War may not be healthy for children and other living things, but that doesn't necessarily include war profiteers--and their Beltway-insider bitches

This land is your land, this land is my land,
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters,
This land was made for you and me.
--start of the 1940 Woody Guthrie folk anthem, later recorded by artists including Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen

I haven't had much to say as the houses of Congress have done their somewhat different but powerfully strange dances around the issues of continuation and escalation of the war in Iraq, with the punchy punditocracy kibbitzing furiously--and the voters who threw the Republican bums out of control of those same house of Congress in November waiting to see something happen. Of course I haven't had to, with Howie leading the charge, lobbing grenades into the foxholes of, in particular, the Democratic congressional "leaders" whose idea of getting us out of Iraq has seemed to be something like waggling a finger at Chimpy the Prez and saying good-naturedly, "Now, Chimpy, if you don't do better next time, why . . . well, we just might do something then. But don't hold your breath."

As regular readers are aware, Howie is totally dismissive of the assorted nonbinding resolutions working their way--or not--through each house of Congress. On the theoretical level I'm not entirely in agreement. I think some of the participants have made a plausible case that such a resolution could have practical value as a preliminary step, serving (again in theory) both to put the president on notice that he doesn't have an open-ended blank check and to condition edgy members of Congress to the idea of taking remedial action.

I still think there are participants who have been sincerely motivated in their championing of the admittedly toothless nonbinding-resolution approach as, in effect, Phase One. However, along the way it has become clear that a different force is at work: use of these resolutions to forestall or even prevent the exercise of real congressional will to end the war. Howie has been writing a lot about this too, and I'm afraid that here--on the practical rather than theoretical level--I can't disagree.

It was a pretty shocking idea to me, when I wrote about it earlier, that there might be Democrats, and not just DINO "Loco Joe" Lieberman but important elements of the Democratic leadership, who feel no great urgency about doing something to end the war, not because of the ritually trotted-out excuses about political realities, but because they in fact support continuation of the war.

I hadn't even considered this possibility until I read David Sirota's Jan. 23 Sirotablog entry, entitled "Top Dems Still Counseling 'Go Slow' Approach to Iraq War Opposition," which concluded thusly (emphasis added):

I asked this before, and so I'll ask it again: How many troops have to die for insulated Washington politicians like Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer to stop counseling the "go slow" approach? How many more limbs have to be blown off before these people stop running to reporters offering up the "we'll have a position at the right time" strategy? How much more damage has to be done to U.S. national security and international credibility before these politicians stop puffing out their chests and repeating the "withdrawal could lead to disaster" mantra? How [much] worse does this situation have to be in Iraq and how against the war does the American public have to be for Democrats to actually use their power to stop it?

And here is, perhaps, the hardest question of all for progressives: At what point do we take off our partisan blinders and start wondering whether a very powerful faction of Democrats actually continues to SUPPORT President Bush and the War in Iraq?

As it happens, while I was searching for that Sirota column, I stumbled across a more recent quote, offered in a different context, but just as pertinent, I'm afraid.

In a Feb. 10 column, David was explaining why he wants to believe in Barack Obama but is having difficulty managing it. Obama, he wrote, seems committed to the view that problems exist because we haven't worked hard enough to find an alternative solution that would satisfy the currently bitterly antagonistic sides. However, he argues (again, emphasis added),

There is no "third way" or "consensus" way out of many of our most pressing problems, as Obama seems to believe. Why? Because many of our most pressing problems are zero-sum: someone is benefiting from the status quo, and to change the status quo means someone may lose something. And if you don't believe me, just take a quick look at history.

It has become increasingly clear that, indeed, "a very powerful faction of Democrats actually continues to SUPPORT President Bush and the War in Iraq."

But why? you may ask. And well may you ask. You might point out that, on purely pragmatic grounds, these politicians should be aware that a growing majority of Americans wants this war over. Well, that may be one reason we're getting these half-measures that really aren't even half-measures, that are in fact placeholders for the action we're never going to get if these people have anything to say about it--and unfortunately they have quite a lot to say about it.

There's another pertinent thought in that Feb. 10 column of David Sirota's, about Barack Obama:

In the Beltway, [Obama] is surrounded by old political hands who, like most people there, likely try to tamp down any of his confrontational, power-challenging instincts for fear they might offend ruling class sensibilities.

Here's an exercise: Try to imagine what those Beltway-ites think when they hear "This Land Is Your Land."

Wikipedia offers this sketch of how Woody Guthrie came to write this song, as a counter to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America":

Guthrie considered that song unrealistic and complacent, and was tired of hearing Kate Smith sing it on the radio, so he wrote a different song, originally called "God Blessed America for Me". Guthrie varied the lyrics over time, sometimes including more overtly political verses that often do not appear in recordings or publications.

"This land was made for you and me"? Not as far as the Beltway-ites are concerned. Oh, they may pay lip service to the notion, and perhaps some of them even believe, that they're egalitarians at heart and it's just that only they know what's best for (shudder) us common folk.

Here's what I think the ruling class and its bitches think when they hear "This land was made for you and me":

Suckers!

Still, you say, why would people like Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer support this hopeless, devastating, ever-worsening war?

Well, they would have to answer that question for themselves. But we already know some reasons why other people have supported it, and in many cases continue to do so. Three in particular leap to mind:

* For the neocon thugs infesting the right-wing think tanks and their allies, it's an ideological jamboree. Whee, great United States go BOOM, transform all rest of world into supine America-fellating free-market paradise run for benefit of Great U.S.A., Inc. (Hey, how's that workin' out, guys?)

* For the money people who really constitute that "ruling elite" Sirota refers to, it's a payday--nay, an outright bonanza. A lot of important people--and you can measure their importance by their closeness to the Bush regime--have made a lot of money off this war.

* And then there are the leeches attached to the above, the people who "go along to get along," who expect to profit in one way or another from their loyal service to the war profiteers of the ruling class.

We all have our little emotional triggers--you know, the sort of thing that Proust encapsuled so brilliantly with the little madeleine cake that brings his narrator's childhood memories rushing back. And as Marcel's madeleine illustrates, the triggers are usually unforeseen.

Awhile earlier I went looking for an illustration for the old aphorism:

War is not healthy for children and other living things.

It was all too easy to find, but I hadn't reckoned on the effect of seeing it. It brought back all the horror of Vietnam: the brutality, death and mindless destruction, the dehumanized and dehumanizing horror of destroying a country under the pretense of "saving" it.

Unfortunately, "War is not healthy for children and other living things," like "This land was made for you and me," turns out to be true only in a sloppy-sentimental sort of way. To a lot of the people who believe this land was made for them, war is apparently a good day's work.