Clinton proud of Kosovo

Bill Clinton’s memoir hit the shelves this week, pompously titled “My Life.” The philanderer-in-chief also went on CBS’ “60 Minutes” to hype the book defending his emperorship.
According to agency reports, Clinton confessed he messed around with Monica Lewinsky “for the worst possible reason. Just because I could.”
Well, that explains a lot – and not just about his sexcapades. Continue reading “Clinton proud of Kosovo”

La Voz de Aztlan: Spreading Disinformation and Hatred

I have been writing to the Website La Voz de Aztlan for several weeks now.

They have been the main site promoting the bogus “Iraqi Rape” photos that have been circulating around the web. These photos are actually from a bad porno produced before the invasion of Iraq, called “Baghdad Babes,” which is available on the Web.

I got no response to my many emails, but today I got a fund pitch for them, and responded to their “donation” address.

Here is their response, which speaks for itself:

We do not watch pornographic movies (ie. Baghdad Babes) like apparently you do. As far as we are concerned, the photographs are genuine. Just because Jewish pornographers are using them on their porn websites to make money does not automatically make them a fraud.

We suggest that you stop harrasing us and go about your business. People like you are probably sodomites like those who now control the LA antiwar (AnswerLA.org) movement in Los Angeles.

They are now promoting the decadent “faggot” parade in LA. You people are disgusting!

If you would like to send your comments to La Voz de Aztlan, I urge you to write them.

Entry #1,001

That’s right, this is the thousandth-and-first entry on Antiwar.com/blog. Some lower page news you may have missed this week:

*Nazi War Criminal an Early CIA Agent. Yay Greatest Generation!

*Brits Send Home 83 Pregnant Soldiers. “No, honey, you weren’t an accident — you were my ticket out of that hellhole!”

*Sit Tight, Boys! Tonga’s Coming!. We may look back on this as the turning point in the war.

*Rebuilding Ali’s Arms. A story of real heroism.

Of Time and Elasticity

I was on welfare back in the 1960s. That was a way of showing contempt for society’s “work/progress” ethic, and if the state was willing to subsidize me while I protested the war and volunteered at the co-op, fine.

Caseworkers loved my brownies, but the joke was on me, for they never mentioned that, according to statute, as soon as I came into “property,” e.g., got a full-time job, I had to start repayment.

Ten years later, a computer match spewed me out, the state wanted its $2000 back. I’d been off welfare for eight years and gainfully employed for three.

Was their failure to inform me I was getting into debt grounds to contest? No, it wasn’t, but the “public assistance recipients’ bill of rights” guaranteed the right to a “speedy” determination of status or change thereof.

Hot damn, I had an argument! My status had changed three years ago, I had the right to plan for the future, I was about to make an offer on a house.

Well, it was a good try, more exactly, a “disingenuous” try, but who knows, had my cause been noble, maybe the judge would have taken advantage of the elasticity of the law.

It’s now another twenty-five years later and my friends at Voices in the Wilderness have been hauled into court; they wittingly violated the Iraq Sanctions Act and face $20,000 in fines. It could be the end of the road for Voices, but wait a minute, the judge has noted that the violations occurred in 1998.

Hmmmm, maybe my cause was nobler than I thought, maybe my mistake was not to have filed a countersuit.

The Tell-Tale Hate Mail

I almost never post hate mail. The posting of hate mail on blogs is usually a passive-aggressive form of hasty generalization – Ah, look what a bunch of raving lunatics/bigots my detractors are! But occasionally I get a piece that is truly instructive, one that wrings out the very essence of a movement in a way that labored analysis never could. Allow me to share one such epistle, written in mock parody of one of my blogposts:

    Blame the Jews for everything bad on this earth.

Continue reading “The Tell-Tale Hate Mail”

Manufacturing Terrorism

Led by the United States, global “defense” spending has risen 18 percent since 2001, presumably justified by an increase in global terrorism. According to a U.S. congressional study, terrorism has risen 35 percent since 2001. The increase in spending has coincided with an increase in terrorism. With every dollar, the U.S., which accounts for 47 per cent of the spending, manufactures new terrorists, which will, in turn, lead to demands for increased defense spending.

The Iraq war and occupation certainly led to the hideous Madrid train bombing. The astute U.S. reaction was to increase its military presence in Iraq. U.S. troop levels in Iraq, originally scheduled to decrease to 105,000 by this summer, are now going to be at 145,000, with several Army units having their tours extended 90 days. The Pentagon has pulled 3,600 troops out of South Korea to help in Iraq. Since U.S. troops in enemy territory provoked North Korea to develop nuclear weapons, removing the provocative troops would be a positive and necessary step toward a negotiated disarmament between the North and South – but sending the troops to the Iraqi quagmire is not what libertarians had in mind.

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the current morass was predicted in many quarters. In a policy study for the Cato Institute two days after the attacks, Charles V. Peña wrote,

    But how exactly will increased defense spending on tanks, airplanes, and ships remedy the situation?

    The answer is that it won’t. To be sure, military action is the appropriate response to the heinous terrorist acts committed on American soil. But a larger military would not have prevented that devastating tragedy. And it won’t prevent future terrorist actions. Why?
    Because terrorists are not traditional adversaries deterred by traditional military force. If that was the case, then terrorism should not exist in Israel. The Israeli military is bigger and better equipped than any of the Palestinian terrorist groups, yet terrorism persists. So the answer is not that simple. Terrorism – by its nature – is not traditional warfare. Terrorists pick and choose the times and places of their attacks, and they are not on military battlefields. Terrorists do not wear uniforms to distinguish themselves from their adversary. In other words, terrorists are the antithesis of the kind of enemy that armed services are designed and trained to fight.

Like trying to swat a fly with a machine-gun, fighting terrorism with massive military force is inappropriate and destructive, leading to the creation of more fanatics willing to sacrifice anything for their cause. As Justin Raimondo put it on September 28, 2001,

    The interventionist response to the massacre of September 11 is to launch a massacre of our own, albeit on a much larger scale. Theirs is an agenda of military conquest, to go in and stay in – to spread “democracy” throughout the Middle East, to impose it by force of arms – and, coincidentally, make the world safe for Israel. On the other hand, the anti-interventionist response is quite different: it is roughly congruent with Powell’s arguments, as expressed to date, that we need to go in, kill ’em, and leave – without playing into Osama bin Laden’s hands. For the radical Islamists would like nothing better than a full-scale invasion of the Middle East, as recommended by [Bill] Kristol – all the better to spread his jihad far and wide.

And in a column on September 14, 2001, Raimondo on how to stop terrorism:

    There is one and only one way to stop this sort of terrorism, and that is to keep out of the affairs of other nations. We should be neither pro-Israel, nor anti-Israel; neither pro-Albanian, nor anti-Albanian; neither pro-Taiwan, nor anti-Taiwan. Our foreign policy should consist of the following principle, one handed down to us by the Founders: entangling alliances with none, free trade with all. It is a foreign policy that puts America first – not Israel, not Kosovo, not Taiwan, not “human rights,” nor “democracy,” but America’s interests, narrowly conceived. Failing that, we reap the whirlwind.

The results of increased defense spending were predicted long ago by libertarians here and at Cato, Old Right conservatives such as Pat Buchanan and Old Left liberals such as Alexander Cockburn. President Bush didn’t listen to these people; instead he opened his ears to superhawk Paul Wolfowitz, the Office of Special Plans and other war-crazy neocons.

What has increased defense spending (i.e., war, occupation, regime change, etc.) given us? Not surprisingly, more terrorism.

Understanding the enemy, while not condoning his actions or agreeing with his views, is the first step toward achieving peace. Nations like Britain and the U.S. don’t really have to do anything to fight terrorism; they only have to stop doing things that provoke terrorist responses. Stop the flow of money to Israel, end the occupation of Iraq, pull troops from foreign soil, close foreign bases, trade freely with every country in the world. The moral crusade to end terrorism can only begin with a realistic assessment of its cause. The U.S. must put down the machine gun and try a flyswatter for a change.