12.30.2004

whore-piss V.

And that title is how I choose to wrap up the holidays. (take a bow)
Oh, and what a merry time it was! *cough* tsunami- *cough*
If you are reading this, and I assume you are (as opposed to letting the words wash over you like Miami memories),
you have access to one of the greatest communication systems ever devised. I've been reading some of the news, looking at some of the imagery, reading some of the outpouring of misery from other scrawlers. I'll leave that task to you. I won't try and make sense of it. There's no sense. I followed along w/ the Guardian's "Interactive Guide" to the making of a killer Tsunami. It's got that keen, chirpy sorta museum-science tone to it. ex: "...And when the tension reaches a critical point, an Earthquake occurs!" Clean white little arrows indicating the direction of the Trail Of Destruction. CUT TO: some corpse hanging in a palm tree.

I can see why some people hate science and wrap their arms around religion. You'd think they could instil some solemnity in a flash video about how the world chooses to fuck you up today. It's a good thing that religion is as morally bankrupt as science is hopelessly maladroit. As I was reading blog after blog, I passingly wondered: "Is it just lefty blogs? I wonder what the American Christian network is making of this." I didn't really follow up on it. As it turns out, they're still running headlines about that issue... with the guys... with the dicks... in their asses... ...doesn't that seem a bit illogical?! Let's compare: Homosexuality. Mass Death. Penii are pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
I think these fundamentalist people are still pissed they didn't think of anal sex first; I mean, it must be pretty fun... if, y'know, you buy that bullshit about people choosing to be gay...
Fuck these people. Fuck them and the cardboard issues and their silly little rage that they bring to bear on people minding their own affairs. We just lost 80,000+ people... that's done. We have thousands of brand new orphans, widows, widowers... the oncoming threats of cholera and starvation. That's real. Cholera is older than sodomy. This is real. 'The threat to Christmas.' pfah! These beady-eyed jowly fucks can't even get through a family dinner without working themselves into a towering rage. It's a good thing heart attacks are catching.

Incidentally, somewhere in my reading-pile is the bible. When I get around to finishing it, I'll maybe post a review. Depends on my chutzpah. My pocket review of Genesis: whoa. The author just walked me through about twenty generations of nonacentarians, and made it about as compelling as an invoice. Dry stuff. It's a book that could have only been published in the desert. Maybe it loses something in the translation(s).
To Iraq, now, where shit just keeps getting stupider. And by stupid, I mean bloody. And bloody stupid.
Elections!! Should we vote in 'em?! Bush says yes!! al-Sistani say yes!! bin Laden says noo!! The bombs say: splat!
(I'm sorry... black humour is the last refuge of the damned. In line to enter hell, I bet you got a lot of nervous comedians.)
So bin Laden releases a tape, claiming that voting is a sin.... Juan Cole thinks he's shooting himself in the foot. Then Bush
actually responds to his statement... which is actually pretty incredible. When you don't even want to acknowledge your enemies as human beings, the standard practice is to ignore their words, and shake your fist at their image whenever it's politically expedient. You certainly don't respond to what they say. Bush doesn't respond anything that anyone says. If you ask him a question, he responds to the question he thought you should have asked, such as: "why are you so great?"
But in that article, there was a great and shining moment of truth:

"
Mr. Bush and his aides have said they think Iraqis have a deep desire to vote - and that the mere act of voting, regardless of the outcome, will make them feel both empowered and invested in the new government."

al-Sistani is running on the platform that voting is a religious responsibility, and the only way of expelling the occupiers. The majority of Iraqis, I think, are willing to try. They are trapped in a cage, pressing that red button and hoping a shiny food pellet will come out of the chute. The cage still stands. Destroying cages with your bare hands is hard. I know this, I'm not trying to belittle anyone's struggle for liberation. I just don't think it will work. It seems fairly clear that America isn't going to leave even if asked politely. I mean, I'm no D.C. insider, but all this talk of withdrawal after the elections is weightless. The oil is still in Iraq. Saudi Arabia is still... Saudi Arabia. Iran is still sitting and watching. All the reasons, the true reasons, that America invaded Iraq are still there. Okay, creating a free market oasis was kind of a wash, (but the theory is sound! sound!) There's still the oil to monopolize, the old scores to settle with Iran, the permanent military bases... to install... no, Americans are staying put. Even if the troops wash their hands of the security situation and continue to cower in their bunkers.
Meanwhile bin Laden and al-Zarqawi are doing their best to disrupt the elections, and thus add to their legitimacy. Fuck, you guys are dumb. bin Laden's ultimate goal is to create a pan-Arabian superpower. You don't do that by killing Arabs and inflaming sectarian tensions. Of course, the Americans are up to the same tricks: the Kurds are proving to be their best proxy army.
What is the lesson here?
Historically, you don't occupy a territory, not unless you have an appetite for pain or you are willing to commit genocide. But if you are occupying a place, you use tribal divisions to make your job easier. For a little while. What you are really doing is sowing another minefield for future generations to step in.

Military powers don't give a fuck about whatever sputum they string together to create their justifications. Militaries are institutions. The cognition they exhibit is comparable to the thrusting of a giant cock. On an individual level, I guess it might be pretty impressive if they can coordinate airstrikes, artillery and infantry rushes. Big whoop. Guerillas can mortar Americans, pull back from the retaliation, blow up a Bradley with an IED and disappear. Pretty impressive. Zoom Out, what do you see? Armies exist for their own sake. The killing is the goal. Think of the wounded pride of all those American generals in Vietnam, sitting behind their desks in sweaty offices, delighting in statistics: "we were doing so well! Why'd we withdraw? You see all dem' dead gooks(hajjis)? How could we not be winning?"
It's the reason Microsoft can't build a sturdy web browser. It's the reason the film Brazil is so scary. Institutions don't achieve political goals. Institutions only maintain themselves. I dunno; I thought this was interesting. It's a look back at Vietnam.
On 28 July [Dayan] went aboard the largest aircraft carrier then cruising off the Vietnamese coast, USS Constellation. He was a professional military man and had often read and heard about such ships; yet what he now saw made a “breath-taking impression” on him. The vessel constituted five acres of sovereign American territory that could go anywhere without having to worry about troublesome allies. Isolated at sea, the crew did not constitute a security problem and the lack of anything else to do made them work all the harder at their jobs. The ship was protected “from the air, the sea, the ground, outer space, and under water”; if Dayan was being ironic—after all, the enemy consisted of little men wearing straw hats—he did not say so. The product of this floating factory was firepower. Every ninety minutes, amidst a numbing outburst of fire and noise, flights of combat aircraft took off to strike at targets in Vietnam; but when it came to specifying the precise nature of those targets his hosts refused to answer his questions. As always, Dayan was impressed by the Americans’ pride in themselves, their nation, and their mission. He ended the day by noting that they were “not fighting against infiltration to South [Vietnam], or against guerrillas, or against North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, but against the entire world. Their real aim was to show everybody—including Britain, France, and the USSR—their power and determination so as to pass this message: wherever Americans go, they are irresistible”.

4 Comments:

At 5:33 p.m., Blogger Robert said...

Eric...u shld consider a more readable template...this blog is dang hard to read

 
At 6:20 p.m., Blogger eric said...

what? is the text too small?

 
At 3:04 p.m., Blogger Robert said...

personally, i think so...course, im rapidly sliding into middle-age, so that cld be factor, too

 
At 10:31 p.m., Blogger eric said...

hmm... yeah, i'm not exactly enamoured with the beige/blue/green colour scheme, and there's a lot of wasted space... then again i don't have any better ideas and i don't want to fall back on the old black!!/red!!/black!! anarcho-colour scheme. Let me think about this and see what i can come up with.

 

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