Antiwar.com Blog

A new threat has emerged against freedom; the threat from life on Mars:
“Earth’s defences may need to be boosted against risk of potentially deadly microbes returning on space probes”

This represents the greatest threat to democracy since Saddam Hussein. What we need is a full-scale “shock-and-awe” campaign against these dangerous Martians. It’s us or it’s them. No mercy. I say we finally use all of those swell nukes we’ve got. Launch them against the Martian populace and watch them run for the hills. The survivors will damn sure submit. Then we’ll install a liberal democracy there that will be pliant to US policy makers, and friendlier to Israel.

Who knows? the Martians may even welcome our arrival, cheering us as we march through their streets, blasting everything in sight. We will show them true freedom. Perhaps we can even turn these Martians into Christians – exactly the way of which Christ would have approved, of course – at gunpoint.

The best part of it is, the whole bloody campaign pays for itself! All we have to do is extract Martian oil, and we’ll be filthy rich! We’ll get the price of crude down to two bucks a barrel, you’ll see. We’ll turn those Martians into our SLAVES! And what a sweetheart deal we’ll make it for our buddies at Halliburton!

There is the issue of how to drum up public support for all of this, but I think I can suggest a way. Perhaps if we only talk in meaningless abstractions, such as “freedom,” “liberty,” “happiness,” “greatness,” etc., the waters will be too muddy for the average person to object. Besides, most people would rather rent two-star (if that) movies than actually think about what we’re saying.

If anyone objects at home, we’ll use the flag against them. We’ll accuse them of treason, we’ll say that they are conspiring with the enemy, that they are on the side of the Martian terrorists, and that they’re Enemies of America. We will unfurl football-field sized flags, and chant the national anthem as loud as we can to drown their traitorous arguments.

True, people will die, perhaps needlessly, but it’s all for the greater good. You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.

The “bombs-and-Jesus crowd” (Hunter Thompson’s decade-old description) – whose heart is in Dixie – has become the decisive voting bloc in American politics.

For nearly a century after the civil war Dixie voted solidly Democrat until a magic bullet in Dallas killed the last Yankee king and broke the spell. Soldier/ spy Bush traded New England for Texas, followed by millions of others, filling the south with voters. In 2000 and 2004 every former Confederate state supported the lad who was born to be king, while he lost the rest of the country in a landslide. Do the math: In last month’s election Bush Jr. received 100% of Dixie’s (142) electoral votes but only 36% of the non-Dixie states’ (396) votes.

As antiwar Republicans like to point out, the Democrats have been the war party, so why hope for change? Because of the change in demographics: the Dems were arguably the more warlike party when they were the Dixie party (and the chief Dem warmongers – Wilson, Truman and Johnson – were southerners). They no longer are.

Since the Kennedy assassination, three Democrats have won the presidency; all three were southerners who ran against non-southerners. The pattern is clear. Antiwar Democrats should start looking now for a male, fiscally conservative, Protestant, Southern, war vet with a conservative personal life (and a similar VP) to run in 2008 – getting past Hillary won’t be easy.

More:

Condescendingly British, perhaps, but worthwhile: see “Sword of Honor” and a worthwhile reply on Grim’s Hall blog.

Who do these guys think they’re kidding?

However, Qassim Dawoud, Iraq’s national security adviser, said insurgent attacks were down since the invasion of Fallujah. He provided no details but said Iraq didn’t need U.S.-led coalition forces’ help to safeguard the election.

“We don’t want to involve the multinational forces in the election affairs,” he said. “We are taking our measures to provide security to our society, specifically to the electoral centers.”

Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan told Al-Jazeera television that Iraqi tanks and armored vehicles would patrol the streets during the election to ensure security.

Yeah, roll out the First Iraqi Mechanized Brigade! Of course! All four of those tanks can patrol “the streets,” no problem. What a bunch of jokers. Who picked these guys, anyway?

The Department of Defense released the names of three more US troops killed in Iraq, bringing the November US death total in Iraq to 137, the highest since the war began. In April of this year, 135 US troops were killed. Each of the three soldiers killed died from enemy action:

Sgt. Pablo A. Calderon, 26, of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Sgt. Jose Guereca, Jr., 24, of Missouri City, Texas, “died Nov. 30 in Fallujah, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near their military vehicle.” Also, Spc. Sergio R. Diazvarela, 21, of Lomita, Calif., “died Nov. 24 in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his dismounted patrol.”

The military also reports that at least 71 of the those 137 died in the “liberating” of Fallujah. All told, 1,258 US troops have died since the war on Iraq began, with over 1,100 of those deaths occurring after the mission was deemed “accomplished.”

OK, now this is a shocker. Who would’ve imagined:

Iraqi rebels are creeping back into areas cleared by US marines in Fallujah, where the military continues daily to secure homes and try to seize weapons caches before they can be used to again attack US and Iraqi troops, marines say.

“The last few days we found 20, 25 guys in houses that were already cleared,” said one marine.

But, apparently reconstruction is going well:

But marines Tuesday were taking no chances as they blasted homes with heavy machine-gun fire and grenades before climbing from roof to roof and storming the empty buildings, according to an AFP correspondent embedded with the unit.

Meanwhile, Fallujah’s refugees are facing winter in their refugee camps:

More than 200,000 people who fled Fallujah ahead of the US offensive have yet to return and many are in desperate need of aid, with temperatures in Iraq heading towards freezing, a new UN emergency report says.

Figures compiled by the International Organisation for Migration show that 210,600 people, or more than 35,000 families, have taken refuge in towns and villages around Fallujah.

Nearly all those people remain outside the city, where the population was estimated at 250,000-300,000 before the attack.

US forces are maintaining a cordon around Fallujah as sporadic fighting continues.

Troops are preventing refugees from returning, saying they want to stagger the return so that basic facilities can be restored before people go home.

Most areas of the city remain without power, water, sewage and other basic services.

It is expected to take much longer than previously thought to start reconstruction as hundreds of buildings are completely destroyed.

“The return to Fallujah may take a matter of months rather than days, as was previously suggested by multi-national forces,” the document said.

But the US military is winning the hearts and minds of the hungry civilians trapped in Fallujah:

The US military is also attempting to provide assistance.

At one aid distribution point it recently delivered a supply of American snack food, including frosted flakes, granola bars and bagel chips to needy families, many of whom were left confused by the foreign food and frustrated.

At least some of the troops are forming a more realistic view of what they’re up against in Fallujah:

Marines at 1-3 Charlie Company’s small toe-hold in the city, an abandoned school surrounded by sprawling homes in the largely affluent neighborhood, say they have been frustrated by rebels who appear beaten one day, only to turn up again another.

But they also say with increasingly fewer marines — several units have already left the city following the November attack — there is virtually no way to keep rebels from taking up refuge in cleared buildings.

“If you want to keep this place secured, you need a whole lot of bodies,” said one marine corporal.

Meanwhile, this is Baghdad today:

What Jim says about Radley Balko’s TCS piece on libertarians and foreign policy. Jim:

Radley Balko’s TCS article this weekend leaves a smoking crater where claims of “libertarian unseriousness” on foreign policy have been.

Radley Balko, “That Republicans don’t take libertarian ideas on foreign policy seriously could very well be a problem with the Republicans, not with libertarian foreign policy.”

Also, don’t miss Roderick Long’s That Pre-9/11 Mindset: Meet the New Normal, Same as the Old Normal which hits some of the same points Balko does. Long:

Critics of the current régime’s so-called “War on Terror” are often accused of having a “September 10th” or “pre-9/11” mindset. (Our ever-articulate Prince President garbled both descriptions into the phrase “pre-September 10th mentality” during the first debate.) The suggestion is that everyone’s worldview should have been radically transformed by the events of September 11th; anyone whose worldview wasn’t so altered, anyone who continues to favour diplomacy over a resort to military force, must simply be blind to reality.

But there’s a problem with this argument: it assumes that everyone’s worldview needed changing. After all, any worldview that was radically altered by the September 11th attacks must have been radically mistaken to begin with. But anyone whose understanding of the world was substantially correct would not have had his or her overall view of things shaken by those events.

Why didn’t more of us (“us” being those of the anti-war/anti-state persuasion, whether “left” or “right”) abandon our way of thinking in response to 9/11? Because 9/11 didn’t teach us anything we didn’t already know. We’ve been saying for decades that the U.S. government’s arrogant interventions around the world have only been increasing the risk of blowback, and that the State, in the event of such blowback, would be as ineffective at protecting the civilian population as it is at everything else. The 9/11 attacks simply corroborated our “pre-9/11 mindset.”

We were right all along, so why would 9/11 have changed our minds? As Roderick Long says, “Those whose worldview was shaken by the 9/11 attacks must have had their heads in the sand. It may sound rude to say “we told you so,” but given that our opponents’ decision to ignore our warnings has led to thousands of deaths, perhaps a bit of rudeness is in order. We told them so.“