Zepp - The Putsch for War

Another good one from Zepp.

The Putsch for War
Never mind the catastrophes; something’s gotta save his legacy and the GOP
Bryan Zepp Jamieson

http://www.mytown.ca/zepp

1/13/08

The radio station was playing “Knee Deep in the Big Muddy, and the Big Fool Said to ‘Push On’” the other day.

You don’t hear it very often, this song that the Smothers Brothers turned into a hymn against the Vietnam war. When radio stations play it, the local bucketheads, those ignorant pseudo-patriots of the far right, yammer that it’s not “patriotic” and if the station is owned by Clear Channel, they cave to the toy nazis.

Still, we’re at a point where even the bucketheads are having second thoughts about a third occupation of a distant land where we are not wanted. The first two haven’t exactly covered America in glory, what with torture and abuse of the civilian population and the disgraceful antics of the contemptible Halliburton.

Millions of Americans flocked to the admin propaganda that the surge was working and peace was coming, and firmly ignored the inner, more truthful voice that told them the occupations were still a quagmire and the reduction in violence was only a passing thing. Not that the GOP benefitted from that; it just allowed people the luxury of noticing just how badly they had been screwed by the GOP economic policies over the past generation. They can’t use their usual wedge issues, because religion will send their base to Huckabee, race will be seen as an attack on Obama, sexism an attack on Hillary, and xenophobia will wipe out what’s left of their Hispanic base (which used to be very Republican until they realized that when Republicans said “illegal immigrants” they usually meant “anyone with brown skin”). So war it is!

The GOP realizes that they lose if people focus on the war, and because they’ve fucked up nearly everything else, they will lose if people focus on anything else instead.

So the GOP needs a new, fresh war that they can pretend is glorious and winnable and will fill people with patriotic resolve and a desire not to change asses in midstream. They don’t mind some death and carnage and another trillion dollars wasted as long as they can maintain control.

So we had that absurd Gulf of Tonkin II last week, in which some motorboats swerved near some American destroyers (as they often do) and an eerie, disembodied voiced (which sounded Iranian in much the same way that Queen Elizabeth II sounds Mexican) threatened the warships. It happened on the same day that the NSA came out and admitted the Gulf of Tonkin incident some 44 years ago was a complete fabrication. Even party diehards had trouble convincing themselves that maybe the government was telling the truth this time.

Putsch went to the middle east, supposedly to work on the road map to peace. There wasn’t much chance he would get anywhere with that, but it did give him the opportunity to suck up to the Israelis. By pulling two major gaffes in the first few days, he probably reassured his Israeli hosts that yes, their boy in the White House was still a docile idiot. He called for Israel to end the occupation of Palestine, which would have doubtlessly embarrassed his hosts if it weren’t for the fact that the media would play it down, Putsch was, after all, an idiot, and if anyone pointed out that Israel never admitted they were occupying anyone else’s land, they could simply point out that America was doing the same thing in Iraq.

Then he teared up at a Holocaust memorial museum and said that he would have bombed Auschwitz. It was the kind of remark a teary drunk in a bar might utter, but it was a disturbing reminder of just how stupid and ignorant the American commander-in-chief was of even basic military tactics.

So it was the usual; president travels to a sensitive spot, opens mouth, makes major fool of himself. Business as usual. If there was a surprise, it was that the images of the Holocaust could have any emotional impact on Putsch. Maybe he is drinking again, at that.

Now, the IAEA report had pretty much destroyed the case for war against Iran. They came right out and said that Iran wasn’t working on WMDs, and every intelligence agency in the world except Israel’s backed them up on that.

With a rational regime, that would have been the end of it. Republicans would have had to pin their election hopes on another 9/11, or the Democrats making OJ Simpson their nominee.

But Putsch has never seen a press for war he couldn’t support 100%.

Thus it was he came out yesterday and said that Iran is threatening the security of the world, and that the United States and Arab allies must join together to confront the danger “'before it's too late.” He went on to say that his perspective victim, Iran, “is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.”

Apparently in Putschworld, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan simply don’t exist.

He still wants war, and his party needs a “good war” and they are still pressing for it. Are Americans stupid enough to be fooled by this man a third time?

But he retains the gift of telling breathtaking, absurd lies of magnificent scope and no trace of self-awareness. For example, in his speech praising war with Iran, Putsch said, “'You cannot expect people to believe in the promise of a better future when they are jailed for peacefully petitioning their government, and you cannot stand up a modern, confident nation when you do not allow people to voice their legitimate criticisms.”

At the same time he was saying this, police were hauling two schoolteachers from the National Archives Building where they were viewing an original copy of the US Constitution. Their crime?

They were wearing T-shirts that read “Impeach Bush and Cheney.”

Just another example of how Putsch has turned America into “a strong, confident nation”...

http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/My%20Town%20Essays/putschwar.htm