Iraq, Deep In Your Bones
A war that isn’t really a war, the great humiliation that’s ours forever. Is there any upside?
We are, of course, mostly fighting against ourselves.
It must be repeated every so often, just as a painful, necessary, ego-tweaking reminder: Iraq was never a war. Not really, not in any sense that mattered or that we could actually define and understand or to which we could truly submit ourselves or our national identity.
It never mattered how many little American flags appeared on how many bloated Chevy Avalanches, how many right-wing radio shows found a new reason to pule, how many furiously blindered uber-patriots happily ignored all the harsh words from all those naysaying generals or even all the “turncoat” anti-war Republicans and insisted we’re really over there to fight some sort of great Islamic demon no one can actually see or locate or define but that we must, somehow, attempt to destroy — even though doing so only seems to make the situation far, far worse.
There was never any coherent, justifiable heroic cause. Indeed, the truth about Iraq, as evidenced by Gen. David Petreaus’ muted, bleak testimony before Congress just this week, is much more simple, nefarious, pathetic. Iraq is, was, and forever will be our very own massive strategic blunder, a failed land grab for position and power in a tinderbox region defined by furious instability and corruption and death.
It’s the great unspoken subtext. Iraq has always been a war between our dueling national identities, a battle over how we are to move and breathe and behave in the new millennium. Are we really this violently paranoid bully, this rogue pre-emptive screw-em-all ideological war machine defined by the dystopian Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld vision of permanent, ongoing global conflict?
Or do we try, instead, to move forward and reinvent ourselves over and over again as the world’s most commited, forceful peacekeeper, ever striving for balance and cooperation and tact, even in the face of hardship and fundamentalist rage, refusing to be taunted and dragged down lest we take the bait and lose our minds and engage in torture and misprision and ultraviolence and become little better, ideologically speaking, than our taunters? Have we already made our choice?
Because the truth is, we are well past the point of salvaging anything noble or honest from Bush’s massive, historic debacle. We have only this brutal reality: Iraq is, and forever will be, one of the most extraordinary wastes in all of American history.
A waste of money. A waste of time. A stunning, almost unspeakable waste of life. A waste of resources and intellectual capital and a massive waste of national spirit. A waste of energy and hope and a giant squandering of any goodwill or empathy our former allies might’ve had for America in its post-9/11 state. Heard it all before? Sure you have.
Some scenes remain almost comical in their absurdity. Perhaps you saw that money, those enormous, ridiculous piles of American cash, the photos floating around of American soldiers guarding giant, shrink-wrapped pallets of U.S. currency known as “cashpaks,” each reportedly containing about $1.6 million in stacks of $100 bills, all airlifted by the ton straight from the Federal Reserve and set down in the Iraqi sun like rotting fruit, small mountains of your tax dollars earmarked to buy off various warlords and pay for covert, unauthorized operations all over the Middle East in an attempt to buy our way into some sort of impossible, forced stability. Right.
Or maybe it’s the bodies, the sheer waste of American flesh, not merely the thousands of U.S. dead or even the countless tens of thousands of dead Iraqi citizens but also the lesser-known horrors, like the epidemic of brain-damaged U.S. soldiers, thousands of them, so many that they’re becoming their own category of study in medical textbooks given how they’re beginning to exhibit combinations of trauma doctors have never seen before.
What a recruitment poster this is. Come fight in the American military. We’re exhausted, overstretched, bewildered, have lowered our entrance barrier to accept D-grade students and former inmates, have almost zero idea what we’re actually fighting for, and serve under a Commander in Chief who cares more about trying to shore up his wretched legacy than for the loss of American life. Oh and by the way, odds are extremely high you will return home permanently wounded, traumatized, or brain damaged. How very proud we are.
We all know the current reality: We are not safer. We are not better off in any measurable way. We are not stronger or more unified or prouder or more respected or healthier or wealthier or wiser and we have done exactly zero to stem the flood of radical Islam or the general outpouring of global disgust at what America has become under this president. This is our scar. This is our great American shame.
So, what do you do with it? Or with the prospect of still more weeks, months, even years of this dull slog of war? Because the fact is, as Petreaus’ testimony essentially confirmed, we will be in Iraq at least through the (blessed) end of Bush’s nightmare term, and likely well beyond, given how entrenched and ensnared our forces have become.
Perhaps we can take the long view, the wide view, the spiritual or karmic view, even, insofar as the short and linear view has become so stifling and deadly and useless. Perhaps this is the only way.
Because truly, many in the alternative set, the lightworkers and the gurus and the healers and the deep teachers, those who think outside the war room and beyond the bland academic platitudes, these people tend see Iraq, BushCo, the American right and all the sanctimonious bleakness surrounding them as merely the inky remnants of a passing disease, the last, vicious gasp of a dying ideology, the violent struggle of resistance that always erupts before any great cosmic shift.
Which is to say: The screeching of the Christian right, the shrill alarmism from cultural conservatives regarding everything from sex and drugs and music to gays and nipples and creationism, the rejection of science, the attacks on women’s rights, the abuse of the environment, all the way up to the bleakest and ugliest manisfestation of all, a brutal and unwinnable war — taken as a whole, these can, if you so choose, be seen as merely the embers of a hugely failed — and yes, nearly extinct — worldview.
Here is the hesitant optimism, the hint of the new, the tentative suggestion that all is not lost: By many measures, the worst of it is over. There really is light coming, a new awareness, a shift away from the bleakness and the rot and the wallowing in bland violence. Perhaps you can feel it. Or perhaps you need to be ready to feel it. Either way, it’s there. You have but to do the most easy/difficult thing of all: you must look behind the veil, see the two dueling Americas, and make your choice.
Thoughts for the author? E-mail him. Mark Morford’s Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate and in the Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle.
© The San Francisco Chronicle
Bush claimed last night that we can “still win” in Iraq.
I have yet to see ANY idea from ANYONE what “win” exactly means.
Yeah, well — for a while ‘winning’ meant fewer car bombs, but car bombs don’t even count anymore, so it is indeed hard to keep track of what constitutes victory. I’m assuming that at this stage in the game, ‘winning’ is defined as provoking Iran into doing something that would unleash hell from the sky on their nuclear installations. ‘Winning’ could also be the ongoing process of keeping Iraq sufficiently unstable to prevent the extraction of oil, thus maintaining record profits for Bush’s BFFs, the Exxons of the world. As long as Exxon continues to break quarterly profit records, we’re ‘winning’.
I think ‘WIN’ means to loot the treasury and inslave the population of the U.S. See PNAC.
It was C. G. Jung that said to look in the mirror for the guilty party when things really go bad. Things are really bad.
TO THE DEMS
I have been meaning to write something like this for awhile because of your feckless responses and kowtowing to a president who is out to destroy this country. Why? Because you are cynical and political to an extreme. It is either that or you want to have all the stuff that is on the books now plus a war that you think will help you and without the blame. This is neither humanistic or morally defendable. Petraeus got what he deserves and cutting off funds for this war is the way to go because when it comes to priorities for this occupation it is contractors first and troops last. You can see this from any facts that you look at. So who cares for the troops? Some of you have been doing a lot of talking but nobody has thrown a rock at this glass house of an administration. Leave it to the people thru MoveOn.Org to do the heavy lifting for what you are supposed to be doing. You will not get my vote because you are no better than the repubs. Is there any difference in dictators, if one is a dem. or a repub? The way that you are acting you just want the whole pie for yourselves and forget the people again. I’m 71 and cant help but wonder what of the younger people? Because of your feckless nature it is a bleak future for them. Tony
One of our brilliant Washington D.C. minds was quoted recently referring to the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers as “the triangle of death.” It jogged the memory of the term I learned for that area as a kid in the early 60’s - “the Cradle of Civilization.” A breathtaking transformation, and a truly evil legacy for BushCo. I pray you are right, Mark, that the worst is over and the healing can soon begin.
“By many measures, the worst of it is over.”
Hmmm… crazies with their fingers on the Iran triggers… catastrophic climate mutation… the fall TV schedule… not quite over yet…
What a wonderfully well written article, that tells it all about the war in Iraq, as it is and will continue to be.
I would give all I have, to have the privelage of reading this to the entire assembled Conress of the United States.
One paragraph “grabbed” me, a bit more than others, it begins with the words, “Or maybe it’s the bodies”. ___ Yes indeed, the vets are forever damaged by inhaling nano-paticles of DU and in a few short years will be either permanently disabled or dead. Of course the same fate is due for ‘millions’ of the people of Iraq, we just very likely won’t ever hear that sad story.
I have been criticized by several others here at times for continually bringing up the DU subject. Read that paragraph with a critical eye, about our veterans, those troops are suffering from radiation poisoning. We should also keep in mind, that more than 600,000 vets of the First Gulf War, are now permanently disabled or dead, from inhaling ceramic oxide DU dust. The insidious symptoms of DU contamination are often not pronounced for from three to seven years after exposure.
When one dies from a cancer, no one autopsies the body to determine if radio-activity caused the disease in the first place. The tiny specks of still deadly DU are buried with the victem. DU didn’t kill them, it was cancer, or Hodgkins, or Lou Gerhigs disease, or kidney failure, liver failure, or diabetes, etc.___ “DU is hamless”!
Depleted uranium is rather harmless in a solid form, it’s like a block of lead only much heavier. When used in a bomb, tank or machine gun shell, it burns when the projectile strikes a target or the explosives in the bomb detonate. DU then burns at a very high temperature, the result is a smoke filled cloud of ceramic oxide, radio-active dust,___ billions of specks of poisonous dust, blowing in the wind. Inhaling only one of the microscopic partilces will insure the “inhalee” of eventual cancer, and or many other serious medical problems. Children with growing body cells and developing immune systems, are much more suseptable to the internal radio-activity.
A nano-particle of DU is one millionth of a meter in diameter, smaller than a grain of pollen. If inhaled, it may enter the lung where cancer is assured, or it may cross the olfactory bulb and go directly to the brain. Once lodged in the brain or lung, the tiny yet deadly speck radiates the cells with over ten thousand times the radiation allowed by a chest x-ray. Unlike an x-ray, the radiation continues forever, cancers form and then metastasis ensues and cancerous cells break off and can travel to any part of the body, to the liver, kidney, bladder, breast, lynph nodes, bone marrow etc. Another cancer factory begins. If the cancer is treatable, the patient may live, if not, the patient dies and no one is ever aware, that the disease began by inhaling a single speck of microscopic, highly radio-active DU dust.
http://www.gulfwarvets.com/du_howkilling.htm
For the average American, Iraq is not nearly as deep in our bones as it should be and perhaps one day will be. http://www.gpln.com/debatingiraq.htm
I have to run, leaving for the east coast for a few days. I’ll post another dreary comment before I pack my clean skivvies and sox. My mom often said, “Always wear clean skivvies Kem, you never know when you might get hit by a cement truck and end up in the hospital”.
DU has been tested by the thousands of TONS here in the United States on militay bomb ranges. In a single exploded tank shell, having ten pounds of DU, the resulting fire and smoke would distribute over 7 BILLION nano-particles of deadly wind blown dust. ___ Hold our breath. ___ Here is a website for just one of our states and what is happening there.
WWW.protecthawaii.ws/page2.html
That old worldview needs to become extinct before all life on the planet does. But attitudes die hard.
Just to follow up on what Kem Patrick said, DU creates a whole new dimension in destruction. Ordinary explosives detonate at around 500 degrees F.; DU, however, burns at 6,000 degrees F. These incredibly high temperatures cause the other heavy metals in military hardware such as lead, steel, aluminum, titanium, etc. to vaporize into nano particles. Additionally, the total surface area of these micron sized particles is thousands of times greater than that of the original DU warhead. This is a significant factor when each micro particle is emitting Alpha radiation directly into the cells. The combined effect of radiation and heavy metal poisoning, cancer, and genetic damage is on a level of horror beyond that seen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The half life of DU is 4.5 billion years.
The Inca Indian culture predicts a time of change between the years of 1996 and 2012. If it is true that the future can inform the past (by what mechanism, I have no idea!) the perhaps we are in the time of change and ‘Meeting ourselves again’ that was predicted well before the arrival of the Spanish in the New World. Oddly enough, the Mayan calender ends 2012. Perhaps we are entering an ‘interesting time’, certainly the course of current events cannot endure.
Veteran ‘66-68
“We” do not need to win in Iraq. “We” never got into this.
This is Bush’s war. He started it. Alone.
Now, Bush has LOST this war.
He’s lost the war, and that’s where it stands.
Bush actually said last night in his speech that we are pretty much going to remain in Iraq because he said the Iraqis would like us to be there. His lies are becoming outrageous. Once again Bush deceives the American people. Did he ever tell us before that we will be there from now on?? He has destroyed Iraq. Now he wants all his capitalist friends to permanently make money off of the resources. How does this serial liar get away with it??
Lying is a despicable, cowardly habit, then if the liar may speak the truth, few believe it.
“It is the nature of any scroundrel to lie”.
~~Cicero~~
Mark Morford said:
“you must look behind the veil, see the two dueling Americas, and make your choice.”
The citizens of the US have made their choice, and have consistently chosen evil over good, consistently stood by and let the evil continue. We could have chosen George McGovern, we chose Nixon; we could have chosen Nader, we chose Clinton; we could have chosen Nader again, we chose GW Bush; we could have better chosen anyone who hadn’t committed a political coup to gain office, but we chose the pretender a second time; we could choose Kucinich in the next election, but we won’t, instead we will, as we always have, choose someone who represents what GWB called “the Have-Mores” to continue to exploit the US masses and to support the oppression, killing, and exploitation of other peoples for the greater profit of the Have-Mores.
We choose evil because we are a pathologically lazy, hedonistic, violence-entertained, violence-loving, short-sighted, ignorant people. As Michael Moore once said: “Americans are the stupidest people on the planet.” Stupid derives from “stupor,” and people that sit by and watch their own rights taken away without protest, who watch their own interests denied, who watch the environment that sustains them being destroyed, who claim allegiance to a god of “peace” while supporting slaughter, are in a stupor.
The only other possible explanation is that we, as a people, are not the stupidest people on the planet after all but merely the most masochistic, sadistic, and evil.
Jonma, Re: “Triangle of Death” in place of “The Cradle of Civilization.” Nice point. I thought the same thing some time back. Truly amazing how backwards we’ve gotten (when we’ve had so much time to get it all right!)
One can always count on Mark Morford to zero right in on the truth of the matter. What we hear is the death-rattle of an empire in its last throes. Empires are almost always at their most dangerous when in decline.
At least, I sincerely hope that this current fiasco is nothing more or less than patriarchy’s last-ditch stand and the sputtering out of White Power. War became obsolete with the dropping of the Bomb on Hiroshima. Are we finally waking up to that reality?
Morford’s article is dead-on right and has some good truths expressed. It’s acknowledgement that anybody against Bush has lost, too… Moreover we’ve all lost, and will continue to lose.
The neoCon agenda has been one enormous, tragic, expensive error that will continue for many, many decades as some, meanwhile, continue to become extremely wealthy.
People are complaining that Bush is “lying” about the war.
Actually, it’s more like this:
He’s just going on a monopoly controlled state media outlet and giving the kind of propaganda speech that you see given by leaders in countries such as Cuba, or Russia, or China, or Iraq prior to the invasions, when there were giant statues of the then chief of state right hand in the air in the Roman “Ave” salute (the one Bush has been affecting for the last few years as he gets in and out of airforce aircraft going to and from his various private residences and the state mansion in DC).
It’s not “lying.” That would be more of a personal thing, of a personal nature: It’s state controlled media propaganda. The state wants you to believe certain things, like for instance that there is a real democratic process behind the present charade called the 2008 presidential elections.
How many of you really believe in the reality of these made for T.V. cardboard candidates paraded before you by the Democratic and Republican parties. It’s pure fiction.
For instance, take Hillary Clinton’s candidacy…Why isn’t Gore running again? Why isn’t Kerry running again?
The point is this: It’s unreal. It defies gravity, natural priorities: It’s propaganda.
It’s not lying: That would be specific. No this is the creation of a fictional reality.
It points to a condition of dictatorship.
The question we need to ask is more like this:
How entrenched is the current dictatorship?
And…
Who really runs this rust bucket? One person alone, a group, someone we know of or someone or a group behind them.
Most likely, there are some group dynamics behind this situation. Most likely, it’s largely smoke and mirrors, rewards and lots of fear mingled with comfort levels that need to be maintained.
But, almost certainly it’s money…big chunks of money, large family and industrial fortunes, old monied institutions with revolving chairmanships and lifetime employees and contributors.
This is the meaning of “conservatism”. It is the preservation and growing of huge amounts of capital in the hands of fewer and fewer people.
Follow the money and you’ll find the people behind all of this. It’s really quite easy.
Thank you, Mark Morford, for bringing it all back home.
Who ARE we as a nation? Can we evolve into a co-operative nation that works at a peaceful world, instead of just killing and drilling?
Your sentiments sound a hell of a lot like those of Dennis Kucinich.
We need this kind of leadership now.
Isn’t it nice that we talk to ourselves and all agree? And isn’t it sad that we talk to ourselves because there’s no real point in talking to the people who supposedly represent us? “Write your Congressman” is the mantra, but you might as well throw messages in a bottle into the ocean. My Congressman is Kit Bond, well-known Bush brownnoser. We have a Republican Party that is evil personified and a Democrat Party that is wishy-washy personified. And a president who apparently would rather lie than tell the truth, although considering the starkness of the truth it’s no wonder.
One of the commentators said he was 71. Well, I’m 73, have lived through a bunch of administrations, including some pretty nasty ones, but this Bush bunch trumps them all. Anyone who reads the nation’s history knows there always have been scoundrels and downright evil humans in positions of power and we’ve survived and thrived despite them. I’m not so sure this time around. There are too many assaults on the democratic ideal and too little passion to stop them.
Will we improve under a new president? I doubt it. I suspect the voters will grit their teeth and pick someone like Roughshod Rudy because they don’t want to vote for a woman or an African American. And, oh, boy! won’t we have fun then!
The above discussion points to this idea:
The capital accrued by various clans and organizations (frequently ideological in nature, including religious groups), has taken on a life of its own.
In fact, the people may change, but the situation remains amazingly similar. The great God of Greed sits astride this human pyramid of power. The people in power are besotted with greed, it animates their thinking and lust for total control over society, over all of the economy.
With the greed comes fear and anger, like attendant little demons or greek gods, nipping at the heals of the great fat god of greed. This is the god the great moral god of the conservatives.
These are people who believe that worship of capital and preservation of capital creates stability in their existence, making them immune to sickness, age and death.
Of course, it does nothing of the sort. They are just as sickly ‘(often more so), aged (almost always) and close to death as everyone else. Hence, the rage… We’ve seen this rage now for over 7 years.
You see the rage of the worshippers of the God of Greed like a Rushmore of little demons splashed on a cheesey Hollywood summer movie poster every time a new country is singled out for bombing, partition and pillage.
We see the angry aligned profiles of our Lone Rangers and Tantos, ready to fire their silver bullets into the offending crowd of happily un-rich, but joyously struggling humanity.
The god of greed is a hungry god. He (well perhaps he is a she?) is never satisfied with what is at his table. He wants what is at the next table.
The god of greed eats everything, especially people. Gobbles up property, people, children, Constitutions, art forms, museums and cultural monuments, businesses, communities, nations, people, oceans full of fish, whole species of animals…
The god of greed has taken over soul of the USA.
When Americans look in the mirror in the morning: The Great God of Greed stares back into their eyes.
Years ago, the Dalai Lama was asked what was wrong with the world, and why his noble people and culture were being unneccessarily and wantonly genocided.
I thought he would say something angry against the perpetrators, denouncing their rapine, and speak out against specific culprits or as we now like to say “evil” people.
But no. He said just this:
“I think it is greed.”
This seemed innocuous enough. I couldn’t see the connection back then, over a decade ago.
Greed just didn’t seem like enough of a reason or power.
Ah, but today, when we look at the Iraq war, at the war profiteering, at great fat god of greed reaching out for helpless civilian victims in foreign countries, in order to take control of minerals, stock markets, national industries and utilities…When you see children and families bombed in apartment buildings because of rage generated by the god of greed who is being asked simply to pay a little higher wage or share some small portion of ill begotten wealth…
Then I begin to understand the Dalai Lama’s simple and accurate diagnosis of the disease, of the deadly sin that is the most powerful virus now threatening the continued existence of the human race and all other species on the planet.
It’s the God of Greed.
The people now in charge are overcome by the Greed God. Their hellish visages are proof of the progress of the disease.
The congress and all branches of the government and most of industry is filled with these unhealthy folks.
What’s the cure?
By the way:
“We” do not need to win in Iraq. “We” never got into this.
This is Bush’s war. He started it. Alone.
Now, Bush has LOST this war.
He’s lost the war, and that’s where it stands.
One last thing:
“Greed kills.”
Mark Morford should be syndicated in every newspaper in America.
But he’s too “left coast”, too mystical, too much a damn good dot connector.
God Bless you Mark - truth teller
Icons of American Greed:
I invite other posters to create a list.
1.
2.
3.
“Well, I’m 73, have lived through a bunch of administrations, including some pretty nasty ones, but this Bush bunch trumps them all.”
Relatives of Julius & Ethel Rosenberg, asked whether the country was in worse shape at the time of the executions or now, universal say that the Bush regime is far worse.
““Write your Congressman” is the mantra, but you might as well throw messages in a bottle into the ocean. ”
When I wrote to my congressman, one of the freshman Dissemblecrats, about the necessity of impeachment, I received back the answer that the congressman took his responsibilities very seriously and IF ANY EVIDENCE OF ANY IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE WERE TO TURN UP IN THE COURSE OF A CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION, why, then he would be glad to vote for impeachment.
I went to the website of a local paper today. The Rocky Mtn News here in Denver. The one article on the speech was just an article where a reporter watched the speech with two brain-dead war supporters who just gushed about how Bush’s speech made reassured them and made them feel wonderful about their support of the war.
A newspaper in Germany in 1938 couldn’t have done it better.
Check it out here…. http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5697913,00.html
And note that while one link on the page does go to an article on the Dem response, there’s not a hint of any ‘reporting’ that might actually check some facts.
Your congressperson is safe because any congressional investigations that might turn up any improprieties is blocked by Pelosi. People like John Conyers definitely have had their marching orders all year long to only investigate issues that might embarrass the Republicans, but to stay far away from any investigations that might lead to impeachable offenses.
The reply you got seems like a decent answer until you step back and see the bigger game played by the Dem leadership to protect Bush and Cheney and to make sure they serve out their term …. just like Reid and Pelosi promised would happen months before the last elections. Thus he can give that answer safe in the knowledge that he’ll never have to follow through on it.
BRAVO! Well said! (But “pule”? “blindered”? Yipes! Still, style and rage were never better mated.) You couldn’t be more right: our Iraq crime was an unprovoked attack and occupation, no more or less, and the blood-and-treasure sacrifice is irredeemable. Yet you err, Mark. This “massive historic blunder” is a howling success. Just ask Dick Cheney or any of his friends at Halliburton. Ask Blackwater or any of the 180,000 “independent contractors” running roughshod over the folks there and getting extravagantly paid to do it. (Where do you suppose our half-trillion has gone?) Ask any “Great Gamer,” like Kissinger or Zbig Brzezinski. The point (besides fleecing us again) is to keep the Mid-East “cauldronized” so no one has a moment to think rationally about opposing U.S. interests–commercially, militarily, morally or in any category you can name–and see how well we’ve done it! As for the New Day Dawning you conjure, not, amigo, unless we summon it harder than we’re doing. I’m running as a Democrat for congress from the First District (Oregon border to Sacramento City Limit), to raise heck with the cowards and criminals who’ve taken over my party. You’re writing powerful stuff (and most of this cri de coeur is dead on). That’s the sort of summoning it takes. More! More! The abstraction referred to as “the American People” is slow to wake, but when it does, big stuff happens, including, maybe, the morning you sense is coming. I’m betting on it.
Mitch Clogg
Mendocino, CA
mitchc@mcn.org
Candidate for U.S. Congress
California First Congressional District
zoya: “I sincerely hope that this current fiasco is nothing more or less than patriarchy’s last-ditch stand and the sputtering out of White Power.”
Sputtering out of White Power? What Whites are you talking about? Not the poor whites where I’m from. You’re utilizing racism to mis-diagnose the true culprit: moneyed interests (many of whom still happen to be of Euro-ancestry, but quickly that’s changing). White-ness is not responsible for Bush. Many non-whites voted for him, and we could construe that they tipped the scale in his favor! But that’d be silly. No, widespread ignorance and fear did it, and we’re still surrounded by it. Probably, we’ll always be surrounded by it.
Mark Monford is trying to reason that the war is unprofitable, “a waste of time,” a “waste of life,” a “waste of money,” a “waste of American flesh”, farther down the line a “waste of Iraqi flesh,”…
He’s appealing to our sense of horror at the waste, the loss of our tax dollars.
What is really going on?
Americans are only interested in the expansion of the economy. Americans pay tax dollars in order to fund the expansion of the economy. No one expects any of that money to invested in infrastructure or public works, schools or transportation, or free higher education, or even free public health.
No the money is given to the central bank to be given to corporations and rich individuals who are then supposed to expand our economy.
These folks chose to take the money abroad and put it directly in private accounts, and to invest in killing and imprisoning people in a protection racket scheme called “The War On Terrorism.” The “War on Terrorism” is a money laundering scheme perpetrated by the American government, including all three branches.
This is a not waste of money, nor is it a waste of time.
It’s pure profit.
And the reason Americans go along with it is because the American dream says that you might become a lottery winner in this pyramid scheme. Each American believes that he or she can become a winner in this system.
Iraqi’s on the other hand do not believe this.
They do not think the war is a waste either.
They believe that the war is very profitable for Americans.
They do not believe that Iraqi’s can in any way profit from America’s shock and awe doomsday politics.
And so, they are spending their time and money getting guns and bombs to throw the Americans out.
The American people have set up their entire economy on wars such as this, and so they will continue as long as there are willing soldiers (also earning money at it) and mercenaries, and weapons to continue.
Monford is telling us to quit becuase there is no profit.
He too believes like I do, that greed is the great god that makes America tick.
Haliburton, oil corporations, and military contractors are doing fine, thank you very much. The Iraqi civil conflicts are going gangbusters, making it easier for US troops to eventually clear out the country. When there’s no people left, there will be no one to share the oil profits with, no one to pay reparations to (and these would be astronomical). The aim is to kill or scare off all the potential was crime plaintiffs. If the victims aren’t around, no one can be charged, right? Just like the Holocaust, the US appears committed to finishing off its crimes. The US congress are behaving like Daleks. We will exterminate. If they withdraw, they must have been in the wrong. They can’t admit that. Besides, there’s a whole nation of oil to win.
Where I differ from Monford is among other things here at this point:
Solving greed thinking by appealing to profit consciousness will not work.
The diseased individual has to see the correlation between greed and death as with other bad habits such as alcohol, cigarettes or drugs.
A greed diseased America, the big obesely fat America we now know will have to realize that greed is a delusion that cannot be satisfied. It is a diseased state of mind and body.
When this settles in to the national psyche, and that might never happen, things could start to improve.
Three last words.
“A Depression is coming”.
Oops, four words.
Hey mustbefree,
Save a little of that bloodlust for the Repugs. We wouldn’t be in this shit heap if it wasn’t for pondscum Repugs.
Jvance,
What exactly would be the point in writing a congressman? People on this blog know the futility of doing such a thing. Congressmen for the most part have shown us where they stand. For the most part, the ones we thought were actually concerned have had demonstrators arrested (Conyers/Sheehan). If you really believe they listen to you, then write away, but when you get your form letter in the mail signed, “Thank you for your concern,” maybe you’ll realize that the only letters they actually read themselves are the ones with $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
I would like to believe that the prevailing world view of violence, power and greed was dying and that better world is coming. I would really like to think that was true. Unfortunately I don’t. Sure, there are many good and even enlightened people but those who dream of the “hundredth monkey,” the “paradigm shift” and the “Age of Aquarius” are delusional. What it’s going to take to get us beyond this darkness is a militant class consciousness unified in a struggle to crush the deadly tyranny of a corrupt and monstrous system. That may happen if (or when) the economy collapses but as long as people are enslaved to the cycle of jobs and consumerism and as long as that holds out, I fear that nothing will change.
Very sober Mark. I truly feel your pain, and mine.
Whether or not a person agrees with Morford’s analysis–and I tend to agree with it–the important bit comes at the end. “You have but to do the most easy/difficult thing of all: you must look behind the veil, see the two dueling Americas, and make your choice.”
I would go one step further: having made your choice, make that choice manifest. Not by writing to Congress, but by doing something in your town or city, something that shows your choice of generosity over greed: work together with others to befriend immigrants and don’t worry about their legal status; help the increasing number of indigent and homeless; meet your neighbours in a new way, work to bring Iraqi refugees to America (one Swedish city alone has taken in more Iraqi refugees than has the entire U.S.), visit traumatized veterans and perhaps help to reduce that cause of increasing suicide–do whatever expresses your spirit of generosity. I do believe if each of us begins with a small step, we can help each other keep from drowning of sorrow and perhaps even change the world a little. Of course, if you choose to go for the greed, you’re on your own.
i really like the writing in this piece, it is great reading and also touches on an absolute ton of the issues at hand today, including the title’s issue.
it is a good question, but there are more.
if the united states is to heal - if that is even possible (we have to accept the possibility that we have dallied to long and left it too late) - there are other questions that not only need to be asked but need to be resolved.
1. is the united states going to continue to allow foreign policy, especially in the middle east, be dictated by the jewish lobby?
i assume we all understand that a large group of the major neo-cons are proud jewish boys, and good for them, but i think it is also apparent that they have more concern for the israeli state than for the american.
2. is the american citizenry willing to allow the corporations to absolutely suck out the last drop of the good red american blood?
the first question i ask gets at how this mess in iraq started, to be fair the israelis wanted the us to go after iran all along, but a few twists and turns aside they are getting their way.
the relentless media campaign to froth you up, provided by the corporations and away we go, spreading democracy from here to eternity.
the second gets at the trend over the last forty or so years of the evolution of the corporation into person hood, then absolution and, finally, righteousness whereby they have all the rights and none of the responsibility.
they screwed you there.
this article asks it’s question - which road?
i say resolve these two questions i ask before you get to the article’s two. they are the struggle.
iraq is a chapter, not the first and not the last, of the struggle.
Bush plunged us into the darkness with lies, deception, and trickery. A huge number of Americans still believe the lies, and BushCo STILL PUMPS THE LIES with all of their Al-Q talk and Terr’ist this and Terr’ist that. They refuse to acknowledge the HUGE SUFFERING they have inflicted on the innocents of a country that could have keep slowing moving toward a passable secular state given less time than this shit will last. They refuse to acknowledge the huge cost that has been placed on our country, its economy, its place in the world, and its military and the military grunts who could have been used for much more noble ends than to trash all faith that we would use our might with thought.
Bush’s mess.
Bush’s disgrace.
I see no reason to give this piece any plaudits or hosannas. It is riddled with deliberate inaccuracies and falsities, all geared to make Americans feel “better” about the abhorrent situation in Iraq.
First of all, the invasion of Iraq was not a “mistake,” nor is it a “debacle” from the point of view of the people who initiated it. For them, everything is right on schedule. The complete destruction of Iraq, and any sovereignty it might claim to possess, was always the ultimate goal.
Secondly, this American warmongering has been a consistent factor on the world stage for the past 50 years. Iraq is absolutely nothing new, although it has reached a new level of in-your-face “unsavoryness,” if that’s a word. If Momford were truthful, he would elaborate on how America truly has no “innocent” past to go back to. There is no mythical time when it stood as the “light of the world.”
The same evils — subversion of elected governments, covert assassinations, stealing natural resources from poorer countries — have been coming out of Washington for decades, even under so-called pacifists like Carter.
Americans absolutely refuse to be honest about things like this, but seeing such lies from a so-called “liberal” writer brings the point home all the more forcefully.
I could go on and on, but what really got me was the repeating of the base and abhorrent lie that “tens of thousands” of Iraqis have been killed. Try upping that number by about a million, and you’ll be much closer to the truth. I’m sure Momford knows this, but for the sake of writing a puff piece, under the guise of criticizing the current administration, he reinforces as many right-wing lies as possible.
Articles like this — designed to make Americans feel “better” about their own horrid history — show how absolutely morally bankrupt the country is, and has been for a long, long time.
Why Blame Bush?
The unprecedented atrocities by this arrogant zealot and his henchmen, include stolen elections, disastrous war on our environment through manipulation of science, intimidation of congress with unprecedented character assassinations (ie branding a triple amputee Viet Vet for supporting an inquiry into the causes of 9/11), a grossly misguided war, & the list goes on.
Blame falls mainly on the apathetic populace who voted for Bush, and then stood by while his team inflected more damage on our republic, and the world, than any administration in our history.
I want each and every one of you to fess up to how much OIL you use everyday.
How much gas do YOU use driving around?
How much energy do YOU use in running your home, your work, your toys?
How much energy is used to make and distribute the products YOU consume?
How much waste do YOU generate?
All of these things require the OIL that we are fighting over, that grease that keeps the capitalist machine running, that creates the lifestyle we’ve become accustomed to and take totally for granted. Look in the mirror, look within, look around, it starts with a conscious choice and diligent effort to change your consumption habits. First take person responsibility, then point the finger.
Saddam Hussein said that “The Americans will commit suicide at the gates of Baghdad”, and they have and will.
I don’t support the war-never have- so I certainly can’t support those who are fighting it. There can never be “victory” in an agressive war. The American troops are fighting for nothing. The Iraqis are fighting a defensive war against the occupiers. The Iraqis are fighting for something-freedom.
XI PEOPLE, I respectfully disagree with many of your rather one sided comments. The one I will address, to keep it brief, is your lengthy tirade about the author writing “tens of thousands” instead of a million, or perhaps near a million. If you are a literary critic, that would be your rather picky opinion. But most would not pick at a writers style or “voice”. I got the message, “tens of thousands” could be more than a million in my opinion. Just take 10 times 10 and add in the 000s. One dead innocent human is one too many. Finally, I garnered NO pleasure or felt “better” from reading the very well written paper. On the contrary, I was once again shamed of what our government has done to us and our country.
ROBERT. I do believe you wrote the KEY words that amplified the rest of your critical views of all of “US”. If you are an American citizen, I do hope you mentally included ‘yourself’ in the guilt trip. You wrote, “STOLEN ELECTIONS”, which I at least did not condone or have anythng to do with. ___ Did You?
my vote seems to have never counted…ive never voted for a bush or anything resembling one…face it..the elections have always been rigged and freedom an illusion…
Tell me, what good is choice if the majority can not prevail.
I am a resident of the state of North Dakota, which has to take the prize for being the most apathetic state in the union when it comes to the people not knowing (or caring) what is really going on in the government, in the world, or even the next-door states. I am originally from Minnesota, or chances are, I would be brain-dead too. These people out here don’t talk about politics at all. Those that bother to vote, vote Republican because that is how everyone they are related to has voted since the beginning of time. At least 9 out of every 10 vehicles (pick-up trucks) have “support the troops” ribbons on them, and if a family loses one of their sons or daughters to the war, they are actually proud of it. I have never supported the Bush Administration or the war in Iraq, not even from the start. I keep myself well informed of what’s going on and try to inform my fellow workers, my neighbors and my husband’s relatives all to no avail. Whenever I say anything at all in criticism of Bush, the Administration or the war they all look at me like I’m nuts and totally ignore what I have to say. They don’t very often argue with me, they just don’t respond at all. Thank God my husband is on my side, but it’s us against the whole state, it seems. This whole situation makes me so frustrated and depressed that I actually cry about it some nights while I am driving home from work. Our country is falling apart, is going to hell, the government is being run like the Mafia, and nobody, NOBODY, gives a dam. All they talk about is the weather the crops and hunting season. All I have to say anymore is that when the shit finally hits the fan (when we get into the big one with Iran, or when the next big depression hits, or both, or something even worse) I hope I live at least long enough to tell everyone “I told you so” as I go down on the ship of fools with the rest of them.
Just a quick thanks to “mustbefree” and “jvance” for taking the time to offer the wisdom of their years. That is worth one heck of a lot more than many of us know. Please listen to them.
And Morf, thanks again to you, too. You’re a brilliant writer and you make this grim, bitter and vicious age a lot more fun.
When Hunter S. couldn’t take it any more and kissed the gun, many of us thought the tradition of HONEST political and social writing had taken a terminal hit, and was toast. It’s wonderful to see that there are young writers ready to keep the faith.
petsr4ever07
Dear Person from North Dakota:
Your post is one of the best things ever written on today’s situation that I have read. I have read a lot of technical analysis, a lot of angry blather. But this, is the clear unvarnished truth. It’s simple and straight forward and real. In my extended family relations there are midwesterners of the type you are describing. And friends of mine have similar experiences as the one you are describing with family and friends all over the USA.
These people are spiritually and mentally dead, and I understand how painful it is for a person such as you to have to live your life surrounded by these soul-less automatons.
You know, when you look behind the facades of these morons, there is mostly deep misery, that is psychotically repressed. The hateful politics of the USA is a symptom of this kind of bourgeois mental disease.
You should feel glad that you are able to think and feel and to cry and continue to be a real, human person, even if you are surrounded by the living dead.
My advice to you is to think about getting out of the country and going to say Canada for parts of the year, or even on short trips to go say shopping in Quebec or skiing in the Canadian Rockies. It’s not too far not to expensive, and it will do you a world of good.
The people are gentler up there.
Best Wishes,
einstein
Robert Settgast September 14th, 2007 10:27 pm
No, no Robert, we must blame Bush. That is our democratic duty.
It’s his fault, and his fault alone.
If we don’t hold leaders accountable for their actions, then the world will never be at peace.
petsforever, I think I share some of your sentiments and I live in MN. To often when people realize just the shear scope of the problems we face many attitudes become well, there’s Nothing You can do, or it’s always been this way so forget it.
I know Iraq is not a war, nor do I believe we are in a war against terrorism. No Justice, No Peace. Is it really unexpected that there has been and will be blowback towards the US government? Perhaps with the next great depression a civil war too.
About greed, generosity and charity.
Doing charity work will not neccessarily get rid of greed. It can help balance it out, but it is not the solution to greed. Sometimes, it is postively furthers the progress of greed in a society, as it did in Dickensian England.
In fact, the Bush administration and his ideologues starting with Reagan have encouraged charity (spreading the notion that it leads to bounty from their greed God) in order to take more money out of federal programs that let us invest in our infrastructure and social fabric, including reasonable public health, public works such as water projects and parks, and education and nutrition and food safety.
Charity is frequently a sentimental solution, and has been known to be abused time and again by charlatans to debunk people of their earnings.
Let’s go back to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who created a strong and reasonable federal government that took tax dollars and spent them correctly on the people who paid the taxes.
Greed is an emotional state, and this state is frequently prevalent in charity scenarios.
A reasonably run society with proper administration has little need of charities, not with our budgets of trillions and trillions of dollars.
Spot on, as quoted from another poster above:
xi_people September 14th, 2007 10:14 pm
“I could go on and on, but what really got me was the repeating of the base and abhorrent lie that “tens of thousands” of Iraqis have been killed. Try upping that number by about a million, and you’ll be much closer to the truth. I’m sure Momford knows this, but for the sake of writing a puff piece, under the guise of criticizing the current administration, he reinforces as many right-wing lies as possible.
Articles like this — designed to make Americans feel “better” about their own horrid history — show how absolutely morally bankrupt the country is, and has been for a long, long time.”
I am embarassed to say I still get suckered in and read all of these articles; and then get swept up. What is the point? Suckered, in that we all know there are to be 14 permanent bases, and now a 15th “mother of all” adjacent to Iran. All of the other blather, hearings, lies, continued posturing, is a time-wasting disingenuous lie. Iraq will be the 51st state, de facto. We all get to pay for it in hard dollars, and all of the many other intangibles. Not to mention the hell-fire-and-damnation inexcusable inhumanity we have wrought on the Iraquis, Afghanis, and so many others over the many years, wars , invasions, occupations.
It’s frustrating: I bet most folks reading here and writing have written, called, participated in protests, and voted “against”, to no avail.
We are very sadly in a small minority of “actors”. The majority are not participating, or actually feel a strong alligence to the American Way.
I wish that I was not supressing cognative dissonance, that I could go along my merry way ( I have come to call all my zombie bretheren ” Blythe” )
Anyone have a solution to keeping from slipping into a stress-disordered depression? My grip is loosening….
Mr. Moford’s downplaying of the Iraqi Deaths is just part of the US-centric perspective of the whole piece. We made a “strategic blunder” and now our young white Midwestern boys are coming home in boxes or missing limbs, woe is us!
He could have written:
“The invasion and occupation in Iraq was a massive war crime and crime ag ainst humanity. An overwhelming majority of us are complicit this crime, and derelict in our democratic duties through full support of the criminals, of a refusal to engage in acts of dissent - even legal demonstrations - because we’re afraid of what our neighbors might say. We deserve all the payback that is hopefully coming our way”
Good Morning!
From Mark Morford’s “Iraq, Deep In Your Bones,” posted on Common Dreams today:
“It’s the great unspoken subtext. Iraq has always been a war between our dueling national identities, a battle over how we are to move and breathe and behave in the new millennium. Are we really this violently paranoid bully, this rogue pre-emptive screw-em-all ideological war machine defined by the dystopian Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld vision of permanent, ongoing global conflict?
“Or do we try, instead, to move forward and reinvent ourselves over and over again as the world’s most commited, forceful peacekeeper, ever striving for balance and cooperation and tact, even in the face of hardship and fundamentalist rage, refusing to be taunted and dragged down lest we take the bait and lose our minds and engage in torture and misprision and ultraviolence and become little better, ideologically speaking, than our taunters?
[….]
“Perhaps we can take the long view, the wide view, the spiritual or karmic view, even, insofar as the short and linear view has become so stifling and deadly and useless. Perhaps this is the only way.
“Because truly, many in the alternative set, the lightworkers and the gurus and the healers and the deep teachers, those who think outside the war room and beyond the bland academic platitudes, these people tend see Iraq, BushCo, the American right and all the sanctimonious bleakness surrounding them as merely the inky remnants of a passing disease, the last, vicious gasp of a dying ideology, the violent struggle of resistance that always erupts before any great cosmic shift.
[….]
“There really is light coming, a new awareness, a shift away from the bleakness and the rot and the wallowing in bland violence. Perhaps you can feel it. Or perhaps you need to be ready to feel it. Either way, it’s there. You have but to do the most easy/difficult thing of all: you must look behind the veil, see the two dueling Americas, and make your choice.”
WHAT IS THE COLLECTIVE IMAGINATION CAPABLE OF AT A GIVEN TIME?
Yes, Mark Morford is right: what Vietnam showed and Iraq painfully underscores is the presence of two Americas and a dueling for the prize of American identity. Morford may be wrong in too stridently himself accentuating the differences (many Americans honorably seeking to extend democracy and economic opportunity), but he is right in pointing out this central, unresolved issue of our identity as Americans.
We have conquered the frontier, conquered fascism, touched the edge of orbital space, claimed beaconhood for democracy. But now, what are we? In our divisiveness, where are we? We desperately need a new mission to define ourselves, to prevent our lapse into being fat, happy and unconcerned, munching on our consumerism and plagued by thoughts of ill health. Or worried by mega-clone China.
What is the battle that can call forth our sinews and spirit — one that mercenaries can’t fight for us?
There really is a third and emerging America, a new way of seeing that unites the disparate parts of ourselves that are thrashing about, one arm twisting the other. And we don’t have to turn purple in the process! The elements are all about us! — we just have to look.
GLOBAL WARMING, OUR PRIMARY PRIORITY, OUR NEW AMERICAN MISSION
By making planetary concerns paramount — notably human induced climate change (aka global warming) — we begin to redeem our nation, materially, morally and spiritually. We begin to earn a new respect in the eyes of the world by tackling the supervening challenges we all face as a species. Our moribund economy will soar — if we do the right thing first. We can embrace and sustain a new vision that leaps over Iraq. Its solution set will become obvious — way beyond the hairsplitting over ‘drawdowns’ and the (obvious) nature of our continued presence there. This solution set is part of the new paradigm of putting authentically global (i.e. planetary) problems first. Then we can stop all the hand wringing and see clearly what to do. A major case for the New American Mission was persuasively argued in Tom Friedman’s “The Power of Green” New York Times article. Basically put, our economic interest is uniquely aligned with our moral imperative and our leadership — not merely as a military power but an advanced industrial nation familiar with the pollution downsides of our stage of ‘advanced’ economic development. In other (crass) words, we can make big money, show others the way, and save the environment, by intensively cultivating our inventive and entrepreneurial genius in advanced clean technologies. Massively investing in green technologies across the entire spectrum — from new bases of fuel and energy production to eco-effective industries to clean buildings and energy efficient homes to reclamation projects of all sorts (remember bridges and highways?) — all this will resuscitate our flagging economy and be the kind of export portfolio to China and India and Africa and Latin America that we can be proud of. Many and incalculably positive ripple effects. Less need to play hostage or prosecute wars. Peoples’ minds and hearts will follow an inspiring pattern of American renewal. Our deep interests — and identity — as a nation will flourish if we think and act like a planet. The Manhattan Project, the Marshall Plan and the Moon Shots were just preludes — if we just allow ourselves to open and embrace the real work of profound renewal that aches in our bones and in our hearts.
Then we’ll know what to do. And who we should be as a people — our identity cracking open, our pride coming from taking on a responsibility that is both huge and defining. And we’ll stop fighting ourselves….. and others.
Cheers, Dan Novak
The only up side is to impeach Bush/Cheney and send them to the Hague to be tried as war criminal’s and crimes against humanity.This would be an up side for America and the World and is the only solution to the war and world peace
Indeed, one might take case with Mark Morford for writing so poetically about something so tragic — but how else to rivet our attention to the reality of the ugly evil unfolding.
Mark writes, “…a war between our dueling national identities…”
Indeed, this is the crux. Will our national spirit become the Lady of Liberty and Light or the Madam Who Drives A Fat Car?
I also want to side with Kem Patrick and misanthrope — even though Off Topic, one cannot draw attention the obscenity of the use of Uranium Lite (aka depleted uranium) too often.
“There really is light coming, a new awareness…”
This is a quote from 1968, and look how beautifully it all worked out! The Great Hippy Revolution transformed America, and by 2007 we were a land of universal peace, love, and freedom!
Harharharhar!
How many times does it need to be said? Iraq was NOT a blunder.
Instead, it was one of the openning moves in a much darker, “nefarious” game. The game is a new form of fascism that is planned to be world-wide. The folks at the top know well that the environmental/health/political/financial crashes to come are essentially unavoidable.
The truest words spoken here “Iraq was never a war.”
CRIMINAL ACT is more apt.
That’s right- a WAR CRIME.
What the U.S.A. did in Iraq is a Crime Against Humanity.
Bush, Cheney and their gang should hang at the Hague. One million murdered for oil!
Despicable and evil, murderous America, brings hell to earth.
All United Statser’s should hang their heads in shame and never show their faces to the world again. The millions and millions of dead at the hands of the U.S.A. is an affront to all humanity that will never be forgot. Please U.S.A. build a large wall completely around your country do not bother to put in any gates, windows or exits.
If there are any USAer’s who have a sense of decency I strongly urge you to go to your capital and do not leave until the filth in your capital city has been cleaned out.
OK folks, Lets give the Republicans what they want. THis election we give the Repubs the Presidency and the Democrats take the rest and mandate that we get out of Iraq. Lets the Repubs clean up thier own mess.
This is beyond waste it is MORALLY wrong to conduct the Iraq occupation. Torture is always MORALLY wrong.
It is wrongheaded to add up the pulse and minus of a totally immoral act.
EINSTEIN: Many good & important comments on your part in this thread. Thank you.
DAN NOVAK: Your optimism is appreciated and you lay out an excellent case for profit based on what is most necessary for mankind’s survival at this point in time.
JEFEMT: I feel the angst now, too. The daily ingestion of all the WRONG moves by the vast majority in power as Nature hangs in the balance, as lives are made immeasurably cruel and tortured (Iraq, but other lands, too)… it forces one to live in a state of paradox because on one level we must honor our lives and replenish our own souls in order to go on with “the good fight,” and yet the odds against us seem awesome.
Comments related about the midwest community where people speak about everything BUT what’s going on brings Orwell and Kafka to life. I hope these types of “dead souls” are NOT the majority. Seems wherever I go people agree with me (when I speak up), and I live in a pretty conservative area. Maybe it’s fantasy but I like to believe there is a gram of soul in every person that knows the truth when confronted by it, even if they have dug themselves into a little ego-based fortress based upon a foundation of lies. Of course the levels of denial in the US for being the perpetrator of a crime against humanity, one quite unjustified, as well… will be upset soon enough by recession, earth changes, and the various correction devices built into our earth system. We can call it karma, global warming, whatever… the shit has hit the fan and a clean-up will be forthcoming.
Dear einstein, all I can say is thank you. Thank you for listening and responding. If it weren’t for websites like this one and the people who read and respond to the articles, I think I would know how it would feel to live on the moon, all by myself. As far as going to Canada, I have been there, and if I weren’t in my 60’s would definitely consider moving there. Now I have heard it takes a few months to even get a passport, so if we wanted to take a quick trip up there it wouldn’t be possible like before. I guess we’ll have to stay and ride this thing out. Peace to you and to all of you who really care.
Thank you, Mark Morford,
In the bleak and garish light of the “daily news” it seems hopelessly “unrealistic” and “escapist” to see that anything truly worthwhile could possibly come out of the destruction happening in Iraq and the consequent dimming of any exercise of reason and compassion in our public life here in the United States. For most of us on the left it is nearly impossible to pull our eyes away from the horrific fascination with what apopears to be unstoppable evil. The actual “fact” is that all over the world in addition to reports of death and destruction there are reports, that the “daily news” version of reality consistently cannot see, that something unimaginably good is growing up through the rot of the breakdown of the idealized versions of what we thought we wanted to create. It isn’t just that a better world will happen (perhaps, if we do enough of the right praying and affirming). The better world already is happening. In the reports in Paul Hawken’s new book it is happening. In the explosion of meditation and awakening to our true nature it is happening. In the appearance of wisdom teachings that formerly were presented only to a select few it is happening. In successful social and ‘utopian’ experiments it is happening. In a peace movement that began before the beginning of a disastrous war. And, above all, in the painful realization that so many of us feel, that we must at all cost do something right this time, something is happening.
Thank you for presenting this in the gritty way that you have in your article. Grit grinds. Sometimes grinding must happen. Sometimes a coarse type of grit has to grind away those things that are no longer necessary and that stand in the way of the truly new. Then the kind of grit that polishes can bring into view something beautiful.
Thank you,
Dear petsr4ever07:
Thanks!
Last suggestion: Try some jaunts to Vermont. Brattleboro is actually kind of fun, and the state is absolutely “un-American” at this time. And another nice place is Vashon Island up in the Pacific Northwest, in the Puget Sound by Seattle. A writer, Betty Macdonald, used to live on that Island. She wrote “The Egg and I.” It was a best seller. You probably know it. The Island was gorgeous as I remembered back in the 1990s. Now it’s probably gotten a bit more posh and expensive. Parts of the film “Five Easy Pieces” was filmed there. You take a ferry boat for 10 minutes out of Seattle. There should be some good bed and breakfasts there. Vashon is a 1960s enclave, and should still remain liberal and progressive.
Best Wishes,
e.
Dan Novak,
You said wha?
“Our deep interests — and identity — as a nation will flourish if we think and act like a planet. The Manhattan Project, the Marshall Plan and the Moon Shots were just preludes — if we just allow ourselves to open and embrace the real work of profound renewal that aches in our bones and in our hearts.”
The MAHATTAN PROJECT???? I fear that was indeed a “prelude” to our march toward absolute destruction. If we all pull together now, we can surely find a way to kill ourselves in a way which will ensure greater suffering for all.
We shouldn’t squander precious mental energy and political-action time by endlessly debating about who, personally, to blame for the current putrifaction of the US state.
Bush & Co. are simply the efflorence of a citizen-neglected system of democratic governance that’s now gone self-destructively wrong; totters on an irredemiable edge — but still can be redeemed, even now, by the simple act of citizen choice and honest moral intention, by its citizen sovereigns.
Person-directed hate and rage screeds against Bush and the neocons shouldn’t be how we use the bulk of our energy, just now — though as creatures we absolutely do need the life energy that comes from the legitimate instinct of being personally betrayed and imperiled by idiots in whom we’ve placed our trust.
I feel the same visceral sense of betrayal, disgust, and yes, even hatred as do many here, for the mindlessness and vileness of what Bush and the neocons have wrought and the craven Dems have allowed. And also for the fat masses of self-satisfied, average Americans who ‘can’t be bothered’ to care about anything beyond flabby maintenance of their decadcent, existentially-fatal, day-to-day confort zones.
But for now, we need to keep focused on the fact that our Republic is about to slip away forever, and that our puntive personal rage toward officials who’ve betrayed us must become secondary to using the system’s virtues to out-manoeuvre them.
All of us who see and feel the present horror need to channel our energies into decisive corrective live public (non-cyberspace,) actions that have half-a-chance of generating change. Otherwise we WILL fail.
E.g., I’ve already scrounged-up an achingly-unaffordable $1000 to donate to Cindy Sheehan’s congressional campaign to unseat Pelosi, and am now working with other progressives to research and publish a list of all declared & prospective congress-seekers who credibly support, at minimum, a return to government-by-for-and-of-the people.
Not just so we can change of our stolen government’s immediate policies but just as importantly to change the structural corrpution that’s enabled such policies to be played-out in our name.
We can’t, overnight, possibly fix all the causes of human creaturely-maddess that presently misgovern us in extremis - or that have mis-governed human polities since the beginning of historical time.
But we can choose to use the legal virtures of our still-flexible US constitutional system to do what needs to be done now, in the moment, to avert total collapse of official decency and self-governance in our country.
Such legal principles in the US aren’t dead yet. In fact their potential is now, finally beginning to rebound.
If we will all take heart in the obvious truth that a minorty of evil people can never govern in our name unless we passively allow them to do so, we will at least rescue the promise of America from impending death.
Continued from previous post:
Irony #1: The oil obsession (and the dramatic actions involved in chasing/controlling/possessing fossil fuels) may well be… er, irrelevant.
From the paper: by Theodore C. Loder, III
Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space
Published 2002 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. with permission. Presented at the 40th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit, Reno NV.
{entire paper can be found at):
www. disclosureproject.org
• Antigravity and zero point energy research and their applications are finally being addressed by some of the open scientific community. This means there will have to be a rewriting of textbooks in this area so our new generation of students can apply this “new knowledge.” Its application will lead to major breakthroughs in transportation technologies both earthside and in outer space. The implications are that we have the potential for human exploration of our solar system and beyond, if we have the will, within our lifetimes. It also means that the majority of 20th century space technology will be obsolete and in fact may already be so.
• The zero point or vacuum state energy source is seen as a totally non-polluting energy source, which has the potential to replace all the fossil fuels on this planet. It also will provide the energy needed for long range space flights. This means that fuel cells and solar cells in common use today for space flight energy applications will only be needed until we transition to these new energy technologies.
• Based on an analysis of trends in antigravity research over the last half-century and the information provided by numerous witnesses, it appears that there is both good and bad news. The good news is that it appears that we (at least covert projects) have already developed the theories of antigravity, and additionally have developed working spacecraft based on these principles. The bad news is that these technologies have been developed for at least several decades, at the public’s expense and that human kind has been deprived of these technologies, while continuing to waste energy using less efficient and pollution enhancing technologies.
Irony #2:
(Remember the gay activist slogan that could be heard at many demonstrations seen on the news? It went something like, “We’re here! We’re queer!!
—– GET USED TO IT!!!”)
Well, apparently we have visitors from our neighborhood. Our Outer Space Neighborhood, that is.
Ie. “They’re BA-ACK…”
Far-fetched?
Meetings with congress-persons and intelligence services are ongoing.
Where, after all, do you think these “new technologies” have come from?
(hint: re- technological leaps via reverse engineering - the goverment is WAY ahead of you)
You can find extensive details, again on www.disclosuresite.org.
And, at www.paradigmresearchgroup.org
Where you can also find:
Washington, DC (PRWEB) May 25, 2007 — Paradigm Research Group has announced it will again bring to the Washington, DC area a powerful group of speakers and panelists to focus on the social, political and media aspects of 60 years of denial of an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race — exopolitics.
X-Conference 2007 will be held September 14-16, 2007 and X-Conference 2008 will be held April 18-20, 2008 — both at the 3-star Hilton Hotel in Gaithersburg, MD.
The X-Conference speakers and panelists collectively hold enough knowledge of extraterrestrial-related phenomena and governmental involvement with this phenomena to end the state imposed truth embargo tomorrow. All it would take is for the political leaders and the political media to pay attention.
With that in mind PRG has scheduled both upcoming events in the middle of what will likely be the longest and most expensive presidential campaign in American history. All candidates for the Democratic and Republican nomination, as well as candidates from established third parties, will be invited to attend and offered an opportunity to speak to an issue about which 85% of Americans believe their government is lying — the facts behind extraterrestrial-related phenomena.
Further, all sitting members of Congress will be extended an invitation to attend or send a staff representative so they might become informed about an issue which 50% of the American people believe to be real — extraterrestrial origins for some unidentified objects seen, photographed, filmed and tracked on radar in the skies over every nation on Earth.
The Washington political media will be heavily lobbied to turn out in numbers similar to their attendance at the May 9, 2001 Disclosure Project press conference at the National Press Club — 100 reporters and 17 camera crews from a dozen nations. (See: www.disclosureproject.org)
Paradigm Research Group will also hold a press conference on the Monday following both X-Conferences wherein the speakers will present developments in their research, announce new books and speak, along with PRG Executive Director Stephen Bassett, to breaking developments and government status as regards the Disclosure process.
—–
Seen in this light, Iraq and Afganistan - at one level of the game - serving as both sleights of hand, And, stalling devices.
Too bad for our suffering, anguished, frightened species…. We’ve been PUNKED!
This war and its consequences has been brewing for decades. I remember especially in the 70’s just how self-centered people had become. They were into “enlightenment” for Self. Then the 80’s came with all the young ones going to college in order to become rich in business. When I was in college back in the 60’s most of us had higher aspirations, like following Kennedy’s advice and doing what we could for our country instead of wanting what our government could do for us. And there was the great King who admonished us to work toward equal rights for all including the poor. And there was Johnson’s Great Society. But we became the me generation and this Iraq war is the result: Following the rich into hell but not back. Ask the young folks today just what they want to be when they grow up? RICH. So this consciousness of selfishness and wealth is bolstered by the average family who endorse shallow values. The wish to rise to wealth and power is a disease and I don’t think we have seen the end of the average person’s idolation of the rich and famous and corrupt for many decades or even centuries.
Bush, Congress, Repubs, Dems, Zionists and the Capitalists are responsible for this mess…
but this doesnt speak to the matter of fixing their mess.
To think that we must get rid of ‘them’ is the same response that ‘they’ had toward the radical Muslims…get rid of them rather than addressing what motivated them… the same response that so many average US citizens immediately grabbed onto, eager to find a way to avoid self-examination and a change of behaviour.
And when one honestly looks at what behaviour needs to change, it is easy to see why one would look at something requiring no personal sacrifice.
The sacrifice is _prosperity_…modern life is a pyramid scheme that relies upon exploitation. It is a slave economy. Every citizen of the ‘modern’ societies rides on the backs of 10 other humans in the subject states as well as an astounding quantity of ‘free’ labor coming from petroleum. Most moderns have zero experience with hard labor and hunger as a daily reality and never imagine why, nor do they want to.
Everyone knows this on some level and instinctively avoids the actions that would reverse this bounty. hence, things will proceed as they have. (nature will correct it eventually)
Einstein & petsare4ever and others, how many people have kicked around leaving the country?
My hubby and I talk about it. Bad timing for both of us as we have parents in their late 80’s to 90 that are coming to the end of their time. But I have a son, age 15.
I often wonder if we are like Nazi Germany poised on the precipice of something worse. Does anyone feel that, too? None of the major candidates are talking about immediately re-instating habeus corpus–well Chris Dodd’s book does open the door to it and Kucinich talks about restoring the constitutional law. But are the front runner dems just salivating over the power amassed by Bush’s unitary ruler ideas and saying, “We can’t wait to get a piece of THAT!”
Hubby favors New Zealand; I’m thinking of Canada.
What sad times we live in.
I have read Einstein - and agree with the kudos/appreciation he has received.
He has said:
“The people now in charge are overcome by the Greed God. Their hellish visages are proof of the progress of the disease.
“The congress and all branches of the government and most of industry is filled with these unhealthy folks.”
and asked…
“What’s The Cure?”
Don’t know but can speculate. As Duane Elgin shows in his book, Promise Ahead, homo sapiens sapiens is facing at least 4 very major trends that can be called “adversity factors” and also at least 4 very major trends that can be described as “opportunity factors.”
This is a test:
(tho’ not like those shrill moments on TV that used to interupt Dick Clark, Steve Allen, or Ed Sullivan in the best parts, authoritatively intoning: “This is Only a Test….”)
This time it is a REAL Test — of the viability of our poignant,struggling, human species.
I’m sure some of the guys in Washington have delusions of grandeur: specifically in their desire to bring on Armageddon - (”just like the Good Book says.”)
However,separate from this self-deceptive and psychotic religiousity (and, the secular obsession with money and power) - a “spiritual awakening” (free of institutional religions) is already well underway. It is a flowing river with Wisdom and Compassion as its two banks.
And it is spreading rapidly across the planet. Folks waking up like flowers openning with the rising sun.
And this is the drama of our time. Which force(s) will carry the day?
Despair often precedes awakening.
As we each do what we can, may we stay alert and keep a very open mind: deep and profound changes in human consciousness will be occurring, especially during the next 5 years. ie, at a minimum from now through 2012.
One little event, which is rapidly gaining momentum:
the disclosure of the presence of our ET neighbors (some of whom apparently have had decade-long treaties with factions of our and other governments).
(see: www.disclosureproject.org).
Add the currently inescapable impact of global warming and various other catastrophies - (massive species extinction for one)- and alot of us are going to need to be willing to change and embrace new thinking about old (and new) problems.
Let’s hope it’s not too late for the human species to mature, at least a little.
Just a last note:
I do Not think that we will suddenly see “Heaven on Earth” in the year 2012. I do suspect there will be Alot Happening.
*It is rumored that even some of the current admin are planning in reference to that date.*
Given that we people often need to have our backs up against the wall before we become willing to change, and finally *begin* to let go of our attachments to various behaviors/ beliefs/ thoughts/ and emotions.
(Think about the alcoholic who needs to “hit bottom” before he or she becomes “willing” to undergo the process of recovery).
From that point of view the force that breaks open our hearts and minds may well be Sorrow. But we’re a pretty frightened and confused species. Tough to let go of what is already “known” and comfortable.
Nevertheless, with luck, Grace, readiness - whatever one calls it - a broken heart can be transformed into a heart broken open to wisdom and compassion.
From then on we will need to use every “skillful means” at our disposal to heal ourselves, one another, and the biosphere…..ie., Life on Earth.
When you are you and everything as simultaneous onlyness, when ever you hurt any of the everything (and this happens), since your heart is inseparately open to compassion, you feel that same hurt, at least as much as whomever you hurt.
~~~
Here’s the normal cause of the me/not me split that can lead to overly patriarchal & pathological “have-mores” trampling on “have-lesses.” And the ever more common and natural change in collecive consciousness.
An essay by Ted Strauss:
Trust In Being
In a way, the entire journey of awakening and unfoldment is about discovering Trust in Being. Being is the union of consciousness, personal bodymind and all form.
Yet it’s practically impossible to define what is meant by Trust in Being because there is no particular way it shows up. There’s nothing to point to and say “this is Trust in Being” or “this is not.”
There’s no formula for how to find Trust in Being, how to know Trust in Being, or how to live Trust in Being.
Trust in Being isn’t a way to be, nor a thing you can attain through intention, any more than a flower can bloom by wishing it.
Trust in Being is a basic disposition toward Life that comes from realizing that Life is Yourself. Once you’ve realized that Life is You, you realize the futility of fighting Being.
Fighting with yourself (as “other”) is exhausting; it shortens your life and makes you prematurely sick and tired. Are you sick and tired of fighting with life and self? If so, perhaps you are ready to find a different relationship with Being.
Trust in Being is hard to explain simply because it’s not so much a thing in itself, but more the lack of distrust in Being. And we have all learned the various meanings of distrust in Being very naturally, for we have all lost our childhood innocence.
We are all born with a hardwired kind of trust that is the essence of childhood innocence: we believe that the world is fundamentally good, that our needs will always be fulfilled for us, and that nothing bad will happen. We assume the world is here to nurture us and make us happy, just like it did while we were in the womb.
But the moment we are born into this world, we encounter a very different reality; a reality in which our needs are often not met, and thus we learn about pain and suffering.
For most, the hope that this must be a temporary mistake dominates our worldview for years. We tend to assume that if we somehow adjust our behavior (do this &/or don’t do that), it will all go back to the way it was.
But, sooner or later, our innocence is dashed.
It must be dashed, simply because the state of innocence represents a very partial awareness of life, appropriate only during early childhood while we are being nurtured and protected by our parents.
To survive and thrive in the world as autonomous beings, we must have a much fuller grasp of the reality we live in. If you believe that grizzly bears want to invite you over for tea, you’ll be in for a shock when you find that they want you for dinner.
However it is that our innocence gets shattered, it is rarely without anger and regret. We had such a wonderful life! We had such trust. And then something had to happen and ruin it all. If only those somethings hadn’t happened; if only the world hadn’t violated us.
This loss of innocence is not the loss of Trust in Being because at this stage, we do not even know what Being is. The loss of childhood innocence is what initiated your distrust in Being and set you on your path to fix the “problem,” or to return to innocence.
Nor is this loss the rot, the reversal, the exhaustion of trying patriarchal ways of fixing yourself or any others.
The reversal doesn’t come until you start to get that you can never return to the innocence of childhood and that maybe the problem you were trying to solve all those years was simply the feeling of being alive as a vulnerable, independent, human form of Being.
Which of course isn’t fixable.
The thing is, had we not lost our childhood innocence, we wouldn’t be able to recognize Trust in Being if it walked up and kissed us on the lips. Without distrust, we cannot know trust. Without separation, we can’t know unity.
And so for the sake of our own whole Being awakening process, we need to experience and learn about separation.
The beginning of the loss of our innocence coincides with the beginning of feeling separate.
It is an awakening into our lives as autonomous beings; it marks the beginning of our awareness that we are not merely part of our mother.
But the passage from unawakened unity with mother into awareness of being a separate autonomous being is a shock so tremendous that some of us (even most of us, so far) never fully adjust.
If our parents themselves didn’t adjust well, we have no template for how to grow up well adjusted.
Many of us went from the shock of separation into anger at having been yanked out of our private heaven in the womb into the hell of having our needs at least sometimes unmet, if not outright violated.
For many of us, the passage into awareness of separation without proper guidance set us on a tantrum that lasts for decades. The tantrum is saying something like “I don’t like it, I don’t want it, and I won’t put up with it! You should be giving me what I want, and I’m going to resist everything until I get my needs met.” So here we are many years later, still feeling entitled to be given the goodies.
And rightly so. But living thus deprived of true nurturance for half a lifetime becomes draining and socially awkward.
In polite western society (as well as in most polite spiritual societies), it’s not cool to be pissed about unmet childhood needs (just ask Dr. Phil!), and it’s certainly not cool to need remedial parenting.
So you are left with a choice: be cool, or seek remedial parenting.
We make it easy to seek remedial parenting by making neediness cool. That’s part of the culture of our work.
We’ve realized for ourselves that waking down into the body necessitates embracing the body’s needs.
Having needs is OK.
Really OK.
This usually takes awhile to grasp. After all, ever since kindergarten (or earlier) it’s been uncool to have needs and feelings. (Hanging out with other immature members of the species is a great way to have fun, and to get your feelings deeply hurt, often repeatedly and many times in the same way - which builds subconscious trigger buttons).
So we bring the protection mechanisms we learned at home to life during and after school. So there we were, defending ourselves from those around us, twisted up in knots and confused to the core, and we were only five (or less).
Fast forward to now.
We’ve spent so many years hiding our true needs and feelings that we might even think we don’t have them anymore.
Or that our needs and feelings aren’t important.
Or maybe we decided that our needs are SO important that ours are what matters and everyone else’s pale by comparison.
One way or another, you may have lost all hope that your needs and feelings might actually be met - for real - with real love and compassion. So, for all these years, you’ve been coping. Waiting and hoping, hoping and waiting.
Most have been waiting and hoping so long we’ve grown cynical and forgot what we were waiting and hoping for.
However, your needs can be met with true love and compassion. So in your quest for Trust in Being, I invite you to take some new risks in asking particular beings whom you trust to help you actually get what you need.
Trust your body, your needs, your feelings, and your impulses. Yes, that’s right, trust your “small self”.
But not only that; trust all of yourself: the child, the animal, the confused adolescent, the competent adult, and your own universal Divinity.
Trust your own impulse to find love and nurturance.
Getting your needs met brings absolutely magical results: your needs actually get met!
As your needs at one level get met, your needs at other levels reveal themselves. By fulfilling your needs, you will find yourself spontaneously moving to new levels of unfoldment.
You may not have fully connected the idea of getting your needs met with getting enlightened or awakened.
After all, most of us were taught that enlightenment is about transcending your needs.
And it’s true that at some point you’ll need to transcend your bodymind and your needs (at least for awhile so you can realize transcendence), but transcending your needs will never fulfill them.
Transcendence may give you the clarity to discern which needs are important and which are not, but still you can only satisfy your hunger by eating.
When you eat, when you let yourself be OK with having needs and then get them met, you will spontaneously grow into the next stage of your evolution.
You will relax out of all the ways in which you were making up a false “eality” of resisting your own reality and the world, and you will see (sometimes at least with the benefit of hindsight) how the miracle of Being is always exquisitely perfect.
Seeing this, your distrust in Being will melt away and Trust in Being will take its place.
Before you discover Trust in Being, there is a place at the very core of your self that can never fully rest, never fully relax.
At the center of your very Being, there is a primary distrust so distressing that it keeps you vigilant. Watching, waiting, sensing (and rightly so) that sooner or later something will go wrong. The subconscious assumption you have is that when that horrible something finally does go wrong, if you are vigilant, you will be so present in that moment that you will spring into action with such great skill and effectiveness that you will deflect the problem and save yourself from an otherwise certain death.
The problem is, death is certain.
Our lack of acceptance of this fact keeps our awareness absorbed in distractions, denial and vigilance.
When your time comes to die, neither an hour nor a lifetime of denial, self-defense, or vigilance will do you any good whatsoever.
In fact, the interminable inner vigilance keeps your immune system over-revved and stressed out, eventually leading to auto-immune disorders and the (conscious or subconscious)desire to kill yourself because you’re so tired of trying to keep it all together. All of which tends to make your certain death happen prematurely.
The experience of primary distrust in Being brings utter misery to life. It makes living a barely tolerable experience that you consciously or subconsciously hope will soon end, so you can finally just rest. Without Trust in Being, life can feel like living on a Siberian chain gang.
When Trust in Being dawns, it’s like the sun rising over a vast, dark, and parched desert. Way beneath your public face, where fear, doubt, and cynicism have stolen your heart, Trust in Being brings a new and unexpected ease and warmth. It releases you from the intense stress of needing to try to make life work out, as if it was all on your own individual shoulders. As if something was wrong with you, that you alone needed to fix or atone for.
Trust in Being lets you relax at your core. As you relax at the core, all the holding y