i had a bit of an orwellian revelation earlier. i was reading the transcript of bin laden’s latest tape, and i was struck by the notion that it was a billiant piece of propoganda.
i gave it the benefit of the doubt and read it assuming it was the creation of bin laden. and what astounded me was how much truth there is in the statement. but as i continued to read it, and saw more and more truth… i became really frightened.
i’ve been thinking about rereading 1984. i know this is a tired thought, but i see a lot of parallels.
what has the right wing smear machine been saying about all the anti-war people from the beginning? “you’re with the terrorists! you hate america. you love bin laden and saddam. nanny nanny boo boo stick your head…” well you get the idea. doublespeak.
so i’m not sure how to process the fact that some of what’s in that translation is truth as i know it. people *are* profiteering from this war (bl specifically mentioned halliburton), for example.
i wouldn’t put it past my government to mistranslate a few lines here and there. ever hear the name sibel edmonds? familiarise yourself.
the first casualty of war is truth, so the saying goes.
we haven’t been hearing the truth for quite some time. why should we expect to hear it now?
this is not tinfoil hat territory. that little slur no longer applies to people like me.
everything i feared about the war in iraq has come true thus far. however, i will grant that bush has been right about one thing. it’s not a quagmire like vietnam. it’s a clusterfuck. an absolute, undeniable CLUSTERFUCK.
but what’s worse, is that everything i feared about the administration back when the SCOTUS selected him has born out. why, america, why didn’t you listen to us? * we knew he’d be this bad…
the press conference bore that out. he read his prepared statement very competently, but once he began taking questions… he was incoherent and disconnected. he obviously isn’t comprehending exactly what is happening on the ground in iraq, nor has he bothered to study the long and storied history of foreign relations between our two countries.
some might say that isn’t his job, but if not his, then who? condi rice, his national security advisor? colin powell, his secretary of state? perhaps dick cheney, his closest advisor and right hand man (others might say ventriloquist)? who the hell is in charge anyway?
watching the 9-11 commission hearings has been both enlightening and frustrating. it was fascinating to hear the testimony regarding how government actually functions. it was frustrating to hear about the many missed opportunities. it was irritating to sit through hours of testimony by certain people (rice, tenet, ashcroft, brennen, and hughes) and not get the truth. i can’t count the number of lies or half truths i heard…
one obvious conclusion is that ashcroft was too busy covering up naked statues and busting tommy chong to pay any attention to the FBI investigations of domestic terrorism. another is that rice is ill-suited to be national security advisor. in fact, she’s not suited to sweep floors in the east wing. she failed miserably at her job. she showed absolutely no initiative, no follow-through, and no curiosity. she was completely hands off when it came to terrorism. richard clarke was hands on, and frustrated due to what he perceived as lack of inaction on the administration’s part.
as to bill clinton, his administration was as on the ball as they could be considering the political climate. let us not forget that every time clinton wiped his ass, the right wing smear machine cried “wag the dog!!!” but i also see validity in the argument that he might have tried pushing congress a little harder. even regardless of that concession, i’m sure he wouldn’t have gotten the support he needed.
overall i feel we are far less safe now than before bush took office. and i won’t give them credit for finally getting off their asses AFTER 9-11-01. they had plenty of warning.
what is the truth anyway? i don’t believe we’ll ever know exactly what happened between 1988 (wheh al quada declared themselves publicly for the first time) and 2001. all i know is that there are some glaring mistakes that we must learn from.
i don’t trust these people to learn the lessons.
so now we have this statement from bin laden. part fact, part raving lunacy, it reads like a carefully scripted propoganda piece. the whole world is watching and waiting for us to react.
we will react, and it will be with perpetual war. bush pretty much said so last night. we’re going to somehow do a technical “cut and run” from iraq (handover of civil administration), but our troops will be there for years and years. and as long as they’re in the middle east there will be perpetual war.
after iraq, we’ll have to move on to somewhere else because we’ve basically enflamed an entire region by acting against iraq with no rational justification. every excuse put forth by the administration has turned out to be bullshit, and naturally the world hates us even more because of this.
and i don’t think it matters which of these guys we elect, really, because there will be an american presense in the region either way.
i wonder sometimes if the line into that orwellian nightmare has been crossed and it’s not going to get better anytime in the near future. sometimes i really fear for this country after all this damage. sometimes i fear for my family and for the future.
and what i fear most of all is that electing john kerry won’t make a damn bit of difference in the grand scheme of things.
* liberal texans told you so, goddammit
** troll prophylactic: yes i know there are policy differences between kerry and bush, but i’m talking about the big picture here. whether i can get a legal abortion or whether the budget is balanced doesn’t matter if we’re constantly at war.
the annatopia.com weblog archives 
April 15, 2004 at 11:02 pm
“and what i fear most of all is that electing john kerry won’t make a damn bit of difference in the grand scheme of things.”
I’ve worried about the same thing, but its important to have him in the Whitehouse because of the Supreme Court. That’s what bugs me about Ralph Nader wanting to run again.
~Rick
April 15, 2004 at 11:10 pm
i hear that, and that’s why i put that little disclaimer at the end. my other big picture issue is the environment, and kerry beats bush by leaps and bounds.
don’t worry, nader won’t get my vote.
*sigh*
April 15, 2004 at 11:53 pm
What sucks is we both live in Texas. We help out with local elections but only help the Presidential election with the popular vote, a lot of good that does. Ask Gore. I hope that Texas democrats come out in record numbers this year. It pisses me off to hear some that say I’m not voting because Bush will win Texas. Urgh! Yeah, idiot you’re helping him by not voting!
Rick
April 16, 2004 at 10:52 am
rick, that’s one of my constant frustrations. we help out with the popular vot ebut not with the electoral college. this winner take all deal is bullcrap. i really wish that we had some sort of proportional representation set up. for example, if 50% of our population voted bush, he should get 50% of our electoral college votes. if kerry got 50% he should get 50% of the electoral votes.
thinking about it almost makes my head explode.
April 16, 2004 at 11:14 am
you know…unfortunately there are a lot of things these days to make my head explode…
all one needs to do is pay attention.
April 16, 2004 at 12:36 pm
Anna, I think Kerry’s foreign policy would be substantially different from Bush’s. He’s clearly interested in repairing our relationships with our allies and increasing UN and general international involvement in Iraq. Furthermore, though I haven’t heard any statements from him on it, he’s much less likely to enrage the Middle East by regularly caving to Sharon’s demands given that he’s not a neocon and wouldn’t be influenced by them. Juan Cole has a great article on Salon today detailing how the recent endorsement of Sharon’s plans to pull out of Gaza and keep the West Bank helped trigger the Fallujah debacle, further anger Iraqis towards America, and generally conflate our occupation of Iraq with the Israel/Palenstine problems. Maybe by the time he’s elected, it’ll be too late for Kerry to fix things, but it’s certainly worth a shot and it wouldn’t be for lack of trying on his part.
Like you said, things are turning into a clusterfuck over there, thanks entirely to the Bush administration’s incompetence. I blogged a little about that here:
http://blog.monkeymask.net/archives/000346.html
April 16, 2004 at 1:14 pm
mallarme, i’m not as optimist about that as you are. i’m sure that outwardly the policy would change. i’m sure that kerry wouldn’t go around shittin gon our allies.
but regardless of that, what’s happening in iraq is not going to change. bush has gotten us into this clusterfuck and we’ll be cleaning it up for 5-10 years minimum. but you know what, our troops will be there even after iraq transitions to whatever form of government they pick. it’ll be just like the saudi bases. we’ll be there for decades. no president will be able to change that in the forseeable futre.
what i’m saying is that we are embarking on a failed foreign policy once again. it’s like we haven’t figured out that we need to break the cycle. if you look at the events of today, what are we really doing? we are cleaning up messes we made in the 80s. right now we are making more messes, and we’ll be cleaning those up in twenty-thirty years. and by then we’ll get engaged in another mess and create more crap for us to clean up decades after that.
our founding fathers were right. we don’t need to be messing up other countries. i’m not saying we should revert to isolationism. the interconnectedness of the world today prevents us from doing so. but we have got to start being HONEST in our foreign policy. we need to stop pretending like we’re this great benevolent protector and get real. we want resources. we want perpetual war to feed our military industrial complex. john kerry won’t change that. he’ll just do it behind closed doors instead of out in the open like the bushies. this same cycle has repeated itself throughout our history, and i see no end in sight.
i will pop over and read that blog post later on. it’s friday so i’m trying to catch up on my blog reading… will leave you some comments over there.
April 16, 2004 at 2:24 pm
Oh, I agree that we’re going to be cleaning this mess up for a long time. But ask yourself this: who do you think will do a better job? Maybe I’m being too optimistic, but I think Kerry would go quite a ways towards repairing what damage can be repaired, whereas Bush will just continue his reign of incompetence and making things even worse. That, to me, is a significant difference. Nothing we do is going to magically fix Iraq and extricate our troops, but there is a chance we can minimize the damage and start repairing it.
As for your comments about the iron triangle, amen, but that’s a whole ‘nother discussion and one that deals with some very basic, structural problems with our government. It’s not really very relevant to recognizing that there are real differences between Bush and Kerry and what the next four years would be like under one or the other.
April 16, 2004 at 6:33 pm
mallarme, you may indeed be being optimistic, and i will also acknowledge that i feel very *pessimistic* at the moment.
i don’t think i ever said or attempted to convey that *everything* would be the same under bush or kerry. god no, far from it! only a crazy person would think like that. SCOTUS alone (as pointed out by boredmonkey earlier) is worth voting for kerry.
what i was trying to do with my long winded train of thought was separate all those social issues from the greater question of american foreign policy. maybe i didn’t do such a good job of conveying that. =)
but anyway, i do believe john kerry will try harder to repair our international relations. but the underlying evils of our government will continue to perpetuate around the globe. i don’t think kerry has the balls to come out and apologise for the last sixty years of our foreign policy, nor do i think he has the gravitas to trash the military industrial complex in favor of more saner industries. that’s what i’m saying. and if none of that changes, then we will continue to make messes and end up in the cycle of perpetual war.
April 16, 2004 at 8:30 pm
No, of course not. I’ll agree with you there. The problems are systemic. No one candidate is going to fix them, even someone like Dean. It’s going to require the education of an apathetic public and a massive grassroots movement before the power of the military-industrial complex, the corporations, and the other such players gets reduced and properly controlled. On that topic, I’m equally pessimistic.
In the meantime, I’m concentrating on incremental improvements the likes of which a Kerry presidency could realistically be expected in enact.
April 16, 2004 at 8:54 pm
Anna, I remember a comedian back when bush 1 was in the white house. I don’t remember his name. Anyway he was ranting about how many things suck in our country. He said he hates when people tell him if you don’t like it move out of the country. He responds by saying. Hell no. I don’t want to be a victim of our government’s foreign policy. Hahahahah! ~Rick
April 17, 2004 at 10:49 am
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ANNA!!!!
April 17, 2004 at 12:36 pm
LMAO @ Rick – thanks =)
muchas grabyerass, tj. =)
April 17, 2004 at 2:42 pm
I think it’s naive to think that one administration or another can somehow magically prevent a random terrorist attack. However, the U.S. will be a much better place with Bush gone. At least Kerry may be able to keep our economy from being destroyed and our environment from eroding further.
has a good column this week explaining some things that led up to 9-11. He says basically you can track a lot of the reason back to Clinton’s (Republican in Democrat clothing) military attacks on Al Queda targets in the late 90’s. But of course, the Neocons demonstrate 1000X the aggression towards the Islamic world that the Democrats ever did, so it’s not as if we will really be safer under them.
The Electoral College is outdated. I do hate that my vote doesn’t count in Texas – except to maybe show that not everyone here is a Republican. To take your idea one step further Anna: we should in an ideal world have representatives that reflect their total portion of the vote. For instance, we’d have, say 60% Democrat, 30% Republican, 5% Green, and 5% Libertarian. That’s how most of the European Democracies work. There is no “winner takes all” – but instead a fair representation of the popular vote.
April 17, 2004 at 2:43 pm
that should of said Ted Rail:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=127&e=1&u=/uclicktext/20040415/cm_ucru/billclintoncaused911
I guess HTML doesn’t show up in your comments