Cry Havoc, and Release Henry Waxman!

Like a shark in the water I smell blood looking at the latest presidential polls.  The deal ain't sealed until the electorate speaks, but things look good for Obama right now.    I trust him to be restrained to our adversaries if he wins the election, but emotionally I need some payback after all the smack the other side has talked the last eight years.  I need some smackdown to demonstrate to the arrogant why arrogance is such a bad move in the first place:  You are either with us or against us.  Mission Accomplished.    John Ashcroft. John Roberts.  Samuel Alito.  Guantanamo Bay.  Iraq.  Torture. Faith Based Initiatives.  Valerie Palme.  Karl Rove.  Dick Cheney.  Donald Rumsfeld.  John Bolton.  Tom Delay.  Half a trillion dollar budget deficit.  Deregulation of Derivatives Leading to the Financial Crisis.  Decline in real wages.  Negotiating is for pussies war is for real.  The list goes on. How are you sleeping Karl Rove?  Probably in a fat bed paid for by your spoils.  Don't get too comfortable.      

A Melancholy Day

September 11th will always be a melancholy day for New Yorkers at least until the last living memory of the day passes.  A  crystalline fall day savaged by history.  Even those in the heartland who condemn New York for its delightful and diverse iniquity were with us on that day.  Now, however, the boys and girls from the heartland have taken the day from us and used it to spin their incessant fear mongering that cloaks  their will to power.

Any chance that someone could convince me that President Bush deserved his title collapsed like the twin towers that day.  His feeble uncomprehending expression in the school classroom when he was told of the attacks is etched into my mind as indelibly as any horror from that day.  When I wanted John Wayne from Stage Coach I got Elmer Fudd from Bugs Bunny instead.  When thousands of innocent people are slaughtered and the heart of American capitalism is attacked, he decides to keep reading a children's book.  Then he got on a plane to run away and hide like a fucking pussy.  Instead of standing up and taking control of the situation he let the situation control him.  

Let his apologists coo and spew what a virile leader he is, and how he has saved the Republic from the ravages of our enemies.  All I know is that seven years later Osama Bin Laden is still being hosted by the Taliban in Pakistan, whose tribal autonomous zone is the first place this New Yorker would have invaded after locking down Afghanistan.  Iraq has been a waste of time and money.  Explain to me the logic of going after religious extremists by attacking a secular state.  A New Yorker wouldn't have wasted time with Iraq and would have pursued the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden into Pakistan as relentlessly as Patton did the Germans.  But, alas, we were fated to have a half witted faux Texan as our leader, and our enemy is still with us.

The Surge

Isn't saying that the "Surge" is a success a bit like saying you got an A on a test that you were allowed to take over and over again?  Isn't the "Surge" what General Shinseki suggested we do in the first place, a.k.a. send in a large number of troops to pacify a fractious nation whose fissures were going to be ripped asunder by our invasion?  Thousands of U.S. soldiers lives lost, tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed, billions of dollars spent, all because of the arrogance of a few with little or no military training who thought they knew better than our military professionals.  The surge isn't a success because it's what should have been done in the first place.  It's nothing more than a do over writ in blood.  I'm glad it's working, but it is fatuous and deceptive to claim success after a carnage that could have been avoided by using the strategy that is the basis of the "success" in the first place.