Wow. A lot of vultures have been coming home to roust lately. It seems that the adage, ‘The Truth will Out,’ is out now with a vengeance.
Twenty years ago today the otherwise truthful and worthy human being Colin Powel waived around a prop bottle of what allegedly contained weapons grade anthrax and which Saddam Hussein was supposedly producing in weapons grade quantities. He dramatically spoke to a United Nations in 2003 in a special presentation arguing the case for war with Iraq over alleged fabrication and intent to use Anthrax that had been modified for military purposes in the pursuit of warfare. Chemical weapons. Biological. Genetically modified creatures. Nuclear. Missiles. Anti-missile technology. Saddam Hussein wanted them all. The Aspiration for all of these was laid at Iraq’s doorstep. After all, if they had Anthrax what’s to stop them from obtaining the rest?
It was a lie, of course. All of it. It was all a weapons grade lie intended to architect a backlash against the Beast Saddam as well as support a new crusade against Iraq. The Crusade of 2023 by Joseph the Addlebrained. Whether fostered upon us in malice or if General Powel actually believed it with aforethought the results are the same. Our government lied to us and used one of our duly appointed and trusted deputies to propagandize the electorate. General Powel, a modern day Washington being honest about the cherry tree, tells us that we are threatened by a potent and horrifying weapon, one only a truly mad man bereft of all reason would consider using. But, you see. That’s what those people are like, see? They have no respect for life. Not like us Americans. It’s OK, whatever we decide to do in return. It’s OK. Because we are right. And we confidently wave our little bottles of talcum powder around rooms full of incredulousness. What we do is so good because what they do is so bad. Trust us. They wouldn’t let us do it if waterboarding wasn’t OK, right? Would we lie to you?
Maybe we should create a national day of fasting and throwing live cinders on our backs as a sign of penitence and purging like they did in the old days. It can be a day of mourning and repentance like those ordered by flea possessed prophets sitting in caves in the desert. Our whole nation, state, and body politic can heed a call to prayer and confession. I suggest calling it, Doubleyou-Day. As in G-Doubleyou-Get-er-Done, Yale Dropout, Bush. We could think of it as Doubleyou-Day as in the letter W-Day, for Wailing Day, or Whoops! Day. This is a day we wail at the realization of how gullible we are and say ‘Woops!’ for believing anything anybody tells us like he’s the High Priestess of the American Religion or the Sultan of Science for Christ’s sake. We don’t believe all that hocus-pocus anymore. And all those bad things we keep doing? Fugedaboudit! None of that counts.
Or maybe UU-Day, Unbelievable Undoing Day? Unraveling Uncontrollably Day? Unredeemably Ugly Day?
W-Day. Or Wday or U-U-Day or maybe Yo-yo day. It could be placed up there with other notable scapedays as The Gulf of Tonkin Day. The Lusitania Day. The Maine Day. MH17 Day. The assassination of a lost archduke in Serbia Day. Chemical Weapons attacks Day. A virus from a questionable lab in Wuhan Provence Day. Pearl Harbor Day. Atrocity Day, Every Day. Every American Indian Treaty ever broken Day. The Alien and Sedition acts of John Adams of 1798 Day which made criticizing the government illegal. Just about everything Andrew Jackson did on any day Day. Quite a few things Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln did. And now a Chinese balloon that made it halfway across the country before being noticed and shot down over the Carolinas. They say it’s a spy balloon. We haven’t had one of those since Roswell NM. Like something Boris Badinoff would try to pull off. Watch out for those M1Abrams Moose and Squirrel.
Many of these just plain didn’t happen. Some happened but not the way they are portrayed. Some were innocent but were capitalized on the principle of, ‘Never let a good tragedy go to waste.’ 9/11 gave us the Patriot act, as good as any Alien and Sedition out there. Not to mention at least 30 years of bringing Democracy bombs all over the world. Many were finally admitted to be frauds, such as GWB admitting that Iraq had ‘nothing to do with 9/11.’ IE, it was a hoax. The war a fraud. Madeline Albright’s 500,000 dead Iraqi children died for blood lust.
Twenty years ago today General Powel presented what he claimed was a bottle containing one of nature’s deadliest poisons. One that exists everywhere, mostly dormant, but which can be activated easily and used as a weapon. Anyone who possessed massive quantities of anthrax modified for the battlefield would be a horrifying enemy. Some autocratic leaders such as Saddam Hussein, who we were told was a madman and who had used chemical weapons against the Iranians, would surely stop at nothing were he to possess such devious weapons as these.
Rest assured, he didn’t.
The whole thing was a lie. Not just mis intelligence misinterpreted. Not just Spy-vs-Spy snafu and propaganda. Not just a Saturday morning cartoon or a Saturday night spy movie at the Drive-In. Recently some politicians have been developing a very late stage truthfulness. It usually comes when a politician has announced his intention to retire. Suddenly he discovers that he has a conscience. Once the hide of a politician is cut out of the money matrix, his brain stem deprived of the False Serums and Truth Suppressants he’s been pickling in all his public life it’s like a light as dawned, and for once since that last trip to the confessional booth he did 67 years ago he can tell the truth again about how rotten the system is and how easily the population is manipulated. Maybe he thinks he can buy his way around the light pole.
First Angela Merkel announced that the Minsk II agreement between the Donbas Ukrainian Republics and the Ukrainian government in Kiev was a complete sham. They never had any intention of honoring it. This treaty was wholly a ploy to buy time while NATO continuing bulking up the Ukrainian armed forces so they could wear Russia down in a war of sanctions and attrition. Then one of Kiev’s generals admitted that the casualties were much greater than the cast away statistics promise. Russian missiles have been shot down by Ukraine, only for them to fall on civilian subjects. Hey, a good tragedy, right? Don’t let it go to waste! And the bombing of North Steam II? Now they are saying that Russia didn’t do that but for the life of them they can’t figure out who. Oh, but the German government has admitted that they are at war with Russia and Poland has enough troops amassed on the Russian border that they might be contemplating an invasion… of western Ukraine so Poland can reclaim a piece of Ukraine they think waw once theirs. They are probably right. Good to know! I might accidentally bomb Dresden. I want to be sure it’s legal.
Governments lie, I know that. And we expect it of them. We wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s called diplomacy and population control and we know that every discussion is going to include a whole lot of wiggle room, talking points, state secrets, Classified info, and places the people and governments just don’t wish to go. We all have our secrets. No negotiated settlement is ever fair.
But it is generally understood that countries and world leaders would be working toward a common goal. That there would be a sense of understanding, a code of conduct for diplomats, generals, senators, and kings. Why would a government send wave after wave of soldiers into a meat grinder like what is happening in the Donbass? It’s a blood bath and a massacre. It’s a crime Ukraine is committing against its own people. Why do they send them, eyes closed, fingers in their ears, mouths silently breathing terror, to their deaths? Their hypocrisy only goes so far.
The Russian diplomatic core has a word they use to describe problematic nations. Nyedegovorosposobni (‘недоговороспособны.’) It means ‘Agreement Incapable.’ The Russian government and its people, as well as a sizable portion of the rest of the world, have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to come to any agreement with whatever powers are currently in control of the United States. Governments come and go. The state remains. (Joseph Stalin.) Well, the US government will someday be gone. The poverty of our war effort will finally be revealed for the racket it has been since the nineteenth century. We will run out of will power, resources, and resolve. And we will just… stop.
‘All’s fair in love and war,’ they say. Well, in war there are rules of engagement. And one of them is to negotiate in good faith. Stalling for time, dragging out agreements, etc, can usually be detected and negotiated around. As long as each side is confident that the other side wants to come to a reasonable conclusion. But if one side has clearly lost. If there is no hope and every day constitutes hundreds of casualties, it is a crime against humanity to continue. Just stop.
But this has not been the case here. The United States has adopted a policy of deceit, manipulation, and cynicism culminating in Washington’s clockwork windup toy diplomats that we need ‘assurances’ from Moscow before we can agree to ‘negotiations.’ Moscow must end their ‘unprovoked attack’ on ‘Democratic’ Ukraine. What a load of talking points.
The US is not capable of negotiations. We are Nyedegovorosposobni.
In the original Star Trek show, every episode sees Captain Kirk get into trouble on some low-class planet where the crew and officers violate every paragraph of the Prime Directive against getting involved and end up restructuring the whole society, changing the governing structure, deposing a monarchy-whatever it takes to bring Enlightenment to the primitives. Never mind that the Federation is not supposed to interfere with primitive societies no matter how revolting their mating rituals are.
Kirk gives a stirring speech. Both sides pause and accept the wisdom of the Space Americans. The episode surprisingly ends in peace. Then, next week brings another exciting adventure! There are no consequences! Kirk can introduce as many stone age societies to atomic weapons, teach them metallurgy and gun powder thousands of years ahead of when they might be expected to find it on their own, obliterate their local legends, practices, and religion, rendering them a burnt out crust of what once was a curious, playful species on the brink of questioning and understanding. And tell them about the Prime Directive so they can revel at the restraint of their colonial saviors who brought Modernianity to their impoverished planet. Then leave.
Oops, there it goes. Another society straight to the cynical, post brain-stem dustbin of methamphetamine, Genbread™, a constant social saline drip, a puppet government, and a life made of plastic.
Boldly go.
