My Vietnam War Memories

Yesterday was, as the US Army’s website reminds us, another dubious memorial day, “The Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act of 2017 was signed into law by President Trump, designating every March 29 as National Vietnam War Veterans Day.” President Bonespurs cynically pronounced a day of memorial for people he called “suckers” and “losers” A friend reminded me, via Facebook, that Friday was when we should all honor the sacrifice that was made for our freedom in that war. The ruling class, like Trump, believes we should celebrate the money they made from profiting on wars and the distraction those wars provided from the damage that they were doing to our nation and the world. From 1955-75, that twenty-year war caused 1.1 million Vietnamese war dead and Vietnamese civilian deaths was in excess of 2.0 million. There is no way to describe the Vietnam War as anything but an empirical invasion of a foreign nation with no national interests justification. The same goes for practically every war the US has entered into since the Revolutionary War, al 107 of them. The US South would argue that even our own Civil War was an empirical invasion. If there is a human history after the USA collapses under the usual internal battles that have destroyed every empire in history, I imagine our national sport will be recorded as “war, with football, baseball, jazz, and Hollywood as recreational distractions.”

“Praise the Lord, this is the Vest residence,” was how Don answered the phone in 1974, the last time I saw him. My little family was passing through Salina, on our way back to Nebraska from visiting my family in Dodge City for some warm-weather holiday, and I took a slightly longer route home to see my old friend,. Don had experienced some rough years since the last time I’d seen him. In early 1970, Don had been one of the most rock-steady drummers I’d ever had the pleasure of playing with. We met while still in high school, he was clinging to the tattered remains of a K.U. college basketball scholarship that was rescinded when his knee wouldn’t recover from a late season high school game injury. I never saw Don play basketball, but he was such a “natural” athlete I have no problem imaging him playing at a level far beyond average.

When we met, I was in the last semester of my dismal high school senior year. Don had been a standout star basketball player at Dodge’s Sacred Heart Cathedral Catholic School, but a knee injury had taken him out of the lineup and blown up his future. In 1965, Vietnam was growing into the threat it would become for all of my generation’s male victims and we were thrashing around a bit trying to figure out where that war would intersect our lives. For some of us, especially the non-white “us,” it was obvious there would be no escape from becoming cannon fodder. The draft loomed large at our 18th birthdays, like a huge black wall blocking every possible escape. Looking back now, I realize that my friends and I played music the way we did as a scream of desperation and protest. For most of us, our WWII fathers did their best to make military “service” seem like an honorable obligation. I know mine did.

From early spring in 1965 until just before I left Kansas for Dallas, Texas in 1968, I lived in a tiny trailer on the south side (“the poor side of the tracks”) of Dodge, with a band on the road or a shared trailer in Hays, Kansas, or in a lean-to on the Arkansas (pronounced are-can-sus in Kansas) River west of town a few miles. One of my fondest memories of Don was while I was on the river, he’d hiked out to spend an afternoon with me hunting. We both had single-shot .22’s, but his was much more of a gun than mine; because he was using it. There wasn’t much to shoot at that day. Usually, I lived on jack rabbits, pheasant, and eggs from the egg distributor who also ran the trailer court where I sometimes lived. We hiked along the river, heading west toward Cimarron, probably talking about whatever gig we’d recently had or one in the future. Don pointed west and said, “See that Blue Jay in the tree?” And I said, “What tree?” (There weren’t and aren’t a lot of trees in Kansas.) He aimed at something and shot. We hiked for a good while and, finally, came to a tree and there was a dead Blue Jay on the ground.

In 1967, I’d bombed out of my Navy physical because of asthma (that I didn’t know I had until the Navy doc flunked me), moved to Dallas for a Trump-style fraudulent “computer tech school,” met the love of my life and was at the tail-end of a brief stint as a folk singer and struggling to survive as sole-support for the two of us. Don and Ed, two ex-bandmates from Kansas, drove to Dallas to hang with me and Ms. Day before heading out to Army basic training. Those two, and Ms. Day, were my best, dearest friends and it felt like we were saying “goodbye” way too early in all of our lives. Ed would go on to specialize in the Army’s pitiful electronics technician program and spent his military time in Germany. Don would become an Army sniper in Vietnam.

My attitude toward the war shifted during the months that I was waiting to be inducted and the day I flunked my physical, thanks to the Hutchinson New’s syndication of David Halberstam’s New York Time’s Vietnam reporting. Aoso, thanks to my new Dallas hippie friends, I’d also read Halberstam’s The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam During the Kennedy Era and his second piece of “fiction, One Very Hot Day and my opinion of that war and my country’s values were shifted left for life. Don had to leave first and Ms. Day remembers the two of us playing basketball at an outdoor court somewhere before he headed off to basic training. Ed and I played at the Rubaiyat.with a jug band assortment of freaks and players before he also left for basic.

I tried to stay in touch with both of them from my “safe” life in Texas, but Ed was quickly offended by my anti-war attitude and cut off communications emphatically not long after he landed in Germany for the duration of his “service.” Don and I wrote often and I wish I’d saved his letters, but almost nothing from my pre-1983 life survived the move from Nebraska to California. Don went from being, like me, a Kansas yokel to a deadly assassin to the most courageous war protester I will ever know. After several “missions” of dubious morality he, somehow, managed a transfer from Vietnam to Germany in the laughable Criminal Investigation Division (CID). Don’s description of the several-floors-underground, ex-Nazi SS basement secret quarters, CID offices was surrealistic, at best, and indicative of the US military’s decent into decadence, at worst. By then, Don was convinced the entire US military and government needed a criminal investigation. My memory of 50-year-old events is sketchy, but I hope I always remember some of Don’s description of his deciding to take a blanket to an Army warehouse, in the dead of a German winter, strip off his uniform, and refuse to leave or obey orders until he was given his release from the Army.

As a result of his protest, Don received a “general discharge” and returned to Kansas where I ran into him, again, when Ms. Day and I attempted to escape Texas in 1969 for Oregon or Washington, but our ‘63 Ford Ranchero full of meager belongings and a cat and us died in northern Oklahoma and barely delivered us to Dodge City. Don was taking an electronics course at the sad excuse for a local tech school and suggested that I might also want to try that route. I found a job as a welder at a local manufacturer, enrolled in the tech school program, and six months later had to drop out and “get a real job” because Ms. Day was pregnant. During that six months, Don and I formed another band and played regularly as a 3-piece power rock band with another guy who fumbled along as our bass player.

Ms. Day’s pregnancy (and another one two years later) forced my career decisions for the next decade and I’ve written a good bit about those years. I mostly lost touch with Don, Ed, and my past life as a wannabe-rock-star. In late September, 1970, Don was convicted of marijuana possession and “intent to sell” and got a 6 month jail sentence for that ridiculous “crime.” That pretty much put a nail in his future and, according to Ed and other sources, Don had quite a few problems with drugs and the law afterwards.

In 1974, after the “praise the lord” telephone announcement, I spent a few hours with Don and his family in Salina (as I remember it). He was some kind of fundamentalist, unordained by anything other than his belief in his god, self-proclaimed “minister” and I was still the savage atheist I’d be my whole life. He made a living as a carpenter and his home was a beautiful demonstration of those skills. I don’t remember much about that visit, but Don was clearly struggling to find himself and it was the last time I would see him. Three years later, Don would be divorced and living in an even more dilapidated Kansas town. The stories I heard about him from the 80s until the early 2000s had him in and out of legal trouble and dying somewhere between those years.

When I sat down this morning to write this Google surprised me with the fact that Don died in 2021. His obituary indicates that he’d found some kind of peace and regained a good bit of who he was. I can not reconcile this picture of a ZZ Top-looking guy with the tall, blond, athletic boy-and-man I knew, but I love the fact that he, at last, seems happy with his life. I feel like I missed years of opportunity to reconnect with my old friend because I’d believed he died at least 20 years earlier.

Thinking Small and Growing Smaller

The United States once did really big things. For about fifty years, we were the inventors of practically everything significant in the world. In the late 1800’s, the United States created a land grant university system that educated children other than just those of the ruling class and created a middle class that drove the nation’s economy, it’s industry, it’s creativity, and its spirit. We created a public education system the rest of the world imitated and, then, improved on while we allowed ours to decay into a pre-prison system. We built cities that redefined urban living. We crossed the continent, first with railroads then with airlines. We electrified cities, then the countryside, and tied it all together with telephones and followed that with the Internet. We went to the moon dozens of times and sent astronauts there six times before 1972. There are branches of science that wouldn’t exist anywhere in the world without American curiosity. There are concepts of democracy, justice, and freedom spreading throughout the world, based on models the United States of America invented. We were the envy of the world.

Then we weren’t. To paraphrase Marlin Brando’s character in On the Waterfront, “We coulda been a contender.”

There has always been a primitive, superstitious character to citizens of the United States. After all, as another move character said about the American people, “We're all very different people. We're not Watusi, we're not Spartans, we're Americans. With a capital ‘A. huh? And you know what that means? Do you? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We're the underdog. We're mutts.” All of which is true. And like mutts we’re naturally inclined to knock over trashcans and root through the rubble for a scrap of food or join a pack of other rejected mutts and go feral and become dangerous to everything around us. Along with getting “kicked out of every decent country in the world,” we brought with us a collection of religions that were clearly as insane and useless as the most dangerous ideas humans have ever invented. Today, those religions are driving the country to do smaller and smaller things in the name of money and power and under the pretense of doing a variety of gods’ will.

Take our prison system, for example. In the 1950’s, we decided to move our prison model from punitive to “corrections.” We still cynically call prisons “corrections facilities,” but they no long serve any part of that mission. Today, our prisons are slave-owning, for-profit corporations that drive some state’s legal system to create more and more “crime” to provide those corporations with slave labor. As a result, one of the most embarrassing big things the United States has done since the genocide of the American Indian is creating the world’s highest prison population rate: 724 of every 100,000 Americans currently resides in an American prison. Russia, a dictatorship and repressive totalitarian government, is a distant second to the United States.

Our one and only other big thing is our war machine, jokingly called the “Defense Department.” We have dedicated our national budget and our industry to creating more dangerous and powerful weapons of mass destruction, individual destruction, and everything in-between.

Neuroscience, without much help from government funding or the public, has plodded along learning more about how the human brain and it’s collection of chemicals, electrical systems (neurons and neural circuits), and molecular biology create the individuals we become or could be. Crime and war are two big things that neuroscience could have changed with just a reasonable amount of encouragement, but neuroscience, like evolution, terrifies the superstitious and, more importantly, the people who make bucket loads of money on crime, war, and religion. In fact, those three “special interests” are overwhelmingly the forces that prevented the United States from reaching its potential and will eventually undo the nation and the species.

The fact is we do not control our brains, our brains control us. The combination of chemicals, electrical systems, and molecular biology between our ears and in our gut are the things that control who we are. Knowing that and controlling it would allow us to be anyone we want to be; as individuals and as a species. The trillions of dollars the US flushes down the military-industrial toilet could have been used to get to the core of human conflict and resolve it. The trillions of dollars wasted on our punishment system could be spent on creating happier and more productive citizens, through education, science, and a shared desire to improve the quality-of-life for every person in the country and the world. We could have built a corrections system that enhances lives and freedom. That would have been a big thing, but we’ve devolved into a nation intent on punishing the poor for being poor and declaring war on everyone who won’t hand over their national sovereignty along with their natural and human resources.

The cost of abandoning big things (No, Donny. Your wall is not a big thing.) is that we become smaller as a result. Our world image has shrivelled to a tiny fraction of what it was in November 2016 and it becomes smaller by the day. Our self-image isn’t doing well, either. Fascists and neo-Nazis are symptoms of failure and self-hate, not power or superiority. You don’t set a goal of repressing others, stealing their resources and lives, and propping up yourself at the expense of everything from decency to intellect because you are free, healthy, and happy. Those are the goals of total failure. Those goals are so small, they reduce everyone they touch upon.

Placing My Bet Now

Regardless  of what you conservative fluffballs think, President Obama has done a fine job of keeping the country safe and restoring as much of our deficit economy as possible without a lick of work from our deadbeat Republican congress. If he’d have been given actual patriots to work with, we’d be in a whole different world today.


But you fuckwits decided to blow up the country and see if a random 1% mobbed-up Russian pimp asshole could fix what people with functioning brains could not make a dent in. That’s the beauty of being a moron; you not only don’t have to think before you act but when you fuck up the world you won’t be intelligent, decent, or courageous enough to admit the mess is all your fault.

Here’s my bet for 2017: Trump and his idiot vandals will be so busy looting the national treasury that, like Bush and Cheney and pals, they’ll take their eye off of the national security job and we’ll experience another national disaster like 9/11/2001. The beauty of being a pseudo-conservative is, as always, never having to admit responsibility or error. You morons stumble through life with both feet stuck in trashcans and your heads up your asses and you think your shit smells like roses.

So, let me say it before hand, “Thanks Donny and friends.”

This time, you’re going to discover that tactic is going to fail; big time or "bigly" (if you’re the usual Trump illiterate). You are going to crash the world economy, the plant’s eco system, and there won’t be any coming back from it. You may not admit that it was your fault, but it won’t matter because everyone is going to suffer. Climate change, massive national debt, near-universal unemployment, and a national reputation for stupidity that turns our allies into either a laugh track or enemies.

#193 Fighting for "My Country"

There are things that we don't talk about in polite company. There are words we don't say out loud in public. There are ideas we don't ever mention when there is a chance that they might be brought up when we are running for office, applying for a job, or asking for a home loan. I'm not as old as McSame, but I'm old enough that I don't worry much about the damage my words will do to my political chances, career opportunities, or housing situation. As a refuge from the 1960's, I distrust the motivations of the people in power, almost always.

Patriotism is one of the least understood concepts in American life. What we often mistake for patriotism is usually nothing more sophisticated than nationalism. Webster's defines patriotism as "love for or devotion to one's country" and nationalism as "a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups." The second definition is pretty wordy, but informative.

"Love" is an emotion that requires sacrifice, understanding, commitment, perspective, and knowledge. You can't love your country, spouse, children, or friends if you don't exercise these capacities. You can be addicted to them, infatuated with them, or dependent on them without loving them. When patriotism is linked to the kind of service typically promoted by the military, the line between informed patriotism and ignorant nationalism is more than just blurred.

Since 1948, the overwhelming majority of American military actions have been inspired by reasons other than national security. The argument that we needed to fight and die in Vietnam, for example, because of some fear of the spread of communism was dishonest, wrong, and immoral. Nobody with a functioning brain believed that the Viet Cong were going to invade the United States. Once the Pentagon Papers made it clear that American forces were not attacked in the Tonkin Gulf and that the entire justification, as weak as it was, for the military build-up in 1964 was based on a deliberate lie, even the dumbest nationalist would have to admit that there were other reasons for committing American lives to that pointless Asian civil war.

Korea was the same as was the 1959-60 Caribbean War, the evacuation of US corporate employees in Lebanon in 1976, our involvement in El Salvador in the 1980s, the military maneuvers in and around Iran, Libya, Chad, Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon (again) throughout the Reagan years, the invasion of Grenada, the continuing occupation of Panamas, the continuous occupation of the Persian Gulf since Reagan's regime, the 1990 exercises in Liberia, and, of course, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. These are not battles of self-defense, they are hostile corporate take-over maneuvers. The Iraq Invasion and Occupation is about oil. Nothing more, nothing less. There have been rare humanitarian uses for the US military, but the overwhelming purpose of our armed forces has been to protect American and international corporate interests. In other words, working class kids are being sent to die or be wounded to protect the investments of our ruling elite.

It's a lot less inspiring to admit that one has wasted and corrupted the best years of one's life fighting to protect the wealth and power of oil company executives, DuPont's rubber plantations, Chiquita's bananas and pineapples, or to control Third World economies so that even more jobs can be shipped to sweat factories in places that don't bother with livable wages, OSHA, or democratic governments. As uninspiring as that is, most of the time Americans are doing just that in our military "services."

It's common knowledge inside the military that the various "services" are more committed to protecting their own interests over that of the nation. The constant shuffling of double-dipping military officers into the military-industrial corporations they were assigned to monitor is a national shame and embarrassment. When institutions become huge, it's almost impossible for them to remain focused on their real mission. The US military passed huge about five generations ago and is now such a monstrous proportion of the national employment and budget that it more often seems to believe the existence of the military is the national mission.

"Be all you can be" applied to the mission of "fighting for your corporation" takes on an interesting meaning. For example, a huge part of the national budget is the cost of maintaining a military, military pensions, and military health care. Obviously, the military serves the orders of corporate America without question, but what would it do to the character of those services if corporate America were obligated to pay for that service? Currently, every man, woman, and child, is going into debt to the tune of $5,000/year for our military expenditures. What kind of sense does that make? Wouldn't it be more reasonable to obligate the people who get the advantage of that government service for the cost of the service(s)?

On the other hand, if only corporations receive the protection of the US military, who protects the nation? If corporate interests control military operations, what would keep them from using their military against US citizens? If the military is owned, controlled, and directed so completely by corporate interests, how is military service a patriotic act?

Many Vietnam veterans discovered that they were more able to serve their country from outside of the military. The most patriotic veterans joined organizations such as Veterans for Peace, Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Rolling Thunder, Military Families Speak Out, Gold Star Families for Peace, and Patriots for Peace to object to the use of military force for corporate purposes. In this time of challenge to democracy, the Bill of Rights, Constitutional government, true patriots have to carefully consider which side of the battlefield they choose when our "of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation" government goes to war.

November 2008

#162 Appeasing Nazis (2006)

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

 

Defense Secretary and neocon wildman Donny Rumsfeld, a man whose bleary, boozy appearance always inspires the endearing nickname "Rummy," recently went into a hysterical rant comparing his critics to "Nazi appeasers" who are interfering in his pursuit of "a new type of fascism." Sam Kinison must be laughing, somewhere.

These days, any attempt to report an administration speech comes off as rightwing propaganda, these characters are so far off the political charts that they are coming around the other side and beginning to sound leftist. My source of information, a Los Angeles Times article (by Julian E. Barnes), was so badly written that I thought, for a few seconds, that Rummy had grown a conscience and swapped sides. The Times, a paper that once was so disregarded that it was barely considered to be more than a rightwing real estate promotion rag, has returned to its roots. Barnes works his ass off to make Rummy sound almost sentient, while reducing contradicting opinions to background noise. Still, even with careful editing, Rummy is pretty funny.

Let's face it, anyone who knows squat about history has long since connected the dots between the 1936 Nazi political takeover of Germany and the 2000 neocon overthrow of the United States democracy. But, no, when he presented his newest, most hilarious argument, Rummy was hiding in that great bastion of nationalism, the American Legion convention. An audience sense of history was noticeably missing.¹ Rummy went into a semi-literate rant about the people who were interfering with his dissection of the Constitution and his illegal Iraq oil takeover attempt. There weren't nearly as many laughs as Rummy would have received if he'd have picked a more conscious crowd, like a college campus. I expect he was disappointed. He went to a lot of work to assemble the best neocon comedic writers and this was some of their best work. Hardly anyone laughed, assuming Barnes and the Times accurately reported the event.

I laughed a lot, when I read the Times' article. I particularly loved this convoluted and typically-Rummy argument, "If we abandon the Iraqi people before their government is strong enough to secure the country, they we will show reformers across the region that America cannot be trusted to keep its word. We will embolden extremist enemies of moderation and of democratic reform." Has anyone ever seen any sign that Rummy supports moderation or democratic reform in this country? Did I miss Rummy's anguished performance when the 2000 Supreme Court disrespected more than 50 million votes, the majority, and politically "appointed" Rummy's boss; "Queen of America?" This is sarcasm, right? It has to be. When was the last time one of the monosyllabic neocons used the word "embolden?" Aren't conservatives terrified of people who are emboldened? When has a reformer ever looked to this administration for any inspiration? Reformers all over South America are looking to the north in fear, especially those who have oil resources. But no political leader with an ounce of good toward his citizens will would ever expect assistance from the Bush Presidency. We don't even expect assistance from our government. Our elections are so fraudulent that "trust" is a word that has vanished from the American political vocabulary. And does abandoning "the Iraqi people" mean that we'd quit shooting them for entertainment? There is so much irony in this pair of sentences that I think Mark Twain would be intimidated by the comedic genius of Rummy's writers.

Rummy tipped his whiskey jar and continued with, "I recount that history because, once again, we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism." Really? The Bushies are doing something new? What did I miss? It doesn't look new to me. 2000 was the same kind of turn-around year for the United States that Germany suffered in 1932 when the Nazi Party wrestled power from the Weimar Democracy in the heat of the world economic depression. Hitler's 1932 "victory" was no less legitimate or more creative than was George Bush's in 2000. The United States has made a slow turn in the exact Nazi German direction that led to WWII. But "new?" I see nothing new in fascism. Fascism is an economic system that attempts to reach corporate and elite goals through force, repression, and fear. Sounds like the Republican Party platform to me. The fact that working class folks keep voting Republican is the funniest, saddest proof that humans are a sincerely, chronically, pathologically stupid species. But that's nothing new, either.

He had to have had them rolling in the isles, but Rummy kept delivering punch lines. Like this one, "Can we truly afford to believe that, somehow or someway, vicious extremists could be appeased?" No, we can't, but we will. I have never believed that the brown shirt extremists who forced the end of the 2000 presidential election recount with violence and a politically corrupt Supreme Court overthrow of democracy can be appeased. I thought they should have been arrested, tried, and executed for treason; including the five members of the Court. Honestly, I can't imagine this country returning to democratic principles without a civil war and I have very little faith that the docile citizens of this country care enough about freedom, liberty, or democracy to go to war for it.  Still, appeasing the Bush Administration is a moral crime and I agree with Rummy, we should all be opposing them with every ounce of our existence. That was what he was talking about, wasn't it? Maybe he was still stuffing his contradictions into a paradox burrito. Irony is so subtle. Of course, when Rummy tosses off a phrase like "moral confusion," we know there's a punch line here somewhere. Morals? Republicans? Where would the two ever meet?

One after another, Rummy kept the one-liners coming, "Can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America--not the enemy--is the real source of the world's troubles?" I read that and thought, "No, we can't, but I don't remember ever leaving that view." Reagan really kicked it up a notch or ten, but since the end of WWII, the United States has destabilized nations and continents, continuously, for the profit of a few rich corporate criminals. I don't know how anyone with the slightest knowledge of world history can avoid pointing, like a compass swinging north, a finger at the United States when a discussion of "the world's troubles" begins. Still, at some clinging basic core, America (including Canada and Mexico and South America) are the hope of much of the world. Bush and Rummy, however, do not represent America (including the United States) at its best. They are us at our worst, our most destabilizing, our most class-controlled, our most short-sighted, and our most violently greedy. That's not that funny, now that I reconsider it. I guess I can see why the reporter didn't mention laughs at this point in Rummy's speech.

As background noise, Rummy (and Condi and Georgie and the rest) keep talking about "victory" in Iraq. This has to be a joke, right? How can an occupying force ever hope for "victory" in an invasion? Historically, the best imperialist occupation forces have ever managed is "balance." Balance usually means the occupier gains as much, in assets or trade, as they lose in moral character, national focus, and actual lives sacrificed so that the ruling class, who does gain from the occupation, can make their profits. That's "victory" when it comes to invading another nation in the hopes of controlling their resources. Oil, in this case and in case you've forgotten why we're in Iraq. With this history lesson in mind, I can't help but wonder when the Native Americans will reclaim this country. "Winning" isn't even an option, but it's pretty funny to think that anyone can take this argument seriously.

Democrats are making a mistake in calling for Rummy's resignation. Rummy isn't the problem, he's a symptom. He's distracting entertainment. When you are attempting to cure a disease, the last thing you want to do is hide symptoms unless the symptoms are all the damage the disease can cause. This disease is the entire conservative movement. Their irrational, superstitious view of the world is colored by rosy prism-shaped glasses that obscure anything resembling reality. They can overthrow the Constitution and the democracy and call it "national security." They can hand over the nation's assets to a tiny, inbred group of wealthy corporate traitors and call it "capitalism." They can destroy the nation's public education system and imagine, somehow, that unlimited immigration of unskilled, uneducated menial laborers and superstition-based charter schools will make up for the national brain trust that has been squandered during the last two decades.

I say let Rummy stand up and say what's on his little booze-soaked, hallucination-blurred mind. Let's ask him what he thinks, on every opportunity and on every subject, and be sure the cameras are rolling. For as little as Rummy seems to comprehend, he's nearly infinitely more conscious than his boss and, if he's the best Bush can offer up, we should be considering that very carefully. Of course, this is all part of Carl Rove's slavish devotion to maintaining Machiavelli's illusion of the "Prince." The goal is to make the Prince sound reasonable, a tough task for Bush, while his representatives act as vicious attack dogs chasing away opponents. The act is growing old and predictable. Maybe Machiavellian government has exceeded it's comedic limits? Maybe Rove is exceeding his abilities in trying to work both Rummy and Bush at the same time: all those hours with both hands up a pair of puppet's butts is probably tiring.

Rummy gives it his best, though. My favorite, and last, Rummy quote is ". . . but some seem not to have learned history's lessons." Exactly what I said in 2003 when I compared the administration's rush to invade and occupy Iraq, except that I was comparing Iraq to Vietnam. Using Rummy's Nazi lesson, I think it's clear how little this country learned from the "Great War" and the political and economic events that caused it.

That's not funny.

¹On Labor Day Weekend, let's not forget that the American Legion and the state militias (the National Guard) first saw significant use in modern times as strike-breaking goons. Celebrated in Woody Guthrie's "You Can't Scare Me I'm Working for the Union" and other famous lore, these guys hide behind nationalism while performing the menial labor for their corporate Republican owners. Sad, but a nasty piece of American history. Some things never change, some barely change.

September 2006

#139 Sexism/Racism Logic (2005)

All Rights Reserved © 2005 Thomas W. Day

I've probably written on this subject before.  Look it up.  I don't care if I'm repeating myself.  In present times, there is never enough being said about discrimination and the flawed logic that is applied by the folks who discriminate and believe in a social class system so religiously that they would sacrifice 200+ years of social and economic progress to maintain it. 

This is a subject that is dear and near to my heart.  Both of my children are women and they've experienced more discrimination than they could ever deserve.  Many of my friends are non-white and their experiences tear at my heart and make me ashamed of my country and culture. 

Here's the deal.  If you believe, for example, that white folks are superior to black folks, for example, it's simple to prove or disprove.  If a race is superior, all healthy (non-mentally retarded) examples of that race will be superior to all healthy examples of the inferior race.  Meaning, that every white man will be superior in intellect to every black man.  Any deviation from that rule will disprove the entire argument.  If I can find one black person who is more intelligent, more capable, and more educated than a single white person, the entire racial-superiority argument is defeated.  I think even the dumbest Aryan Nation, KKK cracker will be stuck admitting that there are millions of black men and women who could outwit them and everyone in their family in every test of mental capacity except, possibly, who has memorized the most possum recipes. 

The same test, slightly modified, would apply to sexism.  For example, the statement "women are biologically unfit to be fighter pilots" could easily be put to the test.  Since this is a highly skilled, we hope, technical and physical occupation, the "everyman" test is less applicable.  So, I'll modify it.  Now, what we'll say is if every qualified man is superior to every qualified woman, it's fair to say that women are unfit to be fighter pilots.  To test the premise, you'd need a war.  In peacetime, all kinds of crap ends up in the military.  Criminals, high school dropouts, spoiled little rich kids who want to be "officers," and freaks who can't afford their own weapons filter into the military when a country doesn't need the military.

Once the war gets underway, the "professionals" get killed, run away, or are court-martialed for their usual perverse behavior and are replaced by citizen-soldiers.  That's when the demand for talent overrides the impulse to either be politically correct or to be personally biased.  Or, at least, that's when those impulses should be overridden.   

During that period, women and men, provided with the same training, can establish superiority or equality.  Until then, either position is unsupported by evidence.  Until then, it doesn't matter.  During peacetime, the military is an unnecessary luxury that can experiment in any dumbass behavior that it finds distracting. 

And so it goes. 

I suspect that the most qualified woman will be considerably more qualified than the least qualified man, in just about any technical field and, possibly, any physical activity we can imagine.  I am absolutely convinced that the most intelligent, capable, rational, and inventive black/yellow/red/brown person will possess infinitely more of those traits than the least intelligent, capable, rational, and inventive white man.  Regardless of education or cultural advantages, that proves (to me) that racial stereotypes are useless in evaluating either a race or individual members of that race.  Your mileage may vary, but your evidence is all that interests me.

August 2005

#127 All Terrorists are . . . (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

Abd al-Rahman al-Rashid, the Editor-in-Chief of the Arab Press Review, recently wrote an editorial titled, The Sad Truth Is That All Terrorists Are Muslim.  While it is brave of an editor in his position to take that stance, he's letting an awful lot of True Believers off of the hook.  The real sad truth is that all terrorists are True Believers.  From Osama bin Laden to the Unabomber, Jeffrey Dahlmer, Adolf Hitler, George W. Bush, Attila the Hun, Rush Limbaugh, Timothy McVeigh, neocons, neo-Christers, eco-terrorists, corporate raiders, and the rest of history's long, painful list of viciously scary folks, every one of these nuts is a True Believer in something.  Usually something that seems completely idiotic to the rest of us. 

If we want to make the world safe from terrorists, we need to spend serious money disproving the fantasies of the world's True Believers.  Now that would make a terrific campaign for a Presidential campaign, wouldn't it?  "Help stomp out irrational faith, vote for The Brain!"  Or, maybe, Pinky would be a more credible candidate behind that platform?  Or some completely suicidal politician who has a brain tumor and absolutely nothing to lose?

The fact is, most humans are some whacked out True Believer.  At the dawn on this country, a few humans labored under the fantasy that humanity was at the beginning of a new age, the Age of Reason.  Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Ben Franklin, and George Washington created a country that would be free of religious interference and irrational fantasies, largely against the prevailing winds of the time.  The nasty fact is that only a few of the country's founding fathers were affected by the Age of Reason. 

The overwhelming majority of their fellow citizens were just as superstitious as cavemen, or more so because they had been infected by the past 1,000 years of Catholic and Protestant weirdness.  You'd think that European expatriates would be a tich nervous about religion in general, after the Inquisition, the witch trials, and the various whacky religious persecution of various whacky religious groups.  They supposedly immigrated to the "New World" to get away from all that, but they really came here to turn the tables.  Almost every religious colony established its particular fantasy as the delusion of choice.  Very few of the refuges provided a lick of tolerance to people of differing faith. 

As for different cultures or races, intolerance was the philosophy of choice.  The majority of the country's founders were so committed to slavery that Jefferson and Adams had to write limited tolerance for the "institution" into the Constitution to keep the country from breaking into dozens of mini-states even before the United States were united.  By the time the Constitution was written, Manifest Destiny was the nutty fantasy of the age.  Neo-Americans were dispossessing, shooting, strangling, chasing away, and poisoning with disease Native Americans as if killing the existing residents were a god's law.  More True Believers doing more serious damage.

Even science has True Believers who may need a massive dose of veracity.  From the global warming advocates and opponents to alternative and conservative energy promoters to evolution vs. "intelligent design" proponents, science is overfull of folks who believe so strongly in their pet fantasies that the unbending rules of science never come into play during their arguments.  It's past time for a New Age of Reason.  In fact, if humanity wants to survive into the 22^nd Century, it's possible that True Believers may have to cash in their weird fantasies for a tenuous grip on reality.

#123 Look out Canada! (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

Today, December 1st, 2004, G.W. Bush scared the crap out of Canada.  He did it under the mask of pretending to thank Canadians for their selfless concern and care of thousands of Americans who were re-routed to a safe country, Canada, after Georgie and CRAP managed to screw up American civil defense on September 11, 2001 and turn the nation's runways into random target delivery systems.  For the last 200 years, whenever US citizens need to run to a safe place, the closest place has always been Canada.  You'd think it's about time that someone from our insanely dangerous government would thank Canada for years of sanity and security.  Why did it have to be the scariest person on the planet?

Bush started well, you have to give his speech writers that.  "For days after Sept. 11, Canadians came to the aid of men and women and children who were worried and confused and had nowhere to sleep . . . You opened your homes and your churches to strangers, you brought food, you set up clinics, you arranged for calls to their loved ones, and you asked for nothing in return."  If he'd have quit there, Canadians might still be sleeping comfortably.

He went further, still without delivering veiled threats or ominous symbolism with what should have been a final note, "Thank you for your kindness to America in an hour of need."  But Bush isn't about making people feel good about themselves or safe in their homes.  Bush is one Charlie Chaplin mustache away from being the craziest and unpredictable person ever to head a nation.  Being a neighbor to a nutcase has never been a comforting situation. 

The words Bush ended his in-person thank you speech put the fear into intuitive and intellectual Canadians, "Beyond the words of politicians and the natural disagreements that nations will have, our two peoples are one family and always will be." 

Knowing how likely GeeWiz is to take a liking to whatever you have that he wants, Canadians have to be wondering exactly how Georgie sees this "one family."  He used similar words in describing his motivation for invading Iraq.  Canada has some oil.  Canada has lots of natural resources that the whacky-cons could chop up and sell to China and Japan.  Canada has a particularly functional democracy that makes our dysfunctional and corrupt non-representational system look terrible in comparison.  Canada has managed to protect its boarders and cities, which are a lot more complicated than ours from illegal immigration, terrorism, and unbalanced trade. 

There is nothing worse than having the ugliest house and lawn in the neighborhood and living next door to the perfect neighbor.  The simple solution is to toss a Molotov cocktail into the perfect neighbor's window and burn their perfect house to the ground.  I suspect some Canadians are staying awake nights watching for any light from the south.  "One if by land, two if by air?"  Or something like that.

Canada is the 21^st Century's Austria, living next door to 1938 Germany and wondering how long their powerful, insane neighbor will tolerate a peaceful, democratic nation so close to the boarders of the exact opposite conditions.  The Bushies, on the other hand, must be worried that a free nation directly across an unprotected boarder might attract citizens not wanting to be the "last Jews across the boarder." 

#109 Legal Recreational Drugs (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

The current federal administration and Minnesota's state governor and big fans of Reagan's War on Drugs.  The argument seems to be that any drug that doesn't make a drug company exec (political contributor) rich causes irreparable damage to society.  Once upon a time, I thought the conservatives' anti-drug case was based on the conservative terror that somewhere someone might be having fun.  Not anymore.  As long as the people having fun are rich, old, white and fat, we're likely to promote their case with an advertising campaign.

Today it's obvious that money is the core to the War on Drugs.  Recreational drugs are the hot sellers in several drug companies' product lines.  If Viagra isn't a free-from-social-value recreational drug, marijuana has to be one of the most beneficial medicines ever discovered.  Pfizer's Viagra (and it's recreational buddies Celextra, Lilly's Cialis, Senetek's Invicorp, Bayer's Levitra, Propecia, Alprostadil, Uprima, and the never ending, constantly growing list of male erectile enhancement drugs) have only one function; to help old fat white men get a hard-on so that they can engage in recreational sex.  If that isn't a meaningless recreational drug, I can't imagine what kind of definition you would use for "recreational drugs."  No activity on this planet could be much less critical to the quality of life on this planet than old fat white guys wallowing on top of their trophy wives. 

It's interesting that the Bushies' argument to protect the income of their drug peddler buddies isn't doing the job they claim it will do.  All those profits were supposed to inspire drug companies to create more lifesaving drugs, but new drugs are not happening at the speed that they were developed before the current medicine=money culture.  In fact, the creation of new drugs is slowly coming to a halt in the US.  After an incredibly slow start, European medical-use drug development is cranking up in capacity and quality.  In a few years, American drug companies are going to want to have their new "intellectual property" laws defanged so that they can steal the patented work of their European competitors. 

A few years later, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, and Korea will join the competition.  Those nations are already providing much of the US manufacturing capacity.  Our lazy, greedy executive class gave away the computer business by "teaching" those countries how to manufacturer, design, and market personal computers.  Those same fools are repeating their mismanagement foolishness with drugs.  The upside is, since US manufacturers have dedicated themselves to creating and selling recreational drugs, we have to hope that the rest of the world will take up their slack and develop drugs for medical purposes.

In the meantime, American dope peddlers are pumping out recreational sex drugs, spending millions on television ads promoting their dope, and spending millions bribing docs and politicians to keep the pipeline open between their dope-peddling docs and the dope-abusing, impotent, fat, old white men.  You have to suspect that the Mafia is getting jealous.  In the past, when the Mob gets jealous they get political and violent (as if there is a difference).  I wonder if we're about to be entertained by gang wars between drug companies and street dope peddlers?  That would be fun. 

What's the beef about recreational drugs?  Don't ask me.  I dislike all of our "victimless crime" laws.  If people want to dope themselves into oblivion, even death, as long as they don't take anyone else down with them, I could care less.  Life is hard, humans are grossly over-represented in the world's animal population, resources are dwindling, and you could make about 4 billion arguments as to why people should be allowed to dope themselves into oblivion.  The world economy is such a mess that most people have two choices, sell themselves to the highest bidder or die.  Prostitution is only a crime when a rich man doesn't make a profit from it.  Employees are prostituting themselves to the employers every day.  Men and women have been sacrificing their health and time to employers for hundreds of years but nobody seems to think that is a moral crime.  It's only a crime when someone makes the sale without an employer middleman taking most of the profit.  The ultimate prostitute is a soldier.  Not only does a soldier offer his own life for money, but he'll take other, often innocent, lives for the same hard cash.  But that well populated with victims occupation is often honored in our cultures.  In our current "war," which is waged to steal the oil resources of North Africa, we're forcing National Guard members (who, mostly, got into the guard as a way to get to play with expensive toys, pretending to be soldiers, for extra cash, as a pointless part-time job) to kill and die for money.  A little recreational drug use, in comparison to that activity, has to be qualified as harmless.

My complaint about the Viagra-strain of recreational drugs is the inconsistency displayed by a culture that allows its ruling class legal access to recreational drugs and turns violent when the working class expects the same courtesy.  The rich can drink and drive without expecting serious consequences when they kill bystanders.  They can have meaningless―and conceptually disgusting―old man sex and have their dope choices sanctified by national televised advertising campaigns.  If someone grows a single marijuana plant in his backyard, federal and state SWAT teams will descend from black, noiseless helicopters to burn the crop, confiscate the grower's property, and imprison everyone in the neighborhood who might have "profited" by the illegal substance.  If we actually set out to create an irrational society with an incomprehensible Through the Looking Glass legal system, we couldn't have done a better job. 

#57 Lighting Dark Days (2001)

All Rights Reserved © 2001 Thomas W. Day

I suspect that most of my readers would like to think that I'd have the good sense and taste to stay away from writing a Rat Rant about the awful September 11 catastrophe in New York and what it has done to democracy and common sense. I wish it were true. Good sense and taste may be qualities that I was born without.

The nation suffered a senseless loss of innocent life and that's being disrespected by a loud outpouring of nationalism disguised as, and mistaken for, patriotism. Politicians and citizens are proving themselves to be completely unaware of the positive things this nation stands for, in their desire to return to the days of believing that we're immune to the dangers of this world. All the while, fools and cowards are pretending to be patriotic in wishing for that pathetic fantasy.

"The world has changed," they rant. "The rules are different." And so on.

Citizens are offering up their basic rights, the things that make the United States the unusual place that it is, in exchange for an illusion of cocoon-like safety. Politicians are offering an unlimited collection of new laws that will take away precious freedom, replacing individual rights and responsibility with a more powerful, less responsible government. There appears to be a wholesale rush to outlaw the very things the terrorists dislike the most about the United States. In Minnesota, we have a state senator who is pushing an amendment requiring the Cold War's pledge to the flag in schools. She claims that the practice of idolatry and fearful submission to ritual will teach children how to be an American.

I, obviously, have my doubts. I grew up in the age when chanting the pledge was common and required in K-12 public schools and some universities. I remember, in the heart of the Cold War, how few of us paid attention to the words we were forced to speak. I remember the joy that some teachers demonstrated when they found some reason to punish those of us who improperly idolized the flag. I, mostly, remember that this practice had nothing to do with the things we should have been learning about our nation's history and the foundations of our freedoms. I remember that the most "patriotic" educators didn't seem to know much about American history, the concepts contained in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, or the "founding fathers" they so often referred to but could not name. In my formal education, those important factors were so abandoned that I had to learn them on my own, outside of school and through fortunate accidents.

The words and concepts that we all need to repeat and understand are considerably more complex and valuable than the obedience chant contained in The Pledge. In my heart I believe that our somewhat flawed Constitution of the United States and our nearly perfect Bill of Rights are the words we all need to learn and understand. Through more than two hundred years of being right and, sometimes, very wrong, this country has been guided by the moral concepts expressed in those few words. Without the Bill of Rights, we would have degenerated into a stagnant monarchy or a degenerate theocratic dictatorship at any one of the mildly difficult times during the last 200 years. Without the Constitution, our government would have been indistinguishable from those of the rest of the world. We may yet give up that identity.

At the heart of all this fear is the fact that we Americans (Canada included--Mexico probably not) are practically universally hated by the rest of the world. Even by our "friends." There are good and stupid reasons for that hatred. An acquaintance, a slightly-redneck, ex-Desert Storm trooper, voiced his defense for riding a noisy, gas-guzzling, 180 mph crotch-rocketing motorcycle on the public streets. He wrote that the war in Iraq was about defending our American "right to be excessive" and that he was damned well going to freely exercise that "right."

The Right to be Excessive is a big part of our national character. Our dinky 5% of the world's population is chewing up something like 85% of the world's natural resources. Our main gripe about the Koto global warming accord was that we're arrogant enough to argue that we ought to be able to exchange our right to continue polluting the world's air in exchange for paying a few third world countries to remain non-industrialized. In that way, we could "trade" our current level of pollution for their current level of clean air; and keep doing what we've been doing without restriction.

We attempted to "manage" Mid-Eastern radicalism and Muslim isolationism by pitting Iraq against Iran and supplying weapons to both sides to fuel that diversion. When Saddam and Iraq got bored with Iran's primitive capabilities and decided to do a little freelancing against Kuwait, we squashed that ambition without a thought for how our presence would be perceived in an area that has never been particularly pro-American. September 11 is a reflection of that Mid-Eastern perception.

In our better moments, we believe that spreading the word about our form of socialized-capitalism will improve the world. We want to encourage the backward folk of the world to liberalize their economic and social systems to provide rights and opportunity for all men and women (women's rights are a particular sticking point with Mid-Easterners and most fundamentalists). In our more common moments, we want to maintain free markets for our products and access to everyone's natural resources for our comfort and entertainment. Neither of these motivations makes us a lot of friends in foreign government and religion.

The drive for and necessity of American access to foreign oil is at the heart of our presence in North Africa and southern Asia. We're not promoting democracy and human rights nearly as much as we're keeping our pipes in their oil fields. Kuwait was a totalitarian theocratic monarchy and we "defended" their right to remain as oppressive as they liked, as long as we got their oil output.

Our recent economic lesson has appeared to escaped much notice. The airlines stopped using burning petroleum to ferry the rich, frivolous, and timid across the country, after September 11, and the price of fuel for the rest of us dropped from $1.80 a gallon to $1.15; and continued falling until all the war activity drove it back up to $1.50 at the time of this Rant. Why this doesn't bother the average American, I can't imagine. So let me say it another way and maybe you'll get it: The small number of citizens who can afford to fly on gas guzzling airlines are subsidized by the rest of us, to the tune of increasing fuel costs by more than 50%. The media, the government, and executives are whining about how their fear of flying is stagnating the nation's economy, because they've enjoyed this luxury at the expense of the rest of us and it really bothers them that toy has been ruined. But what we ought to notice is how much the use of that toy has cost all of us. And we ought to do something about it.

That something is to take advantage of a war-time economy and put some resources into changing the way we effect the rest of the world. The technology to change from oil-based engine systems to hydrogen-based systems is practically in our hands. A variety of manufacturers and airlines have experimented with hydrogen-powered jet engines and they work. They, also, don't make effective flying bombs, since hydrogen does not have the explosive and incendiary capability of jet fuel. Hydrogen engines don't contribute to global warming, air pollution, or excessive use of non-renewable resources. With the kind of effort we put into fooling around in Cold War space, we could eliminate our need for foreign oil in a decade.

If we want to truly honor the loss and sacrifice of September 11, 2001, we will end our dependence on foreign oil, especially Mideastern oil, and we will change the way humans generate energy and use resources. The Islamic radicals think this is a holy war. We could make it one by playing this game on a different board. We could do something truly holy and act to preserve this world, our country, and to create a new energy economy that doesn't rely on propping up corrupt and vicious oil dictatorships, monarchies, theocracies, and international corporations.

Subversion, via the Rat hole.

We could do it. We could put ourselves in a position where we don't need the oil producing cartel. They sure as hell need us, because their system hasn't created anything more complex than castles in the sand in the last thousand years. If we really want to create a democratic and representative world, the first step will be to only do business with those who are democratic and representative.

That's a good rule in business, too: only do business with folks you like and who like you. What we middle class, United States citizens need to do is to direct our government to put us in a position where we don't have to do business with people who hate us. Even more, we should be picking the folks with whom we're taking to bed.

There are more than two ways to react to a threat. We can march mindlessly off to war, or we can shut the enemy out of the world economic game. Without us providing their food and materials, most of the oil producing countries are incapable of making their own light bulbs (I would include most of Texas and all of Alaska in that group.). One of those options would be a death blow to the enemy's economic base. The spillover from a traditional war will just make more enemies and put us further in oil debt.

Quote for the week: "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." Abraham Lincoln

October, 2001

Impossible Missions

The United States has long been addicted to the idea of impossible missions; crusades and causes and impossible ideals. The Revolutionary War was our first national impossible mission. The Revolutionaries hoped to build a nation where "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," but where some men could own other men and where a very few men could live outside of the boundaries of decency and community. Maybe the idealists who wrote those words in the Declaration of Independence had nothing but the best of intentions, but there were men among those who saw opportunity in the misfortune of the many. The more I learn about the origins of this nation, the more I come to believe that something other than democracy was a principal creation with the United States of America. So many things stayed the same, or became worse, after our revolution but one thing that came to be and only grew stronger during the next 235 years; marketing mythology.

Since then, the American public has been sold a succession of wars and invasions that have been, primarily, intended to make that original group of marketeers, and the few who joined them in the last century, rich and powerful. In our nation's short history, we have been at war with some other nation, or nations, for a minimum of 76 of our 235 years; at least 32% of our life. Many of those "wars' have been simple invasions for profit: from the Barbary Invasion of 1801 to the Mexican-American War of 1846 to today's incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of the invasions haven't even been declared and are not part of that 76 year total. Since 1950, we've been at war for 65% of those years. Again, that does not include CIA and undeclared military activities.

In his famous War Is A Racket speech and the book that grew from public appearances, General Smedley Butler, a former USMC Commandant who was twice awarded the Medal of Honor said, "War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes . . .

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

The nation has been conned into at least a dozen wars since Butler's time, not including the CIA's violent and illegal interventions in practically every nation in the world. Now, we're wrapped up in a War on Terror, which from the start sounded oxymoronic to me. War, by nature, is terrorism. You can not drop bombs on civilian populations and be anything but a terrorist.

That wasn't the first instance of wars conducted on imaginary "enemies." We've had a War on Poverty, which lasted until Republicans distracted the American public with a variety of delusions from the early 70's until today. At least that "war" had some good intent. What followed was purely profit-motivated.

That might have introduced the outrageous idea that you can declare war on a noun; let alone a pronoun. Seriously? We're going to launch an invasion against everyone who causes terror in the mind of Americans? I'm pretty sure that isn't possible. Even more unlikely is the possibility that our government--which was well-stocked with rich men who counted on the sources of terrorism (Saudi Arabia, in particular) for much of their wealth--would wage war on the actual source of our particular terror of the moment; the people who attacked New York City on September 11, 2001. Obviously, they picked a place semi-close to the actual source of terrorism and fired away with the nation's treasure and youth. Today, they are much richer and we are nearly a nation in poverty. Fortunately for the rich, "money knows no borders" and after they've bankrupted and demoralized this country, they'll move to some other country and ruin it. It's what they do.

77 years ago, the nation ended its first experiment in prohibition; our War on Alcohol or The Noble Experiment. 1917's 18th Amendment and its enforcement legislation, the Volstead Act, created one of the most violent, destructive periods in the nation's history. This government effort to legislate and enforce morality resulted in 16 years of all out war (at a cost of $500 million/year) against the working class by several branches of government. It also created the US version of the Mob and strengthened their grip on several government agencies, including the FBI and state law enforcement. In the end, prohibition was ended with a gentleman's agreement between government and the Mafia called "Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act of 1938" and "Marihuana Tax Act of 1937." These gifts from our government to the Mob provided extensive territory of illegal markets and activity so that the underworld economy could continue and prosper.

We've waged an incredibly unsuccessful and expensive War on Drugs ($20 billion for this year, so far) since Nixon first coined the phrase in 1971. The Alzheimer's Candidate, Ronnie Rayguns, made this war on a noun his personal platform, created the Office of National Drug Control Policy in 1988, and appointed our first Drug Czar that year. He and his nutty wife consulted tea leaves and Gypsy fortune tellers for advice on waging this war (and other policy decisions) and the result is trillions of dollars wasted and millions of lives ruined or destroyed. Supposedly, the Obama Administration will stop using the War on Drugs mantra because they believe it is "counterproductive." You have to love their love of understatement. This has been the longest, most expensive, least successful war in the nation's history. The history of this make-believe war has been vicious, dishonest, and destructive. There is no end in sight.

In October of 2001, Congress passed the War on American Civil Rights and Liberties Act, also known as the Patriot Act. This amazing 56,800 word incursion into the Bill of Rights and the Constitution couldn't have been nicknamed more poorly. Like most of our wars, this war eliminates basic rights that were once thought to be central to our democracy.

A Small Sample of our Long Wartime History (major events only):

Began	Ended	Years at War	Formal Name	Who and Where
1775	1783	8	American Revolution	English Colonists vs. Great Britain
1798	1800	2	Franco-American Naval War	United States vs. France
1801	1805; 1815	5	Barbary Wars	United States vs. Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli
1812	1815	3	War of 1812	United States vs. Great Britain
1813	1814	1	Creek War	United States vs. Creek Indians
1836		1	War of Texas Independence	Texas vs. Mexico
1846	1848	2	Mexican-American War	United States vs. Mexico
1861	1865	4	U.S. Civil War	Union vs. Confederacy
1898		1	Spanish-American War	United States vs. Spain
1914	1918	4	World War I	Triple Alliance: Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary vs. Triple Entente: Britain, France, and Russia. The United States joined on the side of the Triple Entente in 1917.
1939	1945	6	World War II	Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, Japan vs. Major Allied Powers: United States, Great Britain, France, and Russia
1950	1953	3	Korean War	United States (as part of the United Nations) and South Korea vs. North Korea and Communist China
1960	1975	15	Vietnam War	United States and South Vietnam vs. North Vietnam
1961		1	Bay of Pigs Invasion	United States vs. Cuba
1983		1	Grenada	United States Intervention
1989		1	US Invasion of Panama	United States vs. Panama
1990	1991	1	Persian Gulf War	United States vs. Iraq
1995	1996	1	Intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina	United States as part of NATO acted peacekeepers in former Yugoslavia
2001	2010	9	Invasion of Afghanistan	United States vs. the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to fight terrorism.
2003	2010	7	Invasion of Iraq	United States vs. Iraq
235		76
		32%

It's worth noting that practically none of the "wars" that General Butler mentioned in War Is A Racket are on this list. Most of our war-like activities in South and Central America and Africa are unlisted, also. Obviously, the many wars against native Americans are also unlisted. If those were included, it's possible the United States might be the most warlike nation in the history of the world. We might be more warlike than the Romans or the British. It is easy to imagine that our country has been at war with someone for more than half and, possibly, nearly every year of its existence. If we really wanted to wage a battle against terrorism, we'd probably be tearing ourselves to pieces. As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."


After describing these depressing statistics to my wife, she asked, "Well what do you want to do about it?"

Obviously, there is nothing I can do about it but my answer is, "Restrict the President to the very limited military powers the Constitution gives to that office and grow a pair of testicles on Congress." Before that will happen, the country will have to purge itself of the interests the Republican Party represents and create some political alternatives for the tiny number of people who actually are "conservative" and "liberal." What I expect will happen is that we'll keep following this nutty militaristic path until the rest of the world rises up and beats us down, the same way every other violent empire has died in human history.