Souless

We are under attack. We do nothing. We are victims.


Gingrich: empty inside

The panic button is firmly pressed, if the things Newt Gingrich has been trotted out to say recently are any indication. Oh yeah, there's an election coming up!

Gingrich appeared on Good Morning America on Tuesday to recount for ABC news anchor Charles Gibson the mythic scope of the Terror War around the world and plug for the president. Brave Bush is framed as the 33% public opinion underdog in a struggle to keep his Iraq project going so he can protect America from the bad guys. After all, ``This is going to be the first globalized war. This is a long war, Iraq is a key battlefront in that war,'' according to Gingrich, obviously versed in the White House talking points.

``This is necessary, and we're going to continue working at it until we win,'' said Gingrich.

I guess this time neither interviewer nor interviewee cared to include mention of the current body count--about 2500 US troops, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis blown into eternity.

Gingrich and Gibson banter about the iconic images of the killing of Zarqawi and the formation of an Iraqi government, over which Bush is exerting much effort to hold puppet strings. Gibson quotes the president in a cheering tone, ``Can he do it? Can he convince people?'' that ``The stakes are worth it.''

It appears the White House figures the American people respond to the notion that ``our side'' is ``winning''. ``Victory'' has been a key rhetorical construct for many months now. Bush and the Republicans, their spokespeople like Gingrich, and even Democrats like Nancy Pelosi (who has now called the war a ``grotesque mistake'' and has said that troops should be withdrawn ``at the earliest practical date'') want to frame the debate in terms of victory.

Some one ought to tell the American people that the war was lost the moment we began to wage it. Some one must stand up to the likes of Gingrich, whose soul was emptied long ago. No longer can people like Gingrich admit into their hearts the idea that the death and destruction that is the continuous consequence of their war can be stopped. They no longer see past unspoken strategic interests of domination and commerce that permeate the war enterprise and have consumed their consciences. This is an extremely dangerous precipice to which they have brought the world.

Real victory will come when we are able to wrest political control from these men and stop the war. Our security will come from the elimination of war, not from insistance on fighting a mythic, permanent ``long war'' while secrecy conceals underlying goals of energy resource control, wealth extraction, and accumulation of strategic power.

Gingrich's topper yesterday was to use the Guantanamo suicides to push the panic button even harder. They ``would have been happy killing themselves in a mall near you or a bus near you,'' said Newt.

I doubt ``happy'' has anything to do with it. But by the same logic, Newt should be ``happy'' to pick up a gun and get his ass straight to Iraq to donate his life alongside the rest of our troops.