ISIS: THE COMEDY SHOW

I sometimes think back on that glorious night in November of 2008, when Barak Obama gave his victory speech in Chicago’s Grant Park. As the tens of thousands gathered there watched Obama and his beautiful family approach the podium, there was a feeling of ecstasy in the air, almost as if the President-elect need not say anything for this moment to be etched in history forever. One could feel it, even from the vantage point of a TV screen. America had done it again. We’d thrown out the Bush-Cheney Huns, we’d righted the ship, and, most importantly, we’d blazed a new path for all the world to see, one in complete harmony with the national rhetoric of equality, democracy, opportunity and freedom. It felt good to be an American again. It was time to restore the nation’s dignity, especially in the realm of foreign policy, which The Huns had reduced to little more than a barbaric use of force (I use the word “barbaric” with purpose, being that we use it so often in describing ISIS). Please, somebody, anybody, rescue us from this endless degradation of drones, smart bombs, color coded terrorist threats, and the narrative needed to make us accept such idiocy. And we thought, yes, this man, this poised, intelligent black man with the dazzling smile — maybe he can do it.

Yeah — and maybe an elephant can fly.

In searching for the word that best describes how those of us who had so much hope now feel, I’ve chosen the word “depressed” — depressed to hear the same vocabulary, the same fear mongering, the same insincere, twisted “logic” The Huns sold us: the “coalition”, the “safe havens” for terrorist plots, the animal-like nature of the enemy, stopping them there so they won’t come here, ad nauseam. Most in harmony with how The Huns went about their business is the complete absence of the word “oil”.

It’s depressing.

It would not be fair to blame Barak Obama for the embarrassing level of intellect at which this country now operates. He, like many others who started out with better intentions, has been sucked into that dark and ominous vortex of the American political reality, a reality created by media interests — “Big Media” — who work for and share in the colossal profits of the current form of capitalism. If there is one thing I can say about Barak Obama, it is this: he is far from being the leader necessary to lead America and the world beyond this myopic moment in history.

So here’s the real story of ISIS, or ISIL, whatever, the story Barak Obama cannot tell, the story being denied the American people by the Lords of the global economy — and it reads more like the black humor of a Kurt Vonnegut novel.

I suppose we could start at the beginning of the 20^th century, when the colonial expropriation of the Middle East’s natural resources became necessary to fuel the Occidental idea of a life style. We could fill volumes of books if we started from that source, so let’s begin in the year 2000, when a bunch of oligarchic rich kids with the collective intellect of a marsupial, took over the government of the United States. The entitlement they felt as oligarchic rich kids included an imperial zeal that went even beyond the usual quota the American empire operates at. The events of 9/11 gave them a tailor made double play ball to put this imperial angst into play, but it would have happened anyway, sooner or later, because it had been their plan from even before their election.

So here they go — they make war in Iraq to the backdrop of Big Media’s cheerleading, who sell us the war as a defense against terrorism, as the removal of a wicked dictator (he kills his own people), weapons of mass destruction, democracy, liberation, sheesh! anything but oil. But any high school football coach could tell you their game plan was lacking in preparation. Their marsupial brains never concocted a plan beyond the fact that the United States has the most powerful military apparatus the world has ever known. They never even deign to get curious about the socio-political reality of the place they were attacking. Sunnis? Shias? This tribe or that? Who cares? We’ve got the guns. We’ll just barge in there and take over the place (ahahaha).

The Huns were so ignorant as to what they were getting into, they claimed victory (mission accomplished) before the war had begun! (ahahaha)

So it didn’t work out. The fighting went on for years, thousands of Americans are killed and maimed, it costs gazillions of dollars more than The Huns expected, and as for the Iraqi people — don’t ask. But the invading imperial gringos eventually manage to pacify the place under the weight of its military occupation, at least enough to form a government, a Shia government that answers more to our good buddies the Iranians, than to Halliburton. We blew up the place, both physically and emotionally, just to see a government not all that friendly to the “liberators” take over (ahahaha). But let’s not quibble. It’s a government, there were even votes cast, there’s not much fighting going on, this could work out. Maybe Domino’s can start delivering pizzas, with discount coupons and free toppings — they’ll love it (ahahaha).

So the American honkies, both black and white, thought the place was kind of, maybe, well — secured enough to get out of Dodge. Barak Obama, who, to his credit, hated this war to begin with, is eager to do so. He looks around, he smells the air, he listens for suspicious sounds and vibrations, and he thinks, yeah, let’s get out of here, it’s under control.

But guess what? (You don’t have to guess?) That’s right, it was not under control. Those who The Huns displaced and humiliated with their invasion (hey, Abu Ghraib, we made a lot of friends with that correctional institute), have regrouped and are ready to rumble. (Stop laughing, this is not so funny). Just like The Huns, who had not known when their war began, the Obama brain trust (a brain trust beyond the capabilities of a marsupial, but by how much I’m still not sure) mistakenly thought it was over. But it goes on without the American occupational force in place, and its scope has been expanded beyond just Iraq. It is an attempt to completely reconfigure the colonial contours of the map, centered over the ancient Sunni-Shia rivalry, with a few other factions we’d never heard of thrown in for good measure. The question is, why should we care? This is really a proxy war between the Saudis (Sunnis) and the Iranians (Shias). Why don’t we just sit it out and let them beat the crap out of each other? (ahahaha)

Unfortunately, it is now necessary to talk about oil, being that Big Media and America’s political class in general won’t. There are many people who believe we can frac, drill and sand tar our way out of this mess by becoming more energy self sufficient. But the global economy’s consumer society is so thirsting for fuel that it really isn’t a question of where it comes from, but of how much there is. Anything that becomes problematic for the supply of energy is problematic for the whole inter-connected neo-liberal capitalist system and its corporate hegemony in the world. The problem is global and cannot be resolved locally. If you don’t believe this, ask yourself this question: why would the United States put itself in harm’s way between these warring factions of Islam? (Cue the song, “We Are the World”) To make the world a better place for you and me? (Ahahaha)

So the war continues and Big Media’s propaganda onslaught must be ratcheted up once again. To premise any military action on purely economic grounds is unacceptable for the American people. They must be given more knee jerk, emotional reasons to act and we begin to hear the same bullcrap we’d heard from The Huns.

Let’s start with the personality of ISIS. Big Media will tell us, and I mean every chance they get, just what BAD DUDES these guys are. Look, they chop people’s heads off, an admittedly barbaric act, even worse than killing people with lethal injections, at least when it isn’t screwed up. But yes, I find nothing attractive about the ISIS concept of a society. I’d rather live under Bush-Cheney than ISIS (Ted Cruz? I’m not so sure). To tell you the truth, I think these guys would get along just fine with Rush Limbaugh, and that is BAD! But if the United States of America attacked every country run by bad dudes, it wouldn’t have enough money left to pave 5 miles of the New Jersey Turnpike, and money, not bad dudes, is the name of this game. But let’s be frank here — the United States, considering its actions over the last decade or more, acting as some kind of voice for morality in the world is — well, kind of ahahaha.

But what about the terrorist threat?

Have you ever noticed how Big Media always refers to ISIS as a “terrorist” organization? From my vantage point, they look more like an army or military organization representing a hypothetical nation-state. But nothing riles up the Monday Night Football Yokels more than terrorists. If we don’t stop them over there, etc., etc. They can’t be allowed those “safe havens” to plot their dirty deeds. I will now ask a few questions:

With regard to the 20 or so bad dudes that carried out the 9/11 operation,

     1) What was the most sophisticated weapon in their arsenal? Answer: the cutting edge technology of a razor blade.

     2) Where did they do much of their training? Answer: they learned to fly planes in Florida and Minnesota.

     3) Where was the plot hatched? Answer: certainly, much of it must have been worked and honed in the United States, but Hamburg, Germany supposedly played a pivotal role as well.

Now think back to the first attack on the World Trade Center. Where was that plot schemed up? Wasn’t it that barbaric, far off safe haven known as New Jersey? It’s too bad Chris Christy wasn’t Governor then. He could have closed off the George Washington Bridge and sent the mafia after them (ahahaha).

So the United States and their intelligence services really blew it. They should have attacked Florida, New Jersey and Hamburg, not Iraq (ahahaha).

The problem the United States has in the Middle East is this: regardless of what client states it has in the region (the oil whore potentates in the Persian Gulf; the royal families in Saudi Arabia and Jordan; the military regime in Egypt) the rank and file Arab-Moslem does not look upon the United States and see a friend. It seems that every time we arm a faction in the Islamic world, somewhere down the line those weapons are eventually used against us. At best, the armies we leave behind have little zeal in defending the petro-political interests of the United States. If the west is to maintain hegemony over the natural resources of this part of the world, it can only do so through military force, a remedy that has proven to be very “cost ineffective”, without even mentioning the human suffering it has caused.

So yes, this is a comedy, a tragic comedy. To think that a nation like the United States, a nation that has amazed and thrilled the world with its accomplishments — commercially, intellectually, sociologically, artistically, athletically, technologically, militarily and more — has been reduced to this blithering form of idiocy in dealing with the world around it, is depressing.

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I began writing essays in the early 90’s, the collection “Because You Never Asked” being a fractional but representative cross section of an output that is still in progress today. I restrict their content to anything that may be relevant since the dawn of time to the end of eternity. They’ve given me a kind of therapeutical way to voice my objections to the paradigm of our culture and the negativity it is leading us into. All cultures attempt to inculcate their constituents into someone’s narrow minded, self serving version of reality and this book is an attempt to translate these subterfuges into the truth. Although a number of my earliest essays are included in this collection, the vast majority of them are more contemporary. Regardless of their chronology, they should all still be pertinent to whatever is happening at this moment.

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