The Prime Says...

This is the second edition of The Prime Says and the site hasn't even officially opened yet. There will probably be another edition posted before the site launches so only the truly dedicated (or truly bored) D.I. fanatics will ever delve through the archives to read this.

Overdone, Yet Obligatory

It's been one month since the terrorist attacks on the United States. No one wants to read, or write, more about what's happened yet here I am writing and here you are reading. September 11th commentary has been done to death but since it's nigh obligatory for anyone with a soapbox to opine on the matter I'd like to point out a few things that probably won't be aired by the mainstream media in their rush to squelch all dissent and erect the facade unity.

I Understand

I condemn what the terrorists did on September 11th, but I understand.

The United States has long supported and continues to support corrupt, oppressive regimes in the name of expediency. We supported the Shah of Iran to the detriment of the Iranian people. They rebelled, overthrew the Shah and remain virulently anti-American to this day. We're responsible for everybody's favorite love-to-hate-him dictator, Saddam Hussein. We all think he's despicable now but he was ok when he was waging war against Iran throughout the 80's. Even then he was a ruthless despot who gassed his own people, but he was our guy; until U.S. Ambassador, April Glasspie, informed him that U.S. didn't care if he annexed his "19th province" and he foolishly believed her. After he invaded Kuwait we went in, killed thousands of his soldiers, bombed tens of thousands of his civilians and left him in power so that he could continue to oppress the Iraqi people while our sanctions starved a few hundred thousand Iraqis to death. I'd imagine that after being oppressed by "our" dictator, bombed, teased with liberation, and starved that most Iraqis aren't too keen on America either.

There are millions of people in the Middle East who hate America for what we've done to their fellow Arabs and fellow Muslims. Mix that in with chronic poverty, religious fanaticism and perhaps a bit of brainwashing and you've got the sort of volatile concoction that leads to people to hijacking planes and flying them into buildings.

Usama bin Laden used to be our buddy too. We loved him when we needed someone to fight the Soviets for us. We armed and trained his troops then abandoned them as soon as the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. We left him a gaggle of disgruntled, well-armed, well-trained soldiers with a grudge against the U.S. I guess someone in the (first) Bush State Department figured the Afghanis, after doing our dirty work, would be able to pick of the pieces of their devastated country on their own.

The U.S. government's a bunch of bastards, huh? Yeah, but I understand.

The U.S. government does these things to make sure that we can live in the most prosperous nation that the world has ever known. They do these things on our behalf so that we can buy cheap gas to run our large, fuel-inefficient cars. They do these things so that our industries can have the cheap energy they need to function at the level that they do.

Do I like what they do? No. Do I benefit from it? Unquestionably. Do you like what they do? Do you benefit from it? How many of those benefits are would we be willing to trade in to get the government to stop committing facinorous acts in our name? If the answer is none, will we truly be shocked the next time someone with a grudge against the United States kills a few thousand people?

I'm not a theologian but I believe the "Golden Rule" goes something like "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Sounds like good common sense to me. In Iraq alone we've already (directly and indirectly) killed about 100 people for each person who died on September 11th. After we purge al Qaeda, are we willing to stop killing Arab/Muslim civilians so that terrrorists won't be so eager to seek vengeance on ours?

"If you don't like the effects, don't produce the cause."

		-Funkadelic

The Fallout

The US is bombing Afghanistan as I type this. We're probably going to invade soon and take out Usama bin Laden. Good. I understand his campaign but I have no sympathy for him. Assuming he's guilty he deserves to be killed. (The government claims that they have irrefutable evidence to prove that he's the mastermind. They can't release it for "national security reasons," but they claim to have it. They might be telling the truth. There's a first time for everything.)

As Americans, we pride ourselves on having a system of checks and balances in our government to insure that no branch becomes too powerful. Who checks and balances the U.S. in world affairs? What recourse does a foreign party have for redress of grievances against the U.S.? We're all but unconfrontable militarily. We have the security council veto at the U.N. A PR effort to sway the sentiment of the American public and thereby the policies of the government, is a possibility but it's probably prohibitively expensive for poor countries - the countries most likely to be victimized by the U.S.

I think we can all agree that killing 3000 civilians is a bad response, but what can we suggest as an alternative? If you know the answer, let me know. I don't have one.

Wag The Dog

No, I don't believe that George Bush is "wagging the dog." He's not clever enough. Further, I believe that his advisors are smart enough to know that any conspiracy that big would be uncovered eventually and they would be lynched in the streets when it was revealed. Still, isn't it interesting how everything seems to be going Bush's way since the attacks?

• Bush is riding high in the polls with job approval numbers in the high 80's and low 90's. That's quite a change from the mid-50's he was getting prior to the attack.

• No one blames Bush for the bad economy. Admittedly, it wasn't his fault anyway but, as president, he was getting the blame. No more. The terrorists are being blamed for the impending recession.

• In their rush to "stand united" and "rally around the flag", people appear willing to overlook the fact that Bush is an illegitimate president. (The "true" winner of Florida will never be known with certitude but we do know that partisan Republicans on the Supreme Court handed him his "victory." Isn't it interesting that Justice Antonin Scalia's son, Eugene, just got appointed to be the Labor Department's top lawyer? Can you say "quid pro quo" boys & girls? I knew you could.)

• Political correctness is on its way out. Rep. John Kasich (R-OH) was on the news less than a week after the attack gleefully proclaiming that "political correctness is dead." This will make Bush's legions of supporters in the Ku Klux Klan ecstatic. They can resume bashing kikes, niggers, spics and especially rag-heads without being stigmatized. Policing agencies will resume blatant racial profiling. (Judging by what I've seen in the media, the death knell has only been sounded for left-wing political correctness. Right-wingers have no compunction about smearing people as unpatriotic.)

• The Arctic National Wildlife Reserve will be drilled. Environmentalists have been silenced for fear of seeming unpatriotic. Now that the Bush administration can claim that our middle eastern oil supply is in danger, they can hand the nature preserve over to their friends and family in the oil industry. All in the name of national security, of course.

• The "peace dividend" is no more. At one point, surpluses were projected for years to come but now every extra cent will be dumped into national defense. There may even be a return to Reaganesque deficits. Our armed forces will need additional funding for the training and equipment needed to fight the war against terrorism. The real question is how outlandish will their claims for resources be. Past performance is no guarantee of future pork but the track record speaks pretty loudly. The inclination among Bush and his Republican cronies will be to green-light every single military project that crosses their desks.

• Civil rights are being eroded. Admittedly, Congress has slowed down John Ashcroft's roll somewhat. The Justice Department isn't getting everything they want, but make no mistake: the expanded wire-tapping authority and e-mail scrutiny do represent an erosion of civil rights. There are also provisions that weaken fourth ammendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. They may not pass constitutional muster at the Supreme Court, but we've already seen how the majority of justices will kow tow to Bush.

• The Democrats are in trouble. After the attacks, the 2002 mid-term elections lost their glamour for many congressional candidates. The Democrats are having trouble finding good candidates willing to run. Republicans have an advantage going into November 2002 due to their perceived strength in national security issues.

• Terrorism is the new Communism. The Bush administration is conditioning the American people to expect a years long, perhaps never-ending, war against a nebulously defined enemy. For years, administrations will be able to commit acts of dubious merit around the globe in the name of "fighting terrorism.". This is no different than the "red flag" of Communism that matadors from both parties waved in front of the American public for years to elicit knee-jerk acceptance of their questionable policies. Many of the campaigns waged under the rubric of the "war on terrorism" will be legitimate, but remain vigilant for those that aren't.

• Political language has been dumbed-down below the lowest common denominator. The language of state craft has reached its nadir under this administration. With his rants about hunting down "evil-doers," Bush speaks as if he's in a Marvel comic book. Of course, if he's really interested in hunting down evil-doers, I know of this guy from Texas who killed 152 people...

That's enough.

Bottom line: George W. Bush is the same election-stealing, incompetent, murdering simpleton he was on September 10th. His domestic policies are just as bad and should be opposed just as vigorously as before. His actions (but not his words) in the matter of retaliating for the September 11th attacks have been adequate, but most of his other foreign policies have been as bad as ever.

From the left,
D.I. Prime
Thursday, October 11th, 2001