Life is too short and I don't have time for that kind of crap.
I'm totally not interested in listening to Scott Horton and Antiwar Radio. The last time I did, they didn't even know the year Iraq held elections. But why I will not waste my time listening or transcribing it is because the fantasy bulls**t Horton has to engage in.
I'm so damn sick of the dualism and the need to create heroes. I have never needed to imagine someone rescuing me. (Granted, I was kidnapped as a child and rescued myself which may have killed off the rescue fantasy early on.) I have never need to whore to justify my delusions.
Scott Horton can't stop making Nouri al-Maliki a hero because he hates whatever it is he hates. (He claims its empire but it seems a lot more personal than that.)
WSWS hates the US government. Fine. You don't have to like it, you don't have to hate, it, you don't have to feel a thing towards it. But what you should do, if you're an adult, is stop trying to see the world through the most simplistic prism you can buy.
WSWS has now featured (in seven days) two Nouri-so-groovy pieces.
There is nothing groovy about Nouri al-Maliki. I don't care about how much you hate the United States or its government or whatever it is that crawled up your ass.
Nouri is not you friend. Nouri is a thug.
For Scott Horton to ignore it is not much of a surprise, he lives -- at least on air -- to self-delude. But WSWS has now featured two different writers claiming that Nouri is something amazing.
Why? Because he most likely launched terrorism against the United States decades ago?
WSWS features two stupid idiots writing about Iraq and distorting events and reality because it's so damn important to them that Nouri become godlike. He's a thug.
He was a thug before he was prime minister -- as a file on him easily demonstrated -- and he's a thug now. His working out your hatred towards the US or the government or whatever it is may give you a boner but don't confuse your sexual response with logic or fact.
Ned Parker's years at the Los Angeles Times are little more than: Another secret prison!
That's not because he's a bad reporter but it's because each time a prison was exposed, he owned that story. And these were Nouri's secret prisons.
WSWS needs to figure out if they're supporting torture or not. If they are, they can keep allowing idiotic and immature writers to dry hump Nouri. Otherwsie, they need to grow the hell up and realize that whatever they feel for the United States, Nouri is not the automatic exact opposite.
Film has a mirror negative. Life does not. Life is more complex than that. Nouri may or may not be against the US government (I find that claim hilarious since the Bush White House installed him as prime minister in 2006 and the Barack White House demanded he remain prime minister after the 2010 elections) but that doens't make him noble, it doesn't make him Nelson Mandela.
Unlike Mandela, Nouri is a thug. When the US went after Libya and specifically Muammar Gaddafi, I didn't feel the need to vouch for the inner goodness of Gaddafi. I didn't know his innerds. But I knew the Libyan War was illegal and based on lies. And if we're mature, we can do that. We can oppose a war on a country without needing to turn its ruler into a saint.
Because here's the reality that those trapped in the cult of the personality never grasp, the war didn't do tremendous harm to Gaddafi. He died. So?
He's one person. The harm was what was done to the people of Libya. Focusing on the rulers always obscures the view of the people and, time and again, they are the ones trapped in the combat zones -- due to nothing that they themselves have done.
Until you can let go of your childish need to have a hero to the great US villain, you're never going to see the people and that includes the people in the United States as well.
Peter Symonds looks like a crazy, nut case, conspiracy freak. And we don't use the c-word (conspiracy) that often here. When I use it, I'm furious. And I'm furious right now that a real article on Iraq didn't run because a nut case needed to paint this fantasy of Nouri standing up to not only the US, but to Turkey, and to this and to that, and it's all part of this huge plan for war with Iran and blah, blah, blah. The US government is barely functioning currently in my opinion and I really don't think it's up to plotting these grand plans where they get all these countries to fall in line -- what is this LBJ's Southeast Asia dominio theory come to life?
It's a nut case fantasy and one that only works if you ignore reality. So, for example, you talk down Iraqiya and pretend like it's did this or that while ignoring (unless you're just too stupid to know the facts) that the Kurds were actually the leaders over the summer in terms of calling out Nouri (and demanding that the Erbil Agreement be followed).
Ayad Allawi is not a saint. We've never claimed he was. We've covered all the rumors about him. When his own daughter was asked about the rumor of him shooting Iraqis (after he returned to Iraq after the US invaded), we included that here.
I don't worship any politician. The best of them are flawed, the worst are outright corrupt. We do have a position here regarding that Allawi should have been prime minister. But that's not a position based on my wishes or my desires. I don't live in Iraq. Our view is based on the election results (especially considering what Nouri did in the lead up to the 2010 elections) and the Constitution.
Allawi is talking with Iran. Another detail that escapes WSWS. (Maybe their two writers don't read Arabic? I'm not sure that the three hour meeting Allawi had was reported in English language media.)
But the 'logic' WSWS has now twice sold is that you must support Iran, you must support Nouri, you must hiss Allawi, you must . . .
I've never been good at taking orders and I'm even worse at worshipping humans.
Life is too short for this crap. If WSWS can't grow the hell up, maybe they shouldn't cover events and should stick to runny glossies of their faves with copy like "Nouri likes sunsets and says that his ideal date would be a woman who was . . ."
(Bill Van Auken is among the strong and adult writers WSWS has. But the two who have covered Iraq in the last seven days have been a huge embarrassment. The left needs coverage of Iraq, it does not need jerk-off material passed off as truth.)
It's over, I'm done writing songs about love
There's a war going on
So I'm holding my gun with a strap and a glove
And I'm writing a song about war
And it goes
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Oh oh oh oh
-- "I Hate The War" (written by Greg Goldberg, on The Ballet's Mattachine!)
Last week, ICCC's number of US troops killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war was 4488. Tonight it's [PDF format warning] 4487. Here's the screen snap:
And as we noted when the count moved up 1, it was most likely an error. (The added death had gone into the pre-Septemeber 1, 2010 total. Which was the reason we were suspicious of it.)
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
iraq
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