Twilight of Empire

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 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, 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.