SO WHAT?

The agony known as Iraq continues no matter what anybody does to try and stop it. The democrats for the most part, have proven to be the media conscious medusoids of legend. For their irresponsible part, they refuse to stop the funding of President Bush’s disaster, while the republicans, as least those in the loop, dismiss the idea of stopping the killing and maiming of their fellow Americans, with claims that the surge is working, and that defeat (i.e. withdrawal) is not an option. Just what exactly is winning, no one can explain.Nor does anybody seem to have an explanation for why suicide attacks occur on a continuous basis. According to The Independent of Great Britain, there have been well over a thousand suicide attacks in the five years of the American occupation. Many of these attacks are not by jihadist battle hardened fighters, but rather young people who for whatever reason, economic or religious, see this as a shortcut to paradise, or immortal fame, or both.


Such blood and sacrifice should not seem too strange, even to the most complacent American. After all, is not George W. Bush often extolling the virtues of ultimate sacrifice: for the good of the team, for the good of the cause? POTUS has no problem with sending thousands of people across the globe, fully armed to do battle with the evil ones. He is ready, he informs us, to smoke them out of their holes, dead or alive. Of course religious insanity has a part to play in this. Like Osama Bin Laden, George Bush believes he is performing God’s will on earth. Delusional righteousness becomes a danger to humankind that can not be exaggerated.


Deadeye Dick Cheney shocked many folks when he said: “So?” When asked about the seventy five percent of the population poll that thought that the Iraq war was not worth it. The arrogance was unsettling, but then, what does the Vice President fear? Judicial Watch can force Hillary Clinton to release her public logs as First Lady, but they could not get Cheney to release the minutes of the infamous Energy Task Force. The public be damned he says, and so it is. There is great difficulty in facing the fact that we have powerful myths that are, quite sadly, accepted to be reality. The commonly held notion that might makes right, helps to enable those supposedly in charge, to spend billions of dollars perpetrating violence. But there is difficulty, at least on a public relations front, when the enemy’s arsenal mainly consists of improvised explosive devices and of course, suicide bombers. While the other side, the good guys as it were, have everything from B-52 bombers to robotically guided drones. Perhaps that is why Mr. Cheney used an odd analogy to the Civil War, as an alibi to all this filth and carnage. With an unfounded belief in the invisible, even the most horrendous activity can be perceived in a noble light.


So the question then is: what is a rational peaceful person to do? It is rather obvious that solutions to these troubles will not be found on television. Jerry Mander once pointed out that the television industry thrives on conflict. It is not surprising, considering the enormous sums of money involved. War is portrayed as noble (never mind those Winter Soldier meetings). National Health Care is impossible (just look at the drug ads on the evening news). And conflict is celebrated, from Obama versus Clinton, to pay per view, ultimate extreme fighting.


It is indeed a corporate culture that demands that the ownership class knows what is best for us all. Democracy, as it is seen, is simply getting the yokels to vote every four years. It is no historical accident that the first people who were allowed to vote in this country, where slave owning white men with land. How strange it is to talk of exporting democracy, when right here, it is one continuous struggle.