deterrence of their own, to protect them from our lethal lunacy. Moreover, it is well-known, despite the fact that it is almost never mentioned in our polite political debates, that Israel has a very sizable nuclear arsenal. I should remind you that Israel is not a signatory to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, and that Iran is. If Iran and Israel both had nuclear weapons at their disposal, that might actually serve to stabilize the Middle East situation, and make a wider regional war less likely. This is not a complicated or controversial thought. It is blindingly logical and straightforward. (Obligatory point for the thinking-impaired: this is not to say that I view a nuclear Iran as a good thing. I don't view it as a remotely good thing that anyone has nuclear weapons, including us. [That is especially true, since we're the only country that has used them-- even when we did not have to, and even when we lied about the devastating human consequences.] I am simply suggesting that the results may not in fact be the End Times calamity that so many assume.)

I arrived at these conclusions -- almost six years ago -- not because I am some goddamned "expert." I made these judgments because I am a reasonably intelligent individual -- like you, and like Beinart (at least perhaps, at least at one time), I looked at the information available in the public domain, and I evaluated the evidence. In brief: I thought about it.

This is what Beinart resolutely refuses to do -- just as Taibbi refuses, just as virtually all public voices refuse to do. Beinart approaches the third question -- "the likely fallout" of an attack on Iran -- in the same manner. He trots out his beloved "experts," who declare that such an attack "would have a 'destabilizing' influence on the region." And: "Meir Dagan, who ran Mossad from 2002 to 2011, warned last year that attacking Iran 'would mean regional war, and in that case you would have given Iran the best possible reason to continue the nuclear program.'” Some of us have been saying all of this for years. In addition to the posts mentioned above, see here and here, as just two examples.

I emphasize again the critical importance of this issue: all of these conclusions are easily available to an "ordinary" individual -- an individual who educates himself to even a minimal degree about what information is publicly available, and then thinks about it. In addition to the overwhelmingly significant fact that you need "experts" for none of this, "experts" will always have agendas of their own, as well as agendas aligned with the institutions with which they are associated. When you choose to rely on military and intelligence "experts," you are asking for disaster. You are asking for the next war. Yes, these "experts" may be offering statements now that you think support the case for opposing an attack on Iran -- but what if they change their minds tomorrow? We don't need to imagine that they might decide to announce: "We just received this vital new intelligence report, with critical new data. We now conclude that Iran will have a nuclear bomb within a month unless we act right now. The bombing will commence tomorrow!" We've seen that scenario, on many more than one occasion in our history. It would appear that everyone has forgotten, or never noticed in the first place.

And Beinart and everyone who approaches these issues in the same way will have no answer. "We're just poor ignorant slobs," they declare. "We have to rely on the experts!" And the next war begins. But the principles some of us have identified over and over again, for many years, will not have changed. The determinations with regard to policy and judgment will not have changed. Yet the "experts" will once again declare that war is the only answer -- and those who so blithely resign themselves to following the dictates of authority will go along. They will obey.

The final obscenity in Beinart's endless string of obscenities is contained in his concluding paragraphs. He states that "I've never seen a more lopsided debate among the experts paid to make these judgments," and then laments:

And who are the hawks who have so far marginalized the defense and intelligence establishments in both Israel and the U.S.? They’re a collection of think-tankers and politicians, most absolutely sincere, in my experience. But from Rick Santorum to John McCain to Elliott Abrams to John Bolton, their defining characteristic is that they were equally apocalyptic about the threat from Iraq, and equally nonchalant about the difficulties of successfully attacking it. The story of the Iraq debate was, in large measure, the story of their triumph over the career military and intelligence officials—folks like Eric Shinseki and Joseph Wilson—whose successors are now warning against attacking Iran.

How can it be, less than a decade after the U.S. invaded Iraq, that the Iran debate is breaking down along largely the same lines, and the people who were manifestly, painfully wrong about that war are driving the debate this time as well? Culturally, it’s a fascinating question—and too depressing for words.

If the subject weren't so horrifying, this would be funny. Who was one of "the people who were manifestly, painfully wrong" about the Iraq war? That's right: Peter Beinart. I wrote about his sickening "regret" that the invasion and occupation of Iraq turned out to be "a tragic mistake" at some length: "The Abominables of The New Republic: Getting Away with Murder."

That Beinart neglects to mention his own role in this history points to the larger error he makes now. Beinart names people like Santorum, McCain, Abrams and Bolton, along with other "think-tankers and politicians" -- but these are not the people driving American policy on Iran. That policy is most significantly being driven by the Obama administration. It is the administration, that is, the executive branch of government, that determines Iran policy. And beyond that, it is the fully bipartisan policy directed toward American global hegemony that drives foreign policy with regard to Iran, and with regard to everything else throughout the world -- as I very recently discussed:

For this is the view of the ruling class: "America is God. God's Will be done."

What they want is dominion over the world. They intend to have it. In pursuit of this aim, as they believe the necessity arises, they will destroy anyone and anything that stands in their way. To describe their behavior as insane is to miss the much more critical point, and to minimize the far greater danger. They know exactly what they're doing. They're hoping that you do not. To date, far too many people oblige them.

But Beinart discusses none of this and fails to mention it even once. Since Beinart is incapable of even identifying the nature of American foreign policy and its goals -- a foreign policy and a set of goals that, in their fundamentals, are fully shared by Democrats and Republicans alike -- he is incapable of opposing it in any meaningful way. And the fact is that he does not oppose it, as his record makes balefully clear. This, coupled with his catastrophic reliance on "experts," means only one thing: when the winds change, when enough "authorities" and "experts" declare that their calculations have altered and that they now think several months of bombing runs over Iran will be "worth it," he'll follow their command. He will meekly agree with their edicts, doubtless with deeply touching "regret" and "reluctance." After all, who is he to question their "expertise" and their "special knowledge"? Once again, he will obey.

So I can only repeat what I said in concluding my analysis of Beinart in 2006:

Beinart and his fellow warlovers are filled with regret now, only because the devastation and horror are so immense they cannot be denied. But most Americans have an attention span measured in months and, in the very best case, perhaps a year. Moreover, the horrors of Iraq still have no reality for most Americans, least of all with regard to how those horrors affect Iraqis. To the extent they are aware of them at all, that awareness will fade quickly enough.

And then the stage will be set for the next war, and Beinart and his crowd will propagandize for it once more. For pity's sake, don't let them get away with it again. Remember, and I mean this literally: they will be getting away with murder.

Just as they did this time, and as they do every time.

Yet Another Appeal to Non-Existent Gods

A few years ago, in a series of posts about the economic unraveling of the United States, I cited Mike Whitney a number of times. Whitney was very perceptive about many aspects of what was happening and why. To put it informally: I'm predisposed to like the guy's writing.

But as the ruling class's grip on those who are not favored by wealth and power grows constantly tighter, as the ruling class throttles the little remaining life out of those of us struggling merely to survive, laments of this kind grow more and more wearisome. Whitney begins by describing the latest outrage:

Under the terms of the 50-state mortgage foreclosure settlement, US taxpayers could end up paying billions in penalties that were supposed to be paid by the banks. That’s the gist of a front-page story which appeared in the Financial Times on Thursday, February 17. The widely-cited article by Shahien Nasiripour notes that the 5 banks that will be effected [sic] by the settlement — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Ally Financial – will be able to use Obama’s mortgage modification program (HAMP) to reduce loan balances and “receive cash payments of up to 63 cents on the dollar for every dollar of loan principal forgiven.”

And that’s not all. If borrowers stay current on their payments after their loans are restructured, the banks could qualify for additional government funds which (according to the FT) “could then turn a profit for the banks according to people familiar with the settlement terms.”

How do you like them apples? Leave it to the bank-friendly Obama administration to turn a penalty into a windfall.

Whitney sets forth additional details of this scheme to make the wealthy and powerful still more wealthy and powerful, and then writes:

It’s also worth reviewing what this case is all about, which is industrial-scale fraud directed at millions of people whose lives have been ruined by the banks.

After explaining that "industrial-scale fraud" a bit more, Whitney states the question which appears to remain a burning concern for him:

So, why are we talking about “mortgage foreclosure settlements” instead of criminal prosecutions? Why hasn’t anyone gone to jail with evidence this compelling?

And he repeats the point in his concluding paragraph:

Forget about the mortgage-foreclosure settlement. It means nothing. Someone has to go to jail. That’s what matters.

The title of his article emphasizes the question: "Why Hasn't Anyone Gone to Jail?"

The question assumes that "the law" exists in a manner separate and independent from particular actors in our corporatist-authoritarian system of government -- that "the law" will in some unspecified manner root out wrongdoing and punish it. That particular assumption will reliably be found in fifth-grade civics textbooks. It has no place in discussions conducted by adults about politics in the real world.

To conceive of "the law" in the fashion Whitney does is to embrace the State's own propaganda. As I have recently discussed with regard to this entirely false conception, "The Law Is a Lie." This brief passage from another recent post is to the same effect:

For the ruling class, "the rule of law" isn't a means of protecting you or your liberty. It's a means of enforcement, a critical way of protecting their own power and wealth.

This particular example of State propaganda goes back to the founding of the United States, as I pointed out several months ago:

What killed "democracy" in America? What gave the government over to the wealthy and powerful?

The Constitution. Of course.

The American Change in Management (formerly known as the "American Revolution," and we should work to make that "formerly" an actuality in usage) surely ranks as one of the more effective propaganda triumphs in history.

...

The Constitution created a government of, by and for the most wealthy and powerful Americans -- and it made certain (insofar as men can make such things certain) that their rule would never be seriously threatened. The most wealthy and powerful Americans were the ones who wrote it, after all.

After a lengthy discussion of these issues, that post set forth two examples of invocations just as futile and pointless as Whitney's: Chris Hedges' plea for "a return to the rule of law," and Glenn Greenwald's entirely erroneous claim that the law "has been completely perverted." I briefly explained why both those writers were fundamentally mistaken:

What we have today is the rule of law -- the rule of law as conceived and implemented by the ruling class. As is true of the State itself, the law will always be conceived and implemented by someone -- and those who conceive and implement it will be those who have the most power. This should not be a difficult point to grasp, certainly not for those who regularly write political commentary.

The law has not been "perverted." The truth is exactly the opposite. "The law" is serving the precise function for which it was designed -- to serve, in Greenwald's own words, as "a weapon used by the most powerful to protect their ill-gotten gains, strengthen their unearned prerogatives, and ensure ever-expanding opportunity inequality." This is what history tells us repeatedly, as set forth in Bouton's book and other books on the same theme.

Moreover, this must be true if we are talking about "the law" of any State at all. (See "The State and Full Spectrum Dominance" and the detailed discussion here, as well.) It is again the most obvious point that seems to remain entirely invisible: The State and "the law" will always be devised and implemented by those with the most power: that is why they are devising them and not you. To expect the powerful to erect a system that will strip them of every advantage they possess fails to comport with the lengthy testimony of history, or indeed with human nature itself.

I recently set forth some ideas about how those of us opposed to the criminality of an attack on Iran might fight against the massive wall of propaganda erected by the State and its willing enablers in the media (and its perhaps unwitting enablers, as well). I will take this opportunity to suggest that a similar campaign could be devised to take a message directly to the American public about the actual nature of "the law," and how "the law" is used by the ruling class to make itself ever more wealthy and powerful, and to systematically impoverish, brutalize and destroy the rest of us.

But it appears that no one who enjoys a platform with a large audience is interested in advancing my suggestions in a way that might lead to the realization of a campaign of that kind -- as well as to the further possible results that I described. I was trying to help, but I now think that I myself was quite foolish.

We all tend to cling to fables that give us hope, however faint it may be. I think I should be prepared to give up mine. I still have hope, but it's of a very different kind and lies in another direction, as I'll be discussing soon.