CRIES OF WAR NOW HEARD

WAR CRIES

By Peter Fredson

January 23, 2006

What is appropriate to describe the onset of a war? Crossing the Rubicon, The Die is Cast, The Flight of Birds signals disaster ahead, the Oracle has Spoken, or Crying Wolf?

Certainly Greek and Roman warriors had their rhetoric, their beating of shields with swords, the symbolic flight of arrows, the chest-beating, the swaggering and strutting, the bellowing and threatening.

In that respect we have not evolved a whit. The entire stage play is being rehearsed today. In the wings are warriors waiting, ready to do or die. Only the lead actors have changed, some of the costumes, and the stage scenery.

For years I have watched the Bush administration bellow and bluster its incompetence to the world. I watched for months as the entire cabinet danced their war dances, rattled sabers, shouted ominous threats, pronounced rivals to be EVIL and therefore unfit to live with decent Christian Republicans.

I listened to little Condi Rice, the Black Angel of Death, scare the public with visions of mushroom clouds, aluminum tubes, yellow cake and other strategic lies.

I watched George Bush strut and smirk across the stage, saying he would “go it alone” in his salute to diplomacy and then appoint a fascist as Attorney General to explore the absolute limits of repression, the imaginative extension (or extinction) of our Constitution, and the host of hired sycophant lawyers that pronounced George Bush to be the legitimate heir of Julius Caesar and immune from any responsibility, oversight, or restraint.

And, yes, I listened to the daily repeat of the Bush rhetoric by his entire cabinet. Dick, Karl, Donald, Colin, Condi, etc. reiterating the terrible danger that Saddam Hussein represented to our Grand Old Nation. The pilotless drones loaded with nuclear weapons or bacteria, the grave “intentions” toward Democracy, Liberty, and the Bush family, and the aluminum tubes and bacteriological labs that were daily pronounced to be presages of death and destruction to the American public.

The list of misinformation, deception, stealth, deliberate twisting of facts, and the perpetual lies extended off my printer and rolled endlessly down the floor. Never has a President lied so frequently, so maliciously, so arduously and never has one been backed up by so many sycophants without a word of reproach, caution, or warning.

I watched as the Bush people bullied, bribed, and cajoled the UN members into whatever votes they wanted voted. I watched in amazement as the entire Republican party joined enthusiastically, patriotically, to the call to arms of the Bushites.

I saw the glee on the faces of the ammunitions and war equipment manufacturers. I saw the look of rapture on the faces of Christian fundamentalists, dominionists, reconstructionists, as they realized that their dreams of conquest of the infidel would be realized, and that our petulant, irritable, strutting peacock of a president was pronounced a “Messiah,” who listened to the advice of Yahweh and decided to help fight evil and rule the world for Jesus.

Today I looked at my files and saw the same obscene pattern being repeated, nearly word for word. Little Condi is talking mushroom clouds again. George is chanting terror, 9/ll without stopping, God Bless us All, EVIL, and seducing the entire country into precipitous action. Dick and Donald and Karl are doing their thing, without letup or hindrance, Bolton is trying to destroy the institution to which George sent him with malice aforethought. And the corruption has passed all understanding. The Judicial Committee, the Republican Senate, has betrayed our democracy for a unitary executive who differs not at all in loony behavior from the mad emperors of history.

Surprisingly McCain, whom George tried to destroy with slander, was able to pass a no-torture bill, which George imperiously bypassed by pronouncing that no restrictions applied to his imperial will.

Then McCain, thinking he might be a viable candidate to replace Bush in several years weighed in on the side of the war-mongers. He too talked mushroom clouds, evil Iranians, their insolence toward George, etc., so his patience too was exhausted after half an hours talk with George and he reluctantly opted for death and destruction, thinking he could not be a viable candidate unless he threw meat to the lions.

Such talk is always popular with the multitude of people whose lives are either boring or blighted, especially with those indoctrinated by religious wolves like Falwell and Robertson. They glory in death and destruction ..to someone other than themselves of course.

Whatever they may say they believe about either Jesus or the Constitution, the façade crumbles before the prospect of a gladiatorial circus in which Iranians are thrown into the path of shining missiles from heaven.

And all the good Christians will shout Hallelujah and blubber over a copy of the Ten Commandments as their country sinks into the abyss and lives and ideals of countless people blighted forever

So, all the signs point to a fait accompli. Bush wants war with Iran. Whether it is to fight EVIL or steal their oil is irrelevant. How he does it is secret, but he does not have at present enough troops to invade Iran, so obviously his air force will carry the burden of bunker busters, cluster bombs and assorted other instruments of mass destruction.

Although we have castigated the Japanese for their “infamy”, it seems that Bush likes that strategy. Preemption is consistent with his administration, as is deceit and lies. We know that Bush will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons if pressed. And we know that he will claim being pressed to use nuclear force.

We know that many people influence him besides Dick Cheney. We know the pressures he is under from all the Neoconservatives, the Fundamentalists, the War Mongering Corporations, the glory and wealth seeking Senators. We know that he has only contempt for our Constitution, but this does not seem to bother many Republican Senators.

We know that if there is ever an investigation of Bush for exceeding constitutional limits that the Republican Chairpeople will trivialize everything, deny it all, stupefy the public with terror rhetoric, accuse critics of treason, attempt to censor all voices of dissent and in every way try to distract or deviate any investigation of the imperial President. They have done this for the past five years and there is no doubt that they will repeat their performances.

This nation is in grave peril under the Machiavellian hand of the Bushites, who respond to no appeal and no logic, but will jump at the imperious command of a dry-drunk who is out of control and dragging this country into an endless cycle of bankruptcy, deficits, environmental destruction, economic woes, shameful disregard of humanity and possibly into another World War.

If you like gasoline at $6.00 a gallon, or waiting in endless lines for it, or living in poverty, you will like the Bush administration moves in the next 3 years.