The Empire 347

'BIG MUDDY THERE, FANTASY & DENIAL HERE

Across the Middle East Bush's "war on terror" has led to a rolling catastrophe.

The administration is settling in to permanent occupation of Iraq while one-third of Iraqis need humanitarian aid and four million have been forced to flee their homes. Washington sends 3,000 more troops to Afghanistan as civilian deaths from U.S. bombs turn Afghans against the West. Top officials of the U.S.-backed dictatorship in Pakistan admit that their secret service has "lost control" of insurgents it trained and financed. In response to Israel's "collective punishment" residents of Gaza blew up and surged across the Gaza/Egypt border wall in the largest prison break in world history. Arab newspapers - including mouthpieces of pro-U.S. regimes - call Bush's warmongering against Iran "sad and depressing" while Arab governments normalize relations with Tehran.

It's a reprise of Pete Seeger's anthem from Vietnam days: Washington is knee-deep in the big muddy, and the big fool says to push on.

But almost none of this registers in mainstream U.S. politics. Occasionally a symptom of these disasters gets newspaper coverage or is mentioned in a TV spot before Britney Spears' latest scandal. But for the most part, the U.S. media operate as if "the surge is a success" or what's happening in Israel-Palestine is a "peace process."

On the electoral front, Republican presidential hopefuls prattle on about "victory" (and Mike Huckabee threatens to stick a pole up the butt of anyone who wants to take down a Confederate flag). The main Democratic hopefuls tone down their criticism of the Iraq disaster for fear of being seen as "weak on national defense." The latest example of this fantasyland dance comes from this week's Republican frontrunner, John McCain. McCain (who wants to stay in Iraq for 1,000 years) proclaimed (Jan. 24) that Hillary Clinton (who wants to stay in Iraq at least through
2012) "has called for surrender and waving the white flag."

It's not new for there to be a disconnect between what's really happening in most of the world and the illusions, denial and elite-driven misinformation that prevails inside this country. But rarely has that gap been as wide - or as dangerous - as it is today.

The challenge before the antiwar movement in 2008 is to narrow that gap.

THE SURGE: "PURE FANTASY"

Veteran military officer Andrew Bacevich (whose son was killed in Iraq) exploded the myth of the surge's "success" in the Washington Post Jan. 20:

"As the violence in Baghdad and Anbar province abates, the political and economic dysfunction enveloping Iraq has become all the more apparent... A nation-building project launched in the confident expectation that the U.S. would repeat in Iraq the successes it had achieved in Germany and Japan after 1945 instead compares unfavorably with the response to Hurricane Katrina. Baghdad households receive power an average of six hours fewer a day than under Saddam Hussein. Oil production still has not returned to pre-invasion levels. Reports of widespread fraud, waste and sheer ineptitude in the administration of U.S. aid have become so commonplace that they barely last a news cycle... '

Lees verder: http://www.war-times.org/pdf/WT%20MiR-Jan08.pdf