BushCo is a paranoid schizo entity. It is based on zero-sum thinking and
preference to use
force to solve all problems, both at home (intimidation, fear) and abroad
(military).
Bush's heavy use of signing statements in essence says that he's free to do
whatever he wants and that
no law is over him. Congress needs to take back all the concessions they've
heaped on him,
and either censure or impeach him. But the Republican controlled Congress
isn't going to do
this, even though Bush is ruining (has ruined?) the country both financially
and as a society. The Democrats
must get control of both Houses of Congress in November and stop BushCo in
its tracks.
Peace, D. Mindock
The Force Is Not With Them
By Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch.com
Sunday 16 July 2006
The Middle East aflame and the Bush administration adrift.
So, as the world spins on a dime, where exactly are we?
As a man who is no fan of fundamentalists of any sort, let me offer a
proposition that might make some modest sense of our reeling planet.
Consider the possibility that the most fundamental belief, perhaps in all of
history, but specifically in these last catastrophic years, seems to be in
the efficacy of force - and the more of it the merrier. That deep belief in
force above all else is perhaps the monotheism of monotheisms, a faith
remarkably accepting of adherents of any other imaginable faith - or of no
other faith at all. Like many fundamentalist faiths, it is also resistant to
drawing any reasonable lessons from actual experience on this planet.
The Bush administration came to power as a fundamentalist regime; and
here I'm not referring to the Christian fundamentalist faith of our
President. After all, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, and our Vice President
seem not to be Christian fundamentalists any more than were Paul Wolfowitz
or Douglas Feith. Bush's top officials may not have agreed among themselves
on whether End Time would arrive, or even on the domestic social issues of
most concern to the Christian religious right in this country, but they were
all linked by a singular belief in the efficacy of force.
In fact, they believed themselves uniquely in possession of an ability
to project force in ways no other power on the planet or in history ever
could. While hardly elevating the actual military leadership of the country
(whom they were eager to sideline), they raised the all-volunteer American
military itself onto a pedestal and worshipped it as the highest tech, most
shock-and-awesome institution around. They were dazzled by the fact that it
was armed with the smartest, most planet-spanning, most destructive set of
weapons imaginable, and backed by an unparalleled military-industrial
complex as well as a defense budget that would knock anyone's socks off
(and their communications systems down). It was enough to dazzle the
administration's top officials with dreams of global domination; to fill
them with a vision of a planet-wide Pax Americana; to send them off to the
moon (which, by the way, was certainly militarizable).
Force, then, was their idol and they bowed down before it. When it came
to the loosing of that force (and the forces at their command), they were
nothing short of fervent utopians and blind believers. They were convinced
that with such force (and forces), they could reshape the world in just
about any way they wanted to fit their visionary desires.
And then, of course, came 9/11, the Pearl Harbor of this century.
Suddenly, they had a divine wind at their back, a terrified populace before
them ready to be led, and everything they believed in seemed just soS well,
possible. It was, in faith-based terms, a godsend. Not surprisingly, they
promptly began to prepare to act in the stead of an imperially angry god and
to bring the world - particularly its energy heartlands - to heel.
First, however, because they had long been People of the Word, they
created their sacred texts, their doctrine. In the form of preventive war
and keeping other potential superpowers or blocs of powers from ever rising
up to challenge the United States, they enshrined force at the apex of their
pantheon of deities in their National Security Strategy of 2002. (The term
preventive war was in itself reasonably unique. Usually even the most
aggressive dictators don't label their planned wars with terms that creep
right up to the edge of aggressive and then promote them that way to the
world.) At the same time, the President then began speaking out about the
need not to wait until the threat of destruction was upon us as in his 2002
State of the Union Address where he said: We'll be deliberate, yet time is
not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not
stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America
will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the
world's most destructive weapons.
Soon enough, his advisors began raising Iraqi mushroom clouds over
American
