Same Circus

When you consider the delusional and incompetent leadership that made decisions in Europe prior to WWI and compare it to the delusional and incompetent leadership in Washington today, we can only say that it is the same circus, just different clowns.

In 1900 the monarchs of Europe were the clowns. The insane regimes of Germany and Russia were lead by autocratic airheads who had tunnel vision, were duplicitous and just plain stupid. German megalomania was verbalized by the Kaiser who was essentially a blowhard with a temperament and uncontrolled anger. His personal need to expand German influence was the central focus of his ideology. (Hitler’s aims were similar but his mantra was “living space”.) Add to this a sizeable helping of religious puffery to the extent that the Kaiser believed, as does Bush, that he too spoke for God.

Leaders of the French Republic were not much better. For example, at the battle of the Marne, Marshall Foch was loudly calling “attack, attack” when actually retreat was indicated. When asked why he called for attack, he didn’t really know except that his men were there, he had the will, and God was present. These were soldiers on the ground attacking automatic machine gun emplacements. And, of course, huge numbers of men were needlessly lost on that day. [1]

It is mindful of the 1850’s when Britain was fighting the Russians and the famous cavalry unit known as the Light Brigade was ordered to make a frontal assault on Russian heavy artillery emplacements. In a situation like this the usual attack would have been from the flanks but because of the geography this was not possible. The British should have retreated but instead were defeated. As a result, they lost in essence the whole Brigade. The commanding generals blamed each other. No one was willing to take responsibility.

As for WWI the Kaiser wanted Belgium as an ally. King Leopold, however, refused. The Kaiser’s reply was that “anyone not with me is against me.” Now where have we heard that before? It was Bush’s favorite mantra when he was trying to put together a coalition to invade Iraq. Both Bush and the Kaiser confused themselves with God. In fact the Kaiser deluded himself into believing that the Germans were “the chosen people”. Sound familiar?

We can learn a great deal from history but we tend conveniently to forget the lessons and the country suffers.


[1] Tuchman, Barbara. The Guns of August. Random House, 1962

Get Over It

When Bush was told that Hezbollah had attacked Israel, his immediate reaction was to announce that a phone call telling Iran to “cut that sh-t out” would take care of the problem. In short, whatever the cause of the conflict, just get over it. It’s mindful of how people dealt with mental illness before the advent of drugs. The mentally ill person was told by their families as well as some physicians to just get over it. The present administration believes that the answer to all the problems in the Middle East is “democracy”. Encourage free elections and the masses will vote in a parliamentarian government with a cooperative leader who will deal with the U.S. and Israel in an acceptable and peaceful manner. This fantasy is also the proposal of the think tanks in Washington as well as everybody else in Foggy Bottom. As we know, in Iraq we are forcing a false “democracy” on the country at the point of a gun. When Bush proposed more democracy for Russia, Putin cleverly replied that he certainly would not want the Iraqi version.

So what happens in the Middle East when the people are given the vote? In Iraq because of our presence there is now a civil war between the Sunnis and the Shias. However, in the Palestine authority Hamas, the Islamic party, won the election and is now in control of the government. In Lebanon Hezbollah now has 14 seats in the Lebanon parliament. None of this makes Washington very happy. Obviously give these countries “democracy” and they will vote for an Islamic state. On the other hand, the remaining countries in the Middle East except for Israel are autocracies. Our dependable allies in the region still remain Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, all autocracies. So the belief that “democracy” would be the cure-all is in reality a tooth fairy’s delusion. To give any of these autocratic countries the vote would undoubtedly place in power a hostile Islamic government, assuming that the present power brokers would even consider such a change. And the democracy that we would implant would be a myth. (See Iraq and Afghanistan) It would be a puppet government controlled by Washington. Keep in mind that the last thing Saudi Arabia would want is a popular vote. That would be the end of the monarchy. The powerful people who run that country want Saudi Arabia to remain just as it is so that they may use the money gained from oil in any despicable way that they see fit.

One comment on the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that appears to have ended: It was Israel’s intention by hitting the civilian populations very hard to turn them against Hezbollah and Hamas. But instead of destroying these authorities they have gained overwhelming support to the extent that 80% of the people polled endorsed both parties. Israel’s extreme violence has caused a severe blowback.

References:

Baer, Robert. Sleeping With The Devil, Crown, 2003
Wall Street Journal. 8/8/06. Mixed Message

King George

We all learned in school as we sat in our places with sunshiny faces that the Constitution provides for three branches of power, viz. the executive, the legislative and the judiciary. And there is a balance between them. Bush may have been absent on that day. Nevertheless, George is aggressively increasing the power of the executive and weakening the legislative branch. When Congress passes a law, George maintains that he will interpret that law as he sees fit. And often that is the exact opposite of what Congress intended. He does this with a “signing statement” that he files separately and states that he will interpret the bill as he wishes. Bush has maintained repeatedly that he is the decision maker and that he has the power to ignore the laws as written. In short, he is above the law. If so, he has unilaterally overturned the Constitution and he is now King. It’s great to be King. Something the founding fathers anticipated by writing a Constitution that provided for a balance of power.

According to a number of psychiatrists, Bush is a psychopathic personality demonstrating definite signs of megalomania. Monarchs suffering from megalomania can be very dangerous to the world. Check out the causes of WWI. (See Tuchman, The Guns of August.) As the late Senator Fulbright wrote, wars are caused more often by pathology than politics.

But Bush has other pathological problems as well. Primarily, his behavior demonstrates the pattern of the “dry drunk”. This is a term used by Alcoholics Anonymous to refer to individuals who have stopped drinking but are not really sober. Their patterns of thought are still similar to when they were drunk. Bush loses focus easily and therefore has an attention deficit disorder. Bush drank for 20 years and at some point also used cocaine. At age 40 he became a “born again Christian” and stopped drinking. However, he was never treated for alcohol abuse. Typically he denies he was an alcoholic. Long periods of drinking, according to experts, do cause brain damage and can be permanent. A good example is his inability to talk coherently when he is not reading a script. Another illustration is his tendency to repeat constantly a thought as though his brain was stuck in a groove. One member of his cabinet who resigned some time ago was appalled by his lack of attention at meetings and his apparent inability to even ask questions regarding a topic that he might have known very little about.

His reliance on Cheney and Rumsfeld indicates his need for constant advice and reassurance. He is the puppet and Cheney is his handler. His simplistic understanding of right and wrong as expressed in his repeated mantra “If you are not with us, you are against us”, is another example of his inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy.

Finally, he claims he is compassionate and patient, but he is neither. It is another personality deficit of a “dry drunk”.


References:

Drew, Elizabeth. Power Grab. N.Y. Review, 6/22/06.
Frank, Justin, M.D. Bush on the Couch. Harpers, 2004.

God’s Chosen

My brain may possibly have a Teflon coating when it comes to religious dogma. What little I was exposed to never really stuck. But one thing I do remember is that the Israelites were considered by Old Testament scholars to be God’s chosen people. So it came as quite a shock when our President, an ex-alcoholic and a born again Christian, tells us that God speaks through him and that his administration is literally following God’s will because Americans are God’s chosen people. Obviously Bush is suffering from the delusion that he is a prophet that speaks for God. He preaches the gospel of “freedom and liberty” that he imputes to God and he uses these words repeatedly in his speeches to the point that he deludes his listeners into believing that Christ speaks through him. Observers are convinced that he is an evangelical fundamentalist who believes in the truth and infallibility of the Bible, that Christ died for our sins and that the second coming, according to the Bible, will occur in Israel, the battle of Armageddon. But our troops are presently stationed in Iraq opposing the power of the Moslem national resistance insurgency whose stated purpose is to resist the American occupation of their country and to fight until the American coalition forces leave. What will happen to Iraq afterwards will be up to the Iraqis. One option is that the country could split into three independent sections. After all, the British, after their occupation failed in 1920-21, stitched together these same sections and called it Iraq. Ethnically there were no similarities and it required a strong fist to hold it together, viz. Saddam.

However, in the eyes of the American evangelical fundamentalists, Iraq is the second Babylon and Saddam the modern Nebuchadnezzar. These religious fanatics of whom there are millions in this country and all of them voters were not concerned about oil in the Middle East. Rather they saw Iraq as the anti-Christ and the possible route to Heaven through the coming of the Rapture. This non-Biblical event known as the end-times is when Christ appears and pulls all believers up to Heaven. Non-believers will be left behind as recounted in the novels of Tim LaHaye (Left Behind Series).

Now since these delusional beliefs are linked to America as the chosen Imperial society, it is clear that the fundamental evangelical knows very little about history. History does teach important lessons which most of us tend to forget. Some call it national amnesia. For example, all Imperialist societies before their fall referred to themselves as unique and God’s chosen people, i.e. Britain, Spain and the Netherlands. Based on this past history it is not likely that our experiment as an Imperialist country will last too much longer. The sensible secular people in this country will have to turn back the evangelists at the voting booth and that includes Bush and his supporters. Once having done that we may be able to apply a rational foreign policy to the serious problems of the world.

Since 2/3 of the secular population of the U.S. reject evangelical theology, it should eventually become clear that Rapture as prophetic theology is nonsense. It is difficult to comprehend how fundamentalists who believe in the literal truth of the Bible can accept Rapture as a belief when not one word can be found in the Bible. Rather it was a delusional fantasy of an English ex-priest named Darby who was tossed out of the Anglican church and then came over here in the 19th century to preach the doctrine. He planted the seed and for some unintelligible reason it took root.

However, there is a fly in the ointment. The call to withdraw our troops now creates a serious problem for the evangelists. According to the literal Biblical prophecy Armageddon will occur in the Middle East. Withdrawal of the troops returns the country to the Moslems and it is their decision as to what happens next. But according to the fundamentalists if our troops remain, they become the soldiers of Christ opposing the anti-Christ, the Moslems. This is the battle Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and their supporters envision in their end-times fantasy.

Unfortunately those who believe in this twaddle have a major influence in Washington and many take the attitude that they are not concerned about such issues as global warming, environmental deregulation, or the approaching end of oil because the second coming is imminent. So what does it matter? Attention non-believers, try sleeping comfortably with that one. Instead of taking Ambien, relax with Bush’s latest poll numbers at 31%.


References:

Phillips, Kevin. American Theocracy. Viking, 2006.
Lincoln, Bruce. Holy terrors. Chicago, 2003.

Oil and the Military

As we all know the reason given for the invasion of Iraq was the alleged existence of WMD but when it became apparent that no such weapons existed, the reason for the invasion became the gift of democracy and freedom to this poor backward country. At no time was it ever mentioned that the real reason was to gain possession of its oil fields. It seems historically that whenever the subject of oil arises, our leaders feel compelled to lie. In the case of the American invasion of Iraq the President’s press secretary stated with a straight face that the occupation had nothing to do with oil. The Secretary of Defense asserted shamelessly that the attack was in no way connected to the existence of oil. And the Prime Minister of England stated the same bald faced lie.

It was interesting that at the time our army reached Baghdad a cordon was thrown around the oil ministry building to protect it from harm but the outstanding archeological museum and library filled with rare artifacts and antiquarian books stood totally unprotected from shameless looting.

Before 9/11 Osama bin Laden made it clear that since Saudi Arabia was a center for religious worship for millions of Muslims, American military bases had to go. So the occupation of Iraq played a dual role though not admitted publicly. The military bases were in time moved from Saudi Arabia to Iraq, sitting on top of the 2nd largest oil preserve in the world. Could it get any better than that?

It is not only in Iraq but the military is also being used world wide as protection for oil fields particularly in unstable nations from which we import oil. Nigeria is in the news at the moment. Others are Venezuela, Columbia, Angola and Indonesia. All of these countries rely almost totally on energy exports for income. Such one sidedness perverts their political institutions and restricts their economy. Bribery and cronyism are endemic and wealth remains in the hands of the powerful few. Finally when the economic stress becomes intolerable, a popular arising occurs accompanied by or led by insurgent terrorists. And frequently these uprisings are put down by outside military intervention. Imperial oil must continue to flow irrespective of the needs of the poor.

However, it wasn’t until the first Gulf War that the word oil was used as a reason for military intervention. Bush, Sr. said at the time that our way of life would be threatened if Saddam continued to control the huge oil resources of his country. Then in 2002 when invasion of Iraq was again on the agenda, oil was never mentioned. Freedom and democracy became the new spin; the pipedream of the neocons.

Enduring Camps

This administration has repeatedly stated that we have no intention of maintaining permanent military bases in Iraq. In support of this spin we now have an administration engaging in withdrawal propaganda because of the upcoming Congressional elections and the concern of a number of Republican Party members about the increasing national debt to pay for the war. There is also increased pressure from the states that are desperate for revenue sharing to pay for needed upgrades to the states’ infrastructure. Rebuilding Louisiana is one very good example. Billions are being spent for the war and the states are left begging.

Rumsfeld has stated that there are no plans for permanent bases in Iraq. The military commanders have stated the same. Other administration spokesmen have restated ad nauseam that we want to bring the boys home after the job is done. When would that be? Ten years from now?

So after absorbing all this administration spin, what are the facts? Since 2003 billions of dollars have been spent building enormous military bases in Iraq. In a country that has inadequate electricity, undrinkable water, gasoline shortages and unreliable sewer systems, we are building military bases that resemble hometown suburbia. There are Pizza Huts, Burger Kings, Subway sandwich shops, Popeye’s, air conditioning, football fields, rent-a-cars, movie theatres, Px’s, swimming pools, internet connections and much, much more. Some bases are at least 15 square miles. And there are four of these huge American military towns. If that is not indicative of permanency, tell me what is. Incidentally, the Pentagon was calling them “enduring camps” but that sounded a little too permanent. Now let’s say that another administration comes along and decides to really withdraw as was the case in Vietnam. What happens to the bases and all its expensive equipment? Why, it is just left behind to rot and rust, looted, or bulldozed by the local population and it becomes in accounting terms a “sunk cost” to the American taxpayer? Just another budgetary fiasco. O-hum.

Saudi Arabia Spin

We have been living in harmony with Saudi Arabia for longer than most of us can remember or even care. Only geopolitical buffs would be aware that the Saudis were sitting on 60% of the world’s known oil reserves, and that the US is more dependent on the cheap oil produced by the Saudis than any other country because we use more. However, the industrial economies of the world are also dependent on the oil of the Arab states and if those oil fields were rendered useless by Islamic insurgents, the economies of the world including the US would be devastated.
The administration spin machine spreads the myth that Saudi Arabia is politically stable, their borders are secure, their police efficient, reliable and tough and their population well educated and well fed. In actual fact the Al Saud family that rules the kingdom is constantly threatened by the radical religious fanatics, i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood and the Wahabis, a dangerous organization of religious extremists. The kingdom is “protected” by a well organized and very well trained police force, many of whom were trained in the US. They have a very strong military force with the latest hardware purchased here in the US and the military personnel were also for the most part trained in the US. A small segment of the population is well educated and well fed whereas 30% of the young males are unemployed. These are the men who are recruited for suicide attacks. Fifteen of these Saudis along with four others hijacked the commercial jets that destroyed the World Trade Center on 9/11. Despite administration spin no Iraqis were involved in this suicidal mission. Soldiers who volunteered for the military to avenge 9/11 by killing Iraqis have been deceived by Washington and the Pentagon. It is now clear that it was administration spin that deluded our fighting forces into believing that the Iraqis were responsible for 9/11. If we are looking for answers, perhaps we should look more closely at the manner in which the State Dept issued visas to young Saudi men.

Since we and the Saudis are strange bedfellows, the State Dept allowed young unemployed Saudi men to apply for tourist visas at a designated travel agency in the capital city of Saudi Arabia (Riyadh). They were not required to apply at the US embassy and as long as they paid their fees and presented a valid passport, they could buy an airline ticket to the US and they were on their way. It was called “Visa Express”. But their visas were illegal since the men were classified as immigrants who had no intention of returning home. They had no job, no money and no family. Obviously they intended to remain in the US. As Bob Baer points out they could work in a 7/11 and be better off financially than in Saudi Arabia. So fifteen unemployed Saudis bent on a suicidal mission were allowed into the US illegally, thanks to the State Department. Furthermore, in view of the history of Saudi “terrorism”, where was the political know-how of the State Department? Osama bin Laden was a well known Saudi. The Saudis were involved in hundreds of terror atrocities in many different countries, i.e. the Khobar Tower barracks bombing, the bombing of the Cole, the National Guard barracks and the hijacking of a plane to Iraq to just name a few. The State Department did not pressure the Saudis for any real investigation of these events. They were considered merely aberrant behavior and accepted the Saudi government’s affirmation that they were seriously combating terrorism, which was of course a lie. They were doing absolutely nothing. At the same time the fifteen potential hijackers were being recruited.

So as it turns out the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is in deep trouble. Corruption is rampant, birth rates are high and per capita income is down by 60% or more. Unemployment is 30%. And the very rich members of the Saudi ruling family of which there are many are wanton and wastrel. In fact the regime is so unstable that it fears that it will be overthrown by the religious fundamentalists and therefore it is funneling huge amounts of dollars (hundreds of millions) to the fanatics as protection against a possible coup that would end the monarchy. From 1996 on, Saudi money was actually supporting Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda as well as many other extremists in the Middle East. The Saudi kingdom is so unstable that its oil reserves are liable to attack by fanatics and thereby becoming a real threat to US political and economic interests in the Persian Gulf. The situation has not changed. In fact there is a continuing power struggle within the ruling family regarding corruption and control of money and a ceaseless crisis revolves around staying in power.

After 9/11 spokesmen for the Saudi regime invoked repeatedly the mantra of denial that it had never contributed to Islamic fundamentalist groups. The press had reported that monies given to Islamic charities had somehow gotten to fanatic terrorist groups. The Saudi spin was complete denial. However, the intelligence community through intercepted telephone conversations knew that Prince Salman, the Governor of Riyadh, had contributed millions to certain charities which in turn transferred the money to the religious fundamentalists. Salman was well known as a supporter of fanatic causes. The Bush administration has repeatedly insisted that the Saudis have been totally cooperative in its refusal to support terrorist organizations in the Middle East and in helping in the investigations to collect names and backgrounds. In 1996 when bin Laden was holed up in Sudan, that country offered to turn him over to the Saudis. But the Saudis refused to take him because, they said, he was too popular in Saudi Arabia. They feared that his arrest might provoke a popular uprising. As a result, not one useful piece of information has come out of Saudi Arabia. Even the FBI has not been allowed to interrogate possible suspects or the families of the hijackers. The Saudis have not been willing since 9/11 to provide passenger lists for flights to the US, a major violation of our security. Most American journalists are not allowed into the country and the few that manage to get in are watched very carefully by secret police. Today the religious police control education and the press. As a result, the Saudi press is filled with anti-American tirades.

References:
Baer, Robert. See No Evil. Three River Press. 2002.
Baer, Robert. Sleeping With The Devil. Crown, 2003.
Hersh, Seymour. Chain Of Command. Harper. 2005.