Monday, November 06, 2006

I bought a Netgear powerline adapter. It arrives tomorrow. Will report. 

On CNN tonight they talk about how the Republicans don't have a "strategy to win" in Iraq. It's even worse, they haven't even defined what winning is. 

Amyloo is a visionary. She had a vision about Katherine Harris in Florida. 

I went to high school, in the Bronx, with Mike Masucci, artistic director at EZTV, profiled today in Digital Content Producer.  

Question of the day. We know now that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we brought them there. (They say Saddam attacked his own people, so did we. Poor Iraq.) Next question. Have we brought nukes into Iraq? Extra credit: How many days after the election before we attack Iran? Do you think it matters if Congress is Democrat or Republican?  

Newassignment.net: "Here are nine ways that distributive networks are working to cover Election Day." 

Why We Fight 

This movie, like Fog of War, changed the way I look at things, and filled in at least one important blank, probably far more than that, but only time will tell.

I'm neither a Republican or a Democrat. I'm what they call an Independent, and I think of myself as the Party of Dave. I try to think for myself, and have my own platform, and choose candidates to vote for based on how well they serve my philosophy and values. I rarely vote my pocketbook. I pay taxes, I wish they were lower, but I don't believe any of the bullshit the Republicans throw around about Democrats. I see the money they channel to themselves, the billions they spend on Iraq, as a major major tax, one that they've managed to hide, for now, but it won't stay hidden forever.

And I do think the Democrats are better because they're just a bit more transparent. But in the end they all say a lot of bullshit to get us to vote for them, and then they go ahead and serve the people who really got them elected, the military and the media. And not the media they talk about on the media, but the people who own the media, the ones who decide which party they're going to lean into this time around, and the ones who they raise money for so they can buy ads. It's all a big circular flow of money. CNN supports a group of candidates, they raise money, some of it from corporations, and some of it from us, and pay it back to CNN, for ads. And of course, the other TV networks, and now Google, less these days to the newspapers, its the economics that's the flipside of blogging. We are different, no matter how much complainers say the A-list is just like MSM. The blogosphere is distributed, there are no barriers to entry, and we don't pick candidates and we don't take money from them. (None of this is black and white of course, some bloggers do pick candidates, in the sense that they determine who is running, and some take money in the form of political advertising.)

George Washington, the nation's first general, was dead-set against a standing army, he saw that as a sure way to bring back the king they just fought to get rid of. That's why the Constitution reserves the right to declare war for the people's representatives, the Congress. But that was circumvented right after 9-11 when Congress gave the President a blank check to go to war with whomever he wanted whenever he wanted. George Washington 0, George Bush 1.

Eisenhower warned of the military industrial complex. Well, in Y2K we elected a defense contractor as vice-president. Eisenhower said god help this country if someone takes this office (the Presidency) who doesn't understand the military as well as I do, to hold them in check. Today, we're doing worse than holding the military in check, balancing their power, we've elected people who profit from their excesses! Where's the incentive to hold back? It's just not there. And by the way, we've had a standing army since the end of WWII. Another point against George Washington.

Anyway, all this is background, and what's amazing is that the people doing the explaining in Why We Fight are all Republicans, ex-military and CIA. These are not the people the Republicans run against. They're Republicans, and not fringe ones either. Amazing stuff.

Warning: Spoiler ahead.

At the end they deliver the punchline, they solve the puzzle of Iraq. If you don't like spoilers, stop reading right now. But this one is too important to keep hidden.

I have this conflict about Bush, on one hand, it's tempting to think he's stupid. He sends all the signals that set off my east-coast inner-snob. But I think that's a trick. I honestly don't think it's possible for anyone to reach the place he's reached without being really smart and without knowing exactly what he's doing. Any fool could see what would happen if we drove to Baghdad and tried to occupy the country. I wrote about it in the very early days of the war, before we even took Baghdad, that this would not end like they say it was going to. I was right, but I think they knew how it would come out too. And it's only a failure if you assume they meant to do what they said they meant to do, which of course they didn't.

What they wanted is to have 12 bases in Iraq from which they could launch an attack anywhere in the Persian Gulf. They wanted Iran to feel the American presence at their front door. They wanted Syria to feel it too. They wanted quick deployment possible to Saudi Arabia. They wanted the bases. Our standing army moved to the theater for World War III.

And anyone who says we need an exit strategy is going against what Bush wants, he says this very clearly, because Bush doesn't want to leave.

But ony the most radical Democrats, e.g. Russ Feingold and Ned Lamont, say we should bring all our troops home immediately. All the likely 2008 Democratic presidential candidates agree, we will stay there. Why? Because they're employed by the same people as the Republicans, there's only a difference of style, not substance. The Democrats are making the sounds we want to hear, the ones we believe will relieve the pain we feel because we're going to be dying for this, over and over, and they will not be heroic deaths, they will be anonymous deaths. The Americans dying in Iraq, like the ones who died in Vietnam, are not thought of as heroes, because now everyone knows that we were told bold outrageous lies when we were led to war by the government (including the Democrats).

Even so, we should vote Democratic, because it's the clearest protest vote we have. But if we elect Democrats, we should be prepared not to stop there.