WB: The Road to Hell – Moon of Alabama

September 21, 2006

WB: The Road to Hell

Billmon:

Even if Shrub’s motives were as virtuous as his hagiographers insist, at what point do recklessness and fecklessness, and a petulant refusal to admit — much less learn from — even the most disastrous mistakes, become forms of evil in themselves?

The Road to Hell

Posted by b on September 21, 2006 at 19:00 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Seems obvious but the somnolet media won’t ask any of the hard questions and give the current chief executive and his possé a pass again and again….
…starting to remind me of the Baldknobbers whose overzealous leader eventually had to be taken out, “brought to justice” as it were, by his own minions.

Posted by: Darryl Pearce | Sep 21 2006 19:19 utc | 1

Once the economic bombshell hits the West, vis a vis property leverage and “wealth” of the taxed classes disappears “poof” overnight, it will be very easy for the Bush’s and Blair’s of this world to blame it on the Iranian closure of Hormutz…. self fulfilling prophecy…….
Why have the wealthy being lining their pockets big time over the last 10 years?
Welcome to Russia circa 1897.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Sep 21 2006 19:54 utc | 2

Welcome to Russia circa 1897.
Or the Soviet Union, circa 1987.

Posted by: billmon | Sep 21 2006 20:10 utc | 3

billmon, you’ve got the date for the AP article as 9/21/2005. Not that it was any less true a year ago…

Posted by: Rowan | Sep 21 2006 20:14 utc | 4

The ‘terror without end’ began with the adaptation of imperialistic foreign policy in 1893 with the tacit overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani in Hawaii and has been continuing unabated ever since. What we Americans, even progressives, still fail to acknowledge as an axiomatic given is that the American Empire has been perpetrating deliberate avaricic (adjective form of avarice) growth since then, implemented at the level of official American foreign policy. The record is very clear if one deigns to examine it.
We Americans have all been living inside the cultural paradigm of American benevolence and world humanitarian righteousness. I totally bought into it when I was young and only recently discarded it as repulsive when compared with even the official record.
I think our country’s almost universal mind-set (daily reinforced by the infotainment media) insures that anyone so indoctrinated will be oblivious to all the fnords infecting our consciousness. Even you, Billmon, I believe, find it difficult to accept not just the depth but also the longevity of America’s pernicious actions on the world’s political stage. Until we consciously acknowledge and embrace this darker side of our cultural consciousness, I think we are but howling at the moon (no pun intended).
I’m not sure just exactly how, but I think our energies would be better spent trying to illuminate the oppressed minds of our fellow societal grunts and convert them from infotainment media obsessions to seekers of truth obsessions. Tall order eh?
I don’t know answers right now but want to impress on my consciousness and maybe also that of others the need to extend myself/ourselves beyond our cultural blinders.

Posted by: Juannie | Sep 21 2006 22:16 utc | 5

Tracking the ‘Torture Taxi’

The authors of the new book “Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA’s Rendition Flights” tell Truthdig freelance interviewer Onnesha Roychoudhuri how they pieced together the first comprehensive look at the largest covert CIA operation since the Cold War—a program run not only by shadowy government contractors in the darkest corners of Afghanistan, but also by unassuming America family lawyers in places like Dedham, Mass.

King of Pain
Paul Krugman

We know that the world would see this action as a U.S. repudiation of the rules that bind civilized nations. We also know that an extraordinary lineup of former military and intelligence leaders, including Colin Powell, have spoken out against the Bush plan, warning that it would further damage America’s faltering moral standing, and end up endangering U.S. troops.
But I haven’t seen much discussion of the underlying question: why is Mr. Bush so determined to engage in torture?

The final verdict
International Commission Of Inquiry On Crimes Against Humanity Committed By The Bush Administration Of The United States
Craig Murray

On wars of aggression, illegal detention and torture, suppression of science and catastrophic policies on global warming, potentially genocidal abstinence-only policies imposed on HIV/AIDS prevention programs in the Third World, and the abandonment of New Orleans before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina, President George W. Bush and his administration have been found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Jesus freckin Christ, hirstory really is a nightmare from which I’m trying to wake up from…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 21 2006 22:45 utc | 6

Juannie: Actually, some would beg to differ. Many in America – the continent – would tell you it began decades earlier. Natives would indeed argue it began with the so-called revolution, which was notably sparked by British intention to suppress slave trade and to rein in the murderous expansionism of the settlers into Indian territories. Then of course, one can argue it began with the very first American colony, and the first butcher of native tribe.
Krugman should reread Tolstoy. The more I think of it, the more what he wrote in War and Peace about Napoleon seems to apply to Bush – in fact I applied it to Milosevic at the time of the Srebrenica massacre, which made me totally unsurprised at the Kosovo war and eventual fiasco.
Let’s assume that Bush’s role in history is to thoroughly and definitively ruin all pretense at US hegemony. Let’s assume that Bush indeed is here to cause the downfall of the current imperium. Given that this is necessarily what will happen at the end of the day, you can more easily see which decisions will be made in matters such as Iran.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Sep 21 2006 23:22 utc | 7

Given Clueless Joe’s comment, than, in one way, we should all be supporting The Decider. If he destroys the imperium through his/our own stupdity, will the world be better off when compared to ongoing functioning of the machine under a Bill Clinton?

Posted by: Brian | Sep 22 2006 0:19 utc | 8

CJ,
I think it probably started with the ethic arising from monotheism.
Let’s assume that Bush’s role in history is to thoroughly and definitively ruin all pretense at US hegemony. Let’s assume that Bush indeed is here to cause the downfall of the current imperium. Given that this is necessarily what will happen at the end of the day, you can more easily see which decisions will be made in matters such as Iran.
… In Iran we (collectively anti-war/progressives) have probably played a strong hand in culling their face cards. And now, mostly what cards will fall before 2008 are about to be played. The rethuglicans thought ahead some 20+ years ago and created the framework (game rules) for the present political activity.
If the Bush’s administration is the blatant message to humanity that any form of world imperialism must halt if we can expect our species to survive (disregarding anthropogenically influenced natural effects for the moment), then lets think ahead and figure out what future framing will return our thoughts from the unconsciousness domination of the fonrds toward a more enlightened perspective after ‘their’ downfall.
No tall order eh?

Posted by: Juannie | Sep 22 2006 0:27 utc | 9

“toward a more enlightened perspective”
that’s our problem. way too much misguided focus on attaining enlightenment when we’re meant to be grounded.

Posted by: b real | Sep 22 2006 2:23 utc | 10

Looks like St. McCain and the others reached a compromise on the torture bill. So now we’ve become the first nation in history to walk away from the Geneva Convention. Where were the Dems? Nowhere to be seen, of course, and I start to understand that maybe the Naderites and others might’ve had a point about there not being any difference between the two parties.
Goddamnit, I served in the military in part because I felt it was my civic duty and now I feel like a sucker. This ain’t the country I grew up in, it’s smaller and meaner and filled with hopelessness.
Goddamnit. I don’t know what to do any more.

Posted by: Vespasian | Sep 22 2006 3:05 utc | 11

Sons of Men, on the Cross
As long as the opposition is afraid to call the Maximum Leader a disgrace, they will lose all the arguments.
As soon as the oposition calls the Maximum Leader a disgrace and a False Predicterer, they will be called marginal.
Only when the margin looks around and sees that we are most of the country, only then will we be able act as a nation, rather than a mob.
Even as a mob, we are still responsible.
They want you to forget this, and so they call themselves our leaders, and so they pollute, us.
We have been a long time trying to raise ourselves to higher standards of self-understanding, but perhaps we are too clever when we abandon old moralities as imperfect. The old agreements tortuously won against injustice may be our best resources for fighting, because we are fighting not to destroy, but to convert mobs into allies of justice, that sometimes powerful rallying cry of the weak.
I was struck this week by the realization that the Crucifixion is really what this nation is countenancing now, and yet we liberals have made almost no reference to it. The Romans – those Americans of Antiquity – the Romans did not merely kill, they tortured the Son of Man in the most prolonged way they could easily produce. They did it not only because it produced fear, but because they liked, they enjoyed lording over their enemies. Bush is converting, not our enemies, but us, converting us into a new Church of Golgotha, those who – because it seems clever at the time – torture and scorn the Son of Man.
…by the thousands…

Posted by: citizen | Sep 22 2006 4:16 utc | 12

“I think it probably started with the ethic arising from monotheism.”
It just seems so much easier to worship Satan with the rewards offerred and all…Especially with all the gains obtained through killing and pillaging than to worship God as represented by the Son Jesus with all the sharing and caring involved. Seems almost Socialist somehow.
How can you ‘get ahead’ that way.?

Posted by: pb | Sep 22 2006 4:24 utc | 13

“It just seems so much easier to worship Satan with the rewards offerred and all…”
I had a professor in university of the far-right-leaning persuasion who made this case in one of my classes one day. He was a Dualist of the theological, not psychological, variety and laid out the tenets of a pretty basic form of Dualism; that there exists a God of Spirit and a God of the Material (light and dark, if you wish), who are equal, but opposite. Now, given that they are equal, why should we not follow the material rewards offered by the God of Darkness? (Incidentally, as nearly as I can figure, this is identical to the “philosophy” espoused by Yale’s Skull and Bones Society… insofar as they have any identifiable philosophy at all). Everything else being equal, who can fault someone for embracing the material and trying to appoint themselves as the “King of the World”?
My problem with it, even back in university, was that the “equal” angle was being concentrated on at the expense of the “opposite” angle. The reason it would not be prudent to follow Mammon (if one subscribes to this system) is that while the material is fleeting and temporary, the god of the spirit is eternal and stable. The NeoCons are the perfect exemplars of the kind of people who would pursue temporary gain at the expense of long-term stability (as a matter of fact, they tend to scorn the very word “stability”). They are not the exception to the human rule. In other words, “eat, drink and be merry” today and piss on tomorrow.
Anyway, I am not a theological Dualist and think questions of Good and Evil are nice academic diversions, but become disastrous when they are translated into real-world policies. This schema can be used to rationalise and justify any kind of horrible behaviour (avariciousness and brutality are what we are presently seeing from the “Gott Mit Uns” camp presently). I also think that the inability to juggle more than two variables at a time does not speak well for the prospects for one’s further intellectual/spiritual development.

Posted by: Monolycus | Sep 22 2006 5:03 utc | 14

“presently seeing presently”…? I appear to have graduated from the School of Redundancy School. Apologies.

Posted by: Monolycus | Sep 22 2006 5:10 utc | 15

It’s quite simple, and obvious. The Neo-cons worship Chaos. Now, if you’ve read Michael Moorcock or if you’re into Warhammer, you probably know what to think of them.
Brian: Actually, I think we should fight the bastard because it’s the right thing to do – he said it himself, if you’re not against him, you’re objectively pro-Bush and complicit. But at the same time, we must not fool ourselves into thinking we have serious chances of avoiding the fall. So, let’s prepare for the coming downfall as well.

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Sep 22 2006 9:05 utc | 16

Back to the discussion of whether monotheism which AFAICS externalises life force to ‘out there’ while internalising/centralising need and wish fulfilment into humanity and eventually the self, was the first step down the rocky road to destroying all the life force on planet earth.
I don’t go with it because it assumes that there was no imperialism or subjugation of others before monotheism, which is patently incorrect. The Roman empire was founded on a pantheist culture, although the chief reason for the switch to monotheistic religions such as judeo xtianity or islam was to concentrate spiritual power into one entity, thereby concentrating communication with that spiritual power, therefore spiritual authority. That made it much easier to hook the spiritual/superstition levers in with the earthly ones and keep the population on the same page.
The Roman Emperors were always having hassles with the priests of the competing gods. It took a heap of time and resources to get all the priests to agree on something as straightforward as the most auspicious day to invade the next piece of empire.
The introduction of monotheism meant there was only one mob of grasping bourgois males too smart to want to swing a pick but not smart enough to run a bath, putting their paws out for a piece of the action in return for which they would bless the venture and persuade the hoi polloi of it’s excellence.
Things got even simpler with the Holy Roman Empire when the earthly boss and the spiritual boss were one and the same. But that never sits well with anybody who has a bit of time left over from hunting and gathering to think, therefore weighed up against the increased cost of oppression, it seems in the long run, to be cheaper to have a ‘chinese wall’, that is there is a pretence of a seperation of powers but given that both parties want to consolidate their net worth at the expense of others agreement between the powers of church and state is rarely difficult to achieve.
Back to the original point. Certainly the invention and introduction of monotheism made empire easier, but empire was already well under way prior to monotheism’s implementation.
So given that the single god concept is just another tool of imperial and not the seed of empire, that leaves us back trying to suss out, why? Why do we destroy our ‘spot’ on the planet in the vain hope that we will get something better? Is it all of us or just those who choose to be our leaders?
Other creatures which live communally and conquer and hold territory reach a point where they have sufficient, after which their war skills are purely defensive.
From ants to wolves, as soon as they reach the most efficient unit size, they stop, consolidate and enjoy existence but not humans.
Humans have this defect where they keep expanding a society beyond the point where it can function in a way that best suits it’s members.
It’ll be the death of us as a species long before any superstition ‘comes true’.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Sep 22 2006 9:08 utc | 17

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