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tom moody


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Political Musings Around the Web, Part Whatever.

"Why do they hate us?" was the big question on many people's lips right after 9/11/01. My stock answer: "Well, how about us having military bases all over the world when we're not actually at war with anyone?" Frequent response to that: "Bases? We have bases?" OK, as belated evidence of my assertion, please read Chalmers Johnson's report. He says we have 700 by a conservative count: it's hard to know for sure because the Pentagon plays shell games--pun intended--with the true numbers. How do you suppose that makes people in base-saddled countries feel? Glad because we're protecting them? But from what? People in their own countries that might otherwise overthrow their governments? Johnson points out the crude indiplomacy of the military's term for the geographical parameters of our control. It's called "the footprint."

I'm not planning to see Errol Morris's The Fog of War, a capital-I important film consisting of interviews with Kennedy/LBJ-era Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. A principal instigator of US escalation in the Vietnam War, McNamara now claims with pride ("No, shame." "Pride, Precious." "No...") that he encouraged low-altitude flights during the fire-bombing of Tokyo--a conflagration that killed more civilians than the A-bombs further south. Of course, he would have been too junior to have that power in WWII. Anyway, no way I'm going to sit in the dark for 90 minutes listening to the self-justifications of that 83 year old pathological liar. Alexander Cockburn makes me feel better about my decision. He says McNamara really got the better of Morris.

Lastly, Cockburn and his Counterpunch co-editor Jeffrey St. Clair filed an amusing, dyspeptic campaign report from Iowa. Kucinich is probably the candidate closest to their views on the war (and mine, FWIW, although our "getting the UN involved" as a solution sounds pretty presumptuous--surely only Iraqi citizens can make that call?). In any event Cockburn/St. Clair aren't Deanies, which makes the following quote more in the nature of an unbiased, general ad hominem slam:

What’s Kerry got going for him, apart from the money of his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, who has propelled the sputtered Kerry campaign forward on a sea of ketchup dividends? Not much. Kerry is a chronic fence straddler on issues. Gore Vidal hit it on the head when he remarked that Kerry “looks like Lincoln…[pause]… after the assassination."
Yes, that's mean, but does anyone actually buy Kerry's "poor pitiful me, Bush fooled me into giving him a blank check for war" argument? He should just admit he was afraid and went along with the Congressional pack, and then stop running.

- tom moody 1-26-2004 10:17 pm [link] [7 comments]