Author: Jonathan Schwarz

The new documentary Why We Fight features a retired New York City policeman and Vietnam veteran named Wilton Sekzer. It examines his turbulent emotions after his son Jason was killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11.

At first Sekzer just wants revenge, and he understands the Bush administration to be saying Iraq was somehow responsible. So not only does he support the Iraq war, he asks the Pentagon to write his son’s name on a bomb. They do, and drop it east of Baghdad.

Obviously Sekzer wasn’t alone in feeling this way about 9/11 and Iraq. Until recently, polls showed a majority of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was “personally involved” in the attacks.

Those possessing a cerebellum know this didn’t happen by accident. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the White House Iraq Group ran focus groups to discover the most popular rationale for a war, and found it was an Iraq-9/11 connection.

Of course, they never (quite) came out and directly asserted there was such a connection. People would have asked for evidence. Instead, they repeatedly implied Saddam did it: “9/11…Saddam…terrorism…Iraq…Al Qaeda.” They correctly assumed many Americans—particularly those who don’t parse every single word politicians say for fine shades of meaning—would make the connection themselves.

But what’s gotten little attention is that, in 2004, a Bush official actually admitted this was a conscious strategy.

In other words:

(1) To put it in concrete terms, they sat in their offices and figured out the best way to fool a retired New York City policeman gutted by grief for his dead son.
(2) They were so proud of their cleverness they couldn’t help bragging about it to a reporter.

This appears in a November, 2004 article in Esquire about Dick Cheney. If you read the whole thing, you’ll see the “senior administration official” was probably Paul Wolfowitz or Scooter Libby:

But what were the real reasons for going into Iraq? I’d asked a senior administration official.

There were two basic reasons, the official said. “One was to be rid of the Saddam Hussein regime”… The other was containment…

As it was, the administration took what looked like the path of least resistance in making its public case for the war: WMD and intelligence links with Al Qaeda. If the public read too much into those links and thought Saddam had a hand in September 11, so much the better.

As Why We Fight shows, Wilton Sekzer was stunned when—many months after the invasion—George Bush explicitly said there was no evidence Iraq was involved in 9/11. He felt duped and betrayed. And now not only is his son gone, so is any faith he had in the U.S. government.

But that’s only bad from HIS point of our view! From the Bush administration perspective, if their marks fall for the con, so much the better.

According to AP:

White House counselor Dan Barlett said Monday that Bush’s photographs in the company of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff amount to a coincidence and shouldn’t be interpreted any more seriously than that.

Other photographic coincidences:

1. Picture of Abramoff putting $100 bills into Bush’s g-string with his teeth

2. Picture of Abramoff handing Bush an oversized novelty check for $1 million with memo line reading “bribe”

3. Picture of Abramoff with Bush, inscribed: “To Jack—thanks for the bribe!”

4. Picture of Dan Bartlett with Bush, inscribed: “To Dan—thanks for lying about my sordid relationship with Jack Abramoff!”

5. Twenty year-old picture of Abramoff shaking hands with Donald Rumsfeld in Baghdad.

Update from Tom: as luck would have it, I was able to track down one of the photos Jonathan mentions. Somebody tell Drudge.

Scribner recently offered me a promotional copy of a new novel they’re publishing called Prayers for the Assassin, by Robert Ferrigno. I certainly appreciated this, although I suspect if they included my wee little blog there’s essentially no one with a website they didn’t approach.

In any case, it just arrived. Here’s the back copy:

THE YEAR IS 2040. New York and Washington are nuclear wastelands. The nation is divided between an Islamic Republic across the north and the Christian Bible Belt in the old South. The shift was precipitated by simultaneous, suitcase-nuke detonations in New York City, Washington, and Mecca, a sneak attack blamed on Israel, and known as the Zionist Betrayal. Now alcohol is outlawed, replaced by Jihad Cola, and mosques dot the skyline. Veiled women hurry through the streets. Freedom is controlled by the state, paranoia rules, and rebels plot to regain free will…

In this tense society beautiful young historian Sarah Dougan uncovers shocking evidence that the Zionist Betrayal was actually a plot carried out by a radical Muslim now poised to overtake the entire nation. Sarah’s research threatens to expose him, and soon she and her lover, Rakkin Epps, an elite Muslim warrior, find themselves hunted by Darwin, a brilliant psychopathic killer. Rakkin must become Darwin’s assassin—a most forbidding challenge. The bloody chase takes them from the outlaw territories of the Pacific Northwest to the anything-goes glitter of Las Vegas—and culminates dramatically as Rakkim and Sarah battle to reveal the truth to the entire world.

I see.

I…see.

I will read this quickly, and report back on what the publication of this work Means For America.

Here in America we have Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. In England they have Media Lens.

One point Media Lens makes repeatedly is that while the British media is better than that of the U.S., it’s often still horrible. And this sadly includes the U.K. “liberal” outfits that drive our right wing into a teeth-gnashing, pants-wetting frenzy, such as the BBC, Guardian, and Independent.

Recently Media Lens demonstrated how the BBC simply takes it as given that the U.S. and U.K. genuinely, no-crossies want to bring democracy to the mideast. When Media Lens asked the BBC’s director of news, Helen Boaden, what the evidence was for this, she replied that their “analysis of the underlying motivation of the coalition is borne out by many speeches and remarks made by both Mr Bush and Mr Blair.”

So there you have it: government figures have said something. And as anyone familiar with history knows, that means IT MUST BE TRUE.

I don’t know why everyone doesn’t adopt this standard, because it makes everything so much easier. For instance, by using what I call the “Boaden Methodology,” we can prove:

1. Napoleon’s motivation for invading Egypt in 1798 was to liberate Egyptians. Why? Because that’s what he said:

“I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors…”

2. England’s motivation for occupying Iraq in 1917 was to liberate Iraqis. That’s obvious, because that’s what the commanding British general said:

“Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators…”

3. Hitler’s motive for supporting a 1941 coup in Baghdad? Duh. It was to liberate Iraqis! If it weren’t, Hitler would never have said:

“The Arabian Freedom Movement in the Middle East is our natural ally…In this connection special importance is attached to the liberation of Iraq…”

Given all this, the real question is why Arabs are so skeptical about the obvious good intentions of Bush and Blair. My guess is, it has something to do with their primitive culture.

(Thanks to TG for the Hitler quote)

Hello to This Modern World readers, and many thanks to Mr. Tomorrow for the opportunity to contribute here. My name is Jon Schwarz, and my own website is called A Tiny Revolution. It’s named after something George Orwell wrote in an essay titled “Funny But Not Vulgar”:

A thing is funny when it upsets the established order. Every joke is a tiny revolution.

For anyone curious, on my site you can find more about me, as well as more about the Orwell essay.

I’m looking forward to sharing with everyone here my voluminous diatribes, manifestos, Pentagon-subsidized disinformation, and so on. In particular I enjoy tracing weird throughlines in American history: certain alarming attitudes and even specific words that keep popping up over and over again, long after you think we’d driven a stake through their dark hearts. It’s truly, deeply creepy. As William Faulkner famously said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Here’s a relevant example. In George W. Bush biggest pre-war speech about Iraq and democracy, he explained:

America’s interests in security, and America’s belief in liberty, both lead in the same direction: to a free and peaceful Iraq…

[Iraqis’] lives and their freedom matter little to Saddam Hussein—but Iraqi lives and freedom matter greatly to us…

If we must use force, the United States and our coalition stand ready to help the citizens of a liberated Iraq.

For most Americans, this sounded pretty good. We’re just being helpful! When you put it like that, we’re almost obligated to invade!

It might have been useful if we’d remembered the first Great Seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The seal was part of the charter granted to British settlers in 1629 by Charles I. And the charter was where America began—with Pilgrims, Thanksgiving, etc.

Now, look closely. Can you tell what the American Indian on the seal is saying?

That’s right! He’s asking the settlers to “come over and help us.”

The settlers, of course, did help the Indians…to be dead.

This formula recurs over and over again throughout American history. We go somewhere because we HAVE TO HELP PEOPLE. Then they all somehow—perhaps because of a 400-year streak of bad luck on our part?—end up dead. In 1966, the editor of U.S. News and World Report wrote:

What the United States is doing in Vietnam is the most significant example of philanthropy extended by one people to another that we have witessed in our times.

True, we killed an estimated two million people in Indochina. But when you get down to it, aren’t philanthropy and napalm essentially the same thing?

Now, none of this history necessarily means exactly the same thing is happening in Iraq. Maybe this time we really are going to help! You never know!

But probably not. One of the (two) books on Bush’s Christmas reading list was Imperial Grunts by Robert Kaplan.

Kaplan’s book explains that A) the War on Terror is very similar to America’s Indian Wars; B) the WoT is “really about taming the frontier”; and C) most of the earth is now “Injun country.”

Look at all those people out there saying, “come over and help us.” How can we possibly refuse?

COMING UP: Previous appearances in U.S. history of “shock and awe.”