Winning Hearts and Minds in Lebanon

It seems that we can see so far
But all we see is War
Jacking up the fear
Both abroad and here
And spreading blood and guts
The world is going nuts
Vacant diplomatic skill
With a lust to kill
Be afraid that we are headin’
Headlong to Armageddon
Please don’t act surprised
You’ve heard all these old lies

This past week saw the renewal of cowboy diplomacy by the Connecticut Cowboy. Instead of taking a lesson from the capture of potential terrorists through good intelligence and police work, albeit rushed by the White House fear mongers, the Bushies have again declared that we are “fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here.” Worse, both he and Deferment Dick used the opportunity for partisan bashing of Democrats to use Joe The Kiss Lieberman as a foil. Bush with his cowboy boot firmly in his mouth spoke of “Islamic Fascists.” I guess he doesn’t understand either fascism or Islam. Fascism began in Italy through culpable corporatism and the Unitary Executive that was emulated and improved upon by Nazi Germany with the help of some notable Americans including Thomas J. Watson of IBM and (grandfather) Prescott Bush of Nazi style fascist steel, coal and banking. They were Christians, but I do not recall anybody calling them Christian Fascists.
Why does this man cause his mouth to overload his ass? That is a serious question that deserves serious thought. Is he sober? His ranting seems to put that in dispute. What sober person who is fighting and perhaps even losing wars to Islamic extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan would return to the “bring it on mentality?” I don’t know that any major Islamic group is strong in steel, coal or banking. In fact, they are not strong on corporatism and have tended to operate in large inter-governmental groups that are opposite corporatism in philosophy and structure. They do control considerable oil through OPEC, but that is governmental not corporate. Could it be that Bush simply repeats FOX words? Instead of the transmitter/receiver on his back as during the debates, maybe we should be looking for puppet strings.
For those of you who may be inclined to believe that all is well and that more of the same is the solution to the Mother of all Quagmires, let me review our current condition.
1. We have 130,000 troops in Iraq and have lost 2, 600 military killed there. Recruitment now includes volunteers up to age 42. We have at least 25,000 non-citizens in uniform to help meet the losses we are suffering from casualties and lack of interest. We have also lost our good reputation due to abuse at Abu Ghraib and rape and murder of civilians. Wraparound tours are cited for the highest divorce and suicide rates in history.
2. Afghanistan was never won and the Taliban and religious intolerance is again on the rise. Instead of planning to win there and get their economy off the opium base, we sent troops to conduct and support a preemptive war in Iraq and encouraged the Taliban to recruit and grow. Tora Bora was the escape clause for bin Laden. We deployed no artillery in Afghanistan for over one year. Did we try to kill bin Laden?
3. We are now spending nearly $2 Billion per week in Iraq with worse than nothing to show for it. Supplies of fuel, water, electricity, and food there are below pre-war levels. Infrastructure, schools and hospitals have not been rebuilt despite our spending billions on no-bid contracts for reconstruction (another sign of corporatism).
4. Human rights in both Iraq and Afghanistan have diminished. Women have lost schooling and civil rights they once enjoyed. We have civil war claiming hundreds of Iraqi civilian lives each and every week due to sectarian differences.
5. We have abandoned the plan du jour of standing down as the Iraqis stand up. The Iraqis cannot stand up and we have established a de facto Shiite Theocracy after destroying a Sunni secular regime. We have traded a secular killer (Hussein) for a religious killer (Sadr) through the man that mocked regime change as policy.
6. Because of the failure to train the Iraqis to stand up, we have now committed our tactical reserves (prematurely) from northern Iraq and corralled them inside the Bremer Walls in Baghdad. That has emboldened the Turks who are massing on the Iraqi (Kurdish) border as these words are written. Kurds have recently killed 15 Turkish soldiers and Turkey is poised to strike in retaliation.
7. Israel has destroyed Lebanon with our obvious help in munitions, delayed diplomacy and Bush-Cheney cheerleading thus inflaming most Muslims including the Iraqi Prime Minister. This adds 15 million Shiite enemies in Iraq alone and exposes our military in Iraq to assassination and attack from the very people we put in power. By cheerleading for Israel, we made Hizballah terrorists appear to be martyrs, making our lives only more difficult both at home and abroad.
8. Add to this, recent information that indicates that the Department of Homeland Security has squandered up to $60 Billion in waste, fraud and abuse (through weak contracts and cronyism). We did not improve our police work and sent first responders off to a wasteful war and have made Iraq much like flypaper attracting insurgents from around the world to give unhappy and jobless people a time and place to attack us by identifying with the enemy.
9. We have done nothing about the core problem of Palestine that needs to be the centerpiece of any long-term solution in the Middle East. Iraq is not the problem and neither is Iran unless we make them problems and roll out the flypaper. Congress has not performed its oversight role, so we citizens must by voting out the most incompetent and irresponsible administration in our American history.
10. This is not conservative Republicanism but reckless Neoconservatism that is orchestrated by ideologues and enabled by a docile Congress and you and me. Teddy Roosevelt broke up the corporate trusts. Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex that we now recognize as corporatism gone wild. Combine all that with the Unitary Executive and we have a formula for constant war and profiteering as long as we have an enemy whether real or not. Remember that the Jews were called the earth’s scourge before WW II. Islamic Fascists! New name, same game.

Peace,
George Giacoppe
17 August 2006