The Who

We’ll be fighting in the streets

With our children at our feet

And the morals that they worship will be gone

And the men who spurred us on

Sit in judgement of all wrong

They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution

Take a bow for the new revolution

Smile and grin at the change all around

Pick up my guitar and play

Just like yesterday

Then I’ll get on my knees and pray

We don’t get fooled again

The change, it had to come

We knew it all along

We were liberated from the fold, that’s all

And the world looks just the same

And history ain’t changed

‘Cause the banners, they are flown in the next war

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution

Take a bow for the new revolution

Smile and grin at the change all around

Pick up my guitar and play

Just like yesterday

Then I’ll get on my knees and pray

We don’t get fooled again

No, no!

I’ll move myself and my family aside

If we happen to be left half alive

I’ll get all my papers and smile at the sky

Though I know that the hypnotized never lie

Do ya?

There’s nothing in the streets

Looks any different to me

And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye

And the parting on the left

Are now parting on the right

And the beards have all grown longer overnight

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution

Take a bow for the new revolution

Smile and grin at the change all around

Pick up my guitar and play

Just like yesterday

Then I’ll get on my knees and pray

We don’t get fooled again

Don’t get fooled again

No, no!

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Meet the new boss

Same as the old boss

I nearly forgot to post a Pony Party today so I got nothing…  but this song has been in my head since I heard about the arrests at the IRS this morning: 32 arrested in Washington anti-war protest

Bravo to OPOL, pf8 and all the DharmaKossacks who participated.  

Today’s Four at Four will be long, but worth your time to read.

1. What is the real death toll in Iraq?
   By Jonathan Steele and Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian

   Lieutenant General Tommy Franks, who led the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan during his time as head of US Central Command, once announced, “We don’t do body counts.” This blunt response to a question about civilian casualties was an attempt to distance George Bush’s wars from the disaster of Vietnam. One of the rituals of that earlier conflict was the daily announcement of how many Vietnamese fighters US forces had killed. It was supposed to convince a sceptical American public that victory was coming. But the “body count” concept sounded callous – and never more so than when it emerged that many of the alleged guerrilla dead were in fact women, children and other unarmed civilians.

   Iraq was going to be different. The US would count its own dead (now close to 4,000), but the toll the war was taking on Iraqis was not a matter the Pentagon or any other US government department intended to quantify. Especially once Bush had declared “mission accomplished” on May 1 2003 – after that, every new Iraqi who died by violence would be a signal that the president was wrong, and would show that a war conducted in the name of humanitarian intervention was exacting a mounting humanitarian toll of its own.

   But even though the Americans were not counting, people were dying, and every victim had a name and a family. Wedding parties were bombed by US planes, couples driving home at night were shot at checkpoints because they missed a flashlight warning them to stop, and hundreds of other unarmed civilians were killed for no legitimate cause. In just the last three weeks of April 2003, after Saddam’s statue and his regime were toppled, US forces killed at least 266 civilians – a pattern of overeager resort to fire which has continued to this day.

   So five years after Bush and Tony Blair launched the invasion of Iraq against the wishes of a majority of UN members, no one knows how many Iraqis have died. We do know that more than two million have fled abroad. Another 1.5 million have sought safety elsewhere in Iraq. We know that the combined horror of car bombs, suicide attacks, sectarian killing and disproportionate US counter-insurgency tactics and air strikes have produced the worst humanitarian catastrophe in today’s world. But the exact death toll remains a mystery.

   The article examines the various estimates that range from “100,000 dead to well over a million”. It is well worth the time to read.

Four at Four continues below the fold looking at the five year anniversary of the war in Iraq and its occupation.

2. The Washington Post reports on Five Years In Iraq. “For a majority of Americans, today marks the fifth anniversary of the start of an Iraq war that was not worth fighting, one that has cost thousands of lives and more than half a trillion dollars. For the Bush administration, however, it is the first anniversary of an Iraq strategy that it believes has finally started to succeed… Officials now running the U.S. effort express frustration that the gains wrought by their new political, security and economic policies — in particular, sharply reduced violence — are continually weighed against the first four years of the war, when Iraq unraveled in insurgency and sectarian strife… Today’s policy is fundamentally different from the impatient mind-set of 2003, in both lowered U.S. expectations and a less imperious approach to dealing with Iraqi authorities.”

   Click to enlarge.

   The Swamp blog for the Tribune newspapers reports Americans call Iraq mistake and are divided over withdrawal. “Five years into the war in Iraq, a majority of Americans surveyed say the United States made a mistake in using military force there… The latest national national survey of the Washington-based Pew Research Center, conducted Feb. 20-24, found that 54 percent of Americans surveyed believe ‘the U.S. made the wrong decision in using military force in Iraq,’ while 38 percent called it the right decision.”

   “Support has faded despite a public perception that conditions are improving in Iraq… Americans remain divided on the question of keeping troops in Iraq or bringing them home. A slim plurality (49 percent) now supports bringing the troops home as soon as possible, while 47 percent favor maintaining troops in Iraq until the situation there is stabilized.

3. The New York Times reports Bush defends Iraq War in speech. “In an address Wednesday morning marking the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq, President Bush defended the conflict as one that was necessary and is succeeding.” Honestly, the NY Times coverage of the liar-in-chief’s speech is abysmal.

   The Guardian does a better reporting job in After five years in Iraq, Bush hails ‘strategic victory’. “George Bush showed no sign of regret today when he marked the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by declaring that the costs in terms of lives and upheaval had been worth it and that retreat would threaten both security and the world economy. He claimed his strategy adopted last year of increasing the number of US troops in Iraq had been a triumph… It was his most upbeat assessment of Iraq since his [in]famous ‘mission completed’ speech on board a US aircraft carrier in May 2003… The exact number of Iraqi dead is unknown but estimates run to the hundreds of thousands. The US military death toll stands at 3,990, up from 3,000 just over a year ago, with 29,395 wounded.”

   John McCain, running for Bush’s third term, boldly issued a statement today: “America and our allies stand on the precipice of winning a major victory against radical Islamic extremism… The security gains over the past year have been dramatic and undeniable.” Can Americans be so stupid as to vote for him?

4. The News & Observer reports ‘I will end this war,’ Obama says. “Barack Obama said today in Fayetteville that the United States must end the war in Iraq to meet its real security challenges. ‘I will offer a clean break from the failed policies and politics of the past,’ Obama said. ‘Nowhere is that break more badly needed than Iraq.’ ‘I will set a new goal on Day 1’ as commander in chief, he said. ‘I will end this war.‘

   SusanG of Daily Kos notes Obama takes it to McCain on Iraq war. “In a brilliant pivot away from race, Obama capitalized in North Carolina this morning on McCain’s confusion yesterday about the relationship between Iran and Al Qaeda:”

   Now we know what we’ll hear from those like John McCain who support open-ended war. They will argue that leaving Iraq is surrender. That we are emboldening the enemy. These are the mistaken and misleading arguments we hear from those who have failed to demonstrate how the war in Iraq has made us safer. Just yesterday, we heard Senator McCain confuse Sunni and Shiite, Iran and al Qaeda. Maybe that is why he voted to go to war with a country that had no al Qaeda ties. Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America’s enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades.

   Reuters adds Obama says Clinton showed lack of judgment on Iraq. “He likened Clinton’s approach to that of McCain… ‘The way to win a debate with John McCain is not to talk, and act, and vote like him on national security, because then we all lose. The way to win that debate and to keep America safe is to offer a clear contrast, and that’s what I will do,’ he said.”

5. The Independent writes Five years after the invasion, the totality of our failure is clear.

   Five years on… the removal of that dictator remains the single attainment of an enterprise that was always as flawed in its genesis as in execution.

   Iraq is a war-torn and wasted land. Estimates of its civilian dead range from almost 100,000 to more than 10 times as many. More than two million of its people have fled. The indiscriminate killings may have slowed, but ethnic cleansing continues apace. Any semblance of democracy is confined to the Kurdish region – as it was before the war…

   The US, for its part, is trapped. The controversial troop surge briefly subdued the violence – but at tremendous cost in men and material. With the effect wearing off, however, Washington can ill-afford to reduce their numbers, lest the violence return to previous levels…

   The evolution of a new Iraq, however, will be proof not that might was right but of the indomitability of the human spirit. We would also remind those tempted to regard these five years of suffering as somehow vindicated that the timescale Mr Bush envisaged for operations was rather closer to five months.“

Lastly, to switch tracks completely, Arthur C. Clarke died yesterday. Here is his obituary.

6. The obituary for Sir Arthur C. Clarke from The Guardian.

   Giant among imaginative promoters of the ideas of interplanetary travel, the colonising by man of nearby planets and the urgent need for peaceful exploration of outer space, Sir Arthur C Clarke, who has died aged 90, was pre-eminent because of his hard and accurate predictions of the detailed technologies of spaceflight and of the use of near-earth space for global communications…

   The turning point in Clarke’s career came slightly later with the publication in 1952 of The Exploration of Space, a non-fiction work which nevertheless became a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic. As a writer he was made.

   Clarke’s stature and impact was probably greater than he could have imagined at that time: it has certainly been far greater than that accorded by popular acclaim, for he was highly and, sometimes, effectively critical of the limitations and military basis of the world’s major space programmes. He was bitterly critical of the 1980s concept of Star Wars and, well before this emerged as US policy, sent a personal message of appeal from his Physics and Space Institute in Sri Lanka to the US Congress. His video statement A Martian Odyssey, which was read into the congressional record, argued that money being spent on intercontinental ballistic missiles could, to everyone’s benefit, be imaginatively channelled into an international space voyage to Mars to mark the 500th anniversary of the voyage of Columbus in search of the Americas in 1492. He did not predict an end to the cold war, but he always sought and fought for new bridges between cultures.

   This underlying seriousness led him to view his creative participation in commercial, if poetic, other-worldly enterprises, such as the film of his book 2001: a Space Odyssey, as a kind of scenario writing, not to be taken as an example of his central work. In this, however, many would disagree, for 2001 (“a glorified screenplay” according to Clarke) was in many ways so accurate and convincing that Alexei Leonov, the first spacewalking human, said that he felt that it had carried him into space again.

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Asked about two thirds of Americans’ opposition to war, Cheney says, ‘So?’

“War is merely a continuation of politics by other means.” Though Clausewitz didn’t intend it to be used this way, the quote has gained a life of its own for the bald truths contained within it. First that war is always a choice (though, rarely, the only other choice is surrender) and second….that it is a choice made by politicians.

My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.

George Bush, March 19, 2003

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What if that choice didn’t exist? What if war was not an option for politicians?

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America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

George W. Bush

We can’t allow the world’s worst leaders to blackmail, threaten, hold freedom-loving nations hostage with the world’s worst weapons.

George W. Bush

We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace.

George W. Bush

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.

George W. Bush

Though Clausewitz was merely reflecting the reality of our times…he was wrong. War is not a continuation of politics, it is the failure of politics, and of diplomacy, and reason, and imagination…and most importantly, will. It is the choice of dullards. Dullards who inevitably, somehow, manage to profit from their failures to achieve peace. War is always…..a failure.

Travel with me now to a mythical land. A land where Sentient Beings have evolved a bit more than they have here, on this little backwater of a planet in a podunkville arm of an unimportant galaxy. A land where the natural conflicts that arise between beings was handled….differently.

A land where instead of spending the treasure of a nation, the collective product of a nations taxed toil on war, it was spent on improving the lot and living conditions of all people so that strife would not arise. Where nations and leaders didn’t try to impose their beliefs on others. A land where the egos of the politicians did not dictate their response to conflict, but reason did instead. A land where conflict was anticipated…and addressed BEFORE it escalated to the point where blood ‘need’ be shed. A land where solution, rather than dominance, was sought. A land where war was such an abhorrent concept that it never entered the minds of the leaders of this land. A land where war was not an option to continue politics and policies.

Where instead, the peaceful resolution of conflict was a necessity.

Imagine the resources that had been put towards killing other sentient beings……were instead used to achieve the resolution of conflict through economic means, where the resources used to train soldiers and study warfare were used to train diplomats and study conflict resolution. Where there was no other choice. Because the thought of killing another sentient being over resources or religion or idealism or…politics….was considered a far worse crime than any other.

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

I remember reading a story in the New York Times magazine, in October of 2004 about terrorism and John Kerry’s view on it.

Kerry had a far different view of what should be done to counter terrorism:

But when you listen carefully to what Bush and Kerry say, it becomes clear that the differences between them are more profound than the matter of who can be more effective in achieving the same ends. Bush casts the war on terror as a vast struggle that is likely to go on indefinitely, or at least as long as radical Islam commands fealty in regions of the world. In a rare moment of either candor or carelessness, or perhaps both, Bush told Matt Lauer on the ”Today” show in August that he didn’t think the United States could actually triumph in the war on terror in the foreseeable future. ”I don’t think you can win it,” he said — a statement that he and his aides tried to disown but that had the ring of sincerity to it. He and other members of his administration have said that Americans should expect to be attacked again, and that the constant shadow of danger that hangs over major cities like New York and Washington is the cost of freedom. In his rhetoric, Bush suggests that terrorism for this generation of Americans is and should be an overwhelming and frightening reality.

When I asked Kerry what it would take for Americans to feel safe again, he displayed a much less apocalyptic worldview. ”We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance,” Kerry said. ”As a former law-enforcement person, I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.”

This analogy struck me as remarkable, if only because it seemed to throw down a big orange marker between Kerry’s philosophy and the president’s. Kerry, a former prosecutor, was suggesting that the war, if one could call it that, was, if not winnable, then at least controllable. If mobsters could be chased into the back rooms of seedy clubs, then so, too, could terrorists be sent scurrying for their lives into remote caves where they wouldn’t harm us. Bush had continually cast himself as the optimist in the race, asserting that he alone saw the liberating potential of American might, and yet his dark vision of unending war suddenly seemed far less hopeful than Kerry’s notion that all of this horror — planes flying into buildings, anxiety about suicide bombers and chemicals in the subway — could somehow be made to recede until it was barely in our thoughts.

Remember?  Remember when Bush said he didn’t think the “war on terror” could ever be won?  Remember when he and Cheney were running around on every talk show and media newshour one could think of, telling Americans we should live in fear, that it wasn’t just probable but inevitable that we would be attacked again?

I remember it very well.

I remember after 9/11 being astonished at the notion that bombing Afghanistan would be the correct response to bin Laden’s terrorism.  And, of course, even that bad idea was made worse in practice, and to this day bin Laden is at large.

Going to war in Iraq was a surreal exercise in raw power by the few over the many.  There were those of us who knew this even before the 2000 selection, that this crew of criminals were intent on taking and maintaining power for power’s sake, and going to war preemptively fit that pattern very well.

Over one million Iraqi citizens dead.  Millions made into refugees.  A culture destroyed.  Osama bin Laden still free.  Afghanistan reverting back to Taliban rule.

A generation of American servicemen and women used dishonorably by a bogus Commander in Chief and his sychophantic generals and their lackeys.  Almost 4,000 dead.  Tens of thousands maimed.  Thousands homeless after their return “home.”

All of this because this misAdministration of traitors care only for power, retaining power, and using power to hurt others, whether fellow citizens or those from other countries.

Our privacy as citizens destroyed as their secrecy and “executive privilege” grows.

They know only one way and that is destruction, brute force.  There has been virtually no accomplishment by this misAdministration, none.  Each and every issue receives the same violent response, from the destruction of New Orleans to the destruction of Iraq.

It is clear that Mister Bush, Mr. Cheney, Ms. Rice and Mr. Rumsfeld never had any intention of trying to stop terrorism, trying to capture Osama bin Laden.  Their only intent was to gain power for themselves and their friends and destroy anyone or anything that got in their way.  I’m sure historians will come up with fancier explanations.  I am not a historian.

And they are continuing in this mad pursuit.  They want to go to war with Iran.

And what is the response of our elected representatives?

They are holding firm on not reauthorizing FISA.  Well that’s a good thing.  But it’s not near enough, and we all know that.  While they have been invading the privacy of American citizens, they have also been holding their own decision-making top secret, even to the point of what they eat for dinner, I don’t doubt.

Impeachment?  We know they belong behind bars.  Bush.  Cheney.  Rumsfeld.  Rice.  Gonzalez.  So many more, so many.

And our candidates for President — not one has said a word about this kind of urgent need for accountability.  Not one.  Which is why I don’t give a rat’s ass about the 2008 Presidential election.  There has been no leadership and with the exception of too few folks like Kucinich and Wexler, there will be no leadership on this.

Our country has committed the crime of a preemptive war against a country who did not attack us.  Those in power in our country have committed countless crimes against American citizens and against humanity.

All they know is war.  All they know is power.  And until we hold them accountable and show the entire world this is not to be borne, they will continue to wage war and gain power.  If they are not held accountable it will not matter who becomes President in November of 2008.

All they know is war.  All they want is war.  Always.

Year six.  And no end in sight.

Via Raw Story:

Iraq war protesters arrested at IRS headquarters

Police arrested more than a dozen people Wednesday morning who crossed a barricade and blocked entrances at the Internal Revenue Service building, the start of a day of protests marking the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

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Via Docudharma! We’re going to shut down the IRS! MARCH 19, 2008 by: OPOL

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You may or may not remember him, or even heard of the man, but former Ohio senator Howard Metzenbaum passed away last week at the age of ninety.  CNN.com reports of his eighteen-year tenure as the United States senator from Ohio:

During 18 years on Capitol Hill, from 1977 to 1995, Metzenbaum came to be known as “Senator No” and “Headline Howard” for his abilities to block legislation and get publicity for himself.

He was a cantankerous firebrand who didn’t need a microphone to hold a full auditorium spellbound while dropping rhetorical bombs on big oil companies, the insurance industry, savings and loans, and the National Rifle Association, to name just a few favorite targets.

Unabashedly liberal, the former labor lawyer and union lobbyist considered himself a champion of workers and was a driving force behind the law requiring 60-day notice of plant closings.

When other liberals shied away from that label, Metzenbaum embraced it, winning re-election in 1988 from Ohio voters who chose Republicans for governor and president, and by wider margins than either George Voinovich or George H.W. Bush.

And the New York Times reports:

Mr. Metzenbaum’s success in passing social legislation on issues like workers rights and adoption policy, in blocking pork-barrel excess and tax loopholes, and in inventing new ways to use the filibuster – long the tool of Southern segregationists – were unquestioned.

Finally, the Cleveland Plain Dealer writes:

He once filibustered for two weeks against a bill to lift price controls on natural gas. When debate was cut off, Metzenbaum, who was to prove himself a master of Senate rules, invented a new stalling tactic. He introduced hundreds of amendments and called for a time-consuming roll call vote on each one.

Metzenbaum built a reputation as a Horatio at the bridge. He was credited with saving taxpayers millions of dollars by standing in the way of “Christmas tree bills,” adorned with costly favors for a given state or corporation. Metzenbaum was often at the forefront of Democratic opposition to Reagan administration cabinet and Supreme Court nominees.

This is precisely the sort of leadership we so desperately need in the U.S. Senate.  Since Metzenbaum and former senator John Glenn retired, we’ve been saddled with corrupt Republicans who are beholden not to their constituents, but corporations and the rigid GOP system of discipline that keeps any member from breaking ranks without incurring harsh consequences.  To be sure, in 2006 we were able to oust Mike DeWine from office in favor of Democrat Sherrod Brown.  But even Brown has not exactly been a leader in the Senate.

So why not make a concerted effort to convince Dennis Kucinich, currently representing Ohio’s 10th Congressional District, to run against incumbent George Voinovich in 2010?  Can you imagine the brand of leadership he would bring?  I can, and the more I think about it, the more I like the idea.

There is, to be sure, great risk for Kucinich in making such a run; this year he faced a surprisingly stiff primary battle, mostly from moneyed opponents who think he shouldn’t be running for any higher political office.  And considering how vicious an opponent Voinovich — who ran a nasty campaign for mayor against him in 1979 — is, the battle would most certainly be a tough one.  But I think it’s worth consideration.