Where I Stand on Economic Collapse These Days

Well, damn, here it is nearly two full years since my unfortunate enforced break from blogging and the economic collapse that had been one of my favorite subjects hasn't happened yet--nor does it appear to be at all imminent. In fairness to me, back during the epic debates about slow versus fast crash circa 2008-2009 in online Peak Oil forums, particularly the old Life After the Oil Crash forum, I was firmly in the camp with the slow crashers, stating at the time that I thought America (and by extension the modern Western world) would limp along until some time in the middle to late 2020s before the bottom really fell out. I still see no reason to alter that prediction, though I will admit that the oil industry has been far more successful in exploiting so-called "tight" oil fields like Bakken than I ever expected. Thanks largely to oil shale exploitation and fracking, America is right now experiencing an oil "boom" that has the cornucopians confidently predicting that we will soon surpass Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world's top oil producer.

Other Peak Oil writers such as John Michael Greer have done a terrific job of explaining why the fracking industry is just another massive economic bubble waiting to pop and kick the economy in the balls once again. I won't rehash all of their excellent work, other than to point out that if fracking was really going to "save" a highly hydrocarbon dependent economy built on the premise of cheap oil forever, how come gasoline has been priced at well over $3.00 a gallon for several years now?

I mentioned in yesterday's post that the first minute cracks are beginning to appear in the foundation of America's body politic that are indicators of a coming political disintegration such as James Howard Kunstler first suggested in The Long Emergency. And if one casts their gaze overseas, one can see even more evidence that political disintegration is becoming even more of a word wide issue as more and more nation-states, many with artificial borders created by the Western imperial powers in the previous century, are beginning to break down or otherwise fail.

Somalia turned out to leading indicator by collapsing into total anarchy back in the early 1990s. Congo followed suit a few years later with a multisided, internal war starting after it's despicable dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, fell in 1997 that was so deadly it claimed the lives of millions and has even been referred to as the Great War for Africa. Moving forward, South Sudan finally separated itself from the fanatical Islamic freaks running the show up in Khartoum, only to almost immediately disintegrate into its own nasty little civil war. Ukraine is in flames as ethnic Russian separatists battle that country's puppet NATO government for the right to succeed, and now ISIS has risen up from the wastelands of Syria and Iraq to erase the border between those two countries as it battles for control of both of them. Heck, even Scotland is about to take a vote as to whether to become independent from the UK and as of this writing the outcome is expected to be very close one way or the other.

What every one of these conflicts have in common is that each are fueled by the desire of a whole lot of people to not want to be governed by anyone who is not of the same ethnicity, tribe or religion (or even a different sect within the same religion) as they are. Can't we all just "get along?" that great philosopher and poet, Rodney King, once supposedly asked. Sorry, Rodney, but the answer would appear to be, "fuck no."

For me the most interesting recent development here at home was that public opinion poll a couple of months ago which showed that Americans were at their most politically divided since just before the Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression for you Southern patriots/separatists out there). Which I know is true, but I nevertheless have to shake my head in amazement at just how successful the power elite's divide-and-conquer strategy has been in this country since Reagan first got elected 34 years ago.

It's quite brilliant, really. For a generation-and-a-half, wages and quality of life in this country have been under relentless assault by a tiny group of billionaires and Wall Street tycoons who use their fortunes and control of the vast media empires to manipulate the election of a combination of rabid Republicans and compliant corporatist Democrats. This unholy cabal has done a brilliant job of manipulating everyone not in their own tax bracket into getting all foaming at the mouth about issues such as gay marriage, the pledge of allegiance, flag burning, abortion, contraception, etc., that they personally couldn't give a flying fuck about just so long as there is no political interference in their efforts to offshore jobs, slash wages, cut benefits and pauperize virtually every American worker but for a small cadre they need to carry out their bidding. Every once in awhile I get the perverse desire to stand up and slowly applaud at the sheer successful audacity of it all.

But it won't last forever. Sooner or later the scum that has risen to take total control of America will begin to lose their grip, mostly because they are so damn greedy that they don't seem to realize that a smarter strategy that would allow the party to last a bit longer would be to temper the looting of the economy ever so slightly and throw a few more crumbs to the lumpen proletariat. Thanks to their mass media lapdogs the idiots are compliantly eating the scraps out of their hands, but what happens when all the idiots have their flat screen teevees repossessed?

Given the above, I'm starting to believe that America may pull itself apart politically even before oil production plummets, although all the NSA spying and militarization of local police departments prove that the elites are going to do everything they can short of sharing the wealth to prevent it from happening. Thus am I standing by my prediction of the mid-to-late 2020s as a likely dates for collapse to really be underway, which would put it happening just after the end of Hillary's second term.

And if I'm wrong and the cancer hasn't yet come back and killed me, you can feel free to drop by here and mock me all you want.


Bonus: "It's shite being Scottish."

It is What it IS

Okay, I have REALLY had it with all these ragged looking, religious extremist back country hicks demanding that everyone who refuses to conform and worship God EXACTLY the same way they do be exterminated like cockroaches. These people are CLEARLY a threat to our American way of life, and President Hopey-Changey needs to stop being such a spineless, spluttering little pansy-boy and sic our ginormous military on them post-haste.

Oh, wait a minute, did you think I was referring to ISIS (or ISIL or IS or Whatever-the-fuck-it-IS?)? No silly, I was talking about Phil Robertson and his merry band of drooling, ZZ Top-wannabe troglodytes.

It's at about this point in the program that the Internet's vast legion of armchair warriors gets itself worked up into a rabid froth and begins firing off bile laden comments about how it is the Mooslim fundamentalist whack jobs from ISIS who are running around lopping off heads of anyone they deem an infidel and posting videos of the executions on You Tube for your entertainment. All poor ol' Phil was doing in that Hannity interview, they would argue, was exercising his God-given First Amendment right of freedom of expression.

Fair point. Okay, for the moment I'll take back my facetious call for military action against the Duck Dynasty. After all, there is a BIG difference between committing hideous acts of violence and merely spouting virulently violent rhetoric on national teevee, right?

Well, maybe not that much.

Let's examine for just a moment who Phil Robertson is. Beyond being a self-professed fundamentalist Christian, Robertson has a net worth of around $15 million that is the result of both his hunting apparel business and his reality television show. In other words, he is despite his apparent fanaticism one of the LEAST likely guys in the world to go out beheading reporters and risking having a predator drone dropped on his rich-ass head.

On the other side of this equation are the mostly anonymous ISIS fighters, who these past few months have been rolling up Iraqi and Syrian controlled enclaves even faster than they have the heads of kidnapped American reporters. But think for just a moment about who the ISIS guys actually are: mostly dirt poor young Sunni males who until recently were living under the oppressive Assad and Maliki regimes and whose life choices came down to either whiling away their days tending goats under a blistering hot desert sun for a few dinars a day, or joining up with the local militia boys and being handed AK-47s to go tear-assing around the countryside blowing away soldiers of those very same regimes that had had their boot heels so firmly placed upon their collective necks.

So which choice do YOU think they were gonna make? If you said "goat herder," you fail and clearly need to be sent back to retake Basic Fundamentals of Human Nature 101 all over again. It's a well worn cliche to say that when people got nothing, they got nothing to lose, and few people on this here old Earth have less to lose right now than your average Muslim living in those unfortunate Middle East and South Asian states that have been ripped apart by more than a decade of unbridled American and NATO militarism--to say nothing of a century's worth of exploitative Western imperialism.

But hey, let's flip this narrative over for a minute and imagine that it was Phil Robertson and his clan who had had the misfortune of being born Sunni down in old Mosul. And let's take it a step further and imagine that it was instead a handful of ISIS fighters who had been lucky enough to be born Christian on the Bayou, where the humidity may be high but one at LEAST generally has recourse to the rule of law, especially if one has managed to build a small fortune and can afford to sue rather than shoot their enemies. NOW who do you suppose is going to be rolling heads through the desert sands like zombie bowling balls versus who'll be raking in millions from their duck calls, parading around like circus freaks on their stupid reality teevee show and for some reason being asked to go on a national "news" network so some idiotic airhead can ask them to opine about world events?

It is about at this point in the essay that I imagine at least a few of you are thinking, "hey, Bill, who really gives a flying FUCK what Phil Robertson has to say?" Well, if these were "normal" times in America I'd agree 100%. But as I've pointed out so often on this blog, these interesting times of ours are anything but normal. America has for years now been skating along the edge of the economic precipice just waiting for SOMETHING to shove the country over into the abyss of at least partial economic collapse. And when the day finally does come in which either that happens, or enough Americans see their livelihoods ripped away from them that the country reaches political critical mass, what do you suppose the millions of heavily armed Americans who heard what Brother Phil said and thought "you're God damned right!" are gonna do?

America as a political entity is already beginning to splinter, just as James Howard Kunstler predicted it would in The Long Emergency, as evidenced from such events as the Ferguson riots and the various secession movements around the country advocating separation from certain states or even the U.S. itself. When it starts to actually break apart things are going to get ugly in a hurry for minorities, gays and even women, and many Americans are going to wake up and suddenly find themselves living in a dystopian world little better than the one those unfortunate civilians in the ISIS occupied territories are currently residing in.

I deplore Phil Robertson's comments for their obvious blind bigotry, hatred and sheer fucking ignorance. But what's worse is the fact that his hate filled words were not universally condemned from the moment he closed his mouth after uttering them. Sadly, what they represent is yet another weather vane pointing to which way the wind is currently blowing in our very broken body politic.

Ironically, by funding the Syrian rebels against Assad our government stupidly created the conditions that has allowed ISIS to flourish, while at the same time its domestic policies of continually rewarding banksters and Wall Street while fucking the middle and working classes is slowly creating the conditions that may well someday allow intolerant, violent, ISIS-like extremist groups to flourish right here in the homeland.


Bonus: My papa said "son, don't let the man getcha...do what He done to me."

Smells Like 1968

The recent attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and the killing of Ambassador Christopher Stevens was just the highlight of a series of escalating violent demonstrations taking place outside U.S. embassies all across the Middle East and South Asia this past week. The attacks reportedly even spread all the way to the consulate in Channai, India, a country that is supposed to be a steadfast U.S. ally. Clearly, something is afoot in the world that goes far beyond mere popular outrage over an obscure, cheaply made anti-Muslim cinematic diatribe. Those condemning idiot pastor Terry Jones and the producer of the inflammatory low budget film are missing the point, for it is entirely likely that if it wasn’t this movie inflaming passions among the world’s Muslims it would probably be something else. The Jones-linked film merely represents the spark that set off an explosion that has been building up for a very long time.

In order to really understand what is going on in the Middle East right now, one must do what Americans are absolutely loathe to ever do—namely put themselves in the shoes of the average denizen of Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen or Pakistan. Eleven years ago, a tiny Muslim splinter group nestled in the caves of eastern Afghanistan pulled off a spectacular (and spectacularly lucky) terrorist attack on American soil in part because the administration of George W. Bush was (at best) completely asleep at the switch, and ever since that time the U.S. and its NATO allies have been engaged in a systematic campaign of collective punishment against the population of numerous Muslim countries while continuing to support brutal authoritarian dictatorships from Cairo to Riyadh.

For more than a decade, Muslims have had to stand by largely helpless while many of their fellow religionists, most guilty of nothing worse than residing at the wrong place at the wrong time, have been slaughtered as America has taken its chunk of flesh in retaliation for 9/11. And while it is true that many of the killings that have occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan have been at the hands of other Muslims, it was the American invasion and occupation of those two unfortunate countries that destabilized them and created the conditions for the massive amounts of violence and (in the case of Iraq) even ethnic cleansing that have been occurring there.

Looking back over this sad, sorry recent history, the wonder isn’t that our embassies are being attacked but that all this didn’t start happening sooner. It’s like all of the green-on-blue shootings that have been going on in Afghanistan lately in which our so-called military “leaders” are shocked, SHOCKED to discover that after more than a decade of occupation even supposedly friendly Afghanis would like to see us gone and are willing take their chances against the Taliban, who may be brutal thugs but at least look, dress, speak and worship as they do and don’t randomly drop drone missiles on assorted wedding parties.

It is particularly telling that the worst violence to date has erupted in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, three countries where the U.S. either stood aside while their longtime dictators fell or gave them an active shove. While abandoning the pro-Western Mubarak in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia probably would not have been the U.S. government’s preferred choice of action, we were at least smart enough to recognize that the Arab Spring had gathered far too much momentum to smother. We were just hoping to contain it short of the Arabian Peninsula, and for a while it looked like we might have succeeded without drawing too much popular ire upon ourselves.

Not anymore. The irony of all this is that it is happening on the watch of President Hopey-Changey, who has tried so hard in recent years to play the “good cop” representing America’s brutal foreign policies to Bush and Cheney’s “bad cop.” Obama has just learned that there is an absolute limit to how much sunshine you can blow up the skirts of a certain group of people to try and deflect attention from your bad acts against them before they get fed up and tell you to go fuck yourself. One could make a comparison of how decades of American support for the vile Shah of Iran blew up on the watch of President Jimmy Carter, but Carter at least did more than just pay lip service to respecting human rights.

So where is all of this headed? Time will tell, of course, but we should not underestimate just how ominous these developments are for the continuation of American hegemony in the Middle East and South Asia. Obama’s political advisors must be sweating bullets right now as short of a major market meltdown before election day, which with Benny and the InkJets just announcing the latest round of quantitative easing seems highly unlikely, the one “October surprise” that could unseat the incumbent is the eruption of region-wide anti-American conflagration in the middle of the planet’s most important oil fields. In fact, this whole mess seems to have real “Tet Offensive Potential,” in that it could be the “unexpected” foreign policy event that ends up driving a warmongering Democratic president from power (to also be replaced by a Republican who may be even worse, but that, as they say, is a whole ‘nother story). Obama, it seems, is about to discover that it takes more than just a lot of fancy-but-empty rhetoric and the symbolism of being the first black president to keep blinding people to the unpleasant realities of America’s seemingly endless imperial wars.


Bonus: "I shall not seek...and I will not accept...the nomination of my party for another term as your president"

The War Nerd Explains Why Obama Gets So Little "Credit" for His Warmongering

You almost have to feel for President Hopey-Changey. No matter how many innocent civilians he butchers in pursuit of a foreign policy that in its way is even more bloodthirsty than Chimpy Bush's, he just doesn't ever seem to get the credit as evidenced by the way that Willard tried to used the killing of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens to score political points against him this past week.

So why is that, exactly? Well, Gary Brecher, author of the always entertaining and informative War Nerd column for The Exiled, explains it in an essay published on this most recent September 11th. The whole thing is well worth a read, but here is the relevant excerpt:

When you look back at Obama’s wars, you get a pretty clear idea what went wrong over the last four years. It wasn’t the way Obama’s team handled the wars. Truth is, they did damn well at that, better than I ever thought they would.

The real problem is that they don’t know what world they’re living in. These are people who’ve spent their lives getting straight A’s, collecting gold stars, avoiding mistakes. And they think war is just like all those other little hurdles you face in life.

That’s why they’ll never get credit for any of it. They have this delusion that sanity matters, and they’ve run their wars as sanely and boringly as an exterminator going after termites.

It’s sensible, it’s semi-effective, and it irritates the life out of the 99%. I don’t mean the Occupy 99%, all those “goodhearted ordinary Americans”; that’s a totally made-up imaginary species invented by people just as naive as Obama’s crew. I mean the real 99% of us living our rotten lives out there, mean and dumb and miserable, just waiting for some gore we can really get behind.

Obama just doesn’t understand his job as war chief of this big crazy tribe. A war chief doesn’t have to win; only a wonk’s view of the world would see things that way. A war chief has to look like a war chief and talk like one. And yell a lot. Obama just can’t manage that, and when he tries, he makes us feel stupid. He embarrasses us, trying to sing along to a tune you know he thinks is just dumb.

It’s a shame in a way, because his war wonks did a pretty good job actually running the wars. I like to think of them grumbling about it now, a bunch of youngish dressy-casual technocrats drowning their sorrows in frappucinos at some suburban DC Starbucks, counting off their so-what accomplishments: “We got out of Iraq … not one American killed there this year; we took down Qaddafi without one single American casualty; we killed bin Laden right in front of the Pakistani Army and got away with it; what does a C-in-C have to do to get a little respect around here?”

The answer is: He has to look convincing when he holds our enemy’s head up on a stick and shows it to the crowd, all drippy and drawing flies. That’s what we want, and Obama, with all that creepy self-control, is the last guy you’d pick for that job.

It was obvious, after he ordered the hit on bin Laden. For ten years Americans had been seeing that big long bearded face in their dreams, blasting it on gun-range targets, printing it on toilet paper, waiting for the big day when we could see the bastard in a pool of his own blood.

And boom, at last, Osama was dead. On Obama’s watch. Whoo-hoo! Let the victory parades begin!

Except there weren’t any. I remember real well the weird queasy hush after bin Laden died. Nobody ever tells the truth in this country, so nobody could talk about why Obama never got the cheers he expected, but we all know why. It’s simple: There are two tribes in America and neither one was in a mood to cheer. Obama’s liberal fans couldn’t cheer because they have some taboo about parading around with your enemy’s head on a stick. They think it’s crude or something, “a regrettable necessity”—you know that NYT editorial jabber they use.

And the other tribe, the flyover state white glob I come from, would sooner comp bin Laden a suite in Vegas than give Obama any creds for taking him down. They sulked through it like a confused, hungover Pillsbury doughboy; the way they saw it, Obama got bin Laden on a technicality. There’s always been a lot of Osama/Obama blur in the way they see things, and they might’ve been happier if it’d been Osama zapping that snotty Hawaiian instead of the other way around.

War always comes down to demographics — even this slow cold war we’re having in the US now. And Obama is stuck in the crotch of big demographic forked stick, between the sullen majority and the queasy coastals. The coastals don’t want a war chief, and the sullen doughboys can’t see him in the job.

As for me, admitted antiwar zealot that I am, I really don't know which aspect of Obama is more appalling...that he is as big a thug as Bush and Cheney, or that he is so damn cool about it. But go ahead, Democrats, keep convincing yourselves that he is morally superior to Willard Mitt Romney so you can spend the next four grueling years in just as much denial as you've spent the past four.


Bonus: "And now you do what they told ya, now you're under control"

Gary Johnson Hates Liberty and Freedom

Quick question: which of the current candidates running for President of the United States issued the following statement last year on the 10th anniversary of 9/11?

“As we all pause this weekend to remember the events of September 11, 2001, our thoughts are with those who lost their lives, those who saved so many lives, and a nation that showed its greatness in countless ways. 9/11 and the days after were a time when ordinary Americans did extraordinary things. Our thoughts and our gratitude are also with the amazing men and women of our military who are putting themselves on the line every day to keep us safe. The fight against those who would do us harm continues today, and it is a fight we must carry out with the same determination that was so magnificently displayed by the heroes of 9/11.

“America is about liberty. Ten years ago, liberty was attacked. To those who lost their lives and those many more whose lives were forever changed, our deep obligation is to insure that liberty prevails not just today, but for generations to come.”

So was it job-exporting, Wall Street oligarch Willard Mitt Romney? Or was it Patriot Act-loving, American-citizen assassinating President Hopey-Changey? Wrong, Natch. It was, in fact, Libertarian candidate for president and supposed lover of human freedom Gary Johnson.

Whatever else you may think about the events of 9/11, and I am not here to get into a debate about whether it was an inside job or anything like that, it must be stated that no singular event in American history has caused a greater curtailment of civil liberties and human freedom than our government's out of control reaction to it. Two unnecessary wars of choice that have massacred hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilians, the establsihment of concentration camp in Gunatanamo Bay, a world wide campaign of assassination without trial, the acceptance of torture as a legitimate use of government power, drone missile strikes abroad, drone surveillance at home and the enactment of the Patriot Act are merely the highlights of a systemic program representing a far greater attack on "liberty" than anything Osama bin Laden and his minions could have whipped up in their wildest dreams.

I've been on record here stating that I do not plan to participate in the upcoming sham election this November, but if I did go to the polls it would be to at least cast a ballot against the two oligarch-approved candidates by voting third party. With a statement like the one above, however, that could have come from one of the horrible speeches at the recently concluded Republican and Democratic National conventions, Gary Johnson has placed himself squarely on the side of our oppressors and thus is unworthy of support by anyone who REALLY cares about liberty.

So what should Governor Johnson have said instead? How about something along these lines:

"As we pause to remember the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States and to appreciate again the actions of the heroic first responders who gave their lives on that awful day, we must also reexamine ourselves and question whether our nation's collective response during this past decade to those attacks have been appropriate or consistent with a nation that supposedly values liberty.

"We must strive to curtail the abuse of liberty by immediately ending all foreign occupations, closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, vigorously prosecuting the use of torture, repealing the Patriot Act, ending assassinations without trial and stopping the use of drone missiles to carry out random attacks abroad and drone aircraft to conduct domestic surveillance. Only by respecting the human rights and dignity of all of the world's people and the Constitutional rights of our own citizens here at home may we possibly hope to maintain the ideals of liberty and freedom that the founders of this great nation bestowed upon us."

After all, if you can't trust the Libertarian Party to support liberty, whom can you trust?


Bonus: "Whether your state is red or is blue...always be wary of people who rule"

The Wars Come Home: Violent Sex Crimes Committed By Soldiers Have Almost Doubled

If you still need proof of just what a long term disaster America's war policies of the last decade have been for the country, consider this recent article from Reuters:

Violent sex crimes committed by active U.S. Army soldiers have almost doubled over the past five years, due in part to the trauma of war, according to an Army report released on Thursday.

Reported violent sex crimes increased by 90 percent over the five-year period from 2006 to 2011. There were 2,811 violent felonies in 2011, nearly half of which were violent felony sex crimes. Most were committed in the United States.

One violent sex crime was committed by a soldier every six hours and 40 minutes in 2011, the Army said, serving as the main driver for an overall increase in violent felony crimes.

Higher rates of violent sex crimes are "likely outcomes" of intentional misconduct, lax discipline, post-combat adrenaline, high levels of stress and behavioral health issues, the report said.

And here is proof that our top military brass can challenge any CEO in their ability to talk engage in FlackSpeak:

"While we have made tremendous strides over the past decade, there is still much work to be done," Army Vice Chief of Staff General Peter Chiarelli said in a statement.

"Many of our biggest challenges lie ahead after our soldiers return home and begin the process of reintegrating back into their units, families and communities," Chiarelli said.

Not to be insubordinate there, General, but it doesn't sound like you've made any fucking strides at all. In fact, it sounds very much like you are backsliding. Might this be because you and your general officer buddies care more about your own perks and cushy retirement gigs with defense war contractors than you do about the health and well being of the troops who follow your insane orders to go invade other countries who pose exactly zero military threat to America? Perish the thought.

So just how bad is this problem?

Violent sex crimes committed by U.S. Army troops increased at a rate that consistently outpaced the national trend, a gap that is expected to continue to grow, the Army said.

The top five violent felony offenses committed by soldiers in 2011 were aggravated assault, rape, aggravated sexual assault, forcible sodomy and child pornography.

Soldiers suffering from issues such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury, and depression have been shown to have higher incidences of partner abuse, according to the report.

Soldiers with PTSD are up to three times more likely to be aggressive with their female partners than those without such trauma, the report said.

Let's also knock off with the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder bullshit. As the late George Carlin once pointed out, it's called "shell shock." That's how you describe the condition in such a way that gets the point across. The initials PTSD actually sound like they are describing a form of venereal disease that needs not be taken seriously. Which is probably part of the reason why the military is able to get away with not taking it seriously. Thus the damaged soldiers are often left untreated and end up passing on the damage to the ones they love.


Bonus: "American have a lot of trouble dealing with reality"

Pat Buchanan: Shooting the Message Along With the Messenger

image: Pat Buchanan's running mate from the 2000 presidential election might not be from the demographic you would have expected

A lot of liberals and progressives were gloating this past week that longtime political commentator and 2000 Reform Party presidential candidate Pat Buchanan has apparently been suspended indefinitely from his pundit gig at MSNBC after writing some racially insensitive (at best) passages in his latest book. The ousting of Buchanan is actually quite reminiscent of the severe criticism current Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul is taking for similar writings that appeared in his weekly newsletter 20 years ago. Both Buchanan and Paul are old white guys who have been very successful in life and have never known what it’s like to have to overcome prejudice or people automatically dismissing you because of your race. Therefore, by treading into the rhetorical territory of speculating whether Americans of European ancestry, who have absolutely controlled and dominated the country’s culture and politics since the founding, are getting a raw deal because those of other races have made huge progress in closing those gaps, they have demonstrated their utter cluelessness on racial issues.

Before liberals and progressives get too cocky in denouncing Buchanan, however, they should pause for a moment and make sure they aren't just mindlessly dog piling on someone who actually does have some ideas they ought to be in agreement with. The biggest issue I have with the criticism leveled against Buchanan and Paul from the left is that they are often lumped together with the true know-nothings and troglodytes like Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santorum. For a group of people who often loudly denounce the opposition for its supposedly simplistic, black and white worldview, this shows a remarkable predilection to do exactly the same thing.

Ron Paul’s biggest attraction as a candidate, and what generates passionate support among many of his supporters, is his strong and consistent antiwar stance. Indeed, the aforementioned Rick Santorum even criticized Paul recently for having the same foreign policy positions as Dennis Kucinich, as if that’s supposed to be an insult. I first became aware of Paul back when he was regularly writing editorials for Antiwar.com against unfettered American militarism as George Bush the Lesser was still riding high in the polls and the Iraq debacle had yet to lose public support. But guess who was right there along with him, and in fact probably wrote more articles for Antiwar.com during that time period than Paul? That’s right, Pat Buchanan. Say what you will about Buchanan’s latent racism, at least he is not prepared to exercise it with a drone missile.

Buchanan has also been one of the lonely voices out there in the wilderness, especially on the right, decrying the so-called “free” trade agreements that have utterly gutted the American working class and are now wreaking havoc on the middle class as well. Not only was free trade and opposition to NAFTA an issue Buchanan wielded against Bob Dole when he challenged the hatchet man from Kansas for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination, it was also what allowed him to secure the Reform Party nomination four years later after Ross Perot had faded from the scene.

So here you have a prominent antiwar voice, who also opposes at least one of the major economic policies that is impoverishing the 99% on behalf of the 1%, and yet he is still being treated on the left as if he is no better than Dick Cheney himself. It almost makes you wonder if the outrage against Buchanan is genuine, or whether it is at least partly generated by the guilty knowledge that on these critical issues Buchanan is far preferable to many of their own so-called “leaders,” most particularly President Hopey-Changey and his warmongering Secretary of State. One is black, of course, and the other is female, but that doesn’t in any way make their slavish devotion to big business, war and empire any less odious. In fact, what it proves is that given a chance, minorities and women are just as capable of perpetrating monstrous policies on behalf of the elites as any old white guy.

It is so typical in the public discourse these days to use one particular comment or policy position of a prominent individual in order to utterly discredit them across the board as if, unlike any other person you could name, they cannot be right about some things and wrong about others. Think about someone in your own life with whom you share a similar mindset. Do you agree with them completely on every single issue? Because if you do that is, in my experience, an extremely rare circumstance. It’s unfortunate that it is so hard to find liberal and progressive commentators and politicians whose stance against globalization, militarism and imperialism is as strong and unwavering as Pat Buchanan’s, but the fault there lies with the fact that so many people on the left choose to support complete sellouts rather than people with actual principles.

The fact is you can split the politicians and the punditocracy into two different categories, those who have been completely co-opted by the corporatocracy and those who have not been. Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul are actually two of the rare examples of those who bravely stand in the latter category. Do they deserve to be criticized for their more odious pronouncements and positions, particularly about racial issues? Sure they do. But before accepting any such criticisms at face value, one must always consider who it is who is leveling the criticism and whether they themselves are on the other side of that cavernous divide between those who speak for the 99% and those who do so for the 1%.


Bonus: My man Louis CK has a much more palatable way than Pat Buchanan of saying how great it is to be white

Jonathan Alter: Warmongering Douchebag

I've stated before on this blog that I was opposed to the Iraq War from the very beginning. As such, I remember having passionate arguments with some of my conservatives friends and colleagues in early 2003 during the run-up to the invasion. The war didn't turn out exactly as I and others who were opposed to it predicted, but here were a few things I was certain of even back then:

1). That there was no connection between Saddam and Al-Qaeda.

2). That Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction (and that even if they did, they wouldn't be so foolish as to actually use them).

3). That the war would be a humanitarian disaster that was going to get many innocent people killed.

4). That it was all going to cost a shit-pot load of money.

Right there were four great reasons not to attack Iraq that anyone whose brain hadn't been short-circuited by an overdose of testosterone should have realized before the first shots were even fired. It was bad enough that the conservative/Republican drumbeat for war was deafening. But the really sick part was that so many Democrats/liberals--like Tom Friedman, Richard Cohen and Hillary Clinton--were right there with them. And now, as the American military ingloriously heads for the exits having failed to plant the seed of democracy in the middle of the Arab world, there hasn't been so much as an apology from any of these assholes for the utterly senseless death and destruction they themselves advocated.

All of which brings me to a recent article by Jonathan Alter of Newsweek in which he calls out the Republican presidential candidates for exhibiting collective amnesia on Iraq. Alter starts out with a reasonable assessment of the war's disastrous cost:

All U.S. ground troops will be out of Iraq by Dec. 31, and soon this sorry conflict will fade quietly into the past, the second-dumbest war in American history. Yet the Iraq War has been missing in action during the Republican presidential campaign.

Like “body counts,” “Khe Sanh” and “My Lai” from Vietnam, “IEDs,” “Fallujah” and “Abu Ghraib” are already meaningless to many younger Americans. Today’s young voters were preteens when the war began in 2003.

The forgetting will be faster than with Vietnam because Iraq never penetrated our consciousness in the same way — unless you were among the 30,000 who came back physically wounded or the more than 100,000 with psychological problems. If you add these 130,000 to the 4,500 dead and include the toll on their families, more than half a million Americans were directly affected by this war.

Our soldiers served with great courage, and they deserve respect (and jobs) when they return. But only now are we learning some of the chilling consequences of what took place. The New York Times revealed this week an internal report that details massacres of civilians in Haditha by U.S. forces. One U.S. officer, Major General Steve Johnson, described the killings as “a cost of doing business.”

Speaking of cost, the full price of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is at least $1 trillion, which President George W. Bush and the Republican Congress put on the credit card.

He goes on to chide the candidates for pretending like the war never happened:

One might imagine that having been colossally wrong about Iraq, the Republican front-runners would want to hire advisers who got it right. Nope. Gingrich says that John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, would be his secretary of state. In 1998, Bolton, who makes Donald Rumsfeld look like Michael Moore, was among the 18 signers of a Project for the New American Century letter that kicked off the movement for regime change in Iraq. Romney’s top foreign-policy adviser on the Middle East is Walid Phares, a stridently anti-Islamic lobbyist for Israel who pushed hard for the Iraq War by lumping in Saddam Hussein with Osama bin Laden and Yasser Arafat. Both foreign- policy “experts” are now leading the charge to invade Iran.

Sounds reasonable, right? Oh it's very reasonable, until you consider this passage:

Is Iraq better off? Yes, we removed Saddam Hussein, but the Arab Spring might have done that by now without us. The Iraqis viewed us as occupiers not liberators, and recently refused even a residual force of 10,000 U.S. troops to help protect them. The Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, heads the most pro- Iranian government in the Arab world, other than Syria. For all of the diplomatic niceties when he visited with President Barack Obama this week, Maliki has trampled on the rule of law and assumed quasi-dictatorial powers. Iraq is a democracy in name only.

If we knew in 2003 what we know now — about the absence of weapons of mass destruction, the cost in blood and treasure, the length of hostilities, the blow to American prestige — would we do it all again? Of course not. Even those like me who supported the war at the outset must admit the whole thing was a fiasco.

First of all, let me address the question as to whether Iraq is better off by saying, are you fucking kidding me? I've got over one hundred thousand dead civilians (no one really seems to know for sure exactly how many), an utterly devastated formerly modern infrastructure and a security situation so bad that Baghdad was recently rated the worst city in the world in which to live that says Alter is full of shit. Saddam was a bad guy, and jailed, tortured and murdered many of his own citizens, but what he wrought upon the country was nothing compared to what has happened since the invasion.

Juan Cole has a few more details:

Population of Iraq: 30 million.

Number of Iraqis killed in attacks in November 2011: 187

Percentage of Iraqis who lived in slum conditions in 2000: 17

Percentage of Iraqis who live in slum conditions in 2011: 50

Number of the 30 million Iraqis living below the poverty line: 7 million.

Number of Iraqis who died of violence 2003-2011: 150,000 to 400,000.

Orphans in Iraq: 4.5 million.

Orphans living in the streets: 600,000.

Number of women, mainly widows, who are primary breadwinners in family: 2 million.

Iraqi refugees displaced by the American war to Syria: 1 million

Internally displaced persons in Iraq: 1.3 million

Proportion of displaced persons who have returned home since 2008: 1/8

Rank of Iraq on Corruption Index among 182 countries: 175

It's easy for Alter to say Iraq is "better off." After all, its not like he ever got shot while approaching a traffic checkpoint, or contracted cancer from depleted uranium munitions, or was tortured at Abu Grahib prison, or saw one of his kids' limbs blown off, or had to watch helplessly as some pissed off Marines stormed his house and forced him, his wife and children to the floor, pinning them there while they ransacked all of their earthly belongings.

But the most galling part is that last sentence, where Alter condescends to admitting he was wrong about the "fiasco," but clearly sees no reason why he should say he was sorry, let alone resign from his position in disgrace. After all, it wasn't anyone he personally knows who was butchered or maimed, or had their home and/or livelihood destroyed by the arrogance and hubris of warmongers like Jonathan Alter. Heck, all those people that bad stuff happened to were not Americans, or even Europeans for that matter, so it doesn't really count, don't you know. Unlike in a real job, being a card carrying member of the punditocracy is not only great fun, but also gets you a mulligan on being completely wrong on matters of life and death.

If you want to know yet another reason why not only American liberalism, but also the mainstream media are so thoroughly discredited, look no further than the example of Jonathan Alter. I almost prefer far right commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to the likes of him. At least those guys don't pretend like they care about the horrendous damage caused when their hideous ideas become public policy.


Bonus: Chimpy Bush wasn't Cheney's only toy

So This is What "Victory" in Iraq Looks Like?

If you are an American who cares at all about your country, the image above and the related story below ought to make your blood boil...not in anger against the Iraqis but instead against President George Bush the Lesser and every other American government official who was responsible for getting us into that trillion dollar quagmire. As an opponent of the war since the very beginning, I've waited nearly nine long years for this day to come, and yet I am unable to take any joy in it whatsoever. From the belligerent anti-Iran rhetoric coming out of the Republican presidential campaign, it is clearly obvious that a substantial number of Americans have still not learned the lesson that not only does America do a piss poor job trying to be the world's policeman, we can't afford to do it anymore anyway.

Hundreds of Iraqis set alight U.S. and Israeli flags on Wednesday as they celebrated the impending pullout of American forces from the country in the former insurgent bastion of Fallujah.

Shouting slogans in support of the “resistance,” the demonstrators held up banners and placards inscribed with phrases like, “Now we are free” and “Fallujah is the flame of the resistance.”

Surrounded by the Iraqi army, demonstrators carried posters bearing photos of apparent insurgents, faces covered and carrying weapons.

“Those who destroyed Iraq paid the price because the people here held them accountable.”

The demonstration, which was held in Al-Khadra Mohammediyah Square in the centre of Fallujah, was dubbed the first annual “festival to celebrate the role of the resistance.”

The United States is due to pull out the last of its troops from Iraq by the end of December, more than eight years after the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

Nine Years Later, Iraq Hawks Discover that Trying to Run the Whole World is EXPENSIVE

image: Cops, Baghdad. "What'cha gonna do when they come for you, Abdul?"

As a follow up to the story I posted earlier this morning about Baghdad being rated the worst city in the world in which to live, there was a Washington Post article published on Thursday about the future of U.S. funding to train the Iraqi police. It seems now that America is finally removing its last combat troops from the country, that our great and glorious “leaders” are losing their appetite for dictating to the Iraqis how to run their own affairs:

Democrats and Republicans joined Wednesday to criticize harshly a State Department program for continued training of Iraq’s police force, calling the nearly $900 million set aside in the 2012 budget a waste of money.

Lawmakers at a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing cited an October report from the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction that said the training program lacked focus, could become a “bottomless pit” for U.S. dollars and may not even be wanted by the Iraqis.

That audit also found that only about 12 percent of the money actually will go to helping the Iraqi police. It said most of the dollars will go for security and other items such as living quarters for trainers.

Since 2003, the U.S. has spent nearly $8 billion training Iraqi police. The Defense Department has managed the program since 2004.

One would think that having spent a billion dollars a year for the past eight years creating an Iraqi Police Force that the country would now be a model of public safety admired the world over. Alas:

Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., asked Darby when the Iraqi police would be able to operate without U.S. support. “I wish I could answer that question,” she said.

Ummm…obviously the common sense answer to that question would be: NEVER. If the galling sum of $8 billion spent in eight years is not enough to lift, for example, security in Baghdad above the point where the gets ranked as the very worst in the world in which to live, then you have to figure that NO amount of money or effort is going to do the job.

But what was particularly galling is this quote from this story from one of the Congresscritters conducting the hearing who voted for the war in the first place:

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., said the U.S. experience in Iraq has been a waste of American lives and money.

“Whatever we are spending now should be terminated,” Rohrabacher said. “Who cares about whether their police are good or not? Let them determine whether their police are good or not, and let them spend the money and make the commitment to do that themselves.”

No shit, asshole. Maybe you should have thought of that BEFORE you and the many other warmongering simpletons in Congress voted to spend over a trillion dollars, squander the lives of over 4,000 U.S. soldiers and kill several hundred thousand Iraqis. Considering the massive amount of death and destruction caused by his own actions, if Congressman Rohrabacher and every other member of Congress who voted for the war had one honorable bone in their bodies, they would resign in disgrace if not actually perform Seppuku.

President Hopey-Changey, of course, wants the U.S. to keep borrowing money it doesn’t have to pour into the Iraq black hole, but ultimate isn’t likely to get his way:

Subcommittee members seized on a statement in the inspector general’s report from Adnan al-Asadi, who oversees daily operations at the Iraq Ministry of Interior, or MOI. He indicated the U.S. should spend the money on the American people instead.

How any rational America citizen can read that last paragraph and not shake their head in sheer disgust is beyond me. That is EXACTLY the argument I was making nine years ago in the run up to this catastrophe. It may not have unfolded quite the way those of us who opposed the war from the very beginning predicted, but this is how the Iraq War ends…not with a bang, but with a whimper.


Bonus: Chief Wiggum to the rescue

Mission Accomplished: Baghdad is Now the "Worst City in the World"

Remember back during the runup to the Iraq War when one of the bullshit justifications spouted by the Bush administration was that we had to "save" the Iraqis from the "evil" dictator, Saddam Hussein? The stated policy of the U.S. was that life in Iraq had become intolerable for most people and would instantly improve once they were "freed" from tyranny and exposed to the wonders of western style capitalism.

So how'd all that work out, anyway? About as well as every other project undertaken by Chimpy Bush and his merry band of neoconservative maniacs, actually. Here is the relevant excerpt from the Raw Story's report on Mercer consulting group's ranking of every city in the world in terms of quality of life:

Baghdad’s political turmoil, poor security enforcement and attacks on local people and foreigners made it the worst place to live in 2011, both in terms of life quality and safety, Mercer said.

This is what the squandering of over a trillion dollars in U.S. taxpayer funds, the lives of several hundred thousand Iraqis and well over 4,000 American soldiers has wrought. Those ordinary Iraqis who have been lucky enough not to be killed, maimed or detained and tortured during the invasion and occupation have been consigned to living in a literal (given the desert heat and frequent power outages) hell on earth. Truly, a Mission Accomplished.

Yet Americans still tolerate the unarrested likes of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz in their midst, and even let them bloviate on national teevee from time to time. We are truly a sick and depraved society.


Bonus: a song about another bad place to live

Hillary Clinton Would Have Been Better than Obama? You MUST Be Joking

Many liberals and progressives were rightly outraged when Obama caved in to the Republicans and abandoned tax increases for the wealthy as part of the deal to raise the federal debt ceiling. Some called for a progressive challenger to take on Obama in the Democratic primaries, which is a reasonable response even if there is no chance that such a challenger could steal the nomination from President Hopey-Changey. Still others completely lost their heads and bemoaned that it was too bad Hillary Clinton didn’t win in 2008 because she knows how to stand up to Republicans.

The first problem with that assertion is these delusional fools have somehow failed to notice that the former first lady is an even bigger creature of Wall Street than is the Mighty O, and has been an insider for at least a couple of decades longer. Hillary’s record of cozying up to the big money boys goes all the way back to her 1978 sweetheart commodities trades that netted her a cool $100,000 back when that was still real money.

But if that isn’t enough to convince you, here’s a quote from a report that appeared on Tuesday in The Raw Story:

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Tuesday against budget cuts that could force an abrupt pullout of the US security presence in the Pacific at a time when China's power is rising.

The debate over reducing the US debt "does cast a pall over our ability to project the kind of security interests that are in America's interests," Clinton told officers at the National Defense University.

"We need to have a responsible conversation about how we are going to prepare ourselves for the future and there are a lot of issues that are not in the headlines but are in the trendlines," she said.

"We are asserting our presence in the Pacific. We are a Pacific power. That means all elements of our national security team have to be present," the chief US diplomat said in a conversation with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

"And we can't be abruptly pulling back or pulling out when we know we face some long-term challenges about how we are going to cope with what the rise of China means," she said in the conversation moderated by CNN television.

So suck it up, plebes, and don’t complain about those proposed cuts in entitlement spending. The Queen Bee of the Washington establishment has proclaimed that you will no longer be safe in your homes to live your pathetic little lives unless insane amounts of borrowed money can continue to be heaped upon the Pentagon in order to keep those vast Chinese hordes at bay.

Hillary’s statements clearly show once again just how out-of-touch with reality our so-called “leaders” really are. In my July 30th post, “Top Military Brass Cry Like Spoiled Children Over Proposed Cuts,” I wrote the following:

According to Wikipedia, America’s direct military spending in 2010 was $687 billion. That means we could slash such outlays by 75%, to $171 billion, and still be way ahead of the world’s number two nation, China ($114 billion)

As I also stated in that same post, the Chinese barely have a navy, let alone a gigantic invasion fleet ready to descend upon California the moment we let our guard down. So what Hillary is doing is nothing more than slavish Pentagon fear mongering—yet another version of the tired old argument that “we have to fight them over there or we’ll have to fight them over here.” Quite a change of heart for someone who was supposedly an antiwar hippie back during the 1960s, wouldn’t you say?

Once again, the biggest threat to America’s national security isn’t China; it’s peak oil-induced economic collapse. The day is coming in the not too distant future when an utterly bankrupt America will no longer be able to financially support our out-of-control military industrial complex. That by her statements Hillary Clinton shows no public awareness of this basic fact, she is either clueless or a liar. Either way, she has proven beyond all reasonable doubt that had she defeated Obama and won the presidency instead, the nation would be just as screwed as it is today.

Fear and Loathing in the Illinois Army National Guard (or How I Managed to Pay My Way through College)

image: “I’d rather be hanged as a traitor than go to war for Wall Street” – Eugene Debs, 1917

When I was 21-years-old, I did a potentially very dumb thing that turned out to be the smartest move I have ever made in my life. I raised my right hand at the Military Entrance Processing Station in Chicago, Illinois, and took the oath that served as my formal induction into the Illinois Army National Guard. At the time I was young and stupid and had no idea what a huge gamble I was taking, but fortunately for me it paid off.

It was the mid-1980s, and my circumstances were typical for a small town kid who had lived a fairly parochial existence and had no freaking clue what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. Being behind the times is the essence of small town life, and I spent many nights bumming around in my old Plymouth Duster with the kicking 8-track player—unkempt long hair hanging down near my shoulders and skinny torso clad in a black concert tee-shirt. Like most of my friends, I was a Led Zeppelin kid stuck in the decade of Duran Duran.

To make matters worse, I was also an underachiever who had coasted his way through high school and then bummed around the local community college for a couple of years—not because I had any burning desire to keep going to school but simply to forestall the onrush of an adulthood that I knew deep down I wasn’t ready to handle. Eventually, I finished my Associate’s Degree and reached a crossroads where my dad threatened to kick me out of his house if I didn’t move on to university.

Problem was I didn’t have the money and dad couldn’t afford to pay my tuition. I knew student loans existed, but I’d never been in debt before and even back then I had a deep phobia about owing other people money. The military was an option, but only if you were willing to give up four years of your life. Then one day I received a brochure from the Illinois Army National Guard promising a full tuition at any state school plus a GI Bill monthly stipend if I enlisted for six years. I was immediately sold since the part-time commitment required of a Guardsman meant I wouldn’t have to wait until I was in my mid-20s to complete my studies.

So that fall, instead of returning to school I headed off to infantry basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and got what every aimless young person needs—a bucket of icy cold water called reality dumped right over my head. For I may have been NG (or “No Go” as we were derisively called), but at Benning we were mixed right in with the regular army pukes. It is an understatement to say I didn’t belong in a place where having attended a couple of years of college was not only not an advantage but actually carried a significant stigma. The drill sergeants and even many of my fellow recruits took great delight in humiliating me whenever they could. I also didn’t realize before I got there how fundamentally disadvantaged I would be, having never before fired any type of firearm and having been pathologically allergic to push-ups back during high school gym class. Every day was a struggle, and more than once I thought I was going to wash out.

That’s not to say that all of the guys I met during basic were assholes. Some of them were really good people, especially the ones who were not there because some judge had given them the choice: Army or prison. But even among the ones I liked I sometimes felt out of place.

There was this one guy about my age. He was from Alabama and had a thick southern accent I sometimes had difficulty understanding. I had never met anyone from Alabama before, but he was cool and we palled around a little bit. One day, and I have no recollection how we got on the subject, I for some reason started talking about the theory of evolution. My buddy got this peculiar look on his face and said, “Wait just a minute. You’re trying to tell me that man descended from the APES?” He wasn’t angry or anything. Fact was, not only did he not believe in evolution, he had never even HEARD of it before. For days afterward he kidded me, “man descended from the apes. That’s a good one, dude!” After that, I learned to keep any such intellectualism out of my casual conversation.

Somehow, despite feeling as out of place as Boy George at a Klan rally, I learned to do all the stuff you need to do to be a soldier. I qualified expert with my M-16a1 rifle without shooting myself or my instructors, didn’t blow myself up on the grenade range and actually enjoyed the feeling of power that comes from firing a .50 caliber machine gun. The drill sergeants took glee in dropping me for push-ups more times than I cared to count, but that actually helped me pass the final PT test. Ultimately, I made it through the training…by the skin of my teeth maybe, but I did make it. And probably the best revenge on those who had tormented me was that after graduation they had to go schlepping off to some shitty Army base, while I got to go home and merely had to report to the neighborhood Armory a couple of weeks later.

The best part was that I now had my full Guard scholarship in hand, and two years later I would graduate from university completely debt free. And weirdly, though I had passionately hated my early military days, after I returned to my home unit my National Guard career actually flourished. By the time I was discharged six years later I was a senior NCO and the First Sergeant had been bugging me for years to go to Officer’s Candidate School. Most importantly, it is no exaggeration to say that I would not have been nearly as successful as I’ve been in life had the military not kicked me in the ass and given me direction just when I desperately needed it.

So you can imagine my dismay during the summer of 2003 when the body bags containing National Guardsmen started returning to the U.S. from that awful war in Iraq. Some of the newly dead were guys in their 40s and 50s, no doubt family men very similar to the kind of guys I served with after I returned to my home unit. The majority of the Guardsmen I served with were blue collar types who were not in the Guard to pay for college like I was but to earn a little extra money to provide for their families. They busted their hump all week working at the local factory or prison and then sacrificed one of their weekends each month swatting mosquitoes in the woods while going through the motions of being soldiers.

It used to really piss me off whenever someone would say as an excuse for the Guardsmen being sent to war that anyone who took the military oath KNEW that they could one day end up in a war zone. I can tell you from personal experience that NOBODY in my unit ever expected to end up on the front lines overseas unless it was a dire national emergency. It was always understood that our first mission as Guardsmen was civil defense, and that if a major war DID break out we would be assigned to domestic military bases to replace the regular army units that were being shipped out to do the fighting. We were supposed to be reserves, and training one weekend a month and two weeks during the summer was hardly adequate to prepare a bunch of middle aged part time soldiers for the rigors of combat.

It seems like a little thing compared to all of the other horrors that arose out of that awful war, but what happened to the National Guardsmen and reservists over there was nothing short of a betrayal by our nation’s so-called “leaders.” And of course, there is the supreme irony that the Guardsmen were sent to Iraq by an arrogant martinet of a president who as a young man had used his daddy’s influence to get into the National Guard in order to escape going to war himself.

When I look back upon all of this, I remain grateful that I made the choice to join the National Guard. But I also realize just what a dumb chance I was taking with my future. Had I been born just a few years later it could have been me slogging through the desert trying to dodge IEDs, and it just as easily could have been my body shipped home in a coffin with an American flag draped over it. And that too would have been fine had the cause been just and proper, but it was in fact neither.

It pains me whenever I see one of those military recruiting commercials emphasizing that the recruits will be able to pay for college as a result of their service. In these desperate economic times, the golden ticket to the middle class has become more elusive than ever before. Those commercials and the military recruiters are selling the promise of a bright future to an increasingly desperate base of working class youth, not for the protection of home and hearth, but to perpetuate a worldwide empire and secure resources for the primary benefit of Wall Street. Sadly, in this era of Peak Oil and resource depletion, even if those young men and women manage to survive their service unscathed they will return to a homeland in which the door to their dreams of middle class respectability will likely have been closed to them for good.