Back in 2003, my wife and I were lucky enough to
work with Viggo Mortensen and his indie publisher Perceval Press on a book calling out the war in Iraq as a mammoth clusterbungle before it really got started. It was called Twilight of Empire: Responses to Occupation.
Since its publication, those of us who have been criticizing the Bush
administration as crusading cash grabbers have been validated by href=" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_war_resolution" target="blank">the very people who gave them the green light to
bomb the living daylights out of Baghdad.
I'm sure you'll recognize some of the enablers, as many of them are
running for president on the Democratic ticket. Hillary Clinton, the
tough-talking New York senator who rubber-stamped Bush's right to
"shock and awe" innocent civilians until they were not much more than
body parts or Abu Ghraib torture fodder. John Edwards, a man who lost
a son in a tragic accident and whose wife is now battling cancer but
still couldn't manage to drum up enough foresight or compassion to
understand that his personal tragedies would pale in comparison to the
political ones he would level on the Iraqi people in service of Bush,
Cheney and their neocon contingent. Joe Biden, who I can't understand
half the time he's talking, but still should have known better, having
served his own time in the equally ridiculous Vietnam War. I think you
see where I'm going with this.
I'm proud to say that Viggo is now handing out Twilight of Empire for free at
Perceval, so log on and grab yours. The essays from ambassador Joseph
Wilson, disaster capitalism theorist Naomi Klein, href="http://www.democracynow.org" target="blank">Democracy Now's
Amy Goodman, HuffPo contributor Mark Levine and many others
(including Howard
Zinn, who wrote the new edition's introduction) are charged
exercises in conscientious objection, which grow more relevant as time
passes and Iraq slipstreams into hyperreal madness.
But I'm less proud to say that many of the so-called alternatives to
the Bush administration running for president in 2008 are the same
ciphers that paved the way for our current chaos. It couldn't have
been done without their help, and for that they should be thrown into
Guantanamo along with the neocolonial
Republicans you love to hate like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle
and their grifting ilk. I'm serious as a heart attack.
But I'm also pragmatic as a hedge funder. They like to
play both sides against the middle class, and why not? That's
where the money is to be made. Which is to say that I will most likely
lay down my vote for whoever the Democrats decide to give the White
House to in 2008. I say "give to" of course, because they only chance
the Republicans have of winning the White House is if Bush goes
nuclear and elects himself to a third term with the help of his pals
in the Supreme Court. That said, I won't give the Democrats my
loyalty, as they have to lose something for their capitulating
trespasses.
I'm going Independent, and you should too. There's no earthly reason
that America needs an exclusive two-party system, especially when the
difference between the two parties is as hard to find as Dick Cheney's
heart. Or Hillary Clinton's penis.