Barbwire by Barbano: Lollafallujah Tour 2004

My support of our troops comes from a hardcore pro-life position: I want them all coming home alive. I don't want to have to cry my way through a future edition of "Nightline" wherein Ted Koppel reads the names of the next 700 to die, including more Nevadans.

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Delaware, recently predicted that Dubya would cut and run from Iraq in time to blunt the issue at election time. The first step was taken last week.

I don't know what you call it, but when American troops turn over a major city to one of Saddam's generals dressed in his Republican Guard uniform, I call it surrender.

If "shock and awe" was the working title of Iraqi Quagmire Part One, the sequel will be "shunt and confuse." Expect the Texas Messiah to make lots of moves between now and November to keep muddled the mind of a public possessed of an attention span shorter than Michael Jackson's nose.

While professing deeply felt Christian conviction, our president perpetrates decidedly un-Christian acts. Last week's so-called revelation of torture of Iraqi prisoners was actually not news at all. Human rights activists have long decried our establishment of inquisition chambers in Bagram, Afghanistan, and on the British-held island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. We have further sent prisoners to countries which have decades of experience at torturing detainees: Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia. [1]

If you lay down with dogs, prepare to get fleas.

The only reason "60 Minutes" cried "scoop" was that they got pictures. The story has been out there for years, but this was the first time it was suitable for television. If a tree falls in the forest, has it really happened if no one shot video?

"Americans don't want democracy, they want theocracy," a visitor to this country noted some years back.
We are simultaneously the most warlike and most churchgoing of nations. An overwhelming majority of Americans confess membership in some religious denomination, most of them adhering to Christianity. That's an insult to Jesus of Nazareth all by itself.

This man who spoke of peace and forgiveness is adored by a country which spends the lion's share of its national treasure on new and improved methods of killing people.

Recent media reports have revealed George W. Bush as having evolved to a messianic view of himself. This is the kind of person who would push the nuclear button to purify the world. Osama bin Laden with a tie. (See the most recent installments of "Frontline" and "Now with Bill Moyers" at PBS.org.)

The Frontline program was especially instructive, as it became a campaign infomercial for the president. The American voter is the equivalent of the co-dependent battered spouse. If the master is beating us, it's okay if he's got a good reason. We know he needs us because he beats us.

Eventually, Stockholm Syndrome sets in and we identify with our oppressor and make him our savior.

Americans took a beating from the policies of Ronald Reagan because he was sold to us as a man of deep conviction. And he sounded so soothing as he stomped people into the ground.

We have taken to a self-destructive extreme Christ's admonition to "come to me with the faith of child." Americans want to believe that our tribal chief will protect us, so we blindly and faithfully attribute good intentions to whomever sits in the oval office. Unlike us, lemmings go over a cliff with their eyes open.

Bush has the laziness of mind to become an automaton possessed by simplistic codified superstition. He's the perfect Protestant: it is not necessary to do anything good, it's only necessary to believe in God and you will nonetheless go to heaven. The Apostle James the Less said "faith without works is nothing." For so stating, his epistle was censored from the King James Bible.

On the one hand, Dubya adheres to a religious credo that preaches peace, love and tolerance. His sect further preaches that anyone — Christian or not — who does not view things their way is going to hell. The president's actions belie his words, and that's alright, because all you have to do is believe the scripture on Sunday, then do whatever you damn well please the rest of the week. You're going to heaven because you're a true believer with the unquestioning faith of a child.

Which spawns the certitude of a schoolyard bully.

Philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe observed that we become what we despise. The heroes sold to us as Israeli freedom fighters in the book and movie "Exodus" became oppressive thugs.

Ari ben Canaan of the Leon Uris novel, played by Paul Newman in the film, morphed into the bloody Ariel Sharon of today.

We are in the process of destroying our economy by toxically spending so many billions on war. It took more than a decade to recover from the economic fallout of Vietnam.

Only economic devastation will throw the bastards out and allow our very resiliant populace to begin regeneration. A new Franklin Roosevelt will arise, probably a woman this time.

But the costs of this new depression will be very brutal as the Bush royal family is swept into the dustbowl of history's heartland.

Onward Christian soldiers!

Pray for deliverance.

Be well. Raise hell.

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[1] Scarry, Elaine; "Resolving to Resist"; Boston Review, February/March 2004; reprinted in Harper's Magazine; May, 2004, page 16.