rant from Japan - I Lunghi Giorni Della Vendetta

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I Lunghi Giorni della Vendetta


If revenge is a dish best served cold, then it should also be served slowly, over several long enjoyable courses, leisurely picking the bones of your enemies over several days or weeks. The above title, taken from a 1968 spaghetti western, translates from the Italian to "Long Days of Revenge," and it sums my feelings perfectly these days. Every morning I turn on CNN or BBC and I'm greeting by another story of corrupt, war-mongering American Conservative operatives and Republican Party politicians slowly marinating in a stew of blood and scandal. For progressives our grievances and grudges against the Right go back long before the stolen 2000 election (my first political campaign work was handing out leaflets in California for Edmund G. Brown Sr. in his ill-fated gubernatorial race against Ronald Reagan) – so vengeance is indeed sweet. It now simply requires an "X" in a box, a push of a pin, or a pulling of a lever in free and fair election in less than two weeks time.

Before I indulge in any gloating over the current status of the War in Iraq, I'll state for the record that once this unnecessary conflict began, I said out loud that I hoped it went right – that victory would be swift and that reconstruction of the damage and the creation of a fledgling democracy in that land would succeed in much the same way the American occupation of Japan in 1945-52 accomplished most of its goals. My only published academic piece is on the writing of the Japanese Constitution by a mostly "New Deal" oriented group of U.S. military and civilians in February 1946 and I had hoped to compare two successful progressive liberations from tyranny.

Instead it was a catastrophic example of the old "Murphy's Law" – if anything could go wrong it did so. Everything Bush, Rumsfeld, Proconsul Bremer and the frat-boy Republican appointees in the Green Zone touched literally turned to untreated Baghdad sewage. My favorite moment among many was the one day the Americans and the interim puppet government, without consultations, unveiled a new Iraqi flag – a mostly White field with two Blue stripes and a Yellow Crescent – angry Iraqis quickly made crude copies so that they could burn them in street rallies. It was immediately withdrawn and never seen again.

This last month of October 2006 brings back so many memories and parallels from the February 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam – the month that the American public turned against that war. While this War has had any number of gripping pictures and images, Tet 68 had that one seminal segment when a South Vietnamese general summarily executed a Viet Cong operative – the footage showed a stream of blood shooting out of the man's head like a fountain – I saw it myself over dinner with my parents and my brother. It was then and there that the American people realized that they had been lied to by their government.

This current generation of Americans has been much slower to realize the same facts but they had collectively experienced the terror and loss of a September 11th 2001, an event which this Administration and its supporters then cruelly and cynically manipulated to their own selfish ends. Their great works were to produce a reduction of Americans' Civil Rights at home, a loss of respect for our Democracy worldwide, Torture with a capital T, and a bloody, evil war with Arabian scripts that rivals the blackest days of the French atrocities of 1956-62 in Algeria. Sorry, maybe that's too much history and geography for most Americans, but it isn't for me.

What bothers me the most is the clear lack of shame by any of the Bushites but that should not be surprising coming from their dysfunctional, C-plus in college, 'recovered' alcoholic President who could not even admit he had made any mistakes in the War on Terror until just a few weeks ago. The entire premise that you could even a 'War' on 'Terror' is prima facie absurd. Terror is a tactic, declaring war on it is like declaring war on people going door-to-door with clipboards. No, no shame, no reflection, only school boy arguments like "Clinton didn't resign," along with disgustingly embarrassing pleadings to American people to please, please, please let us stay in power. The Democrats are the party of bin Laden, they'll Cut and Run, they'll endanger you, your children and your S.U.V., ad nauseam. The very idea that there are voters out there who will fall for this argument for the fourth election in a row sickens me. May they not be a majority this time, please God. (It should be noted, that yes, I am sincerely invoking his name here this once, just don't expect to see me in church this Sunday.)

The backbone of the American democracy is the whole systems of oversight, of checks and balances that keeps one group from gaining absolute power. The political fallout from 9-11 upset this and for the past six years we in America have had a One-Party state with an emasculated, sheepish opposition similar to what exists in the Russian Duma today. And look at what a One-Party state has accomplished in such short time. Record deficits, tax cuts for the rich, government by lobbyists, drift and destruction for the environment and global warming and a war, which at last tally, may total a bill of perhaps two trillion dollars. In easier terms every minute in Iraq is costing us $380,000. A minute.

I will confess I was ignorant of how bad things had gotten in Congress until I read a great piece in the current Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi (I hope you're watching Hunter Thompson) on the corruption and death of bipartisanism and coherent law-making there. The entire expose is delicious in its detail and in the sheer weight of the crimes revealed. My comment of the lack of shame of the Repugs was illustrated by the letter convicted former San Diego (my hometown) Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a former U.S. Navy fighter pilot, wrote from prison to the reporter who exposed his blatant corruption – here is the damming excerpt.

"Each time you print it hurts my family And now I have lost them Along with Everything I have worked for during my 64 years of life...I am human not an Animal to keep whiping . I made some decissions Ill be sorry for the rest of my life… As truth will come out and you will find out how liablest you have & will be. Not once did you list the positives. Education Man of the Year...hospital funding, jobs, Hiway funding, border security, Megans law my bill, Tuna Dolfin my bill...and every time you wanted an expert on the wars who did you call. No you write About how I died."

This man, who can barely spell, let alone write coherent English, was the Republican Congressional leadership's choice to chair, CHAIR, the House Subcommittee on Human Intelligence Analysis and Counterintelligence! The Mark Foley scandal and the subsequent cover-up by that venal ball of human fat that is House Speaker Dennis Hastert, in the same manner that the Vatican hid their pedophile priests, was the icing on the cake. And we Americans are supposed to be holding up our version of Democracy as an example to the rest of the world? Here the British have us beat hands down. A government that behaved like this would suffer a loss in a vote of confidence, sweeping resignations, and a spanking at the polls. And it's a tragedy that a decent man like Tony Blair will forever have his legacy shattered by his failure to see through his cowboy partner George W. Bush.

Have I missed anything? Katrina – FEMA gate deserves more than a mention, but in the popular parlance 'that's so last year." North Korea did what? Afghanistan, doesn't that Borat guy come from there? No, I am done, and all that's left to do is grind more long knives for the throat-cutting. If you have read this far through this long-pent up rant, thank you. Get out the vote, find friends on Election Night and watch slaughter unfold. Then celebrate, preferably with champagne as our friends the French do But if the election is stolen like before, be ready to take to the streets. That shouldn't happen. For once I'll put my trust in the American people. The truth has been revealed to them in so many ways that they cannot fail to do the right thing and throw the rascals out. Tar and feathers anyone?

Sven A Serrano
Democrats Abroad Japan Kansai
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Sven Serrano, Democrats Abroad, Western Japan