Aquarian Weekly 5/14/03
REALITY CHECK

VICTORY MANDATE & OTHER SILLY CLAIMS

It is important to point out at this juncture that anyone taking political bows for the systematic dismantling of a third world nation by the most powerful and expensive fighting machine on the planet should be exposed for the opportunistic spin jockeys they aspire to be, and eventually held accountable for whatever weapons are not discovered within the borders of Iraq over the next calendar year.

In the coming weeks you are going to hear a lot of talk from men in ties and women in suits taking credit for a fixed military campaign that was never in doubt. It has already begun. It is disingenuous. It is grandstanding. And it is expected. But it has nothing to do with truth or this pitiful economy or your precarious job as a result of it.

It has everything to do with no mandate regarding domestic concerns, which has been the real quagmire around here.

Crushing foreign regimes with wretchedly out of date equipment and a weak-ass, mostly guerilla army does not a mandate make.

Ask the first Bush who tried that.

And while millions of our tax dollars goes to rebuilding Iraq and appeasing allies and keeping the military police running things in the Middle East, and the red, white and blue bulldozer that heaves endless funds into the money pit known as Homeland Security, the financial solvency of the United States of America and its citizens is in serious question.

You also hear a great deal of back-tracking talk from political hopefuls in 2004 that want you to believe that although they were vehemently and vocally against the war, they were always for the troops and the civil rights of Iraqis. That will also be bullshit.

This will be mixed with talk about how the war, although so far not producing the big-gun villains like Saddam or his brothers, or any Weapons of Mass Destruction, was really about human rights and freeing Iraqis. As stated so many times in this space that it boggles reason, this is a fine example of bullshit's better half, horseshit. When someone does something about China's record human rights abuses I'll believe them, until then shut the fuck up about human rights.

The truth is the military campaign in Iraq was long overdue and probably not completely necessary from a foreign policy standpoint. Could the money and time and lives sacrificed have been better served by a well-designed covert black ops mission, a CIA assassination, fancy coup de tat, or waiting another month for the world to rally the weapons inspectors?

Perhaps, but this is a new world and the constant rhetoric by terrorists that used to laugh at the sleeping giant that was too moral and too conservative to try anything like what went down this spring has ceased. Only a loud public stomping of that kind of magnitude would accomplish this.

And although those lucky enough to be living in fantasyland may see loud public stompings as abhorrent, regardless of what your definition of patriot is these days, they are sometimes good. Those of us forced to comment on the stinking, rotten mess of the real world see the odd stomping differently.

In the long run having Hussein out of the Middle East will settle a few key ingredients for the protection of financial and military allies like Israel, not to mention the billions of other funds funneled into Middle Eastern countries, and the all-important US oil concerns. Again, this is good, unless you use energy alternatives to oil, which unfortunately most of us do not. But it has nothing, let me repeat; not little or hardly, but NOTHING to do with how this county will survive this year or the next with an outrageously bloating national debt, soaring record numbers of unemployed and a frighteningly unstable stock market.

Using the war or the fallout from 9/11 can only go so far for this current administration or the congress it helped form. It is time for the current government to take political responsibility for its abysmal economic record.

I have no space or inclination to start throwing figures out there. They range from whomever you choose to receive them from, but none of them are good. Now the president campaigns for another tax cut package, mainly because his war was successful. Yes, well, that is a ducky reason, even amusing, but glaringly asinine and spurious, and in some circles, plain silly, even for George W. Bush.

Hey, I want a tax cut. Sounds good. Pay fewer taxes. Only here's the problem. This administration received their rather healthy tax cut a few years back. Things have not turned out well. Actually things are friggin' bad. Really bad. Historically, painfully, sickeningly bad.

Bad.

Sears screwed me lately. I don't buy anything at Sears anymore.

Get the analogy?

Once again, as pointed out here in the past, the economy usually has little to nothing to do with stimulus packages trumped up by the executive branch or bills bouncing around capital hill, or even Allen Greenspan tantrums. Just like not one of these blathering suits brandished a weapon in the desert last month. But this latest political football fallout from the War on Iraq kicking around Washington and into our living rooms on cable news outlets is getting into the blurry images political strategists dig. They love it when that happens. They love to tell you that since the president commandeered the war and it ended in victory, then hi-hip-hooray for tax cuts!

By that reasoning the heavyweight champion of the world should be appointed Queen of England.

Or something like that.

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