Living in a Strangelove World

General Petraeus' report that "the surge" is "working" is wrong. Bush's Madison Avenue marketing of a "good to the last drop" war is failing the American people. Our bridges are collapsing, the education system is under-funded, New Orleans remains broken, and millions of Americans watch as our land of opportunity races toward economic disaster.

The cost of living is eating up our incomes. Dim prospects for the United States' post-Iraq future feed on old-fashioned American optimism. Apathy, depression, and exasperation are the weights hard-working Americans are suffering under the "surge." General Petraeus' puppet testimony guarantees the US will continue to cut itself with the razor blade of military retribution -- while its citizens are already bleeding to death. As Americans scramble their psyches in search of hope for a better tomorrow, our elected Democrats are sitting on their hands. Senators whimper and whine while the world tick-tocks toward doomsday.

The generals that are leading this war are marching their soldiers and our country over the cliff of decency and solvency. The president blares his mantra of security, freedom, peace and democracy, as he warns of "emboldened extremists and terrorists," all the while keeping his own people extremely terrified. The president's Iraqi flower greeting has yet to come after four-and-a-half years of shock and awe imperialistic occupation; perhaps General Petraeus brought him some desert posies.

Dr. Strangelove is 1964's bold look at a military General who has gone hostility-haywire forcing the world to backfire itself into extinction. Starring Peter Sellers in three roles, it's Stanley Kubrick's satirical dark comedy about the cold war, the military machine, and billions of expendable lives.

General Jack D. Ripper has gone insane over his unmanly sexual impotence. He's certain he's a victim of a Soviet plot involving fluoridated water and "the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids." Through a loophole designed to be irrevocable "by scheming commies"--he's ordered a nuclear strike against the USSR. As the bombs are on their way to their targets, Gen. 'Buck' Turgidson (George C. Scott) advises the President (Sellers) on how to handle the disaster. It's Scott's greatest performance as another of the film's whack-o American generals. Ridiculous men with their powerful, phallic bombs doom the world.

Dr. Strangelove is a penetrating look at the cold war, male domination, and the sheer brutality of man plotting against man.

Like today's MoveOn.org, Kubrick was sending a powerful message to the president and anyone in the military with itchy trigger fingers. Dr. Strangelove reminded Washington that humanity is watching. So much so, in fact, that the film was required to open a disclaimer, assuring viewers that the situation in the film could never happen. Whew. Reassuring, like General Petraeus' opener: "I wrote this report myself." Who would have thought otherwise?

Dr. Strangelove, like others that followed, helped the world avoid nuclear annihilation. Kubrick was exercising his first amendment right in 1964, exactly as MoveOn did last week.

Unlike the Democrats scrambling with a sound-bite position on the MoveOn ad last week, there were no apologies expected for this film from either political party. Kubrick created a masterwork that inspires Americans to do intellectual battle with politicians to secure a better world. History has shown that speaking out courageously and demonstratively leads towards change. The fatality of this war is the death of American outrage, caught between the crossfire of the party with bad ideas and the party of no ideas.

Politicians work for us; we do not need to be kind to them, and they don't need to be soft and proper to be successful and get re-elected. They are supposed to govern, not grandstand. No Senator should be allowed to hold the floor for seven minutes without ever asking a question. Our democratically-elected Congress has proven themselves ineffectual against the Bush Regime's policy of power, prayer, battle and bloodshed. Democrats defensively distanced themselves from the MoveOn.org's bold statement.

Iraq is what was wrong, not MoveOn.org; representatives with a backbone, not more military with muscle, is what the American spirit demands.

NOBODY seems to be able to speak truth to men in power, and no one--left, right, or center--is telling the truth loudly about this disaster in Iraq. In Dr. Strangelove, the bombs can't be stopped, can't be called back, so all bets are off. And now, the reality in Iraq looks stranger than ever.

Comments

[GMC360]

"...we're all gonna die, and it's gonna hurt"

[mavelous]

It's a free country, free to post a weak and idiotic ad in a major newspaper. Is MoveOn.org secretly run by the GOP, cause they sure got a nice gift from this one.
I used to think Liberals were smart....

[Bobzmcishl]

It was no surprise that Republicans reacted hysterically to the Moveon.org ad in the New York Times with the caption "General Petraeus or General Betray Us". What is baffling is the Democratic Party response. Twenty-four Democratic Senators voted with 49 Republican Senators to condemn Moveon.org for their ad. Yet again the Democrats shot themselves in the foot by going after a group that has been their biggest supporter in trying to get the U.S. out of Iraq. Obviously these Senator's did not bother to even read the ad, which took a skeptical position of General Petraeus testimony before Congress. Better to err on the side of skepticism that blindly accept facts as presented to the U.N. by another 4 star general which led to one of the most disasterous foreign policy decisions in U.S. history.

All American's need to be wary of uncritically accepting information coming out of sources controlled by the Bush White House. Bush is desparately trying to protect his legacy in history and will do just about anything to color what is really going on in Iraq today. We must be vigilant over the next 15 months until George W. Bush is out of office and can no longer do this country harm. Thank God for groups like Moveon.org which are trying to protect this country from further debacles like Iraq.
Maybe Hillary Clinton should hav compared Cheney to Dr. Strangelove rather than Darth Vader.

[GenericBlogger]

Bobzmcishl wrote "Better to err on the side of skepticism that blindly accept facts as presented to the U.N. by another 4 star general which led to one of the most disastrous foreign policy decisions in U.S. history."

General Petraeus led our troops in Iraq in 2003-2004. Since 2004 he was stationed back in USA and in early 2007 he was chosen by Dubya and unanimously (this includes Democrats) confirmed by the Senate as the leader of the multi-national forces in Iraq.

Petraeus followed orders like any soldier. I felt in the recent hearings his presentation was polished and we weren't told the entire truth. That's not betrayal.

No one in their right mind denies or ignores the efforts made by MoveOn.org in helping the Democrats. But the betrayal ad was an overkill that's backfiring. It's providing the Republicans with ammunition to attack and discredit the Democrats.

MoveOn.org's betrayal ad is like fishing with dynamite. Teasing a temperamental tiger that can swing his paw through the cage and rip anything in its reach. Or like throwing out the baby with the bath water.

One sign of the ad's failure is this. Discussions focus on the ad's unintended consequences more than the intended objective.

[DenverCurmudgeon]

I posted this quote with the comments about the traveler personal item database. It also applies to this discussion:

The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies--all this is indispensably necessary.
--George Orwell, 1984

Naomi Klein's new book 'Shock Doctrine' is a must read. We are living in dangerous times.

[skwan91607]

It is hardly to believe an American General like Mr. Patreus could not come out with his PhD degree consciousness, responsible to American people, to confront his world famous illusory leader, Bush. However, there are ways to frame a PhD to do something he don't want by a sitting president. Anyway, it is no doubt that a similar general will also fit Mr. Patreus' place if Bush needed.
Moveon's Ad did not mean to down grade Mr.Patreus' character of personality, but to redicule his courage to say something Bush does not want him to say. Or, we can not find Collin Power from Patreus. Period.
The show of voting against that Moveon Ad is going the wrong way against the will of most Americans who want to withdraw American troops from Iraq. Mr. Patreus miss this chance to put himself in the side of American people, not oil industrial slave.

[disgustedcitizen]

You forgot to mention the most Dr. Strangeloveian part of our current dark comedy. Iran. Appearently, bush can not flush this country down the toilet fast enough. He, Cheney and their neoclown masters want to bomb Iran so bad they can taste it. Never mind that it is obvious to anyone any common sense that this act of insanity would be bad for the United States in so many ways.

God help us, these bastards are truly insane.

[rmwarnick]

Interesting bit of trivia: The title character of Dr. Strangelove was based on Henry Kissinger. Kubrick actually filmed Kissinger to research his mannerisms.

[chicagoan]

The model for Dr. Strangelove was more likely Herman Kahn, the Rand Corp guy who wrote "On Nuclear War" link
The movie came out when I was in High School. I literally fell out of my seat laughing when Sterling Hayden - the screen filled with his cigar chomping face - first uttered the words precious bodily fluids. Still the funniest moment in the history of film. I've watched this movie hundreds of times and it gets better with every viewing. On the other hand, the Patraeus ad was a poorly conceived screw-up whose sophomoric play on words totally distracted from its message.

[chicagoan]

goofed the link
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/movies/10kapl.html?pagewanted=all&position=

[libmatters]

This movie should be on network TV every night the week before an election.
The way the whole thing gets out of hand and the loaded B-52 is dispatched with a bomb is likely the way Cheney will get a war started with Iran. He knows the idea is ludicrous and supported by no rational person but he'd find a way to get the fishhook in before anybody notices. Then it would be too late to stop it.
Even Bush doesn't want to attack Iran.
Why?-
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/09/19/iran/?source=whitelist

[LouGots]

The film, Dr. Strangelove, was very well, done and deserves all the praise we have heaped on it above.

We need to look at the present world situation and apply its perceptions from a new perspective.

Just as the nuclear warfighting machine had been set up to run on its own, so our present Middle East policy has been engineered to be unsteerable. Let me explain. Victory and peace in the cold war, World War III, by some reconing, depended on credible deterrent. The grand plan was to contain the FORMER SOVIET UNION with superior terror until its own irrationality swept it into the dustbin of history. It worked: we buried them.

Now the mystery of deterrence is that the counter-value deterrent force must be itslf undeterable. Herman Kahn's celebrated metaphor of the game of highway "chicken" illustrates this. The winner in the game is the driver who had removed his steering wheel and waived it it of his window. His will not to turn is totally credible, because he has removed the posibility of changing wis will.

In nuclear warfighting, the enemy must believe (that is what the word "credible" means) that the price of attack is total destruction--megadeath. Insanity, many thought. It worked.

What does all this nostalgia over victory in World War III have to do with World War IV? Our Middle Eastern policy has been set up to be credible, that is irrevocable. It shall run on the tracks we have set for it, and the enemy may not hope that it might be called back.

We have done this by the placement of a client state in the heart of the Middle East. Yes, it the oil; yes, it's land and naval, and, yes, it's Israel. If we recede as holder of world power in the region, Israel is finished. We will not allow this to happen, so we need to move on, really move on, to a World War III-style solution to the Middle East.

[insanityfollows]

I've often been amazed over the years at the insight that Kubrick had and how well he made his statement. The same could be said for Orwell (and many others). This is one period of time, however, when I truly wish that life would not imitate art.

[Pero]

There is a complete silence on the extreme pressure of UK-US oil gangster for OIL in Iraq.

Iraq, like all independent states, unlike puppet-statelets in Saudi peninsula, has netionalized its oil long ago.

There is extreme pressure and top priority to "denationalize" Iraq's oil and give ownership to US=UK oil companies for 50+ years (all "legal" after that stealing; oh soooo legal contracts enforced by our military might).

The Grand Theft is packaged as "sharing of (remnants) of oil wealth with all Iraqi nationalities"....

[hark]

It just baffles me that the military has become a sacred cow, and the populace so militant. It seems to have been triggered by 9-11, but the seeds must have been planted long before. But I can't understand why. And I don't understand why liberals have been ostracized by our society, either, and that goes back a long way. And why has the desire for world peace become such an object of scorn in this country? Why has this all happened?

Meanwhile, the rich corporatists look on with amusement at our left/right struggles and antics while they pick our middle class pockets clean, regardless of our politics.

What fools we common folk are. We've been had, and are being had. All of us.

[DudeE]

We have a long history of rallying behind military endeavors - well before 9/11. Viet Nam was the opening volley in exposing the military as fallible and prone to being misused. Throughout the Clinton administration Republicans were the ones throwing up the hand when a military option was on the table. Let's get out of Yugoslavia, out of Somalia, out of Haiti, and bombing strategic Al Qaeda targets was a 'wag the dog' while we were busy discussing Clinton's blowjob.

Back in the Janet Reno days you had Republican outcry over interference in Waco and Ruby Ridge and all manner of other perceived assaults on civil liberties and the right to be left alone.

Republicans used to be the party of civil liberties, privacy and non-intervention. It's been largely high-jacked by ideologues and zealots who care little about democracy and a lot about their pet theories and master plans for a far-reaching American empire. It's a complete 180 and one which is ripping the party apart at the seams.

The irony is that Iraq will be the undoing of the Republican party for years to come. They no longer stand for limited government and personal accountability but for cronyism, warmongering and the passing of the buck.

[PADDYWHACK]

K ubrick exercised his free speech rights from the safety of England,wher he was banished by HUAC orthe Birch John toilet seat society.

[leftLibertarian]

Never underestimate the depths to which the punk fascist Bush will sink for a $. That's why the Democrats won't end the war. They don't have the backbone to do what must be done. And that is to impeach Bush and Cheney for their crimes.

[Plowboy]

Now you know why I don't give a damn for the Democrats. They are every bit as whorish as the Republicans. Every bit the lying bastards. Donn't tell me they oppose the war. They can't do a thing about, it they tell us. But they can criticize a truthful organization's truthful ad.
Join your colleagues across the aisle.
Lie like the dogs you are, and smile.
But don't come asking me for money.
Just crawl in bed with your milk and honey.