Tag: Antiwar movement

It’s not surprising that people are thinking of ’60s protest music. Juan Cole draws attention to what happened at a Colorado high school talent show when a group tried to perform Dylan’s “Masters of War”. Pepe Escobar is also thinking Dylan. Meanwhile, I’ve been listening to a Phil Ochs’ CD, a couple of the lines from which are so timely they send a shiver up the spine.

From “The Marines Have Landed on the Shores of Santo Domingo” :

In the red plaza square, The crowds come to stare, the heat is leaning
And the eyes of the dead are turning every head to the widows screaming
The soldiers make a bid, giving candy to the kids, their teeth are gleaming
The marines have landed on the shores of Santo Domingo

And from Cops of the World:

Clean the johns with a rag, boys
Clean the johns with a rag
If you like you can use your flag, boys
If you like you can use your flag
We’ve got too much money we’re looking for toys
And guns will be guns and boys will be boys
But we’ll gladly pay for all we destroy
‘Cause we’re the Cops of the World, boys
We’re the Cops of the World

Indeed, the rebuilding contractors are chomping at the bits.

But where have all the liberals gone? Young girls picked them, every one? Nope, Madison mayor Dave Cieslewicz has the correct answer. Ochs’ most endearing song will have to be reworked under the title “Praise Me, Praise Me, Praise Me, I’m A Progressive .

Simple: Bush thought some PowerPoint presentations were cool.

In the current issue of The Atlantic, James Fallows details a war game put on by the magazine. It involved a simulated conflict with Iran. The whole process was replicated: briefings, role-playing and prepared presentations. Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel, played the role of the National Security Advisor and presented an analysis using PowerPoint. Fallows describes the last set of slides:

Then there was option No. 3 (a land-invasion of Iran). Gardiner called this plan “moderate risk,” but said the best judgment of the military was that it would succeed. To explain it he spent thirty minutes presenting the very sorts of slides most likely to impress civilians: those with sweeping arrows indicating the rapid movement of men across terrain. (When the exercise was over, I told David Kay that an observer who had not often seen such charts remarked on how “cool” they looked. “Yes, and the longer you’ve been around, the more you learn to be skeptical of the ‘cool’ factor in PowerPoint,” Kay said. “I don’t think the President had seen many charts like that before,” he added, referring to President Bush as he reviewed war plans for Iraq.)

It is easy to imagine George Bush mesmerized by a bunch of flashing PowerPoint slides showing the “cakewalk” that was to be Iraq.

Lawrence of Cyberia points out the hypocrisy of the sudden favor the Bushistas are showing toward Palestinian democracy. A small bit of the conclusion of a well argued and linked post:

The U.S. refusal to countenance Palestinian elections unless they produce a ruler we like is symptomatic of a bigger problem in our Middle East policy in general, which is the absolute bankruptcy of the Bush Administration’s much-vaunted claim to be bringing democracy to the region. Given a free choice, the people of the Middle East are not going to choose the CIA-backed pro-US Emirs, Kings and unelected Presidents that currently rule over them, so democracy is absolutely not on the cards and never was. (Remember Rumsfeld’s comment two days after the invasion of Iraq that a Shiite-led Islamic government was “not going to happen”? Well, that’s a pretty odd thing to say with confidence if you really plan to give a democratic voice to a country that is 2/3 Shiite and where the most respected community leaders are Ayatollahs, isn’t it?).

Our policy towards the Middle East is basically built on the lie that we care about democracy when really we care about installing compliant Arab governments who will keep their populace in line, tone down the rhetoric against Israel and, where applicable, keep the oil flowing at a price Americans can live with. We need to find a new name for the regional order we are currently installing at the point of a gun in the Arab world, because whatever it is, it isn’t “democracy”.

Who will the Palestinians elect to succeed Yasser Arafat? Bet on it.

Tom Knapp on the Rape of Fallujah. Read it.

Tom also makes a point that needs reinforcing here:

* “insurgent, n. A person who rises in revolt against civil authority or an established government; one who openly and actively resists the execution of laws; a rebel.”

There are terrorists in Iraq, to be sure. There is also a resistance in Iraq, and I am certain that the two groups have a great degree of overlap; I try my best to distinguish between the two, including in RRND’s headlines and content. There is not, however, an “insurgency” in Iraq, because there is no established government or civil authority for “insurgents” to rebel against. Quislings of an occupying military force do not constitute an established government or a civil authority.

Exactly so. The only sensible word for those who are resisting the occupation of Iraq is the “resistance.” To call the Iraqi Resistance “insurgents” is to participate in the Orwellian propaganda of the Bush administration.

Antiwar.com blog is glad to welcome the occasional musings of Franklin Harris, wretched scribbler. Franklin is a fellow Alabama native who, despite his unfortunate status as an Auburn Tiger (I kid, I kid), will doubtless keep things percolating around here.

I’ll let zeynep’s excellent rant about this picture suffice:

Somebody please tell Lt. Brandon Turner that he’s insane, that the Pentagon is insane, whoever is allowing the marines or any American soldiers “rest” on that “plush red carpet” with their shoes, uniforms and machines guns is insane. Does anyone understand anything about religious feelings in general or about Islam in particular? Have they spent even half a day watching a documentary or two about Islam and noticed that people carefully and respectfully take their shoes off before entering a mosque, where they will kneel and put their head on that carpet? (Those “plush red carpets”, by the way, are prayer rugs, or”sajjade.” And you don’t step on them with your combat boots, especially inside a mosque, and smile for the cameras unless you really want to fight to the death with up to a billion people.)

Seriously, this is either the most arrogant, incompetent, ignorant occupation, ever, or the most clever, insidious, skillful effort towards bringing about an apocalyptic world war. Are they asleep at the awheel, drowning under their own ignorance, or simply want to end life on earth as we know it?