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TechnoratiMajor Hasan and The Legacy of George W Bush
One of the first lessons aspiring novelists and screenwriters learn is that the goodness of a hero is defined by a single quality - the evil of his opponent. From Superman's Lex Luthor to Batman's Joker to Indiana Jones' Nazis to Luke Skywalker's Darth Vader, for a hero to be perceived as larger than life, he must have a larger than life enemy.
If Frodo in "Lord of the Rings," for example, hadn't been forced to do battle with the supernatural powers of the Ring and its minions, his story would have merely been a boring travelogue. But with an army of supernaturally brilliant, evil, and powerful opponents, Frodo had the opportunity to display his extraordinary inner courage and resourcefulness, qualities he didn't even realize he had until they were called forth by the peril of an awesome evil.
This is a lesson that was not lost on Karl Rove and George W. Bush. If they could recast George as the opponent of a power as great as the Ring, then the rather ordinary Dubya could become the extraordinary SuperGeorge, rising from his facileness to prevail over supernatural powers of evil.
Bill Clinton had a similar chance, but passed on it for the good of America and the world.
When bin Laden attacked us in the 1990s - several times - in an attempt to raise his own stature in the Islamic world, Bill Clinton dealt with Osama like the criminal he was. He enlisted Interpol and the police and investigative agencies of various nations, brought in our best intelligence agents, and missed bin Laden in a missile-launched assassination attempt by a scant twenty minutes (bringing derisive howls from Republicans that he was trying to "wag the dog" and deflect attention from the Monica investigations).
As Clinton left office, he and the CIA were tightening the noose on bin Laden, and his National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, told me that when he briefed his successor, Condoleezza Rice, he told her to put bin Laden and al-Qaeda at the top of her priority list and thus finish the job the Clinton administration had nearly completed.
As we know, when Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, et al finally came up with the priorities for their new administration in January of 2001, al-Qaeda had been replaced by tax cuts for Bush's rich donors on the "A" list, and didn't even appear on the "B" list.
Thus came 9/11, despite over fifty explicit warnings given to the President, including the infamous August 6, 2001 CIA briefing in Crawford, Texas that in the immediate future al-Qaeda intended to hijack commercial planes and use them to attack east coast targets. (Bush apparently took the warnings seriously - Ashcroft immediately stopped flying on commercial aircraft, and Bush moved to Texas for the longest vacation in the history of the American presidency...and even when that was over, he preferred Florida to target-listed Washington, D.C.)
In the days after the 9/11 attacks - much as in the days after Tim McVeigh blew up the Murrah Building - America had the sympathy of the world, and the police and intelligence agencies of even normally hostile nations offered to help us track down and bring to justice its perpetrators.
Muslims all over the world were horrified at the actions of one of their own, a fundamentalist turned criminal and murderer.
Mullah Omar of Afghanistan's Taliban first offered to arrest bin Laden and turn him over to us (Washington Post, Page 1, October 29, 2001, "Diplomats Met With Taliban On Bin Laden" by Ottaway and Stephens) and then made an explicit offer to arrest Bin Laden and try him for the crime of 9/11 (CNN, October 7, 2001, "US Rejects Taliban Offer To Try Bin Laden"; The Guardian, October 14, 2001, "Bush Rejects Taliban Offer To Hand Bin Laden Over").
It would have been so easy for Bush to accept Omar's offer, which had resulted, according to the Post, in over 20 diplomatic meetings and negotiations. The Justice Department could have arrested Bin Laden like they did McVeigh, helped the Taliban dismantle Bin Laden's training camps and track down their attendees and sponsors, and launch an international effort to disassemble and render impotent al-Qaeda.
It probably could have been done in a year or less, given the intensity of the worldwide empathy for citizens of America and the many other nations whose people died in the World Trade Center. Over 5000 American soldiers would still be alive, and tens of thousands would not have lost arms, legs, and eyes. Hundreds of thousands - possibly over a million - innocent Afghans and Iraqis would still be alive.
But Karl Rove knew that George W. Bush had a problem, and saw in bin Laden the solution. And didn't much give a damn what it would mean to American Muslims.
Bush had not defeated Al Gore fair and square, and was seen by most Americans as a spoiler, an illegitimate leader. As soon as the details of his proposed "supply side" voodoo economics hit the press in the first months of his presidency, the markets went into a nosedive.
And already there were stories circulating in the media of his cozy relationship with corrupt oil barons like Ken Lay and the secret energy meetings in the Spring of 2001 - before 9/11 - in which Cheney, Lay, and others in the oil industry were apparently carving up the oil fields of Iraq.
Bush, in short, was seen as a buffoonish pretender, an ineffectual manager, and a sellout to big oil and other scandal-ridden industries. He was the butt of late-night jokes, a former college cheerleader, a "dry drunk" (except when tempted by beer and pretzels), an inside trader, a small man on the national and international stage.
George W. desperately needed his own Lex Luthor if he was to reinvent himself as Superman.
Rove and Bush realized that if they simply branded Bin Laden as the criminal thug that he was - the leader of an obscure Islamic mafia with fewer than 20,000 serious members - they wouldn't have the super-villain they needed for George W. Bush to be seen as a super-hero. If Bush only authorized a police action, or cut a deal with Omar, he'd miss a golden opportunity to position himself as the Battle Commander of The War Against Evil Incarnate.
And so began the building of the mythos. Osama as evil genius. Osama as worldwide mastermind. Even Osama as the antichrist (as General Boykin reminded us so candidly).
If the remnants of al-Qaeda tried to pull our strings by increasing "chatter" about particular flights, for example, the Bush White House hyper-reacted with many press conferences and televised appearances by Tom Ridge. Every action was trumpeted. Bush put "Terror Alerts" on the screens of TVs nationwide as often as possible. The constant drumbeat was that George The Good was battling the One True Dragon. And that Dragon was Islamic.
For George to remain SuperGeorge, Bin Laden had to be as big as Hitler in the minds of Americans. Thus, Richard Perle wrote in his breathless and hyperbolic book An End To Evil: "There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust."
But Afghanistan and Iraq weren't Germany, and Bin Laden wasn't even a pale imitation of Hitler. It wasn't a nation that attacked us - it was a tiny, local, but well-funded Islamic mafia. And that band of thugs run by Bin Laden no more represented the interests or opinions of the majority of the world's Muslims than Tim McVeigh represented the majority of America's Christians.
This archetypal transformation of George W. Bush from spoiled, rich-boy pretender-to-the-presidency into the caped (well, flight-suited) SuperGeorge, Defender Of All Things Good And Right had a powerful impact on the American people - and particularly on their perception of Muslims.
The shadow of the "good" SuperGeorge was, necessarily, the "evil" of Muslims. They were vilified - talk show hosts called for their outright murder ("Kill them all" said Michael Savage) - and a steady drumbeat of suspicion was cast toward American Muslims.
Fox News and right-wing talk jumped in with both feet, feeding anti-Muslim hysteria that continues to this day with teary-eyed TV shows, a "secret Muslim" president, and Nazi-image Tea Parties.
"Be afraid," they tell Americans every day. "Be very afraid."
In retrospect, it's surprising that Major Hasan was the first to snap in all these years.
Bill Clinton knew what to do with a terrorist, be he Bin Laden or Tim McVeigh: brand them as criminals.
The countries of Europe who endured years of terrorism - from the crimes of the IRA against the citizens of Britain, to the crimes of the November 17th terrorist group against Greece, to the crimes of the Red Brigades against Italy - they were fought by investigators, intelligence operatives, and the highly effective web of police agencies that stretch across the world. Although less filled with shock and awe, these able people could have brought Bin Laden and his associates to justice without turning him into a super-villain or demonizing Muslims.
But that would have deflated the heroic SuperGeorge action figure in the minds of average Americans, and possibly Cheny's company Halliburton - which was on shaky ground financially before 9/11 - would have even gone under because of Cheney's ill-thought-out purchase by that company of a bankrupt asbestos supplier. (On December 10, 2001, before the bombing of Afghanistan began, Halliburton stock lost 43% of its value in a single day because Cheney's business decision was pushing them toward bankruptcy.)
So George and Dick made out just fine. But Major Hasan went nuts. And probably never would have, had somebody other than Bush/Rove/Cheney been in the White House back in 2001.
84 Comments so far
Show AllI agree with Hartmann on this one. If fear-mongering/enemy image creation does not stand alone as the top moniker for George W. Bush's years in office what does?
For the Truthers I'd go with Bill of Saginaw and focus on the relations with the Taliban in offering up Bin Laden and the Bush/Cheney refusal...doesn't this help fuel speculation around the events of 9/11/01?
And for the Ol' Bombya's No Better's: Obama's a politician, he's functioning under the well engrained myth of American Execeptionalism(AE) vs. The World's Evil(WE): during his inauguration it was the audience that applauded their loudest when he made his vow to militancy in the face of World Evil...he just said the words. As a politician he'd change his words if the audience reacted differently; and Palin wouldn't still have a soap box to stand on if Bush's fear-mongering hadn't emboldened America's NeoNazi's.
So, instead of trashing Hartmann or Obama, I'd use the article, and those like it, for sharpening one's argument when engaged with someone trapped in the maze of AE vs. WE.; while holding onto the citing of a very poignant timeline of actions in regard to Bush/Cheney behavior.
Peace (the only way to construct and carry out the argument for justice).
(part 2)There are three general types of autistic brains, picture thinkers, verbal thinkers and pattern thinkers. I am a pattern thinker and have a vast knowledge of this, I recognized it immediatley. Most people who realize it was the result of bullying pick one kind of bullying. It was several kinds. Most psychiatrists do not understand it either, it is very complex. Law enforcement and lawyers have a hard time not labeling anyone who shoots someone with a gun a psychopath. The truth is the man must have felt he was very threatened. PTSD also causes hypervigilence which feels like paranoia. Most of the knowlege base on victimology and workplace bullying is in Europe. We have the Workplace Bullying Institute in the US, but since they are trying to sell a product to the corporations they don't tell the whole truth. Their main income is not from the victims, but the corporations which cause the problem. 15 state have tried to pass legislature against it in the US and can't get it passed. The corporations where this is at epidemic proportions control our legislators.
Marie France Hiragoyen in France is probably the world's authority on victimology.
This website has the best descriptions and tons of information:
http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/bully.htm
http://frozenjustice.blogspot.com/2009/11/military-will-put-false-spin-on-fort.html
http://frozenjustice.blogspot.com/2009/11/lies-inconsistencies-and-contradictions.html
"Thank you for your well thought out essay and your ability to think independently, it's so rare these days."
Hartmann's screed here was not about the possible psychological profile of Major Hasan. What the hell are you thanking him for, and why are you going off on extended tangents? Hartmann was thinking no more "independently" than the corporate NY Times allows him to. Certainly Hartmann deserves no praise for the agitprop he continues to spin on OBL/al-Qaeda.
You know what's "so rare these days"? People who are able to discern the difference between truth/facts, and a steaming pile of propaganda.
If you wish to perform psychoanalysis on Hasan, this was not the article to respond to for that.
(part 1)Thank you for your well thought out essay and your ability to think independently, it's so rare these days. I posted on my blog the day this happened and have not stopped writing yet. This was a clearcut case of workplace bullying. It causes PTSD, when it goes on for years it causes Complex PTSD which can cause psychosis or dissociation. The man did everything he could to leave to try and stop it and prevent a problem. They would not let him. Note they leaked information that they were worried about his performance and thought he might be mentally ill, but it was just too much trouble to get rid of him, BS. It is well known that the people who are the targets of workplace bullies are the best employees and workplace bullies are incompetent, inadequate people, they bully to cover for this. They also lie, lie, and lie again. They are a type of sociopath. This common in health care. It is most often supervisors, but can be from lower or lateral. I imagine Dr. Hasan got it from all directions. PTSD can also cause people to loose their religious beliefs, this could have caused him to change his views about his spiritual beliefs, if that did happen. This often happens to very ethical people who have very strong beliefs and principles(workplace bullies hate them). The reason this case was so bad was he was strong enough to hold out for a long time. The longer it goes on the sicker the victim gets. I lasted twenty months myself.
It has resulted in many shootings, but often the result is suicide, drugs, or alcohol. I am willing to bet some of his tormentors are among those shot. It is a form of psychological terror. It is not about being teased a bit or harassed. It is very complex and the military is one of the worst offenders. This has been made illegal in many countrys, America has ignored it. Add the evangelicals which have infiltrated the military constantly at him, add the stress of listening to horrible things which happened to other people day in and day out(with no coworkers to talk to), add some sort of autistic spectrum disorder(or somethng similar), and add being harassed at his apartment. (It is not Schizoid personality disorder as has been reported for many reasons such as looking for a wife.)and add a huge element of injustice to the mix. This is a ticking time bomb. It would fracture anyone. The military's mental health professionals know what it takes to break a person or fracture their personality, that is why the Bush regime had them help formulate their torture schemes. This makes people very ill and as they get sicker and sicker their coworkers talk amungst themselves about whether the person is mentally ill or not. When they finally loose it they all say they are happy he is gone because he was crazy, but he was perfectly fine when he got there.
I have studied this for years. It happened to me in a hospital. I was a nurse for 23 years. I figured out what it was and even though I was in bush Alaska where the doctors were idiots I figured out what to do to prevent myself from suicide or violence after my initial suicide attempt. I had already been arrested due to something I did in the suicide attempt on my last day at work. I never had a psychosis of any kind nor do I have a personality disorder. I do have mild autism and we are frequently bullied. I have been bullied before and usually just laughed about it or stood up to them. I had been a nurse for over twenty years after all, nurses get bullied. This situation was different, it was psychological terror of an unbelievable nature. You can't imagine the anger it causes, it could fill up the whole world. I had never been an angry person before this. One thing that happens is the other workers do not come to your aid with this because they are afraid they will be the next target and the target is isolated on purpose. My serial bullies actually were a gang or mob of them which there usually is in a hosptial and had done this for many years and destroyed a lot of people. I tried to see the psychiatrist at the hospital five times and was refused, then tried to hire an attorney before I had my breakdown. I tried to leave and they would tell me how much they wanted me to stay and rearrange my work assignment to appease me. Then immediately start the bullying again. In other words they were not trying to get rid of me, they wanted to torture me. Another factor with this is if there is an element of being trapped the person gets sicker. Dr. Hasan was not allowed to leave and after many years decided to take the only way out that would be successful, death. When he did he took revenge as well. We had a workplace bullying shooting at the hospital in the town I live in now about a year ago and a woman is in prison for trying to kill someone. The staff at the hosptial are so desperate to stop it they asked the mayor to do an audit of what goes on there. He refused, I guess he wants more violence. From what I hear he may get it.
Great opinion, now what is Obama's excuse?
Excellent article,,,
A proper investigation must be made into the alligations that Major Hasan was being harrassed , followed, gang stalking torture vigilante sytle.
As victim of right wing republican vigilante gang stalking torture for almost three year, I can tell you without hesitation , if Major Hasan had fallen victim to this kind of daily 24/7 harrassment , those who perpetrated this torture drove him to snap, and these fusion center gang stalking torture spies are responsibe for what happend at Ft. Hood.
YOU HEARD ME , GOVERNMENT FUSION CENTER GANG STALKING SPIES.OH YES , THEY ARE REAL AND 1 MILLION STRONG THROUGH 72 FUSION CENTERS.THIS IS A VERY SERIOUS BUNCH OF UNCONSTITUTIONAL STAZI POLICE.THERE JOB IS TO DRIVE PEOPLE CRAZY,MAKE THEM SNAP.
The truth is the truth, we have a nation wide network of spies torturing people with in your face 24/7 surviellance.
They are mean, cruel, and want to drive people crazy.
Why is it a surprise to hear that Americans torture Americans every day with gang stalking tactics.
YOU can read about it online, the Department of Justice gets 200 complaints a month that they ignore and dont document.
Because they know exactly who is doing the gang stalking.
Welcome to the New stazi America. WITH IMMUNITY FOR ALL TORTURE FREAKS.
Thought provoking and well written treatise of your oft mentioned meme of the need for heroes requiring villains Thom.
A term that another commenter used months ago, and I can't recall who did:
"The Sycophantic Punditry"
This was used to describe the mainsrteam corporate media, and I am afraid this article fits that perfectly.
Major Hasan was employed by the military to counsel soldiers who suffered the traumas of the battlefield. These soldier are engaged in insane, criminal wars initiated by vicious and venal politicians. The soldiers are part of a war machine that has slaughtered tens of thousands of innocents in a number of foreign countries. Major Hasan goes on a shooting spree, and they call him "psychotic," out of touch with reality. What shall we call those members of the war party who have killed so many with reckless abandon?
This piece is as naively juvenile as the comic books referenced.
It is not about targeting the "evil doer"--if it wasn't bin Laden it would be another -- it IS about addressing the policy--and these Muslim countries have many INCREASING grievances from casual slaughter to allegiance to & funding of the criminal genocidal state of Israel to greedy designs on natural resources--and if any Muslims rise against it they are defined as "terrorists". Typical liberal embrace of the shallow and limited consensus worldview, also failing to mention, as usual, that there is NO change in the mindset with Obama, speaking of "details of his proposed 'supply side' voodoo economics"...and "secret" alliances with corporate dictates.
They ALL NEED bin Laden and demonization of Muslims to justify their less-than-honorable true aims--which is considerably more than redeeming a faltering political figure.
SarahConnah
The "Here I am, sitting here, exposed with my hand wedged in the cookie jar" look on Dubyah's mug in that school room that day, said it all.
The Hague awaits these tyrantical treasonists.
He was acting guilty when interviewed while on his extended vacation at the ranch. I recall saying at the time, "something's up".
Don't think they are headed for the Hague though--not on Obama's pathetic watch.
That look said "Fuck, Dick told me they was just gonna hijack the planes."
Historic trivia: junior was not wearing a US flag lapel pin that day.
I believe the best of the American public await that day. The actions of the Italian cours recently give us hope. Nothing of substance will be undertaken in this country to reverse the damage done to constitutional integrity. Spin and PR that speak sto our greatest hopes and greatest fears... and then, business as usual.
Bush and Cheney and all of their ilk worship the glory of evil while masquerading as pious defenders of freedom. That's something I need no one to tell me.
Obama's just timidly or complacently playing along with the Empire games.
"If Bill Clinton - or, presumably, Al Gore (or even Ralph Nader) - had been President in 2001, the Ft. Hood massacre almost certainly wouldn't have happened"
This kind of reasoning is almost always faulty and based on rather flimsy arguments with no real concrete proofs.
The only thing approaching proof that we have is the nature of how the Democrats in power have behaved in situations in which they had comparable choices, and really, none of the choices Hartmann makes examples of compare to 9/11. This is certainly not said in defense of W and his bumbling inept Mussolini-esque performances on that day and in the years afterward, but that we have no idea how Gore, Clinton (or even Nader... an outside outside chance, fantasy really) or any other Democrat would have handled the situation beyond how the Dems have managed and mismanaged their own moment in power since they regained control of the House and then the Administrative branch.
From what evidence we do have it certainly looks as though Democrats, when put in power, would be just as easily bought out by big money interests when it comes to waging illegal wars, including ones that involve international kidnapping, torture and secret black op sites. Their malingering concern about the goings on in the Honduras might be considered a good indication about where their interests lie and how they might play out in such situations.
We can go all the way back to Johnson to see that while they like to be seen, and spun, as a kinder and gentler party, their fist in foregn affairs is just as gloved in acts of war, massacre, espionage and anti-democratic power and resource grabbing. I still have fresh memories of Clinton bombing African factories due to rumors of munitions of some kind when the news of his semen spillage was reaching a peak.
That Clinton's decisions also were the building blocks of our current financial malaise and that Gore really showed no predilection while in the Senate or as Vice President to break away from the corrupting influence of the financiers of the government, big banking firms, Health care and big Pharma, as well as (and most importantly perhaps) the big money privatization of the war and intelligence industries, and that the likes of Pelosi and the rest of the House Dems threw away their opportunity to reverse Bush's legacy and instead have done next to nothing to right the various mishandlings of the constitution that were implemented by Bush makes them more than bumblers, but accessories... as is Obama, who's presidency is looking more like Carter's every day.
Nicely stated, don't forget that the Dems lined up in a straight line approving Bush's war agenda almost to a man or woman following 911. In a system of checks and balances to abusive or stupid use of military force it is supposedly the responsibility of the so call opposing party to provide the brakes. But as we have seen repeatedly in the modern era there is absolutely no difference in practice between what is called 'the two party system.' Of course, their rhetoric is very different but used only to disguise the actual result. The only power the peasants have is their resolve to say NO in the next election. Withhold your vote from the stats quo, or quite whining about it when they take us down the road of our collective demise. Every day Obama is creating recruits from the Islamic world for his perpetual war agenda which will fail just like Bush failed.
Thom,
I have a deep appreciation and respect for your work, and I never, ever thought I'd need to say this, but.....
CUT THE CRAP!
Something tells me you have researched 9/11 at least as deeply as the Kennedy assassination, the rise of corporate power in our country, and the many facets of ADD.
And something also tells me that you know (or at least sense) that, in leaving out the more controversial "inside job" allegations regarding 9/11, you are being (for whatever reason), less than honest here.
Bigtime.
Although I highly doubt that you, of all people, need help on this --- if you do, just say so, and I'll make sure the relevant data is at your fingertips - on this site or sent to your e-mail address, as you prefer.
I'm tempted very much to say: "Shame on you!"
Every regime needs a Boogie Man to keep their sheeple at bay with fear and to redirect their anger while they're being anally raped. With religion, it's the devil. With the Communists, it's the Imperialists. With the Imperialists, it's the Communists...well, now, it's the Muslims and, at one time, it was the Injuns and the Japanese and the Mexicans and the Russians and, oh, well, the list is too long to mention them all. But the bottom line is that, absent the Boogie Man, there's no leverage. And this reminds me of a real funny joke from a Cuban comedian on the subject. During the hayday of the Revolution, everything that happened was the CIA's fault (much like everything that happens here now is the fault of Al Qaeda or the Taliban or whoever is in vogue). One year, a plague invaded the sugarcane fields and the harvest was crap. At the end, el Comandante delivered one of his week-long speeches and, wouldn't you know it? he told the sheeple that the CIA had planted the bug in the fiels and sabotaged the harvest! I kid you not!
But back to my joke. This comedian was imitating Fidel delivering a speech, it was a parody on the incident above only in his joke, el Jefe was informing the citizenry that they had to tighten their belts because the chickens had stopped laying eggs (the only protein available in Cuba for many years) because the CIA had put Crazy Glue in the feed and glued their asses shut! ROFL!
Man, oh, man! That, in essence, is the nature of a Boogie Man for ya. And no matter what happens, how obsurd, you blame it on the Boogie Man and the mentally deficient will believe it. After all, religion has already pre-conditioned them to believe the most obsurd of things and the rest is easy.
Do tell, MK! You know, Hartmann should try some of that CIA chicken feed, since that's where he pulled this article from - straight out of his ass!
blowback
Thanks Thom! These kinds of summaries are really useful, imo, as they remind us of how things got to be this way, and helps to remove the 'wool over our eyes' that seems to creep up on us.
nineleven. the day of too many improbabilities.
From Silverstein's insurance policy to the power-down to the recycled steel, an inside job.
The most powerful imo, being the still-not-investigated issue of the nano-tech produced thermite chips:
http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM
Such a marvcelous analysis, which still should be utilized in considering Afghanistan today.
Bill Clinton had it right then, and that is what we still should try to tap: police efforts in Afghanistan . Let's not perpetuate the deception and further play Star Wars on our own planet.
Ksrita and Paul Hummer
San Jose, CA
p.s. Thank you for reminding us how the Bush administration blew a golden opportunity to utilize police help by the Taliban to nab Bin Laden and how the little "President", a fraud, if there ever was one, was sequesterd in Fla. on 9/11. Some bravery! Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld should be considered war criminals and not only their CIA designees in Italy.
truly a compassionate leadership puts us all at less risk
It's smart, entertaining, articulate, and alas, Thom Hartmann like so many in the progressive media just can't let go of Dumbya, propeller head Rove, the sneering Cheney- dog, and the rest of that rogues gallery of misfits.
I suspect this is because Thom, like so many of the progeressive establishment just cannot face the reality that Dumbya's beige successor and most of his adminstration is just as venal, knee-jerk, and putrid-rotten to the core as his predecessor.
Poet
ha ha ha this site is hysterical, thanks for cheering me up kids, you are all too funny!!!
Thom Hartmann.....
No one does it better.
I listen to EVERY one of his radio shows, ALL the way through (podcasts) and almost never disagree with him on anything.
Only Ralph Nader is as good in the "political commentary" world. And both are almost mental clones of the other.
Both are my heroes and "gods", to me.
As usual, what you wrote here, Thom, is nothing less than SUPERB.
ICK!
If Nader is harping the lie of bin Laden/al-Qaeda/9-11 as the legitimate casus belli for A'stan, then yes, he's in that way a mental clone of Hartmann.
If you want to see a truly ghastly and frightening display of ignorance and racism, read what the President of the American Family Association said about Muslims in the military and Muslims in general.
I would supply the link for you, but I got booted off of the website.
Is that ghastly and freightening display of ignorance and racism worse than those displayed on Yahoo Answers? No doubt this is truly a mentally-defficient society.
"Bill Clinton knew what to do with terrorists, be he bin Laden or Tim McVeigh: brand them as criminals."
Bush/Cheney and their other neocon cohorts in crime held a deep ideological aversion to using international legal tools such as extradition. In more than one post-9/11 speech I can recall, Bush the Warrior King in full swagger referred to his predecessor's wimpish penchant for "filing legal papers" in the naive belief "our oceans could protect us" from the evildoers' attacks. The whole point of creating military tribunals was to treat terrorist threats as acts of war by enemy combatants, rather than crimes committed by criminal conspirators, thus neatly dispensing with such pesky obstacles as actual evidence, fair trials, and/or judicial review.
For whatever reason, Thomm seems to be drawing an shitstorm of ad hominem attack for this particular offering. Maybe it is the premise that if history could just be rewritten, if Clinton, Gore, or Nader had been in the White House on 9/11/01, "in probably a year or less" Al Qaeda would have been dismantled worldwide by using cooperative diplomacy and a criminal law approach rather than blundering off to overthrow the Taliban militarily. I'm not so sure that's how events would have unfolded, but Thomm Hartman's reminder about Mullah Omar's offer to turn bin Laden over for trial - and the Bush/Cheney White House cavalier rejection of that offer - is important to keep in mind. Like Iraq, Afghanistan too was a war of choice, not a war of necessity.
Yes, Karl Rove's spinmeisters and the dark forces of the far right cynically played up Osama bin Laden as the universal boogeyman, and fear mongered the nation into two major wars abroad in Muslim lands while reaping partisan advantage at home for Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush's whole domestic agenda. There may have been no anthrax scare or color coded threat levels under a President Al Gore, but there still would have been a huge anti-Muslim backlash in American popular culture.
The Bushies had much to fear in the very immediate aftermath of 9/11. To any objective observer, it sure as hell looked like they were sound asleep at the switch, what with My Pet Goat going on down in Florida while lower Manhattan was aflame, and the country's military command headquarters successfully attacked in broad daylight with nary an air defense asset anywhere in sight.
What if Sandy Berger had gone on CNN to relate the story of his specific warning about Al Qaeda, delivered personally to Condoleeza Rice nine months earlier?
What if Bill Clinton, or the beltway Democrats generally, had risen up to demand answers to the obvious, awkward questions that needed to be asked about what had gone so horribly wrong, after so much money had been spent on national defense and intelligence for so many years?
What if Richard Clarke, or even George Tenet, had blown the whistle?
The first order of business then, while the WTC rubble was still smoldering, was to nip in the bud any serious effort to actually learn what had happened, which could morph into an effort to hold the Bush White House accountable for what happened. Fortunately for the GOP, the Washington Democratic leadership proved more than glad to cooperate, some perhaps fearing that if any finger pointing did start, Rove's people would be quick to try to pin the Al Qaeda menace back on the laxity of the outgoing Clinton/Gore national security team. There was an immediate gentlemens' handshake agreement inside the DC beltway not to open up any such partisan food fight, at least while the nation was still traumatized. That deal stuck.
With the loyal opposition thus neutered, the Bushies were free to turn their attention to spinning their own narrative in the mainstream media about how and why the swarthy evildoers had done what they did on 9/11/01, and what steps were necessary to take to insure no such atrocity would ever happen on American soil again. They did so with avengence, and with virtually no critical voices in opposition. Nobody was court martialed. Nobody was even fired.
Sure, George W. Bush got his image temporarily inflated to near Godlike proportion in some red state constituencies, and managed to hang on in 2004 against John Kerry, but there was much more to it than that. For the next seven years, everybody got a piece of the action, a turn at the feeding trough, and a share of the war profiteering while Wall Street soared and we killed 'em over there so we wouldn't have to fight 'em over here.
Now that the party's over, shouldn't accountability start with 9/11 itself?
Why not pledge to pull all American troops out of Afghanistan within 90 days of Osama bin Laden and Zwahiri being turned over to a neutral Muslim state for eventual trial? If the Taliban were willing to do it before, why is it too late now?
Bill from Saginaw
Would've could've should've, yippity skip,Bill. Get to the fundamentals. There is a Way BIGGER Picture. Remember Bosnia/war criminals/Clintons/same game, extermination of Moslems vermin scam.Then on to bigger and better yield,a seriously imperiled, full blown USSA'S exterminators'rush from secondly sacrifices,all to keep those Gihad monster moslems at bay,suited up and at the ready. "bring em on" Warrior Bush-shite jokes.Except that,we the master race, believe, as the entitled,that we can annihilate/conquer every Moslem,for starters,then on to the South Americans,the Chinese,the Russians and any other of the inferiors on the planet,who,after we have said BOO to them, don't run away and hide.The policies of extinction have been in place for generations and now are smack,dab in everyone's face( you'd have to be stone deaf dumb and blind not to see what's going on).So split hairs all you want.The blood is on the wall, kill anything that moves.We are the top dogs and those who are participants,anywhere on the planet,have joined us as sadists and psychopaths.Might as well call a spade a spade!
"For whatever reason, Thomm seems to be drawing an shitstorm of ad hominem attack for this particular offering. ..."
Bill, most here were pounding Hartmann for his servile attempts to point the finger for the wrong reasons, for instance: regurgitating the same old false narrative of OBL/al-Q.
Bill, I believe we are not there to get Zwahiri or anyone else. We're there for a gas pipeline. The Taliban and Warlords are paid by the CIA and do not want to see them go.
"Bill Clinton knew what to do with a terrorist: brand them as criminals."
takes one to know one.
Yeah, Hartmann falls into the trap of rhetorically buying in to the Official Version of the events of 9/11 in order to make a supposedly larger or deeper point.
He's hardly alone-- since "sheeple" popped up in another comments thread here, I'll use the term to describe a nervous bunch of moderate progressive pundits ("The Nation") who are unable or unwilling to openly and skeptically question the default 9/11 myths because it might impair their vaunted reputations for "credibility".
And I must be one of a tiny handful of Amerikans who deplore the Instant Pontificating regarding the Fort Hood incident. Because I don't really know what happened there in the first place, despite the usual rush of Breaking News Team Coverage that breathlessly suggests that the essential facts aren't in dispute.
That may be good enough for our shameless hack of a president, or at least sufficient for him to boldly tell the world that Amerika is determined to give the perp a real fair trial before they hang his ass-- I paraphrase liberally here, but not inaccurately.
It's not a matter of the story not having "legs"-- but having too damn many of them, running in different directions. I think it's unwise at best to attempt to discern the True Meaning of Major Hasan just to make the Veteran's Day headline.
Hope this doesn't come off as too impunitive.
· Yr Obd't Servant
The official event of 9/11 was that both Papa Bush and Bin Ladin's brother were at a Carlyle group meeting that morning. If this was preplanned, they would have made sure all of the Bin Ladens were out of the country first.
Thom does sugar coat the fact that the reason why Bush and Cheney were not keeping tabs on Osama was because they were busy racking their brains trying to find an excuse to go into Iraq. Initially, the Bush administration blamed 9/11 on Saddam (for about an hour until Bin Laden took credit) - but then realized that if they wanted to attack Iraq that they would have to attack Afghanistan first.
I wished that Thom chose someone more arrogant and show offish like Iron man rather than the Canadian created Superman. Clark Kent kept a low profile - he did not show off, he did not boast, he did not thump his chest:
Superman never made any money
For saving the world from Solomon Grundy
And sometimes I despair the world will never see
Another man like him
Hey Bob, Supe had a straight job
Even though he could have smashed through any bank
In the United States, he had the strength, but he would not
"Bin Laden took credit"
This is unverifiable.
exactly, evidence anyone?
are you suggesting there might be a grassy knoll at Ft. Hood?
There is a lot I don't know about what has transpired in the past few decades but I have long wondered about the apparent symbiotic relationship between G.W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden.
After 9/11, neither did anything to directly attack each other's interests, preferring to strike at proxies (Iraq, Spain, London, etc.). Rather, in retrospect, each provided the other with political fuel they could not have generated on their own.
Here is something to add to the Koolaid :
http://animalnewyork.com/2009/11/hackers-performed-electronic-pearl-harbor-under-bushcheney-in-2007/
you that impune Thom Hartmans' integrity are morons in the first degree. I wonder why you would try to read or understand the journalism presented here.
P'raps YOU could 'splain such towering journalism to we of the Guild of First Degree Morons?
Can you explain, for example, Hartmann's continuous foisting of the fabricated 'bin Laden/al-Qaeda®' casus belli?
While you're doing that, maybe I should run out for some Kool-Aid?
Wow, the rhetorical skills of the Hartmann apologist is impressive in'it?. A juvenile ad hom. smear and no facts! Freakin brilliant!
And the elites will go on winning just as long as the Left spends time vilifying it's component groups.
It's not vilifying. 'Don't know your past, don't know your future...' Z. Marley
I concur. Anybody who tries to understand the complexities of turning back eight years of psychosis is called an "apologist" to Obama, and to even Bush, which is very self-serving to say the least.
This article is garbage, an insult to intelligent people and a disgrace to journalism. Phony black and white, good cop bad cop scenarios. He must have written it as a propaganda piece for 8th graders.
Everyting is Bush's fault. Gee why did Obama informally pardon Bush, Cheney and the rest of the War Criminals?
Why did Obama re-appoint Robert "uncle Bobby" Gates (a Bush family crony) as Secretary of Imperial Aggession?
Why is Emperor Obama sending more legions to the outermost regions of the Empire?
What is the difference again between the last regime and the latest one?
Thommie boy."Sychophant/psychophant" I concur.Can't get it straight. The article is PURE RUBBISH.Let's explore .One of the Stans?Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan?,rector of Dundee University/Ambassador to one of the stans saw a CIA/M15 report on UK/USSA fondness for sadism ways,describing horrific stuff,CHILDREN TORTURED IN FRONT OF THEIR PARENTS, RAPES WITH BROKEN BOTTLES, PEOPLE BOILED ALIVE, CIA FLIGHTS TO TORTURE PRISONS sickening and on and on.THE AUTHOR was PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS.
The point is,the torture,the genocide,the Arab slaughter,if I were Arabic I'd sure as hail want the USSA UK devils'to fall on their fucking fecal faces.The other point the article made,was that the Bushlim fam. claimed and were granted ALL the rights to the Gas pipelines snaking through Afghanistan by none other than MR.KARSAI.MR.KARSAI'S BROTHER RUNS THE TRILLION DOLLAR HEROIN EMPIRE DIVIED AMONG THE ELITE.DID THOMMIE HAPPEN TO MENTION any of this in his garbage article.(as to why an intelligent psychiatrist just might reach a breaking point if that infact is what happened, knowing how his own people are being treated by this civilized nation of ours, is it still a mystery.)
why is obama doing these things? perhaps he doesn't
want a bullet perforating his cranial cavity?
OBOMBA could wear a bullet proof helmet and bullet proof space outfit at all times if he wanted to! The guy would have be all liquered up on hooch most of the time just to deal with his conscience
more excuses
Here we go again. It is good and honorable for a soldier to sacrifice his life for his country--that is how the mythology goes, but our fearless leader must cower in fear and serve powerful interests opposed to the common good?
Was it worth it to be first Black pop idol president? To ultimately be viewed as a pathetic failure?
Give me liberty or give me death...
Better to die trying.
"but our fearless leader must cower in fear"
exactly!
if you can't do the crime, get out of the kitchen.
or something . . .
You claim the article is garbage and yet you fail to dispute any points raised, but instead talk about Obama which is not even the point of the article. That is intellectual dishonesty. We know Obama is continuing many of BushCo's policies, that's not the point here.
I think the POINT is Lucky---- Same camel different saddle-----Oops was I intellectually dishonest enough for you? Dang Cders can be annoying with this dishonesty stuff.
I agree; the article is total bullshit, and an attempt to rewrite history. Mr Hartmann's last few essays reek. Too much Obama koolaid it seems.
Thom Hartmann,
You are a Gatekeeper of the U.S. Empire.
You also lack a lot of knowledge as I listened to your radio show overnight on Sattelite. You are very gullible regarding false flag attacks and you go with the dominant narrative from the mainstream media a little too much. This was obvious in your "analysis" of the shootings at Fort Hood.
Remember, Thom, the Democrats are not free of guilt either.
A lot of "progressives" and even anti-war libertarians don't want to touch the lies around 9/11 or all the others, for a good reason. They figure the rulers have committed so many crimes that are obvious and indisputable, they don't need to get involved in hard-to-believe (though true) "conspiracy theories." I have some sympathy with their views, although ultimately, the ongoing narrative of "Muslim terrorists" is a very powerful support for the war machine and should be challenged.
The one quality?
Maybe we should read more nuanced novels.
Hartmann never tires of his jaundiced spin machine. Yes (listen carefully all you Hartmann Disciples before spilling your obnoxious odor), the name of the article ought to be, "Major Hasan and The Legacy of George W Bush [and Barak Obama.]"
Hartmann lives in a political vacuum and sees through a colored pollyAnna lens; apparently he has not heard of Obama's covert air strikes on non-combatants, or his perpetual war agenda which will soon to add tens-of-thousands of troops to Afghanistan, or that Cheney's assasination general in Iraq is now Obama's assasination general in Afghanistan. Maybe if Hartmann got his nose out of his own personal self-absorption long enough to read the views on CD of the authentic left, he would discover some new colors among the glistening tripe he is married to, while generating his own personal bank accounts off the backs of the authentic left,
Hartmann lives in a bubble named me, me, me...while generalizing various bits of propoganda for the herd. The future Hasan's of Amerika are now being created by that piece of sh-t named Obama who (like Bush) speaks the same language as Hartmann.
Maybe someday Hartmann will wake up and smell the coffee.
Do I hear an amen from the GROUPIE elite?
Wow, talk about personal attacks. Sheesh. Thom's article has nothing to do with Obama. He's takling about everything that occurred before Obama. Things that people forgot and things that are still not fully investigated. Bush, Cheney, et al need to be prosecuted for war crimes. Ask Vince Bugliosi.
But Obama has effectively pardoned the war criminals, and is participating in war crimes himself.
That is the point .... Obama is following the same norms as Bush. Talk about obtuse.
That doesn't mean the article is not valid, and it doesn't excuse the personal attacks.
And you are being quite diplomatic about it elohim, well put.
Thanks, I am sick and tired of people like Hartmann who never set foot on a battlefield playing fast and lose with other peoples lives while living life through their anti-septic lens of the value of innocent human life. In the case of Hartmann he actually enlisted and than ran away. I have no problem with conscientious objectors who did not participate and worked on their behalf for amnesty back in the seventies. Why be diplomatic in the face of more oppression by someone profiting off political discourse?
"profiting off political discourse" are you referring to Thom's radio show? In that case, let me point out that many (most?) americans are exposed to political discourse through for-profit media which (certainly in radio) is dominated by the right-wing. Thom works tirelessly and is a breath of fresh air. He has mentioned that he would do his job for no pay, if he could make a living at it.
I don't know his Vietnam history, but would you have more respect if he went to Vietnam and then was killed in a senseless war rather than running away as you say? You may be trying to remove a splinter in Thom's eye, ignoring the 2x4 in your own.
lucky, admit it you and Thommie are the same person, right, you had us all fooled for a minute
Your selective reading of my comments reflects ignorance. And as for the 2 y 4 I served two years in a combat role in Vietnam. Furthermore, I acknowledged conscientious objectors who I respect and admire, Hartmann was not one of those. If you want to take this subject up further read Hartmann's book, The Prophets Way where he gives a snippet of the issue. And then try thinking for yourself for a change.
"I have no problem with conscientious objectors who did not participate and worked on their behalf for amnesty back in the seventies."
respect.
Precisely, elohim.
Hartmann: "If Frodo in "Lord of the Rings," for example, hadn't been forced to do battle with the supernatural powers of the Ring and its minions, his story would have merely been a boring travelogue. ..."
If faux-leftist shills like Hartmann didn't perpetually strum the perpetual money-generating machine that is the supernatural myth of "bin Laden and his al-Qaeda Minions®", Hartmann's, and the rest of the MIC's "terrorism" stories all would be equally as boring.
The difference is, in Frodo's story, the villains actually existed.
You missed the point of this article.
Karl Rove and the Bush White House used the idea of Osama Bin Laden (and Islamic terrorist groups) as antagonists to the U.S. and Bush... making Bush "the good guy" in this scenario. In what way is Obama doing that (regardless of the atrocities happening on his watch)?
Actually it is you who missed the point. What antagonism are you referring? Surely you jest? I agree the rhetoric is directed in that fashion, but not the policy. Obama is engaged in an identical strategy as Bush with a few nuances that are different, but the overall direction is to perpetuate the military industrial establishment which owns the man. He is engaged in a grand social experiment which funds the terrorists through the corruption of the Karzai government, and then inviting the Taliban into the political process. Obana's propaganda is just as pernicious as Rove and company, Obama recently asserted that Afghanistan is not a war of choice. Bullshit. It is just more propaganda for the herd which uses fear based frames to achieve U.S colonial objectives and an empire of bases like Chalmer Johnson notes in his many fine books. Try reading one before spewing your nonsense.
by claiming that US troops are in Afghanistan fighting "the same people who killed nearly 3000 Americans on 9/11©"
mind you - I have read somewhere that some of the hijackers are still alive . . .
The question AND ANSWER have been the same since "63. Who's benefitted. Among many others, the poppy bushs.
Thom, you forget: Milosevic was Billy boy's Hitler. And that war was for a pipeline as well.
"The war in Yugoslavia (a war in fact if not in official declaration) has suffered no shortage of casualties, refugees, destruction - and overheated, overblown references to Adolf Hitler and Nazism.
As is usually the case, what in debating circles is known as the "reductio ad Hitlerum" doesn't advance rational disputation. Rather, it shifts debate into the realm of emotional response, where facts and logic matter less than feelings and passion. Such a tactic may sometimes be appropriate in the classroom or the kitchen, but it's certainly no way to conduct American foreign policy.
Related Results
To justify the NATO "action" in the Balkans, the Clinton administration has moved quickly to cast Slobodan Milosevic in the Hitler mold. In his first extended attempt to explain what "this Kosovo thing is all about," Bill Clinton rhetorically asked a crowd of AFSCME union members, "What if someone had listened to Winston Churchill and stood up to Adolf Hitler earlier? How many people's lives might have been saved, and how many American lives might have been saved?"
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has, as NBC's Andrea Mitchell put it, "demonized [Milosevic] as a modern-day Hitler." Other NATO supporters have similarly penciled in a mustache on Milosevic. Reagan administration U.N. ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, for instance, has said that Serbian actions in Kosovo constitute "the closest thing to genocide that we have seen since Pol Pot's killing fields in Cambodia or Hitler's gas ovens in Auschwitz.""
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_2_31/ai_54772887/
>>
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has, as NBC's Andrea Mitchell put it, "demonized [Milosevic] as a modern-day Hitler."
<<
Is this the same Madeleine Albright who said that killing 500,000 children in Iraq was "worth it" in the efforts of accomplishing whatever the hell it was that the Clinton administration was trying to do there? I mean, after all, if one is to compare another to Hitler, I guess it takes one to know one, eh?
Is this the same MADeleine Albright that venomously supported HILLA the Hun Clinton for President
add also into the equation junior's conceit of pre-emptive war.
(a conceit not denounced by 0)
what might Hasan have been pre-empting?