The United States of America, the world’s greatest force for good, has lately been using drones to bomb the crap out of Muslims in the Middle East. Drones are especially convenient tools because they are light, maneuverable, and unmanned. The government — the government that works for me, and you (if you’re an American), and does what it does for your benefit — has only increased the number of drones it’s used in those areas in which it is fighting kinetic military actions.

Some people have expressed concern that these drones that we’re using to bomb the crap out of Muslims aren’t only hitting those that our government has deemed to be the *bad* ones. Official numbers are difficult to come by, because they don’t exist, but some have estimated that, well, a significant number of innocent, non-terrorist Muslims, have been killed in drone strikes.

Well, the Associated Press has used some impressive journalism to discover that those people are full of beans. They have convincingly shown that drone bombing the crap out of Muslims is actually a pretty efficient way to conduct a war, so you can stop worrying about that and concentrate on presumably more important issues, like, you know, contraception. And yesterday they helpfully released the fruits of that journalism:

“[A]n AP reporter who spoke to about 80 villagers at the sites of the 10 attacks in North Waziristan, the main sanctuary for militants in Pakistan’s northwest tribal region along the Afghan border, was told that a significant majority of the dead were combatants.
Indeed, the AP was told by the villagers that of at least 194 people killed in the attacks, about 70 percent — at least 138 — were militants. The remaining 56 were either civilians or tribal police, and 38 of them were killed in a single attack on March 17, 2011.”

See? Nothing to worry about. Only about 30% of the people who are being drone bombed aren’t militants. Of course, we have no way of knowing how many of that 30% had it coming for whatever reason. Maybe some of them had meth on them at the time.

I really want to congratulate this intrepid AP reporter. This person spoke to “about 80 villagers.” That is 80 more than none at all, so you know that he got some amazing insights. I mean, those 80 “villagers” are right there on the front lines, so to speak. They have the full view of what’s going on. They should know.

Also, kudos for showing more than one side to this complicated story:

But the civilian deaths in the covert CIA-run program raise legal and ethical concerns, especially given Washington’s reluctance to speak openly about the strikes or compensate the families of innocent victims.

It’s kinda quaint to still have qualms over a program that’s efficient enough that a full 80% of its hits (probably) strike our “enemies.” I mean, war isn’t exactly an exact science. Neither is journalism for that matter. You work with what you got. I think it was George Orwell who said, “Don’t let the enemy of the perfect get in the way of doing what you know is good,” or something like that. I might be misquoting it and I might have gotten the wrong attribution but I’m fairly confident that I got it 80% correct, so I’ll just leave it.

Anyway, if you’re one of those people with “legal and ethical concerns,” let no less an authority than the president of the United States himself put you at ease:

The drone program is so secretive that only last month did Obama publicly acknowledge its existence. He said the strikes “have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties,” but gave no details.

Who needs “details” when you’ve got reassurances like that? So the next time some worrywart tries to guilt you over civilian drone bomb deaths, you just give them the response of your mathematically sensitive leader. After all, this is the same sensitive president who apologized for that whole Koran burning thing.

And, by the way, on the very same day that the Associated Press released its in-depth report on our drone bombing the crap out of Muslims policy, they also released an insightful story on the “mainstreaming” of drones.

They’re coming to America!

Those things that don’t cause “a huge number of civilian casualties” will soon be flying over your head. And you might not even be a Muslim.

“Civilian cousins of the unmanned military aircraft that have tracked and killed terrorists in the Middle East and Asia are in demand by police departments, border patrols, power companies, news organizations and others wanting a bird’s-eye view that’s too impractical or dangerous for conventional planes or helicopters to get.”

It’s kinda fun to think about these new drones as “cousins” of the “military aircraft that have tracked and killed terrorists.” Can you imagine what that family reunion is like? “Oh, Droney, why can’t you be more like your cousin Milly? He’s out killing terrorists with 80% efficiency, while you’re out just flying around, looking for cows in the middle of nowhere!”

Cowsearchers are only one use for these new drone cousins:

“Potential civilian users are as varied as the drones themselves.
Power companies want them to monitor transmission lines. Farmers want to fly them over fields to detect which crops need water. Ranchers want them to count cows.”

Doesn’t that sound awesome? But what’s even more awesome is that your new drone cousins will be working hard to help keep you safe:

The hungriest market is the nation’s 19,000 law enforcement agencies.
Customs and Border Patrol has nine Predator drones mostly in use on the U.S.-Mexico border, and plans to expand to 24 by 2016. Officials say the unmanned aircraft have helped in the seizure of more than 20 tons of illegal drugs and the arrest of 7,500 people since border patrols began six years ago.

It’s hard to believe that anyone might be opposed to this, especially after learning of military cousin drone’s 80% accuracy rate. And yet, the AP gives space to the concerns about this amazing technology:

A recent ACLU report said allowing drones greater access takes the country “a large step closer to a surveillance society in which our every move is monitored, tracked, recorded, and scrutinized by the authorities.”

Ooh, that does sound scary. “Surveillance society.” Should someone who’s not doing anything wrong be concerned? Only as concerned as you are about the Muslims we’re drone bombing out in the Middle East.

“Today anybody— the paparazzi, anybody — can hire a helicopter or a (small plane) to circle around something that they’re interested in and shoot away with high-powered cameras all they want,” said [Dan] Elwell, the [Aerospace Industries Association's vice president for civil aviation]. “I don’t understand all the comments about the Big Brother thing.”

See? A paparazzi hiring a helicopter to fly him around so he can shoot photos of Kim Kardashian’s wedding is exactly the same as each of the 19,000 law enforcement agencies using one of those little hummingbird-sized cousin drones to peek in the window of someone that they just got a tip might be running a meth lab in his bathroom.

What? Are you all of a sudden worried about Kim Kardashian’s privacy?

Recently I started a daily ritual of watching Euronews after dinner. I’m not sure why I find the channel so absorbing, as when I actually lived in Europe I found it incredibly dull. And not dull in a smug, irritating BBC way but just… soul-crushingly boring, as is characteristic of anything that begins with the chilling prefix “Euro-”. Perhaps it’s only now, after years spent in a land where the news is delivered exclusively by pompous, Botoxed egomaniacs that I can appreciate the channel’s relatively understated style. Or then again, maybe I’m just digging the stuff I can see in the backgrounds.

Consider for instance Euronews’ reporting on Greece. It seems obvious that the country’s economy is doomed and that the latest raft of bailouts amount to just more money tossed on a bonfire. I mean, haven’t they tried that already? And how many times? Well, whatever. As a result, each report on Greece blurs into the last one, like some weird kabuki play in which the cast lifelessly perform their allotted roles over and over again. They show us some ugly people in suits sitting in a room in Greece looking sad; then some irritated Germans in suits laying down a new set of conditions for the miserable Greeks; then some depressed looking Greeks standing in the street talking about their feelings of powerlessness. Occasionally a fight breaks out. It feels like it’s been going on for forever.

Since it’s essentially the same set of ritual gestures repeated ad nauseam, I recently stopped listening to the dialogue and started studying the scenery in the backgrounds. Now that was interesting. I mean, have you noticed how rubbish Athens looks? It’s just a bunch of shabby, concrete buildings, crumbling roads and duff cars- and that’s the birthplace of Western Civilization! Incredible! Even the ruins of the Acropolis look decrepit and sad, completely lacking in the dilapidated grandeur you find in Rome.

Inspired by my Greek revelation, I was soon ignoring the content of the actual reporting whatever the country, and paying much more attention to the environments in the background. As a result I’ve made some interesting discoveries, foremost among which is how sad and tired the world looks, like Athens, only worse.

Last night for instance I saw a report on the latest futile attempt to stop the violence in Syria. Unhappy people were lining up for aid in a landscape of dust and shabby concrete. Of course, Syria, like Athens, should have its fair share of amazing structures and ruins. But wherever they are they clearly don’t impinge much on people’s lives. According to Euronews, the Syrians endure a fear-filled existence filled with rubbish and mediocrity. Senegal is even worse: this week Euronews reported from the country several times, where many people are angry over the geriatric president’s declared intent to run for a third term in office, in defiance of the country’s constitution. The angry Senegalese were rioting in a variant of the concrete-and-dust landscape I saw in Syria, only even more run down, amid a preponderance of hand-painted signs. At least the weather was nice.

I have also learned something very surprising about Iran: there are no mosques in the revolutionary Shiite theocracy. No, seriously, when I watch images from Tehran, all I see are cheap cars on dusty roads and dismal low-rise concrete apartment buildings, plus the occasional fuel rod being inserted into a nuclear reactor. The only major structure in the country appears to be that weird arch thingy they show as an establishing shot in every report, which I assume is a monument to some martyrs or other. Or possibly the occulted 12th Imam, who knows?

Of course not all the world is full of poor people living amid dust and concrete. Rio de Janeiro is a big alley inhabited by exuberant samba dancers wearing bejeweled bikinis and bright feathers. Brussels is a clinical Science Fiction dystopia of glass and steel populated entirely by pallid zombies. Reports from France can’t quite conceal the elegance of the buildings in the background, while all of the former USSR consists of a series of holes in the ice in which naked people are swimming.
Pakistan meanwhile doesn’t appear to have any buildings at all, but is instead an enormous crowd of angry people who are always shouting about something. Last week it was Saint Valentine’s Day: a group of women shrouded in black were burning a love heart and shrieking about the evils of this pernicious infidel holiday while some thuggish chaps with beards looked on approvingly. A week later a much bigger group of women had gathered and they were even angrier, protesting about their lack of rights. My sympathies were with the latter assembly, but I empathized with both groups of women. They were alike the victims of the chaps with beards, even if the aforementioned gentlemen only appeared to be lurking in the background, at the edges of vision.

Originally published by RIA Novosti, the home of awesome

Gore Vidal is not the chronicler but the fictionalizer of American history. The twin capitals of the nation warranted titles of their own, in his estimation. The one was Washington DC. The other was Hollywood. I ascribe not even the tarnished Golden State as the residence of Hollywood. Instead this bucolic appellation that once meant a modest agricultural hamlet now describes an ethereal thoughtscape that hovers above and beyond terrestrial boundaries. Hollywood rests on a state of mind, not a mere State of the Union as the existence of Bollywood and other imitators attests. It is a factory town and it’s one produce is Dreams. Tony Montana was well advised. “Don’t get high on your own supply.” Mark Wahlberg should have listened.

You know this cat, he is the guy who is not Matt Damon. In the more civilized days after Disco he earned fame as the original B-boy in Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. But the honorable trades of break dancer and white rapper were not enough, the music industry could not fulfill his ambitions. Perhaps he thought so or perhaps some headhunter came and got him. In any case he has been knighted and raised to the Peerage through chiseled abs and skillful coaching. If he isn’t the King of Hollywood today his elevation only awaits a dagger thrust into George Clooney. His realm is the Action Movie and I must admit, this has had appeal for me. Among explosions that kill and disrobe most meticulously Wahlberg has leapt and grunted through my living room as much as the next fellow. Foolishly I allowed myself to be persuaded through the miracle of casting and screen writing that he truly was a sensible Everyman, perhaps the better to believe that I might also skillfully rob with the Mini Cooper as my weapon and gain the devotions of Mila Kunis. But that is their BUSINESS out in Hollywood. Mark Wahlberg should know as much about movies as Lee Iacoca knows about cars especially as he has much more to do with daily production. It seems though that Wahlberg has begun to believe his own highlights reel. He has bought his own press. He has gotten absurdly high on his own supply and we know this because he believes that 911 was a blockbuster from 2001 in which he, sadly, was not cast. Men’s Journal has the scoop.

“If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn’t have went down like it did. There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, ‘OK, we’re going to land somewhere safely, don’t worry.’”

That’s his re-write. Not bad, huh? He doesn’t try to get himself cast as Todd Beamer. That is thinking small. Rather he writes himself in, playing himself and allows Beamer not even a supporting roll, much less the rest of the passengers and crew who, somehow, managed to hold a plane-wide vote on their actions. And he doesn’t save the day simply by crashing the plane that had been commandeered into jihad as a flying bomb; oh no! He leads the whole planeload of grateful extras to a safe harbor, perhaps in a Shanksville field or perhaps in Atlantic City, after which they take Trump’s casino for a grillion!

We cut the Hollywood hero a bit of slack. He was, after all, scheduled to board some 911 flight that day (which one is unclear), if only that Toronto film festival hadn’t popped up, how different history would have been! The more friendly venues where this story appears imply that Mark of Hollywood suffers PTSD, that is Pre-traumatic Stress Syndrome, or maybe HTSD, Hypo-thetical Stress Syndrome. Lucky for him and the jihadis that he was able to charter a plane that fateful day but unlucky for America. And he has apologized. We’ll give that equal billing with the original flubb.

“To speculate about such a situation is ridiculous to begin with. I deeply apologise to the families of the victims that my answer came off as insensitive, it was certainly not my intention.”

Now THAT is an apology! Clearly it has come from a PR team and was funneled through legal unlike the original offense which, by the way, was not all that original. Wahlberg said something quite similar in 2006 and this one specifically states it was Flight 93 so his statement…

“We certainly would have tried to do something to fight. I’ve had probably over 50 dreams about it.”

at least implies that no one did, in fact, do any fighting. Ah, but Marky has dreamed about it, now THAT I believe! But the guy, unsurprisingly, is having some trouble separating his dreams from our reality and friends, that is where the Hollywood/Washington axis runs.

In the same way the infantile Mr. Wahlberg believes, oh, if only I were there…. likewise does the political animal of any persuasion resoundingly know in his heart that if only HE were elevated, if only HE were entrusted, if only, gosh dern it, people would just LISTEN! then all would be well. Not just the individual beast believes this but our elected class as an institution does likewise. Most of the “partisan” division is illusory. In full Wahlberg style, Ron Paul believes that if he were at the helm of state 911 itself would never have happened as America would have been happily indifferent to the world and the jihadis therefore happily indifferent to us. Mr. Obama believes much the same, or did before he was in charge except he takes it further, saying we might have befriended the market bombers and honor killers; replacing their grievances with friendships. We have given peace a chance however. It’s poor results have been chalked up to older animosities like the fall of the Ottomans, the kindly predecessors to Mubarak and bin Laden. Boner and Ryan and Newt and Mitt all agree with Obama and his Democrats that a leading position in both your retirement and your medical decisions must be reserved for government. Does the simple observation that not a dime can be returned in benefits that was not first taken from a beneficiary crack the consensus? Oh no. If one is not convinced that there is a moral imperitive, based on metaphysical equality that demands the nationalization of all things important, then there is the pseudo-business rational that we have economies of scale in our giant government projects that cannot be duplicated. No one can be found to say, the actuaries have spoken and the whole enterprise is doomed; a simple truth. No failure or depravity of any sort wounds the happy comity; not a rate of fraud in Medicare that outstrips all profit in medicine seven fold; not an explosion in applicants simultaneous with a collapse in funding. No, if these aren’t the work of malcontents and enemies they are cyclical fluctuations, sometimes known as “luck”. We can still sell bonds. We can still print money. We shall shortly return to vigorous growth giving us time to work out the bugs and once we do there will be Happy Endings for all. This is the firm conviction of all these waistcoated muckies who examine their manicures in First-class and know they lack only the opportunity to show their greatness. There is a reason that politics is known as Showbiz for the Ugly. It is a state of affairs our limited government was designed to keep to a dull roar but the semi-venerated papers were never enough. The drafters assumed at least a bit of skepticism on the part of America at large. We know (if he does not) that Mark Wahlberg cannot leap and fart and shoot with any accuracy simultaneously even though we may enjoy seeing that at the movies. Gravity is not subject to over-cranking nor time to time lapse photography. How can we then accept that printing money creates wealth? Or that unemployment makes jobs? Or that taxes can provide MORE than they cost? 

Simple, there is a giant industry that produces those illusions. We collude in both the Hollywood and Washington games with the Willing Suspension of Disbelief and oodles of straight cash. The only solution lies in the resolution that neither of these dream factories have anything we cannot live without. We can realize that on our own or in short order it will become a literal and unavoidable fact. In the case of Washington, the checks will bounce. In the case of Hollywood, the tickets will go unsold. Both are happening now though those who live by make-believe refuse to grasp it.

A tsunami of outrage has swept the nation and the globe. Another crime has been catalogued, another provocation that threatens to stir benevolent goatherds to strike at jumbo jets, of which they are pastorally ignorant. We speak of the ritual desecrations committed by American troops as they relieved themselves on a pile of defenseless, deceased, Taleban jihadis. A cry goes up that piss has no place in war. Patton would disagree but we need no more to rubbish the assertion than to recall that those who think piss has no place in war likewise think blood can be excised from it. That scrum includes, among other bigwigs, a young candidate for President who thought “smart diplomacy” a sound replacement for smart bombs. I wonder whatever became of that guy? But we have no time for trivia as the wars, under whatever management, have continued at least through this morning.

So where does this piss come from? Anatomical answers are not what we seek. Clearly the Marines on the block are humans and therefore need to express their bodily fluids. That they also express a contempt for their enemy, well, might be objectionable on grounds of decorum but hardly on principle. We may shoot, beat, burn, stab, irradiate, defenestrate and entomb; either from afar or at close quarters but we must spare our dedicated antagonists the indignity of a post-mortal golden shower? In Vegas that would cost them plenty so we might, as Michelle Obama declared her daughters to be “senior staff” so to get their travel expenses covered, re-jigger our definitions, declaring the impromptu baptism a bit of cultural outreach. If that modus proves inoperable, let us then claim that, as with Admiral Ossama’s respectful burial at sea, we are adhering to local customs. The Believer deserves a vigorous washing upon death, the better to make a good impression on his promised virgins. Nearly sterile, bonafide American piss is probably the most powerful disinfectant known to these dusty tribesmen. Is the odor offensive? Only relatively, friends. Only relatively.

But there is a practical foundation for the carping. The urination will inflame and enrage the Arab Street, that famously placid avenue. This forgets some crucial facts. As alluded, the Arab Street is already aflame. It has been for years beyond counting. Will some new Abdullah join the fight hearing of this insult to his people? Oh, probably. Also will some other be discouraged, not wanting to walk the seven scimitars in a foul state; not wishing to take a chance that the touch of a kaffir’s whizz might, like pigs blood or dog saliva, be a disqualifying pollution. Yes, this was an insult but a piddling one. Of greater weight to these rustics who deal with piss and shit, human and otherwise routinely in their daily rounds is the publication of insulting cartoons, the aviation of assaulting drones and the big one, which is the stubborn respiration of the Unbeliever. Most likely, this means you.

If we must consider the ignition of that which is already on fire, shall we not also consider what provocations Our Boys might have suffered? So we must but first let me insert the adamant accusation of a friend of mine who should know, that almost certainly these pishers were NOT the warriors who ventilated our absorbent foes. Rather he thinks this video and the actions depicted reveal the Rear Echelon Mother-f****r on a jaunt outside the wire. The REAL killers are unseen, having retired to clean their weapons and stalk their next prey. Whether or not that is the case we do recognize that, barring an error, the pissees were lately sending something more substantial than fluid in the pissers’ direction. A firefight had just concluded from which the Talib had the worst of it. If they had instead enjoyed a rare success, what respect would have been shown OUR dead? We know by precedent. Even worse would have been the treatment of any prisoner which they take only to behead as opposed to shipping them off to a resort in the Carribean.

“But we are Americans!” is the objection. We are better than these savages. This is heard most loudly from those who, when over seas, instead declare that they are Canadians. Still we must answer the complaint. Yes, indeed we ARE superior to these rag-bags. These are the fellows who vote with market bombs, who behead little girls for the crime of seeking literacy. Even if we don’t assign them culpability for 911, the ancient insult, still we must acknowledge that as a practical matter, if our Marines were not there absorbing IEDs and mortar rounds, the agglomeration of goat-ravishers that committed those attacks will quickly reconstitute.

Oh but it is not just our enemies who are offended but also our allies! Why should that be? According to the doctrines agreed upon in Islamabad, Kabul, Baghdad and lesser islands of sophistication, these cats are not believers anyhow but rather are kaffiri themselves. Why? Because, as W and O have both explained, jihad is not a violent concept at all. Rather the term describes a journey of self-analysis and meditation, much like Rolfing. The practitioners of ambush and decapitation are defaming Islam with their heresy. There are fatwas to that effect, go and see. If this is the case, what matters a bit of disrespect on the carcasses which also, as unlawful belligerents, are outside the protection of the Geneva Accords? Is the society that stones not just willing adulterers but also rape victims grown so particular? And if they have, clearly their account is already over drawn. While the christening of bodies is not explicitly prohibited (though it probably is now) we have already accepted PREsciptions on defecation. This is NOT to be towards Mecca or else it is an unforgiveable sacrilege. We know this because there is not an outhouse in the Umma that points to Mecca or else it is razed like a Buddhist statue. Whether the demand is that your nose or your tail point away, I cannot find, but still the rule obtains over our fellows on the line.

Let us stipulate that, like ancient Rome, for reasons of practical politics we should be as unlikely to give insult as to absorb it. Still this leaves much wiggle room into which a Marine’s gun might fit. For we DO take insults daily and repeatedly, do we not? Recall the Ground Zero Mosque, still unbuilt due to the divinely baroque corruption of New York real estate developers, but clearly concieved as a strategic insult. This was one we are prepared to accept given our stated principles of liberty but that does not change the obvious fact of its triumphalism. We also absorb much more explicit insults. Even WITHIN America there are demonstrations that declare, ah, Death to America! And our police, military, firefighters, paramedics… not to mention non-government actors like the ACLU and various councils of churches… act to protect and aid these protestors, protesting the nation many have fled to to avoid murder at the hands of their former states or neighbors. The plunking of a frozen pig head in among praying believers has resulted in apprehension and prosecution of the plunker. Has there been a riot, pogrom or any public agitation against that? Nope. Nor should there be but the assassination of Ossama bin Laden, the proud mastermind of the 911 attacks produces upheaval in Karachi which, ostensibly, is home to our allies in the hunt. Are we not insulted by that? This does not even address the universal celebration in the Muslim world of the murders at the Towers, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania which continues on shirts and all other media to this very day.

So we trade in insults. We traffic in them. And not just internationally. Andres Serrano made his name a household one with a simple bit of desecration. Famously he immersed a plastic Jesus in urine, photographed it and launched into historic stardom. We are informed it was not merely colored water but HIS urine though tests were never conducted. This bit of bathroom humor was raised by its depravity to the level of Performance Art. Our giddy acceptance of it as such was the mark of the enlightened being back in the Age of Reagan when this occurred. Since then we have also had the elephant dung Mary and numerous immitators. These are all secularly holy acts of self-expression, clearly celebrations of the First Amendment whatever you think of the materials and implications. Yet there exists a protected class. Of course it is Islam. The mohammed cartoons sparked riots across the globe but more unexpectedly the riots sparked self-censorship that is patently with us today. Perhaps this could be a laudable exercise in restraint but the jihadis and the Muslim world at large do not see it so. Rather the willingness to take public insult; cultural and political as well as eccumenical is percieved as a sign of mortal weakness. We are a paper tiger or in Osamma’s famous declaration, the weak horse.

That erroneous supposition must be overcome militarily if we do not overcome it in some other fashion, to the detriment of both our own armed forces and the young, misguided Taliban who make unholy war against them, on this, the battlefield of bipartisan designation. So let us have two, three… indeed many Piss Mohammeds as we have serial Piss Christs. Let the Muslim population learn that insults are a part of life and insults to one’s religion, a part of life at Liberty, something any Jehovah’s Witness could tell you.

Recently, a video surfaced showing what appears to be United States military personnel urinating on what appear to be corpses. The video is shocking, so I would prefer not to embed it here. If you want to see it, you can click on the image of president Obama below:

Reaction has been justifiable shock and anger, especially from people in our government. Leon Panetta, the politician who runs the defense department, said,

“I have seen the footage, and I find the behavior utterly deplorable… I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”

Hillary Clinton, the politician who runs the state department, said,

“Anyone found to have participated or known about it, having engaged in such conduct, must be held fully accountable.”

…

“The United States remains strongly committed to helping build a secure, peaceful, prosperous, democratic future for the people of Afghanistan, and we will continue to support efforts that will be Afghan-led and Afghan-owned to pursue the possibility of reconciliation and peace.”

This is not the America that I love, and the actions of those soldiers do not represent America. Urinating on corpses is not an American ideal. We do not urinate on corpses. That is wrong. America stands for much more than that.

In America, we send drones to kill and mutilate thousands of people in foreign countries every year. In America, we have a politician who uses his best discretion to decide when and where to start wars, which aren’t actually wars anyway they’re kinetic military actions. In America, that same politician decides, based on evidence that only he has access to, when to kill Americans overseas. In America, we send our forces into other countries to kill the people we deem to be enemies of our ideals. In America, we promote a global war on drugs that kills thousands of people every year. In America, we supply guns to drug lords in other countries, where more than thirty people are murdered every day. In America, we use subterfuge to undermine countries who do not share our ideals. We do this behind an almost impenetrable wall of secrecy; and when that wall of secrecy is breached, we swiftly punish the responsible parties to discourage its ever happening again. These are the things America stands for; they are part of our social contract.

The world is not our toilet. We do not urinate on corpses. That is just wrong. It is un-American.

Jerry Harvey, expert on management dysfunction and organizational behavior, has a classic finding called The Abilene Paradox. Basically, it discusses our inability to deconflict — agreement. We may all “want to do X but there are hidden voices saying, We should do Y because…” His story involves the disruption of a family afternoon in north Texas in the summer because his mother in law figured that he and his wife were probably bored. This resulted in a four hour car trip over beat up roads in a beat up, unairconditioned car to a Rexall Drug Store and Lunch Counter in Abilene. It was hot, it was dusty, it was a lot like the Texas in The Last Picture Show. When they finally got home and collapsed in the living room, there was dead silence punctuated by gas and burps from that fine Rexall Lunch Counter cusine for about 45 mintues. As Harvey tells the story, realizing that he was a trained social scientist with a PhD in Organizational Psychology and Behavior, felt compelled “to make a behavioral intervention.” So, he said, “That was fun now, wasn’t it?” To which his father-in-law responded by looking at him and visibly questioning the wisdom of letting his daughter marry this clown and then saying as only someone who’s from Texas or at least spent a lot of time there can say it, “SSSSHHHEEEEIIITTTT –that was awful.” The family did a post mortem, and when their reasoning got exposed — Momma thought the kids were bored and wouldn’t want to eat left overs, the kids didn’t want to deny Momma anything, Papa wasn’t going to push back against eveyone else so…the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and in the early 70s, the road to Abilene was paved with kind thoughts and care for other people’s feelings. Book is a classic, and I recommend it to anyone — Harvey is one of my heroes along with Keith Richards, Guy Clark and Kierkegaard.

I am drawn to this example today as we observe the final drawdown of US Forces in Iraq and the casing of the colors… Although we were not militarily defeated and did eliminate a crazed dictator, in a very large sense this was a strategic if not ontological defeat for the United States. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq may rank historically with Cyrus invading Greece, Hitler Russia or Lee Pennsylvania.

This war was a terrible idea as a use of blood, power, treasure and time. Our soldiers performed incredibly well — the average enlisted guy in Vietnam served one tour of 11.5 months. Once. In World War II and Korea, once you got there, you stayed until you couldn’t fight anymore but there were long lulls between battle and fear. But in Iraq, it was never quiet, never safe, never secure, never lulled — every day, anywhere, was a day in combat. Everybody hated you, and if they didn’t, you figured that there was something wrong with them. As I talked to our kids returning from this cauldron, the general theme echoed one I heard from a British Peacekeeper in 1994 — “They’re all guilty bastards.”

Were there problems? Hell yes; war is nothing but problems. This one was fought so poorly that it makes you wonder if Rumsfeld, Cheney and Tommy Franks had bet against at some British bookies…their ignorance, stupidity and basic inhumanity wasn’t just criminal. It was of some other dimension — as if the DOD was run by Reptilian-Alien overlords. Bizzare…

Did we have soldiers do some bad things? Yup — every war has soldiers do bad things. But, the vast, vast majority of the American military served incredibly well, honorably and effectively. It was a bad idea; it’s the Iraqis country; we broke it, we fixed it, and we need to get our guys all home. Now.

So, it was with a certain degree of stunned outrage that the drumbeat from the Republican party managed to get through my skull. The leadership of the Republican party is so committed to reflexive condemnation of anything that this White House does that they’re not only willing to destroy the economy of the foreseeable future, the lives and hopes of millions of Americans; they are willing to denigrate the sacrifices of the people in the boots on the ground by saying that this war was in vain because we didn’t stay there.

If you recall when the agreement to end the war was signed, GW Bush was president, Condi Rice was Secretary of State, and Petraeus was still in charge of the Army in Iraq. That team didn’t negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement; the Iraqis want us gone. We just lost 4500 killed, thousands of lives shortened by wounds both physical and psychological fighting a war to bring self-determination and Jeffersonian Democracy to a nation made up of various ethnic, religious and cultural groups that all hate each other. As a whole, they want us gone, and we need to go.

Now the clowns are rattling their cages about Iran. Seriously, what do they expect to happen? The drone goes down in their country; we should bomb them? Was that Gingrich or Romney or Palin? Insane. Again, total lack of historical perspective on how the “great Game” or any game for that matter besides Monopoly is played. When a Soviet defector flew a MIG 25 Foxbat to Japan about 30 years ago, we totally dissassembled the plane, kept it for 67 days and returned it to the Soviets in boxes.

Of course, these guys are all operating in a vacuum. What we do to them, they can do to us. If we torture prisoners, they will torture prisoners. If we bomb indiscriminately, they will bomb indiscriminately. It’s important as this mess ends that we honor the victors, the American Armed Forces and Veterans who overcame the strategic defeat that was the whole war, and won an operational and tactical success in conditions of incredible difficulty.

So, while I find Barrack Obama less than a success, and I resent the mistake that you can have bi-partisan cooperation when only one side cooperates as being the worst of new age gibbersih made into policy, we need to make certain that he is re-elected but, more importantly, that the Democrats take back the congress, a greater majority in the Senate and begin to work dismantling the Oligarchs on the right side of the Supreme Court.

Or, fuck it. At another site my pals and I have backed a mythical monster — Cthulhu — an anarchist analytic philosopher –my brother from another mother, Crispin Sartwell — and a dead Communist — Gus Hall — for President. We were being satirical we thought…but, if you can’t get your head out of your ass far enough to care this time around, just vote for our new ticket of Gary Busey and Callista Gingrich. What the hell — he’s beyond certifiable and she’s obviously controlling Newt through a combination of shiny things and sexual deviance. At somepoint Gingrich will either choke on a ring or she’ll suck his brains out; might as well get it over with.

However, I am going to care. I’m going to encourage other people to care. I’m going to get goddamned irritable about people not caring and doing jejune parlor tricks with semantics. You know what the meaning is of “lesser of two evils?” The better choice. Our soldiers, our people and the world deserve to be free of these madmen for at least a complete term. It needs to be done, and if we don’t do it now, who will?

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

–Bob Dylan, 1962

IN FLANDERS FIELDS
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved,
and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lt. Col. John Alexander McCrae, MD
Canadian Expeditionary Force

Here in the U.S., one doesn’t see the poppies on people’s lapels so much, as we used to when we were children. One of the most ridiculous victories in America’s ‘war on drugs’ was the declaration by ‘drug czars’ and their staffs that the poppy reminded people of addiction to drugs, rather than appreciation to those who gave the ‘last full measure of their devotion’ in service to their country. Such is not the case in Canada, England, and other countries that once formed the ‘Commonwealth.’ The paper poppies — and the fundraising for veterans’ relief that they represent — have been prominent in photos and video the past couple weeks.

Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, Veterans Day ….. call it what you will ….. but find some way to mark this day. Here, in America, the focus of the day has been expanded to honor all men and women who, throughout history, have answered their country’s call to serve. There have been many in our own family, but — mindful of the origins of this particular holiday — I will tell the boys of their great-grandfather Frederick, a sergeant with the 102nd Balloon Company, U.S. Air Service, American Expeditionary Force, and his service in France during the First World War.

Lately I’ve been chasing my father all over Hell – figuratively speaking. I don’t expect to catch him; he died seven years ago, taking with him some secrets I wish I could have asked him about, and others that I know I couldn’t have. He left behind some intriguing clues about himself, but remained something of a mystery to the end.

As a posthumous attempt at understanding, I’m writing an essay about his formative experience in World War II, when he was sent to the Pacific as a cryptanalyst for the US Army Signal Corps. He served aboard the USS Blue Ridge, a command and communication ship that took him to New Guinea and the Philippines. The Blue Ridge was the flagship for Rear Admiral Daniel E. Barbey, leading the VII Amphibious Force, during the invasion of Leyte Gulf, when American forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur returned to the Philippines. My father liked Admiral Barbey, an expert on amphibious warfare who planned and executed some 56 landings in New Guinea and the Philippines. When I was very small, one of his nicknames for me was ‘Admiral.’

     A few months ago, while exploring how my father’s war experience shaped his later life – and how his generation came out of World War II to produce mine – I came across an interesting book titled “Lost in Shangri-La” (2011) by Mitchell Zukoff. It describes an odd occurrence in New Guinea in May 1945, seven months after my father left. An American DC-3 carrying some two dozen soldiers and WACs crashed while on a sightseeing flight over the interior of the island. They were looking at a vast network of native villages, a primitive culture that had only been discovered by outsiders a decade or so earlier, and which had not invented the wheel.

The three survivors of the crash were ultimately rescued, but getting them out required a massive month-long effort. They had taken off from a base at Lake Sentani, Gen. MacArthur’s headquarters, where my father had stayed for a while in 1944. I can’t help wondering whether he knew any of the survivors or rescuers.

My father was lucky: he didn’t have to carry a rifle through hell. But he saw action between New Guinea and Leyte, and may have witnessed the first successful kamikaze attack, which struck the bridge of the HMAS Australia during the battle of Leyte Gulf.

He and I differed, but didn’t argue, about the atomic bomb. He thought it had been necessary to avoid an invasion of Japan, and that such an invasion might well have cost him his life. Based on what he knew in 1945, his reasoning wasn’t unsound.

But while researching my essay I learned something interesting about that subject as well. Operation Olympic, the planned US invasion of the Japanese home islands, had been secretly abandoned in the summer of 1945. Japanese radio intercepts at the time (not made public until the 1970s) showed a massive build-up of enemy forces on Kyushu, and the projected invasion became unthinkably costly. So, unbeknownst to the rest of the world, President Truman and his war planners scrapped it. The actual alternative to Hiroshima and Nagasaki was further bombardment and blockade, not invasion.

It goes to show.

I grew up in a very different and more divided America than my father. That’s the luck of the draw. He remained an enigma to the last, but a loving one. He taught me to laugh, and we practiced a lot together.

Digging into the past has a way of turning things up that don’t fit the puzzle, or hitting rock; it’s worth the effort, but only if you know when to stop. I’ve stopped trying to figure out my father. There will be no more digging. The essay is nearly finished – a son’s small gesture. and a last long salute.

Where there is suspicion there is hope. Anything less than defiantly blind credulity must be taken as something of a triumph, especially amongst the young. If you want to see suspicion in all its varied glory make this a habit: whenever you meet a young jew (and it comes up) ask, are you a Zionist Jew or an Anti-Zionist Jew? If immediate suspicion is in the jewish character it seems to have been mostly boiled out of the semite undergrad. Mostly, as with all questions these days, you will receive the quizzical expression of a kitten nursing a cigarette. They are not used to new questions, these pupae, without getting the answers in advance, and presume you have begun speaking a foreign language. Possibly fictional. For some reason the usual method of fence straddling is likewise not employed. It is that expression, Zionist. They know they have heard it and it is not good. “But it does seem to have something to do with jews, which I am,” so they are at least hesitant to join in the hoots, the damnation of the bankers, the presumption of their jewishness, the denunciation of Israel and the perpetual explanations of how the jews are at the root of it all.

Given the givens of our day, as I said, this is triumphal and all opportunities must be explored. Exploration will reveal great ignorance in our undergrad regarding the history of modern Israel, current events there and the conditions under which the Isreali, jewish or otherwise, lives. But any attempt to remedy this situation, at least at the first go, will be met with the grumpy refusal of a toddler to visualize whirled peas. “What do you care?” they will say in more or less frank language. Somehow they never wonder if I am a jew myself. It seems the black fellow can more easily pass for non-black than any jew can be confused with non-jew. Must be pheromones. In any case, it is a good question. Why should any non-jew care what happens to Israel?

Funny how this is the only issue on which concern is suspect. Why do you care about the whales? one might ask though the response would only be a gaping disdain. Why do you care about the ozone hole? Or the Aborigines? Or the delta smelt? Or indeed, poor urban blacks with which you have engaged in little voluntary contact except in your music downloads? Concern for the so-called Palestinians likewise is suspect only in absence and again ignorance does what enmity would fail to do; present the unbreachable barrier of the guffaw. Why, everyone is for the Palestinians as everyone is for polar bears however unfamiliar they may be with them. Chip away at this if you need a lifelong project with no hope of completion. Instead, let the brats have their assumptions because there is much to say for the Zionist Goyim that is unsentimental and indeed, nakedly Machiavellian.

Of what objective worth is Israel? It is a sandy spit. Cosmic humor has made it a perverted reflection of the state of New Jersey though with less water and poorer beaches. New Jersey is surrounded by belligerent but dependent neighbors; is the last safe target for bullying in a hostile crowd and is narrow at the waist. New Jersey I would defend from attack and slander selfishly. As New Jersey sinks so does a bit of me. And if Israel were to slip? None of my relatives are there and there is plenty to concern us here at home. But those concerns are not separable and the alchemy of dividing one strand of our maladies from another is a vain project, not impossible necessarily but far too time consuming and productive of toxic waste. The struggle of Israel to draw her daily breath is not conducted on a distant front in our collective war. Israel is the farthest forward outpost on one, vast encircling theater the center of which is right where you are sitting now, presuming that is a safe chair by an open window over a placid American street.

By this counting we here in safety and plenty occupy the First Ditch. Or more accurately, we lounge in cabana chairs just behind it, confident that we will hear the bullet or the click of the detonator in time to throw ourselves in and boot up our weapons. A good few of our countrymen stroll far beyond it, touring the Second Ditch, which is in the weaker but still civilized nations of Europe or the orient.These are subject to attack but it is infrequent. Still further there is the invisible array of the Third Ditch, more a tangle of deep tracks that are filled with hostile rats and driving sand when they are not filled with lead. Iraq and Afghanistan are here, obsessed with hostility to civilization and rapidly being drained of American soldiers. Whether the project of explaining decency and tolerance to this crowd was ever plausible is still unanswered but mostly because we do not care to take No for an answer. The fact that we contemplate a full retreat without serious consequences demonstrates that even the jagged edge of daily combat is not, truly, the final front. No. It is not where our people are dropped in, lifted out and make sure to cover their tracks. It is where the free, bawdy, roilsome West comes up against medievalism forthrightly; where the bikini meets the burkha and that, friends, is Israel.

Israel is the unscrambled porno channel on Al-Jazeera. Israel is a middle-finger to the mullahs, why don’t the Occupiers (and when did that become cool?) grasp this? If they think the Bachman Conformity would be an uncomfortable place for them, how does sharia smell? To ask the question is to mark oneself out as a loony. Why, these modest goatherders mean us no harm and their quaint beliefs are far less offensive than the 700 Club. But of course they don’t watch the 700 Club. Nor do they consume its equivalent; a constant stream of jihad videos supported in principle from the BBC to USAToday with breezy equivalences that take the jihadists’ every english statement of conciliation as gospel, and ignore their domestic incitements in arabic as gibberish. This sort of thing the Occupiers devour with alacrity, at least those who are lately and prominently turning the OWS movement into an ululating denunciation of The Great Satan . International Jihad and secular jew hatred would be ripe for a Wikileak assault but for one problem; they are open in their recruitment, open in their goals and open in their methods. While bloody vitriol is ignored if its source is a protected group, dramatic slanders are concocted and promulgated cheerily through the press “exposing” targets for tactical benefit. This is the eternal role of the jew; Target. Scapegoat. Lamb. The Koch brothers have become honorary jews with their new celebrity. Murdoch as well. But even actual jewishness is no bar to an unscrutinized political career if those politics are the right flavor. George Soros, who could not more fully embody antisemitic stereotypes if he were a Bond villain, is revered and left to his machinations. The jewishness of this precocious nazi becomes a shield of corruption. Like Medusa he is so foul no one dare look too closely.

Soros as demon is much for our weary undergrad but perhaps their native suspicion is aroused. So, jew=bad is not the full equation? Ah, now as they are asking why anyone would object to Israel’s obliteration they are also wondering why anyone outside the principle parties would seek it? Hmm. No one doubts the existence of devious special interests out to line their pockets or drive on your lawn but they aren’t just jews are they? No, clearly not. The simple numbers make that impossible. So why is there so much agitation against the jews? Simple, those doing the agitating are muddying up the waters because clarity would expose THEM, with justice, to the public pillory they attempt to keep filled. Antisemitism is a tool of the tyrant since Greece. One needs not a single warm feeling towards a jew or even towards humanity to understand your self interest is at stake, if you consider liberty and truth to be in your self-interest. All this Hitler stuff is an inflammatory diversion; so it was, so it is and so it shall ever be. Diversion from what? Simple truths that our Occupiers were not denied but never sought. First, neither government nor any spacey alternative you might concoct to government can give you anything they don’t first take from someone else. And YOU are often that Someone Else. It seems the internal conflicts within the Occupiers reflect some hard lessons only lately learned. But even simpler and more basic lessons like the value of innate skepticism have been written out. That is a nearly universal diagnosis: the Occupiers at large are terminally naive. So even if you have no love for Israel, even if you have an active hostility it is STILL in your best interests to be dubious of anti-Zionism, antisemitism or any quick and dirty assignment of metaphysical blame. And this is really the first hurdle of civilization (after pooping discipline, which we will also have to work on), to forbear from simply blaming the drought or your rejection for tenure on the guy next door with the big nose. That is helpful to him, certainly, but it is even more helpful to YOU especially as The Last Ditch and The First Ditch have intersected unexpectedly in the tent cities of America.