Roadkill Journal

“Fox News Internal Memo: "Be On The Lookout For Any Statements From The Iraqi Insurgents...Thrilled At The Prospect Of A Dem Controlled Congress"...”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/11/14/fox-news-internal-memo-_n_34128.html

Fair and balanced, my ass…

It’s even worse without the edits:

“And let’s be on the lookout for any statements by the Iraqi insurgents, who must be thrilled at the prospect of a Dem-controlled congress.”

He… She… It? Goes on to refer to the Democrat’s Iraq plan as being a very short angle, insists twice that the war on terror isn’t over “just because the Dems won,” and stresses the need to pursue stories on a Hamas threat to American interests…

Hamas… They’re Israel’s problem – one Israel created – not ours. They’ll leave us alone if we leave them alone… Instead of pumping billions into the Israeli coffers to be used to kill Palestinian doctors…

FoxNews clearly wishes to promote Hamas as our problem – and make the problem as bad as possible.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


It’s so telling. This is a perfect example of the neoconservative attitudes that have been used to poison the attitudes of the non-thinkers among the Republicans. Everything about it is delusional.

First off, the last thing “Iraqi insurgents” want to see is a Democratic congress or administration. As Abu Ayyub al-Masri, head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq stated on the 9th:

“"I tell the lame duck (U.S. administration) do not rush to escape as did your defense minister...stay on the battle ground"… "Remain steadfast in the battlefield you coward!"”

They – all of the warring factions - are desperate to keep US over there.

It’s important to remember the “insurgents” – an idiotic term in the first place – include native-born Iraqis of at least two religions and several parties, tribes, etc as well as foreign adventurers. We provide the cause celebre that brings in millions of dollars and thousands of recruits which fuel some factions. At the same time, we are providing millions more to the phony government in cash and arms, much of which is just ripped off or turned over to the militias that hide inside the Shiite-dominated administration –fuelling the other factions. Dollars and weapons they are using to kill US troops with…

Then as we bomb and destroy, we leave behind survivors who become recruits for all factions…

The Democrats just might figure out a way to get us out of the fray without giving up the fight – to isolate the battlefield from the outside through a combination of smart battle strategies and smarter diplomacy. If that happens, one side or another will come out on top fast as all sides run out of the wherewithal to continue the battle. Their mutual eradication agendas will be starved out…

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


Wars are never fought for discrete, simple reasons, let alone the reasons stated, even though the misleaders of war try to reduce their agendas of carnage to simple reasons and single provocations in the public’s eye.

The war on terror / the war in Iraq… Never before has a rationale been so twisted; never before has the truth been so thoroughly occluded…

Anyone with a lick of common sense sees that nobody in the west would be interested in the Middle East but for two reasons: Oil and Israel. The greatest driver – one the neocons won’t face – is the oil. The hard core of the neocons try to pretend they are moral, even though they are moral toilets. Admitting they are out for plunder shatters the illusions they mollify the public with.

And admitting the money that fuels “terrorism” comes out of our own pockets at the gas pump is an admission of pure stupidity they can’t make.

But still a significant minority promotes the “war on terror” for the second reason. The New York Times reminds us that the destructive religious fantasies of the evangelicals do affect American foreign policy:

“For Evangelicals, Supporting Israel Is ‘God’s Foreign Policy’”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/washington/14israel.html?_r=2&ei=5094&en=2ddf96aacd3748dd&hp=&ex=1163480400&oref=slogin&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all

From the article:

“As Israeli bombs fell on Lebanon for a second week last July, the Rev. John Hagee of San Antonio arrived in Washington with 3,500 evangelicals for the first annual conference of his newly founded organization, Christians United For Israel. At a dinner addressed by the Israeli ambassador, a handful of Republican senators and the chairman of the Republican Party, Mr. Hagee read greetings from President Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and dispatched the crowd with a message for their representatives in Congress. Tell them “to let Israel do their job” of destroying the Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, Mr. Hagee said.

He called the conflict “a battle between good and evil” and said support for Israel was “God’s foreign policy.”

The next day he took the same message to the White House.”

And of course when the pro-Israel lobby needs to advertise, they know where to spend their money:

“Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, the founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and the Israeli government’s official goodwill ambassador to evangelicals, said the statements turned out to be superfluous because there was a groundswell of grass roots evangelical support.

Mr. Eckstein said he had discovered the depth of that support when he ran television commercials on the Fox News Channel seeking donations. The response, mainly from evangelicals, “burned out the call centers,” Mr. Eckstein said. During the five-week war, his group added 30,000 new donors. Thanks to the influx of money, he said his organization has exceeded its income from the first 10 months of last year by 60 percent, putting it on track to pull in $80 million this year. “The war really generated a momentum,” Mr. Eckstein said.”

FoxNews… Where else? They know how to reach their target audience. And no wonder Fox is interested in ginning up a Hamas threat to the US. They are after all doubly motivated by the ideologies of their senior management and their customers…

The neoconservative / religious right cabal.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


To be sure, the arguments for the war on terror and the Iraqi occupation are often couched in much more convoluted terms – but the arguments can almost always be distilled to the same two issues: Oil and Israel.

Before the election, the lead rabid monkey at Orbusmax was trying to scare people, linking an Orson Scott Card piece via Rainmaker, who claimed it was a "must read before voting." Card's writing is still a must-read, I think.

“The Only Issue This Election Day”

http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2006-10-29-1.html

Card opines:

“There is only one issue in this election that will matter five or ten years from now, and that's the War on Terror.

And the success of the War on Terror now teeters on the fulcrum of this election.

If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will be one.

Unfortunately, the opposite is not the case -- if the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the outcome of the present war will be favorable for us or anyone else.

But at least there will be a chance.”

Card goes on to make some unpopular assertions about our progress in Iraq and the usual arguments for the war, and he makes them very well. He very carefully refutes my position that the Iraqi insurgents want us to “stay the course.” But there is one interesting error and a paradigm assertion, made in the role of Devil’s Advocate:

“Every Congressman who says "We must set a timetable for departure" is providing ammunition to the tyrants in their campaign of terror… That is certainly not what most who call for withdrawal intend. They see Americans dying and they have no hope of victory. The Iraq War (as they call it) is costing lives and shows no sign of ending. Meanwhile, Iran is getting nuclear weapons, North Korea already has them, Syria and Iran are sponsoring continuing and escalating attacks on Israel -- how can we possibly "win" a war that threatens constantly to widen? Let's cut our losses, retire to our shores, and ...

And will you please stop and think for a moment?

There is no withdrawal to our shores. American prosperity requires free trade throughout most of the world. Free trade has depended for decades on American might. If we withdraw now, we announce to the world that if you just kill enough Americans, the big boys will go home and let you do whatever you want.

Every American in the world then becomes a target. And, because we have announced that we will do nothing to protect them, we will soon be trading only with nations that have enough strength to protect their own shores and borders.

Only ... what nations are those?”

“There is no withdrawal to our shores. American prosperity requires free trade throughout most of the world.” That is literally paradigmatic. Have we wholeheartedly accepted this? And have we accepted the burden of defending the entire trading community – for free? Consider the case as you consider Card’s mistake. Speaking in the context of the Islamist position, Card goes on:

“President Bush has offered something quite different. We don't want to turn you into mini-Americas, he says. We offer you, instead, democracy, in which you can choose for yourselves what parts of western culture to adopt. You will govern yourselves. It isn't a choice between wickedness and righteousness, it's a choice between freedom and oppression.”

“Choose for yourselves.”

I’m not sure Card speaks for all when he says we don’t want to make them into “mini-Americans.” Clearly, the globalists want as many glutinous consumers as possible. But we’ll leave that aside.

Because “choose for yourselves” isn’t how our government works, of course. We don't have a democracy - if we did, we'd have a "living, breathing" - growing, changing - constitution that meant nothing intrinsically. As a concept - one we have somewhat abandoned - we have a limited government of enumerated powers that recognizes individual rights, even ones that are destructive to society as a whole.

Oh, it's not a choice between freedom and oppression, democracy and totalitarianism? Of course not. Democracy and totalitarianism are not mutually exclusive. In a democracy, "the people" are free to elect a dictator, or anyone else.

And that is plainly what has happened in the Middle East. In Iraq, in Palestine, in Lebanon – “they the people” have democratically chosen government by tyrant – tyrants in the flesh wielding tyrannical religious attitudes.

So put it together. What if a democratically elected government declined our trade in a vital commodity or initiated an outright embargo? Will we take it – accept the decision and do without – or will we TAKE it?

In the early ‘70’s, we took it, as OPEC cut us off over our support of Israel. Back then, they supplied a significant but not crucial amount of “our” oil.

Would we take it again? That was answered when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. As Rush Limbaugh remarked at the time, Gulf I was about oil at market prices.

We TOOK it – we handed it back to the emir, whose claim to the land, resources, and rule of the people was as tenuous as they come. But he was – is – our lackey…

Is it ours because we need it?

At the kernel of the core lies this attitude from which all the other issues spring. It’s the attitude Fox slants everything to promote. It’s we’re right, they’re wrong, and history is on our side because we are the victors. Might gives us the right to allocate the wealth of a planet. And consistency isn’t required of us, any more than following international law is.

But it was the victors of a war on another continent who created Iraq – something Card reminds us of. The victors re-established the long defunct State of Israel. In both cases, the will of millions was ignored. We are still dealing with the backlash of those bad decisions – they are part of the roots of the “war on terror.”

We support pliant tyrants like the House of Saud and denounce nationalistic movements that bear unfavorably on our hegemony, giving tacit support to such as the Russians as they brutalize the Chechnyan separatists. More roots…

We ignored 12 years of genocide by Saddam Hussein, only taking action when it became apparent he intended to threaten the oil we apparently believe is ours by right because we need it.

We ignore the brutalities of China, whose slave factories destroy the environment as they supply our “needs.”

We ignore the genocide of Darfur. Darfur doesn’t exist to the neocons. Why? They have nothing we want. Our morals do not reach beyond our appetites.

It’s no wonder we are making enemies faster than we are making friends, Card’s assertions notwithstanding.

We’re never “fair and balanced”… Any more than Fox is. No wonder they are so popular.

// posted by Instructor @ 9:57 AM