Stephan Zielinski: Dwa

04.04.10, and another Hate Week begins!  This year’s fresh-coined new slogan:

Contradiction Is Discussion.

So President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize!  And all of a sudden, I can’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone singing

I’ll tell you what Obama’s done for me lately: deflected my country away from a beeline course towards a multi-front hot war against every Muslim state on the planet. That he’s also been reversing the thunderingly stupid Bush policies when and as he accumulates enough political capital to do so is a bonus– but that’s mostly just for us.  On a global scale,  he was halfway to the Nobel just by defeating John McCain– and, God help us, the party that looked at Sarah Palin and thought, “Looks qualified to be the Vice President to me!”

Allow me to expand on that.  You know the teabagger neocons who are whining about birth certificates and raving about “Death Panels”?  The guys doing their best to make the rest of us wonder how many cases of paranoid schizophrenia are going undiagnosed every year?  These chuckleheads used to have the ear of executive reactionary thugs with NUCLEAR LAUNCH CODES. People thought this was BUSINESS AS USUAL.

What’s Obama done for Peace?  Turned the whole damn country around.  What’s he doing now?  Maintaining sanity.  Collaring the hawks, ignoring the doctrinaire, and laughing when the absurd stumble onto the political stage– so that once again, we’re a force for good in the world.

That counts.

From Chapter One, “Laying Plans”, of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War:

18. All warfare is based on deception.

19. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable;
    when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we
    are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away;
    when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

20. Hold out baits to entice the enemy.  Feign disorder,
    and crush him.

For the last ten years or so, the reactionaries– the xenophobic and anti-rationalist segment of the USAen population– have organized under the banner of the the Republican party.  As I type this, the Republicans are now little more than a joke.  I fear many are concluding from this that the reactionaries are thus now little more than a joke.

Listen to Sun Tzu.  A specific political party being reduced to irrelevance is not the same as a movement being reduced to irrelevance– just as one must not conclude from the sight of a platoon in disarray that the army is in disarray.  That the Republican party as such is now apparently comprised of dolts running in circles and bonking into each other should be considered nothing more than a distraction.  The effective reactionaries have not disappeared; they’re just not as inclined to wear a straw hat decorated with an elephant.

45.7% of the votes in the 2008 Presidential election went for McCain and Palin.   These people have not vanished.  We cannot afford a repeat of what happened during the Clinton administration; we must not dismiss the reactionaries as mere clowns no longer relevant to the political process.

I’m all for Schadenfreude– more so than most, perhaps, because I’m not a nice guy.  But the correct reaction to seeing the Republicans thrashing like gaffed tuna is not, “The reactionaries’ organization is broken, hooray”– it is, “Given the Republicans are no longer an effective right-wing organization, where have the reactionaries’ organizers gone, and what are they doing?”

22. If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to
    irritate him.  Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.

23. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest.
    If his forces are united, separate them.

24. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where
    you are not expected.

In honor of Hate Week—during which, as Orwell notes, new slogans are introduced—I would like to offer the following. It may not be destined to become a classic, but it does honor the work the current “loyal opposition” is doing on the national scene:

Obstruction is Construction.

Your attention, please: a newsflash has this moment arrived from Airstrip One.  Here is the newsflash:

Surveilance is Privacy.

I have faith in the American people. When presented with a situation that is clearly and obviously precedented, we will learn from history—spending years less time dithering before doing what needs to be done.

“Years” is a vague term, of course. Its minimum is “two.” Given that the current administration appears incapable of perceiving reality, let alone reacting appropriately to it, we’d better stick with the minimum.

The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was August 7, 1964. The Fall of Saigon was April 30, 1975. Ten years, eight months, and 23 days. The Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq was October 11, 2002. If we assume that we can learn from history as described above, we add eight years, eight months, and 23 days. This yields my prediction for the Fall of Baghdad: July 4, 2011.

That works out nicely. It’s a Monday—perfect for the Monday morning quarterbacking claims that we could have “won” if only we’d followed whatever idiot scheme the speaker favored. Better still, the war apologists will be able to stay in their back yards setting off firecrackers to drown out the media coverage of our final squalid retreat.

I’m certain I’m not the first to think of this—so let’s just call this a restatement of conventional wisdom…

I think I’ve figured out the United States’ religious right. They started to read the Bible, but only got as far as Leviticus before they got bored. They skimmed the rest—managing to pick up that Jesus taught, died, and rose again—but totally missed all the wisdom of His ministry. Then, figuring that the last chapter would be a summation of the whole work, they paid real close attention to Revelation.

This would certainly explain why they seem fixated on a few specific Old Testament tales and verses, they have no clue what Christian virtue actually is, and they spend all their time looking forward to the Apocalypse. Their bluster is that of poor students who, not having learned the whole of their lessons, bluff that the bits they did learn are the only important ones—and perhaps the teacher will fail to notice the underlying ignorance.

(#2 in a series of unoriginal and obvious points I want to be able to say that I made publicly back in August 2006.)

• Bomb in the cargo hold.

• Artificial limb containing 460 ml 50% hydrochloric acid and 432 grams of sodium cyanide. When mixed, these form enough gas to contaminate the 703 cubic meters of a 747 with 300 ppmv of hydrogen cyanide—which can kill you by entering through your eyeballs. (With a long enough exposure, it can even enter through your skin.)

• Sealed glass capsule containing 40 ml GB—which enters through your skin quickly. Assuming 10 ml for the glass itself, this can be carried in the rectum for hours at a time without incurring so much as a funny walk. (VX is worse, on a deaths per gram scale, but is a bit harder to weaponize.) Neither nerve gas requires a government-sized organization to produce—Aum Shinrikyo made (and killed people with) both.

I am not the first to think of these schemes, nor the first to speak of them. Thus, defeating them requires, at a minimum, inspection of all cargo, a qualified radiologist to take and inspect X-rays of all prosthetics, and full cavity searches of all passengers. Any airliner security program that does not include all three things does not protect passengers from threats known to be within the capabilities of private organizations.

Ergo, I argue that the debate is not whether airport security is sufficient. It is known not to be. The only question is why we’re bothering to implement measures that do not solve the problem they’re intended to. What benefit do you figure we derive? Are you sure it’s worth the price?

Further, even if we were to implement all three, there is one last scheme:

• Corrupt a mechanic to install a bomb on the jet during routine maintenance.

No security measure inflicted on passengers can prevent this. Knowing this, does all the delay and indignity of passenger inspection still make you so much as make you feel safer?

Even ignoring the wasted time and subsequent loss of productivity, the security infrastructure is not free. You understand now that the security measures are pointless. How much of your money are you willing to pay—in the form of taxes and higher travel costs—to buy the props for a fool’s paradise?

I have no new insights. I just want to be able to point to my having made these points out loud way back in August 2006.

There is one solution to the USA’s involvement in Iraq. When I say “one,” I mean that it is the solution we are doomed to implement—whether we plan for it or not, and whether we like it or not.

Leave.

As in, get everybody the hell out as quickly as possible—where “as quickly as possible” is measured in DAYS. Call it 72 hours. Pull the units out of the cities, form them up into proper field deployments under air cover, and head for a coast or border.

This will be an absolute disaster for Iraq. There will be blood in the streets—rivers of it. There are factions atop factions, and most loathe each other. They’re going to fight it out. Many people will die horribly. Whatever government emerges is going to be a nightmare.

This is bad. The trouble is, this is what’s going to happen sooner or later anyway. The Fall of Baghdad is going to be a bigger disaster than the Fall of Saigon in 1975. Unfortunately, there isn’t a single thing the USA can do to prevent it. The fire selector on an M16A4 does not include a setting for “Eliminate ethnic hatred.”

Understand that Iraqization is not going to work any better than Vietnamization did. Supporting a specific Iraqi government is not going to work any better than supporting a specific South Vietnamese government ever worked. As with Viet Nam, these realities transcend specifics of the USAen administration—Republican or Democrat, left, right, or center. No matter who takes power in 2009, 2013, or 2017, no matter what their politics or motives, any plan predicated on these notions will fail.

Further, a pullout with a timetable of months or years is just a slow, agonizing buildup to the finale. Recall Nixon and Ford: they understood the USA had to get out of Viet Nam, but they pursued Vietnamization for years. It didn’t help a soul. The final result—total defeat—was the same. They might as well have pulled out the day Nixon took office: it wouldn’t have been any worse for the Vietnamese, and fewer USAen soldiers would have died.

Sooner or later, that finale comes and it’s 72 hours to have everyone out of the country. Putting off the inevitable just costs money and lives while we sit around moaning about how tragic it all is.

Bite the bullet, cue up “White Christmas”, and hope the door doesn’t hammer our collective ass too hard on the way out.

Shortly after my editor mentioned on her blog how much she hated certain Christmas music, and a commenter reaching for a word mentioned the Infant Jesus “in his crib,” lightning hit my stereo again. I recognized the tune at least, this time: Public Enemy’s Fight the Power. But I don’t know what to make of the lyrics…

Neg three BCE the number another winter (get down)
Sound of the Virgin M, her
Screaming hittin’ your ears ‘cause I know you sin, soul
(Brethren and sistren, hey)
But today, we’re not too sure
Are our motives all pure
Askin’ what Bush knows
While the Guardsmen sweatin’
And the mortar rounds fallin’
Got to tell us why we’re there
Gotta give us an excuse
Well, freedom of faith is freedom for death
We got to bomb the heathens that be
Lemme hear you say
Bomb the heathens

(Chorus)

As the rubble designed to bounce
What counts is that the spin’s
Designed to cloud your mind
Now that you’re convinced our pride’s on line
We’ve got to rule Baghdad to make us glad
Close your heart
Rape a tart, set flames to art
To devolutionize roll back change fear the strange
People. Muslims, are they the same?
No, they’re not the same
Hit them with all the blame
What we need is gasoline, small cars are obscene
Rah, rah, SUV
My President, saddle up the horses
Preempt invasion ground forces
(Yo) Smart bomb the show
And maybe nuke them till they glow
Make everybody see, it’s our job to bomb the heathens that be
Lemme hear you say…
Bomb the heathens

(Chorus)

Jesus was a hero to most
But he never meant shit to me, you meat;
Straight pacifist that preacher was
Simple and neat
Mother fuck him and Saint Pete
Cause I’m White and I’m proud
I’m ready and hyped, son of Huns
Most Christian heros don’t appear without guns
Sample a look back you look and find
Nothing but killers for 1000 years, they’re chillers
“Do unto others”
Was a number one thought
Damn if I say it you can shoot me right here
(Get it) let’s get this purging started right
Right on, c’mon
What we got to say
Power for warriors no delay
To make everybody see
In order to bomb the heathens that be

(Bomb the heathens.)

During the storm last night, my stereo was struck by a bolt of lightning. For a few moments, it picked up a broadcast from a hip-hop station in a nearby alternate universe.

John Ashcroft’s the name, and justice is my game
Got some jail cells ready for all those deserving blame.
We’ve got dogs and shotguns and electrodes for your “bits”;
I’m here to protect you from bare naked marble tits.

[A prisoner gets a few notes of “Amazing Grace” out before the power switch is thrown and he fries like a side of bacon.]

Now I go by Rummy, and I ain’t no dummy;
With my war plan goin’ them Baathists call for mummy.
We don’t need many troops, ‘cause our boys are all the best
State fifty-one comin’; them Iraqis sure are blessed.

[Little girl’s voice: “Mom, what does `for the duration’ mean, and who’s that guy standing next to you in that photograph?”]

I’m Big Dick Cheney and I’m here to say
The Democrats can kiss my bootay.
I’m bald and mean and white and phat
With a big Halliburton check to go with all that.
Now, my ticker’s not so hot; that much is true
It’s because my daughter likes girls, and that makes me blue.
Some say I’m a hypocrite, but that nut won’t fit the screw;
Just ‘cause she’s a human being don’t mean others are, too.
Yo. By the way, Leahy: go fuck yourself.

[Muttering: “If I have to sleep with Lynne, I don’t see why Mary can’t take one for the team as well.”]

Well, my name is George, but you can call me double U
I’m a dry drunk rich boy; God tells me what to do.
Got a Stepford wife and and a fresh mandate
Time to clean up the house and bring on the hate.

[Frank Sinatra record scratching: ZOOP ZOOP “Did it my way” ZOOP “My way” ZOOP “Mymymymy My way”]

[A-10 Warthog screeching over Nasiria. Filter, pilot’s voice: “Whoops! That was me; my bad. Sorry, Marines.”]

[Mob beating the crap out of someone with a Middle Eastern accent pleading for mercy. Over it, George is saying, “Need some wood? Do you, punk? Need some wood? Need a little MORE wood?”]

[Everyone, in chorus:]
It’s time to meet the new boss, it’s the same as the old boss
We’re following a prophet, and it’s time for your loss.
We’ve got the Senate and the House, the highest court’s on borrowed time;
If I was you, I wouldn’t think of stepping out of line.