No Fun

As every card-carrying neocon knows, certain parts of governmenting are just no fun. And when you get to these parts, the best bet is just to just ignore it and hope it goes away. That's what our Founding Fathers did, after all. When the King came to collect taxes, they just ignored him. When the Redcoats came to suppress the fledgling republic, patriots like Patrick Henry simply shrugged and said: "there's no evidence that British influences have controlled the colonial government. And pass the scones - there's a good chap."

And so it is with our adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. While it was a hoot to bomb the locals with 'smart' munitions and then to roll our awesome tanks against them and then take their oil, it's a lot less fun to try and rebuild them and establish democratic governments. That's like studying and taking tests - best to avoid the whole thing.

So in Afghanistan, all our promises to build schools and hospitals are just a bunch of hooey. In four years of less-than-glamorous occupation and rebuilding, we've built pretty much nothing.

Four years after American-led forces ousted the Taliban, the United States has spent $1.3 billion on reconstruction in Afghanistan, intending to win over Afghans with tangible signs of progress. And indeed, there are some. But to Afghans, the Turmai clinic is emblematic of what they see as a wasteful, slow-moving effort that benefits foreigners far more than themselves. "The aid that comes from other countries for the Afghan people, it's not going to the Afghan people," said Mr. Ahmadiyar. "It's being wasted."

Of course. Administrating is hard. It doesn't have cool catch-phrases like "shock and awe." It's a big snooze.

But grownups realize that it's the most important part. If you screw it up as badly as the Junta has, you are absolutely guaranteeing that you'll be back. Already, the Taliban is recovering their strength. The 'central government' is just an American base - the countryside belongs to the drug lords.

When you try to avoid your grownup responsibilities, you suffer. If you don't pay your rent, you get tossed out. When you lie to everybody, everybody treats you like a liar. There are no two ways - you are your actions. The out of control teenaged septuagenarians running the ruling Junta are just figuring this out.

...the Bush administration's effort to win quickly and cheaply in Afghanistan and then Iraq has boomeranged. Now a new military and political strategy is in place in both theaters that calls for making the long-term investments and fighting the battles that administration strategists -- above all, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- disastrously tried to dodge.

As a grownup, you can't even get your friends to lie for you. Sure, you can get some family retainers to hide your coke convictions, but as a grownup, your failures are part of the public record. Having your bestest buddy tell people you didn't get busted doesn't take the arrest off your record.

So when family retainer Pat Roberts says there's "no evidence of "political manipulation or pressure" in the use of such [prewar] intelligence," you know he's just covering for Georgie. But this is a far more serious matter than the sort of drink driving trouble Georgie's used to getting into. This is the matter of treason against the people of the United States.

And like other parts of the Junta's propaganda machine, Roberts has discovered a new way to lie to the public. Just as the non-answers to the Niger-uranium questions get deflected, Roberts is not addressing the question of manipulative lies by simply not answering.

The game is to make up a question that you want to answer, and then answer it. Pretend all the people who are asking you about the real matter are complete idiots - let's face it, they probably are. If they weren't certified card-carrying morons, you couldn't have gotten away with five yours of treason under their collective noses.

So when Roberts makes his big press announcement about there being 'no manipulation of intelligence' by the White House, he deliberately asks the wrong question:

As part of a report released last year by his committee that found widespread intelligence failures on Iraq's weapons capabilities, "we interviewed over 250 analysts and we specifically asked them: 'Was there any political manipulation or pressure?' Answer: 'No,' " Mr. Roberts said on "Face the Nation" on CBS.

Of course, the Times lets him get away with this nonsense. The problem was not pressure from the White House to reach certain conclusions (though I'm sure there was such pressure - let someone outside the Junta ask and we'll see what the real answer is), but the selective use of intel by Dickie and Rummy.

Because when the 250 analysts gave their information to the Junta, the Junta used about 1% of it - the part that seemed helpful. The rest of it they discarded. They set up an Iraq intel group in the White House and a special department in the Pentagon to work the bad intel themselves. So it was their manipulation - their willingness to believe serial liars and to discard anything that would disprove their ugly theories - that sent our children to kill and die.

When disgraces like Dickie Cheney - who's still fighting Congress for the right to torture - go to trial, hopefully they'll be able to scoop up scum like Roberts as well.

Can you believe that Cheney's still using all of his waning clout to put a provision in the McCain amendment to allow the CIA to torture prisoners? Where was he raised? Siberia?

Seriously, what kind of parents could raise a sociopath like Cheney? This guy has done nothing but push for unjust war, torture of defenseless people, and fast-track the rape the environment since he's come to office.

Speaking of what's left of the environment, there's an interesting new angle being discussed by the rightists. For the 'money right,' the environment is there to be cut, dug, and drilled for profit. To get a go-ahead from the religious types, they appeal to the Rapture right. The Rapture people are very useful to the money people; they say that since an End of Days is coming, you can be as destructive and short-sighted as you like. So go ahead and take all the short cash you can grab - you'll be in heaven before anything runs out.

Which is a particularly dangerous way to think, because it prevents any conservation. If you try to conserve anything, you're not showing faith in the Rapture.

But now a large group of rightists are calling for environental protection based on their reading of the Bible.

The National Association of Evangelicals, a nonprofit organization that includes 45,000 churches serving 30 million people across the country, is circulating among its leaders the draft of a policy statement that would encourage lawmakers to pass legislation creating mandatory controls for carbon emissions.

Environmentalists rely on empirical evidence as their rationale for Congressional action, and many evangelicals further believe that protecting the planet from human activities that cause global warming is a values issue that fulfills Biblical teachings asking humans to be good stewards of the earth.

"Genesis 2:15," said Richard Cizik, the association's vice president for governmental affairs, citing a passage that serves as the justification for the effort: "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it."

Yes, "empirical evidence" doesn't cut it anymore. We live in a world where the religious nuts have to find a passage in their book of faith in order to do anything, right or wrong. This is a lot like living under a monarchy. When you get a good king, thing go okay and people wonder what al the democracy talk is about. When you get bad king - or just a stupid one - things go quickly to hell.

But apparently we need a Protestant fundamentalist seal of approval on our environmental policies in order to not obliterate the land, air, and water before the return of the narrow saviour.