First Light - Chris Floyd - Empire Burlesque

[dutchdemocrat]

First Light

The column below appears in the Nov. 25 edition of The Moscow Times.

Last week, America's troubled sleep was shattered by a trumpet blast of truth sounding deep in Washington's corridors of power, where the rule of the Lie has held sway for so long. This intrusion of reality into the bloodstained fantasy-land of the Bush Regime comes late in the day for the moribund Republic - perhaps too late - but it has struck a mighty blow against the Lie's adherents, driving them into spasms of hysterical panic, like rats exposed suddenly to the light.

The unlikely instigator of this historic upheaval was U.S. Representative John Murtha, the 73-year-old conservative Democrat and warhawk, one of many "opposition" leaders who once strongly backed George W. Bush's murderous folly in Iraq. Murtha, a Vietnam vet, has been a stalwart of the military-industrial complex for decades, supporting American wars around the world and showering legislative largess on the weapons industry - which has obligingly kicked back lobbying contracts to his kin and friends, the Los Angeles Times reports.

But a penchant for typical backroom grease is not necessarily incompatible with political courage. And Murtha showed plenty of the latter when he rocked the Washington establishment with a truly revolutionary act in these degraded times: stating the obvious. Calling Bush's war "a flawed policy wrapped in an illusion," Murtha said American forces should "redeploy" out of Iraq immediately; otherwise, Iraqis will never feel free, the insurgency will grow, terrorism will spread, and America will sink further into debt and dishonor, putting the nation's very survival at stake.

This riot of understatement has been self-evident to most sentient beings for a long time; that it is now sinking into the occluded consciousness of Potomac power-players is a turning point of genuine significance. Although Murtha was immediately assaulted in one of the most raucous displays of bile ever seen in Congress - with Bushist attack dogs labelling the war-wounded Pentagon patron a coward, a traitor, and a terrorist-appeaser - his volte-face has brought the so-called "extremist" anti-war position of swift withdrawal squarely into the political mainstream, and it won't go away now. And why should it? After all, it just happens to be the position of a majority of the American people, as poll after poll reveals.

None of this means the Bush nightmare is over, of course; not by the longest shot. This gang will grow ever more vicious as their support crumbles; in fact, it's a good bet that the worst is yet to come. The Bushists know that they have prison sentences hanging over their heads if they ever lose their grip on power. They will either do "whatever it takes" keep the whip hand - in which case we are in for political and social strife the likes of which America has not seen since the Civil War - or, at the very least, they will make things bad enough that the nation's power elite will negotiate a settlement, as in Richard Nixon's day: we won't prosecute you if you'll just go away. In any case, it won't be pleasant.

SNIP

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=299&Itemid=1

[confuddled]

1. Damn, he's good! Thanks for posting. n/t