Chicken George’s worst nightmare ©2005 UrbisMedia
Anybody who confronts this Administration or Rumsfeld or the Pentagon with a true assessment, they find themselves either out of a job, out of their positions, fired, relieved or chastised. Their career comes to an end.
Janis Karpinski, interview with Marjorie Cohn, August 3, 2005
For being a cabal of hypocrites and military cowards, shirkers, and people who “had other priorities,” during the Vietnam War, Chicken George Bush and his Neo-cons are not a bunch to be taken lightly when it comes to doing political battle. While they adopt the posture of great supporters of our troops (cf. March 2005, No. 18.2) the record of their “fragging” military people exposes the hypocrisy behind that façade. Military people who do not play along with them, or who are not unquestioning “good soldiers” that will “follow orders,” are attacked, defamed, disgraced, demoted, or otherwise dispatched.
It would make a most interesting seminar to convene John McCain, Max Cleland, John Kerry, and Generals Shinseki, Karpinski, and Colin Powell. There are probably some I have missed, but they suffice to make the point. McCain, after enduring several years iof torture in a POW camp came home and found out what political torture was at the hands of Karl Rove who had him fathering black babies. Cleland, a triple amputee, and a decorated veteran got smeared by the same bunch. They like to kick a guy when he’s down. Then there were the calumnious Swift Boat Veterans who had Kerry shooting Vietnamese kids in the back and throwing away his medals. Shinseki’s offense was telling Rumsfeld, prophetically, that he couldn’t pacify Iraq with 130,000 troops, and Karpinski is taking the hit to cover up Pentagon responsibility for Abu Ghraib. This is how they like to show their support for the troops. With “friends” like that who needs “insurgents.”
But Powell, you might question? Of course. One has to roll back to that fateful scene of Colin Powell, widely respected Secretary of State of the United States of America, probably the most respected person the Bush Administration, not only for his war service, but because he seemed to be the voice of moderation, a rational voice that counseled caution and non-military methods of addressing the problem of terrorism and the political and cultural complexities of the Middle East. Powell who might prove to be a problem with his more “liberal” state department people, and who received more respect and credence than the president.
Bringing down Powell was a political masterstroke, probably orchestrated by Cheney or Rove, or both: put Powell in front of the UN with that bogus pile of lies and suppositions they called “intelligence” and let the old general make the case for war on Iraq. Then when we are closing in on Baghdad and the intel gets exposed for the bullshit that it is, Colin will no longer be a problem with that albatross of being a dupe or a dope around his neck.
Because they are its very antithesis, the cabal knew that they could get Powell to cooperate in their fragging him in front of the watching world (and, bonus points here, in the UN the neo-cons despise). Powell, who seems unable to desist in being “the good soldier” at any cost (didn’t he ever see The Man in the Glass Booth ?) was the perfect target to the Bush fraggers when it become evident to them that he didn’t share their perspective on Iraq. But the good soldier would follow the orders of Chicken George, his commander-in-chief, saluting, as they say, the rank, if not the man.
In may respects it is the same “good soldier” mentality that overrides realities in the minds of so many military people in Iraq. The Romans used to regard farm boys as the best recruits for the Roman Army. They were used to hard work, understood defending territory, and were not used to the freedoms to which city boys were accustomed. Being little more than slaves, they fit the military life and even regarded it as an honor to serve. And most importantly, they followed orders without question and fought valiantly. They were “good soldiers.” While making for good armies and victories, under a corrupt command, such as the Nazis, for example, you could end up with the Eichmann factor—“I was just following orders, like a good soldier.”
I hasten to clarify that my point is not to associate in any way Powell’s behavior with that of Eichmann, but both “following orders” resulted in a lot of dead people. Powell, a very intelligent man, is certainly aware of having been fragged. He knew he had to leave, his effectiveness, his role in the administration, even as a voice of reason and moderation, gone in a few minutes of video tape. They hung him out to twist in the wind. Colin Powell, once regarded as Presidential timber, is, rather than making history, history. Done in by men who are not fit to polish his boots or dust off his rack of campaign ribbons. All’s fair in politics the way the Republicans play it.
Fragging was a term that came into the lexicon of war in Vietnam, although there probably have been in every war, incidents of soldiers creating “accidents” or “friendly fire” in the chaos of battle that did away with superior officers. And there have always been situations where the upper brass have used the lower ranks to take the blame, one of the most notorious being when the US Navy blamed the explosion in a battleship gun turret on a seaman’s “homosexuality.” The execution of three soldiers for supposed “cowardice” in the face of the enemy as portrayed in the WW I film, Paths of Glory , is not a fiction without factual backing. The Romans used to “decimate” (execute every tenth legionnaire) a legion if it failed to perform.
Should Powell have seen it coming? Yes, he was too smart to not know what a bunch of ruthless backstabbers he hooked up with. Should he have seen it coming and ducked the UN presentation (hell, let Rumsfeld do it, or Bolton, he would have loved it)? Maybe Powell “owed one” to the people who gave his son a nice nepotistic FCC Chairman job. Should I feel sorry for him for getting it this way, even though he bears some responsibility for getting us into this war and getting Cindy Sheehan’s kid and over 1,900 killed and thousands maimed. My sympathies are with them; Colin Powell can wait at the end of the line, and the line keeps getting longer.
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©2005, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 10.1.2005)