The American Empire and "The Shady Stuff"

In a series of comments and replies between myself and Booman regarding the election, Booman wrote:

The State Department was being run by Poppy’s guys, who happened to have ties to some of the shadiest stuff our country has ever been involved in, but who also had a pretty orthodox view of America’s role in the world.

This got me to thinking, and my reply grew past the bounds of that thread. Way past.

Here ’tis.

The shady stuff, eh Booman?

That “shady stuff” is the “orthodox view of America’s role in the world.” At the very least it has historically been a tool of the emerging American PermaGov. Without the shady stuff…at least since the Spanish American War and in truth well before that…no American Empire would have ever arisen. Think of Manifest Destiny and what was done to implement that idea, from smallpox-infected blankets to the sinking of the Maine and beyond. Think of the clandestine bombing of Cambodia. Think of the totally unnecessary “to save American lives” nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Shady!!!??? There are no words to describe the shadiness of an act like that. It was simply a declaration of American military primacy over the entire world and proof that the U.S. would kill whomever it wanted to kill however it wanted to kill them in order to achieve its strategic goals.

And Booman…the “shady stuff” is coming back to haunt us. It’s already here with the economic collapse under which we are living…an economic collapse that was to a great degree exactly what bin Laden and the Islamic opposition had planned for us in the late 1990s/early 2000s.

Bet on it.

Read on for more.
You can bet on this as well.

The shades are still on our case and flying US-ward fast and furious.

Oh yes they are.

Chickens home to roost

War is the way of the universe, Booman. Right on up from virus and insect wars to the destruction of stars and galaxies. But we cannot continue our own shady act in a world full of WMDS of all varieties. Them injuns got repeatin’ rifles now, podna!!! And unless we clean up our fucking act today’s Little Big Horn massacres are going to continue to get bigger and bigger until the really big Doomsday horn sounds. Gabriel’s already warming up backstage. Ah kin hear him!

Photobucket

In a country that was founded on the twin…and totally opposing…principles of universal equality (“…all men are created equal…”) and human slavery, the word “shady” loses almost all meaning.

Shady?

Today?

It’s simply what’s for dinner in America, up and down the scale.

Shady?

WTFU or die.

For real.

This is not about “morality” or any other debatable concept, it is simply about survival. Clean up or die. The junkie’s last chance. Clean up or die.

FOUR MORE YEARS!!!???

Is Syria next?

Iran?

Cincinnati maybe?

Detroit?

Your house?

Mine?

What was it that got ol’ Ron Paul so totally un-personed by the media?

(Among other things like advocating cleaning up the financial area of the PermaGov, of course.)

It was this kind of thing.

If he were president, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul says, the United States would remove its forces from Afghanistan as “quickly as the ships could get there.”

In a July 20 interview with PBS’s “NewsHour,” the Lake Jackson Republican continued: “It’s insane on what we’re doing. And I’ll tell you one thing about this business about the military: We just had a quarterly (campaign finance) report, and they listed all the money that all the candidates got from the military. I got twice as much as all the other candidates put together on the Republican side, and even more than Obama got, which tells me that these troops want to come home as well because they know exactly what I’m talking about.”

OOOOoooooo…!!!

Cain’t have our heroic servicemen and women hestitating to press them drone buttons now kin we, Hiram!!! Git out them big guns. Call in the media!!! This Texas pol gotta go down!!!

And down he went.

Are we next?

Time will tell.

Oh yes it will.

Watch

6 Comments

Oui on August 5, 2012 at 11:26 am

‘Realists’ Gain Bush’s Ear, to Cheney’s Chagrin

(Anti-War) May 5, 2007 – With just over 18 months left in office, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush appears once again to be moving in a more “realist” direction in its dealings with the rest of the world, including the Middle East.

The most obvious sign came during this week’s regional meeting in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, where Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spent a 30-minute tete-a-tete with her Syrian counterpart, Walid al-Moallem, reportedly focused on securing greater cooperation from Damascus on sealing its border with Iraq.

It was the first bilateral cabinet-level encounter between the U.S. and Syria since the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, in protest of which Washington recalled its ambassador from Damascus.

While Rice later insisted that her meeting differed from last month’s controversial visit to Damascus by Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi because the discussion was both confined to Iraq and no photographers were present to record the occasion, most analysts here saw it one as the latest – and potentially most significant – in a series of tentative steps toward implementing key recommendations of the Iraq Study Group (ISG), co-chaired by super-realist James Baker.

Cheney, the leader of the administration’s hawks, had publicly condemned Pelosi’s visit to Damascus as “bad behavior,” while some of his neoconservative allies outside the administration even called for her prosecution under a 200-year-old law that makes it a crime for individual citizens to communicate with hostile foreign governments to influence their behavior.

Cross-posted from my diary – Syrian Kurds Near Autonomy, Adds To Erdogan’s Headache .

Arthur Gilroy on August 5, 2012 at 11:31 am

Lookin’ fer a little shady spot in which to snooze, maybe?

Wake the fuck up!!!

Ain’t no place for shady in the global warming glare of the internet. Things are hettin’ up all over the place!!! Cain’t fool them injuns no more. Nope. They got Wikileaks to read in 1100 languages and they ain’t gonna stand for that shit. Gotta crawl out from underneath the rock of American Empire into the cruel daylight of reality.

Or…die.

Our choice.

So far…? We done made the wrong one.

FOUR MORE YEARS!!!

UH oh!!!

Later…

Oui on August 5, 2012 at 1:36 pm

Four Reportedly Killed in Sikh Temple Shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin

TarheelDem on August 5, 2012 at 1:43 pm

AG, AG, AG:

You completely ignored Thomas Jefferson’s campaign against the Barbary “Pirates” and his letting Haiti hang out to dry during his term as President. And then there’s this:

The arrival of Joel Roberts Poinsett, in 1811, marked the beginning of U.S. involvement in Chilean politics. He had been sent by President James Madison in 1809 as a “special agent” to the South American Spanish colonies (a position he filled from 1810 to 1814) to investigate the prospects of the revolutionaries, in their struggle for independence from Spain.

From the beginning the United States of America styled itself as the “empire of liberty”. How’s that for an oxymoron. And speeches and writings over two centuries have been filled with that phrase. It was only with the Vietnam War that a minority of folks in the US began asking WTF are we doing. And it was only the validation of the Church Committee investigation during the Carter administration that allowed that to become a legitimate critical point of view.

Arthur Gilroy on August 5, 2012 at 2:08 pm

Not enough bits and bytes in Computerland to include all of the shady stuff. Not even close. Under this particular rock? The United States of Omertica? Fuggedaboudit!!! The truth about Bebe Rebozo and Nixon alone would bring down what is left of this government in a tumble of sudden revulsion from the people.

Or would it?

Maybe that kind of shit is now so much a part of “business as usual” that the people have no outrage left.

The McCarthy hearings updated:

Welch: You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

McCarthy: No. Why do you ask? What a silly question! Of course not, and nobody gives a good goddamn either, you moralizing old fart. It took us 60 years to desensitize the American public’s moral sense by sheer outrage overload, but now that we’ve managed to do it?

Security!!! Get this idiot outta here. We have Homeland Security issues to take care of today.

Next…???

Bring in the next miscreant!!!

Like dat.

Bet on it.

AG
- TarheelDem on August 5, 2012 at 6:09 pm
  
  You overestimate the people’s capacity for revulsion. Unless it touches them personally.
  
  Even in the Watergate era, as you most likely remember, most folks wondered what the fuss was about. A burglary at the Democratic Headquarters in June before the November election — just politics; they all do it. Breaking and entering Ellsberg’s psychiatrist office — got that peacenik, didn’t they? What was different was that at some point the Republican leadership decided that Nixon was a huge liability and threw him over the side — with a nice liferaft. Between Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton it is clear that impeachment does not work as the founders advertised (who the hell knows what their intentions were on it).

Oui on August 5, 2012 at 11:26 am

‘Realists’ Gain Bush’s Ear, to Cheney’s Chagrin

(Anti-War) May 5, 2007 – With just over 18 months left in office, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush appears once again to be moving in a more “realist” direction in its dealings with the rest of the world, including the Middle East.

The most obvious sign came during this week’s regional meeting in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, where Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spent a 30-minute tete-a-tete with her Syrian counterpart, Walid al-Moallem, reportedly focused on securing greater cooperation from Damascus on sealing its border with Iraq.

It was the first bilateral cabinet-level encounter between the U.S. and Syria since the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, in protest of which Washington recalled its ambassador from Damascus.

While Rice later insisted that her meeting differed from last month’s controversial visit to Damascus by Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi because the discussion was both confined to Iraq and no photographers were present to record the occasion, most analysts here saw it one as the latest – and potentially most significant – in a series of tentative steps toward implementing key recommendations of the Iraq Study Group (ISG), co-chaired by super-realist James Baker.

Cheney, the leader of the administration’s hawks, had publicly condemned Pelosi’s visit to Damascus as “bad behavior,” while some of his neoconservative allies outside the administration even called for her prosecution under a 200-year-old law that makes it a crime for individual citizens to communicate with hostile foreign governments to influence their behavior.

Cross-posted from my diary – Syrian Kurds Near Autonomy, Adds To Erdogan’s Headache .
Arthur Gilroy on August 5, 2012 at 11:31 am

Lookin’ fer a little shady spot in which to snooze, maybe?

Wake the fuck up!!!

Ain’t no place for shady in the global warming glare of the internet. Things are hettin’ up all over the place!!! Cain’t fool them injuns no more. Nope. They got Wikileaks to read in 1100 languages and they ain’t gonna stand for that shit. Gotta crawl out from underneath the rock of American Empire into the cruel daylight of reality.

Or…die.

Our choice.

So far…? We done made the wrong one.

FOUR MORE YEARS!!!

UH oh!!!

Later…

AG
Oui on August 5, 2012 at 1:36 pm

Four Reportedly Killed in Sikh Temple Shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin
TarheelDem on August 5, 2012 at 1:43 pm

AG, AG, AG:

You completely ignored Thomas Jefferson’s campaign against the Barbary “Pirates” and his letting Haiti hang out to dry during his term as President. And then there’s this:

The arrival of Joel Roberts Poinsett, in 1811, marked the beginning of U.S. involvement in Chilean politics. He had been sent by President James Madison in 1809 as a “special agent” to the South American Spanish colonies (a position he filled from 1810 to 1814) to investigate the prospects of the revolutionaries, in their struggle for independence from Spain.

From the beginning the United States of America styled itself as the “empire of liberty”. How’s that for an oxymoron. And speeches and writings over two centuries have been filled with that phrase. It was only with the Vietnam War that a minority of folks in the US began asking WTF are we doing. And it was only the validation of the Church Committee investigation during the Carter administration that allowed that to become a legitimate critical point of view.
- Arthur Gilroy on August 5, 2012 at 2:08 pm
  
  Not enough bits and bytes in Computerland to include all of the shady stuff. Not even close. Under this particular rock? The United States of Omertica? Fuggedaboudit!!! The truth about Bebe Rebozo and Nixon alone would bring down what is left of this government in a tumble of sudden revulsion from the people.
  
  Or would it?
  
  Maybe that kind of shit is now so much a part of “business as usual” that the people have no outrage left.
  
  The McCarthy hearings updated:
  
  Welch: You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
  
  McCarthy: No. Why do you ask? What a silly question! Of course not, and nobody gives a good goddamn either, you moralizing old fart. It took us 60 years to desensitize the American public’s moral sense by sheer outrage overload, but now that we’ve managed to do it?
  
  Security!!! Get this idiot outta here. We have Homeland Security issues to take care of today.
  
  Next…???
  
  Bring in the next miscreant!!!
  
  Like dat.
  
  Bet on it.
  
  AG
  - TarheelDem on August 5, 2012 at 6:09 pm
    
    You overestimate the people’s capacity for revulsion. Unless it touches them personally.
    
    Even in the Watergate era, as you most likely remember, most folks wondered what the fuss was about. A burglary at the Democratic Headquarters in June before the November election — just politics; they all do it. Breaking and entering Ellsberg’s psychiatrist office — got that peacenik, didn’t they? What was different was that at some point the Republican leadership decided that Nixon was a huge liability and threw him over the side — with a nice liferaft. Between Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton it is clear that impeachment does not work as the founders advertised (who the hell knows what their intentions were on it).

The American Empire and "The Shady Stuff"

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Arthur Gilroy

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