The Common Ills: Hejira

Sunday, October 05, 2014

Hejira

At The World Can't Wait, Debra Sweet notes:

This seems like a good time to sort out what's true in the public discourse over Iraq and Syria, and what's not. The United States, apparently with at this point some significant level of public support, is embarking on an extremely dangerous and provocative war, possibly with the help of allies in NATO, and certainly with an alliance of countries targeted by protesters during the Arab Spring.

It isn't possible to spend too much time understanding the dynamics, in order to better challenge the lies, and lead people to stand up for the interests of humanity. Which, as we've noted many times, do not equal the interests of any particular government in power in the United States.

At World Can't Wait, Dennis Loo points out:

Two key elements in the current popularity in the US of Obama's "relentless" airstrikes upon Syrians and Iraqis is that they are not jeopardizing American lives - since it's only Syrians and Iraqis who are being killed - and that these "relentless" airstrikes are allegedly "surgical."
These attacks are not surgical. They are even more indiscriminate than drone attacks. And drone attacks, as a 2012 authoritative study by Stanford and New York Universities concluded, are exceptionally indiscriminate.
For every one militant killed, forty-nine innocents are killed.

(It should be pointed out that even when alleged militants are killed by drones, they have been killed without due process, in countries such as Pakistan that we are not at war with, and over the express objections of these nations, simply by POTUS' declaration of a death sentence in secret session with his close advisors. Thus, even this outrageously low 2% of drone kills of alleged militants can be and should be classified as war crimes. We should further note that the US government officially defines those it kills in drone attacks as "militants" and "terrorists" as long as they are of a certain age and male.)

Where's everybody else?

Or as the cell phone ads used to ask, Where you at?

If you're The Nation magazine, your top 24 headlines, as you scroll down the home page?

Not one of them is a piece for the magazine or by the magazine about Iraq.

(One is a repost of Foreign Policy In Focus on Iraq.)

The Nation magazine wants you to know about Claire Danes and about "revenge porn" and Cuba and the NBA and the Ukraine and --

Get the point?

They're making it really clear where they stand -- in the shadows, cowering unable to speak up.

As we note in "," Barack's now sending combat troops, US combat troops into Iraq. They're in helicopters so his 'boots on the ground' is supposedly kept. Of course, the Islamic State shot down an Iraqi helicopter on Friday -- both pilots died in the crash.

Presumably, should that happen to a US helicopter, Barack will rush to insist that although the helicopter touched the ground (hard), the boots never did.

And professional whores will rush to go along with him.

Professional whores?

Did someone say "Iraq Veterans Against the War"?

Well since we last called out the fraidy kittens of that group, they have posted.

Not about Iraq.

Never about Iraq.

They probably are pissing their panties and briefs over the name of their own group.

I believe being silent about the Iraq War when your group is called "Iraq Veterans Against the War" is actually the text book definition of hypocrisy.

In These Times wants you to know David Bowie was a radical (they love the past tense at ITT!) and they find that racist Lena Dunham's done "a good thing" by agreeing to pay her opening acts on her book tour. They don't know how much money would be paid and Lena has history of lying (as Betty points out in "Racist Lena Dunham in more trouble") when the press is on her case. She makes a promise but doesn't follow up.

Well at least World Can't Wait found the time, right?

We didn't a long roundtable at Third that we're not publishing. (Community members will see it in the newsletters.) This is our one time being kind on this topic. We called out every loser on the left, every chicken s**t liar including a radical who used his radio time to tell you how awful Hillary was for what Barack's doing in Iraq right now.

Does that make sense?

Not until you grasp that so much of the left is too cowardly to call out Barack.

Here's the thing though.

These cowards?

They want to come back in 2016 and tell you how to vote. (Especially if Hillary is a candidate.)

They want you to trust them and see them as being on the same side.

No one who refuses to call out Barack's actions in Iraq right now is on my side, or on the side of peace or antiwar.

I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away
-- "Hejira," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album of the same name

The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4491.

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