Henri Reynard Speaks Out

Holy Shiite Batman, What, A Mess?

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Could the fact of Islamic reality that propelled the Iranian Revolution be descending on Iraq? Could the Shiite branch of Islam in Iraq be prepared to wage religious war against any foreign power interfering in Iraqi affairs? "Gee golly Batman, what a surprise! In this round of the ugly American (white man) versus the Arabic cleric in a nation long plagued with US interests we lose their respect. But we have firmly established our ability to kill them any time we want to. Our crass interest in the oil lying under the ground and vast cultural distance from theirs restrains the Iraqi people's love for their liberators. While the Mullah has the love and affection of the people, we get the hatred. It works so well in the comic strips, we liberate them and they fawn on us and elect a government that loves us too. Why does real life have to be so complicated? "Well grasshopper, it just is!" We live in a world where the people in this country who make our political decisions are both naïve and cynical. They are proving to be profoundly naïve in the way that they approach the world outside our borders and they are exceedingly cynical about our constitution and the manipulation of the American People by any means at hand. This is a dangerous combination.

Of course we may have seen the same cynical use of power at home and abroad in history a few times in nations other than our own. There are a lot of voices in the world right now that are saying that this is just how the powerful nations of the world behave. They serve their interests first and those of others seldom if ever. That is why the UN is no longer working, because its charter failed to take into account the behavior of nations too powerful to oppose. It is historically true that powerful nations often act outside of the law. It is also true that the body of law promoted by the UN is now as dead as the previous failure, the League of Nations. The only question is what will the new Sheriff in town (that's US) be enforcing? The laws of the USA, and it's Constitution are not functional internationally. There is now no international law unless we agree to it in advance, and we are not evidently in the mood for agreement. No we are not in the mood for love but oh do we have a headache. You see we have just declared open season on people who can threaten us in any way, but there are no game laws that apply. Since we are free to act in our own interests across any border and using any necessary level of force no one is safe except by our sufferance. Think about what that implies for a minute.

Time's up and now I'm going to tell you my version of what our unilateral policy of preemptive war implies. It puts us above the laws that the international community has worked for more than two centuries and through a dozen major and over a hundred minor wars to establish. It declares that no nation is our equal because of our prowess with arms and that we will tolerate no nation attempting to catch up with us. It defies anyone to call us to account for any act of war we carry out in pursuit of defending our interests, no matter how grievously our actions hurt prior agreements long in existence. This means that we can unilaterally demolish commercial agreements between target nations like Iraq and any other nation in the world. Ask Russia and France what that means, they are owed a lot of money that we now say is gone and forgotten. International bankers are still standing around with their jaws flapping in the breeze after this act.

This, my friends, is the hatching of the cuckoo's egg in the hummingbird's nest. This is chaos beyond anything promoted by any nation in the recent past. This is International lawlessness on a scale to daunt Napoleon and other grand mal imperialists in the past. This is a nation simply declaring that it is now an imperial power on an international scale that has no boundaries. It is breathtaking in its scope and amazing in its vainglory but will it work to keep the peace? It is ostensibly in pursuit of peace that this doctrine was laid out and promoted and used to justify the war on Iraq. We are now an empire that makes Rome look like a piker and all for the price of a little paper and ink and a few bombs dropped on a basically defenseless nation. But can we do what we have declared we will do to keep the peace? Can we hold onto the empire that we have declared? We can, for a time, but "tempus fugit" is the fate of empires.

Time is fleeting, Rome was a society that lasted nearly a thousand years. The ruins of Rome's construction projects can be seen all over Europe. That is parts of them can be seen, where the wars of Europe have not swept them away. If I believed that power used this way could bring peace to our planet for a time I would still not condone these acts of aggression that we have committed and are about to commit. I believe in the law with every bone in my body and every scrap of gristle and fat hung on them. Good law brings peace and keeping the law maintains it. We are clearly a nation embarked on a course that puts our actions above the law. We have refused to even consider the ways our actions have impacted the halting and feeble efforts at creating international codes of justice. We have declared our rights as a nation to be above human rights everywhere on the planet. This cannot bring lasting peace and we will be alone so alone because of it.

There is a song that dancers used to use for tap dancing a dance form known as the soft shoe. "Just me and my shadow, all alone and feeling blue" were some of the words in that melancholy little song. It is going to be very lonely at the top of a world order totally designed and controlled by US interests. Of course at first there will be a rush of sorts by the weakest nations to align their interests with ours, but then the dance can get really Byzantine. This is no soft shoe but a pair of big hobnailed boots tap dancing on the long-term interests of nearly every person on the planet including the citizens of this nation. Empires cannot suffer dissent, their grip on forces beyond their immediate control is too fragile for that kind of behavior to be tolerated. Nor do Empires really elect their leaders, those dirty little jobs are taken over by some powerful elite group with the best of intentions, of course.

The elitists always have your interests at heart when they are lifting your rights from off your shoulders. "See, isn't it easer to walk around free of all those heavy decisions and prickly rights?" "If it bothers you, you can just take a little Prozac or Valium and you'll feel so much better." "We'll give your rights back once this crisis period is over." Of course the crisis is designed to go on until you have forgotten what it was like to have all of those rights. Or it may last until you're dead and your children and grandchildren never knew what it was like to have them in the first place. How will you like that state of affairs. Don't fear the terrorists! Fear the elite fear monger who is gradually creeping up on the process of removing your rights permanently! They are not Republicans or Democrats but a new Imperial force in this nation. The establishment of a Palace Guard will follow their dominance of our politics as surely as it has everywhere else in the world. And then will come the purges and infighting that always leads to suppression and torture and government by fear. Is that what you want for our future? Or can you put aside the fear of terrorists for a moment and work out what you want out of your government before it no longer is yours? That question is posed seriously and it will be answered by your effort to build a better government here or by all of us suffering the consequences of a lack of action. God bless and keep you our troops and our protestors safe in these trying times.