All Abuzz...

...as U.S. War Eagle Falters

"Yankee go home" as Bush takes heat


The Eagle: Emitting the High-Pitched Twitter of Warbloggers

I can see that your head | Has been twisted and fed | By worthless foam from the mouth.

Bob Dylan

My, my... for people with atrophied brains, the right's ability to go 'all aflutter' never ceases to amaze. Over at Open Source Politics, I'd been reading Kenneth Quinnell's take on Bush's request that the U.N. start absorbing some heat in Iraq following his illegal invasion and occupation of that impoverished country.

Somehow, I almost immediately ran into Merde in France, a bilingual hate-speech site focusing on France and its people. With headlines such as The only thing the French know how to do: bla bla bla, yak yak yak, you can be pretty sure the lobotomized editor of this piece of condensed vituperation knows his or her enemy.

Nevertheless, always being willing to seek common ground, I found this little nugget: "A former French Minister, Jack Lang, has claimed several times that George Bush is as dangerous as Osama bin Laden. It's time for Americans to understand that France is an 'ally' about as reliable as Saudi Arabia is."

While I doubt our vitriolic political commentator would agree with my reasons for doing so, I can happily say, "I agree wholeheartedly."

The bee under Merde in France's bonnet seems to be a recently published French best-seller, Windows on the World by Frederic Beigbeder. The book is a fictional account of the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in September 2001.

It seems its dialogue, centering on sex and money (what else is there?), causes offence to those sensitive to the type of stereotypical conversation Hollywood has taken a century to convince the world is stock-in-trade New Yorker or generic American.

While I disagree with the notion that The French always get on the winning side after the fight is over, purely on the grounds that the United States is the current underdog in the battle to dilute French influence in Africa, I must point out that Merde in France does engage in some objective reportage. Its anonymous author, W., points, for example, to an article in Liberation wherein the allegation is made that many "US GIs are cowardly and trigger happy."

I'm glad this has been noted. Robert Fisk has been trying to point out for months that scared youths thrown into guerilla warfare might not be ideal material for exporting so-called democratic values. Fisk also points to the results of such trigger-happiness.


Opinion Poll: Democracy in Action

I can tell you are torn | Between stayin' and returnin' | On back to the South.

From Shit in France (from whence all good shit flows), I wandered on to Jeff Jarvis's busy blog, BuzzMachine.

Jeff is an extraordinarily industrious fellow who describes himself as "just plan [sic] American". He has been tracking Windows on the World and found a partial review of it in the New York Times.

Not exactly a bastion of raw liberalism and with nary a taint of rampant Cold War Soviet Expansionism left since the last clutch of editors were shown the door, the Times' review, French Feel the Anguish in Books Inspired by 9/11, gives a mixed, hardly enthusiastic reception to a clutch of books cashing in on a single, highly-hyped tragedy. While most of the authors appear to be less than enamored by George W. Bush, their fascination and ongoing love affair with matters American hardly seems to be over.

Being a "plan" American, Jeff is taken with many people's desire to see themselves as "multi-culti". I assume scientists at the CDC are working feverishly to develop filters blocking that pesky French gene. He writes: "Two weeks ago, Howard Stern had his staff's DNA tested for ethnic roots and Artie the apparently Italian pasta-snarfer turned out to be one-quarter Native American (he's opening a casino)."

There are certainly no French genes in Artie's blood. He's definitely a Native American, especially as he's planning to open a casino. No liquor outlets in the offing yet, Jeff?

You won't find Windows on the World on Jeff's Amazon wish list (if truth be told, I don't dare look). Jeff does, however, read my friend Glenn Reynolds, he of the Warbloggers' Convention Donkey Scandal, and the author of an MSNBC opinion blog.

In the column to which Jeff points, Glenn disingenuously ties Howard Dean and John McCain to Satan's shadow, Paul Wolfowitz, before waxing lyrical about Wolfie's future plans for Iraq. Lending credence to the notion that politicians make cheap propagandists and turn their publicists into even cheaper whores, Wolfie writes:

Terrorists were aiming a blow at something they hate even more--the prospect of a country freed from their control and moving to become an Iraq of, by, and for the Iraqi people. Terrorists recognize that Iraq is on a course towards self-government that is irreversible and, once achieved, will be an example to all in the Muslim world who desire freedom, pointing a way out of the hopelessness that the extremists feed on. And so, they test our will, the will of the Iraqi people, and the will of the civilized world.

Indeed. I wonder if he tells that to the Iraqi people as well.

In leaving Jeff to his industry, I thank him for his courtesy in extending a link to A Small Victory, where further sentiment towards Windows on the World is expressed. Hmm... if I were a French Canadian, I'd lie low for a while.


Cause of Death: U.S. Foreign Policy

You've been fooled into thinking | That the finishin' end is at hand.

All this wandering has led me from that which prompted this post, Kenneth Quinnell's Open Source Politics article, The Necessity of the U.N.. In agreeing with the thrust of Kenneth's article, I feel I might jeopardize my budding friendships with the likes of W, Jeff, Glenn and Wolfie but, what the hell, I am sure they will understand.

On reading Kenneth exhorting his readers to recognize the value of the U.N. in the wake of Governor Bush's call to that august body to pull its weight in Iraq, I realized the governor and his praetorian guard had painted themselves into a corner. I therefore noted the following:

It seems though, that Bush is hoping a U.N. presence will lend legitimacy to an illegal invasion and deliver the international community a war that is yet to come. The U.S. has won no war; it has merely started another by invading and occupying a foreign state for no good reason.

Pre-invasion, Iraq was a defenseless dictatorship, its people impoverished by decades of war and inhumane sanctions. It was barely functioning and posed a threat to nobody. Its profit-driven invasion was deemed illegal by the world and its occupation is being fought by guerillas rather than 'terrorists'.

Today, it is a state of chaos and anarchy without electricity or water, and produces far less oil than it did under punitive, death-dealing sanctions that allegedly cost the lives of 500,000 people. Under the COA, it no longer functions at all. This is the freedom and democracy promised by U.S. foreign policy and the Bush regime. I suspect an increasing number of Iraqis remember Saddam with growing fondness (we all have selective memories).

With or without allies, the U.S. invasion could never have been seen to be anything but illegitimate. The U.S.' position was and is morally repugnant. The U.S. is the rogue state here. It is taking the world to war. It is mud.

More, with the U.S. yet to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan or take Iraq (coalition troops no longer patrol the streets at will), any war is far from won and U.S. troops, despite the fire power at their disposal, are far from proving themselves adept at warfare.

Where are the defeated Osama bin Laden (the savior of Bush's presidency), Mullah Omar and Saddam Hussein? They're drawing the United States into a protracted war the Americans show every sign of losing hands down. Should the U.N., which did little to thwart the United States, wish to share such ignominious defeat and ruin its reputation as the United States has done, its future actions will cease to carry any weight at all.

The Bush administration's concern is public perception rather than winning a 'war'. Its Middle East policy is destabilization and fragmentation or 'divide and rule'. In this, it is succeeding. It is offering the Iraqi people and, later, the Arab world a taste of Central Africa and decades of foreign-funded, internecine warfare.

Politicians are not in the business of fighting terrorism (they or their right-wing supporters appear to generate it in the U.S.), genocide or poverty. Their job is to secure their countries' autonomy and influence over others. They will go to any lengths to achieve this.

In Iraq, the U.S. is creating a new Somalia, one in which it gets to choose who plays the dominant warlord willing to sell off that country's resources for short-term gain. Unless stopped, it will expand its armed forces and move on to fresh 'conquests' when politically expedient.

Post 9-11, U.S. citizens needed the U.N. to reign in those wielding power in America. Today, in a perceptual quest for legitimacy, the Bush administration seeks to gut it.

I can already hear the voices of my friends on the right, rising above the crackle of gunfire, thud of bombs, and screams of the wounded: "Fuck the U.N. We'll go it alone." I'm sure you will, W., Jeff, Glenn and Wolfie, I'm sure you will.

Yet there's no one to beat you, | No one t' defeat you, | 'Cept the thoughts of yourself feeling bad.

Bob Dylan

Note

I sometimes wonder if bloggers such as those so assiduously following the prosecution of this crime against humanity ever bother, while at their monitors, to read views from sources close to the fruits of their desire, i.e. an Iraq under U.S. occupation or an imposed leadership.

To make matters worse, Rumsfeld is in Iraq. It’s awful to see him strutting all over the place. I hate the hard, smug look that seems plastered on his face… some people just have cruel features. The reaction to seeing him on TV differs from the reaction to seeing Bremer or one of the puppets. The latter are greeted with jeers and scorn. Seeing Rumsfeld is something else - there’s resentment and disgust. It feels like he’s here to add insult to injury… you know, just in case anyone forgets we’re an occupied country. more

River has been writing a month now, and offers the most authentic view from 'the street' I've come across. One couldn't hope for a more level-headed, knowledgeable and insightful running commentary on daily Iraqi realities than those she delivers in a clear and perceptive voice that often articulates anger but is devoid of bitterness.

Do the dummy armchair warriors not realise she is a person they would, more often than not, immediately want to befriend? Are they not prepared to listen to a message delivered by someone gracious enough to accept the lunacy of global politics but hopeful enough to believe the common sense of ordinary people will stop it?

For myself, I would not want River to become bitter, resentful, or vengeful. Without belittling or judging the immense character she shows in blogging from Ground Zero, I ask myself how she'll feel about Americans and all those who kept quiet in the face of American aggression if the situation has not improved in a year or two years' time.

Given her lucid writing, I shudder to think how she might judge my neo-con friends referred to above.