Living with the Decisions of the Decider

Guest Blog by Bartlebee

Well here we are, five years later.

Many of us said "don't go" but we were shouted down. Now, five years later and hundreds of thousands of dead, Bin Laden's still running around making home movies — and George Bush and Dick Cheney are still talking about patriotism and waving the flag.

The fruits of the decision to invade Iraq now have now been examined and the results are in. We're in a mess. Bush and Cheney did not have the courage to take the momentum we had immediately after 911 and rally the world to a UN supported US led incursion into Kashmir to root out Osama Bin Laden and his thugs and to garner the support of both India and Pakistan for such an incursion, which he could have done had he acted quickly and "decisively. Back when we had the momentum the world would have gotten behind us on any remotely reasonable plan to strike back at terrorists following the terrible images they witnessed of the 911 attacks. The world was with us. It was like we had been given an international credit card and the sky's the limit. And we could have used that card to buy our way into Kashmir and root out the son of a bitch and his thugs who murdered Americans on 911. We would have had him by the balls. But because they were cowards Bush and Cheney took that credit card and squandered the entire balance on invading Iraq, because they were afraid of what an invasion of Kashmir and UN and US forces in Pakistan and even India might mean.

Suppose Bin Laden supporters in Pakistan, where he enjoys the support of more than half the country, rose up and a war breaks out on a larger scale? Suppose it goes nuclear and Russia or China get pissed and things get hairy? These were the demons lurking in Bush's thoughts and he could not bring himself to confront them. So instead of dealing with the intricacies of such a potentially messy engagement in Pakistan and Kashmir, Bush and Cheney decided to squander the balance on their international 911 credit card by invading Iraq, making false claims about their involvement in 911 and WMD to sell their "poor mans war".

But the "bitch of the bunch" is where we are now.

Stuck literally between “Iraq and a hard place”.

Because now, that momentum is gone. The balance on our international 911 charge card is zero. In fact, it’s overdrawn. We are morally bankrupt as far as the rest of the world is concerned, so I guess it’s only fitting as far as fate is concerned that we’re also financially bankrupt as well. Problem is, we need the international credit to buy our way out of here. We need that international good moral credit to do the hard things we’re going to have to do to either capture or kill Osama Bin Laden and his thugs.

We know where they are. They’re in or around Kashmir or other remote regions in Pakistan, protected by his loyalists. All we have to do then is go get him right? Like we should have done when we had him cornered at Tora Bora and Bush let him go, like he did for about 70 his family members 2 days after 911 (still waiting for an answer on that one). But unfortunately Kashmir is a disputed region between two cold war countries, both that happen to be nuclear armed. And the US military is not allowed in, nor is the UN.

What we need to go get Bin Laden is “momentum”. Like the momentum we had right after 911. But that momentums gone and it ain’t coming back. Even if we were to be attacked again we won’t likely garner the international empathy we had post 911. Not after we’ve squandered their previous empathy so wantonly. Instead we’ll likely see a cold shoulder, and probably more than one lecture by other nations about starting wars with people who never attacked us. But we won’t gain their overwhelming support. The kind of support we’d need to initiate a US led UN supported incursion into Pakistan to get Bin Laden.

Come on. We all know he’s there. We’ve known that since 2003. But we just don’t have the means to go get him now. Bush and Cheney did not show courage after 911 by invading Iraq. They showed fear. Fear of going after Bin Laden like they promised they would because they thought it would be too hard. And possibly for other reasons yet to be identified.

So here we are, 5 years later, and no Bin Laden, Al Quaida going strong, and our international moral credit account bankrupt as is our national purse. And we have more important problems at the moment other than holding those responsible for this trainwreck accountable. We still have to get the guys who attacked us on 911. Make no mistake about it, we cannot let them get away. We need to capture or kill those responsible if we're ever hoping to be respected again by our enemies, whom we have many. Even more now thanks to our trainwreck that was the decision to invade Iraq. Bush and Cheney claim it doesn't matter and that we'll get him "sooner or later", but it does matter. It matters a lot. For all their talk of "going after the bad guys" the reality is they have done nothing to actually get the bad guys who they say attacked us. And at this rate Bin Laden will die of old age or kidney failure before we bring him to the "justice" Bush so loudly boasted of from his megaphone while standing on the bodies of 3000 dead Americans.

So now we are stuck, for the want of a better pun and at the cost of being redundant between Iraq and a hard place, the hard place being the chore still waiting the men and women of our military and our federal law enforcement agencies assuming we ever get around to electing a leader who will assign them to it.

And perhaps more difficult, we have to find a way to rebuild our squandered international moral credit before doing all this because until we do no ones going to just walk us into Kashmir and let us do the job we should have done in the fall of 2001, thanks to the Bush\Cheney doctrine. So 5 years later, all Bush and Cheney have given us is more overwhelming challenges to deal with, and we still have the one we had to deal with on Sept 12, 2001 waiting on our to do list.

Heckuva Job.

Listen to Lydia on Basham and Cornell Progressive Talk

WHY WE'RE ANGRY

Just got this letter from John Conley, the Marine combat Vet (who sent me his Purple Heart, God bless him!)

Dear Lyd,

What Imus said was inexcusable and deserving of decisive punishment, but more inexcusable to me is the ongoing urgency to completely destroy his life and the very positive things he and his wife have built to help kids fight cancer. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have both needed forgiveness in the past for racial slurs and incidents (Jackson with his anti-semitic "Hymietown" remark in describing New York City and Sharpton with the Tawana Brawley myth he rushed into and helped perpetuate.)........both incidents just as inciteful, if not more, than anything Don Imus has said or done.

In this case not only is there no forgiveness, but the punishment grossly outweighs the offense and a feeding frenzy has developed among bored journalists trying to uncover new excuses to hammer Imus even harder. The theory seems to be that If you want to prove you're not a racist, then step up and take your pound of flesh from Don Imus. I fear the pendulum is now swinging a little too far the other way.

John
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Part of being a public figure or celebrity means dealing with unsolicited opinions about yourself. On this blog as well as on others, I have been stung and hurt to the core by cruel, sexist comments. The first time it happened, my cheeks stung and I burst into tears, feeling lower than I had in my entire life. I can't imagine what these young Rutgers women must have felt like after working hard to get to college, to earn their place on the Rutgers team, to make it to the finals — only to be dismissed as whores (no matter the catchy slang, "ho's" means one thing and applies to the worst thing men can call women.) Black women have it harder than any other group; they have been marginalized, forsaken, forgotten and maligned and yet they have such dignity and innate beauty in the face of unbearable hardship.

Imus lost his MSNBC show, a signal that sexist, racist hate-speak will not be tolerated on the public airwaves. But much worse than Imus on any given day, are Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage — who also have their own shows. They systematically engage in hate-speak and Nationally syndicated Clear Channel radio host Glen Beck has actually sent out screaming death wishes to certain Democrats he hates. He called hurricane survivors in New Orleans "scumbags," and said he "hates" 9-11 families: "I didn't think I could hate victims faster than the 9-11 victims. (More below, but first this...)

Please Go back and listen to Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly's shows. Every single day, they provoke people to hate their fellow man, to hate anyone who is not pro-Bush, pro-war labeling peacemakers as traitors. Every other word out of their mouths conveys their disgust for perceived liberal bias, for human rights groups, environmentalists, liberals, gays, Muslims, women's groups, feminists, "Hollywood" Democracts and their fellow man.

Is this kind of hate-mongering good for America? Is the politics of personal destruction good for America? Does anyone know the truth about the "Swift Boat Veterans" who ruined John Kerry? Did the media ever get the word out that the man behind this campaign was a completely deranged individual who was caught lying and posting threats on blogs -- and had no credibility whatsoever? I will post the truth you missed in my next thread.

On all these political talk shows, every single pundit, except for Keith Olbermann — are raving right wingers. Chris Matthews aside, there are no other intelligent, Progressive or Democrat-leaning talk show pundits with thoughtful, reasoned voices -- such as Paul Waldman or Scott Ritter or Robert Dreyfuss or Arianna Huffington. The list is endless. We have so many wonderfully intelligent people that could be talk show hosts, yet we get these sinister loud-mouths who dumb America down such as Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh.. and of course Bill O'Reilly, one of the most hateful hypocrites on the public airwaves. Why are they still on the air? They take glee in stirring up hatred. What a tragedy for America. We need to become a softer, kinder nation. We need to come together and see each other with fresh eyes. We are all one race, and we are all flawed.

BUSH LIED, THOUSANDS DIED and are dying ....WHY?
In case you didn't know the reasons most Americans are so upset with Bush, here is a brilliant article that describes how we feel. This is an an article by Paul Waldman, Senior Fellow at Media Matters and author of "It's Not Enough to Be Right: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success." We had him on our show a few weeks ago. Don't forget, this Saturday morning at 9 AM PST we're honored to have Congressman Charlie Rangle, who has been serving America for over 30 years. He's a great wit, and a man with such a keen eye and big heart. He's on CNN and MSNBC almost every week.

ALL THE RAGE
There's No Denying it, we Progressives are Angry
by Paul Waldman

We can’t deny it any longer. There’s no point in hiding it, no point in trying to explain it away. Yes, it’s true: We progressives are angry. And we no longer care if the centrist, moderate guardians of the establishment scold us for it.

Our anger is not just some vague feeling whose source we can’t put our finger on. It isn’t based on absurd conspiracy theories and it isn’t illogical.

We’re angry because of what has happened to our country, because of how we’ve been treated, and because of the innumerable crimes the conservatives have committed. We’re angry at the president, we’re angry at the Congress, we’re angry at the news media. And we have every right to be.

Yes, we’re angry at George W. Bush. We’re not angry at him because of who he sleeps with, and we’re not angry at him because we think he represents some socio-cultural movement we didn’t like 40 years ago, or because he hung out with a different crowd than we did in high school. We’re angry at him because of what he’s done.

It’s true, we don’t like the fact that the most powerful human being on the planet is such a ridiculous buffoon that he can’t put two coherent sentences together without beginning to giggle and shimmy his shoulders. But we’re not angry because we think he’s stupid, we’re angry because he treats us as though we’re stupid. We’re angry that he lied to us, and lied to us and lied to us again. We’re angry that when he lies to us it isn’t because he’s caught up in scandal or got caught doing something he shouldn’t have, it’s part of a carefully constructed plan to fool the public.

Yes, we’re angry about Iraq, and we may be for the rest of our lives. We get angry every day when we open our newspapers and see the photo of another young soldier who died for this, another one maimed for life, another one with a tormented and broken soul. We’re angry about the couple of trillion dollars this war will cost. We’re angry about the thousands of young men around the world have been driven into the arms of al Qaeda, who have decided to devote their lives to killing Americans because of this war. We’re angry about the thousands upon thousands of Iraqis who have died in the orgy of bloodshed we unleashed, and the living too, those whom we said we were coming to “liberate,” but who now find themselves in a suffocating, endless miasma of fear and misery and death.

We’re angry that when we talk about ending this monstrous war, the soulless hypocrites who are glad to send more and more men and women to be scarred and maimed and killed in Iraq have the gall to accuse us of not “supporting the troops.” We’re angry that people whose actions exhibit nothing but contempt for freedom and liberty and justice, who wouldn’t know real patriotism if it came up and smacked them across the face, pin a little flag on their lapel and say that we’re the ones who hate America.

We’re angry because people who said the Iraqis would greet us as liberators, who said Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were good buddies, who said this nightmare of a war would bring a flowering of democracy across the Middle East—this band of idiots, the Kristols and the Krauthammers and the Kagans and the Kondrackes, is treated as “serious” and “credible” on matters of national security, while those of us who were right about the war are dismissed as some sort of fringe whose ideas are too silly to listen to.

We’re angry that America may now be the only country in the world in which torture is an officially sanctioned policy, proclaimed proudly in public. We’re angry that in our name prisoners are subjected to sleep deprivation, water boarding and other forms of psychological torture to the point where they are literally driven mad. We’re angry that the president has decided, over 750 times, that if Congress passes a law and he doesn’t like it, he’ll just ignore it. We’re angry that this administration has argued over and over, in public and in court, that if the president does it, it’s not illegal. We’re angry that they tell us we have to shred our freedoms in order to be safe, and that so many of our fellow citizens shrug their shoulders and think it’s no big deal.

And we’re angry that Bush has made our nation so hated around the world. We’re angry that the next time a Democrat gets elected, most of their time will be spent cleaning up the god-awful mess Bush has made of everything.

We’re angry that we and our children and our grandchildren will have to keep paying off the nation’s debt, which now stands at nearly $9 trillion. We’re angry because every other industrialized country in the world has a single-payer health care system that works, and we pay more for ours than any of them, yet we have 45 million people with no health insurance. We’re angry that the insurance companies have convinced their obedient servants in Congress that the Rube Goldberg perpetual paperwork machine we have now is somehow “the best health care in the world” and preferable to a system in which you go to your doctor, get treated and go home, without having to fill out 10 forms and get down on your knees before the gods of the HMO bureaucracy to get a partial repayment minus your deductible and your co-pay.

We’re angry that the federal government is brimming with people fundamentally opposed to the mission of the agencies over which they preside, the anti-environmentalists who run the Interior department, the mining company lobbyists in charge of mine safety and the union-busters in charge of worker safety. We’re still angry about Hurricane Katrina, that our government left thousands of its citizens stranded to suffer and die, while the president thought that the guy presiding over the disastrous failure was doing a heckuva job. We’re angry that our government sends religious fundamentalists around the world to discourage condom use, thus condemning untold numbers of people to unwanted pregnancy, disease and death.

We’re angry that forty years after the Voting Rights Act, the Republican Party continues to exploit racism and do everything in its power to stop black people from voting in each and every election. We’re angry that in the richest country in the world we can’t seem to find our way to a system in which you go to the polls, cast your ballot and know that it will be counted. And yes, we’re still angry about what happened in Florida in 2000, that through lying and cheating and pure luck the Republicans were able to steal a presidential election, and five unprincipled partisans on the Supreme Court helped them do it. We’re angry that every time we look at Al Gore all that pain and frustration and outrage comes bubbling up through our guts no matter how hard we try to “get over it.”

We’re angry that some of the most powerful people in America see nothing wrong with getting down on their knees to kiss the rings of radical clerics espousing a theology as maniacal as any on earth. We’re angry that we have to endure lecture after lecture on “family values” from people who rush from their pulpits, whether in church or in Congress or on cable chat shows, to a motel room to give in to their desires and revel in their transgression before rushing back to those pulpits to wag a finger in all our faces with talk of sin. We’re angry that people whose souls are so twisted by hate and shame they make John Winthrop look like Wavy Gravy have the nerve to tell us how to live “moral” lives.

We’re angry that when some pompous fool who less than a decade ago demanded that Bill Clinton be impeached in order to demonstrate our fealty to the “rule of law” comes on television to explain how Scooter Libby’s perjury and obstruction of justice mean nothing and he must immediately be pardoned, Wolf Blitzer doesn’t say, “Get out of this studio, you contemptible hypocrite, and don’t ever come back.”

We’re angry because a repellent ghoul like Ann Coulter can regularly advocate the murder of people with whom she has political differences, yet continue to get invited on the Today Show. We’re angry that journalists who ought to know better tut-tut progressive bloggers for using dirty words but don’t blink an eye when conservatives spew forth the most abominable hatred and calls for violence that one could imagine.

We’re angry that there is not a single show on cable news in which a progressive is given an hour to spout off his or her opinions, but that privilege is given to the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck and John Gibson and Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough and all the other two-bit electronic hucksters of phony aggrievement.

We’re angry because snake-oil salesmen like William Donohue— despite being an anti-Semitic homophobe —can issue a press release expressing patently phony outrage about something somebody said, and get the mainstream press to jump like trained dogs. We’re angry because a band of liars like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth can hoodwink the media into doing their dirty work for them. We’re angry because every despicable Republican attack gets recycled as knowing, arched-eyebrow commentary by “mainstream” commentators.

Those are a few of the things we’re angry about, and yes, that’s a lot of anger. But you know what? There’s nothing wrong with being angry. Anger is the appropriate reaction to moral outrages, to crimes against our common humanity, to the actions of those who would turn our country into something twisted and ugly.

Paul Waldman is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and the author of the new book, "Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Can Learn From Conservative Success."
© 2007 TomPaine.com

From Lydia: I struggle with my anger toward Bush and I pray for him to gain wisdom, compassion and to truly understand the Christ Truth. As a mother of young sons, I feel such agony over the deaths of our soldiers — young kids barely out of high school — and I am so horrified at Bush's arrogance, that he doesn't seem to care about human life. I am most upset that Bush proclaims he's a Christian, yet persists in doing the exact opposite of the Great Peacemaker's teachings. The "anti-Christ" means "evil in the mind of man; evil in human thought." I do not believe in a physical "anti-Christ" but Bush and the pro-war politicians, including misguided evangelical leaders such as John Hagee, Tim LaHaye and Pat Robertson represent the anti-Christ thought on earth right now; of this I have no doubt. Research how they are connected to White Supremacists. Jesus himself called the religious leaders, the pharisees a "brood of vipers" and got very angry with them. We are angry with Bush for his wanton destruction of lives and our democracy.

But I know that thinking the worst of Bush, or anyone, never helps them. We have to send love to those who are in the dark, that have lost their way. We need to see the good in people, even those we think are evil, becaues there is no power in evil except that which we give it with our thoughts. This is prayer: seeing the good in others so overwhelmingly that our vision of them actually changes the situation. Even with terrorists, dictators, "deciders" — and in the environment, world affairs, financial crises — it works for our worst enemies. It's written in the New Testament, in red lettering.