I have read article after article from some of our most respected journalists and newspapers discussing the virtual certainty of an attack on Iran. One of the best summaries can be found in Tom Engelhardt's recent "Tomgram: Over the Cliff with Dick and George" at Tomdispatch.com. Like most of you, I sit incredulous at the vast recklessness and dissociation such an obviously self-destructive course of action reveals. The potential disaster the attack would unleash is also fully fleshed out by many respected journalists.
"It's f***in' suicide," I yelled at my computer this morning, reading PM Carpenter's February 10 Post "More Bloodthirsty Propaganda On The Way." And then it hit me. It could be just that.
I know it sounds far-fetched, but bear with me. Passive suicide, when all is said and done, is the real, if undiagnosed, cause of death for virtually all practicing addicts (more on that below). That President Bush is a recovering alcoholic (and likely drug user) is not much debated anymore. Less known is the fact the Vice President Cheney has two DUI's on his record. Any drug and alcohol addiction specialist will tell you that multiple DUI's is a very strong sign of addiction. Neither, as far as we know, has undergone therapy or other treatment. Though I am certainly to trying to diagnose them, they appear to be "dry drunks."
Now, I am not a professional therapist, but I have more experience with addicts and addictions than I would like, and have talked and worked extensively with recovery specialists and in interventions and intense support groups. I come from a family of addicts (alcohol and work and exercise); lost my sister to LSD and cocaine; nearly lost a dear friend to booze and coke before an intensive intervention got him into treatment; am watching another highly successful dear friend married to jaw-dropping Goddess slowly drink himself away; my first wife and both her parents were serious alcoholics; other family members are of serious concern; and I have several times alternately eaten my way to a Body Mass Index resembling that of Planet Earth and then obsessively exercised it all off.
Back to Bush and Cheney and Iran. Addiction comes from pain. Very serious and unbearable psychic pain. Much has been written, albeit speculatively, about the various sources of President Bush's psychic pain and his possible mental illnesses and disorders. His obsessive exercising, extreme religion, and general refusal to face reality or admit even the possibility of error, reveal a man still trying to salve the pain. Cheney's pain is splashed all over his scowling, snarling face, and evidenced by his repeatedly breaking heart. (By the way, we should all feel deep compassion for them as human beings; addiction-inducing pain is horrible stuff.)
Passive suicide is the ultimate analgesic and it takes many forms. The overdose and the slow wasting away are the most common. Intoxicant-induced active suicide is passive as far as I am concerned because it's the substance doing the killing. The drunken car wreck is another. So-called "suicide by cop" is a violent and extreme example, having the advantage of appearing not to be suicide at all. The raw and grinding reality of passive suicide is that the addict feels it is better to die than live with the pain, but won't commit sober, active suicide for a variety of potential reasons. So they use the drug until they either recover or die. It's that simple and awful.
As Tom Engelhardt points out in "Over the Cliff with Dick and George," Bush and Cheney appear to have found a very dangerous new drug of choice, and a wickedly addictive one at that: "the religion of force" as Engelhardt calls it, detailed further in "Bush's Faith and the Middle Ease Aflame," (Tomdispatch.com, July 16, 2006). Engelhardt describes this faith in force beautifully, in terms evoking the enchantment of an addict for the drug.
"Our self-styled "wartime" Commander-in-Chief, and the Vice President head an administration that has long been in love not just with the American armed forces, but with the dazzling military possibilities that seemed open to them as leaders of the last standing superpower. Its high-tech destructive capabilities, they believed, gave them the power to go it alone in the world, shocking and awing a post-Cold War assemblage of lesser states into eternal submission." This is typical of an addict's unrealistic sense of self-grandiosity and, the fact that they are, truly, "in love" with the drug.
"At the height of their self-dazzled sense of power back in 2001-2003, they saw force as their own special Tao, their Way in the world; at their depths -– now -- reaching back into their problem-solving quiver, they naturally find only the same arrow that's always been there; a belief system, a religion for all occasions." Only one arrow; the drug of force. Only one way to cope with a disaster of their own making, now rapidly decaying beyond their control. "Captain Jack will get you by tonight," (Billy Joel), or Captain Whoever in his bomber.
Bush's Presidency has to be unbearably painful for him. His popularity is darn-near Nixonian. Even hard-core Republicans are deserting him. His Iraq War is an unmitigated disaster. He is regularly called a lame-duck, even in the mainstream media. The only historical grouping of Presidents in which he is mentioned is "worst ever." The university where he most wants to put his library (his wife's Alma Mater) is actively debating whether to turn it down, something I don't remember hearing before. Most Americans, according to recent polling, just want his Presidency to be over. A man often described as trying to prove he is worthy of his Father's, Grandfather's, even his little brother Jeb's respect and success, is seen by almost everyone as an abject failure and he knows it.
But the President has his drug. The most enticing drug of all. The drug of absolute power, borne of unparalleled and irresistible destructive force. A magic drug that instantly casts all unruly men and wildly spinning reality at his whim and for that one moment raises him high above all the pain and sorrow that accompanied him there. It would put him, for the single rushing instant that matters most to an addict, on top of the world. Plus it would end the pain of constituent rejection (either through actual death or the death of democracy), while appearing to be the result of manly assertiveness. That using this drug will almost certainly bring destruction to all he is, and all he has claimed to love and serve and stand for, well, that has not stopped millions of addicts from using before.
We have to stop him. Rock bottom for this President may mean the end of the United States as we have known it. In this case intervention is spelled I-M-P-E-A-C-H-M-E-N-T. (And that is the first time I have ever recommended it.)
http://madnessofdivinity.blogspot.com
Bruce is 46 year-old father of one, stepfather of three and grandfather of two, who left a lucrative law practice at a large national law firm to work, advocate and write for social justice and equality and find a way to incorporate a spiritual life into the material world. He now struggles along to make a decent living while holding true to his deepest principles in Portland Oregon.
I blew up the world to save my sorry ass
I didn't really mean it, it just came to pass
I was a fool and my ego knew no measure
God, I thought you would give me holy treasure
It turned out the aliens knew it all along
There are no angels to sing a heavenly song
I know now it was only a collective insanity
A delusion of the whole, it was our humanity
As I fly skyward at an ever increasing speed
Faces of the children look at me and plead
Why was it you and yours, who got to decide
Your generation could commit global suicide
by
HL Bumpkin (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 53 comments)
on Saturday, February 10, 2007 at 3:08:27 PM
It is only we, Progressives, Liberals and most moderates, who see him as a failure.
The GOP has hated everything about the New Deal and the Great Society for as long as I can remember. They have wanted to get rid of every social program anyone has ever managed to create.
Well, guess what?
Bush and Cheney have damn near done it. By the time they are through, they will have made it next to impossible for so-called "entitlement" programs to survive.
The Iraq war has been a horrid mess since it's inception. But has Bush or Cheney seemed all that upset to anyone of you? Neither have the Republicans, until November.
Iraq has served it's purposes well.
Sometimes it serves as a distraction for domestic crimes, like the shredding of the Constitution and the wholesale looting of the treasury, by and for the GOP and their big corporate supporters.
Actually, it has helped immensely in the looting of the treasury and if we say a word about all the outrageous spending for the military and unnecessary, criminal wars, the GOP says, we have simply got to get a handle on all this entitlement spending.
Note the use of the word, "entitlement." Never mind that what they are talking about are pensions, Social Security, Medicare and the like, for which people have paid all their working lives. So yes, people are entitled to have what they have worked for, but that word, "entitled," is not held in high regard in this country.
The GOP would rather use American tax payer money to kill and maim, destroy whole nations, than to take care of the elderly, the sick, disabled or continue programs that allow people to retire with dignity.
God forbid that any of all that surplus we had when Bush came into office, and still had on 9/11/01, would have been directed to alternative forms of energy.
Bush and Cheney have been a raging success for the oil companies. Their profits, since the Iraq war began, have been staggering. CEOs make so much money, most Americans could not tell you, right off hand, how many zeros their paychecks require.
Why do people still believe that the Iraq war was about cheap oil? It was always about controlling the flow of oil, among other things. What oilman has any desire for cheap oil.
Nevertheless, Iraq has about run its course. The November elections were a clear signal to the White House and the GOP that Americans have had it with what we perceive as failure in Iraq. For average Americans, it has been a horrendous failure. But not for everyone.
Bush was given 70 ways out of this mess, many of which would have even helped him save face. So, which plan did he choose? The sure fire loser. Why?
Because Iraq is again serving as a distraction. The Iraq war is over. We lost, the Iraqis lost. BushCo won, big time.
WWIII is on tap. It's only a matter of of time. The Neocons and the Theocons won't rest until Iran is blown to kingdom come, national economies, including ours, melt down and the world goes up in flames.
The America I knew as a child is already gone....long gone. Can we get it back? Do we really want to?
We have reached a point where our social, governmental and economic institutions can no longer be trusted to work for the good of the people.
The Republicans and Democrats have a sick symbiotic relationship. One can't exist without the other and both are dependent on the two party system, in which we get to vote on the lesser of the evils, election after election.
Even though Bush and Cheney have made amazing progress at drowning American cities and the federal government, they now run the risk of destroying the GOP, as they only see it as a vehicle for imposing the hellish vision of the Neocons.
Only the Democrats can save the GOP now and, thus, the corrupt two party system in which only money matters and the people be damned.
by
wintefire6 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 87 comments)
on Saturday, February 10, 2007 at 9:43:54 PM
The one thing Americans do not see, a massive military defea
Iran has over 25,000 200+ mile range shore to ship missles, 15,000 of them are mach 2 flying at ten feet off the water, with ping target acquisition radar that goes to magnetic once a target ships bearing is acquired, so our anti-missle radar can not lock on them. They will sink every ship we have in the Persian Gulf in an afternoon.
The military insanity of our tactical position is obvious. Once our navy is sunk, our army is essentially defenseless as it is 90%+ re-supplied by sea. No navy, no resupply. Turkey is now the only surrounding country that will allow us to fly over their territory to get to Iran using their Irbil airbase. Turkey government, a 85% moslem country, will certainly fall with an attack on Iran, probably within a day. The rest of the world will turn on us like a mad dog. Within a couple of months Iran will have captured what they haven't killed of our army in Iraq and we will be kissing there behinds to get the rest of our soldiers out. The political/economic consequences for the USA are obvious.
We, the people had better make Congress wake up and smell the roses. We are done as an Imperial power. We can grow up fast and take back our government in time(a low probability event judging by the spinelessness of the democrats), the easy way.
Unfortunately, you can tell that none of our political leaders can conceive of us losing militarily. They act like they think the universe has made us invlunerable. Our grunts in Iraq know better.
Suckers don't think having not been skinned yet.
"Pain makes man think; thought makes man wise; and wisdom makes life endurable.", 'Socksup' played by Marlon Brando, "The Teahouse Of The August Moon". I really dislike the looks of the hard way. A lot of us better start squeaking loud and fast now.
You can read my bio, then go to the no1stcostlist.com.
by
Dan Alter (0 articles, 1 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 4 comments)
on Sunday, February 11, 2007 at 2:42:12 AM
We are in the hands of madmen who are both suicidal and homicidal. Bush and Cheney are two of the most worthless creatures on the face of the planet.
George Walker Bush doesn't have the brains to pour urine out of his own boots with the instructions for doing so written on the sole. Additonally, he is a pampered, self-indulgent and useless waste of skin with an obvious history of substance abuse. Cheney is a mean self-centered S-O-B!
How these two monsters got control of this nation is a monument to the Corporate (read here Fascist) state that is the goal of people like George Herbert Walker Bush and all the other plutocrats who believe that the rest of us exist to work on their 'plantation'.
We must demand that our Congress move to stop these madmen NOW! But, impeachment is about as likely as the possibility that George Bush will receive the Noble Prize for his work in Quantum Mechanics. The votes to sustain impeachment are just not there.
by
Michael Weaver-Robbins (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 30 comments)
on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 2:57:31 AM
America is still perceived to be a democratic nation. As long as that perception holds, the loss of liberties won't matter to too many citizens. Only when that perception begins to fade will there be an outcry. The Republicans have a different view of what democracy is, and their version has become more of a reality. Those with eyes to see know that democracy is now just a concept, not reality.
Maybe W's idea of being a good Christian is to "bring it on", the end of the world that is. Maybe his idea of being a good President is to "bring it on", the second coming that is.
Democracy? Looks more like a Corporateocracy to me, or Facism, or an Oligarchy. Or an attempt to bring in an American Theocracy.
Paraphrased from Kevin Phillips' book "American Theocracy":
Charles Kimball identified 5 principal perverse symptoms of fundamentalist tendancies: 1) claiming absolute truth (when "people presume to know God, abuse sacred texts and propogate their particular versions") 2) seizing upon an "ideal time", as in claims for imminent cataclysims or fast approaching end times. 3) fostering blind obidience. 4) using ends to justify means (as in deaths or acceptance of collateral damage). 5) pursuing "holy war" as in the crusade (and to some extent the 1991 Gulf War).
by
Mark Petersen (9 articles, 73 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 50 comments)
on Sunday, February 11, 2007 at 8:56:56 AM
5 comments
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