i can only slake my desire for infinite revenge with an infinitely deep lake of blood

“Two sides to every story
Somebody had to stop me
I'm not the same as when I began
I will not be treated as property”

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- John Lydon

In 2004, LI compared what was happening in Iraq to a chess game. This was a radically simplifying image, meant only to highlight the fact that, a., “American strategy” was not the salient factor, by that time, in Iraq’s affairs in spite of the myopic depictions of the American newspapers; and b., there would be no deus ex machina, no special suspension of the laws of causality, for the Americans. Whenever the governing class confronts one of those crises that results from a combination of erroneous assumptions and its own deepseated corruption, it immediately begins to evoke a suspension of the laws of causality, along the lines of “… but if Iraq improves in the next three months,” etc.Behind the cloud that is supposed to hide cause and effect, the elites scramble to put in place the usual deals and violence. But of course, in 2003 the elites, to even manage the affair of plunging the U.S. into an unprovoked, aggressive war, had already bet that the violence would be so easy – that a major war could be waged with the resources of limited war, with the surplus cost going, of course, to a network of seedy mercenaries of all kind, an immense machine dedicated to hiring politicos and producing goods and services that were as expensive as they were unnecessary. Of course, you can’t wage a major war as though it were a limited war – which LI pointed out in 2002-2003 in increasingly hysterical tones, like a mockingbird with an adenoid problem. But even LI, at that time, couldn’t imagine how fucked up the U.S. effort was going to be.

Well, as John Lydon said, “You never listen to a word that I said…” Me, plus how many million worldwide, out in the streets protesting, and given the kind of rush one usually reserves for a prophylactic salesman’s phone call at dinnertime. Fuck off wasn’t in it – this was a truly historic silence, an indication of the absolute decay of democracy world wide – a silence compared to which the Czar’s soldier’s trampling down and shooting the crowd petitioning the Winter Palace in 1905 was actually more democratic, more responsive. Poof, the crowds went. Poof, the protest went. Poof, the protest went about the occupation. Oh, we all went poof, we were all so so so fucked. But we ate, we shat, we fucked, and we watched other crowds get it in the neck, in the groin, get the dental drill, the black hood, the drone bombardment, the white phosphorus.

Anyway, the chess metaphor served to point out some facts, but the problem with chess is, of course, that the ritual sequencing of moves, the waiting while one’s opponent makes his move, organizes the game tidily away from reality, where the moves are made by millions, all at once, on countless number of boards, according to an inferno of rules. So, while LI has pressed for one thing since the invasion – unilateral, immediate American withdrawal - and we still believe in pressing for that, we aren’t insane. Nobody hears, and nobody certainly is going to give this result in the American system. We will be in Iraq, in all probability, until 2008 and beyond. The way to get out of Iraq, from the American side, is to press in every way, from discouraging recruitment to demoralizing the war effort to pressing congress. Unfortunately, when the Peace movement went poof, it disheartened those who would organize the stabbing in the back of the American military effort – and the anti-war effort has since been mainly directed by those who abjure the whole stabbing in the back thing in order to remain, uh, politically viable. Yeah, right. Well, we are ardently pro-stab, and hope that the demoralization of the American will – that vaunted tool of the para psychos in DC – will lead to massive, permanent cuts in American military expenditure and a radically revampted foreign policy that no longer relies on military threat, period.

However, there is what you want and there is reality. The one thing a small blog can do is work to promote the decomposition of the American will, and particularly the illusion, which is still prevalent, that the Americans are over there to prevent a bloodbath – which illusion was, in the Vietnam war, beginning to crack under the strain of too much reality by 1967. Still, it is a perennial American misconception. It is like thinking a man purchases an elephant gun to protect elephants.

However, as it is likely the America Will is not going to respond to LI’s flea circus, we have another goal we want to promote, even though it is in contradiction to the goal of withdrawal. This is simply to call for unconditional negotiations between all parties in Iraq – the Americans, Al Qaeda, the Badr Brigade, etc. – simply in order to establish a basic level of self-policing and a significant diminishment of attacks. On the table should be the ridding of the criminal gangs that have attached themselves to all factions (including the Americans – we have heard too much about the private military services to not think they’ve engaged in murder and robbery). Does such a suggestion have a snowball’s chance in Cheney’s undisclosed underground location?

I don't know.