Ron Paul: liberal

By Capt. Fogg

Some people like to dismiss Ron Paul as a simple minded extremist loony. I don't think that's fair and not just because I'm often dismissed with the same simple mindedness by the same simple minds. Yes, I think Dr. Paul does take many things to an extreme point, but you know -- sometimes he's right and sometimes so far to the right that he comes back around the spherical universe and appears on the left.

When he was booed at last night's Tea Party "debate," he was booed as a liberal, not as the dogmatic, theory obsessed, quasi-anarchist and not-too-bright demagogue he's been portrayed as. He was booed for not bleating and re-bleating the recorded message about why "they" hate us, which, if truth ever be told, isn't for our freedom: a thing that in fact has a larger following amongst Muslims that can be allowed by the Jingoistic braying of the party for which the jackass is not the symbol -- but for the reality.

The reality is and the reality has been that not only al Qaeda but others have hated the US government for interfering in Middle East, for rightly or wrongly supporting Israel, for building military bases in places they see as sacred and for supporting oppressive governments because they were "anti-Communist" and willing to exploit their resources for our benefit.

Who else in the Republican Party is willing to step outside the passion play and challenge the formula: they hate us because we're all good and always good and so we have to hate them -- all of them, all of the time? 

This whole idea that the whole Muslim world is responsible for this and their attacking us because we’re free and prosperous, that is just not true,

he said last night. But what set the snarling beasts off their feed was: 

Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have been explicit, and they wrote and said that we attacked because you had bases on our holy lands in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians a fair treatment.

Which quite plainly is true.

The Tea Party picture of human and natural events needs to be presented in such high contrast that any smudge of darkness on our pure white character must be erased; there are no grays or colors and one is either the favorite angel of God or Satan's most foul smelling demon. To admit that any of our sacred military endeavors was not waged in defense of our alleged "freedom" puts one on the odiforous side and so yes, the Battleship Maine was blown up by the evil, freedom hating Spanish between bouts of raping American women and God really did want us to have the continent and our conquest thereof was just like the rape of Jericho only slower. It's anathema to suggest that we were not protecting our freedom by killing millions of Vietnamese or destroying Iraq and those who think and those who know must then be devils for suggesting that anything we ever have done might ever have made anything worse for us or anyone else of God's elect.

We have to believe, as we've been told, that "liberals" would have preferred to "psychoanalyze" al Qaeda than to retaliate, that Democrats unanimously voted against the odious Patriot Act when in fact their support was (sadly) unanimous. Facts don't matter and for the Tea Party only feelings matter and the only feelings they have are greed, anger and hate. If you're not unquestionably in support of everything we do; if you don't hate enough and hate whom we tell you to; if you don't think everything we do in anger isn't ipso facto God's will, you're our natural enemy even if you're Ron Paul and even if most people think you're so far right, you're wrong.

This time Ron Paul is right and it's time to question the people who say government is always wrong when they simultaneously say it's always right.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

U.S. troops in Afghanistan formed "kill team" against civilians

By Michael J.W. Stickings

This isn't good -- but it is instructive:

The U.S. soldiers hatched a plan as simple as it was savage: to randomly target and kill an Afghan civilian, and to get away with it.

For weeks, according to Army charging documents, rogue members of a platoon from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, floated the idea. Then, one day last winter, a solitary Afghan man approached them in the village of La Mohammed Kalay. The "kill team" activated the plan.

One soldier created a ruse that they were under attack, tossing a fragmentary grenade on the ground. Then others opened fire.

According to charging documents, the unprovoked, fatal attack on Jan. 15 was the start of a months-long shooting spree against Afghan civilians that resulted in some of the grisliest allegations against American soldiers since the U.S. invasion in 2001. Members of the platoon have been charged with dismembering and photographing corpses, as well as hoarding a skull and other human bones. 

Needless to say, this is awful, and, if true, which it likely is, it will further weaken America's credibility and moral standing both in Afghanistan and around the world.

Now, of course, these are rogue soldiers who are not necessarily representative of the U.S. military generally. I suspect that the vast majority of soldiers, whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere, perform their duties nobly and courageously.

And yet, next time you see one of those "Support Our Troops" bumper stickers, or next time some flag-waving jingoist tells you that you're either with the troops or a traitor, you might want to think a bit more clearly about just what supporting the troops really means -- and that goes for Canadian troops, my country's troops, as well as for American troops or any other troops.

Do I support the troops? Of course I do. But I don't necessarily support the mission, and, to me, supporting the troops means opposing the Afghan War. Why would you support keeping the troops in a war that makes no sense? Why would you want them to keep risking their lives, and dying, for a war without purpose?

And I certainly don't support everything the troops do, including, of course, what these "kill team" troops did -- and yet, they're troops, aren't they? Aren't we told we have to support them, or else?

American blood on American Soil

By Capt. Fogg

Well maybe not blood - it was only some bits of stucco and brick, but you know. . .

President Barack Obama is "gambling with Human lives" says Texas Governor Rick Perry. I'm afraid he's not talking about any of our current foreign wars, and anyway, gambling with military lives is worth the patriotic fervor we need to keep the proles supporting Republicans.

He's not talking about the death cult that executes prisoners without much apparent concern for evidence of innocence. He's not talking about tossing out mining or oil drilling safety rules as "communism." He's talking about a stray bullet coming harmlessly across the border into El Paso from Juarez and hitting a wall, shedding American brick dust on American soil. It's happened once or twice before with no harm done to anyone, but it's Obama's fault according to the hysterical hyperbole of Rick because -- well just because.

Human Lives are being endangered because Obama is president and the failure of previous administrations to stem corruption in a country not our own is not worth discussing lest it place blame upon white shoulders, or heaven forfend; Texas gubernatorial shoulders and take all the fun out of our national game of "pin the blame on Obama." Yes, says Rick, we should amass troops on the border but to what effect he doesn't tell us. The drug lords we finance with our drug policies aren't going to notice or care. Perhaps they could form as a wall of human flesh to stop the spent bullet that strays over the border every few years? Or perhaps he'd like to invade Juarez, Tijuana and Nogales. After all we haven't stolen any property from Mexico for years and we really need another illegal invasion, don't we? We'd be protecting Amer4ican lives and we'd be welcomed as liberators and it would pay for itself and there are credible rumors of enchiladas of Mass Destruction. Remember the stray bullet! Never forget! wave more flags! Unhinged we stand!

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

You and whose army?

By Capt. Fogg

It's Memorial Day weekend again in the New South. It's nice to know they've finally accepted a holiday they once loathed. Of course it was Decoration Day until 1968 and after I was grown and had a family. It was as you know, about decorating the graves of Union Soldiers and after the next horror of the Great War, the graves of the 117,465 American dead: a day of solemn reflection.

But by the time they changed it to Memorial Day to make it more compatible with our imperialism at the height of the senseless horror in Vietnam, it was about Dad's cremated Hamburgers and Indy; parades and patriotic hoo-ha, but perhaps it's because I now live in the South, it's taken on a new tone. Perhaps too, it's because I live in an area flooded with retired military folks filled with their own importance and those employed by the notorious Military- Industrial Complex -- but my in-box is once again flooded with glorious stories about our glorious military and the glorious things they do. A good part of them are hoaxes and of course there are no mentions of our heroes of My Ly 4 or Abu Ghraib or of the recent glorious heroes who accidentally slaughtered 30 or so civilians using robot planes in air conditioned comfort from halfway around the world.

No, what I get are bogus stories about Marines rescuing babies on 9/11/01 and how it is the Veterans" we owe our freedom of religion, press, speech and the rest of the rights we've had abridged because of the martial spirit of the times -- not the constitution, the courts or the Government of the United States.

Have we forgotten that the biggest enemy of freedom on this continent was the American South? Was anything we can call our own freedom at risk in most of our wars? Andrew Jackson's slaughter and deportation of the Seminoles? the use of Federal troops in slave raids into Florida? The Mexican War? The Spanish American War? The war against Philippine independence? What kind of threat to our freedom of speech necessitated suppressing free elections in Vietnam or the killing of two million civilians? What threat to our freedom of Religion was posed by Iraq? What threat were flower carrying kids in Ohio that they needed to be shot in the back by American troops? Were the troops driving armored vehicles down Chicago's State Street in 1968 there to support our right to assembly or to shut us up?

It' s not that I have any disrespect for veterans, living or dead, but our Constitution wasn't written by the Generals, no foreign power is any threat to it and that we still pay any attention to the Bill of Rights owes as much to the "activist" courts and the ACLU as to anything else. It owes nothing whatever to the Tea Bag flag wavers who hate government power unless it's carrying guns. It owes nothing to Macho flag wavers from John Wayne to Bomb-bomb McCain.

Memorial day has become an encomium not to dead soldiers; an expression not of profound grief. It's not a day when we mourn our losses or of any remembrance of the horror of war and militarism, but to celebrate living veterans, sing praise to the Armed forces and to the glory of war itself. It's a day we now use to decorate ourselves, congratulate ourselves on our military prowess and this in a country that's been fighting all my life but hasn't been on the winning side of a war since 1945. It's a day too often used to obscure the real threats to freedom with red white and blue bunting and it's good to remember that the same folks crowing about military defense of freedom are quite happy to require anyone with tan skin to carry proof of citizenship at all times, quite happy to give the local police the power of Federal Marshals and to forget all about warrants and probable cause. What army is going to protect us against our own smug racism, bigotry and expansionism?

(Cross posted from Human Voices)