WilliamPitt
WilliamPitt's JournalIt's Not War, So Stop Saying That
President Barack Obama, center, with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), left, and House
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington,
Sept. 3, 2013. (Photo: Christopher Gregory / The New York Times)
It's Not War, So Stop Saying That
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed
Thursday 05 September 2013
The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now - with somebody - and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.
- Hunter S. Thompson
John Boehner and Eric Cantor think attacking Syria is a great idea, and have encouraged all congressional Republicans to support President Obama in the upcoming vote to authorize such an action, though they don't intend to actually whip votes or anything. John McCain was for attacking Syria, but against it, yet for it, but refused to vote for it unless his amendment making the resolution more fulsomely war-ish was added to the final text. Sheldon Adelson, the right-wing billionaire who spent $70 million trying to defeat Obama in the 2012 election, is firmly in the president's corner when it comes to saving Syrian civilians by dropping bombs on them.
Boehner, Cantor, Adelson and Obama: if someone showed you a picture of them playing golf together, you'd think it was Photoshopped, because it's just too deranged to be real. But there they are, all four of them, walking shoulder to shoulder towards the precipice of another Middle East conflict, with McCain as usual scurrying to keep up.
Secretary of State John Kerry made it abundantly clear during a congressional hearing on Tuesday that he is ready to ask someone to be the first to die for a mistake, and did so with a barrage of gibberish so vast that it bent the light in the hearing room.
He insisted with table-pounding vehemence that the president is not asking America to go to war by asking America to flip missiles and bombs into Syria, because it totally won't seem like war to us. No one bothered to ask what it will seem like to the people on the receiving end of our non-war armaments. It won't be like war, though, so stop saying that.
The rest: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/18609-its-not-war-so-stop-saying-that
(h/t to Bob Boudelang, wherever you are)
Regarding cruise missiles and airstrikes not being "war"
...let's hear from an expert:
"We veterans can only look with amazement on the fact that this country has been unable to see there is absolutely no difference between ground troops and a helicopter crew, and yet people have accepted a differentiation fed them by the administration. No ground troops are in Laos, so it is all right to kill Laotians by remote control. But believe me the helicopter crews fill the same body bags and they wreak the same kind of damage on the Vietnamese and Laotian countryside as anybody else and the President is talking about allowing this to go on for many years to come. One can only ask if we will really be satisfied only when the troops march into Hanoi."
- John Kerry, 22 April 1971
But cruise missiles and airstrikes are not "war."
Gotcha.
"...because, you know, Assad is this year's Hitler."
(snip)Enough, OK? If you want to argue that we should make war in Syria because of what the regime did to people, then make that case on the merits. (Of course, if you do that, then you have to get behind regime change, which we don't seem to want to do, except for Senator Angry Grampy.) But don't tell me that the national security of the most powerful nation on Earth is suddenly in peril, because you sound like an idiot, and you sound like you think I'm one, too.
"With impunity, there is opportunity," John Kerry said a few minutes later. "North Korea is hoping ambivalence carries the day." And then he cited Justice Jackson from the Nuremberg tribunals because, you know, Assad is this year's Hitler.
We're going to make war in Syria to keep Kim Jong Un in a box?
Jesus, just stop it. Make an honest case.
- Charles P. Pierce
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Hearings_Begin
Is it just me...
...or has it gotten profoundly stupider around here all of a sudden? Like, super-sized special-blend jaw-droppingly stupid? With stupid sauce on the side?
Someone just told me to "tell it to the Jews."
Tell it to the Jews???
All day like this. All day.
I know I know I know I know, this is meta, no complaining about DU, this will get locked, I know.
But Jesus H. baldheaded Christ...nothing like a war to bring out the Epic Derp, I guess.
So there's this, from the archives:
"I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know."
http://www.ultimateflame.com/
Seems appropriate.
Carry on.
So, yeah...remember that whole Iraq war thing? Remember all the refugees flooding into Syria?
Remember the Iraq war? Millions of displaced Iraqis running for their lives? A couple million of them wound up in Syria, thanks to Syria's open-door citizenship policy for Muslims around the world.
To wit: if you're Muslim and come to Syria, you'll get housing and assistance until you land a job...but hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees tore that welcome mat apart by dint of sheer mass.
There were food riots in Syria a few short years ago. The government had to sharply curtail the largesse they gave their new Muslim immigrants, and resentment festered. Plus, a lot of people were pissed about what happened in Iraq. Syrian society was put under enormous stress, and began to fray.
So, yeah, the Iraq war probably had at least something to do with the reasons why Syria descended into civil war. Kinda sorta. And stuff.
And the lead cheerleader for that disaster?
Oh, he's painting cats now.
These New George W. Bush Paintings May Herald a "Cat Period"
http://gawker.com/these-new-george-w-bush-paintings-may-herald-a-cat-pe-1209373403
Motherfucker.
War on Syria: Twenty Pounds of Stupid in a Ten-Pound Bag
A front line, where rebels have made slow gains
against the entrenched Syrian Army, in Aleppo, Syria,
Dec. 12, 2012. (Photo: Tyler Hicks / The New York Times)
War on Syria: Twenty Pounds of Stupid in a Ten-Pound Bag
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed
Tuesday 27 August 2013
I'm just going to throw this out on the stoop and see if the cat licks it up: instead of attacking Syria, how about we don't attack Syria?
Crazy, I know; this is America, after all, and our presidents like nothing more than to flip a few cruise missiles at other countries, combined with a few bombing sorties for good measure, because it's a hell of a lot easier than actual statecraft. Besides, it looks good on television, and all those meanies in Congress can't accuse the Commander in Chief of not doing anything. Oh, also, cruise missiles and bombs cost a lot, so if we pull the trigger on Syria, someone will get paid handsomely.
What ho, this we call "diplomacy," right? Flatten a few buildings, blow some children sideways out of their kitchens during breakfast, take a victory lap on the Sunday morning talk shows...what could possibly go wrong?
Quite a bit, as it turns out.
The rest: http://truth-out.org/news/item/18416-war-on-syria-twenty-pounds-of-stupid-in-a-ten-pound-bag
If you or anyone you know shops at Forever 21, read this immediately.
From US Uncut:
Retail company Forever 21 sent this letter to all full time/non-management employees informing them that they will be demoted to part time, they and their families will lose their health and dental benefits, and they will no longer qualify for paid time off. Employees believe the company is punishing them to retaliate against Obamacare.
We were asked to share this by one of our fans, and now we are asking you to do the same. Don't underestimate the power of your SHARE. Two weeks ago, US Uncut was the first place to widely publish McDonald's now notorious budget, and it went viral across mainstream media. Thank you.
Former WaPo Ombudsman OBLITERATES Jennifer Rubin, Tells Bezos to Fire Her Immediately
Quoting former WaPo ombudsman Patrick B. Pexton:
Not because she’s conservative, but because she’s just plain bad. She doesn’t travel within a hundred miles of Post standards. She parrots and peddles every silly right-wing theory to come down the pike in transparent attempts to get Web hits," Pexton wrote. "Her analysis of the conservative movement, which is a worthwhile and important beat that the Post should treat more seriously on its national pages, is shallow and predictable. Her columns, at best, are political pornography; they get a quick but sure rise out of the right, but you feel bad afterward.
And she is often wrong, and rarely acknowledges it. She was oh-so-wrong about Mitt Romney, week after week writing embarrassing flattery about his 2012 campaign, calling almost every move he made brilliant, and guaranteeing that he would trounce Barack Obama. When he lost, the next day she savaged him and his campaign with treachery, saying he was the worst candidate with the worst staff, ever. She was wrong about the Norway shootings being acts of al-Qaida. She was wrong about Chuck Hagel being an anti-Semite. And does she apologize? Nope.
Rubin was the No. 1 source of complaint mail about any single Post staffer while I was ombudsman, and I’m leaving out the organized email campaigns against her by leftie groups like Media Matters. Thinking conservatives didn’t like her, thinking moderates didn’t like her, government workers who knew her arguments to be unfair didn’t like her. Dump her like a dull tome on the Amazon Bargain Books page.
The last sentence is what makes this art.
Former WaPo Ombudsman To Bezos: Fire Jennifer Rubin
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/former-wapo-ombudsman-to-bezos-fire-jennifer-rubin?ref=fpa
You Are, In Fact, Being Watched
(Image: James Montgomery Flagg; Edited: JR / TO)
You Are, In Fact, Being Watched
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed
Wednesday 07 August 2013
(snip)
The cat has fled the bag, folks. The American government is spying on you comprehensively, is using the information they gather on you to jail you if they choose to, and is doing so by laundering secretly-gathered information from one alphabet-soup agency through another and another, to make that information nice and clean for the courts.
Harken to the vacillators: "But it's just terrorists and drug dealers, and it's been going on for 20 years. Why do you care about terrorists and drug dealers, and why are you surprised?"
Sure, yeah, terrorists suck and drug dealers suck, and I'm sure this massive thing that has been unleashed upon the American system of law, and the American people, is totally benign and awesome and only doing good things and stuff.
Let's pretend for a second that we even believe that.
What about tomorrow?
And next year?
And four years from now?
And ten years from now?
How much do you trust the future?
The poet Yeats told us that the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. I pray his judgment of the best is wrong, but I know for a stone fact that his understanding of the worst is ruthlessly correct...which means, sure as sunrise, another Dick Cheney will someday hold a seat of power that allows him to direct the incredible weapon of our massive national surveillance state against anyone not properly bathed in the blood of the Lamb.
If they can jail someone based on surveillance-gathered data forwarded surreptitiously to the DEA, why not you? Who knows what "crime" will come to mean in the world our American Taliban Christians would like to create? They already control a third of the federal government, and are gunning - pardon the pun - for the rest, from the counties to the states and on up the line. Imagine if they got another one of their candidates into the White House, or took over the Senate, or managed both in one fell swoop.
If you think it can't happen, you're a damned fool.
So forgive me for being leery of this latest ZOMG ANY MINUTE NOW terror alert. I've been badly used by the people tasked to "keep us safe," as have you. The Reuters report submarined any argument that claims we aren't being comprehensively watched and recorded for the express purpose of punishing us. They are building a future I want no part of, and I would not put it past them to puff up a threat to distract us.
...and, P.S., if by dark chance a bomb does go off somewhere, it begs the question: would the American surveillance state be better able to thwart bombers if it didn't spend its resources surveilling the American people?
The rest: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/18022-you-are-in-fact-being-watched
Profile Information
Name: William Rivers PittGender: Male
Hometown: Boston
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 58,179
