PIGWORLD!
"Survival of the Swinish"
Rants and Raves from the Left of Nowhere
Two Years Later
and the Water in the Hole is Rising Steady
I have a fantasy that the people of the United States are outraged. They are outraged that mass murder has been committed in their name. They are outraged that their government is little more than a pack of greedy cutthroats who care for more a dollar of profit than for an entire culture. They are outraged that France, those dirty rotten frogs, not only participate in national elections in far greater numbers, but that they also know how to protest in the streets with real style and verve. And lastly, the people of the United States are outraged because they are supposed to be the good guys and not a bunch of empire building dickslaps who delight in punishing cripples, children and old women.
I sometimes dream that there is a cosmic justice. That evil deeds are punished and that good deeds are rewarded. I imagine Rumsfeld in an orange jumpsuit sitting on the dirt floor of his 9 foot by 6 foot cell in some nameless part of the world. No one to hear his cries. No one to hear his pleas for mercy or for compassion or for justice. Dick Cheney hasn't shaved in five days or bathed in ten and hasn't eaten since Sunday. Tears well up in his eyes as he reaches the soup kitchen and finds it closed due to budget cuts. He can't afford the price of the bus to the clinic and he's not sure if he can con anyone else into buying more worthless shares of Haliburton stock. George W Bush is in a small white house off the beaten path in Indiana. The padding of his room is hosed off once or twice a week and his straightjacket is union made. Maybe someone will read The Hungry Capitalist Caterpillar to him today. It's his favorite book.
And then I wake up.
Or do I? It's hard to tell. The planet I'm on isn't the planet I knew. Is that gut wrenching sensation the fall or are we already underground, deep in a hole with the dank water rising? Over the toes of our shoes. At our ankles. Up to our knees in the foul sewage of greed, corruption, failure. The failure to wake up. Can't wake up. This nightmare doesn't end. The flicking light above remains a goal but the hole keeps getting deeper, the water keeps getting higher and it takes so much energy just to keep your eyes open.
And then, there, in this fetid hole with this black water up to our chest we finally wake up. Or some of us do. Sort of. It's a hell of a thing to wake in such peril. Confusion and panic and paranoia and frustration are rough companions.
Up to now, life had been simple. Easy. Understandable. Did things start to go sour when that first plane in living color over and over and over and over again slammed into the tower? Did it all go south when Bush slid into the White House in a simple power grab disguised to look like political savvy? No, the real impact of the September 11th crimes wasn't that we fell into a hideous dream state, but that we were slapped awake. The world did not change forever on September 11th. The change was finally realizing the United States isn't the center of all creation. We were made aware of a planet bigger than the narrow focus of our lives. And that hurt.
Which is why our government went into hyper-drive to put us back asleep. One country was bombarded with weapons and another with lies. We were gassed with toxic patriotism and shelled with sound bites and expert testimony and machine gunned back into a slumber of consumer needs. We took a squalid reckless war and make it into something noble and uplifting and just. We took a bunch of scared kids and turned them into an Army of One.
Afghanistan proved to us that war was sound foreign policy. We kicked the shit out a crippled nation and it felt so good, we found another one to kick the shit out of. The fog of war is used to keep people drowsy. If we're busy supporting our boys, then we can't be asking questions about the trustworthiness of our Commander in Chief. If we note the honored dead, then maybe we won't notice the dishonored living. Two million people in the largest prison system in the world is a symbol for something gone horribly wrong, but a dead Marine can always be a symbol for Freedom and how dearly we cherish it. There was no mention of the dead neither American nor Iraqi nor Afghani in Bush's sleep-inducing speech on September 7th. But 87 billion dollars was the current fantasy number fronted by Bush to fix things up nice and neat.
Currently the dollar cost is roughly 3 billion a month in Afghanistan and 4 billion a month in Iraq. Those are the official figures, mildly low-balled, I'm sure. The 3 billion per month for Afghanistan so far as resulted in a flourishing heroin trade, an increase in rape and murder and a longing for the return of the Taliban rule, which is better than no rule at all.
The 4 billion a month in Iraq has netted us roughly 10 soldiers wounded a day, a soldier killed a day, an increasingly hostile population as we fail to provide basic utilities and a total lack of world confidence.
I can't say I fully grasp all the ends and outs of running an army of occupation, but it does seem to me that for a lot less than 4 billion dollars a month one could set up an electrical system and get water to people. It's been reported that tank crews are being forced to leave their tanks behind because of the narrow streets and they walk patrols unarmed unless they get some AK 47s from the Iraqis. I'm totally against our being in Iraq, but for 4 billion a month I think I could manage to arm all of our troops. Just for appearances if nothing else. I'd love to see one of those pie charts showing where our money is going. It's certainly not going to the people we're occupying. It's not going to our troops. How much is being spent on "administration" and for "studies" and "cost overruns" and "entertainment." There's no reason to believe that 87 billion or 870 billion will be spent any wiser or yield better results. This is a money pit being funded with human lives. This war is really Corporate Welfare on steroids.
I can't help wondering how this country could spend 7 billion dollars a month on other programs. I can't help thinking that with 7 billion dollars I'd have great hair. I could take taxis. I could do totally insane things and give 10 million dollars to 700 school districts. Or 1 million dollars to 7000 homeless shelters. Or 100 thousand dollars to 70 thousand libraries. And that's just the first three months. I'd probably still have change leftover for a cool stereo system.
And then, once more, I wake up. The reality of it all really sucks. We can talk and write zines and grow red-eyed with rage. We can make jokes and poke fun and shake our heads in sorrow as the needless, stupid death keeps touching lives. But as a nation, we slumber on. The lessons learned have all been negative. We proved twice now that we can quickly defeat badly run third world nations. And we've learned to hate more. To fear more.
If the price of terror is more terror, then we should expect more attacks. We should expect to be hacked to pieces without mercy. But waiting for the next attack from abroad is a waste of time. Instead we must gear whatever energy is available to unseating Bush and his government of thugs. It is entirely possible that our democracy is now a shell game. If Dubya needs a trillion dollars to be elected, then a trillion dollars will be raised. If he's actually defeated by a landslide, (and make no mistake, only a landslide will do it), there's no reason to believe that whoever replaces him will be radically better. The damage to the foreign and domestic policies is so vast, if the most intelligent, strong-willed liberal leaps to the White House tomorrow he's going to be in a mess that may take decades to fix.
We're in a hole and the water is rising steady. The final legacy of the Sept 11th crimes is that we were hurt and reacted foolishly and with supreme cruelty. And now we're fucked. Even so, we're better off than the people of Kabul and of Baghdad. And we don't deserve to be.