The most effective diplomats, like the most effective intelligence officers and foreign correspondents, possess empathy. They have the intellectual, cultural and linguistic literacy to get inside the heads of those they must analyze or cover. They know the vast array of historical, religious, economic and cultural antecedents that go into making up decisions and reactions. And because of this-endowed with the ability to communicate and more able to find ways of resolving conflicts through diplomacy-they are less prone to blunders.
But we live in an age where dialogue is dismissed and empathy is suspect. We prefer the illusion that we can dictate events through force. It hasn’t worked well in Iraq. It hasn’t worked well in Afghanistan. And it won’t work in Iran. But those who once tried to reach out and understand, who developed expertise to explain the world to us and ourselves to the world, no longer have a voice in the new imperial project. We are instead governed and informed by moral and intellectual trolls.
To make rational decisions in international relations we must perceive how others see us. We must grasp how they think about us and be sensitive to their fears and insecurities. But this is becoming hard to accomplish. Our embassies are packed with analysts whose main attribute is long service in the armed forces and who frequently report to intelligence agencies rather than the State Department. Our area specialists in the State Department are ignored by the ideologues driving foreign policy. Their complex view of the world is an inconvenience. And foreign correspondents are an endangered species, along with foreign coverage.
We speak to the rest of the globe in the language of violence. The proposed multibillion-dollar arms supply package for the Persian Gulf countries is the newest form of weapons-systems-as-message. U.S. Undersecretary of State
R. Nicholas Burns was rather blunt about the deal. He told the International Herald Tribune that the arms package “says to the Iranians and Syrians that the United States is the major power in the Middle East and will continue to be and is not going away.”
The arrogant call for U.S. hegemony over the rest of the globe is making enemies of a lot of people who might be predisposed to support us, even in the Middle East. And it is terrifying those, such as the Iraqis, Iranians and Syrians, whom we have demonized. Empathy and knowledge, the qualities that make real communication possible, have been discarded. We use tough talk and big weapons deals to communicate. We spread fear, distrust and violence. And we expect missile systems to protect us.
“Imagine an Iranian government that was powerful, radical, and in possession of nuclear weapons; imagine the threat that would pose to Israel and to the American-led balance of power, which has been so important in the Middle East since the close of the Second World War,” Burns said in a speech at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston last April 11. “That is our first challenge.”
“Our second challenge is that Iran continues to be the central banker of Middle East terrorism,” he went on. “It is the leading funder and director of Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine general command. Third, Iran is in our judgment a major violator of the human rights of its own people; it denies religious, political, and press rights to the people of a very great country representing a very great civilization. And so we see a problem that is going to be with us for a long time, and we are trying to fashion a strategy that will work for the long term.”
George W. Bush’s latest salvo, on Aug. 28, was more of the same.
“Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust,” he said. Bush warned that the United States and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too late.”
These kinds of words, pouring out of the administration, send a clear message to any Iranian: You are in trouble. Bend to our will or we destroy you. These were the same words, with a few minor changes, that the Bush administration delivered to Saddam Hussein, who, despite numerous compromises, including letting the U.N. inspectors back into his country, was overthrown and put to death during a U.S. occupation.
And the Iranians know that without the bomb, which no intelligence agency thinks they can produce for a few years, they are now probably going to be attacked.
The Pentagon has reportedly drawn up plans for a series of airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran. The air attacks are designed to cripple the Iranians’ military capability in three days. The Bushehr nuclear power plant, along with targets in Saghand and Yazd, the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, a heavy-water plant and radioisotope facility in Arak, the Ardekan Nuclear Fuel Unit, and the uranium conversion facility and nuclear technology center in Isfahan, will all probably be struck by the United States and perhaps even Israeli warplanes. The Tehran Nuclear Research Center, the Tehran molybdenum, iodine and xenon radioisotope production facility, the Tehran Jabr Ibn Hayan Multipurpose Laboratories, and the Kalaye Electric Co. in the Tehran suburbs will also most likely come under attack.
But then what? We don’t have the troops to invade. And we don’t have anyone minding the helm who knows the slightest thing about Persian culture or the Middle East. There is no one in power in Washington with the empathy to get it. We will lurch blindly into a catastrophe of our own creation.
It is not hard to imagine what will happen. Iranian Shabab-3 and Shabab-4 missiles, which cannot reach the United States, will be launched at Israel, as well as American military bases and the Green Zone in Baghdad. Expect massive American casualties, especially in Iraq, where Iranian agents and their Iraqi allies will be able to call in precise coordinates. The Strait of Hormuz, which is the corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, will be shut down. Chinese-supplied C-801 and C-802 anti-shipping missiles, mines and coastal artillery will target U.S. shipping, along with Saudi oil production and oil export centers. Oil prices will skyrocket to well over $4 a gallon. The dollar will tumble against the euro. Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon, interpreting the war as an attack on all Shiites, will fire rockets into northern Israel. Israel, already struck by missiles from Tehran, will begin retaliatory raids on Lebanon and Iran. Pakistan, with a huge Shiite minority, will reach greater levels of instability. The unrest could result in the overthrow of the weakened American ally President Pervez Musharraf and usher into power Islamic radicals. Pakistan could become the first radical Islamic state to possess a nuclear weapon. The neat little war with Iran, which few Democrats oppose, has the potential to ignite a regional inferno.
We have rendered the nation deaf and dumb. We no longer have the capacity for empathy. We prefer to amuse ourselves with trivia and gossip that pass for news rather than understand. We are blinded by our military prowess. We believe that huge explosions and death are an effective form of communication. And the rest of the world is learning to speak our language.
Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is the author of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.“
©2007 TruthDig.com
Bush is now taking advice about war and peace solely from The Most Interesting Man In The World, the macho, Heminwayesque beer slosher of the Dos Equis commercials. When Bush asks him a question about foreign policy, The Most Interesting Man In The World replies: “Stay thirsty, my friend.” According to a report in the Asshole-ciated Press, attributed to a high but anonymous administration source, Bush has called this the most sage advice he has gotten from anyone, including Cheney. George Wanker Bush has indeed remained thirsty . . . for more war, more pain, more suffering, more death. Drink responsibly because you only go around once; so grab for all the gusto you can get!
If this catastrophe does occur, let’s remember that it will be the Democrats’ war as much as the Republicans’. No Democratic candidate should be able to say afterwards that he/she didn’t know then what he/she knows now. Any Democrat–local or national–who supports this war or who doesn’t speak out strongly against it should never be elected to public office again!
” They have the intellectual, cultural and linguistic literacy to get inside the heads of those they must analyze or cover”
The racist kooks, led by Daniel Pipes, have tried to shut down the Gibran Institute in NYC on the grounds that Arabic is Islamic & therefore if you teach or speak Arabic, you are a propagandist for ‘terrorism’ and all that blah. Just like German was a Nazi a language and Russian a commie language. And this is being promoted through Murdoch’s toilet sheets & the dumbshit gobblers of the flying monkey right.
But — Chris Hedges continues to project the fantasy that somehow the empire used to be more nuanced & nicer or somehow not as imperial. Who was it who decided to ride with the ‘house of Saud’, who put the Shah in power & trained the Sabak? Ask Owen Lattimore just how receptive the American regime was to specialists with comprehensive knowledge of their areas of expertise. Loyalty to the American ideology has always trumped cultural expertise; there would’ve been no Cold War had the reverse been the case. Our rulers & at least half the electorate still act on the same principles in 2007 that they acted on in 1947, and which prompted the war in Korea and then the war on the Vietnamese people.
Burns third challenge: “Iran is in our judgment a major violator of the human rights of its own people.” Insert “The United States” for “Iran,” and this cynic is ready to agree.
SuPpose they callEd for war And nobody CamE. (Read: PEACE) If enough of us spoke and lived for peace we could put an end to the habits and voices of hatred and fear that feed the war machine and sound a lot louder because against the voices and habits of peace they have no defense. Violence is not working; it is time to learn and teach peace. We each much make the commitment and live it. Change begins with one and ripples out.
Right on Jian!
And we need a friggin crash course in peace!
Bombing Iran
In view of the absurdity the hair brain schemes to bomb Iran while providing arms to this volatile region, and the history of other ill conceived policies of this administration, one can only conclude that the arms merchants are instrumental in its conception.
After tolerating the actions of this theocratic administration, guided by special interests for over six years, Americans must assume blame for the resulting destruction.
Devotion of an economy to war has destroyed every empire in history, starting with Homer’s Greeks, who displaced, destroyed and tried to bury Minoan Crete—and Crete was and still is the longest continuous period of peaceful human progress on record, about which most people are told NOTHING. (Not utopia: just 4000 years of successful harmonizing of nature and culture.) Ever since then, “Western history”: war for profit, glorious manhood, and wasteland after wasteland. The West is a junkie—for power, energy, wealth etc.—and God help anybody in its way for the next fix. So the question is, how much suffering would you like to experience before you change? The Bible-based cultures all around us are going to answer, “We’d rather die than change.” And they are going to get their wish.
And let’s expect Russia and China to stealthily support Iran in order to fulfill the neocrazies’ fantasy of a new “cold war.” As the fire erupts, the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, all the Dept. Of Homeland Sec “laws,” and all the other “anti-terror” laws will kick in - conscription will start, protesters will be rounded up and held in Halliburton “special programs” detention centers, and the propaganda will be cranked up to such a level, Americans might just start turning on each other.
Merry Christmas everybody!
“SuPpose they callEd for war And nobody CamE.”
They will always come. And when you don’t get enough of them to come, you lower the standards for enlistment & increase the bonuses while continuing to build up mercenary armies. There are many who won’t put on the uniform but gladly join in the cheering choruses.
At yesterday’s baseball game in San Diego, the home team wore CAMOUFLAGE FATIGUE TOPS to help give the army a boost — “We support the troops, whyn’t you strong young fans go to help fight for fuhreedom?”
“Change begins with one and ripples out.”
There was a great deal of rippling, the greatest global protest ever, in February 2003. Only when material conditions change do spiritual conditions change, not vice versa.
GOilP
“The arrogant call for U.S. hegemony over the rest of the globe is making enemies of a lot of people who might be predisposed to support us, even in the Middle East. And it is terrifying those, such as the Iraqis, Iranians and Syrians, whom we have demonized.”
As one learned journalist pointed out, the greatest ally Bin Laden has is American foreign policy. Americans need to wake up and realize that the swaggering tough guy in the White House is but a mere shadow and not a human being at all. For more on American foreign policy, read John Perkin’s Confessions of an Economic Hitman.
Which ‘We’ is chris talking about? I think he meant ‘They’ not ‘We’. I know it looks like it from our mainstream media but is that fair? The MSM is Bush’s real base. What we are offered we buy. Independent voices are rarely heard on the MSM consolidated airwaves/electronic waves/ and the press. So we wait for them.
Bloggers are being heard but it is bearing fruit. But where are the voices of the rebels, rascals and freedom loving rogues? Once that was us and it stopped another different war. They are an endangered species… the free voices? Here in CD sure and other places. That…um…we?
Do we ignore the danger of bush/cheney attacking Iran? Likely. But why? where do you see MSM coverage of what you here on CD or other places like it? THEY own our MSM. I know WE …don’t.
Yeah imagine Bush starting another and far bigger war. Iran. Our men will left holding Iraq while Iraqis fight from behind and Iranians from the front. Why? So Bush can have his John Wayne big finale and commit America to a continuing war?
Maybe he is becoming infected by the madness of caesars? Have Bush’s delusions of efficacy and ability become fatalistic and grimly remote?
Maybe ours have? But I see we are made to believe we are powerless and controlled and THEY have been doing it so long now…perhaps it is becoming more and more true. What do most people know what to believe anymore.
War with Iran…human waves … madness and much blood. Why? Why after four and half years of war start another?
Say why exactly did Napolean invade Russia? Or the other one too? Madness huh…? In retrospect. The deciders decided and that was that I guess?
But war with Iran would mean a draft and that will be that at home. The young already know this war in Iraq was bogus… Haliburton’s War. A draft is necessary for a war with Iran but if a draft happens… then Americans will flip. Compared to now the sixties were all about peace and love. That was then though.
Bush mess spreads and this ‘old guard’ Congress lets him. Sometimes I think Walter Cronkite stopped the war in Vietnam. That kind of thing doesn’t seem quite so likely anymore. Now we have rushing rush and heckling oreilly. We know what they know? What choice do we have elsewise?
The MAINSTREAM MEDIA is no longer OUR free press. Save free speech on the net. If we lose that …we lose. The MSmedia is remote chris…that makes us that way.
Little George wants to lead us into another war that he will attempt to justify as necessary for our protection, but that is not the real reason. This will be another war for economic colonization with strong prompting by the Neo-cons and especially the contracting arm of the “military Industrial Complex”
Little George likes to dress up in warrier garb and play the “Wartime President”,but its all a sham. Our involvement in Iraq is no war. A nation of more than 300 million people, with a military budget double that of the total expenditure of all the rest of the world combined does not spend more than four years in a losing battle with a country of 24 million, especially one beaten down by UN sanctions and a broken economy. This is an occupation, a land grab or more accurately an oil grab. As a war it is unwinable and an attack on Iran will be infinitely worse.
I have lived and worked in Iran. They are a noble and brave people with a proud history of never initiating a war of conquest since the time of Cyrus the Great, but they have fought and tenaciously resisted every attempt to subjugate them. They are a nation with a population more than six times that of Iraq undivided ny religious schism. They have a military four times larger than the US presence in the Gulf and they are in a position to destroy our presence in Iraq and strangle the flow of oil to the West. An attack on Iran would open Pandora’s Box to the kind of problems that will never be solved within our lifetime and could destroy our way of life.
There is no honor, no grace, no dignity in what our President has already done in Iraq. He has sullied the honor of this great and noble country with the foul weakness of his own character. His actions were those of a bully, and like all bullies he is at heart a coward. By his own history regarding Vietnam he must be adjudged a physical coward and by his unwillingness to correct, or even acknowledge, his failings in Iraq and now to threaten to extend the war he demonstrates his fundamental moral cowardness. God help this country.
What empire hasn’t come to an end without a civil war in the Imperial country, between those who want to move on and the others who want a return to (supposed) vanished imperial glories?
In the USA, it won’t take much to re-open that old wound between North and South, and I even have deep reservations about my own country too.
W is taking his marching orders from the usual suspects; AIPAC and the neocon ‘intellectuals’.
Probably Israel told him if you don’t, we will and W figured he might as well get a payoff for the Repuglican party
when I was a child I had a recurring nightmare. It is still very difficult to describe - it was kind of an abstract, textural, utterly terrifying experience, It was like a mistake had been made, a terrible mistake, and layers upon layers of things had been piled on that mistake like strata of sedimentary stone, and the thought of going back and repairing that mistake, of peeling back all those layers was the most daunting and impossible task. When I read about the racheting up of tensions, I get that feeling again, like the momentum has been building for years toward this moment, and it is almost fate that the grand ship that is America be ripped open by the iceberg of Iran.
Jian: It is a nice thought, but it might take a couple of generations to rebuild a culture of peace. This war culture, this blood lust cannot be wished away. We are going to have to get our asses kicked, utterly destroy ourselves before we come to our senses.
I hope I’m wrong.
Quagmire
I wonder what would happen if we the people once again became “We The People” or maybe it’s to hard or to late? But what if, as in some communities, we went to our local town or city meeting and said we want our city to call for Impeachment of Bush et al and there after Prosecution. City council you took an Oath to not only honor our Charter, the State Constitution, but also the US Constitution and while it no longer seems that we have much or possibly any say in National politics….It won’t be as hard to replace you….so are you willing to do your sworn duty or not? In other words we know this is wrong and it is time to stop. From the bottom up instead of the top down.
esarge: I don’t think you are wrong. For what it’s worth…
The violent rise to power in the presence of crowding. Their policies prevail because the burgeoning masses need dwindling resources. Pace fertility to mortality-by-natural-causes. Create a vacuum of demand. It’s really the only way out of this. It’s the only thing that is inevitably and truly grass-roots. We know how to do this.
Chris, the WE you mention is not the average American citizen, but the average knot head we foolishly elected to Congress and to the Presidency. Most Americans want nothing to do with the Middle EAst as this area of the world has been battling each other for centuries. It’s the Corporations along with the present Administration that is causing such blunders and don’t expect Bush to listen to advice because he will stoop to bombing Iran with expcectations of controlling the whole Middle EASt and our representatives don’t listen to the average bloke anymore but continue to be slaves to this corrupt Administration.
Another great article, Chris!
A Physics instructor I once knew used to describe different methods for solving problems. The one method that stuck in my mind was what he called the Brute Strength and Ignorance Method. It was the method a lot of us students used to solve physics problems. It seems to be the method of choice for our government at this time.
The Value Judgment World
Currently, our dominant world view and therefore our life experience, is dominated by two basic core beliefs. They are: we’re all separate and there’s not enough to go around. When we take a step back and look at these two self-defining core beliefs we can see how limiting and divisive they are, and how they attract associated ideas like survival of the fittest, dog-eat-dog, and devil take the hindmost, predatory concepts we see dramatized in life, work, and art every day. In an environment of ideas like this, it’s not hard to see why so many of us define success by the amount of money, power, and prestige we acquire. When we insist on believing we’re separate and there’s not enough of what we need or want to go around, we create a foundation for the fear, competition, violence and suffering we see in the world. It’s no wonder two additional core beliefs, or negative self-concepts are part of this mix: we are basically bad or evil and we can’t trust ourselves. (See: “What I Learned in Catholic School” at www.realtalkworld.com)
In a world dominated by belief in separateness and scarcity - fear, distrust, and competition force us to create central forms of religious and/or secular authority to formally determine, command, and control our behavior. Cultural ideals, expressed as religious doctrine and/or secular laws, supersede individual rights and are imposed upon us with the threat of force, which includes a formal means for establishing guilt or innocence with the ability to administer punishment, if necessary, to ensure public safety and peace.
On a less formal level, but just as persuasive, social norms (external values) that characterize different aspects of being and performance as right or wrong, good or bad, control us through the power of self-judgment and public opinion. From birth we learn to compare ourselves and one another to outside standards of being and performance in every role we play. In the process of policing ourselves and one another to ensure we conform to preapproved patterns of being and behavior, we become Master Fault Finders. Ever vigilant, we look for discrepancies between cultural ideals and personal behavior. We criticize and attack ourselves and one another for the things we do and don’t do, who we are, or are not, and for differences in our size, shape, weight, race, religion, age, sex, beauty, and intelligence. When we compare ourselves and one another to external cultural standards of being and performance, instead of accepting ourselves as the unique individuals we are, we make judgments about our goodness or badness, our rightness or wrongness, our worth or worthlessness, hence the name, Value Judgment World. In the process of trying to “straighten” each other out, we alienate ourselves from one another and create a world where some feel like winners and others feel like losers.
In a world view dominated by belief in separation and scarcity, the amount of money, power, and prestige we acquire becomes the “official” measure of our success or survivability. We want to feel like we’re “someone” in this world of “winners and losers” as we “struggle to survive,” and some of us will do almost anything to achieve this status. In a world of fear and value judgments, some of us attempt to achieve these ends by any means possible and do whatever it takes to get ahead, whether it’s by hard work or criminal behavior. As long as we’re clever and don’t get caught, our behavior is tolerated and even seen as beneficial, logical, and proper. In this ambitious, competitive, and material world, there is one question that plagues us, though: “when is enough, enough?” How much money, power, and prestige does it take to make us feel safe in a “hostile” world? Obviously, some of us think enough is never enough, which can create an imbalance or breakdown in the system. If imbalances go uncorrected and become great enough, they can push us to the edge of extinction, if not over it.
In a Value Judgment World, most of our energy is absorbed by activities involving the need for defense. We go to school and choose work more to develop a lifestyle that helps us avoid suffering, guilt, punishment, and the wrath of public opinion than to express who we love to be and do what we love to do. We invest so much of our creative energy in being who we think we’re supposed to be and doing what we think we’re supposed to do, we lose touch with who we like to be and what we like to do. Only during infancy and in quiet moments away from the demands and expectations of a fearful, manipulating, and controlling world do we get in touch with our true selves and highest ideals. In these quiet moments of creative freedom and spontaneity, when we are being who we love to be and doing what we love to do, we realize that pleasure, in the form of love, truth, and joy (happiness), is life’s highest reward. Sadly, this natural impulse gets lost when we believe too strongly in separation, scarcity, competition, and fear.
If we stop to think about our own experience for a minute, we can see that consciousness and energy, awareness and action, are at the heart of everything we do, whether it’s deciding to drink a glass of water, smile or frown at someone, or write a book. It is behind all being and creation. It is the Great Oneness from which All That Is springs! Awareized Energy (or Energized Awareness, if you prefer) is what we are and use to create individuality and personality. It is behind the creation of matter and its manipulation in time and space. It is what we use to manipulate and express ourselves in life, imagination, and dreams. It is the Great Oneness we are a part of and apart from at the same time. To understand this is to see the sacredness, the magic and wonder of all life. It is the key to evolving beyond Childhood’s End. Even God’s children need to grow up sometime!
How we define ourselves and the world around us forms our intent, which in turn, forms our reality.
How often do we stop to examine the ideas that motivate or drive us to see where they come from and where they’re taking us as we create our reality? Judging from our concern about human overcrowding, disease, the effects of global warming, increasing interpersonal and international conflict, and general planetary degradation, it’s safe to assume we don’t examine our beliefs as well as we should and often enough.
Again, take the two core beliefs, we’re all separate and there’s not enough to go around. When they are associated ideas like survival of the fittest, dog eat dog, and devil take the hindmost is it not hard to understand how we might conclude we’re basically bad and can’t trust ourselves? Core beliefs act like genes in a fertilized egg but instead of transforming the basic building blocks of matter into a full blown human being, animal, or plant, they take the basic building blocks of thought and transform them into a mature belief system, a system that seems just as determined to survive intact as its physical counterpart.
Just as we (the essential self, basic identity or soul) have the power to shape our bodies through intent and action expressed as changes in attitude, eating habits, and exercise, we have the ability to shape our thought or belief systems. In fact, our belief systems are easier to reshape than our bodies!
Take the following example from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “To be, or not to be…?” In asking himself this question, Hamlet is considering whether, given his circumstances, it’s better for him to live or die. It is a question we all consider from time to time in our lives, depending on our circumstances. Take these two opposing thoughts and stretch them apart to form a continuum.
Not to be |——————————————| To be
Where would you place yourself on this continuum at this moment in your life? Would you place yourself near the left, the right, or the middle? Why did you place yourself there; what are the causative factors or reasons? Where would you like to be on this continuum? Read the front page news of a current newspaper or watch the news on television and see how your concern about living or dying changes. Where would you place the United States, Europe, Asia, or the Middle East on this continuum? Where would you place humanity as a whole? Can you see how momentary thoughts and current events change our position on this continuum?
Our thoughts and accompanying moods are in a constant flux as a result of what we think and experience in the moment. What we often forget is how much power we have to determine what we think and experience in life by taking responsibility for choosing our thoughts and experiences, much like we choose items to buy in the grocery store or grow in a garden. If we fail to take responsibility for creating our reality, which includes how we see and react to it, we become the victims of it.
Here’s another example to demonstrate how powerful, dynamic, and flexible parts of our belief systems are. Take the opposing values: live to eat or eat to live. This is another health and quality of life issue we have to deal with daily because we need to eat to survive and eating, for many of us, is such a great source of pleasure. Unless we have clear and strong beliefs, emotional stability, and a routine in place to balance the pleasure of eating with our need to eat, eating patterns can get out of control and create both physical and emotional challenges for us.
Separating opposing values in this way gives us knowledge about many things. First, we get to see how all-encompassing our thoughts are. Each of us has access to the sum total of all thoughts, but whether it’s from loyalty or tradition, a failure to question, or systematic conditioning, we choose to actualize only a small range of associated ideas in the form of beliefs, attitudes, values, and expectations. These ideas, whatever they may be, represent our knowledge base or working belief system. They provide us with an invisible blueprint or built-in recipe book for living. Therefore, it is important that we examine our belief systems periodically to remove beliefs and behavior patterns that produce results we don’t want, and replace them with beliefs and behavior patterns we do want. When our intent is self-improvement, it’s very much like upgrading our computers and the software programs that run them. Each upgrade results in the creation of a better version of who we are. (See: My Recurring Superman Nightmare).
Also, by separating opposing values like live to eat and eat to live, we get to see how dynamic and changeable our belief systems are. We get to see how the needs of our body, random thoughts and feelings, a sight, a sound, a smell, another person’s suggestion, or advertising pressure us to shift position relative to opposing beliefs in one direction or the other. When we add all of these aspects of life into the mix we can see how creative and challenging life is for all of us.
Live to eat |—————————————-| Eat to live
Not only can we use Bi-Polar Continuums of Belief to define our behavior, analyze the source of it, and predict future behavior, we can use it to consciously change our behavior.
The following Bi-Polar Continuum of Beliefs is made up of thoughts that reflect the most basic (core) beliefs we hold about ourselves and life. While it is possible that the sum total of all human beings would appear evenly distributed along this continuum and form a flat line, it is more likely that a majority of us hold similar enough beliefs, due to broad cultural influences, to form a peak somewhere along the axis between the two extreme points of view. Smaller numbers of us would place ourselves closer to one end of the spectrum or the other, forming a bell shaped curve. As our personal and collective core beliefs change over time, the peak would shift toward one end of the spectrum or the other with the resulting experience we create changing accordingly. At present, I see the bell near the left end of the spectrum. Where do you see it? Wherever it is there’s lot of room for us to grow.
Separation, Scarcity |—————————————| Oneness, Sharing
Imagine that you believe all things, including people, are separate and there’s not enough of what you want or need to go around. How are you likely to think and act? How will you define success? If these beliefs are the dominant beliefs held by society, how will society think and act? What kinds of institutions will society create and how will they define success? On the other hand, imagine you believe all things, including people, are both one and separate and there is enough to go around, if we share and balance our demands against the earth’s ability to provide for us. How will you think and act? How will you define success? If these beliefs are the dominant beliefs held by society, how will society think and act? What kinds of institutions will society create and how will they define success?
Do the competitive, closed networking, survival-of-the-fittest beliefs in the first set of questions reflect elements of the Conservative World View? Do the sharing, peace generating, all-for-one and one-for-all beliefs in the second set of questions reflect elements of the Progressive World View?
I think these questions do reflect inherent differences between a Conservative World View and a Progressive World View. They also point out the fact that these ideas are available to all of us and that, over time, our views shift. The only thing that makes us different are the ideas we choose to believe in the moment. We are not bad, it is our ideas about who we are and what reality is that are bad.
Instead of examining the core beliefs we use to create our differing realities to see where they’re taking us, we lose ourselves in defending our way of life as it is. This behavior will not help us survive over the long term and we know it. It’s time to take the bull by the horns. The only way to change the world for the better is for each of us to change ourselves for the better. We need to believe in ourselves and our own unique abilities. No one can do a better job of creating our reality than us. And no other way is more efficient!
WE CREATE OUR OWN REALITY
During the course of everyday events we often forget the role of thoughts in the forging of our material reality. We get lost in the visible symbols, the material by-products of our imaginations, forgetting the invisible blueprints from which they, and we, emerge.
Pure energy like money, its material equivalent, is shaped into matter and experience by thought. It can be used to lift up or smash down, to build character or destroy character, to express love or express hate, to beautify or make ugly.
The purpose, or challenge, of life is to learn how to use thought in its various forms to shape energy into a pleasing reality. The prize is a sense of satisfaction, a feeling of a job well done. And, like learning to walk or talk, it is a personal, subjective endeavor that requires creative aggression. It is a great balancing act, where one must accept falling down in the course of learning how to stand up.
Remember:
Thoughts are “things” with a reality of their own and you an artist. With thoughts in the forms of belief, attitude, value and expectation you paint the landscape of your life.
Create a Great Day!
Copyright 2007, Roger A. “Pete” Peterson
Visit: www.realtalkworld.com
There are two options: Either we keep talking about the pending quagmire in Iran, or we start moving in the streets in increasing numbers and with bold action until we bring the death machine to a halt. The Congress will not do it. So let us “we the people” do it. On September 15 we can make a new beginning of determined direct antiwar action.
SEPTEMBER 15 ALL IN WASHINGTON DC
When George W. Bush and his gang that can’t find its own ass with both hands get the ultimate Saddam Hussein treatment America will begin to heal. The healing can’t happen until these clowns are tried and hung like the terrorists they are.
BugsBBunnyIII–I like your commentary about the MSM being President “Butch’s” base. (Appologies to any offended Lesbians) You could have added most of the Congress, Senate, and Wall Street.
esarge–That vision of the US being the Titanic and Iran being the iceberg that facilitates its sinking is very compelling. I trust your “gut” a lot more than Michael Chertoff’s–thanks for sharing.
Our last chance might be either with the markets going into the crapper or with the rest of the world’s central bankers dumping t-bills. Really crappy having to hope for outsiders to do what “we the people” should be able to do for ourselves.
Short of a military coup or twin assassinations that seems about the only tning that is going to stop these crazies from their mission to destroy the earth.
National strike 09/10-09/11/07
Hedges’ view of players in US policy emphasizes testosterone and meatheaded ignorance; unfortunately this doesn’t help us understand it.
This is all about oil, people. As its production peaks, Saudi Arabia’s estimated remaining oil reserves are believed to be exceeded by Iraqi reserves. (See Simmons’ _Twilight in the Desert_) Iraq is the #1 oil prize of the Gulf; Iran is #2. And by the way, it’s not about having control of this oil to produce it — it’s about controlling, limiting, and even preventing its production. (See Yergin’s _The Prize_ for a century of historical examples.) The global oil cartel has no intention of allowing prices to fall by a return to normalcy in Iraq, Iran or any other land they don’t own. Condemning Iraq to a century of bloodshed is as good a solution as owning it; decimating Iranian industrial and social structures, as well as military capacity, is as good as an occupation — or perhaps better — for these purposes.
(Mr. Hedges: ask your friends in the State Dept why no similar military assault was required for N. Korea.)
There is nothing more important to be done for world peace than to control world energy demand. The same is true for world climate. These are giant problems but they are too big to be concealed by myths and lies, and we can succeed by speaking truth to (and about!) power.
ASB
I agree with Esarge and worldchangeguy -
Unfortunately (or fortunately) the buck stops with We the People….Ultimately the power to change our reality rests solely with a fully aware and conscious active majority…
The following are happening at the moment…
A) Latest polls show the country moving more towards a liberal direction, with people being very troubled by the direction this country is taking.
B) it may be too little, too late - We’re still a country of somnambulists, going about our daily business, living in our material comfort, untroubled by what is happening in the world around us. As Esarge mentioned, it will, unfortunately, take us being afflicted by pain and suffering of some kind to get us off our collective Butts, and to generate the kind of unified will required to effectuate fundamental change……..
“moral and intellectual trolls” YES!!!
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong
#1 The US bombs Iran.
#2 Iran gasses Israel.
#3 Israel NUKES Iran.
#4 China NUKES the US.
Archduke Ferdinand?
Who the hell is Archduke Ferdinand?
Look for phrases that stick. Better than
too much blibbedy-blab.
Ok, a bit much really.
Maybe all China has to do is embargo the USA.
Could you imagine what would happen if Wallmart had nothing to sell?
China would never do anything like that.
Well not since the Ming anyways.
RE: “FORCE,” “ARMED FORCES” AND “IDEOLOGUES” vs “EMPATHY” and COOL “STATE DEPARTMENT” HEADS? I DON’T BUY IT
“The Pentagon has reportedly drawn up plans for…airstrikes…in Iran….But then what?…[W]e don’t have anyone minding the helm who knows the slightest thing about Persian culture or the Middle East. There is no one in power in Washington with the empathy…”
So if “empathetic” state department types were there, an attack could avoid “catastrophe”? Naaaaaaah. Hedges has some interesting things to say, but he’s muddled.
By the way - the idea of ideologues shoving aside the state department comes from the criticism that, during the McCarthy Period, McCarthy’s attacks on Truman’s State Department wiped out cooler government heads - including those that understood China, Korea, and Southeast Asia - ultimately paving the way for Vietnam.
I don’t buy it - “empathetic” approaches are just as susceptible to abuse, leading to false ideas of ‘what the enemy is thinking’; there’s only progressive and right wing, regardless of method.
BillyB writes: “There is no honor, no grace, no dignity in what our President has already done in Iraq. He has sullied the honor of this great and noble country with the foul weakness of his own character. His actions were those of a bully, and like all bullies he is at heart a coward.”
~ well said and well writ friend.
As to Chris Hedge’s article, I believe there used to be a tad more ‘intelligence’ in Intelligence circles, but hey, -thinking has become Sooooooo unfashionable in this day and age, ~ OMG: it’s sooooo passé now!
Mindlessly emoting is more à la mode, -courtesy of the trash-head owners of our mEss Media, - those unprincipled, vulpine shepherds leading their unwitting sheep audiences to an assortment of precipices and abattoirs…
**A radical change and expansion of consciousness is needed if we are to reverse this dire process.**
Here at C-D we oft attempt this, but more yet is needed, and yes, I have an inkling (as others here have noted) that if we can’t achieve that in a timely way, then Nature, God or Gaia (call her what we might) will then provide the appropriate kick in the pants to awaken junk-munching, TV-ogling, barely-educated, sports-distracted, vacant-minded, over-emoting, fully-armed and very paranoid peons from their consumerist reveries…
RE: INTELLIGENCE IN INTELLIGENCE CIRCLES
UN-common-dreams September 3rd, 2007 4:51 pm
“there used to be a tad more ‘intelligence’ in Intelligence circles, but hey, -thinking has become Sooooooo unfashionable in this day and age”
Dunno about that…that’s what Hedges argues w/his State Department vs. ideologue contrast. As I indicate - re the McCarthy Period - this has been argued in past. But I’m not sure that those more ’sensible’ heads have ever prevailed, during any time.
Ultimately, in my view, Hedges’ analysis looks to validate the US govt by seeking the possibility of sensible decisionmaking at the top - vs. resistance from below.
worldchangeguy & bugsbbunny:
Thank you for your eloquently stated points.
I agree with both of you.
“We must grasp how they think about us and be sensitive to their fears and insecurities.”
from the German newspaper Spiegel (8/31/2007)
“Muslim separatists in the south of Thailand want to secede from the Buddhist north and have targeted monks and other representatives of the state. But they also claim to have been victims of government atrocities.”
from Google news (9/3/2007)
“Ex-hostages say Taliban beat them for refusing to convert
15 hours ago
SEOUL (AFP) — Some of the South Korean Christian aid workers held hostage by Afghanistan’s Taliban said they were beaten for refusing to convert to Islam and protecting female captives, a hospital chief said Monday.”
from the British paper The Telegraph
“Islamist extremists have been blamed for a double bombing in Hyderabad, the south Indian information technology hub, which left 42 people dead, including several women and children, and more than 50 injured.”
These few clips are from the past few days. The violence perpetrated against non muslims and muslims by muslim extremists could fill volumes of books. Videotaped beheadings, stoned women, honor killings, genital mutilation, the horror list is long. “We must grasp how they think about us” indeed.
This stupid article puts the blame of the global violence squarely at the feet of America. To be sure, America has had many foreign policy blunders, but Afghanistan is not one of them. Put yourself in the shoes of an American president at the time of 9/11. Bin Laden and his cronies were under the protection of the Taliban. What, lets send over diplomats and ask them why they killed 3,000 men, women and children? In case you haven’t noticed or have been on another planet, this violence has been happening since the sevetees and well befor that. 1914 - 1915 one and a half Armenians were tortured, raped, crucified and murdered at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.
This article is totally disgusting, but I am afraid America haters are becoming more vocal and soon America will enter a period of dormancy which is what they want. We will go back to that place called isolationism. As Abraham Lincoln said “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”
I suggest America haters do a bit more global traveling, try Saudi Arabia and bring along your girlfriend or wife and have her wear shorts and see how far you go.
This great nation needs Americans, and yes needs improvement. The peoples of the world are coming to our shores legally and illegally. Why?
Shah kenaw
China will do nothing. As China grows, it will not be able to constrain it’s people from seeking more liberty.
I’m trying to figure out what this war is going to look like. (Altho, sometimes people say that I’m a unrealistically crazy as a bush…)
Would Iran be able to put together some kind of a coalition? Likely! For now I’ll call them The Allies.
It’s likely The Allies would use targeted bombing, rather than the area bombing so favoured by the USA, otherwise The Allies would be acting no better than their enemies. The Allies’ bombers and missiles would hit gas refineries and energy plants, both of which are easily seen from the air, and easily targeted by missiles. No infrastructure that touches ordinary people, sewer lines, water supply, basic food crops, will be destroyed or poisoned. Agin, The Allies would not want to act like the state that they are fighting against.
Without vehicle gas and electricity, the American public would be sitting waiting to see who was going to win. Americans are individualists, so no organized civilian resistance is likely, Patrick Swayze notwithstanding. Many Christian Zionists might head to Canada, to await the rapture there. However they may find the Smart Border regime that USA forced on Canada a bit problematical. those that do get to asylum in Canada would likely find, after one winter up there, that they prefer curling to religion.
Ground assaults could hit both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. It would not be possible to use Mexico or Canada for a launch for a liberating invasion: the former,because the Mexico USA border is too strongly defended, and the the latter, because they would still be debating in parliament what their stance should be.So assaults woould have to be from the sea and air.
(An assault in New Orleans would likely be met with cheers and flowers; likely that assault would not even need military cohorts, but rather only medical and infrastructure teams.)
Once the coasts have been secured, and New Orleans, at the head of the Mississippi, the battle for the hearts and minds would begin. Guaranteeing the public that they can keep their guns would win over most of the interior. As far as politics goes, that seems to be their main priority. That, and who is number one on sports, so sports would continue…but without the nationalist displays at the opening of every contest.
Then Mexico and Canada would be invited to take back Mexico irridentia and Canada irredentia; the former, that territory taken from them by warfare; and the latter, that territory given away by Britain in the 19th Century. Russia and Canada will decide on Alaska’s future. But it will be a military free zone, as will all the rest of USA.
There will be a round up of the war criminals, those guilty of crimes against humanity, stretching back to the 1960s, and they will face their accusers and judges in open court….not in secretive military tribunals, or mock trials like the Lockerby mess. There will be no extra judicial murders, again,because that would suggest that The Allies are no better than the USA has been. these war criminals can be found in Washington DC, either in government majority, or in think tanks waiting their turn to form the next majority.
The pentagon will be dismantled, either that, or become a ‘peace dividend’…reorganized as a university which will specialize in the study of peace, ethics and the advancement of civilized behaviour.
The Allied occupation will end once Americans recognize openly htat they are just like thier fellow human beings around the planet, no more, and no less.
We should not forget that Lieberman had our senate vote 100-0 that we should protect Israel and that congress need not have to o.k. any attack on Iran. Called for by AIPAC and totally fullfilled by our Congress.
My newly elected senator Robert Casey not only jumped on that bandwagon but also voted to have Bush wiretap us to death. By the way he’s a democrat or a gopocrate.
Let’s put forth a possibilty: Lieberman is appointed Attorney General by Bush. Congress can do two things, OK or not. Lets try, OKing him for the job and the Gov of CT appoints a Republican and their goes the Senate, or the Senate refuses to OK him and he turns GOP. Their goes the Senate. Win Win except for the American people.
Also remember the only name put forth by Bush at the American Legion Pow Wow was, you guessed it….Liberman.
“The United States and its allies should confront Iran”. What allies?
If we go to war with Iran I hope they thoroughly kick our asses all over the mid east!!!
Don’t waste too much thought or effort on Dutch1949, he is just trolling the waters.
Could it be possible that Bush is even dumber then he looks?
THey’re just so intent on hastily running this country into the ground… Not even little by little. Getting involved with Iran will create another quagmire with serious repercussions.
This time we won’t be dealing with a failed state like Iraq from 13 years of UN sanctions, 13 years of continuous bombing, a crumbling infrastructure, an obselete and demoralized military, and a disorganized Iraqi government (not that the current Iraq government is organized either). An attack on Iran brings Turkmenistan and Syria into the mix, directly, and indirectly brings China and Russia into the fold as well (which is what the Neo-cons want all along, another cold war). All China has to do is dump it’s treasury bonds of 1.3 trillion it has invested in the US, and you’ll see a massive US depression overnight 10 times worse than in the 30’s. Our economy isn’t built to temper or sustain an depression. Not only that, military action of any kind further alienates the US standing in the middle east amongst our “allies,” and worldwide as well. The backlash against Islam in general would be catastrophic, we’d be creating more and more extremists giving them more reasons to justify attacking the US.
But anyway, the war propoganda spin will be on full gear after this labor day. Rumor is they’re not even looking for majority public opinion anymore, but somewhere in the area of 33-40% is “plenty” for them. Which is basically what you have now. 33-40% blindly supporting these imperialist misadventures without any critical thought whatsoever. As I said, these people have no memory, and no concept of history as they can’t even remember what’s happened in Iraq… and Iraq is the present day. They were lied to and tricked into supporting the Iraq war back in 03′, and like an alzheimers patient will easily be fooled again. It’s an easy sell to ignorant and braindead fools.
When the empire embarasses itself again, and runs America into the ground and into a massive depression, let’s not forget that 33-40% who supported and enabled these policies. Of course, when it does fail, this will somehow be the “lefts’” fault just like Iraq is the democrats fault for not supporting the troops even though the republicans haven’t actually done anything to support the troops, but things are going so well in Iraq that we need more troops, and 50 billion more dollars-more time, more time, they’re in their last throes, we just need to build more permanent military bases to house 50,000 soldiers in Iraq.
They estimate the current Iraq war will cost our treasury and taxpayers 1.5-2 trillion dollars- and that’s if we leave in 2015 which we won’t. We might as well had just bought the damn country for half that ammount and avoided the war altogether, not caused half a million deaths, millions wounded, 4 million refugees, a humanitarian crisis and not to mention nearly 4,000 Americans dead, 25,000+ wounded… and if Iran and Iraq truly are the center of terrorism, perhaps Bush can tell us how many of the 9-11 hijackers came from Iran and Iraq?
I’ll have my passport available when the strikes occur and I suggest you all have it ready too. You’re not going to want to be in America dealing with the consequences of these misguided and twisted policies. And yes, unless you’re a multi-millionaire, YOU will be dealing with the consequences of these wars. Just like the Kennedy’s and Vanderbilts etc all used to say they never knew the great depression had ever occured in the US untill they read it in a textbook. It’s easy to live one’s life when one is just completely shut off and ignorant of all reality around them, and completely misses the big picture. And this is essentially the future that the Neo-Cons are building for America. Mindless, pre-programmed, timid, paranoid, and demoralized drones who will easily soccumb to any authority and law/policy thrusted upon them, including a government which actively spies, harasses, and invades the privacy of their every move. but they will nevertheless frantically insist that the government represents them and that there is a democracy.
They can have all the freedom fries, and freedom toast they want. THe rest of us, along with the world in general and the Neo-con masters too will be laughing at them, they truly are pathetic and history will record them as such. They will be studied over and over again in classrooms, psychological and historical examples of the brainwashed and programmed masses, and the dangers of both. Germany was and is studied as such, but again, a portion of our public has no concept of this. In 1939, at the height of the third reich, you had the Nazi propoganda machine in full gear with bullshit like “Poland has Amassed 2 million soldiers on the border of Germany and threatens invasion!!!! Germany must mobilize and attack before Poland attacks first!!!!” and all the way through to 1944 with the walls closing in all around the Nazi’s, you still had the Nazi propoganda machine spinning the public with stuff like “The German military is wearing down the allies and the Russians, it will not be long before they surrender.” All of this occuring in the bubble that was Germany.
America, similarly, is an Island itself completely isolated from reality.
I personally would love to see things go back to the old warfare, where the kings and generals LED their troops into battle. Bush doesn’t need to be sneaking into Iraq, far away from the battle zone, into a heavily fortified area. He needs to be in the lead humvee, rolling through the streets of Baghdad.
Is it just me, or do you believe that there would be a lot less wars?
It may be my earlier comments that Dutch 49 finds so offensive when he characterizes those of us in disagreement with him as “America Haters” and then goes on to admonish us to “do a bit more global traveling”. I believe the extent of my travels and my years of living and working in the middle east should give me some credentials.
As far as his quotation of Abrahan Lincoln regarding a “house divided” I would like to direct him to another Lincoln quotation, “With malice towards none, with charity for all…”. There is another quote however which is more to tne point in dealing with Little George the loser; it begins, “You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but……..”
Keep the faith: Billy B
We need to have a discussion on a national level of the effect on our lives of our county’s unquenchable desire for empire and resources and stonehearted willingness to sacrifice its youth to obtain it.
We need to have a discussion on a national level of the effect on our lives of our country’s unquenchable desire for empire.
I think it’s important that as many people as possible express the opinion that our government is run by criminals and war criminals.
Given time our society will crumble, anyway, with its denial of overpopulation; but George ‘the evil one’ has the ability implode our society in next 2 or 3 months.
All the hopes and dreams of relatively well-off americans will become nothing (even those SUVs won’t run). Survival will become the only hope.
Looks like the time (LIKE TOMORROW!) to stock up on guns, food, and suicide pills — the later for a worst case scenario.
Good luck to the smallish minority of relatively sane intelligent, and moral americans.
Here’s what we can do, and it won’t cost a dime to start. We need a Peace Committee in every neighborhood, in every town. There are already hundreds of Peace Vigils happening weekly all over the states. If you know where your local one is, join it. Then help it become more organized, or start your own committee with four or five neighbors and friends:
1.Create a data base of everyone who attends street vigils.
2. Stay in contact with people who show up, urge them to keep coming back.
3.Get in touch with other vigils/committees in your area.
4. Organize into Congressional coalitions so that when your congresscritter shows up, he encounters a wall of people.
5. Create a steering committee, meeting regularly, so that all the work doesn’t fall on one or two folks.
Here’s why this is important. If the crisis deepens, as Chris Hedges suggests, people need to know where to show up. If we leave this to ’spontaneity’, it’ll happen once or twice, then fizzle out. If we have organized, ongoing Peace Committees and Vigils then the protest has a location to grow and swell. Believe me, it will.
We are already doing all of the above in Oregon. It’s not hard. Contact me w/any how to questions.
mikeedera@centurytel.net
mastershake: “if Iran and Iraq truly are the center of terrorism, perhaps Bush can tell us how many of the 9-11 hijackers came from Iran and Iraq?”
If you saw the Zeitgeist movie, you’d know that 6 of the “hijackers” are still alive, and that the flight logs for the downed jets (only evidence that 2 of the 4 crashes were jets) don’t include anyone of Arab descent. One of the guys is living in England and is astonished that his name has been used this way. The FBI has never revised their flight lists. IOW the goddamned thing was a set up, with Cheney running NORAD that day from his bunker (hence no intercepts).
frank1569: “And let’s expect Russia and China to stealthily support Iran in order to fulfill the neocrazies’ fantasy of a new “cold war.” As the fire erupts, the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, all the Dept. Of Homeland Sec “laws,” and all the other “anti-terror” laws will kick in - conscription will start, protesters will be rounded up and held in Halliburton “special programs” detention centers, and the propaganda will be cranked up to such a level, Americans might just start turning on each other.”
I agree. We are so divided that a new civil war could take place. I only hope that a massive depression will bring us together as a people. But given the jingoistic and uncritical-of-power MO of the mainstream media, we’ll probably be encouraged to be at each other’s throats.
Dichterfreund: “The racist kooks, led by Daniel Pipes, have tried to shut down the Gibran Institute in NYC on the grounds that Arabic is Islamic & therefore if you teach or speak Arabic, you are a propagandist for ‘terrorism’ and all that blah. Just like German was a Nazi a language and Russian a commie language. And this is being promoted through Murdoch’s toilet sheets & the dumbshit gobblers of the flying monkey right… But — Chris Hedges continues to project the fantasy that somehow the empire used to be more nuanced & nicer or somehow not as imperial. Who was it who decided to ride with the ‘house of Saud’, who put the Shah in power & trained the Sabak? Ask Owen Lattimore just how receptive the American regime was to specialists with comprehensive knowledge of their areas of expertise. Loyalty to the American ideology has always trumped cultural expertise; there would’ve been no Cold War had the reverse been the case. Our rulers & at least half the electorate still act on the same principles in 2007 that they acted on in 1947, and which prompted the war in Korea and then the war on the Vietnamese people.”
Thank you for providing us with a handful of the many genocidal anecdotes in American history. It’s so easy to slip into the habit of whitewashing the past — or at least to project a fantasy image of it by which to make today’s idiocy look atypically violent and imperialistic (when it is in fact the norm).
BillyB: “Little George wants to lead us into another war that he will attempt to justify as necessary for our protection, but that is not the real reason. This will be another war for economic colonization with strong prompting by the Neo-cons and especially the contracting arm of the “military Industrial Complex”… Little George likes to dress up in warrior garb and play the “Wartime President”, but it’s all a sham. Our involvement in Iraq is no war. A nation of more than 300 million people, with a military budget double that of the total expenditure of all the rest of the world combined does not spend more than four years in a losing battle with a country of 24 million, especially one beaten down by UN sanctions and a broken economy. This is an occupation, a land grab or more accurately an oil grab. As a war it is unwinable and an attack on Iran will be infinitely worse.
I have lived and worked in Iran. They are a noble and brave people with a proud history of never initiating a war of conquest since the time of Cyrus the Great, but they have fought and tenaciously resisted every attempt to subjugate them. They are a nation with a population more than six times that of Iraq undivided ny religious schism. They have a military four times larger than the US presence in the Gulf and they are in a position to destroy our presence in Iraq and strangle the flow of oil to the West. An attack on Iran would open Pandora’s Box to the kind of problems that will never be solved within our lifetime and could destroy our way of life.
There is no honor, no grace, no dignity in what our President has already done in Iraq. He has sullied the honor of this great and noble country with the foul weakness of his own character. His actions were those of a bully, and like all bullies he is at heart a coward. By his own history regarding Vietnam he must be adjudged a physical coward and by his unwillingness to correct, or even acknowledge, his failings in Iraq and now to threaten to extend the war he demonstrates his fundamental moral cowardness. God help this country.”
BillyB — Awesome post! I agree that W is a moral coward. While the US will pay a serious karmic commeuppance for what we’ve done, there will NEVER be an acceptable excuse or a price worthy of the crime — short of our death as a nation — that can be offered to compensate for the 20,000,000 million Iranians and Iraqis who may be dead by the end of this juggernaut/crusade. It is such a horrific admixture creating the perfect diplomatic storm: the central banks and corporate elites’ bloodlust for world domination (oil/energy being secondary to that); the absence of a free press in the US (and the misinformed public that results); religious fundamentalism on all sides, but most especially the US’s aberrant form of Christianity; the technological capacity to anhilate all of humanity (and those “lesser” creatures like plankton and soil bacteria that make the web of life possible; etc.
Reggie Brown: “I personally would love to see things go back to the old warfare, where the kings and generals LED their troops into battle. Bush doesn’t need to be sneaking into Iraq, far away from the battle zone, into a heavily fortified area. He needs to be in the lead humvee, rolling through the streets of Baghdad… Is it just me, or do you believe that there would be a lot less wars?”
I agree with you. The neocons, Bush admin, and Congress are all playing this Middle East thing like a video game. They have no TRUE sense of what they are up to, the carnage and the damage they are responsible for. The only way out: US economy collapses and/or THE DRAFT.
But I am down with the Peace Vigils and Days of Strikes — the Titanic’s got to play something!
More seriously, no matter how bad it gets, one is never absolved of the responsibility of doing the right thing. Protesting and being a witness of conscience to Bush’s Plague on the world is required of anyone who believes themselves to be empathetic and moral.
In the event of an attack on Iran Chris Hedges asks “then what”, and tells us to “expect massive American casualties, especially in Iraq”. He is right, there is certainly a very real possibility that this will occur. But then what? The U.S. will certainly retaliate with greater force. If significant numbers of U.S. troops are dying, then it’s well within the realm of possibility that the U.S. answer will be a nuclear attack on Iran. That’s what all this could end up leading to - a nuclear war. And then what?
But it isn’t our country’s, the great majority of our people’s, desire for empire. It is the desire of those ultra-wealthy corporatists who have financed and sometimes fraudulently manipulated those “elected” into power. Has anybody thought about what bombing means? Cheney has made public reference this year to nuclear bombs. Certainly, the delivery systems are “Bunker Busters” which seek underground facilities. The US gave Israel such Bunker Busters with conventional warheads when they attacked Lebanon. Were they testing? This resulted in many women and children being killed because they were put in underground shelters. IF Cheney gets his way, the warheads would be nuclear with each one having a power many times that of a Hiroshima blast. Even underground, buildings would collapse from the shockwaves. But aside from that, there would be deadly radiation. I wonder how our far larger nation would look after 122 nuclear bombs in a three day onslaught. That’s what Cheney intends. Who is to stop him?
To Patrick Cummins- Then what is is that a newly Taliban-overthrown Pakistan comes in on the side of Iran with their nuclear weapons. Would that mean that India, with its nuclear arsenal would side with the US while trying to survive? And there’s Russia with multiple nuclear warheads intercontinental missiles Bush never saw fit to negotiate dismantling. Whose side might they be on? It’s a cinch they won’t be pleased when their people are nuked in Iran. Madness! We’re getting well past “War Games” at this point.
To Poet:
Military coup, our military academies produce honorable men, they stand straight except when it comes to the constitution then they bend over. So coup is out of the question. Somebody killing those turds, sorry. Revolution is the only solution. Now that’s poetry.
Is revolution a dirty word?
Chris Hedges is correct in suggesting that there used to be a place for what are called the “soft” disciplines in our elite system. The fact that they are not there to soften what the “trolls” would do means that we are now on the same trajectory as ancient Rome. Maybe that is good.
“Is revolution a dirty word?”
In the US, there can only be one revolution, and it was a non-revolution; it was a successful war for independence (not achieved independently), followed by a century-long imperial war against the indigenous nations & then expanded beyond the shores of the US when internal rule was consolidated.
In the ’60s, the word once again gained currency, but when the most prominent new revolutionaries were hunted down & assassinated outright, with thorough protection from the Murderstream Media, few of those who were consumers of radical books turned out to have the tenacity for the long-term project. The rewards for declaring that the US is the splendid, wonderful, unsurpassable goal of history have proved quite enticing.
“Revolution is the only solution”
Revolution is the inevitable outcome of the processes pursued by unopposed capitalism, but under what circumstances & to what extent it’s initiated & achieved are always up for grabs; there is no crystal ball, no clairvoyance. The revolution has to occur in the minds of those who will enact it; history is the great persuader as the majority begin to reckon with an irremediable system & a wholly inaccessible seat of power.
Mordechai and others, all your swear words do not help your argument. I found the additional expletitives difficult to read and confusing, but more than that they demonstrated the lack of empathy that Chris was writing about. We need to treat the President as the President of the United States even when we disagree with him. This will help our voices be heard by the conservatives and help get our country out of the quagmire that will lead to our own civil war. Of course, I would appreciate it if the conservatives would do the same, but they need to develop their own voices of reason.
This discussion is the next quackmire.
Misanthrope and Dutch1949
“Don’t waste too much thought or effort on Dutch1949, he is just trolling the waters.”
Thanks for the good advice “Misanthrope”
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It seems that within the self-deluding circles in Washington few have noticed that the greatest lesson the peoples of the world have learned from the US invasion of Iraq is that US wealth and military power is far from being capable of robbing, bamboozling, and enslaving the people of one crippled Middle Eastern nation and therefore the US has absolutely no chance of doing the same to the whole region. The elites around the world must be shaking their heads in amazement at the foolishness and waste as the US self-destructs.
The US has long been a ruthless empire, but only recently has it become completely incompetent. One can argue whether that is a good thing, that is if it does not result in worldwide thermonuclear war.
Until the American people put their VP in a box, along with the Jewish lobby, the threat of an all-out war across the Middle East leading to a world war, is imminent. As a clergyman, I cannot believe the ignorange and gullability of the religious Right with their hope of pending ’salvation’ through total destruction of the world, something they seek passionately. These people need to be in a mental hospital.
Atheism without empathy is as dangerous as religious conviction without empathy.
But there’s only one sin in my book: Abuse of Power.
Dichterfreund
What kind of revolution? Using the polls with our votes, or do you have something else in mind? From the way it is worded I think you want something else - I could be wrong. I hope you are not advocating anything violent.
Soon, everybody should be happy. GW will have been replaced by a Dem, probably Clinton from the way it looks. However it plays out, the front in Iraq will have ended, although I believe we will still be in Afghanistan.
Aren’t bloggs nice, we all get to spout our opinions - everybody has one of course, myself included.
Wishing all of you lefties a great day
Dutch
Dutch:
Thank GOD for perceptive folk like you.
That crazy Dicherfreund is trying to get us all killed, myself included.
So I got that going for me, which is nice.
QUAGMIRE REMEDY:
TAKE THE PROFIT OUT OF WAR.
NATIONALIZE THE DEFENSE INDUSTRY TOP TO BOTTOM, SIDE TO SIDE, OR—
TAX AT 100% ALL DIRECT OR INDIRECT INCOME OF THE WAR INDUSTRY, OIL COMPANIES AND CONTRACTORS FOR THE DURATION OF COMBAT OPERATIONS BY ANY AGENCY OR CONTRACTOR OF THE UNITED STATES====FOR THE DURATION OF HOSTILITIES====. WHEN THE KILLING STOPS, PROFIT STARTS BACK UP. AFTER ALL, OUR WHOLE WAY OF LIFE IS AT STAKE HERE, OUR CIVILIZATION, FOR GOD’S SAKE.
DON’T WORRY, OUR BUSINESS COMMUNITY WILL BE HAPPY TO STAND UP FOR FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY —EVEN IF THEY DON’T MAKE A PROFIT!