Who's Counting, Still?
In November of 2005 I wrote:
"Perhaps fourteen months from now the three-thousandth flag-draped coffin will be unloaded at some air base in the middle of the night. Contained within will be what's left of someone who died, we hope, for something that he or she believed in. What's tragically ironic is that most of us who supposedly benefit from their sacrifice, a majority now, no longer think that their sacrifice was worth it. For that, the cabal of zealots that occupies the White House deserves nothing but contempt and disdain. We can only hope that the mounting numbers of casualties press heavily against their leaden souls.
But who's counting?"
Well, sad to say, it's taken only taken thirteen months to reach three-thousand, an awful number that appeared beneath the fold of the local newspaper, beneath the story of the playoff-bound San Diego Chargers. What has changed in the past thirteen months? For one, "stay the course" has finally been retired to slogan boot hill along with "where's the beef" and "you deserve a break today". Now if only we could find a way to rid the world of "support the troops".
A commission of elders has opined that the current course is a disaster, (it's only taken four years), and recommended a strategy for the lame-duck commander-in-chief, who has promised an announcement after the New Year, so as not to interfere with his holiday routine. As he has reminded us many times, his is "hard work".
The ultimate holiday rush has come, however, with the "You Tube" execution of the "Buthcher of Baghdad", Saddam Hussein, an event that for the corporate media, rivaled "Camp OJ" in its cynical pandering to the basest of the base. On cue, the networks repeated, ad nauseum, the hacknyed drivel of "good", (us), versus "evil" (him, anyone but us).
Amidst this circus we had the side show of the death and funeral of President Gerald Ford, an accidental figure of history who, by benefit of the twenty-four hour news networks, was elevated into the rarified strata of Churchill and Roosevelt. For a week we've heard, over and over, the sound bites, ("Our national nightmare is over") that the pundits use to excuse Ford of his most egregious crime--the pardon of Richard Nixon.
In pardoning his benefactor, Ford, in effect, prolonged the national nightmare, perhaps into perpetuity; criminal abuse of power was now protected by executive order. Nixon and his accomplices should have been tried for their crimes and sentenced. That they were not contradicts our arrogance and self-righteousness in regards to the "rule of law" and "democracy".
Rep. Gerald Ford, as a member of the Warren Commission, was instumental in persuading the Commission to adopt junior counsel Arlen Specter's risible and preposterous "single-bullet" theory in their final report, which other Commission members, including Richard Russel and Hale Boggs, did not accept, (President Lyndon Johnson, who appointed the Commission, never fully accepted the findings either).
In 1975 President Gerald Ford, with his Secretary-of-State, Henry Kissinger, visted Indonesia on the eve of that nation's attack upon the populaton of East Timor. Indonesian President Soharto delayed his attack until the American president had left his air space, after which he launched an assault, that over the next quarter-century, claimed over 200,000 lives.
Gerald Ford deserved a more mature reflection of his true legacy than the sycophants of the corporate media were willing to give. Instead, his was an embarrassing hagiography that reified the illusions of his greatest failures.
And so it goes with America. We will continue to delude ourselves with feel-good nods to a mythical past; with self-righteous homilies to freedom and democracy; with simplistic comparisons to good and evil; all the while ignoring our many disatrous failures. Sadly, the rest of the world must pay for our arrogance and hubris, and they're getting very tired of it, in larger numbers every day.
But, who's counting?
"Perhaps fourteen months from now the three-thousandth flag-draped coffin will be unloaded at some air base in the middle of the night. Contained within will be what's left of someone who died, we hope, for something that he or she believed in. What's tragically ironic is that most of us who supposedly benefit from their sacrifice, a majority now, no longer think that their sacrifice was worth it. For that, the cabal of zealots that occupies the White House deserves nothing but contempt and disdain. We can only hope that the mounting numbers of casualties press heavily against their leaden souls.
But who's counting?"
Well, sad to say, it's taken only taken thirteen months to reach three-thousand, an awful number that appeared beneath the fold of the local newspaper, beneath the story of the playoff-bound San Diego Chargers. What has changed in the past thirteen months? For one, "stay the course" has finally been retired to slogan boot hill along with "where's the beef" and "you deserve a break today". Now if only we could find a way to rid the world of "support the troops".
A commission of elders has opined that the current course is a disaster, (it's only taken four years), and recommended a strategy for the lame-duck commander-in-chief, who has promised an announcement after the New Year, so as not to interfere with his holiday routine. As he has reminded us many times, his is "hard work".
The ultimate holiday rush has come, however, with the "You Tube" execution of the "Buthcher of Baghdad", Saddam Hussein, an event that for the corporate media, rivaled "Camp OJ" in its cynical pandering to the basest of the base. On cue, the networks repeated, ad nauseum, the hacknyed drivel of "good", (us), versus "evil" (him, anyone but us).
Amidst this circus we had the side show of the death and funeral of President Gerald Ford, an accidental figure of history who, by benefit of the twenty-four hour news networks, was elevated into the rarified strata of Churchill and Roosevelt. For a week we've heard, over and over, the sound bites, ("Our national nightmare is over") that the pundits use to excuse Ford of his most egregious crime--the pardon of Richard Nixon.
In pardoning his benefactor, Ford, in effect, prolonged the national nightmare, perhaps into perpetuity; criminal abuse of power was now protected by executive order. Nixon and his accomplices should have been tried for their crimes and sentenced. That they were not contradicts our arrogance and self-righteousness in regards to the "rule of law" and "democracy".
Rep. Gerald Ford, as a member of the Warren Commission, was instumental in persuading the Commission to adopt junior counsel Arlen Specter's risible and preposterous "single-bullet" theory in their final report, which other Commission members, including Richard Russel and Hale Boggs, did not accept, (President Lyndon Johnson, who appointed the Commission, never fully accepted the findings either).
In 1975 President Gerald Ford, with his Secretary-of-State, Henry Kissinger, visted Indonesia on the eve of that nation's attack upon the populaton of East Timor. Indonesian President Soharto delayed his attack until the American president had left his air space, after which he launched an assault, that over the next quarter-century, claimed over 200,000 lives.
Gerald Ford deserved a more mature reflection of his true legacy than the sycophants of the corporate media were willing to give. Instead, his was an embarrassing hagiography that reified the illusions of his greatest failures.
And so it goes with America. We will continue to delude ourselves with feel-good nods to a mythical past; with self-righteous homilies to freedom and democracy; with simplistic comparisons to good and evil; all the while ignoring our many disatrous failures. Sadly, the rest of the world must pay for our arrogance and hubris, and they're getting very tired of it, in larger numbers every day.
But, who's counting?
posted by jvmuss at 10:48 PM
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