DYING FOR NIXON, DYING FOR BUSH
Topic: By Paul Loeb
“I didn’t want to die for Nixon,” said a man I met recently in a Seattle park. He’d served on military bases in a half dozen states, then had a car accident just before being shipped to Vietnam. “The accident was lucky,” he said. “It was a worthless war and I didn’t want to go.”

I agreed. I admired those who fought in World War II, I said. We owe them the debt of our freedom. But to die for Nixon’s love of power, fear of losing face, deception and vindictiveness—to die for him was obscene. Nixon’s war, the man said, had nothing noble about it. And neither did Iraq.

What does it mean to die in a war so founded on lies? Bush may lack Nixon’s scowl, but he’s equally insulated from the consequences of profoundly destructive actions. He came to power riding on the success of Nixon’s racially divisive “Southern Strategy,” which enshrined the Republicans as the party of backlash. He won reelection by similarly manipulating polarization and fear. Like Nixon, he’s flouted America’s laws while demonizing political opponents. His insistence that withdrawing from Iraq would create a world where terrorists reign echoes Nixon’s claim that defeat in Vietnam would leave the U.S. ''a pitiful, helpless giant.''

While Bush assures our soldiers they fight for Iraqi freedom, and to “make America safer for generations to come,” 82 percent of Iraqis, according to a British Ministry of Defense poll, say they’re "strongly opposed" to the presence of American and British troops, and 45 percent justify attacks against them. This creates what psychologist Robert Jay Lifton calls “an atrocity-creating situation.” Lifton first used the phrase during Vietnam. He now uses it to describe a “counterinsurgency war in which US soldiers, despite their extraordinary firepower, feel extremely vulnerable in a hostile environment,” amplified by “the great difficulty of tracking down or even recognizing the enemy.” This sense of an environment out of control has seeded the ground for Abu Ghraib and for massacres, at the villages of Haditha and Mukaradeeb, already being compared to My Lai. Former Army sniper Jody Blake recently described his unit keeping extra spades on their vehicles so that if they killed innocent Iraqis in response to an attack with an Improvised Explosive Device, they could throw one next to the corpses to make it appear those killed were preparing a roadside bomb.

Last December Bush called the Iraqi election “a watershed moment in the story of freedom.” But if our invasion and occupation has created a watershed moment, it’s one whose rivers of resentment and bitterness may poison the global landscape for decades to come. And when Bush talks of promoting freedom, the world sees the freedom of America to do whatever we please, no matter how many nations oppose us. America’s Vietnam-era leaders made much of their embrace of freedom as well, while overthrowing elected governments from Brazil to Chile to Greece. The war they waged in Southeast Asia killed two to five million Vietnamese, plus more deaths in Laos and Cambodia. And as with Iraq, those making the key decisions were profoundly insulated: Out of 234 eligible sons of Senators and Congressmen, only 28 served in Vietnam, only 19 saw combat, only one was wounded and none were killed. In Iraq, as we know, the chickenhawks led the march to war, and the sole Congressman or Senator with a son who initially served was Democrat Tim Johnson, who the Republicans still attacked as insufficiently patriotic. While the sons of Republican Senator Kit Bond and three Republican congressmen have since also volunteered and been deployed, most who initiated this war have never been intimately touched by it.

Counting Eisenhower's first deployment of soldiers and CIA agents to Vietnam in support of the French, Kennedy’s further commitment, and Johnson’s major escalation, the United States fought there for over twenty years. We’ve now been in and out of Iraq for nearly forty, since the 1963 coup when the CIA first helped the Baath Party overthrow the founder of OPEC. (And intervening in Iran since our 1953 overthrow of the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh, who we replaced with the dictatorial Shah). With the administration promising no immediate end in sight, Bush now tells us it will be up to “future presidents” even to consider withdrawing our troops. Who wants to be the last man or woman to die for George Bush?


Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association, and winner of the Nautilus Award for best social change book of the year. His previous books include Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time. See www.PaulLoeb.org.

It's Not The Intelligence, It's Intelligence
Topic: State Of The Union
I'm watching these fools in the Senate hold hearings for Hayden's CIA confirmation. It's amazing to watch Senator Roberts and General Hayden recreate the reality of post 9/11 and the lead up to our invasion and occupation of Iraq. The problem wasn't foreign intelligence i.e. the CIA, simply put, it was intelligence, period.

Watching a couple of morons attempting to recreate reality to suit their present deluded version of it is absolutely infuriating. And if I was a member of the CIA I would be fuming over the constant barrage of blame and criticism for not giving our war criminal President a rational reason for invading a country that was under brutal sanctions for 12 years, menaced by our war birds on a regular basis, possessing a starving population and 2 no-fly zones in the North and South of their country. Reasonably informed people don't need the Downing Street memos to tell us this.

The fact is that this administration cherry-picked pseudo-evidence to make their case for something that they wanted in a pre-9/11 world (and there is more than sufficient evidence to prove that). Couple this with the reality that anyone even remotely familiar with Iraq knew that they weren't even a threat to their neighbors and any senate report and criticism's of the CIA to the contrary are absolutely bogus.

How can anyone reason with people like this when they don't live in reality?

Here It Comes....
Topic: State Of The Union
Possible Cheney Indictment Looming, Impeachment....?

Axioms
Topic: Misc.
ax•i•om A self-evident principle or one that
is accepted as true without proof as
the basis for argument; a postulate

I was prompted to write this when I received an email about illegal immigration from one of my friends. The email was just one of many that I regularly receive from friends and family that can instantly be pegged for what they truly are when read skeptically but unfortunately for most people the author's goal of eliciting a visceral response is usually attained, which incidentally causes the reader to immediately forward it on to me. If you listen closely you can hear the "ooohhh's," "ahhhh's" and "oh my god's" of people all around you who are opening email just like the one I received.

The problems is that the "facts" found in these emails are much like "facts" found in a Bush State of the Union address. They're dangerous and they can get people hurt especially when the author cobbles together cherry picked pseudo-facts that sound incontrovertible. Undiscerning readers fall into this perception trap because they have yet to learn that sometimes the words they read are written by people whose goal it is to manipulate them. The danger with this delivery of information is that it plays on the reader's "conventional wisdom" in such a way that they start to base their realities on these materially false axioms.

co-de•pen•dent Of or relating to a relationship in
which one person is psychologically dependent
in an unhealthy way on someone who is
addicted to a drug or self-destructive behavior...

It is because of this that I have struggled for quite some time with the thought of writing an article that utterly destroys the fundamental underpinnings of the popular conservative movement that is so prevalently destroying America and indicative of a much greater problem. The problem that I keep coming up against in writing this piece is that I can't seem to find a way around the obstinacy with which most people hold on to their perception of reality. I would literally have to destroy so many things that so many people hold dear and which have been indoctrinated in them by their parents, their family and their friends that they just wouldn't accept it and they certainly wouldn't accept me telling them. They would condemn me as a "radical" for destroying their precious worldview that has been cultivated over a lifetime without any attempt at objectively analyzing reality but by forming their perceptions through codependent relationships. They wouldn't believe me because reality is so contrary to their conventional wisdom that it would literally blow their minds. The main reason why I haven't written such an article is a line from the movie "The Matrix" that continues to ring in my ear like a Robert Schumann A-note,

"... That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around.
What do you see? Business people, teachers, lawyers, carpenters...
You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged.
And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent
on the system that they will fight to protect it. "

As disturbing, as evil, as devoid of compassion and humanity as their worldview is, "they will fight to protect it" and many will fight to the death. It may come as no surprise to many of you reading this that it doesn't matter how many facts you use or how tight your arguments are, they won't believe you. In fact, some of them are so smart that they can literally justify through logical rationalization, the wholesale destruction of other people's lives for their own gain.

Make no mistake about it, the only difference separating you from them is that you have taken the proverbial red pill. Never, ever, think that you are in some way better than they are. You may not have reached the end of the rabbit hole yet but you are aware that the way in which you perceive reality may not be how it actually is. You may also be aware that at times your ego directs your logic to convince you of what you want to be convinced of. The degree of separation between you and them is miniscule and can be defined simply as self-awareness. But be warned "there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path."

The Indy File
Topic: State Of The Union
The "Cafferty File" on CNN asked the question tonight, "What does it mean when the Iraq war is more unpopular than Vietnam was at this point?"

It means that not everyone who opposed this war from the beginning is a anti-American, un-patriotic, pinko-commie hippie. It means that those of us that were clearly correct when we questioned the motives of our President and the lies, half-truths and hidden agendas of this administration should have a much greater forum for our views and should be given the respect we deserve. It also means that if we really lived in a sane world, guys like Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Savage and everyone at Fox "news" would be out on the streets panhandling for what their opinions are truly worth.

The Wizard of Odd...
Topic: Hopefully Humorous
From Indy's hometown newspaper,

Walt Handelsman's,
"No place like home"


Thanks Brian!!!

To Good Health
Topic: State Of The Union
A recently published study on health differences between the English and Americans found that people living in the U.S. are profoundly more unhealthy than their counterparts from over the pond. The study did not reach any conclusions but experts were shocked at the extent of the disparity.

You can find hints at the fundamental reasons underlying this problem everywhere you look. All you have to do is look out your front door. You can see it in the over-fertilized, over-watered and well manicured lawns; in fact it's a metaphor for the root of the problem. You can observe it by the things that hang on your wall, the car that's parked in your driveway and the designer jeans that hang in our closets. It's not hard to find at all. You'll see it on the $10,000 car with the $4,000 rims and in the state-of-the-art electronic devices that seem to occupy every nook and cranny of every house in America. You can look at it in the hands of our children as they sit in the back of the family gas-guzzler with the built-in DVD player that bellows the latest Disney movie, speeding away on the 10 lane highway only making pit stops for gas and McDonald's as it heads to our vacation homes.

The problem is that the antidote for it isn't reflected back in the state of our marriages or our families. You won't even come close to finding it in our schools and it's conspicuously absent in our libraries. The box that sits atop our mantle that seems to be continually droning on is nearly devoid of it. We seem to have reached the point where it's absent from not only our everyday conversations but from our hopes and our dreams.

The fact is that as a people we are unhealthy. We are physically, mentally and spiritually sick because we worship a god that is devoid of all substance - but we still keep praying at the altar. Our souls long for meaning and purpose and we feed it with the spoils provide us by our man-made god. We can't seem to grasp that no matter how hard we pray the void grows deeper and the chasm in our souls grows wider.

We come by "it" and we use "it," abuse "it" and discard "it" and that's just how we treat the people in our lives. Have you ever noticed how hard we can be on our possessions? Everything in our collective eyes is expendable - we just toss "it" out, whatever "it" may be with the belief that we can just get a new one. But our religions and our science conclude something contrary to the way we believe and the way we live our lives. Our actions do have consequences and we will continue to suffer as a people and as individuals when we don't feed our need for substance found in true relationships.

People are not expendable, they're not inherently evil and everyone, no matter who they are, hurts because they long for something more than just the attainment of things. We can heal our collective infirmity with a little courage but we must be willing to live, to love, to sacrifice and to give. We must forego our immediate need for the entertainment of the hour and work towards making our homes and communities something more than just springboards for our commercially crafted egos. Together we can remove the log from our eyes. Only then will we approach what it means to have good health.

Reagan In His Own Words
Topic: Hopefully Humorous
Those of you who have read The Indy Voice for any length of time are probably aware that Ronald Reagan wasn't my favorite President. So when I received an email from someone in his fan club I couldn't resist the opportunity to retort. I was compelled to publicly respond when the last line of the email read exactly (bolding and capitalization included) like this,

"IF YOU AGREE, PLEASE FORWARD.....IF NOT JUST DELETE."

So, here goes,

Reagan: "The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

Indy: He's right, I was terrified when he said it.

Reagan: "The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant: It's just that they know so much that isn't so."

Indy: Oh yeah and the facts haven't been strange bedfellows in conservative administrations.

Does Nixon's resignation and Iran-Contra refresh any memories?

This from a guy who didn't remember authorizing the sale of missiles to a "terrorist state" so that he could subsidize the "murder, rape, torture, maiming of children, cutting off arms, cutting out tongues, gouging out eyes, castration, bayoneting pregnant women in the stomach, and amputating genitals" of a so-called "freedom fighting" force.

Reagan: "I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandment's would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress."

Indy: A Christian would say that the Commandments came from God not Moses but hey "there I go again" with that liberal ignorance. Either way I don't think Reagan was aware that the U.S. Congress didn't exist when Moses presented the tablets.

Reagan: "The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination."

Indy: You constantly have to remind these guys that taxpayers don't take the civil service exam because they're the boss.

Reagan: "Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."

Indy: Kind of sounds like the political philosophy of the modern conservative movement. Don't they go around eating up all the things that make this country great and when it's their turn to return the favor all we're left with is a whiner and a stinking diaper.

Reagan: "If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under."

Indy: I'm all for it except my God is evil. Can we be a nation under my God?

Reagan: "The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program."

Indy: ...and glib comments by bad actors.

Reagan: "Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops! moving, subsidize it."

Indy: His view could be summed up in a few short phrases: if it makes something blow up, secretively spend massive amounts of taxpayer dollars for it. If it keeps moving after you've tried to blow it up, deny that you blew it up and secretly spend even more money towards blowing it up. If it stops moving there's nothing saying you can't try blowing it up again.

Reagan: "No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women."

Indy: So when do we stop raising taxes to build bombs?

Reagan: "Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book."

Indy: We're still waiting on that book.

Reagan: "It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first."

Indy: Spoken like a true pimp daddy!

What Would Jesus Do?
Topic: Iraq


WWJD

Oil Versus Independence
Topic: State Of The Union
If you are a believer in free market capitalism, high gas prices are something that you are going to have to endure as the supply is limited and demand around the world is only increasing. If you really wanna do something about high gas prices once and for all, scream at the top of your lungs to your political representatives and car manufacturers that you're not going to buy another car powered by gasoline. Tell your Rep. that we need to stop spending money in Iraq, stop making war around the world and we need to stop stressing taxpayers and cut our $500 BILLION DOLLAR A YEAR military budget (more than what the entire world spends on their military put together) and we need to start investing in de-centralized and alternative energy education, research and development with the goal of kicking the oil habit in no more than 10 years so that not another U.S. soldier has to die on a battlefield protecting an oil pipeline.