American Realistan

Saddam Hussein is dead. Good riddance.

I find it interesting that there are certain similarities between Saddam’s termination and some conducted by another tyrant in another time.

Erwin von Witzleben was arrested on 20 July 1944 for participating in Count Claus von Stauffenberg’s attempt on Hitler’s life at the Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia. He was cast out of the Wehrmacht by the so-called Ehrenhof der Wehrmacht (”The Regular Army’s Court of Honour”), a conclave of officers set up after the attempted assassination to remove officers from the Wehrmacht who had been involved in the plot, mainly so that they could be tried at the Volksgerichtshof rather than at a court-martial.

It was as if he was declared an enemy alien
so he could be tried outside of his nation’s laws.

Erwin von Witzleben was put to death the same day he was tried at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin. He was hanged with piano wire, with the execution filmed for Hitler’s viewing in the privacy of his personal theater

I wonder if Bush has a video of the execution of Karla Faye Tucker? He must get off on executions, because of the 232 people who have been executed in Texas since 1973, (fifth in the world in executions as of October 25, 2000), the Chicago Tribune reported that 131 Texas executions were performed while Bush was Texas’ Governor - more than half.

We don’t have to question, however, whether Bush has videos of the execution of Saddam. You ghouls out there can see the noose being put around Saddam’s neck by clicking on the link so thoughtfully provided by CNN in their report of the execution. [Find it yourself!]

You know that the execution was carried live to Crawford.

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A reader didn’t like my taking Jerry Ford to task for pardoning Richard Nixon before Watergate could be properly investigated:

The sad truth is that both political parties have been bought and paid for many times over. Get a quick start on what you obviously never learned in school about the government of your native land and how it came to be. Read: “The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America” by Prof. Gary B. Nash of UCLA. Consider the exercise due pennance [sic] for being gullible enough to believe the morons who taught you history, civics, etc., and not do some of your own reading and fact finding.

Wake up and smell the coffee…

Red Barron, Vienna, VA

There is only one correct response to offer. To quote a well-known social philosopher of the late 1970’s:

“EX-CUUUUUUUUUUUUUSE ME!”

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Don’t include me in the pantheon of mourners for the original enable of the rise of American corporofascism. Jerry Ford, while probably a most-decent man on a personal level, was extremely malleable through subtle persuasion. He was putty in the hands of Nixon aides Rumsfeld and Cheney (these names sound familiar?). They are the ones who are attributed with getting Ford to see the “wisdom” of pardoning Nixon before any serious investigation into the Watergate activities could begin.

But Ford won’t be remembered for his defective deliberative abilities as much as he will for his slapstick physicality:

Ford’s Image Belied His Reality
By John J. Miller, National Review Online
12/27/2006

Somehow, the only president who ever tackled a Heisman Trophy winner gained the reputation of a lubber.

Ford couldn’t get away from the teasing about his clumsiness. On a visit to Austria, Ford tripped down the steps of Air Force One — to the chuckles and clicks of a press corps that, in the aftermath of Watergate, was no longer interested in protecting the image of the president. He fell down on skis. He bumped his head while getting off a helicopter. His stray golf balls became the stuff of legend.

“It’s not hard to find Jerry Ford on a golf course,” quipped Bob Hope. “You just follow the wounded.”

The jokes kept coming: Have you heard about the Jerry Ford doll? Wind it up and it lurches into something. The only thing between Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and the Oval Office, it was said, is a banana peel.

Other comedians piled on. Saturday Night Live’s Chevy Chase lampooned Ford as the president who couldn’t stay on his feet.

And yet, somehow, Jerry Ford tended to land on his two left feet anyway while the nation crashed.

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I certainly hope that the title of this piece isn’t applicable to you and yours. But if one considers oneself a good person, much less a good Christian, are we not supposed to remember the less fortunate? And yet, there are so many signs that we have forgotten what Christmas represents:

How We Say Christmas
New York Times Editorial
December 25, 2006

What would you say if you had to explain Christmas to someone who knew nothing about it? A stranger might well wonder, don’t you always hope for peace on earth? Does good will really have a season? And if you genuinely love one another - truly hold one another in your hearts - wouldn’t simply saying it be far more eloquent than any other gift that you could give?

You would probably have something to say about the importance of family and the force of a holiday whose strongest emotions center upon children, and upon our memories of being children. And yet to really explain Christmas you would also have to try to answer the question that seems more pressing every year: how do those emotions and memories connect to the frenzied commercial machinery of the weeks that lead up to Christmas? What does all that retailing and wrapping paper have to do with peace on earth?

What matters is not just the disjunction between the majesty of those old hymns and the immodesty of this shopping season. It is that all those presents did not really catch the feeling we were looking for, did not say what we hoped to say.

Unfortunately, some say too much, demonstrating that they know nothing about Christmas:

Tis the Season for Republican So-Called Christians to Go Nuts
by A. Alexander, www.progressivedailybeacon.com
December 12th, 2006

Republican so-called Christians certainly do become extra angry this time of year, but who can blame them?

Christmas is the most wonderful time of year and oh-so full of wishes for joy, happiness, peace on earth, and goodwill toward all. Most of all, however, Christmas is the Holiday that, just beneath the surface, celebrates an incredibly beautiful Christ-like Liberalism of giving, sharing, loving, caring, and joy.

In short, the Holiday season is
the antithesis of the Conservative movement.

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It took far too long, but the arch-nemesis of traditional American diplomacy has finally come to a well-deserved terminus:

End of the neo-con dream
By Paul Reynolds, BBC World Affairs correspondent
21 December 2006

The neo-conservative dream faded in 2006.

The neo-conservatives were called that because they sought to re-establish what they felt were true conservative values in the Republican Party and the United States. They wanted to stop what they felt were the isolationist tendencies that had developed under President Clinton, and even under the pragmatic President George Bush senior.

The idea of the “The Project for the New American Century” was to project American power and influence around the world. They predicted the development of democratic values in a region lacking in them and, in that way, the removal of any threat to the United States just as the democratisation of Germany and Japan after World War II had transformed Europe and the Pacific. They saw the war in Iraq as their big chance of showing how the “New American Century” might work.

The 1997 statement (written during the administration of President Bill Clinton) said: “We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan Administration’s success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States’ global responsibilities.”

The ambitions proclaimed when the neo-cons’ mission statement “The Project for the New American Century” was declared in 1997 have turned into disappointment and recriminations as the crisis in Iraq has grown. Since so much was pinned on Iraq, it is inevitable that the problems there should have undermined the whole idea. “Project” has been reduced to a voice-mail box and a ghostly website. A single employee has been left to wrap things up.

Let’s hope that the paycheck doesn’t start bouncing anytime soon, as the ultra-wrong-wingers will pull out their financial support to apply to the next incarnation of the imposition of corporo-fascism in America. We wouldn’t want a neocon to have to accept welfare!

“. . . And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
- “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold, written in 1851,
quoted by Bob Koehler, Ignorant Armies, December 20, 2006

“We’re not winning, we’re not losing,” Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. The assessment was a striking reversal for a president who, days before the November elections, declared, “Absolutely, we’re winning.”

“Victory in Iraq is achievable,” Bush said. “It hadn’t happened nearly as quickly as I hoped it would have.

“But I also don’t believe most Americans want us just to get out now,” the president said.

54 percent said the U.S. should withdraw its troops immediately or within the next year, support for Bush’s handling of the Iraq conflict has decreased to 28 percent with a record 70 percent of respondents saying they disapproved of Bush’s war management. Half of those polled said a stalemate was the most likely outcome of the war. 27 percent said that the U.S. needs to completely overhaul its strategy and 46 percent said major changes were needed.
Support for his management of anti-terrorism efforts dropped to 42 percent while 55 percent disapproved.
Bush’s overall job approval was 36 percent versus 62% who said they disapproved of his performance in office.

He does not interpret the Democratic electoral victories as a mandate to bring U.S. involvement in Iraq to an end.

“Bush does not seem to have understood the message of mid-term elections,” said Andrew Burgin, spokesman of the Stop the War Coalition. “The whole political class appears to be out of touch with how this war started, what is happening in Iraq now and what the future holds.”

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My comment threads are being monopolized by spammers, and I’m considering shutting off comments since I get so few real comments anyway. If you have an opinion on this, email me at writerealist[AT]earthlink.net. I’ll wait until the start of the new year before I make the change, so you have some time to think it over - if you even think this important at all!  ;< )

There are plenty of Americans who have way too many dollars and far too little sense.

There has been a great deal of enthusiasm generated lately by folks like these, supporters of personally-lucrative Bush economic policies, due to the current high stock index prices. But even these folks can’t hide from the looming problems under what good economic news there is.

Take this article from The Business Ledger of Naperville, Illinois:

The U.S. economic outlook for 2007 is solid, despite the myriad challenges presented by rising energy and health care costs, expensive foreign wars and a lackluster housing market, said a panel of experts. Employment costs will go up as well.

But foreign analysis of the US economy isn’t so rosy as the Happy Talkers want us to think:

Economic growth in the US, the world’s largest energy consumer, may slow next year because of lower consumer spending and rising unemployment, said Deutsche Bank AG, Germany’s largest bank.

So which report is correct?

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Recent business news has been loudly touting the rising stock indices as proof that the American economy is really fine and doing swell. And yet, if one chooses to look beyond the headlines, there are signs that everything isn’t as it seems on first glance.

The dollar is dropping relative to most of the world’s currencies, and Bush adminstration officials are over in China hoping to relieve some of that downward pressure. Unfortunately, the Bush administration isn’t the irresistable force they like to believe they are. They have run full steam into the Chinese immovable object.

But as it is the beginning of the real holiday season at the end of this week, the parties have already begun - and some have much to celebrate. They are so busy doing so that they are blind to the bigger picture, which is that where we are headed is going to put us outside the boundaries of polite concern on the part of other societies.

This is a long post, so refill your holiday drink of choice and venture onward.

“It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
- Henry Ford

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The body of Augusto Pinochet is barely cool, and the recounting of his debatable life is just heating up.

John O’Sullivan, a Hudson Institute senior fellow, praises Pinochet, proclaiming that “if successful economic transformation could justify political mass murder … then Pinochet should be celebrated without reserve as the savior of his country”.

There is celebration in Chile, but it isn’t over being “saved” by Pinochet! Dave Zirin of the LA Times reports that a Chilean friend emailed him shortly after the dictator’s demise, saying, “In Chile, we have always known the truth about this evil man. It does my heart well that jail was his immediate future, and that he knew it.”

Greg Palast provides the details of Pinochet’s damage to the country he was “saving”:

The claim that General Pinochet begat an economic powerhouse was one of those utterances whose truth rested entirely on its repetition.

Like the common Republican claims of the rash acts of Reagan and Dubya being so good for the American nation!

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