Memorial Day might be a good time for the Chickenhawk-in-Chief who's done so much to dishonor U.S. veterans to keep his trap shut

The Chickenhawk-in-Chief dishonors veterans at Arlington Cemetery.

"To me the logic of events seems inescapable. Unless something quite unexpected happens, four years from now the presidential candidates will be arguing about two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, one going into its ninth year, the other into its eleventh. The choice will be the one Americans hate most -- get out or fight on."

--Thomas Powers, in the May 29 New York Review of Books

"It is positively nauseating to have George W. Bush ever talk to us about "America's highest ideals" when his administration has started a bloody war for no reason, imprisoned those suspected of being "terrorists" without trial or benefit of legal counsel, tortured prisoners in America's name and done everything but grab the original U.S. Constitution from the National Archives and run it through a paper shredder."

--Bob Geiger, in his Memorial Day HuffPost post,
"Dead Troops Remembered By President Who Had Them Killed"

I feel bad about thinking about Memorial Day as nothing more than a holiday from work, even if it's a very badly needed holiday from work. There's an excuse of sorts in that we've lived now for nearly seven and a half years under a regime that dishonors memory. Or you could argue that that only underscores the importance of honoring memory.

At the moment, Americans could be forgiven forgetting that we actually have a war going on -- or two wars, if you're a stickler about these things. Our "war president" and his coterie of die-hard warmongers don't much like us to think about that, except when it suits them to trot out the "war on terror" they've cherished so dearly.

I just caught up with a piece by Thomas Powers, a voice I take seriously in national-security matters, in the last (May 29) New York Review of Books, asking the alarming question "Iraq: Will We Ever Get Out?" And he's not optimistic.

After reviewing some of the serious literature on the realities of Iraq and Afghanistan, and then reviewing the numerous disasters that have befallen the Bush regime and found it totally unprepared, he notes that many of those disasters were "at least new in some sense, harder to see in prospect than in retrospect," this doesn't apply to the messes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A better-read, more reflective man might have seen what was coming. Regretting adventures in the Middle East is one of the constants of history. The Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the French, the British, and the Russians all sent armies and were forced in the end to bring them home again.

Invading the Middle East is the kind of imperial overreach that breaks the spine of great powers. Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to warn Bush against the magnitude of the undertaking with reference to the homespun "Pottery Barn rule"—if you break it, you own it. Did anyone go further and attempt to explain that Iraq was a seething cockpit of warring religions, political movements, social classes, and ethnic groups, many influenced by Iran? Did the President worry about the difficulty of occupying and rebuilding a country of nearly 30 million people with ancient scores to settle?

It appears that he did not. Going to war in Afghanistan and then Iraq was what the President wanted to do and he let nothing stand in his way.

Powers argues that we're stuck now with an even more catastrophic consequence of the Bush regime's "error" in transforming political conflicts into military ones. "A political conflict transformed into a military one," he argues, "requires a military resolution, and those, famously, come in two forms -- victory or defeat. Getting out means admitting defeat."

Is it possible that the new president will have that kind of resolution? I think not; to my ear Clinton and Obama don't sound drained of hope or bright ideas, determined to cut losses and end the agony. Why should they? They're coming in fresh from the sidelines. Getting out, giving up, admitting defeat are not what we expect from the psychology of newly elected presidents who have just overcome all odds and battled through to personal victory. They've managed the impossible once; why not again? Planning for withdrawals might begin on Day One, but the plans will be hostage to events.

At first, perhaps, all runs smoothly. Then things begin to happen. The situation on the first day has altered by the tenth. Some faction of Iraqis joins or drops out of the fight. A troublesome law is passed, or left standing. A helicopter goes down with casualties in two digits. The Green Zone is hit by a new wave of rockets or mortars from Sadr City in Baghdad. The US Army protests that the rockets or mortars were provided by Iran. The new president warns Iran to stay out of the fight. The government in Tehran dismisses the warning. This is already a long-established pattern. Why should we expect it to change? So it goes. At an unmarked moment somewhere between the third and the sixth month a sea change occurs: Bush's war becomes the new president's war, and getting out means failure, means defeat, means rising opposition at home, means no second term. It's not hard to see where this is going.

And Powers concludes with the gloomy prognosis:

We are committed in Afghanistan. We are not ready to leave Iraq. In both countries our friends are in trouble. The pride of American arms is at stake. The world is watching. To me the logic of events seems inescapable. Unless something quite unexpected happens, four years from now the presidential candidates will be arguing about two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, one going into its ninth year, the other into its eleventh. The choice will be the one Americans hate most -- get out or fight on.

I wrote earlier today, in connection with HBO's docufiction film Recount, about "the orgy of evil that was unleashed by the 2000 election's outcome." I hate to "rank" the catastrophes notched by this regime. They're too numerous, too deep-running, too intractable -- and we will continue paying too dearly for them. But it's hard to nudge the Afghanistan and Iraq wars out of the top spot.

As it happens, one of my favorite writers -- one I think of as both the most reasonable and the most carefully reasoning of writers -- has also been thinking about the wars in connection with Memorial Day. It's fair to say that our friend Bob Geiger is raging over at HuffPost:

Dead Troops Remembered By President Who Had Them Killed

Yes, that's a harsh headline for this piece.

But I'll ask you to forgive me because, as a Veteran, there isn't a day on the calendar that causes my hatred -- and I do indeed mean hatred -- of George W. Bush to bubble over the top more than Memorial Day.

"On Memorial Day, we honor the heroes who have laid down their lives in the cause of freedom, resolve that they will forever be remembered by a grateful Nation, and pray that our country may always prove worthy of the sacrifices they have made," reads Bush's official Memorial Day proclamation, issued by the White House on Thursday.

The Chickenhawk-in-Chief says a lot of things that make this Vet's blood boil but stuff like saying that he prays "...that our country may always prove worthy of the sacrifices they have made" is almost vomit inducing.

This statement comes from the same man who himself began dishonoring the sacrifices of all Veterans in such huge ways in March of 2003, when he invaded Iraq behind a veil of lies and deceit and started spilling barrels of military and civilian blood to start a war with a country that posed no threat whatsoever to our national security. These stirring words of remembrance come from an administration that began with a stolen election in 2000, which goes entirely against what I was taught way back when I was in the U.S. Navy, which was that part of the "way of life" we were protecting was symbolized by the ability of all of our citizens to have their votes counted.

"These courageous and selfless warriors have stepped forward to protect the Nation they love, fight for America's highest ideals, and show millions that a future of liberty is possible," continues Bush's proclamation. "Americans are grateful to all those who have put on our Nation's uniform and to their families, and we will always remember their service and sacrifice for our freedoms."

The words Bush puts forth are true -- it's him being the one to say them that I find so sickening and personally offensive.

It is positively nauseating to have George W. Bush ever talk to us about "America's highest ideals" when his administration has started a bloody war for no reason, imprisoned those suspected of being "terrorists" without trial or benefit of legal counsel, tortured prisoners in America's name and done everything but grab the original U.S. Constitution from the National Archives and run it through a paper shredder.

I also don't believe for one minute that the majority of the planet now holds our country in such extreme contempt because we're right and they don't understand our "highest ideals." This Veteran will go to his grave believing that the years 2000 through 2008 were a dark time in our history when much of what I believed when I served in uniform was made invalid and debased.

According to the Defense Department, we have now lost 4,082 men and women in Bush's war of choice in Iraq and we should not allow the man who sent them needlessly to their deaths to lead our nation today in mourning their loss. Make no mistake about it, George W. Bush is as responsible for the deaths of those men and women as if he himself had fired the bullet or set the IED that ended their lives.

And before the right-wing hate mail starts flowing in my direct I'll admit that, yes, you are probably right that if Bush said nothing today I might notice that as well. But here's the thing with so many of us Vets: Memorial Day is not an abstraction to us. Too many of us knew personally and can remember the faces of a few whose untimely deaths we mark today. Some of us actually even saw them killed in battle.

So, we do indeed take Memorial Day very personally and I for one would rather that Bush say nothing at all than to issue hypocritical pronouncements and give an insincere, flowery speech in honor of our war dead when he is personally responsible for the most recent we mourn today.

Even a garden-variety murderer would be unlikely to make an appearance when the victim's family is observing the anniversary of a loved one's death.

The least Bush can do is stay in the White House today, keep his lying mouth shut and understand deep in his craven soul that the next day the Congress should declare a national holiday is January 20, 2009, the day he leaves office and his days of dishonoring our war dead are forever done.

I suppose the things that Tom Powers and Bob Geiger are remembering are things we might rather forget, or at least not think about. But we can't do that, especially on Memorial Day, can we?

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From the bookshelf: If you've been waiting to order your copy of "Nixonland," now's the time to get cracking--plus some other book notes

One thing that should be obvious by now is that the final descent into right-wing darkness marked by the Age of Bush has also stimulated and focused a wave of progressive writers like gangbusters. Howie is the DWT book guy, and he keeps you apprised of the books he's devoured. Me, in my 9-to-5 grind I mostly dream of finding the time and concentration for so grand a project as, you know, reading a book.

Now word comes from our friend Rick Perlstein that for-real retail copies of his long-awaited Nixonland : The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America actually exist and are being shipped to buyers. ("I can't really believe it myself," Rick writes. "I signed the contract for the thing in November of 2001, first started thinking seriously about it in 1998, and wanted to write just this book since I was sixteen years old.")

If you haven't heard about Nixonland, what you need to know is that Rick Perlstein has always been a close observer of the right side of the great left-right political split that erupted in the '60s. His 2001 book Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus looked at how the seeming conservative debacle of the 1964 presidential election in fact laid the groundwork for the ascension of the new Right. In Nixonland, I gather, he's carried that chronicle (watch out, it's 896 pages and weighs a whopping 2.4 pounds) forward to the years 1965-72 and the emergence of the conservative movement as a political force, with emphasis on how those culture wars looked from the other side.


WHY NOT TOSS THE REAL McCAIN IN YOUR SHOPPING CART?

If your book source of choice happens to be Amazon, you'll notice that the hefty discount offered on Nixonland, which brings the price down from $37.50 to $24.75, also drops you below the magic $25 mark for free shipping. If you're as cheap as I am, this is a problem.

Now we've probably all got so many books on our reading list that the solution is obvious: piggyback one of the others onto your order. I'd been meaning for weeks now to get hold of Cliff Schecter's The Real McCain, the book I'm hoping will provide both a framework and a lot of raw material for penetrating the fake halo of that double-talking phony McCranky and keeping his sorry ass out of the White House.

Probably you already know that The Real McCain was conceived and substantially written--by Cliff and another of our favorite writers, the patrician Bob Geiger--before the embarrassing collapse of the McCranky campaign, which seemed to drag the book down the drain with it. Until, with the GOP presidential field looking like some sort of circus freak show, the McCranky campaign was reborn, and The Real McCain was back in business.

By tossing The Real McCain in my shopping cart, thereby getting free shipping on both books, I added only about six bucks to the total I was about to pay for just Nixonland.


AND ONE LAST BOOK NOTE: PERVERSION OF LANGUAGE

I don't want to leave the subject of important new books without a quick mention of Jeffrey Feldman's latest, Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right is Poisoning American Democracy, due out May 1 from enterprising progressive publisher Ig Publishing.

You probably know Jeffrey from his Frameshop blog, in which case you know that he is a careful student of language. I've been tinkering with a set of advance galleys of Outright Barbarous, with a view to bracketing it with one of the most remarkable books I know (as much for its genesis as for its actual content), Victor Klemperer's LTI--Lingua Tertii Imperii (The Language of the Third Reich): A Philologist's Notebook, the study of the Nazi perversion of language which Klemperer (a first cousin of the great conductor Otto Klemperer) extracted after World War II from the remarkable diaries he kept secretly all through the reign of National Socialism. (As it happens the book I'm trying to get through now is the final volume of the Klemperer diaries, from 1945 throuh his death in 1959. It's a tough subway read.)

All smart politicians know that language is important. Smart totalitarians, however, understand that control of language is crucial. Manipulation of the language was a key factor in the rise of the American Far Right. One of these days we need to talk about this a little.

If you want to know about real, non-"fringe" American values, just read "The Fred Thompson Report" on the ABC Radio Networks website

Will the ABC Radio Networks website reconsider "The Fred Thompson
Report" when our Fred makes his presidential candidacy official?

"Took my son to the driving range with me. While we whacked golf balls, we discussed our lack of family values and my little boy stunned me with this question: "Dad, why haven't you been divorced a bunch of times like Fred Thompson and the other Republican presidential candidates?" "Now son," I said. "Senator Thompson's only been divorced once. You're thinking of Rudy Giuliani or Newt Gingrich."
--blogger Bob Geiger, in a post responding to a charge by presidential crypto-candidate--and, it now appears, ABC Radio Network website columnist--Fred Dalton Thompson that he's a "fringe element" in American society


Bob Geiger is one of the smartest, funniest, most straightforward, scrupulous, charming, and trustworthy people I know. Well, actually, I don't know him. I just read him in his various online venues. (Among other things, he does a remarkable job of keeping tabs on the activities of the U.S. Senate, a project that requires a contact network of trust he's singularly well-qualified to fulfill.)

Now Bob is under attack from America's District Attorney:

Did you know that former Senator and maybe, kinda, sorta Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson has his own column on the ABC Radio Network's web site? Neither did I until someone pointed out to me that he had written a piece bashing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) for calling incompetent people in the Bush administration, well, incompetent.

And while it's standard fare for Republicans who have nothing whatsoever to offer America to attack Democrats for voicing loud opposition to their destructive policies, a little passage by Thompson describing a recent Reid conference call with Progressive bloggers really struck a chord with me.

Here's Fred:

"Harry Reid, though, has taken a different route. He made his statement about General Pace on a conference call with fringe elements of the blogosphere who think we're the bad guys. This is a place where even those who think the 9/11 attacks were an inside job find a home."

Well, I was on that conference call, and based on what I know of the other participants, I suspect they lead much the same kind of life that I do. I never knew I was a "fringe element" in American society, but when I look at a snapshot of my nefarious activities over the last week or so, I know in my heart that Freddie must be right.

You'll have a grand time if you visit Bob's blog and read the full chronicle of his week's worth of suburban subversions, including:

* drinking two of his favorite beer, Tree-Hugger Pale Ale, while mowing the lawn;

* enjoying a nice Shabbat dinner "with wife, son and in-laws . . . while planning family vacation and plotting overthrow of Federal government";

* while "shopping for son's birthday presents, hard a hard time deciding between membership in the ACLU and the Sierra Club or a SpongeBob SquarePants alarm clock."

After running down his exhausting week, Bob concludes:

I only regret that we didn’t have time to burn an American flag this week. But I feel better having spilled all of that and I urge the other people who were on the Reid conference call last week to do the same.

The only way we can truly confront being the wacko, zany, "fringe elements" that we are is to admit the lives we lead that so undermine Fred Thompson's vision of America.

Oh, by the way, I'm also a military Veteran who served my country when called.

And Fred Thompson? Well, he did do hard time at sea in The Hunt For Red October.