I rather liked the MoveOn ad from the Times. It was crass, but these are crass times. It was simplistic, but these are simplistic problems, basic ones -- after all -- the American people have been treated as foolish consumers of a product -- in this case a war -- by an administration that hovers in a bipolar helix between hapless fervor and rank cynicism. Depending on the day. I wrote MoveOn a check, like a lot of people did -- back when we were going to war in Iraq -- for the first ads. There should have been ads and protests and actions every single day from then on.
And I liked the ad a lot more than the posturing of the senators who decried it -- amongst them at least one psychosexual hysteric with a jones for hookers. But hey, this is the circus, this is a Golgotha, and if the Barbarians are at the gates -- at least they're putting on a show. Some time ago a mogul told me he thought the six month test Bush proposed was 'fair and dead on'. This is a man who controls and has made billions of dollars and is hipper than anyone in the room, and smarter too. So what can you say? Now let's face it. We're in Iraq for the next decade. We are in Iraq for the next decade. At least. No way out. This is how America crumbles; at the hands of the most misguided ideologues since the Crusades. Men who led America to catastrophe, who betrayed all the promise we had left -- and for what? The naive and arrogant expectation that a grateful culture would be democratized magically, instantly, and with no ambivalence. I often think that Mr. Rove would not have lasted two rounds with the boys at CAA or any decent studio head -- they'd have swallowed him and his woozy hucksterism with a glass of water -- if only he'd been a schlepper out of Burbank, instead of our very own minor-league Talleyrand. Mr. Draper in an interview regarding his book on Bush says that the fatal flaw in this most likable of men, is a kind of frightened, defensive lack of curiosity. That seems right. In the Atlantic Monthly, one of the ex-speech writers for the administration turns on one of his own with the ferocity of a cartoon pirate turning on another pirate after the treasure is all gone. This is how it goes down, folks. They're not conservatives. They're not even Republicans. They are de-regulating cynics who pray that capitalism works like the glorious God-Powered Rube Goldberg machine it is. Just add self-reliance and a few days in Aspen. This crowd? They make one long for the intellectual rigor of a Nixon, and they don't deserve to even speak the name Goldwater. I liked the MoveOn ad, because it was probably true, in the Freudian sense, even if it is a little shrill. We have been betrayed. "Weapons of mass destruction" was always a guess -- and a wrong guess that calcified into a frightened and incurious dogma (the reasons for the war have changed), is going to do us in.
And not one of the viable candidates for the presidency is going to be able to save us.
The general didn't betray us. His bosses did. How will America survive the cold brutality of the neo-con pillage? And what if America has not had enough cheap patriotism and actually decides that a Romney or Thompson or a (wow!) Rudy administration is a righteous notion? I liked the ad, because the people who loudly decried it as an outrage are as blind as moles to the true outrage of what it means to be an American now; of civilians and young soldiers dying in the dusty and terrifying streets and fields of a bitterly divided and shattered state thousands and thousands of miles away.
I liked the ad because it was cheap and street, and true in spirit. I think tonight that America is shuddering, is in spasm, and she is losing blood. Christians -- real ones -- steeped in compassion and gentleness -- are impotent abdicators to sharpies and megalomaniacs who see God as a vicious cop on their beat.
Why do i feel this way tonight? Because six years ago I saw and heard in ways I'll not share here -- the end of one world -- and the start of another. Six years ago today, amidst the gore and dying and murder -- there were the stirrings of a world united with this country. "We are all Americans today!" -- you heard it from France and England and almost everywhere else --
but for three days after -- a shell-shocked and incompetent president flew hither and yon -- in a hapless prelude to the years of dark buffoonery to come. And the mythology that the president "found his voice" at Ground Zero days later -- is pablum from a Capra out-take.
I walked through Tribeca, where I then lived, days later. Past the National Guard. Past the fliers and into the smoke of lower Manhattan.
That smoke has spread across the nation, and instead of uniting us, has become a dark cloak, one used by liars and zealots, one used to gull a frightened polity, and to seize power. Our individual rights are almost as precarious as our bridges.
Now, six years after the worst day in modern memory for this writer -- the day of the dead --
the only thing I have left is personal -- holding the people I love -- and acting with a desperate and flailing and imperfect personal decency in the hopes that others around me are doing the same. Not enough, not enough, not nearly enough.
.
It is about to be September 12th. I want to paraphrase Auden and silence the clocks and the noise and pray in the silence to a a god I don't trust or even know how to believe in -- for a way to help my country -- and everyone in it -- find a way through the dark toxic cloud that was conjured up six years ago at the tip of Manhattan.
It is almost September 12th, and still people are dying.
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Mr. Baitz, you are truly a wordsmith.
As a vet who served in Iraq, I started my pullout in 2005 and refuse to be apart of any more of this illegal shit in the name of liberty, Haliburton, and the xenophobic way. I know plenty of other vets who feel the same. Fuck destroying a civilization for the sake of our own.
All the pundits and chicken hawks should make their arguments in front of the pictured backdrop of dead Iraqi women and children, combined with graphs of stock prices surging from the companies who's profit depends on the blood of soldiers and Iraqis. In my opinion, if you own stock in AT&T, Titan, Haliburton, KBR, LG, Blackwater, and a host of others--you're just as guilty.
I refuse to be apart of bush's terror fantasy. And that's what the war on terror really is--a simple minded fantasy born from simple minds who invented a black & white world with no room for grays after the dust settled from 9-11.Great post.
Yeah, your right! I wonder what happened to Bin Laden, you know, the guy who did the spectacular better than Hollywoood could have done it attack!!! Bin Laden is still walking around and the dumb-ass president goes and attacks Iraq. Does not make sense. One thing is certain however, the slice of America who want or backed this war that Bush started for no good reason is coming back on them like bad cheese. This is good. You gotta learn sometime, somehow, somewhere, that mistakes like this don't come without retribution from the other side of America that did not want this war. It's time for Bush to apply the old "Duck and cover" routine cause I see it comin.
Ads like Move on's are not made to be dissected for their content. They are made to shock people into seeing the big picture. The 30% right wing flag wrapping crowd will see it as treason (the kind that lost Vietnam, remember.)The real anti war people should see it as a cartoon in words to be that "attention" this is the real issue of our time, keep up the protest. The independents, (moderates?) should see it as they have been duped for six years following a President into hell. If they read this ad and go back to being right wing nut boosters, then all is lost anyway. The ad represents no more or less than that. If the war and Bush's approval rating are up because of that ad or the good general's testimony, then America deserves the fate that surely lies at the end of this long tunnel.
I think it's ironic that we abandon Somalia and inspire terrorists to kill over 3000 on 9/11 which costs our economy over $3 trillion and liberals are concerned about us spending half a trillion dollars to keep it from happening again and think prevention of millions of American deaths due to terrorism is a waste of manpower and money. Maybe by 2012 we'll be able to compare the cost of four years of preventing attacks on American soil between 2003 and 2007 with four years of terrorist attacks between 2008 and 2012. I bet the latter costs will be higher economically and in the body count.
What is going on today strikes me as the Hannah Arendt"s "banality of evil", and the evil being American hubris, denial of a human consciousness for the sake of a contrived morality? For the convenience of few, far too many have died American or otherwise. The blood on the hands of terrorists is no match for the blood on the hands of a political and economic elite obsessed with their own self-righteousness and superior destiny beyond the limits of a lesser mass. America is really dead - at least an image of America in my head. Righteousness without love is not. The message, lost between the old and new testaments is love but, as always the self-anointed, infatuated with their reflection in the pool play requiems without the fear and equality of those buried under an assumed flag. The abiding youth trundle off into the oblivion chaos of failed humanity - dogmas of death and destruction for patriarchal hysteria. "Holy Marry, Mother of God".
Indeed, there need to be "protests every single day." If the horrendous war and occupation is to end soon it will have to be "we the people" who make it happen since we cannot count on the Congress to stand up to the Bush Administration or the media to challenge the false and misleading propaganda of the Bush minions. So, can all us bloggers pledge to either work with a group that is already active or start our own activist group. Last year I joined with a few dozen older women to form Grandmothers Against the War, and we are out leafletting, marching, collecting signatures, phoning members of Congress, talking with their aids. We even tried to enlist at our local recruiting station, asking to take the place of young people being sent to Iraq. We will be marching on National Day of Action, October 27, in San Francisco. We are trying to be creative and would like to figure out which actions will be most effective. A general strike? What do you think? Let us know. Check out our web site at www.gawba.org or contact us at 510-845-3815 or info@gawba.org and we will be glad to listen to your ideas and to share with you our experience and our materials.
The difference between a neo-con and a liberal?
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Reasearcher, wrote this:
The neo con is more patriotic and nationalistic even to the point of warlike and usually much more about religious dogma (evangel) rather than spiritual in their beliefs.
not patriotic...imperialistic... not warlike...torturers and mass murders
profess to be Christians and yet forget the teachings of Christ (love of God) and follow the doctrine of the Taliban and the Zealot Jews (fear of God)
eye for an eye........VENGENCE IS MINE SAYETH THE LORD....not man's.
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The following is a letter I wrote to the neo-cons on a message board in Jan. of 05: It is still true today.
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Neo-cons,
You do not know us, you do not think like us, and you definately do not understand us.
Anyone that thinks PNAC is a good idea,
that Islam is terrorism,
that the al qaeda terrorists are the problem in Iraq,
that bush wanted democracy for Iraq or the US,
believes we should let the prez usurp the laws of the nation, the laws of the world, the constitution, the bill of rights,
believes in preemptive wars, perpetual war, torture, that the Geneva conventions are 'quaint'
think that global polution by corporations is okay,
thinks anyone that says what they think is a traitor or un-patriotic,
thinks that it is okay to for the government to expose their own covert CIA angent to the world
that make heroes into traitors and cowards into heroes,
wants to re-start nuclear weapons race with ourselves, making millions sick
and thinks that the people of the world our enemies okay to bomb and kill them all,
cannot possibly define, know or understand a lib, or a dem.
So, shut up about, what libs and dems think, want, feel, or know. You haven't got a clue and you never will. Your disgusting, pitiful, attemps, only magnify your ignorance of us.
Moderate Liberal Wiseoldgranny
How is it that the same people who slimed John Kerry's war record now find it reprehensible for us to call the obviously biased and politically-driven testimony of a general handpicked by Bush a betrayer of the people?
This is a beautifully written piece: both thoughtful and insightful. I liked the Move-On ad too but I couldn't have explained why nearly this well. Way to go Jon!
Just wondering but did all these Republicans who are demanding an apology from MoveOn and The Democrats, apoligize to Senator John Kerry for their 527 Swift Boat Ads, BEFORE the election?
Didn't think so.
Far better expressed on the page than I can, and you hve found my deepest feelings despair and fear for the future of our wonderful country gone astray.
Brilliant. Petraeus will one day, once we have emereged from our caves or the US gulag, be known as the Benedict Arnold who turned over est Point to the enemy.
Any ad the ruffles the feathers of Duncan Hunter and has David Vitter telling us how wrong this is...is a sign of a clear cut victory.
100 bucks to MoveOn.org
jack jett
Superb piece. One of the best I have ever seen. Thank you. If we are one day herded into the dark, I will have this folded up in my back pocket to pass on to my soon-to-be-born grandchild who will, in the worst of all possible cosmic jokes, inherit the wasteland.
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Posted September 11, 2007 | 11:50 PM (EST)