Dreams of Empire

Oh dear. Dick Cheney seems to have mislaid his helmet

©Bryan Zepp Jamieson
10/28/07
http://www.mytown.ca/zepp
 

Dreams can be daft things.

For instance, the other night, I dreamed that a friend of mine at the local community access channel had set up to do an interview with Dick Cheney. But when we got there, we looked at the chair where Cheney was supposed to be sitting, and he wasn’t there. Instead, there was just one of those goofy white helmets the Imperial storm troopers wore in the Star Wars movies. In the background a voiceover was going, “Yes, this is a dream. But it will make perfect sense, so remember it.”

Well, after I woke up and got some coffee in me, I remembered the dream and realized that it didn’t really make a whole hell of a lot of sense. If it was an idea I was going to toy with in waking hours, I would have put Darth Vader’s black helmet on the chair instead. Cheney’s always reminded me of a cross between Darth Vader and Montgomery Burns, the evil nuclear plant owner in the Simpsons. Say what you will about Cheney, he’s not the spear carrier type. He’s the one who might say, “Will no one rid me of this accursed priest?” He might be at Agincourt (although if he was, the English would have lost). He might have a hunched back and prove himself a serviceable villain.

What did amuse me was that evening, I when was watching BBC World News America (and if you are interested in an actual news program that routinely matches 60 Minutes at its best and has actual stories from actual journalists instead of the rubbish on the corporate channels, then tune in to Beeb America at 7pm Eastern or Pacific), Condoleezza Rice was on, struggling vainly to get some sort of accord going between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and she had her hair in a really severe framing curve around the left side of her face. It looked like one half of the Darth Vader helmet.

Which got me to thinking about the dream again. I had posted an article on Usenet about how the Colorado Rockies were run by religious whacks who were trying to claim that theirs was God’s team without actually making such a ludicrous claim, and noted that Boston had just crucified them 13-1. Someone asked if this meant Boston was a Jewish team, and I noted that it was more likely Roman, and said the Green Monster was an allegory for imperial power.

OK, I know a trend when I see one. Obviously I’ve got “America-as-evil-empire” on my brain. Understandable, given this admin’s insistence that it has the right to trash the constitution and the rights of people living in America.

Also understandable in that America has instigated two wars, followed by illegal occupations, over the past six years, and is now making bellicose noises at Iran, a country that is not only far more powerful than Iraq or Afghanistan, but which has Russia as a ally (Putin said a week ago that an attack on Iran would be seen as an attack on Russia) and China, which would see such an attack as cause to dump their bonds as fast as they could, wrecking the American dollar.

America spent the time since the cold war swanning about, talking about how America was the only superpower and basically controlled the world. The world had other ideas. While American right wingers were making truly idiotic remarks like calling countries that disagreed with administration policy “disloyal,” in Britain, the closest thing to an ally America has left, the Cockneys were referring to Americans as “Septics.” Granted, the only other word that rhymes with "Yanks" is even LESS flattering in English idiom. 

The American empire may well be the shortest-lived since Hitler – and even more destructive. Some of these crazy bastards on the right are talking about the use of “bunker busters” – relatively small nuclear bombs. That should provoke an interesting reaction from Putin, who DOES have WMDs – some 8,000 of them.

Even the New York Times is skeptical of administration claims that Iran is building nuclear weapons. That’s right – even the New York Times. When you can’t get the Times to toe the party line for you in a ramp up to war, then you really don’t have much of a case. Of course, you don’t NEED a case. Just political clout will do it. If this keeps up, Faux News might suggest not using nukes on Iran next. At which point, the GOP will be truly dead.

Some folks have suggested that the Pentagon simply refuse if Putsch orders them to attack Iran. As tempting as the idea is, it’s really a very, very, bad idea. In effect, these folks are urging that the Pentagon stage a military coup against the civilian authority, and those never work out well. The last time a military man was daft enough to try it, the President promptly fired his treasonous ass, and stuck by his guns, not matter how much the right vilified for him. These days, that President, Truman, is seen as a hero, and Douglas MacArthur as a strutting and pretentious flake.

No, the only entity that can stop Putsch and the other mad bastards in his administration is Congress, and it’s becoming obvious that there aren’t enough Democrats left who haven’t whored out to corporate and GOP influence to stop him.

The rest of the world will try to stop Putsch from carrying out his lunatic schemes. Europe, Russia, and probably China can exert enough economic pressure to give Putsch pause. As noted, China is in a position where it can smash the already weak dollar, and needs only to consider the economic disruptions and short-circuiting of their own “economic miracle” a sacrifice worth making in order to avoid World War Three.

Putin couldn’t possibly have made it more clear. He will regard an attack on Iran as an act of war. Even those countries in Europe not kindly disposed to the mullah regime in Tehran will find that persuasive. And Putin regards missiles in Europe as a provocation equal to the one his own country committed some 45 years ago in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Putsch has dismissed war talk with Iran as being just rumors, and it’s telling that nobody, not even his own party, pretends to believe him. Have you encountered anyone who has said, “Oh, there won’t be war. The President says he wants to avoid it”? No, and you won’t. The man made a career out of lying to us, and now nobody believes him.

Meanwhile, despite the propaganda from the GOP and Faux, Iraq continues to worsen. Turkey appears to have enough sense not to occupy northern Iraq (they’ve seen a bad example of how that turns out recently) but they could still attack, and with the Americans not willing to protect the Kurds (they’ve decided that the Kurdish PKK that is provoking Turkey is “terrorist”) the US will lose the only allies they have in Iraq.

In the meantime, the latest is the effort to restore order by putting Saddam’s henchmen back in control. Doubtlessly in the name of freedom and democracy.

So: internationally, the situation is bad, and getting worse. We’re closer to World War Three than at any time since the USSR was in full power, some 20 plus years ago.

Stay tuned.