Aquarian Weekly 11/10/04 REALITY CHECK

SECOND TERM MADNESS Captain Shoo-In Gets a Rousing Rubber Stamp

“It’s not a lie, if you believe it.” – Zelda Fitzgerald

Five years ago in a rotten Orlando resort bar, I told Karl Rove he was a fucking genius. We laughed a lot that night, mostly because we were really drunk. He got a kick out of me. I got a kick out of him. And to his credit he never ignored my warnings that his boy was in trouble against Al Gore, and fought hard to see that the incubus was sent packing. But about halfway through the evening I pointed out that it seemed fairly preposterous that he or any of the brain trust behind the creation of George W. Bush, God-Fearing Country Bumpkin, really believed it.

“We believe it, because George Bush believes it,” Rove told me. “He really believes he’s born again,” he slurred. “Jesus got him off the drugs and booze and forgave him for doing nothing and standing for nothing for 40 years, and he was going to take advantage of being a rich Yaley and make a difference. And that’s something Al Gore never believed about himself. He only believed merely being privileged makes him worthy. But the American people want to believe the guy who’s convinced himself he’s one of them; a proud American with a gun and a Bible who doesn’t take shit from anyone.”

I had more or less forgotten the details of that conversation, until about three in the morning on election night when it became glaringly apparent that regardless of what havoc could be wreaked by a president, the electorate must trust that the guy they give the job to believes the bullshit. And for all his mistakes and faults, George W. Bush believes the job of this nation is to bring peace to the world with force and the people must be ruled with fear, because force and fear is what got Captain Shoo-In off the cocaine and the bottle and put him in the loving arms of Jesus and gave him the strength to fight terror and all that other nonsense. It was never political. It’s real for George Bush, and for reasons barely decipherable by even the weakest minds among us, it’s real for America.

A solid majority of Americans have rubber stamped this president and all that he believes. He is against Europe and international compromise of any kind. He is willing to bag civil rights for safety. He thinks the military is the best way to boost national morale. He is not sure gays choose to be gay or whatever they are, but he is damn sure they have no right to civil unions. He does not believe in vetoing anything as long as his party is in charge of the legislative branch, and he’s keen on growing business over and above anything petty like environmental issues. And boy does he believe in charging on the national debt. He believes it, and in overwhelming numbers, so does America.

Here’s something the Kerry camp never understood, that Bill Clinton’s people copped too, and why a political fossil like James Carville was whisked in too-little-too-late in the eleventh hour to manifest; the majority of people in this country care even less about intellect and privilege than they do about whiny foreigners and all that science mumbo jumbo and sissy diplomacy and threatening dissent. They want to relate to the fantasy model of the Everyman. They want a man who believes, whether it’s asinine, insane or astoundingly feral. Kennedy believed the bullshit. So did Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. These were believers. They had it down. That’s why they won national elections.

George W. Bush is a believer. He is president, again.

John Kerry pretended to believe. He is going back to the senate.

This election tells us that more Americans want to love the flag and God and mom and apple pie, and not all the stinging reality of cold hard facts. They believe in the Shining City on the Hill. They want someone who believes it too, no matter what. They want a president that tells them the economy is coming around and the morally imperative war is going well. God loves us. We’re always right. Everyone else can go to hell. No one wants to be called a sucker of government malfeasance and victims of policy. Their kids aren’t fat, reality shows aren’t infantile, abortion isn’t choice, support the troops, and so on.

But the electorate is not entirely duped about this enormously flawed president. Two-thirds of it thinks the country’s going in the wrong direction and Iraq is madness. But the president believes in the madness. John Kerry didn’t believe his madness. You could feel it in the stump speeches and in his uneven debate performances. Any jabbering sop could’ve pushed George Bush around in those debates. Bush hung back, repeated the mantra: Man of my word, values, faith, pride, and belief. This is what voters in predominant parts of this country want to hear. Not long-winded tripe about deficits and policies or how we’re doomed.

Those people who were power-hosing the black folk in Alabama and Mississippi and the Carolinas during the Civil Rights movement? They’re still there, and they had children, and they’re not trading the country in for any slick talking Yankee lawyer who ain’t down with Jesus.

Kerry went on and on about change. He wasn’t going to change anything. We only needed him to be president to take the stank of the Bush mistakes off us. Change? About three hundred thousand of us voted for change. The rest of you participated in choosing between the madness. The guy who believed it, and the guy who made it up.

Turns out Zell Miller’s apoplectic lunacy at the convention three months ago was right on the money. He was goofy, but he spoke for the electorate. Miller represents the majority. It hasn’t changed in 220-plus years of this republic. You want to change the hearts and minds of the hinterland? You want to jerk the south from its Bible Belt? You had better get the army together, like Lincoln did. Burn their cities and teach them a thing or two. These people are still fighting the damned Civil War. Those people who were power-hosing the black folk in Alabama and Mississippi and the Carolinas during the Civil Rights movement? They’re still there, and they had children, and they’re not trading the country in for any slick talking Yankee lawyer who ain’t down with Jesus. Give them a smiling hick like Carter or Clinton or they’re sending you back to the Ivy League.

The Democratic Party doesn’t get it. They talk about issues and other mish-mosh, but leave out the visceral damage. Maybe northern Democrats need to cheat to win in the South or the Midwest. One thing is certain, pulling in a vacuous haircut like John Edwards backfired on Kerry. If he had taken the advice of this column, or harbored any idea of winning the White House, he would have secured something viable, like the upper mid-west and, most vitally, Ohio by choosing Bob Graham or Dick Gephardt. He wins Ohio, he’s president. But most people in this country are never going to vote for a Massachusetts liberal droning on and on about pacifying Europe and peace and gays and the right to choose and keeping God out of the statehouse. They damn well want God in there. What they obviously didn’t want was John Kerry.

Thus, we will begin the coronation on what has in recent years proven to be, if nothing else, an entertaining embarrassment; the second term. Seeing how second terms have not been kind to any president in my lifetime, to say I have every confidence it will end in disaster is to barely scratch the surface of the girlish excitement that rattles my bones. And those who didn’t live through Watergate, Iran-Contra, or may have forgotten the beauty of 15 months of Monica Lewinsky and Kenneth Starr, cannot fully understand the opportunity it provides cynical old political junkies like myself.

I was ecstatic George Bush beat Al Gore. Now the professionally sinister part of me is glad he’s back, because second terms with the brainwashed believers is what loving politics is all about. That’s what I told my friend Georgetown in ’96 when Bill Clinton, the last phony southerner, danced his way back into a second term of ignominy, and what Karl Rove admitted after half a quart of Chivas five long years ago, “We studied the Clintons. We know their moves and what counts. Watch us go.”

Damn right.

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Aquarian Weekly 5/19/04 REALITY CHECK

MAN OVERBOARD The Bogusly Self-Righteous Flogging Of Master Rumsfeld

The outrageous glut of evidence coming from the government’s recent censorship of media coverage of flag-draped caskets arriving at air force bases and the ridiculous furor over these “prisoner abuse” photos can lead anyone to assume the American people are woefully unaware of the casualty and operation of war. So, for those humble neophytes, I offer the following:

This war thing everyone was so hepped about? This vengeance jag we’ve all been on since 9/11/01? It’s ugly, petty, brutal and horrid. You don’t get to be squeamish and moral all of a sudden.

War is hell. Ever hear that one? It’s a popular axiom among those who’ve been there/done that. Young kids die senselessly during it. And people conducting these things don’t have the screws tightened onto the old noggin too well. This is why we hire them. Clear thinking, compassionate types make bad war contributions. Moreover, there are a plethora of sadistic freaks who head these things, on all sides. Animalistic torture, sickening reams of propaganda, and the killing of innocents is part of the deal. What did you think was going on here, table tennis?

Take this crazy American contractor roaming around Iraq trying to rebuild infrastructure. He didn’t get it. Now he is beheaded on video. It’s like that poor, misguided fool Pat Tillman. He wanted to be John Wayne. Now he is the poster-boy for ideological suicide.

And before you start sending me your hateful missives about my insensitivity toward these victims of war, I consider them fellow humans and therefore brothers, and if my biological brother came to me and said he was leaving $3.5 million at the tender age of 25 to go off to the desert and get shot at or planned on roaming around Iraq looking for work I would have advised him otherwise. And those who disagree are just not being honest.

But back to the “prisoner abuse” thing.

I cannot believe for one moment that anyone over the age of 10 would be shocked that this country would be fighting any other kind of war? We’re so different? We’re above it? Do you know whose running this thing? Hawks. Warmongers. Oil Men. Corporate land-rapers. When this inarticulate goober of a president stands on his sloping green lawn and has the gall to utter that these tactics do not represent the American spirit, it is so patently false you expect the sky to collapse on his head like some bad cartoon.

This country’s military record of death, destruction, rape and pillaging is legendary. How do you think we got so rich and powerful? Good business acumen? God on our side? Yes, the tooth fairy and Uncle Sam had a baby and called it Liberty. OR maybe it was free land grabs, free slave labor, systematic economic backstabbing, not-so-secret assassinations, and an incredible roll call of CIA global crimes. Ripping off France, Spain, Mexico and anyone else minding the Manifest Destiny store put us in the catbird seat, sonny.

The spirit that sicked those Dobermans on that naked Iraqi grabbing his balls on the front page of every newspaper this week is the same one that slaughtered Native-Americans, torched Atlanta, firebombed Dresden, locked up American citizens of Japanese lineage, murdered women and children in My-Lai, and on and on and on.

Fact is peasant terrorists liberated this country by reeking guerilla warfare havoc on an imperialistic empire. Sound familiar?

I understand its human nature to eat a nice, fat, juicy steak and not wonder how it got there, or slip on those Nike’s and not consider what sweat shop made them. We’re here because horrible thugs with guns put us here. I’m a pacifist and I’m willing to admit it. Do it. It takes the edge off.

Letting our children be murdered while playing Peace Corps police force is a crime of unconscionable depths and should be rectified immediately.

Good. Now doesn’t this fuss over prison abuse ring as hollow as someone complaining about the rain during the Battle of Gettysburg?

And what can you say about the enemy, fanatic religious thugs running around with hoods and sub-machine guns? Five thousand years of violence in the name of Allah bankrolled by oil funds from the west. Starving Bengal tigers are too good for these monsters.

Just a few weeks ago the U.S. Army massacred hundreds of innocents in Fallujah. Not a peep. We get a few porn images that don’t look any worse than some of the shit I did in college, and we’re closing down shop? This is the same logic behind polls that have two-thirds of Americans judging George W. Bush a lying incompetent, but the clear choice for re-election.

So now in steps the embattled Secretary of Defense, of whom I wrote in the 3/6/02 issue of this magazine, “I think it’s important to point out that Donald Rumsfeld has gone insane. His Meet the Press, 2/24/02 appearance frightened me in ways that is hard to discern at the moment, but suffice it to suggest that he is clinically mad and currently has the power of two Caesars and Benito Mussolini thrown in for good measure.”

I went on to point out that to consider an invasion of Iraq, although not a terrible idea, must be run by a maniac to succeed. Loose cannons win wars. History is littered silly with their collective shadow. But although I do not blame The Master of War for these so-dubbed atrocities, I do blame him for conducting a chaotic, non-delineated cluster fuck of a battle plan that has dragged on for 13 months too long.

The idea that the United States of America could take this long to secure a third world desert nation with no army, with the silent, if not tepid support of the Arab nations bordering it, and, what is it now? $50 billion or some gaudy number, and still be screwing around out there is an outrage. Letting our children be murdered while playing Peace Corps police force is a crime of unconscionable depths and should be rectified immediately.

But instead we get The Passion of The Master Donald Rumsfeld, because every White House scandal, like every religion needs a sacrificial lamb. Kennedy gutted the CIA after the Bay of Pigs, Nixon threw his entire staff, cabinet, and the cook to the wolves during the final days of Watergate, The Gipper nailed Ollie North to the political cross for Iran-Contra, and poor Vernon Jordan had a hell of a time during Clinton’s Oval Office Fuck Fest.

But what is this government doing to secure this country we currently inhabit? Forget prisoners being piled into orgy balls. That’s window dressing, like women on television getting massive plastic surgery to sell flat screens. It wouldn’t surprise me if this government’s war effort leaked those photos to blind us to the real problem here: This administration has lost its grip, assuming it ever had one, on this occupation. Why would anyone take the damn photos in the first place?

And if this whole thing turns out to be a CIA affair, coming clearer each day, then it should be George Tenent, and not Rumsfeld who should go. Tenet was so hot and heavy for this mess. I propose we get this murdering lout on the rack and pour hot led into his rectum for starters. See how he likes war now.

Either we secure this thing or risk total anarchy in Iraq and most of the region. Otherwise Israel is doomed, if it isn’t tumbling towards that point already. And even though Iran, Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia likes to put on the stern Arab face for their terrorist brethren, they would be appalled and frightened and become ornery business partners if this thing falls apart.

Firing Rumsfeld in the middle of this is like firing a coach during the third quarter. It’s too late in the game for this. He’s not getting off that easy. This is his mess; he should clean it up. Send in a mass of troops and take out everything in sight or get the hell out, cross the fingers, batten down the hatches, and get out your plastic to pay five bucks a gallon.

This lunatic has five months to end this madness or he goes when we boot out his boss in November to try something else.

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Aquarian Weekly 2/18/04 REALITY CHECK

LAST WORD ON WMD’S

There can be no sane argument that the president did not lie about the invasion of Iraq. Let’s put that one to bed. He had to lie. All that droning on about evil regimes, human rights, direct threat to the US, and freeing the Iraqi people was admittedly weak Texas hooh-ha, but what did you want the man to do, get on the tube and talk about daddy’s revenge and restructuring the Middle East to secure oil concerns, protect Israel, and put a scare into the towel heads?

Nonetheless, as stated in this space before, Hussein had to go. My meager research alone (clearly dissected in past columns) has given me enough proof that if Iraq had continued to be run in that fashion, the compromises for not only Israel but also Saudi Arabia et al would have been grim. Thus, the concept of regime change (formulated over 12 years and three administrations) never was about a how or why, but when.

You know how much money and power was at stake here? So much that if someone told G.W. to do a hoola dance on Letterman to make trashing Iraq an imperative, he would have been trying on grass skirts by sundown. So let’s not have any allusions over a semantics argument regarding WMD’s or any other banal acronyms.

The frame of the debate over this Bush fiasco should be the methods and expediency of the current operation, both of which have been royally flummoxed from jump street. All the fears about Junior being a lost rich boy with agonizingly limited intellect came to pass.

But all presidents lie about invasions. This is part of the gig. Some are better than others. FDR was excellent. LBJ, not so much. Nixon and Reagan were just clumsy and stupid.

The jury is in on George W. Bush.

He stinks at it.

Now we get all the backtracking from the lackeys.

It pains me to see a gentlewoman and a scholar like Condoleezza Rice jump through hoops for political dunderheads. I don’t feel so bad for Colin Powel. His soft-core approach never fooled me. He is the worst kind of militaristic idiot, a useless tool of aggression with a predictably disingenuous twist on the facts. It’s the same old crap from these medal-toting pustules, break stuff first and ask questions later.

However, Donald Rumsfeld deserves to squirm. He was a corn-sniffer for Nixon and took it hard from Bush Sr., and has been rightly diagnosed in this space over a year ago as clinically insane. Nothing that has transpired since has reversed this judgment.

The rest of the administration is goofy. Not as insidious as the Left wants it to be, but it’s not functioning correctly right now.

Functioning rather badly in the realm of foreign relations in fact.

Innocents die, kids with guns run amok, and the map of the globe changes a bit. But the one thing that doesn’t change is the power structure. And as much as we hate to admit it in print, America is part of the power structure.

Okay, they’re lost.

Watching Tim Russert try and yank serviceable answers out of the president on this abortion last Sunday gave me pause. Firstly, Russert, of whom I have great respect, dropped the ball. He let a blatantly stupefied Bush make slap-dag ideology speeches without taking responsibility for anything, and heaving none of it on anyone else either. Most importantly, all prior talk about Bush having sincere convictions on religious grounds to save a wounded country and stand tall in the face of mounting adversity melted in the glare of network lights. The guy came off as a seat-of-the-pants dink. He’s not Nixionian in madness or morally strangulated in Reagonese. He’s lost.

Really lost.

And I can only hope the poor saps who made the call to send that jabbering moron into an interview format amidst plunging approval ratings was shot on site.

That scared the shit out of me. No one should have to endure that kind of meltdown. Anyone arguing that Janet Jackson’s striptease was anymore emotionally damaging is not paying attention to detail.

Now to this ridiculously childish idea that the CIA or the Pentagon act in the interest of public safety.

Who’s buying this laugh-out-loud absurdity?

Since the dawn of civilization, spies make things up and armies choose to fight over it. Most times this combination tragically results in reams of fantasy and we end up with Viet Nam or the World Trade Center disaster. Innocents die, kids with guns run amok, and the map of the globe changes a bit. But the one thing that doesn’t change is the power structure. And as much as we hate to admit it in print, America is part of the power structure.

We put Hussein in charge, fed him weapons, turned our backs on it, and then acted shocked when he went wiggy. America’s fingerprints are more or less over every nightmare from Korea to Iran to Pakistan to you name it. Occasionally, someone has to clean this shit up. If not this guy, then the next guy.

He can crow and hoot all he wants, but soon, if he is unlucky enough to achieve the job of commander and chief, John Kerry will have his hands filled with blood and old sins. It’s the nature of the beast, and the beast breathes. It’s a big ugly thing. And you best be sure you’re ready to ride it, rich boy.

Let’s face it, we’re all guilty.

Raise your fist in anger, but you’re guilty.

You drive a car that runs on petroleum? You’re guilty. You eat bananas? You’re guilty. You use GE products or run around in Nikes, read USA Today or take planes to places?

Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

The real lie is that you can stomp around like you own everything, expect entitlements with no sacrifice and then hold up iconic villains to answer for your insecurities. But in this crazy experiment called a republic it all comes back to us. It’s not exactly a democracy, but its close enough to be the best humans could devise using eight percent of our brain matter.

Safety and privilege has a lofty price tag. Otherwise, where are the American Indians today? And why are all these people from Africa running around? Yeah, you don’t know. You’re just trying to get by. Some crazy people killed Lincoln and Kennedy. Truman had to torch thousands of innocent Japanese. Shit happens, right?

Sleep well.

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Aquarian Weekly 1/28/04 REALITY CHECK

DOGFIGHT REVISITED Surprises and Disguises Tumble into New Hampshire PART II

“The only one that can’t win the dog race is the pace rabbit.” – Chris Matthews

Since my last discussion with our Democratic insider, Dibbs, things have gone awry. The heavy but invisible Howard Dean support wilted in Iowa, pulling in a meager 18%, which would have been gangbusters six months ago, but with Golden Boy running free the past three months, checks in at an unmitigated disaster. Meanwhile, the comebacks of John Kerry – expected six months ago – and John Edwards – a late comer to the ball – and the demise of perennial retread, Dick Gephardt has leveled the playing field and put a new perspective on the upcoming New Hampshire primary.

In addition to the resurrection of a surging Kerry and the coming out party of a second place showing by Edwards, Iowa did dramatically reframe the campaign rhetoric. Although three out of four voters chose their candidates based on an anti-war platform, more than half the votes went to the two men who supported the war.

“I think overall Dean lost his message after Hussein was captured. Yet, the polls indicated he had not. This is what added to the caucus’ drama. In the end, Internet buzz and the youth factor did not translate into votes for Dean.“

The second most interesting noise out of the caucuses was the zeal with which the electorate abandoned personal ideology and went hard for candidates who would be “electable” in a national race come fall, leaving Dean, long considered a potential wild card sacrificial lamb out and the more conventional polticos in the driver’s seat. Judging from the woeful prognostication performance of Dibbs eight days ago, we began our 1/22 discussion with a vicious berating and continued merrily from there.

jc: Man, did you guys get that whole thing wrong in Iowa. The union boys fucked Gephardt and the kids screwed Dean.

DB: I told you the voters would decide. You’re the one who had Dean battling Clark for New Hampshire.

jc: That still may be, because as of this morning Kerry has leapfrogged Clark and Dean and now leads with a ballpark 5% to 10% cushion. But this could ironically save Dean in the long run. Now he doesn’t have to fend off Clark, the more dangerous southern democrat, and deal with his New England brother until Super Tuesday. But I stand by my column from over a month ago: Dean cannot beat Bush, so what would be the point?

DB: And I stand by last week’s data that suggests strongly that any Democratic candidate would stand in the base forty-percentile range and benefit from key Independent votes left in the Ralph Nader vacuum.

jc: I didn’t believe for one minute Kerry was as dead as the press had it. The man was the choice for four months and then Dean becomes this year’s John McCain. He galvanized the other candidates, was fun press for a while, but in the end the Democrat power base has to push the more electable candidate. That’s what happened in Iowa. Admit it.

DB: It was most interesting how many votes Edwards and Kerry picked up from the Gephardt troop. That was years of Gephardt’s guts floating out there Monday night (1/19). But I think overall Dean lost his message after Hussein was captured. Yet, the polls indicated he had not. This is what added to the caucus’ drama. In the end, Internet buzz and the youth factor did not translate into votes for Dean.

jc: Or money, which Dean still has plenty of, and judging from his apoplectic fit speech Monday night, he plans on spending it all the way to the bunker.

DB: Today’s Zogby polls have what amounts to a dead heat between Kerry and Dean with a hefty 15% undecided. With that many undecided, 5% or 10% either way matters little. It didn’t matter in Iowa, so Dean isn’t going anywhere, nor should he.

jc: Conventional wisdom, which by the way also got it’s ass kicked in Iowa, says that Clark takes a hit here, because he was ramping up to be the southern Democrat, War-Hero Anti-Dean, and now has to deal with North Carolina’s Edwards and the Viet Nam Vet Hero and new Anti-Dean, John Kerry.

DB: Perception is everything coming out of Iowa. Kerry is obviously the man of the minute. But if he fails to win NH with this kind of momentum, he’ll have some answering to do. Dean has 72 hours to resuscitate. But he certainly has the organization and money to do it.

jc: He had it in Iowa and got smoked. You have to come clean on what went down in Iowa, really. I maintain Kerry got down and dirty with party biggies and painted the same picture everyone refuses to publicly admit: Dean will implode on the national stump. Because it makes no sense that 75% of the electorate in Iowa is anti-war and then choose Kerry and Edwards; unless it came down to Dean not being a viable national candidate. Kerry and Edwards have always been the safe choices. Christ, Bush people were talking about Edwards Tuesday morning like the second coming of a Kennedy.

DB: We’ll find out about the Edwards push in South Carolina. Kerry or Dean has to win NH, or come in first and/or second, and Edwards cannot lose SC.

jc: And Clark?

DB: The debates will decide if Clark is a player. NH debates are notorious either as coming out parties or the exposing of lightweights. Clark must distinguish himself tonight (1/22) or he may sink behind Edwards. jc: The Boston Globe has Clark in third at 16% and Edwards hot on his ass at 11%.

DB: As I say, I believe this debate is a seminal moment for the general.

jc: Face it, you guys cannot win the White House without a southern Democrat. Clark and Edwards have bristled at taking the VP job, even in closed quarters. Kerry or Dean will definitely not survive without one of them or someone like Bob Graham as a running mate in the national election.

DB: Graham is an interesting choice. jc: Any idea who Lieberman will endorse with his 7% after he is pummeled in NH?

DB: Not Dean. My guess would be Kerry.

jc: You have any comment on Dean’s concession speech? The crazed banshee deluxe version, of course.

DB: No.

jc: Is it Gary Hart on the yacht or merely a Gennifer Flowers bump in the road?

DB: I think I answered no for a comment.

NEXT WEEK: NEW HAMPSHIRE FALLOUT

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Aquarian Weekly 5/9/01 REALITY CHECK

WAR IS HELL & OTHER EXCLUSIVES

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. – Oscar Wilde

Big story this week: Innocent people died in Viet Nam. Other noteworthy events were the sun came up today and when you stop breathing…you die.

Stop the presses: War is Bad. Put it up in huge letters on the front page and send a copy to Dan Rather when you can wake him.

It was apparently newsworthy for Time magazine to slap former Senator and Navy SEAL, Bob Kerrey on its cover for his recent revelations about killing women and children in combat. At first he wasn’t sure he didn’t kill the enemy. He might have killed women and children. Somebody killed women and children. Whatever.

This is still an issue for anti-Viet Nam activists that cannot seem let go. They somehow feel by laying it all out on the line about the horrors of that unjust war, as if any war is just, then a nation and humanity will be healed. These are the same dupes who protest this country’s involvement in ceasing the systematic eradication of people due to religion or race or some other insignificant attribute.

But who among us can blame them? Anytime a father, brother or friend gets shipped against his will to a jungle halfway across the globe to be slaughtered for the pride or ideology of the rich and powerful, it tends to take all talk of glory out of the thing. No one wrote any clever musical ditties or memorable slogans promoting that.

War is Bad. But war is also the best thing a country can do for its economy. There are still scholars and historians who swear on stacks of Bibles that every war from Ancient Greece to WWII to that asinine Desert Storm was the result of sagging economies. War is good for money and if there is killing, mass or otherwise, there is most likely money involved: Money, power, God, all of that crap. No Time cover or endless debate on burning babies and massacred innocents will make it stop.

Blood is on the hands of Kerrey and his troupe. This is the unfortunate reality of war, but blame, fault, public derision and outcry should not accompany it. Kerrey was put into one of life’s most impossible situations. He was a soldier. His job was to kill and break stuff. Mostly, Kerrey wanted to stay alive. In the midst of chaos and disorder, shit happens.

The Shit. Isn’t that what the poor souls like Kerrey called battle in South East Asia? Kerrey has to live with that, but the blame, no sir.

Blame goes to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. This was their war, enacted strategically by the heartless kill mongers who culled paychecks from the Pentagon, the CIA and the military. If there is anything resembling a hell, there is a special wing housing them. And they are surely trading anecdotes with the litany of leaders who sent the masses to their doom for a patch of land.

But these have been the gory details of civilization since its senseless inception; so dissecting these concepts, as if it happened for the first time yesterday, is redundant and silly and really should stop. Now.

The ONLY reason to perpetuate this sorrowful mess, beyond television and radio ratings and newspaper sales, is the remote possibility that someone might learn about how disgusting and meaningless the loss of ANY life is over rifts about borders or perspective. But that will not happen, because as long as there is the penis and available currency, atrocities will soon follow. Dredging up memories of the poor souls sent across the globe to set this horror show in motion does no good for anyone.

Sure its interesting, like watching idiots eat bugs for a million dollars, but after its over we’ll be distracted by Cuban refugee children or a celebrity drug overdose. What is most important is that we understand that this country has been involved in some heinous war crimes. This is a prerequisite for any country. Ask the original natives of any continent. Ask Native Americans.

Viet Nam was a major fuck up. It was wrong and pointless and costs thousands of lives for little reason beyond ego. But in the grand scale of the putrid abortion man has made of this globe, Viet Nam is nothing more than blowing through a toll on the Garden State Parkway.

We used to revile people who came forward with the truth about war. Then we applauded them. Now we want them to stand for everything that is bad about anything. And when they are done, we wonder how they sleep or could have kept it hidden for so long.

Bob Kerrey wanted to be president. He failed. Now he is pouring his heart out to magazine editors and 60 Minutes. But this is not going to mean a hill of beans to people who lay in wait for the next big American invasion, so the sales of ammo and helicopters and flags can rise and CNN can make media stars of cub reporters willing to stand on rooftops and be bombarded by missile fire. It makes for great television and wins awards, don’t you know.

People will protest, make noise and eventually governments will come to some compromise on how to satiate the masses and gear up for another slice of Hades. And in the middle of it all will be another Bob Kerrey, and he will kill innocents and be haunted by it. He may or may not tell us about it. But it won’t make a fucking difference.

Hey, did you hear?

War is Bad.

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Aquarian Weekly 3/7/01 REALITY CHECK

HELP WIPE OUT FEDERAL EXECUTIVE CLEMENCY IN OUR TIME

“The President shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.” -U.S. Constitution Article II Section 2

There was a time, not too long ago–or maybe eons ago, it’s hard to tell now–that I found myself in a Bayridge, Brooklyn loft listening to a plot to kidnap Casper Weinberger. There were always plots back then, concocted by the type of people who laughed at any talk of reason, especially at 3:00 am after two consecutive days of serious drinking. So I sloughed it off as speed-addled gibberish, finished my beer and got the hell out of there.

“Grab Weinberger out of his three-story luxury home, throw him in a potato gunny and drag him to the crack boulevards in downtown D.C., then we’ll get the real story.”

That was the plan, and I would have volunteered to wrap the rope around the damn sack if I thought it would accomplish anything beyond garnering us a federal sentence. But not even Ollie North would be doing that kind of time. Ollie took the fifth, and so did Bill Clinton’s friends and lovers last week. And anyone else he diddled in the Lincoln bedroom those last precious hours in the White House.

But overt posturing about ideologies and party politics never did jazz me. Those things are nothing more than a smokescreen for the rich and powerful, and all the grass roots movements, protests or odd kidnapping would never slow them down.

The Iran-Contra boys got off easy. George Bush sr. saw to that. He was, after all, a CIA man first, and “once CIA, always CIA.” So Casper and Ollie’s cabin boy, Elliott Abrams, and Reagan’s security advisor, Robert C. McFarlane, who thought it was a good idea to swallow the Valium mother lode rather than rot in prison, all received cushy pardons from the president for pissing on the constitution. This was Bush’s parting gift to the bleeding hearts that dared question the judgment of The Great Communicator.

But those were top-level political criminals, not like the cheap whores Bill Clinton pardoned. Dime-store hoods like Marc Rich and chubby crackers like Hugh Rodham are pond scum compared to the depth of human mucus presidents dine with daily.

And no matter how much the bored national press tries to hype this daily litany of street trash the president set free, William Jefferson Clinton only carries the notorious, if not eminently predictable tradition, of abusing absolute power.

The Clinton’s were bought and sold long before they left Little Rock. Every president is, and will always be. Criminals are as much a part of our national landscape as public servants. Except criminals have money to burn, and politicians need flammable funds by the boatload, especially big-time politicians.

Big Bill wanted to make his “money people” happy. They pushed him over the top in New Hampshire in ’92 and promises were made, promises he couldn’t keep, like the one Joseph Kennedy made to the Chicago mob and Richard Daley to swing Illinois to his boy Jack so daddy could fuck the government for yanking his ambassador status back in World War II.

Federal executive clemency allowed George Washington’s pardon of all participants in the Whiskey Rebellion, Abe Lincoln and his successor, Andrew Johnson’s full and complete pardon to “all and every person who directly or indirectly participated in the late insurrection or rebellion” known as the Civil War.

Violent drunks and confederates aside, it is Gerald Ford’s pardoning of this nation’s greatest criminal Richard Nixon, and now Clinton’s obvious fire sale of freedom for campaign funds, legal fees and key votes for the wife, that has the dander dancing again.

But to call anything administered in the name of complete and absolute power illegal or immoral is missing the point of this, or any other, republic.

Big Bill knew he was meat on the way out. His legacy was humping, and his would-be successor used every angle to avoid mentioning it in a doomed campaign. Another Bush was breathing down his neck, and it was time to pay the piper. Hollywood money machines need to be greased, and Hollywood isn’t just a city in California. The constitution clearly allows it, so the argument is with the system not the use of it.

In the case of Rich and his flamboyant ex-wife, who dumped millions into Clinton endeavors, and more importantly, the state of Israel, the answer was easy. The Clinton’s bought off a 20-year fugitive to bolster significant Jewish votes for Hillary’s senate run. Should the Clinton’s apologize for bartering deals to hold onto power if the constitution provides such unchecked autonomy?

The second article of the constitution also hands military power over to its government’s executive branch. The Korean and Viet Nam police actions were the result of presidential decrees, cleverly sidestepping the messy business of having the legislative branch declare war. Thousands of Americans lost their lives in these little power plays, everything from Truman’s miscalculations to LBJ’s escalations to Reagan and Bush’s wars of convenience.

Bill Clinton is the same man who crawled from the Arkansas slime nine years ago. The public voted him in, and the constitution allowed him to run amok. The uproar is not with the past, but the current state of law allowing anyone in the United States government absolute power.

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