Another new book that may be of interest to AWC readers is Greg Grandin’s Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, The United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism, which examines the roots of that “Salvador Option” the neocons have been so keen to employ in Iraq.
Bill Kauffman’s new book, Look Homeward, America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists, looks mighty interesting. From the Introduction:
Now, I do not claim to be the archetypal American. If my ethnic mix is typically mongrel, stretching from Italy to Ireland, so are my politics a blend of Catholic Worker, Old Right libertarian, Yorker transcendentalist, and delirious localist. So my story is singular but also strangely representative. We live in an age in which Americans by the millions have lost faith in a system that seems, at best, alien, and at worst, repressive. I, too, started in the mainstream, but I found it placidly sinister, so I took a trip down the tributaries, left and right and great plunging cataracts, till I found that my faith in the oldest, simplest, most radical America had been renewed. Robert Frost put his faith in the “insubordinate Americans,” throaty dissenters and ornery traditionalists, and this book is for and about them—those Americans who reject Empire; who cherish the better America, the real America; who cannot be broken by the Department of Homeland Security, who will not submit to the PATRIOT Act, and who will make the land acrid and bright with the stench and flame of burnt national ID cards when we—should we—cross that Orwellian pass. This is still our country, you know. Don’t let Big Brother and the imperialists take it from us.
For a great sample of Kauffman’s work, read “Why I’m Not Ashamed to Be an American.”
In response to reader requests, we added a summary to our original content RSS feed. Check it out!
The wife of a U.S. soldier who is a conscientious objector has informed me of a website to help soldiers know their rights: soldiersrights.com.
They have lied us into war for the benefit of Israel and Iran (and have since lied about and plotted against the latter), killing who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people, turned the two-bit rapist nobody, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, into a new bin Laden, tortured and murdered with impunity [.pdf] at “ghost prisons” (some the actual gulags of the former Soviet Eastern Bloc), asserted the authority to nullify the Bill of Rights due to an undeclared war, kidnapped Americans and turned them over to the DoD, used the military to tap and keep records of our phone calls, used Total Information Awareness and Talon to create extensive files on us all, conspired to “out” Valerie Plame, sent suicidal troops into combat in Iraq, and continued to pick a fight with the Russians. (Sorry, I’m sure there’s more I’ve forgotten.)
The President’s poll numbers are far lower now than when Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives in 1998.
But, of course, the Republicans won’t do it, and who wants the 3rd in line for the presidency, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, to be the President anyway? Not me.
The vile House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, is adamant that she will not let John Conyers issue articles of impeachment from the judiciary committee – which is a sort of prerequisite for asking Americans for a Democratic majority this fall. She’s running for re-election to the House, not President.
The solution is a simple one: Pelosi should announce, for all to see and hear, that she would very much like to see both the President and vice-president impeached and removed from office, and that as House Speaker she would be more than happy to remove herself from the line of succession to the presidency, which would leave it to the President Pro-Tempore of the Senate, a seat now held by Ted Stevens, a Republican from Alaska. (Smart folks I’ve talked to expect that the Republicans, who now hold the Senate 55-45, will continue to hold a majority next year, as only 1/3 of the seats are up for re-election to a six-year term every two years, and they seem to be pretty safe seats).
This way we are all rid of the disastrous Bush/Cheney term early next year, and the Republicans won’t be able to call it self-interested partisanship by the House Democrats.
Now, does anyone believe that Nancy Pelosi would ever be big enough to sacrifice her own glory for the good of this country and the world?
