Lord Kitchener and "The Banality of Evil"

image: Uncle Sam is a piker compared to Lord Kitchener

"The banality of evil" was a phrase first used by political theorist Hannah Arendt to describe Nazi bureaucrat and key Holocaust cog Adolf Eichmann when the latter was finally put on trial for war crimes back in 1963. It arose from Eichmann's claim that what he had done in the service of of his country was not wrong because he was "doing his duty" and "just following orders." Arendt's thesis about Eichmann is summed up thusly:

Eichmann was not a fanatic or sociopath, but an extremely average person who relied on cliché rather than thinking for himself and was motivated by professional promotion rather than ideology. Banality, in this sense, is not that Eichmann's actions were ordinary, or that there is a potential Eichmann in all of us, but that his actions were motivated by a sort of stupidity which was wholly unexceptional. She never denied that Eichmann was an anti-semite, nor that he was fully responsible for his actions, but argued that these characteristics were secondary to his stupidity.

And as a result of such stupidity--the same kind of stupidity that is unfortunately all too common in our own country these days in such places as the Pentagon and Wall Street--did Eichmann become one of the most notorious names of the 20th century.

But what about those who are NOT stupid, and are NOT motivated by the desire for promotion? Those at the top who make decisions knowing damn well millions of people are going to suffer and be killed as a result, yet don't particularly seem to care? Are they not far more hideous monsters than the likes of Adolf Eichmann? After all even Eichmann's ultimate boss, Adolf Hitler, was not exactly history's brightest bulb.

My last post got me to thinking again about the First World War. Unlike the second global conflagration, the wake of World War 1 never saw any serious attempt to hold those whose decisions were responsible for slaughtering over 37 million of their fellow human beings responsible for their actions. And if one wants to talk about stupidity in power, one needs to look no further than the collection of hereditary monarchs and preening fools from Kaiser Wilhelm to British Prime Minister H.H. Asquith who were in charge of their respective countries when the war broke out. Most of these esteemed statesmen stupidly believed that the war would be short and glorious and that the troops would be "home by Christmas," as the popular expression went in those fateful early days of August 1914.

One reason so many of these so called "leaders" were so confident was because Europe had not seen massive continental warfare since the Battle of Waterloo ended the career of Napoleon almost exactly a century before. They truly could not envision (because they were stupid) the wholesale slaughter that modern industrial warfare inventions such as artillery, the carbine, the machine gun, the airplane and poison gas were going to precipitate everywhere from Flanders' "bloody fields" to the Gallipoli Peninsula.

But there was one man in particular who knew the horrible truth even before it all started: British Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener. Considered at the outbreak of the war to be "Britain's greatest living soldier," Kitchener had already had plenty of opportunities to see up close and personal what the rapid advance of military technology had wrought in the years since the Grand Armee's wave finally crested and broke in the burned out ruins of Moscow.

Kitchener had spent most of his career fighting colonial wars. He was particularly renowned for his victory in the Battle of Omdurman in Sudan, in which by training his Maxim machine guns on horseman charging with spears his forces killed 10,000 enemy soldiers and wounded 15,000 more while losing only 47 of their own. As author Scott Anderson put it in his fascinating book, Lawrence IN Arabia, during his career Kitchener had participated in more one-sided slaughters than probably any man alive. But because he had, Anderson adds, Kitchener also had a pretty good idea what would happen on a battlefield in which BOTH sides possessed the same level of superior military technology.

Thus, while the other idiots in the British cabinet that summer (to include Winston Churchill) were confidently predicting that the war would be over in months, or even weeks, it was Britain's greatest living soldier who sounded the very sobering and completely accurate warning. The war would drag on for years, Kitchener told them, and it would not end "until we have plumbed our manpower down to the last million." Needless to say, it was NOT a message the politicians running his country wanted to hear.

So, knowing what he knew about how the war was likely going to unfold what did Kitchener, whose word carried more weight with British public opinion in all matters military than even King George V, DO once it became apparent that the nation's "leaders" were determined to drive the country into the abyss? Did he resign in protest at a time in which doing so could possibly have halted the insane rush to war? Of course not. Instead, he allowed himself to be appointed Secretary of State for War. Almost immediately, Kitchener's became the very public face of the British war effort, as well as the drive to get young British men to voluntarily sign up to be led off to slaughter (the country did not resort to drafting soldiers until 1916, around the time of Kitchener's death).

Going back to Arendt and "the banality of evil," Kitchener was rare among the "leaders" of his day in that he was obviously not a stupid man. Nor at the time that he helped initiate what for his country was a war of choice knowing that it was going cause many millions of deaths was he likely motivated by the hope of professional promotion. In fact, Kitchener's ambition was to be Viceroy of India, not Secretary of State for War. So if Eichmann represents the "banal" figure who commits massive crimes against humanity because of a combination of burning ambition and no moral compass, what exactly does that make the likes of Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener? Yet one is (rightfully) vilified as a monster while the other has an elaborate memorial monument permanently on display in St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

Bringing all of this forward to America in the present day, I doubt if I'll get too many arguments if I assert that our current "leadership" features countless figures who are in fact monumentally stupid. But perhaps the lesson we should keep in mind from the example of Lord Kitchener is that it's the rare smart ones who when they do appear that we should REALLY be wary of.


Bonus: "In the fields the bodies burning...as the war machine keeps turning"

Remembering "Remembrance Day"

"I'd rather be hanged as a traitor than go to war for Wall Street" - Eugene Debs

With all the ass kissing of veterans that goes on every November 11th, a tradition that has gotten particularly annoying in the wake of 9/11, it is worth remembering what the November 11th holiday is SUPPOSED to be remembering. Called "Remembrance Day" in the British Commonwealth, the holiday there pauses to reflect on the over 800,000 soldiers of Great Britain and her Empire who perished in what has to rank as mankind's most fruitless and futile war.

In America, where anything that's happened more than six months ago is considered ancient history, most people have a pretty dim awareness of the First World War, assuming they remember it at all. Go into any bookstore (if you can find one that's still open), and even with the recent "splurge" in publications about the war to commemorate the centennial of its outbreak in August 1914, the number of World War 2 books will still outnumber it on the shelves by at least 20 to 1. That's a shame for a lot of reasons, but particularly because it means that the MOST important historical event of the 20th century is far less well understood even by the tiny fraction of people in this monumentally stupid country who actually still read non-fiction.

In addition to arguably being the first war to feature death on an industrial scale (the last year of the American Civil War also has an argument in this area) it was also the first war to feature airplanes, tanks, massive starvation of civilians (largely in the old Ottoman Empire) and the world's first modern genocide (again, courtesy of the Ottomans). The war's end also redrew the map of the Middle East to the abomination that has led to so much subsequent misery and bloodshed as well as a hideously one-sided peace treaty that created the political conditions that would allow a thuggish young upstart named Adolf Hitler to eventually seize control of what had previously been one of Europe's most enlightened nations.

Taking things across the Atlantic, Woodrow Wilson's decision to plunge America into the European abyss not only tragically and needlessly wasted the lives of 117,000 young men, it also witnessed the unconstitutional political persecution and even imprisonment or deportation of antiwar leaders such as Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs, who correctly surmised that American involvement was first and foremost to protect the interest of big business in selling war material to Britain and France. It was, in fact, America's first neoliberal war--sold as a humanitarian mission (the "war to end all wars") while fattening the pockets of the wealthy benefactors of America' corrupt politicians. Worse yet, had America ultimately stayed out, World War 1 would have likely ended in a stalemate, which would have meant no Versailles Treaty, no "stab in the back," no Hitler rising to power and no World War 2, at least in the European theater.

But lastly, the First World War is an interesting study in just how far "leaders" of nations will go in slaughtering their citizens in order to maintain their power, as well as how far said citizens can be pushed while their fathers, brothers, uncles and nephews' lives are being fritted away by megalomaniacal and incompetent psychopaths. Yes, many French soldiers rose up against their officers in 1917, and in the same year a revolution finally brought down the pitiful Czar in Russia, finally taking that beleaguered country out of the war, but for the most part the young men of Europe and later America marched suicidally into blanket artillery and machine gun fire like lemmings drowning themselves in the sea while the civilians back home watched in horror but sat on their collective asses and effectively did nothing to stop it.

From this example come the lessons we should take to heart as the American empire lurches ever forward to its eventual collapse: 1). Don't ever underestimate the lengths the elites will go to in order to maintain their power, and 2). Don't ever overestimate the willingness of your fellow citizens consumers idiots to revolt against whatever their "leaders" who say they will do to "protect" the homeland and keep them safe.


Bonus: "It was dark all around...there was frost in the ground...when the tigers broke free"

Waving the Flag While Circling the Bowl

Has anyone else noticed just how obnoxious flag-waving has become in America these past few years? Plastering flags everywhere first became a huge fad right after 9/11, which should not have been unexpected under the circumstances. Those were the days when it suddenly became impossible to spot a politician anywhere out in public who wasn't sporting a flag pin on their lapel, and in which lots of people actually bothered to learn the words to the Star Spangled Banner so they wouldn't have to fake-lip sync it anymore. Even the Pledge of Allegiance and God Bless America came back into vogue, and to hell with them Atheist types if they didn't like the religious overtones of those two archaic gestures from times gone by.

The quest to make anything and everything seem patriotic got so ridiculous that the lyric "Some folks are born, made to wave the flag" from the Creedence Clearwater Revival song "Fortunate Son" and the refrain from "American Woman" by the Guess Who were used in patriotic-themed commercials DESPITE both songs being anthems of the anti-Vietnam War movement.

Such overt public expressions cooled somewhat a few years later as the Iraq quagmire deepened and then the Bush economy finally imploded. One might have then thought that with the American military having to again ignominiously pull out of yet another guerrilla war and unpopular foreign occupation, that flag waving gestures and other expressions of mindless patriotism would have gone completely out of style, but that is not what's happened. In fact, it seems to be getting worse than ever.

One habit of your average American consumer that I personally have not been able to break is watching professional and college athletics, particularly football and baseball. Now, it's a well known fact that sports fans and athletes tend to be more conservative than your average American. The days when the likes of Muhammad Ali and pitcher Bill "Spaceman" Lee openly questioned the status quo are long over. Your modern athlete is far more interested in getting endorsement deals than promoting social justice.

But for some reason, as our national malaise has slowly worsened during the tenure of President Hopey-Changey, superficial patriotism is actually on the rise, especially in the sporting world. These days, it is not enough to merely have the National Anthem sung prior to an NFL game, but it must be accompanied by a field-sized flag held up by dozens of service members while a formation of fighter jets buzz the stadium (all at taxpayer expense, no doubt). Meanwhile, the singing of God Bless America has invaded baseball's 7th inning stretch along with countless in-game tributes to "the troops." Some teams like the San Diego Padres and Cincinnati Reds even go so far as to wear "camouflage" uniforms on occasion. I'm so old that I recall a time back when I served during the dark ages (the 1980s) that military people would get greatly offended at seeing any civilian wearing any outfit that remotely resembled "THE uniform." Not anymore, apparently.

Nevermind too, that unlike in previous generations none of the young millionaires on the field are ever going to be at risk of having to actually go fight in America's countless imperial wars. Nope, no modern day Ted Williams will ever lose four of his prime playing years while in uniform. Heck, the one NFL player who put his money where the league's supposedly patriotic mouth is and volunteered after 9/11 managed to get himself killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan. Other players may call Pat Tillman a hero, but none of them have seen fit to emulate his example (the volunteering part, not getting killed that is).

Then, just when it seemed there was no limit to how far a sports team (and the apparel companies who dress them) could go with their mindless military fetishism, the Northwestern University football team came up with the abomination pictured above. Nope, I didn't photoshop that picture, that's a (supposed) Northwestern player wearing a flag-themed uniform splattered with fake blood. Incredibly, that uniform was supposedly worn to help raise funds for the Wounded Warriors project, which is kind of like a cancer charity selling tee-shirts depicting a full blown metastatic tumor.

Just as disgusting is that the uniform in question replaced the players' names with the words representing seven supposed "core values," to include: courage, duty, integrity, honor, country, service and commitment. None of which, I might add, have anything whatsoever to do with the disgusting and hypocritical world of big time college football.

In fact, it's gotten to the point where when I see any one of those seven terms used in the media, or other words such as "freedom" or "liberty" I automatically assume they are being used perversely in a way diametrically opposed to their true meaning. This is what happens when an empire teeters on the brink of collapse. Instead of recognizing what's really happening and trying to stave off catastrophe, the vast majority of its denizens shut their eyes and wave their flags harder and harder as if the resulting breeze will somehow cast away the boogeyman at the door.


Bonus: "I don't need your war machines...I don't need your ghetto scenes"

How to Tell When a War is Over

Modern wars are messy affairs, and since they rarely involve two standing armies going against one another trying to gain territorial advantage anymore, it sometimes can be difficult to tell when they are effectively over and your side has no chance of winning even though it is still conducting military operations. In Vietnam, one of the key indicators that the war was effectively over for the United States was when soldiers began to "frag" their superiors rather than follow their orders. Once that started happening, the pressure on the country's "leadership" to find an "honorable" way out of that jungle quagmire became overwhelming.

We have now reached a similar moment in the stalemated war in Afghanistan, as reported yesterday by the Atlantic Wire:

After yet another green-on-blue attack left four Americans dead on Sunday, U.S. troops have suspended their joint operations with Afghan security forces. And who could blame them? Afghans are responsible for about 15 percent of all coalition deaths, and efforts to promote better cultural understanding are suffering with the recent surge of anti-American sentiment in the region due to the anti-Islam film that's been making its way around the Internet.

Truth is, Americans have been ordered to keep bullets in their chambers at all times and are looking over their shoulders at every turn. "We're to the point now where we can't trust these people," a senior military official told NBC News. "It's had a major impact on our ability to conduct combat operations with them, and we're going to have to back off to a certain degree." The suspension of join operations are indefinite, one official said, and "could last three days or three months."

Again, it's not terribly surprising that Americans taking a step back. It was a particularly messy weekend for coalition forces. On Friday night and into Saturday morning, insurgents disguised in U.S. Army uniforms snuck into the British-run Camp Bastion, where Prince Harry is stationed, through a hole in the fence. Once inside, they took out six (very expensive) AV-8B Harrier jets, "significantly damaged" two more and totally destroyed six refueling stations. They also killed two U.S. Marines. Then, on Sunday, U.S. airstrike killing eight Afghan women gathering firewood on a hillside, and the Taliban took out $150 million worth of plans and equipment in the most expensive insurgent attack of 11-year-long conflict.

Let us re-emphasize the fact that nobody is very happy with how things are going in Afghanistan. The U.S. military stopped training members of the Afghan Local Police earlier this month, a tough move since those are the guys who are supposed to take control of the country's security when coalition troops leave at the end of 2014. As such, experts have grown pretty pessimistic about the handoff. "It looks like what we're going to be handing off is a stalemated war," Stephen Biddle, an international affairs professor at George Washington University told the Associated Press on Monday, "which means the U.S. Congress will be asked to write these checks (to support Afghan forces) for years and years and years with no plausible argument that we're going to bring this to a successful conclusion, at least on the battlefield."

Just like with the fragging incidents in Vietnam, when an occupying army can no longer engage in military operations or even conduct training exercises with their supposed local "allies" the occupation is effectively finished. This is the end result of Obama's insane military surge in Afghanistan, which we must remember was done for no other apparent reason other than to prove that he was a tough guy.


Bonus: Those who forget the past...

The Punishment for Collecting Firewood: Death

Ho-hum, just another sad, sorry day in the graveyard of empires:

Kabul - According to Afghan officials a NATO air strike has killed eight Afghan women and girls gathering firewood. At first International Security Assistance Force officials claimed that 45 insurgents were targeted but later admitted possible civilian casualties.

As is often the case, NATO at first claimed that the targets were insurgents and that initial reports showed that only insurgents were killed in the strike. However this report was contradicted by information coming from Afghan officials who said that victims included eight women and girls who were out gathering firewood before dawn.

Once the Afghan officials contradicted the NATO report Jamie Graybeal a NATO spokesperson said that NATO took any charges of civilian deaths seriously. No doubt the charges were taken even more seriously after villagers from the Alingar district in Lagham province brought bodies of those killed to the governor's office in the provincial capital.

So why should anyone in America care? After all, the NFL season is underway again and we all have far more important things to occupy our minds. Well, there is this:

Sarhadi Zewak, a spokesperson for the provincial government, said:

“They were shouting ‘Death to America!’ They were condemning the attack."

A provincial health director said that there were also seven females injured who were brought to area hospitals for treatment. Some of the injured were as young as ten years old.

So what is the rationale that our brilliant military "leaders" used to justify this senseless attack?

U.S. officials say that these missile attacks are very precise and that civilian casualties are rare. However, what are called signature attacks are now used. In these attacks people are targeted simply on the basis of suspicious behavior. Apparently people moving in the countryside before dawn arouse enough suspicion to be classified as suspected terrorists. There were probably never any insurgents targeted. The women collecting firewood were just classified as suspected insurgents.

Yesterday, I wrote that there is no hope that we can possibly work our way out of our collective predicament. Part of my justification for such a belief is seeing on almost a daily basis such insanity as that of American officials justifying wantonly killing Afghan civilians for the "suspicious behavior" of collecting firewood when there is no justification that any thinking person who is not a raging psychopath could bring forth that makes any sense whatsoever. Even had these women and girls been carrying AK-47s instead of logs and sticks they would represent exactly ZERO threat to the American homeland.

But go ahead, America, convince yourselves that the recent wave of anti-American demonstrations and attacks on our embassies and consulates are happening because all Muslims are easily excitable, irrational whack-a-toons. They couldn't POSSIBLY have any legitimate grievances against the utterly exceptional "shining city on the hill" after more than a decade of such senseless violence.

No, there is no logical reason given the above for the embassy attacks or for this kind of thing to happen:

Elsewhere in Afghanistan four more soldiers were killed in an apparent insider attack. The four killed were American troops. The killings happened at an observation post operated jointly with 6 coalition troops together with 6 Afghan National Police.. One of the Afghan members was found dead at the scene while the other five had disappeared. Over 50 NATO troops have now been killed so far this year in "insider" attacks.

Yep...those frggin' Muslims...they must be crazy.

Addendum: As yet another example of just how badly compromised even the so-called "liberal" media is these days, check out this account in the hideous progressive online "news" rag, The Atlantic Wire, about the killing of the four American troops that completely whitewashes the slaughter of the Afghan women and girls, describing it merely as: "a NATO airstrike that angered locals."

Damn, those silly locals, always getting all worked up about utterly harmless NATO airstrikes. You just can't reason with some people.


Bonus: "One day, something fell from the sky"

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"

Well, OF COURSE No One in the Presidential Campaign Really Wants to Talk About Foriegn Policy

Could the insanely stupid presidential campaign get any stupider? The answer to that question appears to be yes after Willard made quite a spectacle of himself by bizarrely attempting to politicize the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, before the death of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens was even confirmed. In its own particular liberal, toadying-to-power way, the Atlantic Wire tried to explain the problem in an article entitled, "No One in the Presidential Campaign Really Wants to Talk About Foreign Policy":

The conservative backlash to the backlash to Mitt Romney's comments on the attacks on U.S. embassies in Cairo and Benghazi Wednesday goes like this: You media people said you wanted Romney to talk about foreign policy, and now he is. What's the problem? Well, it's that no one — both campaigns and political press corps included — seems to really want to talk about foreign policy. The debate Romney wanted to get into on Wednesday wasn't a substantive one on actual foreign policy and how to make sure the new governments created by the Arab Spring remain friendly to the U.S. Romney instead wanted a cable news shoutfest about whether Obama made us look like wimps abroad. Instead the cable shoutfest was over whether Romney is qualified to answer 3 a.m. phone calls. You can understand why Romney supporters would like to change the subject. As National Review editor Rich Lowry wrote for Politico this morning:

"The old complaint about Romney was that he didn’t talk about foreign policy. The newly minted complaint about Romney was that he did talk about foreign policy. He gets it coming and going, and everywhere in between."

Lowry writes that foreign policy debate doesn't stop just because Americans die, and that wars and violence have always been campaign fodder. Likewise, a Wall Street Journal editorial is headlined "Romney Offends the Pundits." Subheadline: "Doesn't he know he's not supposed to debate foreign policy?" And The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol says Romney is "right to reject the counsel of the mainstream media," and that he should use a crisis for political purposes.

"Still, the fact remains that the events of September 11, 2012, represent a big moment for the country. Romney is right to sense this, and to seize on this moment as an occasion to explain the difference between his foreign policy and President Obama’s."

It's true that during Romney's press conference Wednesday, every question reporters asked was whether Romney felt bad about issuing a political statement before he knew Ambassador Christopher Stevens had died. But it's not just the timing that has pundits, including Republican ones—not to mention one anonymous Romney aide whose comment was deleted from a New York Times news story—saying Romney mishandled the events. It's also that Romney got one small fact wrong, claiming the Obama administration's "first response" to the attacks was to apologize, when, in actuality, the Cairo embassy had posted the statement in question before the protests, before anyone died, and before getting approval to do so from the State Department.

Then there's Romney's larger statement—a talking point he's promoted for years—that Obama has been overly concerned with the hurt feelings of Muslim radicals who want to kill Americans. For once thing, Obama hasn't done that much IRL coddling -- Lowry describes the "signature Obama foreign policy success," as "killing people." For another, in 2010, Romney himself condemned an American preacher who was going to hold a Koran burning because, "It puts troops in danger, and it violates a founding principle of our republic." But that was two years out from the presidential election, not two months.

The section I've highlighted above is the key point--no one in the campaign wants to talk about foreign policy because then they would have to admit that there is essentially NO difference between Romney and Obama on foreign policy...just as there is essentially no difference between Romney and Obama in terms of kissing Wall Street's ass and propping up the zombie economy by giving out as much "free" money as the big banks are willing to take. As the two potential faces of the American Empire, circa 2013-2017, Obama and Romney are nothing more than a sophisticated good cop, bad cop routine.

As the article states, Obama's signature foreign policy success has been killing people, which will no doubt be Romney's primary foreign policy pursuit should he be elected to replace him in November. It is what should be expected from a declining empire that can feel the sands of history shifting under its feet and knows no other way to try and forestall its inevitable downfall.


Bonus: "Even Richard Nixon has got soul"

Are We SURE the Obama Campaign Didn't Pay for that Idaho Billboard?

Now THAT is a beautiful bit of trolling. I have no idea who or what the Ralph Smeed Foundation is, in fact like most people I had never heard of the organization before they generated national headlines and yet another stupid media controversy by paying for the billboard pictured above. Nevertheless, whoever they are they did such a masterful job of once again getting idiot liberals and progressives to misdirect their ire that it made me wonder (and only half in jest) if the Obama campaign wasn't secretly behind the whole thing.

Because here is the question I have for the members of my former political tribe who are frothing at the mouth about this latest "outrage": what exactly are you upset about? Yes, the message is crass and insensitive coming so soon after the recent Aurora shootings. But that doesn't mean it isn't fundamentally correct. Putting aside the "in your face" nature of the billboard, what it is really saying is that Americans only get upset when it is other Americans who are killed for no good reason by a marauding sociopath. Shoot up innocent movie theater patrons in suburban Denver = national outrage. Drop a drone missile on an innocent wedding party in Afghanistan or Pakistan = "(Yawn) Hey, honey, what time is American Idol on, anyway?"

The reaction to this story on liberal op-ed website Think Progress was particularly galling. Check out some of the comments:

Scott Merrick · Top Commenter · Vancouver, British Columbia
Proving yet again that there is no bigger liar than a Republican/right winger. They KNOW Bush/Cheney started that war, as well as Iraq (which they conveniently do not mention in this revolting billboard), so not only are they dishonest, their pathological hatred is also fully on display.

Margie Robinson · Top Commenter · University of Georgia
Thanks for this, Scott, because it's 100% true: "Proving yet again that there is no bigger liar than a Republican/right winger. They KNOW Bush/Cheney started that war, as well as Iraq (which they conveniently do not mention in this revolting billboard), so not only are they dishonest, their pathological hatred is also fully on display."

Mark Duwe · Top Commenter · Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis
This nutjob could have donated the money he spent on this billboard to the Aurora Victim's Fund, if he really wanted to do something positive, but clearly, he doesn't.
(Bill's note: because paying for an advertising campaign advocating the end of an insane war isn't doing anything "positive" at all)

Anna Soull · Top Commenter · Toronto, Ontario
I have never witnessed the citizens of the USA attack a President in such a demeaning, hateful way as I have witnessed their public disrespect of President Obama. In previous decades any such deep, personal, slanderous attacks against the President of the country would have resulted in criminal charges against the culprits. I wish that Republicans would actually use some sort of political argument in their race for the Presidency rather than a personal attack on the man who is trying to steady the sinking ship of a country he got for his Presidency.
(Bill's note: Yep, Anna, and I'm sure you never referred to Bush as a war criminal. And if you didn't, you should have)

Rob Willhelm · Top Commenter
My concern is not with the sign itself but I definitely concern myself with the millions of supposed "Americans" who believe this crap, complemented by their total contempt for the fair and open democratic processes that finds Obama as the President of the United States, thus representing the greatest threat to my beloved country.

Scott Douglass · Top Commenter
I somehow don't think the people in Aurora "volunteered" for what they got. This person is an opportunist looking for their 15 minutes of fame. With any luck, the sign will fall on him as he's standing there admiring his 'handy-work'.
(Bill's note: notice how this idiot is only thinking of American soldiers and has no concern whatsoever for the civilian casualties of Obama's wars?)

Jackie Rawlings · Top Commenter
This is just one of the many examples of how insane our country has become with the current insane Law Makers and their King Mitt.
(Bill's note: yep, Jackie, this country is insane all right...and if you support Obama depite his war crimes, you are every bit as much of the problem as the conservatives you claim to loathe)

Aaron Keith Fewell · University of Louisville
This is so disheartening. While I'm a Democrat, I like to think I can look at things objectively and I work to see where people are coming from with their logic. But there is a growing faction of "movement conservatives" who have no logic...their strategy is simple, win on hatred, play on people's weaknesses. With each year, it becomes more outlandish. There was McCain heavily hinting at Obama as a terrorist at a rally and then he seemed shocked when he asked "Who is the real Barack Obama" and one of his mindless followers screamed "A terrorist". You can't practice the strategy of hatred and encourage it and then wash your hands of its effects.

Robin Potter
This is outrageous. I do not agree with the war, but come on, Obama did not start this war. I believe he is trying to end it and although, I am very sad about any deaths( American AND Afghans AND Iraqi"s) but I hardly see that we can lay this at THIS presidents feet.
(Bill's note: holy shit, nearly four years and one huge troop surge later, Afghanistan is STILL Bush's war. The cognitive dissonance is strong with this one)

Margaret Ann Williams · Works at The Dow Chemical Company
this is about as absurd as I've seen, such a shame that they would spend money to advertise such ignorance.
(Bill's note: yeah, and it's also a goddamn shame that the Guantanamo Gulag is still open despite the campaign promises of that lying sack of shit in the White House)

And so it continues on in this vein for nearly 100 more grueling comments. I didn't even have to selectively choose among them to make my point here. Sadly, the Ralph Smeed Foundation could not have done a better job of getting the delusional Obamabots fired up, and thereby more likely to go to the polls and vote for President Sellout again this November, thus helping to legitimize President Hopey-Changey's aggressively warmongering foreign policies, if that had been their intention all along.

There was a time in this sad, sorry ass country about 45 years ago when the American left brought down a Democratic president for waging aggressive war and slaughtering innocents abroad. ("Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" Remember THAT one, fuckers? What...because it isn't YOUR ass on the line anymore it no longer matters? Is THAT it?) And thus has the American left has been reduced to reflexively supporting a President who does exactly the same thing because, hey, you know, at least he isn't George Bush, Dick Cheney or Mitt Romney.


Bonus: "Your flag decal won't get you into heaven anymore...they're already overcrowded from your dirty little war"

When Huma Met Hillary

Poor Michelle Bachmann. She REALLY doesn't understand the way the world works. Because, you see, Mooslim-bashing (and gay-bashing, and librul-baching, and feminazi-bashing, and athiest-bashing) is perfectly acceptable as a tactic for scaring up votes and keeping the little people divided against each other if you are a wingnut Republican. You've just got to be sure that the Mooslim you are bashing isn't part of the in crowd.

Now even that tanned clown John Boehner and political hatchet man Ed Rollins are getting in on the act, ganging up on Bachmann for her recent two-bit McCarthyite antics. Here is Atlantic Wire with the details:

Speaker of the House John Boehner has become the latest high-profile Republican to denounce Michele Bachmann's "pretty dangerous" accusations that Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton's deputy chief of staff and Anthony Weiner's wife, has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. "From everything that I do know of [Abedin], she has a sterling character and I think accusations like this being thrown around are pretty dangerous," Boehner told reporters during his briefing today. (There's that word again, hmmm ... sterling) As Senator John McCain did yesterday, Boehner is doing his part in taking down accusations put forth by Rep. Michele Bachmann and other conservative congresspersons which allege that Abedin, among others working in the U.S. government, have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Bachmann and Rep. Trent Franks (R-Arizona), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Thomas Rooney (R-Fla.) and Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) put those accusations in letters which were sent to five federal agencies, reports The Huffington Post's Amanda Terkel and Jennifer Bendery.

Boehner said he hadn't yet seen the letters, according to Politico, but his admonishment of Bachmann's crew is notable in that he joins the ranks of high profile Republicans-- denouncing the "dangerous" accusations. Since McCain's fiery defense yesterday, senators like Florida's Marco Rubio and Massachusetts' Scott Brown have voiced their displeasure with Bachmann, but the most scathing seems to be Bachmann's former campaign chairman Ed Rollins, who has come out with a "Shame on You" op-ed on Fox News' s website on Wednesday. Here's Rollins's parting shot:

As a member of Congress, with a seat on the House Intelligence Committee, Mrs. Bachmann you know better. Shame on you, Michele! You should stand on the floor of the House and apologize to Huma Abedin and to Secretary Clinton and to the millions of hard working, loyal, Muslim Americans for your wild and unsubstantiated charges. As a devoted Christian, you need to ask forgiveness for this grievous lack of judgment and reckless behavior.

Gee, the whole spectacle of the right wing eating its own to protect poor Huma is almost enough to bring a tear to a good, diversity-loving liberal's eye. I mean, she is the very embodiment of the American Dream: daughter of immigrants, educated in the finest schools and has become very successful based upon her talents and work ethic. Heck, she's even a Muslim who married someone JEWISH. She's a wine-sipping, brie-eating, NPR-listening, Prius-driving, Daily Show-watcher's wet dream. You just HAVE to admire her, am I right?

WRONG!

Let's examine for a moment who Huma Abedin is. First of all, she is a prominent Congressman's wife, and even though that Congressman had to resign his seat over a sex scandal, he's still part of the exclusive club of business, political, academic and media "leaders" who run this country on behalf the billionaire elites. According to Wikipedia, Huma herself first began working as an intern for Hillary Clinton in 1996 when the latter was First Lady. She rode Clinton coat tails, first as a Senate staffer and now as the Deputy Chief of Staff to the Secretary of State.

That means Huma has been with her boss the whole time while the latter voted to authorize the Iraq War, was a consistant supporter of the Iraq War while in the Senate, and then was the Obama administration's most passionate advocate for the Afghanistan surge after she became Secretary of State. Yet if Huma has had any qualms whatsoever about her boss's consistent belligerency towards her fellow Muslims, she has kept it well hidden. So well, in fact, that (again, according to Wikipedia), Hillary Clinton said about Huma on the eve of her wedding to Anthony Weiner: "I only have one daughter. But if I had a second daughter, it would [be] Huma."

Huma Abedin is in fact a perfect tool of the empire. As a minority female, she is the Democratic Condoleeza Rice, a useful idiot that even the likes of wrinkled up old warmonger John McCain and the blithering John Boehner can hide behind when they try to convince people that America really is all about diversity and not run by a tiny cabal of rich, evil old white fuckers who rule the world with an iron fist. The agenda here should be very apparent to anyone who is paying attention. As I've said repeatedly on this blog, whenever you see Republicans and Democrats agreeing about something, THAT is when you should keep a tight hold on your wallet.

Though she is far too stupid to ever realize it, Michelle Bachmann has now been shown her real place in the hierarchy of the American elites. She may have thought she was a true insider, but what she didn't realize is that she is instead another Rod Blagojevich, a sideshow clown whose batshit insane antics merely serve as a holographic distraction for the idiot masses. The reactions of McCain, Rollins, Boehner and other conservatives to Bachmann's over-the-line demagoguery against Huma were a shot across the bow, and if she persists in wandering off the reservation of the elite consensus, she might just find herself sharing a fate similar to that of the original Tail Gunner Joe.


Bonus: I'll bet Passover in the Weiner household was never anything like this

Trust Kills

Here is yet another example of just how utterly bamboozled the American public really is these days. That isn't exactly news, I realize, but sometimes it is just stunning to contemplate how bad the problem really is.

One would think that two futile land wars along with the Abu Grahib and Walter Reed scandals would be enough debacles for any nations' military to endure in just one decade...but wait, you haven't heard the worst of it just yet. Here is thedaily.com with the details:

Over the next year, America’s largest fighting force is swapping its camouflage pattern. The move is a quiet admission that the last uniform — a pixelated design that debuted in 2004 at a cost of $5 billion — was a colossal mistake.

Soldiers have roundly criticized the gray-green uniform for standing out almost everywhere it’s been worn. Industry insiders have called the financial mess surrounding the pattern a “fiasco.”

That doesn't sound good. Tell me more:

“Essentially, the Army designed a universal uniform that universally failed in every environment,” said an Army specialist who served two tours in Iraq, wearing UCP in Baghdad and the deserts outside Basra. “The only time I have ever seen it work well was in a gravel pit.”

The specialist asked that his name be withheld because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the press.

“As a cavalry scout, it is my job to stay hidden. Wearing a uniform that stands out this badly makes it hard to do our job effectively,” he said. “If we can see our own guys across a distance because of it, then so can our enemy.”

The fact that the government spent $5 billion on a camouflage design that actually made its soldiers more visible — and then took eight years to correct the problem — has also left people in the camouflage industry incensed. The total cost comes from the Army itself and includes the price of developing the pattern and producing it for the entire service branch.

So, pray tell, how exactly did this particular clusterfuck happen, anyway?

The problem, the researchers said, was an oddly named branch of the Army in charge of equipping soldiers with gear — Program Executive Office Soldier — had suddenly ordered Natick’s camouflage team to pick a pattern long before trials were finished.

“They jumped the gun,” said James Fairneny, an electrical engineer on Natick’s camouflage team.

Researchers said they received a puzzling order: Take the winning colors and create a pixilated pattern. Researchers were ordered to “basically put it in the Marine Corps pattern,” Fairneny said.

For a decision that could ultimately affect more than a million soldiers in the Army, reserves and National Guard, the sudden shift from Program Executive Office Soldier was a head-scratcher. The consensus among the researchers was the Army brass had watched the Marine Corps don their new uniforms and caught a case of pixilated camouflage envy.

“It was trendy,” Stewardson said. “If it’s good enough for the Marines, why shouldn’t the Army have that same cool new look?”

The brigadier general ultimately responsible for the decision, James Moran, who retired from the Army after leaving Program Executive Office Soldier, has not responded to messages seeking comment.

It’s worth noting that, flawed as it was, the universal pattern did solve the problem of mismatched gear, said Eric Graves, editor of the military gear publication Soldier Systems Daily, adding that the pattern also gave soldiers a new-looking uniform that clearly identified the Army brand.

“Brand identity trumped camouflage utility,” Graves said. “That’s what this really comes down to: ‘We can’t allow the Marine Corps to look more cool than the Army.’ ”

Un-be-fucking-lievable. I don't know what's worse, the $5 billion dollars wasted, the uncountable casualties that likely resulted or the fact that no one is apparently going to be held responsible for this debacle. This is just so fucking par for the course for a U.S. military establishment that has its head firmly planted up its ass.

Hmmm...I wonder how the American public is feeling about the military these days after ten years of relentless failures, including over 6,500 dead servicemen and women, some of whom might still be alive had they been issued adequate camouflage uniforms. Gallup has that particular story:

Once again, Americans are most confident in the military (75%), which has finished first each year since 1989 except 1997, when small business edged it out. Small business, at 63%, is second this year. The police, at 56%, is third, and the only other institution of the 16 tested in which a majority of Americans express confidence.

In fact, as you can see by the chart above, only 6% of Americans polled said they had very little or no confidence in the military as an institution when it should be perfectly obvious that the military is one of the LAST institutions worthy of public trust. What you see here is the end result of 30 years of relentless flag waving propaganda spewing forth from the American corporate media machine. Joeseph Goebbles would be so proud.


Bonus: "U.S. forces give the nod...it's a setback for your country"

Hack Journalism Porn: Richard Cohen Demands More Government Lies

Many thanks to my friends over at Gawker for taking down the odious Richard Cohen on his latest outrage to the profession of journalism so I didn't have to:

There's a bit of an uproar in Washington over the White House leaking stories about Obama's kill list. Craven politics? All leaks are good leaks? National security risk? Some other position that is, in some way, intellectually coherent? Washington insider Richard Cohen goes with: none of the above! Watch this progression of thoughts closely:

The leak that troubles me concerns the killing of suspected or actual terrorists. The triumphalist tone of the leaks - the Tarzan-like chest-beating of various leakers - not only is in poor taste but also shreds a long-standing convention that, in these matters, the president has deniability. The president of the United States is not the Godfather.

So. Wait. Richard Cohen is not so much troubled about the fact that the president of the United States is personally approving assassinations as he is troubled by the fact that the president has lost his deniability. Richard Cohen, you see, is the president's personal attorney. Oh, Richard Cohen is a journalist? Ha, that's weird then.

Of course, we have always known that the president, as commander in chief and all of that, is where the proverbial buck stops. But for the longest time, a polite fiction distanced the president from what, after all, is murder, and it helped somewhat in protecting him. Deniability is always a fiction, but it provides some space between the president and his orders, and does not plaster the presidential face on an act of extreme - and possibly illegal - violence. Presidents need protection from retaliation - not just in office, but for the rest of their lives. After all, the poor man's drone is the suicide bomber.

Someone with a finer ear for the vagaries of language help me out here, please—is Richard Cohen being sarcastic? I genuinely hope so, but I cannot tell, because Richard Cohen is known to do this sort of thing. That is, to embarrass himself and the rest of us by bemoaning the death of the "polite fiction" that protects powerful politicians from the consequences of their actions. Richard Cohen quite explicitly hates justice, as well as journalism. I appreciate any explanations that anyone out there can provide on what this really means.

Killing is a serious matter. The death of an American citizen (Anwar al-Awlaki) is deeply troubling (the government asked the government if it was legal, and the government said it was). For this as well as other assassinations, there could be blowback.

Assassination by drone has its charms - it has severely degraded al-Qaeda - and war, after all, is war. But I wonder if those presidents who knew war - a Truman, an Eisenhower, a Kennedy - would themselves boast about killing or let others do it for them.

"Kill away outside of the rule of law, US presidents, but please, be sure to lie to the public about it."—a man employed by a journalistic institution.

Is he kidding??? Serious question.

No, sadly he is not kidding. And what's worse is that he is what passes for an icon in the supposedly "liberal" media these days. The only reason why the Washington Post would continue to employ such a thoroughly discredited hack is so it can laughably claim to have "balance" for the legions of warmongering neoconservatives who regularly appear on its op-ed page.


Bonus: Just remember kids, when the president does it that means it's not illegal

Nazi Germany’s Example and the Future of America (Part 4): Arthur Nebe Vs John Yoo

Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler’s favorite architect and later Armaments Minister during World War Two, has often been described as “The Good Nazi” because he was intelligent, charming, was not directly involved in any of the genocidal policies of the regime and actually tried to save Germany from Hitler’s insane destruction orders issued while the Russian tanks were closing in on the Fuhrerbunker in the spring of 1945. Speer’s biography makes for fascinating reading because it is pretty obvious that had he been born 30 years later he no doubt would have become one of Germany’s leading lights instead of ending up a convicted war criminal serving two decades of his life in Spandau prison.

Speer’s example begs a question: is it advisable for someone who retains at least some sense of ethics and humanity, but serves a regime hell bent on destruction, to remain in power believing that if they resign whoever takes their place will be worse? Or does it really not matter either way? Speer himself, while there is no evidence of his direct complicity in the Holocaust, did give orders as Armaments Minister that resulted in the horrific torture, abuse and deaths of many slave laborers the Nazis were forced to use to keep the war machine running in the desperate days after the Battle of Stalingrad.

For purposes of this discussion, however, I would like to focus on a German official who was actually a bit farther down the food chain. SS Gruppenfuhrer Arhur Nebe is another fascinating case of a man, unlike many of the notorious thugs who served the Nazi regime, who had he lived at a different time would have likely borne a far more positive posthumous reputation than that of a mass murderer. Nebe was a professional law enforcement officer, and he was good enough at it that he was installed as Berlin Police Commissioner in 1924 when he was just 30 years old.

Tragically for Nebe, he joined the Nazi party and Heinrich Himmler’s SS in 1931, two years before Hitler even came to power. One might have inferred from his not having been a “March Violet” (those who joined the Nazi Party immediately after Hitler’s ascension to power) Nebe was an ardent National Socialist and vicious anti-Semite, but he in fact seems to have been motivated more by career enhancement than any inherent malevolence. At any rate, Nebe started to sour on the new regime as early as late 1933 after he was ordered to liquidate Gregor Strasser, Hitler’s rival for power within the party as the head of its “Socialist” wing.

At that moment in time, Nebe had a choice to make: resign from his post in protest or continue to work within the system. He fatefully chose the latter option, and by 1941 found himself serving as the commander of one of the SS’s notorious Einsatzgruppen units on the Eastern front in Belorussia, directly carrying out mass exterminations of Jews, communists and other “asocial elements.” Even more appallingly, Nebe’s unit was among the first to experiment with the use of poison gas to exterminate prisoners, a tactic which helped greatly inflate the final body count of the Holocaust.

However horrified Nebe may have been at performing this duty, and there is evidence that he actually attempted to reduce the total number of killings by his own men, by the time he returned from the East to become the President of Interpol in 1942 his hands were indelibly stained with the blood of his many victims. Nevertheless, Nebe subsequently joined in the conspiracies against Hitler, and was part of the plot to assassinate the Fuhrer in July 1944. Shortly after the failed attempt on Hitler's life he was arrested and eventually executed in March 1945 as the war was drawing to its conclusion.

So what does Nebe’s example mean for those of us who are concerned about the direction in which America appears to be headed as a nation? Nebe was born and raised in Imperial Germany, and began his career as a police officer during the Weimar Republic. There is nothing in his early history to indicate that he would so flagrantly depart from the ethics of his chosen profession under the Nazi regime. Yet despite his growing private opposition to Hitler, he countenanced ever more flagrant abuses of power until such time as he himself became complicit in committing history’s most notorious genocide.

Now compare Nebe’s example to that of John Yoo, who while working in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2001-2003, according to Wikipedia:

...played an important role in developing a legal justification for the Bush administration's policy in the war on terrorism, arguing that prisoner of war status under the Geneva Conventions does not apply to "enemy combatants" captured during the war in Afghanistan and held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, asserting executive authority to undertake waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" regarded as torture by the current Justice Department. Yoo also argued that the president was not bound by the War Crimes Act and provided a legal opinion backing the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program.

In fairness to Yoo, he is not the only attorney who has given such advice to presidents in the wake of 9/11. Even today, lawyers for the Obama administration have been providing the legal cover for his drone missile bombing and assassination campaigns. Yoo and the others are highly educated Americans, among the best and brightest one might say, who graduated from our top universities and law schools. And yet, in their quest to have a seat at the table in the inner sanctum of power they have been perfectly willing to cast aside any notions of professional ethics or even basic human decency. How many of them have qualms about what they are doing, but justify it based on the idea that if they don’t do it somebody else will? We may never know.

Of course, it is a huge leap from authoring Bush’s notorious “torture memo” to actually becoming the commander of a death squad as Nebe did. As I pointed out in my previous essays on this subject, however, the Holocaust didn’t happen overnight, but was a nearly decade long decision making process in which the repression against the Jewish population of Europe worsened along with the larger political tensions and then the widening of the world war. When one has started down the road of considering that a “leader,” be they a president or a dictator, has the legal right to indefinitely detain, torture or kill anyone who is perceived as a “threat,” one has created the conditions that make possible a gradual increase in the repression of the general population. In Nazi Germany, the terror eventually turned on its own (non-Jewish) citizens as it become obvious that the war was lost. There is no reason to believe something similar will not happen on our own shores as the economic crisis generated by peak oil and resource depletion continues to worsen and it becomes plainly apparent that our “way of life” is not only negotiable, but completely unsustainable.

How many Arthur Nebes and Albert Speers do we have living in America today, who will keep the faith in what they are doing long past the point when it should be obvious that the regime they serve is increasingly becoming out of control? There is no way to know for sure, but I would bet that such men (and women) are more the rule than the exception.

Previous: Nazi Germany’s Example and the Future of America (Part 3): The Hologram Vs. The Propaganda Ministry

Nazi Germany’s Example and the Future of America (Part 2)

Nazi Germany’s Example and the Future of America (Part 1)


Bonus: "Don't be stupid, be a smarty...come and join the Nazi Party"

Alabama Closing 13 National Guard Armories

This is a good companion to this morning's post. Here is the Tuscaloosa News with the details:

Alabama’s National Guard plans to close armories across the state, including some in the Black Belt, citing smaller military forces, changing military needs and budget constraints.

The National Guard announced Nov. 1 that it would close 13 armories, many of them aging and substandard. Some were built in the 1950s.

“We’re $12 million behind in maintenance, we have roofs leaking, commodes won’t flush, lights are flickering and they’re dangerous,” Maj. Gen. Perry Smith, Alabama’s adjutant general, said last week.

Smith announced in November that armories in Georgiana, Greenville, Grove Hill, Hartselle, Heflin, Linden, Lineville, Millport, Moulton, Ozark, Thomasville, Union Springs and Wetumpka would be closed.

The state’s military department said last week that it has already closed 11 of them, leaving only two on its list, the Linden and Hartselle armories, still open.

The Fort Hill McManus Boggs armory in Linden is scheduled to close before Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

Smith said it’s not just the lack of money that is forcing the armories to close, but also changing recruiting and military needs.

Linden Mayor Mitzi Gates, however, is trying to convince state officials not to close the armory in her town, saying it is still fairly new and is in “great shape.”

She has the support of area legislators in her efforts.

“We’ve had a military presence since the 1950s and it’s part of the culture of our town, of course,” she said. She said the armory, with its 14 or 15 full-time employees, has an economic impact on Linden.

“It was puzzling to me why they would close it,” she said.

Just like at the national level, nobody wants to cut back on military spending because it will result in people losing their jobs, but sooner or later the money simply will not be there to continue to support this form of Military Keynesianism.


Bonus: Bill visits Alabama

Military-Industrial Complex Porn: Congress To Spend More On Tanks Than The Pentagon Wants

From The Raw Story, I've got your "austerity" measures RIGHT HERE:

The US Congress is poised to approve more funds for modernizing the US Army’s main battle tank despite objections from the military that it puts the Pentagon’s overall strategy in jeopardy.

In its 2013 budget proposal, which begins in October, the Obama administration requested $74 million to upgrade the M1A2 Abrams tank, which originally was intended for land warfare in the plains of central Europe.

But, just as it did last year, the Congress has turned a deaf ear to the Pentagon, with the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passing a defense authorization bill last week that adds an additional $181 million to the program.

In the Senate, Democrats have also gone way beyond the administration’s request and in the Senate Armed Services committee approved an additional $91 million for 33 extra tanks to be upgraded.

“The conundrum we have is that we don’t need the tanks,” General Raymond Odierno, the army chief of staff, told members of Congress.

“Our tank fleet is two-and-a-half years old (on) average now. It’s been recapped, its been reset, we’re in good shape, and these are additional tanks that we don’t need.”

The defense bill is expected to go to the Senate floor next week. The House and Senate versions, with their differing amounts for the Abrams, will then have to be reconciled.

Lawmakers say the additional spending is needed to keep production lines open at the Ohio factory where upgraded tanks are built. They say at least 70 tanks a year must be built for the factory to stay open.

However, Pentagon officials fear that in a time of budget cutbacks, the extra spending on the Abrams and other programs favored by Congress will undercut competing plans considered essential to the US strategy toward Asia.

“There is no free lunch,” US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned lawmakers earlier this month.

“And if members try to restore their favorite programs without regard to an overall strategy the cuts will have to come from areas that could impact overall readiness,” he said.

Blogger Charles Hugh Smith calls boondoggles like this part of a massive number of "make work" programs designed to try and keep people employed in a failing economy. But I can't think of a less beneficial form of make work program than building a bunch of tanks that the military doesn't even need. At a time when there is no conceivable conventional military threat to the U.S. anywhere in the world, this is sheer waste of resources is maddening in it's utter insanity.

If the government is going to continue to borrow obscene amounts of money to try and keep people employed, let's at least have them doing something useful like repair some of the nation's crumbling infrastructure. But no, somehow having the government employ people to try and maintain the common good is "socialism," wheras giving that same money to defense war contractors who would be out of business without it is as American as baseball and apple pie. Notice, too, that once again this is a bipartisan initiative from a supposedly hopelessly gridlocked congress. Just par for the course in Washington these days.


Bonus: "They're gonna rip it off...Taking their time right behind my back"

Bipartisanship Strikes Again: House Overwhelmingly Rejects Afghanistan Withdrawal Measure

When it comes to issues of real importance, those involving unwavering support for big business war and empire, there is absolutely no difference between the two parties. This obvious but far too little acknowledged truth was on full display yet again this past week when the House of Representatives voted down a measure that would have resulted in an immediate exit of combat troops from Afghanistan. Here is Common Dreams with the story:

By a vote of 303-113, the US House of Representatives rejected an amendment by California's Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) on Thursday that would have swiftly ended combat operations in Afghanistan by limiting funds only to the "safe and orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops and military contractors from Afghanistan."

Congresswoman Lee (D-CA) discussing her amendment to end the war in Afghanistan.

The amendment was among dozens debated during passage of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

"The American people are far ahead of Congress. It's past time to end the war and bring the troops home," Lee said ahead of the vote. "My amendment allows Congress the opportunity to stand squarely with the war-weary American people who want to bring our troops home. The call has been growing across this land to bring this war to an end. It's time now for the Congress to answer the call here today." It was not to be.

An Associated Press-GfK poll released last week showed that backing for the war has hit a new low and is on par with support for the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Only 27 percent of Americans say they support the war effort, and 66 percent oppose it, according to the survey.

So, 66% of the American public oppose the continuation of the Afghanistan war and yet over 56% of their supposed Representatives voted to continue the war anyway. Some great democracy we have going here.

One thing the article failed to mention was just how many Democrats voted against the measure. So I went to the House website to find out. All told, 79 House Democrats cravenly voted to keep the war going and 10 more were too chickenshit to vote (including the Democratic party chairwoman, the hideously obnoxious Debbie Wasserman-Shultz). In fairness, 12 Republicans, including Ron Paul, actually voted in favor of the amendment. With this number of "aye" Democratic votes, it wouldn't have mattered if that sellout party was still in control of the House, the measure would still have failed.

All we keep hearing in the mainstream media is how hopelessly gridlocked Washington is these days and how bipartisanship is dead. Great line to sell to the idiots who don't pay attention. Unfortunately, it isn't true at all. For when it comes to supporting the true agenda of the billionaires who really run the country, you can absolutely count on a bipartisan majority to emerge every single time.


Bonus: From my You Tube channel - "Another day to face up...another day to wake up...on the feed kill chain"

Nazi Germany’s Example and the Future of America (Part 1)

I’ve always been an avid history buff, with a particular fascination for the peculiar and tragic trajectory of Germany during the years 1919-1945. Part of it has to do with my German heritage, but there’s also a voyeuristic aspect to it—I mean, how can one’s attention NOT be drawn to the spectacle of history’s greatest national train wreck?

Despite my obsession with all things National Socialist, however, I usually try to avoid making Nazi Germany analogies when writing about current events. It’s been my experience that most people who make such comparisons have no more than a superficial understanding of Adolf Hitler and his movement, and throwing out the charge that someone you disagree with is a Nazi is the quickest way to shut down any reasoned debate. For example, no American leader that has appeared on the scene as yet (no, not even George W. Bush) has earned being mentioned in the same breath with Hitler, and those who engage in such frivolous name calling never seem to notice that a modern day Gestapo doesn’t then immediately break down their door and haul them off to a concentration camp, as WOULD likely happen if we really were experiencing the second coming of the Third Reich.

Nevertheless, there actually are some parallels that can be usefully examined between Hitler’s twelve year reign and what is happening in America today. First and foremost is the prevailing attitude of “exceptionalism” that exists among the respective ruling classes of each country. The Germans of the 1930s really believed that Germany’s destiny was to rule most of Europe if not the world, and in their hubris they failed to recognize that however much the Nazi regime was able through extensive propaganda and intimidation to stifle dissent and get the vast majority of the population working towards that goal, Germany’s geopolitical situation—particularly the fact that a lion’s share of the world’s known oil reserves at the time were controlled by its two biggest potential enemies—was in fact going to make such a conquest impossible.

America today, of course, faces a much subtler but no less limiting reality—that the worldwide production of oil and other resources needed to continue growing our mammoth-sized economy and hence maintain our global military hegemony is peaking and soon to go into irreversible decline. Just as the Germans stubbornly refused to acknowledge that the combined economic and military might of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. was going to be impossible for their nation to defeat in a global conflict, America’s “leaders” today are just as determined that maintaining a military presence on every continent and in every ocean is not a policy subject to natural limits.

Though obviously much shorter lived, the German empire built by the Nazis followed a trajectory very similar to our own. Germany in the 1930s went through a period of rapid expansion not all that dissimilar to how America aggressively conquered a continent and then began expanding its reach overseas. The amount of physical territory acquired by Germany didn’t actually peak until 1942, at the time of its greatest advance on the eastern front but well beyond the point where its battlefield successes were going to be sustainable in the long run. Likewise, America’s “Operation Barbarossa” moment came in the wake of 9/11 when the Bush administration decided to double down on America’s planetary hegemony by launching two wars of choice in the Middle East while simultaneously expanding both our military presence around the globe and the national security state here at home. Ten years later, the national debt has nearly tripled in size and we have already passed the point where our “successes” at expanding the reach of the empire during the War on Terror will be sustainable in the long run.

For purposes of this discussion, however, it is far more telling to examine what happened in Germany once it should have become obvious to even the most thickheaded Nazi that the country was dangerously overextended and a day of reckoning was rapidly approaching. By early 1943, Stalingrad had been recaptured by the Soviets, all but sealing the eventual fate of the German armies on the eastern front. U.S. and British planes were making frequent appearances in the skies above German cities, wreaking havoc with their bombing raids. Later during that same year, allied armies also invaded Italy, causing the government of Germany’s most important European ally to collapse. Any realistic analysis of the military situation at that point would have concluded that Germany’s prospects of winning the war were hopeless and the Nazi regime was doomed despite the fact that the country still controlled a vast amount of territory.

And yet, under new Armaments Minister Albert Speer the years 1943 and 1944 were the most productive for Germany in terms of producing munitions for the war effort, despite the frequent air raids that battered the factories and killed and maimed many of those who worked in them. How did the Germans accomplish this? Resorting to slave labor was part of the answer, but more importantly, despite its increasingly hopeless situation the Nazi government was able to marshal all the nation’s remaining resources into preventing collapse for as long as it could possibly be prevented.

The lesson for those of us in the reality based community who are reading the many indicators pointing towards a future collapse of the United States is quite apparent: governments that find themselves backed into a corner are capable of putting forth extraordinary efforts in attempting to stave off the inevitable. There has been a lot of speculation that one day the whole system is just going to lock up—gas stations will run dry, the supermarket shelves will be quickly emptied and the electrical grid will stop functioning—causing mass panic, especially in the cities. The experience of the Germans who lived through the Nazi period shows that such an overnight unraveling is extremely unlikely and that a government that still has resources available to it will use those resources to prevent a fast collapse at all costs, even if the effort merely prolongs the agony.

Make no mistake—it might be the Nazi Germany equivalent of early 1943 in America today, but on the whole our country still has a tremendous amount of resources available to it. Even if foreign supplies of oil were cut off completely, there would be enough domestic production (to say nothing of Canadian production) to support a functioning government. The nation is also still blessed with a huge amount of agricultural land, meaning that mass starvation is unlikely so long as the government can ensure that enough of the remaining oil supplies are dedicated to food production.

Obviously, such a scenario would require a greatly reduced standard of living on the part of the average American, something we would not expect to happen without considerable domestic unrest. How the American government is likely to react to that eventuality and deal with a discontented population will be the subject of part two of this essay to be published on Monday.


Bonus: From my You Tube Channel - "Don't want to live vicariously...in a virtual reality...shopping malls and prison walls all look the same to me"