Letter Never Sent

“Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.” -Julius Caesar

There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old system and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new one. – Machiavelli – 1513

From Counterpunch:

I’ll say this for the Pres. He’s lucky, just like Bill. Of course under Bill the country felt it was sharing in the luck, whereas under W it’s been one damn thing after another. Thus far the history of the Bush Presidency has been the history of falling masonry. President Rubble. But, just like Bill, W. has been the huge beneficiary of Terror. With Bill it was the Oklahoma Bombing. It turned his presidency around. With W it was 9/11. Without it he’d be a laughing stock inside the national jurisdiction as well as overseas.

And now he’s has the gift of a California court’s ruling that the pledge of allegiance runs counter to the Constitution, thereby allowing every politician in the country up to and including W the pleasures of posturing in front of the flag and declaring unflagging trust in God, who is doing little or nothing these days to merit such childish confidence.

Welcome to Bush’s America, where the Supreme Court has now ruled that vouchers are okay. So a child is free to go to Catholic School at public expense and be sodomized by a priest, preferably while both recite the pledge of allegiance.

Fantastic comic strip by Tom Tomorrow. ARE YOU A REAL AMERICAN? Take the quiz and find out.

Afghan Vice President Abdul Qadir was assassinated saturday. This is the second assassination of a member of the puppet government of Afghanistan. This sort of thing will continue as long as the Afghan people continue to fight for their independence and as long as the United States attempts to set up Afghanistan as a vassal state in Central Asia. The Afghans possess an amazing amount of pride and determination. I wish them luck in throwing off this farce of a government, this confederation of conmen manufactured by US government and business interests.

I went over Bush’s response to the assassination and was surprised at his mealy-mouthed comments. Normally, he would decry something like this as dastardly terrorism. His response was interesting and very Clintonesque:

“We are more resolved than ever to bring stability to the country so that the Afghan people can have peace and hope,”

Obviously, he means the stability delivered at the end of a gun or dropped by American bombers. He went on to mention that the Karzai regime has not yet asked the United States for assistance in the investigation. This could be construed as an attempt to create the impression that somehow the Karzai government is now acting independently of the United States. Bush might be reluctant to criticize too loudly the assassination because he has authorized similar plots against other world leaders such as Saddam Hussein. I wonder how much Americans would appreciate if other world leaders authorized plots to assassinate our leaders. This sort of double standard displayed by the Bush administration is troubling.

• Bush Mourns Death of Afghan VP Catch Bush doing his Clinton lip biting ‘i’m emotional’ expression.
• Bush Condemns Assassination of Slain Afghan
• Afghan Vice President Assassinated

“Freedom is just a hallucination caused by a pathological lack of paranoia.”

The bad news: You’re a slave.
The good news: You’re one of the better off slaves.

From A Symposium on Citizenship and Military Service by ELLIOTT ABRAMS and ANDREW J. BACEVICH in PARAMETERS:
US Army War College Quarterly (Summer 2001):

Elliot Abrams is, of course, the infamous democrat-turned-republican Neocon creep Bush appointed to the National Security Council

• First, the mythic tradition of the citizen-soldier is dead, its fate sealed by changes in the nature of modern war, in the aims of US national security strategy since the end of the Cold War, and in the aspirations and expectations of American citizens. Given the changing relationship between the individual and the state, spurred particularly by the cultural revolution touched off in the 1960s, the federal government has effectively forfeited its ability to compel citizens to serve in the military. Conscription has become and will remain implausible. To an increasing extent, the individual, not the state, determines the terms under which service is rendered.
• Second, the identity of the “soldier as warrior” has become obsolete. It does not adequately describe the actual function–or, more accurately, the broader range of functions–of American military men and women in the aftermath of the Cold War. As such, it misleads citizens, creates false expectations among would-be recruits, and breeds cynicism among those already in uniform. Certainly, the US military establishment must retain the ability to “fight and win the nation’s wars.” But warfighting as such is not the task immediately confronting those dispatched to succor hungry Kurds or Somalis, occupy Haiti, separate ethnic groups in the Balkans, or pursue a “strategy of engagement” in places like the former Soviet bloc, Central Asia, Latin America, or, indeed, Yemen. Even the limited bombing campaigns that over the past decade have become the preferred US means of employing force–although providing airmen personal experiences approaching something like “combat”–are quite distinct from war as such.

  Some more relevant identity–a refashioning of what it means to be an American soldier–is in order. The reality of US military history offers a rich trove of experience from which to forge just such an identity. For the greater part of that history, the American soldier’s assigned role has not been the passive one of holding himself in readiness to wage war, but the active one of attending to the nation’s existing priorities. Over time, those priorities changed, but they included fighting Native Americans, exploring the West, developing the nation’s economic infrastructure, opening markets abroad, governing colonies and protectorates, advancing the cause of public health, and building the Panama Canal. The relevance of this history to the current quasi-imperial role of US forces is all but self-evident. In the experiences of bluejackets and blue-coated and khaki-clad soldiers of old lies an identity as servants of the nation that may convey more accurately and more compellingly the vital role that the present-day military plays, however much traditionalists may bridle at that role.

Reads to me as completing the transformation of the military from defensive force to totalitarian/fascist borg-like entity.

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From Posse Comitatus and Nuclear Terrorism in PARAMETERS: US Army War College Quarterly:

Although Posse Comitatus as a matter of law may be rapidly weakening, the principles embodied in the act serve an important and essential role within the American constitutional system. Even during a domestic nuclear terrorist incident, further erosions of Posse Comitatus are neither necessary nor advisable. Advocates of an expanded military role correctly note that many of the homeland defense missions they envision for the Army have a firm constitutional basis, including the Preamble’s call to “insure domestic tranquility” and “provide for the common defense.”[14] However, these analysts sometimes fail to acknowledge the Founding Fathers’ significant concerns regarding the effects of a large standing army on a democratic government. As evidenced by the Second and Third Amendments to the Constitution, the Framers clearly preferred a small standing army to be augmented by a “well-regulated militia” in times of crisis over a larger, permanent military force. George Washington, the first American Commander-in-Chief, endorsed a standing army only under limited conditions: “`Altho’ a large standing army in time of peace hath ever been considered dangerous to the liberties of a country, yet a few troops, under certain circumstances, are not only safe, but indispensably necessary.”[15] The Anti-Federalists went further, calling standing armies “that bane to freedom, and support of tyrants, and their pampered minions; by which almost all the nations of Europe and Asia, have been enslaved.”[16]

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