The Empire Lives!

Man gets stiff citation for
telling woman in express lane
she is fat and ugly.

The Empire lives, at least for a while longer. MSNBC seems to believe that our last combat brigade leaving is akin to the end of WWII, breathlessly following their caravan as it slowly leaves Iraq for Kuwait. I cannot get excited about this. I guess it is technically true that our last (specifically labeled) combat troops have left, and I guess that should be cause for celebration, but what about the 50,000 troops left behind (that are apparently trained for combat should the need arise), to say nothing of the unknown numbers of private contractors fulfilling other previously military jobs? What this means to me is that Iraq will now join our other satellites with 50,000 troops to go with the 50,000 in Germany, X thousand in South Korea, X thousand in Japan, X thousand in Columbia, and who knows how many spread around the world in our other approximately 100 bases? So far we have not yet established ourselves in Afghanistan or Iran but that may only be a matter of time (if we have our way about it). In a strange way this means that our Iraq “war” did have a successful outcome, we did in fact replace an unfriendly (but almost pathetically toothless) dictator with a new regime more favorable to our interests (or at least it appears that way at the moment), and all this at the” reasonable” cost of perhaps a trillion dollars, millions of deaths, and misery so widespread as to be unimaginable. Good job Bushie, but don’t try to travel too far from the U.S. where war criminals are uniquely protected.

It appears that the campaigning for the November elections is now fully underway. Obama has more or less gone on the attack and Republicans are going to find themselves increasingly exposed for what they have been doing, which, of course, is saying “no” to everything and inhibiting progress at every turn. Will they have to pay for this recalcitrance? I sincerely hope so because it is true, and it remains true no matter how Democrats may have failed. It is also true that if you look objectively at the record Obama has actually accomplished a good deal and has not been given credit for it. Everyone seems more interested in what he has not accomplished than what he has accomplished. I suspect that if Democrats stop giving in to Republican demands and actually stand up and fight they may survive much better than anticipated. Tell me one useful or positive thing Republicans have done in the past couple of years (indeed, over the past ten years). Their all out and unrelenting attempt to bring down Obama rather than cooperate and try to help us recover should cost them dearly, but, hey, this is the U.S., the land of ignorance and bliss, so don’t count on reason or truth having anything to do with it. Sarah, Michelle, Angle, Rush and Beck will fill you in on the facts.

Does it occur to anyone that the trial of Milorad R. “Rod” Blagojevich (you know, the ex Governor of Illinois with all the hair and the big mouth) may be setting a truly undesirable precedent. That is, as I understand it, much of his defense is based on the argument that he can’t be held accountable for corruption because all politics is conducted that way, and/or he was also simply incompetent. This implies to me that no politician can ever again be prosecuted for corruption because corruption and incompetence are the normal conditions of American politics. Neat, huh?

General Petraeus is going to convince us that the “war” in Afghanistan is “winnable” and all he needs is more time. How many times do you think he has sold the Brooklyn Bridge to some yokel or another? It is widely conceded by most everyone, including those in the “know,” that we cannot “win” in Afghanistan, that it is a lost cause and it continues mainly because it continues, and continues, and continues. No one seems to know what “winning” would actually mean in the case of Afghanistan. Perhaps they believe that we can “win” as we have just “won” in Iraq, that is, we can establish a friendly central government that will concede to our interests and thus expand our empire further. Sorry, that’s not going to happen in Afghanistan. There is not going to be a strong central government that has the power and authority to rule the entire country (in fact it is not really a viable country in the first place, being an artificial British creation of disparate peoples and territories). Personally, I don’t see why it even needs to be a country in the first place. The various tribes and clans have managed their own affairs for a very long time, some joining together at times for a common purpose, some withdrawing from alliances when necessary, but always joining together to repulse invaders from the outside. It has always been so and quite likely will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. We seem to lack the imagination (or even the knowledge) to understand that people can exist without strong central governments presided over by one single all-powerful authority. Many times in the past the demand “take me to your leader” was met with blank expressions, and unable to believe there were no “chiefs,” the colonials arbitrarily appointed them, a situation that most often led to much unnecessary trouble.

LKBIQ:
Criminal: A person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.
Howard Scott

TILT:
Perth is geographically closer to Singapore and Jakarta than it is to Sydney.