-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/justincol.html
}}}>Begin
Behind the Headlines
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com
October 31, 2001
ATTACK
OF THE McCAINIACS
Mad bomber McCain: Will he ever
shut up?
War
is hell � and, thanks to Senator John McCain, it has just gotten a
little
more hellish. Writing
in the Wall Street Journal, this angry embittered man has launched
an effort to undermine the war effort, one that will no doubt be
far more
effective than the Lilliputian efforts of peaceniks. "War," he
intones, "is
a miserable business." Let us "shed a tear," he opines, "and then
get on with
the business of killing our enemies as quickly as we can, and as
ruthlessly
as we must." It was Camille Paglia who perceptively
remarked that the all-seeing TV cameras have "exposed McCain over
time
as a seething nest of proto-fascist impulses," and the same happens
when he
puts pen to paper, only more so.
McCAIN'S
BLOOD-LUST
Here
McCain exposes himself as a moral monster who positively revels in
the prospect
of innocent blood being spilled. Oh yes, we are supposed to "shed a
tear"
� a single tear, mind you � over all that has been lost in the
march to war,
but then we must go on about our business, which McCain describes
as "ruthless."
How he loves that word: he used it twice in his WSJ op-ed, and more
during his Sunday morning [October 28] talk show appearances, of
which there
were all too many. That's the unpleasant sight that awaited us
Sunday morning:
him aggressively thrusting out that self-consciously militant chin,
and composing
his face in a semblance of rectitude. Ruthless! Or is that
clueless?
AIN'T
NO MOUNTAIN HIGH ENOUGH
Ah
yes, war is indeed "a miserable business," as McCain says, but this
one is
made all the more so by McCain and his fellow McCainiacs, who are
now frothing
at the mouth and barking that we must abandon all "half-measures"
and start
carpet-bombing Afghanistan. Ain't no mountain high enough, ain't no
valley
low enough, ain't no river wide enough to keep American power away
from its
enemies � according to McCain, the US is practically god-like in
its military
prowess, and "yet our enemies harbor doubts that America will use
force with
a firm determination to achieve our ends, that we will use all
force necessary
to achieve unconditional victory. We need to persuade them
otherwise, immediately."
Oh? And how does McCain know this? Does he have a direct line to
the Taliban,
is he a mind-reader who can detect Osama's thoughts way on the
other side
of the world? Such a view of the US is unlikely in those, such as
Bin Laden,
who condemn America as the "Great Satan" and the chief perpetrator
of evil
in the world.
LOOSE
LIPS
How
does the Taliban know of this apparent reluctance to unleash our
full military
potential � unless McCain uses every forum at his disposal to so
inform them?
Loose lips sink ships, Senator � but, then again, you already knew
that, didn't
you?
THE
IMMORALIST
By
all means shed a tear, says Mad John McCain, but let us not
hesitate to "ruthlessly"
slaughter innocent civilians. Or, as he puts it:
"We
cannot allow the Taliban safe refuge among the civilian population.
We must
destroy them, wherever they hide. That will surely increase the
terrible danger
facing noncombatants, a regrettable but necessary fact of war. But
it will
also shorten the days they must suffer war's cruel reality."
THIS
MAD LOGIC
Having
thrown all morality to the winds of unlimited war, one can only
wonder why
Mad John stops at merely suggesting the carpet-bombing of
Afghanistan. By
his mad logic, we ought to immediately launch a nuclear attack that
would
literally incinerate Al Qaeda � and, incidentally, hundreds of
thousands of
innocent civilians. But, hey, we have to be "ruthless" � don't we?
Indeed,
some nut-ball general did suggest this, and now a powerful American
Senator
is implying it. Surely this settles, for all time, the question of
McCain's
fitness for the Oval Office � and raises once again the long-
simmering question
of his mental stability.
DANGEROUS
DICHOTOMY
A
peculiar sub-theme of McCain's appeal to bloodlust is the idea that
war and
diplomacy must conflict. "We cannot fight this war from the air
alone," he
avers. "We cannot fight it without casualties. And we cannot fight
it without
risking unintended damage to humanitarian and political interests."
Say, what?
War, as the saying goes, is the continuation of politics by other
means. So
a war that damages the political and diplomatic interests of the US
in the
region is, by definition, self-defeating. A war that destabilizes,
say, Pakistan,
and delivers it to the Bin Ladenites, could hardly serve any purely
military
purpose � especially considering that a fundamentalist revolution
would give Al Qaeda a nuclear capability.
THE
MIDDLE EAST AGLOW
Thank
God John McCain lost the Republican presidential primary: with this
hebephrenic nutball in charge, much of the Middle East would have
been a radioactive
wasteland shortly after 9/11. Can't you just see and, worst of all,
hear President McCain addressing the nation, solemnly intoning all
the reasons
we had to nuke Kabul, his red face seething with barely-controlled
rage?
A
PYRRHIC "VICTORY"
Forget
about the Arab world, says McCain: they all hate us, anyway, is the
unspoken
addendum. They hate us, not because we occupy their holy places and
keep the
settler-colony of Israel afloat, but due to the behavior of
"America's purported
friends in the region," who have "allowed" the bad guys to freely
"sow hatred
of us throughout the Islamic world." The repressive regimes of the
region,
which we regularly denounce as un-democratic, are not, in McCain's
view, repressive
enough. While this is no more sinister than the Bushian foreign
policy which
supports Middle East tyrants against their own people, McCain's
more "idealistic"
interventionism is entirely untethered from such mundane practical
considerations:
"Should
the conduct of our war incidentally help inflame that hatred it may
indeed
increase the threat to regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere
whose stability
is a strategic interest of the United States. But that threat will
be infinitely
greater should we fail in our mission or delay victory by one day
longer than
necessary."
What
kind of a "victory" would it be if we captured Kabul � but lost the
entire
Middle East, from Istanbul to Riyadh, to Bin Laden? Truly
a Pyrrhic one. This idea, which is just plain crazy, defines the
madness
at the core of Mad John McCain: for, in his view, the loss of the
Middle East
is a small matter compared to his own pure devotion to the abstract
idea of
Victory. And here is where ideology begins to blend seamlessly into
psychopathology�.
VENGEANCE
AND VICTORY
For McCain, who
aspires to be a popular demagogue on the strength of the war issue,
"there
is no substitute for victory" � and yet victory, in his lexicon,
has a unique
meaning. It requires not the achievement of certain political
objectives (the
eradication of Bin Ladenism), but some vague emotional catharsis
that seems
perilously close to pure vengeance. McCain's war is being
conducted, not to
further American interests in the region, but to further his own
political
interests on the home front. Some of my regular readers may
remember all
those rumors that McLoser was going to bolt the GOP and form his
own "centrist"
third party, and it may happen yet. Back then [June 11, 2001], I
ventured
that the main planks of the McCainiac Party seem to be three in
number: conscription ("national service"), conquest, and "reform,"
this last meaning the federalization
and centralization of power on the home front. It is an agenda that
flourishes
in wartime, as irrational and emotionally satisfying as equating
"victory"
with vengeance wreaked on the innocent. McCain in 2004? You can bet
on it�
AN
AMERICAN NAPOLEON
It
is ironic, at the very least, that McCain seems to speak for those
who claim
that "politicians" lost the Vietnam war, not the military, and if
only the
latter had been allowed to run it their way, without politicizing
the conduct
of the war, defeat might have been averted. But now here is McCain,
the politician,
trying to run another war single-handedly, a would-be Napoleon
second-guessing
the Pentagon in a very public manner:
"We
have been sparing in the amount of ordnance we have dropped on the
Taliban
front lines. We have not yet employed B-2s and B-52s, the most
destructive
weapons in our airborne arsenal, against them. We shouldn't fight
this war
in increments. The Taliban and their terrorist allies are indeed
tough fighters.
They'll need to experience a more impressive display of American
firepower
before they contemplate surrender."
RAGTAG
TYRANTS
He
also wants us to unconditionally back the ragtag coalition of pro-
Iranian
tribes, petty warlords, and ordinary brigands who call themselves
the "Northern
Alliance" � a gang whose rule after the Russians were driven out
was so brutal
that the Taliban seemed tolerable in comparison. Oh, but remember
now: we
must be ruthless.
NEVER
MIND SUSAN SONTAG�
How
Mad John dearly wants to be Commander-in-chief, so much so that he
is perfectly
willing to undermine the authority and declared war aims of the
real Commander-in-chief in order to call attention to himself. Never
mind Susan
Sontag, or that Canadian "feminist" who declared that America, as
the root
of all evil, basically got what it deserved on 9/11. The real fifth
columnists
in this war are the hawks, led by the opportunist McCain, who don't
really
care about getting Bin Laden, and have a whole other agenda.
FIELD
MARSHALL KRISTOL
As
an alleged war hero � albeit one whose
dark past may not have been fully exhumed � McCain at least has
some standing
to conduct his own military campaign from the sidelines. But how do
we explain
the strategic
dictums of Field Marshall Bill Kristol, as expostulated in this
morning's
[October 30] Washington Post? As Morris Wanchuk recently pointed
out
on Lucianne Goldberg's site, "Kristol's brave exploits during the
Viet Nam
War � he wore a Spiro Agnew sweatshirt at Harvard." That doesn't
stop this
dime-store Clausewitz from proffering his advice: failure to take
Kabul before winter would be a
"disaster," and, like his hero, McCain, he clearly means to do it
with American troops on the ground. And that's not all: Iraq is also
in Kristol's sights,
and only an immediate attack would satisfy him. What is really
striking, however,
is his rage at the direction the anthrax investigation has taken.
Any conclusion
that doesn't fit his preordained view of the facts is, in his view,
monstrous:
"And
what signal do we send when our law enforcement and intelligence
agencies
desperately try to convince the press that, as Saturday's
Washington Post headline put it, �FBI and CIA Suspect Domestic
Extremists; Officials Doubt
Any Links to Bin Laden'? Really? Was someone unrelated to bin
Laden's people
ready to mail anthrax spores immediately after Sept. 11 just for
the fun and
chaos of it?"
NEVER
MIND THE FACTS
Never
mind the facts, as they emerge, not least of all the
scientific evidence which shows that this is a variety of anthrax
that
a graduate student could have whipped up in his basement. How dare
the FBI contradict the editorial policy of the Weekly Standard!
Besides
being an amateur Field Marshall, little Billy Kristol, being a real
Boy Wonder,
is also a kind of Sherlock Holmes. The FBI, the scientists, all of
whom have
access to information unknown to the rest of us � who are they to
contradict
Kristol? Good God, the insufferable arrogance of this pompous
little man is
apparently limitless!
I
GIVE IT A TEN
This
open disappointment � and even anger � at the administration's
conclusion
that the anthrax attack is the work of amateurs, and that mass
death is probably
not in the cards, is downright bizarre. On the Insensitivity Scale,
Kristol's
remarks rank up there with the comment
by some AOL executive that the 9/11 atrocity was "good for the
Internet."
Yes, a different conclusion on the part of the FBI would have been
good for
the War Party � but very very bad for the rest of us. Not that
Kristol gives
a rat's ass about that�.
RESISTANCE
IS FUTILE
"At
some point," the Field Marshall smugly concludes, "the president
surely will
insist his administration change its strategy, and get about
winning the war.
Better sooner than later." In other words: us neocons will get
to Bush eventually by relentlessly exerting pressure, including a
threat to split the Republican party and the nation in wartime � so
he might as well
give in now, before he is subjected to a humiliating defeat. Let us
hope Bush
gives Kristol and
his ilk the answer they deserve.
THE
NORTHERN STRATEGY
Well,
then, what about this hurry to send in the ground forces? How, the
War Party wants to know, can we vanquish Al Qaeda, and wipe out the
terrorists,
without sending US troops into Afghanistan? The answer is not at
all obvious,
until one realizes that this will never be accomplished by
assaulting the
enemy from the south. The consequences for Pakistan, and the
subsequent unraveling
of the whole region, would not be worth the price of such a dubious
"victory."
What is needed is another kind of strategy for this "new war" of
ours, and
that is what might be called the Northern strategy. Let me briefly
explain�
IN
THE CROSSFIRE
The
other day I was
watching Crossfire, and Robert Novak was firing some awfully good
questions at two proponents of the war, Frank Gaffney, who
represented the
"Bush is doing fine" position, and some big-mouthed ex-military
man, a self-styled
"expert" who, roughly, took the McCainiac widen-the-war position.
The latter
kept insisting, like Kristol, that we need to unleash the ground
troops before
winter sets in, and Gaffney kept insisting that the Northern
Alliance could
be our troops on the ground. Novak turned a skeptical eye on
Gaffney, and
said "Everybody knows the Northern Alliance can't win against the
Taliban."
Gaffney looked uncomfortable and could only emit a few inarticulate
noises
in feeble protest. That's when it dawned on me: why not give
Afghanistan back
to the Russians?
GIVE
IT BACK
The
Russians are now our great allies, and have pledged to stand
shoulder-to-shoulder
with us in the "war on terrorism" � so why not take them up on it?
We fought
a long war against the Soviets, of course, to "liberate"
Afghanistan � and
look where it got us! We created our own strain of Franken-
terrorism, as the
veterans of the anti-Soviet campaign (including Osama) went on to
found the
core of Al Qaeda and turn on us. Vladimir Putin has been fighting
these guys
in Chechnya all along, so why not use his experience to our
military advantage?
What we need to do is invite the Russians to re-invade Afghanistan,
to re-fight
their own equivalent of the Vietnam war, and, this time, help them
to win
it. That should restore their national sense of self-esteem � and
help us
get rid of the terrorists without putting large numbers of our own
troops
at risk. That's why I was thrilled to read the news that "the US
and United Kingdom will turn to Russia as the primary provider
of ground troops in the Afghan campaign," and was positively
thrilled
to note that "Moscow is preparing to mobilize up to 1 million
soldiers for
the invasion and occupation." Now, my heart sank when I saw where
the report was from � Debka.com, the notoriously hyperbolic "news"
site whose name is
a byword for the farfetched � but, hey, a stopped clock is right
twice a day,
and, in any case, we can always hope.
Please Support Antiwar.com
A contribution
of $25 or more gets you a copy of Justin Raimondo's Into the
Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans,
a 60-page booklet packed
with the kind of intellectual ammunition you need to fight the lies
being put
out by this administration and its allies in Congress. And now, for
a limited
time, donors of $50 or more receive a copy of Ronald Radosh's
classic study
of the Old Right conservatives, Prophets on the Right: Profiles of
Conservative Critics of American Globalism. Send contributions to
Antiwar.com
520 S. Murphy Avenue, #202
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
or
Contribute Via our Secure Server
Credit Card Donation Form
Back
to Antiwar.com Home Page | Contact
Us
End<{{{
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe
simply because it has been handed down for many generations. Do not
believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do
not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. Do not
believe in anything merely on the authority of Teachers, elders or wise men.
Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it
agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all.
Then accept it and live up to it."
The Buddha on Belief, from the Kalama Sutta
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled
one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller,
German Writer (1759-1805)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that
prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless
of frontiers."
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will
teach you to keep your mouth shut."
--- Ernest Hemingway
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
