Fear is the foundation of most governments.
-John Adams
Thursday, September 14, 2006
CHRONICLES OF MENDACITY
CAPMAGISTAN
Sometimes something comes along that is so mind-boggling wrong and inane, something that selectively edits so completely and uses the most primitive kind of 'might makes right' argument that one can't help but wish they gave an International Award for Complete Bullshit.
Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand's chief propagandist and an authority on the world's most shallow ideology-masquerading-as-philosophy, writes an essay on history completely removed from the usual course of cause-and-effect.
The thesis is a flip-flop: Imagine if the extremism in the Middle East were not the result of US/British intervention and destabilization and colonialism (which naturally can entail both positive and negative results, the negative termed 'blowback' by the CIA), but rather our 'appeasement' in the region, i.e., our various withdrawals from confrontation, diplomatic processes, strategic retrograde maneuvers and small nods to local sovereignty. See, Middle Eastern extremism comes from giving Middle Easterners too much space, not meddling enough.
Peikoff justifies the British seizure of Middle Eastern oil fields, the creation of Iraq, the Red Line Agreement, by one simple principle: We got there first, we knew what to do with it and we had the guns. By those statements, property rights are meaningless. We're not sure what that does for his jerkoff philosophy, but there you have it.
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"Reagan not only failed to retaliate after 241 U.S. marines in Lebanon were slaughtered; he did worse. Holding that Islamic guerrillas were our ideological allies because of their fight against the atheistic Soviets, he methodically poured money and expertise into Afghanistan."
Ideological allies? Not even Reagan was that senile. The Mujahideen were never seen as ideological allies. It could be argued they weren't even seen as allies, not in any traditional diplomatic sense of the word. They were useful idiots at best, funded, trained and agitated by the CIA in order to protect various American interests - partly, at least as the most surface narrative shows, to keep the Soviet Union bogged down in a costly, wasteful conflict.
Blowbackis always inevitable, it's just that US intelligence agencies have never factored it into their calculations. They might consider, briefly, whether tainting Cuban milk destined for schoolchildren or secretly bombing large numbers of Cambodian civilians could piss some people off enough to, oh, say, organize into small guerrilla units formed around an intense hatred of US imperialist policies, but if the military-industrial-corporate masters will benefit more, then the infernal calculus demands action regardless of lofty notions of "consequences."
Political maneuverings are done with the same kind of blatant disregard for after-effects. Foreign leaders who act outside of US interests become targets, which often fuels their extremism and paranoia - and sometimes that paranoia is justified.
The whole article is an agitation for war. Terrorism is blamed on states and the solution presented is to depose those states. This is madness. Peikoff is the worst kind of idiot - he gets paid. Should we invade Ireland? What of Sri Lanka? Destabilizing Iraq created an even worse terrorist situation, one in which al-Qaeda now controls al-Anbar province.
Do not ever approvingly quote Paul Wolfowitz.
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"A proper war in self-defense is one fought without self-crippling restrictions placed on our commanders in the field. It must be fought with the most effective weapons we possess (a few weeks ago, Rumsfeld refused, correctly, to rule out nuclear weapons). And it must be fought in a manner that secures victory as quickly as possible and with the fewest U.S. casualties, regardless of the countless innocents caught in the line of fire. These innocents suffer and die because of the action of their own government in sponsoring the initiation of force against America. Their fate, therefore, is their government's moral responsibility. There is no way for our bullets to be aimed only at evil men."
That's it, folks, right there. The money paragraph. Invasion, murder, genocide - Peikoff calls those things self-defense. When he talks about elimination, he means total annihilation.
"Self-crippling restrictions" - also known as respect for the dignity of other human beings.
He's delusional, saying that Afghanistan is too devastated to breed fanatics even as the Taliban resurges, even as opium production rises under the watchful eyes of warlords.
What is it about the phrase "Clash of Civilizations" that turns people into gibbering morons flinging shit at the wall and then affecting that oh-so-serious look, contemplating the streaks approvingly?
It goes on and on, hitting all the neocon high-notes, fapping over World War II analogies and treating military matters as minor footnotes.
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"Eliminating Iran's terrorist sanctuaries and military capability is not enough. We must do the equivalent of de-Nazifying the country, by expelling every official and bringing down every branch of its government. This goal cannot be achieved painlessly, by weaponry alone. It requires invasion by ground troops, who will be at serious risk, and perhaps a period of occupation."
Perhaps a period of occupation? Were you just about to say something about a cakewalk, flowers and candy, fund its own reconstruction? Were you about to say smoking gun, mushroom cloud, rape rooms, mobile bio-weapons labs? Were you about to repeat the same tired propaganda and pretend it means a fucking thing? Were you going to volunteer, out front, spit-shined, glorious conquest? If not, drop off the fucking Earth right now.
And on it goes, like a stream of diarrhea. Stab-in-the-back. Intellectuals are selling us out. Exterminate all the brutes.
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Analysis:
Peikoff is a dangerous madman. It is clear he is stockpiling lunacy. Therefore, we urge the United States to unilaterally invade him before he can get ahold of any kind of weapon.
