This was the week that Gen Martin Dempsey, Chair of the Joint Chiefs, took the plan to (continue to) send US troops back into Iraq public and everyone pretty much ignored it in the US press. AP filed an awful report from DC (the next day, a report filed from Iraq was much better).
Where was everyone else?
It was like last September when Tim Arango reported in the New York Times about Barack sending a US special ops unit in at Nouri's request.
No one wanted to notice that either.
On the plus side, no one gives a damn about Leslie Cagan anymore. In fact, if she tried to speak publicly outside of NYC, I think her fat ass would be booed off the stage -- as it should be.
Leslie, an out-lesbian but a closeted Communist, go figure.
And she asked so many of us to stand by her when there were questions raised about her political status/affiliation. And many of us stupidly did. We pointed out that Pacifica Radio was the last place the issue should matter.
But this wasn't McCarthyism. Leslie would lose nothing by coming out as a Communist.
So what we should have done is ask who would be put out by it being known Leslie was a Communist?
We should have asked, "Why the hell do you -- a lesbian who's refused the closet -- need a political closet?"
To trick.
To lie and to trick.
Stupidly, we thought this was some holdover from McCarthyism.
It had nothing to do with McCarthyism.
It had everything to do with Leslie grasping her influence wouldn't be as great if she were a known Communist.
She couldn't, for example, influence Democratic Party primaries.
She couldn't do a lot of things.
Leslie 'led' the national faux group United for Peace and Justice. The group, remember, that closed up shop immediately after Barack's November 2008 electoral win.
And Leslie's been no where for The Drone War or anything else.
Iraq only mattered when Bully Boy Bush was in office.
Iraqis only mattered then as well.
That is the message from the fake ass 'peace leaders' of the United States.
We used to highlight World Can't Wait all the time.
Then Debra Sweet called a protest on a piece of art before viewing the art.
And as someone who supports art, that still pisses me off.
But, if last week, World Can't Wait had found the time to note Dempsey's remarks, we would have noted them and I would have pulled them out of the limbo I'd exiled them to here.
Did you read about World Can't Wait here this week?
Nope. Because they didn't bother with Iraq. (I'm still furious with World Can't Wait but unlike other groups mentioned in this, World Can't Wait actually did spend post 2008 with their causes and core beliefs intact. They're about the only group on the left that can make that claim.)
Remember January 2007 in DC, all those big speeches. Where are those people now?
They don't talk about Iraq anymore, do they?
It's as if Iraq vanished in 2008.
In the end, Iraq will, as it has so far, survive without them.
But they won't survive. Not with their reputations intact.
As Kate Nash sings, "Darling don't give me s**t, because I know that you're full of it" ("S**t Song," first appears on her Made of Bricks album).
I don't whore. So maybe I missed how whoring for Barack was going to save the world?
Guess so.
Here's what I do know, basic physics will tell you that Bully Boy Bush pushed the nation towards war. A peace movement (rank and file, the real people) attempted to change the trajectory. Barack got into the White House and continued the trajectory (maybe increased it with Libya and Syria) and the movement was gone. No one was pushing back on Barack.
So how do you think the next occupant stops what has been put in motion?
He or she most likely doesn't.
And grown ups worry about that in real time, not when their pin up leaves the White House.
Grown ups worry in real time because they realize people are dying in real time. The Drone War doesn't drop candy corn and pumpkin seeds on children in Yemen and Pakistan.
If you missed the news about Dempsey addressing sending more US troops into Iraq -- he declared it in a press conference -- you can refer to these entries:
But what you really need to ask is not just who the press is serving but who are so called left 'leaders' are serving. No one tried to alert the people, no one gave a damn.
They've embraced their inner War Hawk.
Embraced? Hell, they've fondled it and need to be brought up on charges.
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!)
The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4488.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
iraq
i hate the war
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