May 15, 2008
Forget Me Nots
All us here at Dakota are finding it hard to relax, even though it looks like a sensible man with a moral center might have a crack at the presidency. Let us not forget that the propaganda machine is in place continually generating enthusiasm.
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo once again called upon his group of diligent volunteers to sift through the enormous pile that resulted when "the Department of Defense did a document dump on their program to use retired military analysts as surrogates on network and cable news to pimp the administration line on the Iraq War - something we now know they did on at least 4,500 occasions". In it they found this ominous musing from a Donald Rumsfeld (remember him?) speech given in December 2006:
RUMSFELD: That's what I was just going to say. This President's pretty much a victim of success. We haven't had an attack in five years. The perception of the threat is so low in this society that it's not surprising that the behavior pattern reflects a low threat assessment. The same thing's in Europe, there's a low threat perception. The correction for that, I suppose, is an attack. And when that happens, then everyone gets energized for another [inaudible] and it's a shame we don't have the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the threats...the lethality, the carnage, that can be imposed on our society is so real and so present and so serious that you'd think we'd be able to understand it, but as a society, the longer you get away from 9/11, the less...the less...
And we can always depend on certain Bush abortions and members of the press to do their patriotic duty once again.
Glenn Greenwald reviewed this New York Times op ed for Salon:
Today's a very exciting day in America. Our nation's most Serious foreign policy expert, the brilliant Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, has today declared our latest new war:The next American president will inherit many foreign policy challenges, but surely one of the biggest will be the cold war. Yes, the next president is going to be a cold-war president -- but this cold war is with Iran.
So congratulations to us. After years of desperately searching, we've finally found our New Soviet Union. Nay-saying opponents of the New War (those who Tom Friedman, in March of 2003, dismissed as "knee-jerk liberals and pacifists") may try to point out that it's a country whose defense spending is less than 1% of our own, has never invaded another country, and could not possibly threaten us, but those are just small details. Iran is our new implacable foe in Tom Friedman's glorious, transcendent struggleSo 9/11 was caused by our backing of dictatorial Arab regimes, our unconditional support for Israel, our general interference in the Middle East, and the fact that Muslims aren't free. So what does Friedman want to do now? Have the U.S. wage a "cold war" (at least) for dominance in the Middle East alongside our best friends: the dictators and monarchs of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf States (plus, incidentally, Israel). In other words, Friedman now wants to do everything that he himself said is what caused 9/11 in the first place.
There's a reason that Friedman occupies the place he does in America's foreign policy establishment. He's perfectly representative of it. It's an establishment in perpetual search of an Enemy and the next war. And finding it (or creating it) is the one thing they do well.
This time around Henry Conyers Chairman of House Judiciary Committee is making an effort to preempt the bloody bastards by putting Bush on notice that if he touches Iran, he will be impeached. You can help by co-signing his letter, which can be found under the clickie.
Photo note: Turns out that there are forget-me-nots flourishing right outside the office door. We were looking for them on Mother's Day, when all we could find were Siberian Squill. Just as well, the forget me nots served a higher purpose
Addendum: From Dan Froomkin's piece "Bush Cries Alone' "Bush seemed to indicate, yet again, that he doesn't intend to leave office with Iran still a potential nuclear threat: "Permitting the world's leading sponsor of terror to possess the world's deadliest weapons would be an unforgivable betrayal for future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon," he said. Bush also likened Iran to al-Qaeda, saying both "reserve a special hatred for the most ardent defenders of liberty, including Americans and Israelis. . . ."That is why Osama bin Laden teaches that 'the killing of Jews and Americans is one of the biggest duties.' And that is why the president of Iran dreams of returning the Middle East to the Middle Ages and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map."
Posted by Dakota at May 15, 2008 06:30 AM