The Middle Way is a revered Buddhist tradition and similar notions exist in other philosophical traditions as in the Western idea of moderation in all things. This concept, judiciously applied, can be wisdom itself. But don’t be too moderate in how much water you drink or how much shelter you avail yourself of...or how many train wrecks you avoid.
Is it wisdom to moderately oppose war crimes? Is it prudent to be neither hot nor cold about torture, genocide, treason or murder? Are there times when moderation is betrayal? The unequivocal answers to these questions are no, no and yes.
There is no middle path when it comes to certain things. Things like unnecessary war, enormous economic crimes and torture.
There are many here among us who remember Nixon, Vietnam, Watergate, Reagan, Iran/Contra and etcetera. The rightwing war on America is nothing new. It didn’t start with George W. Bush, but when he was tragically installed as the illegitimate President of the former United States of America, astute members of my generation felt a powerful mix of alarm and despair. Without claiming undue prescience, we saw it all coming – or enough of it to know it would be worse than anything we’d seen up to that point.
All the sane people in America were screaming ‘Don’t do it!’ four years ago. We begged for restraint and sanity, instead we got ‘shock and awe’.
Four years later we are mired down in a nasty civil war that we are responsible for but can do nothing about. Our leaders have failed us miserably, and they continue to fail us.
Four Years of Horror, Madness and Disgrace, posted Mar. 19, 2007
As the bogus case was being made for the attack on Iraq, my peers and I saw the whole shithouse debacle coming like an old familiar and very bad dream. For us it was the ghost of Vietnam rising from the grave. Even my father, an old warhorse who should have known better, got sucked into the steady drumbeat of rightwing propaganda. "Oh he’s definitely got WMDs," he said of Saddam Hussein at the time. My response was that it hadn’t been proven to me. My father believed it because he was retired Army and Colin Powell told him so. I did not have that weakness. I knew it was a lie.
First, it’s all about oil and war profiteering. It was never about WMDs, terrorism, Saddam (except in the mind of the Dupe-in-Chief), or the benign export of democracy. It’s always been about the 300 billion barrels of light sweet crude astride which Iraq sits, and the profits to be made by the military-industrial complex in a major Mideast conflict.
The Truth About IRAQ, posted Nov. 24, 2006
And the unmitigated gall and hubris of those who, in response to the American people’s demand to end the war, instead chose to escalate it is beyond belief!
Hopefully it comes as no surprise to any of you that our government does not want us to know the truth...about any damned thing. They are 100% committed to snookering us all. Their intent and their actions have diverged so far from the best interests of the American people that their only option (as they see it) is to lie their asses off and hope we don’t get wise.
That’s why they hate people like Michael Moore, Seymour Hersh, all of us at DailyKos, and any others who insist on yanking back the curtains on the snarling greedy craven menace our government has become. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtains!" They simply cannot afford for us to ever learn the truth about them.
"If the people knew what we had done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us." ~ George H.W. Bush to journalist Sarah McClendon
The Surge Option is for SUCKERS!, posted Nov. 21, 2006
War is not a noble endeavor. It is rarely justified and is never ‘clean’, sane or civilized. It is always barbarous, hideously ugly and fiendishly cruel. It is the greatest abomination of which we as a species are capable.
The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness
CHRIS HEDGES & LAILA AL-ARIAN
"I'll tell you the point where I really turned," said Spc. Michael Harmon, 24, a medic from Brooklyn. He served a thirteen-month tour beginning in April 2003 with the 167th Armor Regiment, Fourth Infantry Division, in Al-Rashidiya, a small town near Baghdad.
"I go out to the scene and [there was] this little, you know, pudgy little 2-year-old child with the cute little pudgy legs, and I look and she has a bullet through her leg....
An IED [improvised explosive device] went off, the gun-happy soldiers just started shooting anywhere and the baby got hit. And this baby looked at me, wasn't crying, wasn't anything, it just looked at me like--I know she couldn't speak. It might sound crazy, but she was like asking me why. You know, Why do I have a bullet in my leg?... I was just like, This is--this is it. This is ridiculous."
The Nation
As events in Iraq and at home have unfolded, the only surprises have been that it’s even worse than we feared. The war profiteers are even greedier, more nefarious and shortsighted than we suspected; the war even crueler, deadlier and crazier than we feared; the oppression and fascism at home even more putrid and repugnant than we dared to imagine.
Are these harsh words justified? You bet your ass they are! Bushco and the Republicans have dismantled our democracy as surely as they have dismantled FEMA and the EPA. No greater damage has ever been done to our republic by any enemy foreign or domestic. And yet there are those among us who question (apparently seriously) whether or not there is any evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors. What planet are these people living on? And can they really be on our side? I am beginning to wonder.
And please stop supporting the war in Afghanistan. While it once came close to being justified (since the Taliban did harbor Bin Laden), it ceased to be justified when we purposely let Bin Laden get away at Tora Bora and turned our evil attentions on Iraq. (And as for letting Bin Laden get away, WTF? There are no innocent explanations for such Machiavellian machinations.)
Our fight was not with the Taliban (except by proxy), our fight was with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. To what purpose do we remain in Afghanistan? I’ll give you a clue: since we invaded and occupied Afghanistan they have gone from almost no opium production (the Taliban all but wiped it out) to being the world’s most prolific producer.
Maybe the Taliban’s success in eradicating opium production is what really pissed us off.
Make no mistake, rogue elements of the CIA and others at the highest levels of our so-called government are neck deep in the illegal drug trade and have been for decades, and Cheney and the neocons are calling the shots.
What the heck is Sibel Edmunds’ case about, and why should I care?
Sibel Edmonds' case is about the intersection of illegal arms trafficking, heroin trafficking, money laundering, terrorist activities and the corruption of many "highly-recognizable, highly-known names" in and around the US government. Sibel says that the people involved will go straight to prison if we can get hearings into her case. Richard Perle, in prison. Douglas Feith, in prison. Dennis Hastert, in prison. Marc Grossman, in prison.
According to Sibel, the best place to begin trying to understand the case is a recent article by Phil Giraldi in the American Conservative. Sibel says "Giraldi has it 100% right; this I consider the most accurate summary of my case."
Source
Major tip of the hat to lukery for his tireless advocacy on behalf of Sibel Edmonds and this incredibly important story. I highly recommend that you read his most recent diary on the subject, Can we get Cheney & Libby through FBI translator Sibel Edmonds' case?
A criminal cabal led by Dick Cheney has taken hostile control of our government and our country, and committed grave offenses against humanity and the planet in the name of the people of the United States of America. They have humiliated and discredited our nation and tarred every American with the shame and disgrace of what they have done including torture, treason and aggressive war for oil and empire. The voluminous evidence of their horrendous crimes is readily available to anybody with a computer and an intertube connection. Any who challenge this are either blind or on the wrong side of history (to put it oh so politely).
Among the worst things this band of war profiteering thugs has done is to do everything possible to acerbate the very circumstances that led to our being attacked on 9/11 in the first place, while deliberately leaving us as vulnerable as possible. They have done nothing in real terms to secure us from another attack and everything to tempt them into it.
Yes they attacked us, but it didn’t happen in a vacuum. There were reasons for it, there was history that led up to it - there was a long chain of causation. And maybe, just maybe we had something to do with it. Certainly the question of how much it was our fault is not as silly as it might seem to the average Kool-Aid drinker.
And when the ‘authorities’ start reporting al Qaeda in the house, and Chertoff starts talking about his guts, for my money it’s time to start watching for the false flag. These miserable fucks are up to no good.
I have been watching and opposing these bastards since I was a teenager in the 60s. I have been repeatedly told to be patient and work within the system which I and millions of others have done. All the while things have gone from bad to worse. When does ‘be patient and work within the system’ cease to be wise counsel and become something else? In my view we reached that point long ago. The Democratic capitulation on the Iraq Supplemental back in May made it undeniable. It’s time to fight back, it’s time to demand action, and it’s time to organize!
Poll: Americans Evenly Divided On Impeachment Of Bush, Majority For Targeting Cheney
By Eric Kleefeld
Does the conventional wisdom that impeachment would be politically radioactive still hold true in the post-Libby commutation political world? A new poll from American Research Group shows a startling result: The people are evenly divided on impeachment proceedings against the president, and a majority favor the House beginning impeachment proceedings against Vice President Cheney.
Among independents, 50% favor starting impeachment proceedings against President Bush, to only 30% opposed. And 51% of independents are also for starting impeachment proceedings against Dick Cheney, to 29% opposed.
Source
The people finally are on the side of history. Now if we can just manage to return the nation to its rightful owners, we might just muster the will to do the right thing and impeach and prosecute these criminal rat bastards!
Peace out!
OPOL