I Didn't Do It! I Didn't Do It!

Just after considering a break from MOON, I can’t resist remarking about the latest Washington perfidy.

It is becoming clear from the statements of President Bush and Republican as well as Democrat politicians that a clear strategy for getting out of Iraq is being evolved: Blame the mess on Iraqis.

If you’ve created a disaster (and all the Americans mentioned in the first paragraph are guilty), just pretend that somebody else is responsible.

In this case you keep saying that the Iraqi puppet government you’ve created and sheltered in your U.S. Green Zone is to blame for all of Bush’s failures. We’re beginning to hear an astonishingly unified chorus in Washington that even if the Bush military efforts (The Surge in particular) give the impression of some success, it will do no good because of those useless Iraqis, who have only themselves to blame for the hell they’re in.

Think of it: Suddenly, in light of this new lie, Bush has waged a successful war and must withdraw his troops from Iraq only because he cannot (and of course should not) control Iraqi politics. The generals look good for "winning" militarily, even Bush looks a bit better than a two day old piece of road kill, and the Democrats have an excuse for shucking Iraq after one of them becomes president – which must be why Hillary is suddenly heard singing in Bush’s choir.

Beneficial as this new lie is to the American warmongers and those who live with their snouts in the tax-fed trough, it heaps additional disgrace on the infamy of the invasion of Iraq and the complete failure of the U.S. to create any positive results from that carnage.

After all, look at all we’ve done for the Iraqis: Destroyed their country, their infrastructure, their army, and their police force, not to mention their irreplaceable ancient treasures. Murdered most of their leaders who had succeeded in creating a stable and prosperous Iraq, an almost miraculously unified Iraq considering the obvious difficulties now in plain view. Killed tremendous numbers of citizens. Reduced a once well-off people to poverty, hunger, and misery. Unleashed a civil war which would not have occurred except for the American occupation.

In spite of all those good things, the Iraqis ignominously persist in killing Americans and one another, while their U.S.-pampered politicians fail again and again to bring back the pre-war peace and stability. How can they be so incompetent? How can they be so ungrateful? They even have the effrontery to take vacations, something unheard-of in Washington, D.C.

To me this latest propaganda campaign is the most inexcusable since the “weapons of mass destruction” lies. The burglar breaks into your home, ransacks and vandalizes it, and then lectures you on your failure to repair the damage and clean up the mess.

The future Big Lie we can expect, around the next big turn in the road, is that the Americans have left Iraq when they actually have not left.

"Wrestling" Republished

Wrestling Lessons, Part II

Today I’m going to apply my wrestling perceptions to international conflicts.

There is always a Good Guy and a Bad Guy. With rare exceptions, people identify with the Good Guy and see his victories as theirs.

Can you remember the United States ever fighting a war in which there was no Bad Guy, or in which America was not the Good Guy?

What makes the Good Guy good and the Bad Guy bad?

First, appearance. The Good Guy is usually good looking, or at least pleasant looking, and the Bad Guy looks unpleasant, if not outright ugly. It helps if the villain appears foreign in some way, or of an unpopular race.

In international propaganda, “we” look better than “they” do. Our facial features are familiar, while theirs are depicted as alien, or distorted into unpleasant expressions in the case of people, like the Germans, who may actually look better than we do. Our soldiers are handsome and familiar-looking, while theirs are, for example, short, yellow, and buck-toothed, with slanty eyes behind thick glasses – or swarthy, big-nosed, and bearded. Our clothing is “normal” while they are “towel heads”. If “they” are from the Arab World (other than Israel), they are usually shown in U.S. photos as poorly dressed in un-American robes, squatting in the dirt next to ruins – not shown in the modern western dress in a well-furnished home one would actually see if one visited middle class and professional people in Arab countries. How many photographs have you seen of an Arab in a business suit, carrying a Gucci briefcase?

Appearance is related to the first aim of war propaganda -- to “dehumanize” the enemy so as to make the Good Guys willing to see the enemy killed, or even willing to help kill him. We must never be allowed to identify with the people our leaders want to destroy. Showing the enemy looking “different from us” is an important step toward dehumanization.

Second, reputation. The Good Guy is good primarily by designation, and not because he has done anything in particular to earn the title. In international politics, unlike wrestling, there is the additional arbitrary factor of where one is born. For most people, where they happen to be born determines where their patriotism lies. Loyalty goes with birthplace, which designates where the “Good Guys” come from . . . whether it’s California, Tokyo, Shanghai, Moscow, Berlin, or Marseilles. Few Americans would ask, “Why should I fight for America instead of North Korea?” It’s just a given.

(Wrestlers know how to use the “patriotism” factor. Some deck themselves out like the star spangled banner for a kind of “Captain America” effect, while some deliberately appeal to the denizens of a certain region, as by wearing cowboy boots and a Western hat. Wait a minute now; I could be talking about politicians!)

Third, demeanor. The hero may be confident and even cocky, but he is not as outrageously vain and boastful as his opposite number. Boasting is less important on the international front than in wrestling, but what Americans cheer as admirable in the shouting bravado of a U.S. Marine would be seen as threatening bluster in an armed Al Qaeda trainee. Foreign leaders we are meant to dislike are almost always portrayed as bombastic boasters.

Fourth, courage. The Good Guy is always brave, even when he is in serious trouble, but the Bad Guy exhibits bravery only as long as he’s on top. When the Bad Guy gets into trouble, he cringes, cowers, kneels and begs, retreats, and even tries to jump out of the ring and run away from the fight.

Yes, “our” people are courageous by nature, by virtue of being born where we were, while the enemy appears brave (if ever) only because of insane fanaticism or outlandish religious beliefs, or drugs, or brainwashing, or some other factor which explains the apparent bravery away. When an American “celebrity” opined that the men in the planes which brought down the twin towers were brave, he was promptly ostracized. The enemy can never be brave. His attacks, no matter how courageous and self-sacrificing, are “cowardly”. Professional military men may acknowledge the bravery of enemy troops, but that remains a private matter.

Fifth, fair fighting and abiding by the rules differentiate a Good Guy from a Bad Guy . . . but only to a point. What the audience wants, and often gets, is a Good Guy who is driven over the edge by a cheating, dirty-fighting villain, so that the Good Guy gives back worse than the Bad Guy gave in the first place. Whereas rule-breaking, sneaky tactics, and torture were booed by the audience when they are used by the villain, they are cheered when used by the hero. The very things which most marked the Bad Guy as a villain are now approved for the Good Guy. Here we see also the holy power of “retaliation” as compared to villainous “aggression”. "Isn't it terrible? But we have to do it."

We Americans were always told – until the past few years when the truth became too obvious to hide – that American soldiers fought cleaner than their enemies, abided by the rules of war and the Geneva Convention, and were in particular distinguished from the enemy because the enemy used torture and Americans didn’t. Atrocity and torture tales – true and untrue – are the staple of war propaganda. Why was Saddam Hussein so bad? Mainly because he tortured people. (How many times before and during the invasion of Iraq did I see that photograph of an empty chair in the middle of an empty room with some kind of line hanging above it, supposedly going to prove Saddam Hussein’s use of torture. It could have been in Minnesota.) Why were Nazis so bad? Because they tortured people. Many a Hollywood “war movie” told us so. And what was the main Nazi evidence that the Soviet Bolsheviks were so horrible? The Bolsheviks tortured people.

What is now the main evidence before the world that Americans are bad? They torture people. While the president of the U.S. says (in ludicrous contradiction of hundreds of photographs and documented reports) that “Americans don’t torture people”, he seeks and obtains laws which make torture legal. Has torture become respectable – as torture by the Good Wrestler is okay under certain circumstances – or has America become a Bad Guy? It sometimes happens, even in wrestling, that a Good Guy turns bad.

To wrap this up, when I read the daily propaganda and the results of opinion polls and man-in-the-street interviews, I often think of that evening of wrestling in West Palm Beach. It was truly illuminating.

Invisible Deaths?

I’m still puzzled by the U.S. news media’s smokescreen over the deaths of American troops in Iraq. In the past 24 hours eight U.S. soldiers were killed, six by a single bomb. That is a lot of deaths, and a very dramatic addition to the recent escalations in group military deaths. It is also a lot of bad news for the Bush administration and the members of Congress who are wiggle waggling over taking real action to end the war as mandated in the November elections. Yet not one of the wire services I follow online -- New York Times, MSNBC, AP, USAToday – or any of the headlines prominently displayed on Google News – mentioned those U.S. deaths this morning. I learned about them by skimming reports under headlines on the deaths of Iraqis, and then reading paragraphs two or three or four. I’m willing to predict that the eight (or possibly more by tonight) military deaths will also get sparse coverage on the evening television news.

We have to assume that the downplaying of military deaths is to the advantage of those Americans who support the war and consider bad news unpatriotic. Is part of “supporting our troops” not only paying the costs of getting them killed but also hiding the fact that they are getting killed? Why not report big news as big news? For one thing, we know that it is not to the advantage of a news service to alienate Congress and the administration. For another, we can be sure that the reporting of U.S. deaths brings a storm of complaints from the Unintelligent Majority.

The worst underlying general assumption in all of this is that war and support of war are patriotic, and that patriotism is not only a virtue but a virtue worth killing and dying for. This mindless human attitude is not so much a form of species-wide insanity as an evolutionary product of the hairless ape’s insatiable lust for fighting and killing, demonstrated from its earliest times. Group cohesion is necessary to survival, but in the case of humans it has taken a bizarre, proudly murderous twist which will not only breed continual war but also an early end to the species as a whole.

Olbermann and MSNBC Flunk Backbone Test

BULLETIN: MSNBC TV NEWS MANAGERS AND KEITH OLBERMANN CLASSIFIED INVERTEBRATES.

I watched all of MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” last night, and quite a bit of “Scarborough Country”. Not one word was said about the big story of the day, which I quoted and discussed in my previous post.

Yesterday MSNBC online reported that the Democrats had eliminated from proposed legislation the requirement that Congress approve an attack on Iran before Bush could launch such a war. Politicians said that the reason for the elimination of any restraint on Bush was Israel’s fear of Iran. What could be a bigger story than that? “Democrats Clear Way for Bush Attack on Iran Due to Israeli Concerns”.

Please read the full story I posted yesterday if you haven’t. The big point now is that last night Olbermann/MSNBC TV avoided the most important story altogether and found the US Attorney General scandal so fascinating (even though no laws were broken) that virtually the entire hour-long program was filled with Attorney General Gonzales and the usual “celebrity” sewage.

It seems that every time I stray from my original announced aim in VIEW FROM THE MOON – to provide important facts that are missing from mainstream news coverage in the United States – events bring me back on track. It also seems that those events are almost always related to Israel and its supporters – whether it’s a Zionist Harvard law professor attacking Jimmy Carter for supporting Palestinian rights or the present case, in which the United States Congress, incredibly, has abdicated all responsibility for preventing Bush & Co. from starting a war with Iran.

If you think about it, this is one of the worst things that has happened in a long time. If our politicians are going to throw us to the war dogs for Israel’s sake, isn’t it time to analyze and ask questions?

First, why should “Israel’s fears of Iran” have any impact on the U.S. Congress at all? In case you haven’t looked lately, Pennsylvania, Florida, Maine, Iowa, and Arizona are on the North American continent, not in Palestine.

Second, Israeli concerns about Iran are childish anyway. Even if Iran does try to develop atomic weapons it would take at least ten and probably fifteen years to do so. Besides, Israel already has its own nuclear arsenal, as well as a much more powerful military than Iran, courtesy of the U.S.A. It's as if the United States were quaking and wringing its hands today because Gautemala began a nuclear power program.

Third, why would the Israeli Lobby strive so hard to eliminate the requirement of a congressional green light for a Bush attack on Iran if it weren’t to guarantee that widespread American public opposition to such an attack could find no expression in Washington? Bush can be trusted to start any war that Israel wants, but if congressional approval were required, there would be just a tiny chance that Congress would flash a red light. A tiny chance indeed, considering the Israel Lobby’s power over Congress, but perhaps a chance.

Democrats are still trying to lie their way out of the quicksand of their advance approval of the Iraq war. What possible excuse will they invent for having let Bush know that he has a free hand to attack Iran?

Who Gets to Start Wars? (And End Them?)

From the Constitution of the United States:

Article II

“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.”

Article I, Section 8

The Congress shall have the power “To declare War”.

I’ve looked at the U.S. Constitution (again) to see if I can find anything which gives a president the right to start a war, and I can find nothing.

By the way, I have not studied the Supreme Court constructions of those portions of the Constitution. The Supreme Court has left the original Constitution unrecognizable in many respects (the present construed Constitution would certainly come as a shock to the people who wrote the original, probably cause for another revolution), and I wanted to see what the original intention was.

If Bush and other presidents have argued that as Commander in Chief of the military they have the right to order the military to invade other countries without a declaration of war by Congress, they are being illogical. What if the writers of the Constitution had not made the President the commander of the military, so that the highest generals and admirals were the commanders in chief? Would that empower the generals and admirals to invade other countries without a congressional declaration of war?

A civilian commander in chief should have no greater power to start a war than a military commander in chief. By the same reasoning, neither does the commander in chief of the military have the power to continue or end a war without congressional approval.

Let’s not forget that it is the “executive” power which is vested in the president. He comes second to the legislative branch in the Constitution, and his job is to execute – that is, to carry out and put into action – the enactments of Congress. There is nothing at all in the Constitution that says the president is “the decider”. Congress is the decider and provider; the president is the lackey who carries out what Congress tells him to carry out.

I hope, without optimism, that the Democrats of today will wrest back some of the power of a president who mistakenly considers himself top dog. Maybe one reason Congress has been so weak-kneed about retaining its constitutional powers is that it's easier to let somebody else get the blame for decisions. "Who cares, as long as I get re-elected."

Behind U.S. Foreign Policy, Part 1

A comment on this weblog asked if I might be overemphasizing the Zionist/Israel Lobby influences on American foreign policy and overlooking other explanations for America’s intrusive and bellicose behavior toward the nations of the world.

Additionally: “Why is a pro-Israel policy predominant in a country where Jews are in a minority? Is this a proof of the failure of democracy?”

Those are pertinent questions which I look forward to discussing in more than one weblog post.

First, I wrote a kind of statement of purpose in the initial post in VIEW FROM THE MOON which begins to answer the first question:
“What is missing from daily news coverage in the United States is often more important than what is in it, especially since the big news media are designed to be more opinion-forming than informative. That is largely what this blog will be about: What is being omitted from the U.S. news reports that logically should be there? When you look at the jigsaw puzzle assembled for you by the TV news editors, why is there a piece conspicuously missing from the middle of the picture? What was the motive for leaving a hole in the picture? Who benefits from the omission?”

In addition, the description of VIEW FROM THE MOON states: “I discuss dimensions of power and influence which are rarely covered by the U.S. news media.” There is no point in a blog which simply repeats what every American can see on television and the news services.

By far the most important thing conspicuously and consistently missing from the U.S. news is the Israel influence. That is my reason -- along with recent American wars having been in the Middle East on behalf of Israel -- for placing so much emphasis on Israel and the U.S. Israel Lobby and its supporters. Additionally, Israel and its multilayered lobbyists are daily pushing the United States to attack Iran – yet another Middle East war plan which would harm rather than serve U.S. national interests, not to mention the damage that would be inflicted on Iran.

If I were writing during the Spanish-American War I would be talking about entirely different “hidden factors”.

Of course most of the explanations which governments give for their foreign policies are tales “told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” We always have to look beyond the sound and fury to find the real motivations. Nowhere is this more true than in the United States. Often, however, we cannot get at the underlying truth behind the tales unless we study what is NOT being said as well as what is being proclaimed.

Here, briefly, is the background:

President F. D. Roosevelt flouted international law and majority American opinion and manipulated the United States into wars with Germany and Japan. Jewish agitation and pressure for war against Adolf Hitler’s government was a decisive war factor both in the U.S. and in England, as was the leaning of many Jewish immigrants to support for Communism.

The United States, having gone from Depression to an economic powerhouse because of the war, and having suffered no damage within its borders, came out of World War II in 1945 as the world’s dominant nation. England was technically a winner but had been severely weakened and soon gave up the empire which had not long before been the planet’s greatest power. Meanwhile, Stalin’s Russia, thanks to the U.S. and Britain, occupied huge portions of Europe and had become a rival to the United States.

Zionism – the Jewish movement to establish a Jewish state in Palestine to which the Jews of the world would immigrate – had existed since the late 19th Century, but only during and after the Second World War did it begin to have practical success with its program. Germany, eager for the Jews leave Europe, contributed to the increasing flow of non-Palestinians to Palestine, but the floodgates of Zionist colonization of Arab land did not fully open until after 1945, when the long efforts of the Zionists resulted in their proclamation of a Jewish state in Palestine called “Israel”.

The bloody conflicts between the Zionist colonists and the people whose land they were taking and occupying are not the topic of this post. In terms of American foreign policy, “Israel” was not yet a major factor, but it would soon become one, not least because of the large number of European Jews who had recently moved from Europe to the United States and because of the soon ballooning “Holocaust” story.

I do not claim any original insights into what formed American foreign policy right after World War II, but the accepted wisdom is that the U.S. came out of the war as the world’s “superpower” by default. Because of the physical and economic ruin that had been inflicted on formerly strong nations on the altar of Jewish and Communist hatred of the German government, the U.S. found itself the only nation with military bases and forces spread all over the globe, and with the economic strength to dominate the world economy.

The main pressure on U.S. leadership was to maintain American world power, to enhance the benefits to U.S. corporations, and to deal with the one major rival, the secondary “superpower”, Soviet Russia. Now the questions asked repeatedly by German prisoners of war -- “Why are you fighting against us. We’re fighting the Communists to save Europe, so why aren’t you fighting with us?” – had to be answered, unfortunately belatedly. Faced with the aggressive Russian colossus, the U.S. realized that the Jewish “Morgenthau Plan” for keeping Germany in a primitive condition was creating a dangerous vacuum, and so revenge was replaced by rebuilding. The supposed enemy, Germany, was – presto chango – replaced by Soviet Russia and all the European states it had absorbed.

The American focus became the “Cold War” and the “struggle against world Communism”. We know that this mentality led, among other things, to the Korean and Vietnam wars, and eventually to “victory over Communism” during the time of Gorbachev -- the pulling down of the Berlin wall, the reunification of Germany, the freeing of Soviet slave states, and the transformation of the Russian economic system. America was now declared “The Only Superpower”, and the fantasy was floated that it could whatever it pleased with the world.

Thus a new era in American foreign policy began -- a logical time to
end this post.