If I Were A Terrorist… August 6, 2007

If I were an Islamic terrorist, not just a common street bomber, but a leader, a strategist, what would I be thinking  these days?

My strategic goals:

• Islamic states throughout the Middle East and South Asia.
• Weakening, if not destroying, United States military power
• Enfeebling, if not destroying, democracy in the U.S. and Europe, but primarily in the U.S.

To establish Islamic states, I would need an enemy common to all Islamic people.

That’s simple enough. There is A) the West, and B) America.

The U.S. is a major military power, relying on high tech, highly organized armies. These can be bled into impotence by guerrilla forces. Draw them into a battle where they will suffer the death of a thousand cuts.

How? A major attack on one of their cities would likely work, and would be guaranteed to work if a right-wing government is in power. Conservatives historically seek power and destroy democracy. The further right the better. And the weaker the leader the better. A weak leader is easy prey for power-hungry subordinates.

If I were a terrorist, I would now consider myself successful.

I brought down a major symbol of American power, the World Trade Center. I was lucky enough to have an incredibly weak and poor American leader in George W. Bush, and have come to consider him almost an equal partner in my plan to bring down the United States – he and his party of morally and ethically corrupt Republicans, who seek permanent power and thus contribute to the coming collapse of their country.

I have drawn their armies, with virtually no effort on my part thanks to the megalomaniac arrogance of Bush, into a war they cannot win, a war which  bleeds them to collapse, which tears apart the United States politically, which drains it economically.

I have partners working closely with me to destroy civil liberties in the United States. They have already suspended one of the most powerful tools of democracy, one of the foundational tools of Western liberty, the right of habeas corpus. They have effectively suspended provisions of their vaunted Bill of Rights, the latest effort being the revised wiretap law. Bush has aggregated to himself dictatorial powers in executive orders and in signing statements that deny the validity of laws passed by Congress. Bush and the Republicans, aided by weak Democrats, have given me all this, and they have, by practicing torture, by imprisoning without cause or justice thousands of innocent people, by slaughtering other thousands of innocents, given me recruits and recruiters in vast numbers.

And I have tens of millions more partners in the United States. I have all those citizens who blithely go on shopping while ignoring the rise of tyranny; citizens who have decided that ignorance is bliss, that biased news is real news, not that they can tell the difference anymore. I have all those citizens who don’t vote, and those who stupidly accept that voting machines proven to be easily compromised are okay because the people in power say so. I have all those citizens who can’t be bothered to read a book, who can’t be bothered to question what they see on television news, who think people shouting over each other is news, who believe everything they see and hear in political commercials. America is populated by herds of humans who fail the simplest tests of knowledge, who have no ability to think critically, who want only to be led, to be told what to think, what to buy, where to go, and where to stand while the ax comes down. 

Let me not forget those citizens who cheer their blind, thoughtless, arrogant right-wing politicians who offer, as a solution to the problems I create, the nuclear bombing of my holy cities; who offer as a solution to the flood of illegal immigrants seeking escape from problems created in part by the United States the wholesale arrest and repatriation of these millions of people; who offer as a solution to terrorism the constant drumbeat of fear and the wholesale repression of dissent and criticism.

These citizens, and the Republican party, and the cabal headed by Bush and his puppetmaster Cheney, are my greatest weapons, my most powerful allies. If I can keep them in power, I can destroy the United States.

One more attack should do it, should drive the final nail in the coffin. One more major catastrophe. Perhaps exploding a major dam. Perhaps a suicide squad melting down a nuclear power plant. Perhaps a chemical refinery near a major population center. Perhaps assassinating some Supreme Court Justices or Cabinet officers.

The Republicans and the Bush Administration have given me the power that will allow the Americans to bring themselves to their knees. I barely have to do anything more.

And if they capture me, or kill me, so what? I will be with my God, and another will take my place. And another will take his place if God calls him. I know in my heart that the United States will not stop destroying itself, will not stop its policies of destruction and slaughter in the world, will not rein in its corporations as they despoil the world and ravage populations and create more hatred. The United States is like a blind, enraged elephant loose in a village. Its only weapon is rage and massive power. It will destroy all around it in the stupidity of rage, and then it will fall as the villagers rise up and reclaim their home.

The villagers will feel some pity for such a beast, but the people of the world will feel none for the blind, ugly thing that the United States has chosen to become.

If I were a terrorist, the United States would be my best friend, my greatest helper, and when it has exhausted itself and lies helpless before the world, I will feel no pity, no compassion, no sympathy. One does not pity evil.

But I am not a terrorist. I am a citizen of the United States watching my government and my people destroy what was once the hope of freedom, of liberty, of democracy in the world, watching them follow blindly, stupidly, the plan for their destruction laid out by brutal, calculating men in far lands and in Washington.

I no longer weep.

I vote. I watch. I read. I write.

I wait.

In time, if the time comes, if I am able, I will rise up to reclaim my country from fascism, or whatever -ism the tyranny will be named. My comrades will call me a patriot. The powers in Washington will call me a terrorist. They will fail to understand that dissent is patriotism in its highest form, and that fighting a tyranny on one’s home soil is the highest form of dissent.

And in time, in time, they will fall.

It is my deepest hope that from that fall will rise the America that is in my heart, that lies in the heart of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the America the world needs, the America that the world looked to for so long as a sane harbor of reason, of democracy, of liberty.

But for now America is a long way from sanity, from reason, from democracy, from liberty. A long way.

Giuliani: "9/11, 9/11, 9/11"!! But Does Anyone Know What He Actually Did? July 5, 2007

Susan Milligan writes in the Globe today about Mr. G and his trump card – September 11, 2001. You remember, right? That was the day some three thousand people got their asses killed by fanatics. Mr. G harps on that day constantly in his lust for Presidential power. The man’s walking on the bones of the dead to get another job in politics.

Milligan notes that just six seconds into a speech in Delaware:

“I’ll tell you the reason I wear this flag,” (Giuliani said) pointing to the American flag pin on his lapel. “Before September 11, I only wore this flag rarely. But I started wearing it everyday now. Each time I wear it, it reminds me of September 11.”

Nice touch, Mr. G. Too bad the dead can’t vote, eh?

But the thing  about 9/11 is that no one seems to be able to identify what Mr. G did that merits his iconic status as a hero of that day.  Even his supporters have trouble with that:

Giuliani’s supporters lavish him with praise for his handling of 9/11. At a recent Giuliani event, many said they could not recall any specific thing Giuliani did the day of the attacks. But, they say, Giuliani’s very presence in the streets of Manhattan after the attack – a stark contrast to President Bush, who was absent from public view for hours after the tragedy – displayed strong leadership and courage.

“He took control,” said Carolyn Mercadante, 70, a Delaware voter who came to see Giuliani speak. “Just the fact that he was such a presence there” in New York the day of the attacks, said 67-year-old Bill Uranko of Middleton, Del., when asked to explain what impressed him about Giuliani’s Sept. 11 performance. “You could see he was visibly moved by what happened.”

Well, hell’s bells, I was visibly moved too. How about I get elected President? Damn, that’s it, I’m officially announcing my candidacy for President of the United States. Send me some money, folks. We’re gonna rout these pretenders.

So, let’s see, Rudy pretty much just walked around wiping the dust off himself. Just like everybody else was doing. He didn’t save anybody’s life. He didn’t dig in the ruins for survivors. He didn’t even have a place to go because the disaster command center he set up years before was in the World Trade Center, at his insistence. You know, in one of the towers that went down, in the towers that were the biggest, most obvious targets in the city. Sure, you remember, the towers that were attacked in 1993. Smart man, that Mr. G.

Then we have the firefighter, from Maryland, who thinks Mr. G “stands out as someone who would protect the nation. ‘We need a person who is going to take on the terrorists. It’s the real thing.”

What’s this guy think Mr. G is gonna do? Go to the Middle East and challenge al Qaeda to a fist fight? “Take on the terrorists”? Give me a break. Mr. G not only couldn’t protect his own city, he refused to take steps that would have protected the city’s first responders.

After the 1993 attacks, he knew that the radio system used by firefighters and police was a failure. He knew there were systems that would work in disaster situations. He refused to provide police and firefighters with a proper system. In effect, he signed the death warrants of hundreds of firefighters in the towers on 9/11. Atta boy, Mr. G!

And yet, here’s Rep. Dave Reichert, Washington State chairman of Mr. G’s campaign there.

“The mayor may have more credibility in this [antiterrorism] area than some of the other candidates. He has the experience to back up his comments.”

No, he doesn’t, Dave. He didn’t do anything to fight terrorism on or before 9/11. He hasn’t done anything since to fight terrorism. In fact, he blew off the Iraq Commission, of which he was reputed to be a member, so he could go out and campaign. You’re blowing smoke, Dave, and it’s coming out of your butt.

And finally, Fred Siegel, a history professor who wrote a book on Mr. G, said, “Giuliani governed against the grain. He alienated every interest group in New York, which is why he accomplished so much.”

I would note that George W. Bush, the current sicko occupant of the Presidency, has alienated just about everyone on the planet except Tony Blair, by ‘governing against the grain’. So, what Mr. G is offering us is four to eight more years of Bushian psychopathy as a philosophy of government.

No thanks, Rudy. Maybe you ought to just go back to New York and get a job digging bone fragments from the sewers around the World Trade Center. Then you can say you actually did something useful about 9/11.

Joe Lieberman, Neo-Con Lovebug June 11, 2007

Joe Lieberman, the fake Democrat from Connecticut, wants ‘us’ to attack Iran. We should first note that when a clown like Lieberman says ‘we’ in situations like this, he means your kid should go die, and a bunch of innocent people of non-American nationality should be shredded by U. S. weaponry, while he and his stand safely far behind the action and don’t stand to lose a penny.

The Associated Press says:

“I think we’ve got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq,” said Lieberman.

…”We’ve said so publicly that the Iranians have a base in Iran at which they are training Iraqis who are coming in and killing Americans. By some estimates, they have killed as many as 200 American soldiers,” Lieberman said on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’.

Wait, wait, so it’s not Iranians killing Americans, Joe, it’s Iraqi fighters who are smart enough to go get some good training so they return to their country to kill the soldiers who illegally invaded and occupied Iraq and are responsible for the utter maelstrom of death and destruction there.

So Lieberman wants to kill Iranians because Iraqi patriots are killing American invaders? Joe, Joe, Joe, c’mon, you’ve proven your irrelevance and the complete failure of reason inside your brain. Stand down and let the Republicans make such ridiculous arguments. It suits them. You just look silly doing it.