Giving aid and comfort to the enemy - its wrong and it should be stopped

Well another decade, another war protest, and once again the charges are flying that the protest is ‘unpatriotic' and that war protestors are giving ‘aid and comfort to the enemy'. This is basically the message that Condoleeza Rice was putting out while touring the Sunday Morning Talk Shows this weekend. Now given the way that the right wing stays ‘on message' it will not be surprising to see the internet and the television screens and the coffee shops now filled with such talk, taking their signal from Condoleeza that this is the official message of the moment, and thus we can all expect to find the talking points now elaborated and spread out by pundits and various other talking heads on television, talking points that will then swamp the internet as loyal rightists take the new official message to the streets.

The argument is essentially the same one used during the Vietnam war. People like ‘Hanoi Jane' (as they called her then) were giving ‘aid and comfort to the enemy.' Because of them ‘the enemy' would not come to the peace table or consider surrendering because they were led to believe that if they just held out long enough, the peace movement would carry on with their filthy and unpatriotic work, thus winning the war for them. As the Nixon administration said at the time (and remember the members of this Republican Administration have a pedigree going back through Bush One, Reagan and yes, the Nixon White House, so the message is always the same for that reason) well, their message at the time was that in no way were they going to let protestors stop them, and they didn't either, they just went right ahead with that war, dragging it out for years, and that is just what Condoleeza said this weekend. Nixon like, Bush has stated emphatically that protests be damned, he's going in. As for the message for all right wingers at the moment, well it must be that thing about giveing ‘aid and comfort to Saddam' and also encouraging Saddam to not listen to arms inspectors and do all the other bad stuff he's bound to do now that the knows that their are peace protests, you know, just like those Vietnamese refused to surrender and kept fighting on, getting succor, support and courage from the peace protestors like ‘Hanoi Jane' and today ‘Baghdad Bob' and ‘Iraqi Irene' or whatever tar brush name they might dredge up to use on people for this war.

I found an example of this type of argument floating around the Internet already (and its only Monday, and Condoleeza just put out the word on Sunday, so that tells you how fast the right wing will be getting on message and mobilizing to get the word out). In the hopes, one must suppose, of splitting the peace movement with its powerfully convincing arguments, which are the arguments used by Condoleeza on Sunday, which themselves are just the recycled arguments used by the Nixon White House propaganda machine during the Vietnam War.

Now the basic argument is that by protesting you are giving ‘aid and comfort to the enemy.' There is just one flaw with this proposition. You see the Viet Cong were not the real enemy, but rather as Eisenhower warned, the real enemy was the military industrial complex. The Vietnamese people were the victims and thus deserved as much aid and as much comfort as possible.

So here we have the essential flaw with this argument. Now certainly Saddam is not ‘the victim' but the innocent citizens of Iraq certainly are, 50 per cent of whom are children under the age of 12. Now as for Saddam being the ‘enemy' and thus being ‘comforted' by all the peace protests, well let's just say that Saddam is the enemy of the moment. You know there is a vicious dictatorship in Burma, one of the foulest and most thieving ones on the planet, too, and of course they are armed to the teeth as well, since they have Western support. Now getting rid of tyrants costs a fortune, tens and even hundreds of billions of dollars. In Saddam's case, maybe they can pull it off for 80 billion dollars, since they already spent 80 billion dollars wrecking his army the last time, leaving him rather toothless now. The Iraq war was also a war on a barren desert, just the perfect place to use American technology, and so we could assume it was one of the cheaper wars as well, so let's put the cost estimates at somewhere around 200 hundred billion dollars per dictatorial tyrant removed as the United States does the planet a favor by overthrowing tyrants and bringing freedom and justice to humanity.

Now when pigs fly the United States government might actually start spending the trillions of dollars it would take to save the world from the tyrants that America arms to the teeth (making getting rid of them that much more expensive in the process). However because there are so many tyrants in the world being armed right to the teeth by America, well that explains why America must spend trillions on the Pentagon (and billions on the homeless, maybe, if they can afford it), since the world is such a damned dangerous threatening place, what with all the vile and disgusting violent people who live in it, and who hang on to power due to the fact they are just armed to the teeth, and thus real dangerous. You could suggest disarmament as a method to get rid of the tyrants of the world, you know by disarming them by not letting the Military Industrial Complex make trillions of dollars selling them weapons of medium destruction, but for some reason that's not supposed to be a good idea, and so we should fill body bags getting rid of them instead. It would be lot quicker, and will also line the pockets of the military industrial complex as well, so you can see how they can make real good cash on both ends of that deal, both in arming the tyrants to the teeth, and then by disarming the tyrants later, which also costs a fortune, and is thus very profitable. This must be the way to bring freedom and democracy to all the troubled places of the world.

Of course, not all the troubled places of the world. Not Burma, for example, dope dealing, thieving bunch of billionaire torturing murdering greedy despots and tyrants that they are. They are after all good customers, they pay their bills on time, and you do want to be nice to your regular customers, right. I mean why risk losing any business. Besides, there wouldn't be much profit in saving the people of Burma from such a gang of psychotic sociopaths, and when you consider how selective American is when it comes to disposing of tyrants, well you have to understand that there must be reasons why one and not the other. After all, America can't be everywhere, and neither can it do everything, therefore it is required that one set priorities and pick and choose. If the Americans invaded Burma and brought freedom to that people oppressed at the end of the gun barrels of all those weapons of medium destruction the Burmese military tyrants have been purchasing, well in that case even the most cynical person, such as myself, would have to agree that here it must have been the case that they did it for no other reason than to do the planet a favor, in what was obviously a deeply moving and genuinely heart touching display of selfish generosity. After all it will cost at least 200 hundreds billion to overthrow tyranny in Burma, and probably even more than that since it is not desert, but rather jungle, and that high tech stuff is much less useful in the jungle. So it could be as high as 400 hundred billion or even more, although, if one were to wait say about ten or twenty years, then the invasion and liberation of Burma could probably be achieved on a hamburger budget instead of a sirloin budget, provided of course that the Military Industrial Complex quit arming the planet to the teeth in the meantime. Yes, Burma would be much less expensive to ‘disarm' and thus bring to freedom and democracy, and it would also be a lot easier and a lot less bloody to do these things, that is if the Burmese people didn't do it themselves before we got there, you know, to perform our latest act of charity for humanity by saving them all from the tyranny.

Now given that is unlikely that Washington, D.C. is Tinkerbell, sprinkling the earth with her magic pixy dust that brings freedom and democracy to hurting people, well we must assume that there is a reason why Saddam and not some other third world despot that Washington still likes, and isn't mad at, like they are mad at Saddam now. And, the reason would have to be that Iraq has the best oil in the world, really light and sweet, and also incredibly easy, and thus profitable, to pump out of the ground. Iran (how deeply we long for their freedom) also has oil as well as lots and lots of natural gas, and thus deserves to be free as well, just as free as they were under the Shah, the last time they got saved and rescued from their own mistakes made in error in a voting booth.

And this brings us to Vietnam, another poor suffering country that deserved all the freedom and democracy that only Washington, D.C. can ever really bring. Tragically it was the case that Vietnamese were about to make a tragic mistake that would haunt them forever, by voting democratically in a landslide election for Ho Chi Minh, while pitching out that other tin pot despot that the American's installed and were promoting as a candidate, thus making it about as likely that he would ever elected dog catcher as it would be that people play snow balls in hell. Once the Americans found out about that, well that was it for democracy in Vietnam. They were getting invaded instead. So you can notice a bit of an inconsistency here, in that while Americans say they are invading to bring democracy, if you check up on things, you find that typically they invade to prevent democracy, just as they did in Vietnam. Back in those days there were lots of people who were always giving aid and comfort to the enemy, thus encouraging Washington to do those same things over and over and over again, to cheat and then retreat, believing that once again they could away with splitting the international community or defying the United Nations, breaking international laws, threatening all their neighbours, and all the other stuff they did, and continue to do, because of all those unpatriotic Americans who give aid and comfort to the enemy.

The long list of countries that made the mistake of having freedom and democracy, thus getting invaded by the United States of America should be familiar to most people, but if it isn't, well I guess that must be because no one ever told them. That's because there are far far to many people in this place giving comfort and aid to the enemy, thus giving them the courage to keep right on doing all the stuff their doing right now. When they see all their supporters pouring out onto the internet and into the coffee shops, and they hear all their talking heads promoting the message of the moment on cue, well it just encourages them keep right on doing what they have been doing by thinking that they continue to cheat and then retreat if required, over and over and over again.

And if there's one thing I can't stand it is unpatriotic Americans who give aid and comfort to the enemy. It's wrong, and so it should be stopped.

The Americans don't always invade to prevent freedom and democracy in a country. Take Iran for instance. Iran did not get invaded like Vietnam did, even though Iran made the exact same mistake at the ballot box as the Vietnamese were to do later, by voting for a leftist candidate. In that case, since America can't be everywhere, they got a coup d'etat, and the Shah was installed as dictator, since it was obvious that Iran was not ready for democracy at that time, and there is nothing worse than giving democracy to people if they aren't going to vote the way you tell them to. Later on, Iran had a revolution, got rid of that despot and the terrible Savak secret police, who learned every trick of the trade from the CIA. They called America, ‘the Great Satan', and so, now once again, it would seem to be time for America to prove they were right, by doing the Great Satan thing on Iran just one more time, well, as soon as they get finished giving Iraq the full Satan treatment. Sure Iran will be mad, and lots of terrorists will decide to punish America for being so damned Satanic, but terrorists can be hunted down the way rabbits are hunted (its just that easy) and as for Iran, well it will be at least twenty or thirty years before they ever get back on their feet again and pull off another revolution, so that will a problem that a future Republican Administration will have to deal with, and nothing that need concern us now.

The Chileans also sinned greatly by having a democracy, and voting for the left, and got, from America, as their suitable reward, the dictator Pinochet, and a wave of mass murder. All of this started when a suicide bomber crashed a plane into the Chilean capitol, thus leading to the rise in power of the extreme right wing, the only party any country in the world can ever vote for on this planet, if they know what is good for them. In Argentina they made the same mistake as the Vietnamese, the Iranians, and the Chileans had made, and they did not get invaded, like Vietnam did, or Korea before them, but instead the got the full Great Satan treatment, complete with that Savak secret police idea, torture dungeons where teenaged and twentysomething street protestors were brutally tortured, you know, to find out who their friends were, and then thrown alive from air planes, an expensive way to execute people, but probably a lot of fun, which might explain why they bothered. Lots of kids and lots of intellectuals and other troublesome people like that were disappearing in Argentina, so many that Henry Kissinger had to send that really weird letter of his to the despots of Argentina, asking them to hurry and get all the mass murder and torture done before the end of the year, otherwise it was going to be hard for those Republicans to maintain public support for what was going on down there. ‘We understand what you are doing and why you are doing it,' Kissinger told them, but damn it could you people hurry up and get finished with that.

And then there was Indonesia. Perhaps you might have heard of ‘the Year of Living Dangerously'. Somewhere between five hundred thousand and a million leftists were slaughtered by the aptly named Kap Gestapu. Recently declassified documents reveal that the American Ambassador requested that the CIA hand over their list of people that needed to be murdered by the Gestapo, er pardon me, the Gestapu, since he complained, despite naming themselves after the Nazis, those Gestapu were so damned incompetent, they didn't have a clue how to find out who needed to be murdered that time. Since the CIA was competent, and they had a list, well could they please hand it over so those dumb bastards would know who they were supposed to mass murder in Indonesia during the year of living dangerously. As I said, all this skull duggery is detailed in recently declassified documents, which naturally enough Washington fought like hell to stop from being declassified, even though their time had come. Fortunately there is someone in law enforcement every bit as weird as that J. Edgar Hoover, and once that patriotic Patriot Bill goes through, well the government will be able to keep a lid on things like that, thus being able to commit acts of Satanism without worrying about being embarrassed by it later when all their Satanic writings get released to a press which wasn't particularly interested in covering the story, which is the next best thing to having the Patriot Act already passed, but still not quite good enough, thus the need for that bill to put the finishing touches on it all.

Nicaragua also voted the wrong way, thus leading Ronald Reagan to the Great Satan thing on them, this time in a slightly different way. Rather than putting a psychotic tyrant and the Savak Gestapu over the Nicaraguans, or invading, since it was now illegal to do those things at that time, Reagan decided to break some other laws instead, and sent in the contras with orders to avoid military engagements they just couldn't win, and instead hit all the soft targets in Nicaragua, such as hospitals, clinics, schools, various civilians, and so on. You can understand how maybe some terrorist somewhere saw that and then got the idea maybe, since they can't fight the United States military, well perhaps they should start hitting soft American targets, with the most juiciest and softest target of them all being the American Economy, of course, a prime target for all the terrorists of the world. Fortunately there is no need for the American public to panic, they can just go about their daily lives, for, although Washington is going to really be pissing people off in the days ahead, they are also solving the terrorist problem in that they are going to hunt down and kill the terrorists just like people hunt deer or elk (its just that easy). Let's just say that those terrorists will all meet their fate and won't be a problem to Americans anymore (its just that easy).

Now one of the great mistakes that the Vietnamese made is that they fought back, thus becoming the enemies of the American people. That was why, back in those days, you weren't allowed to take the side of the Vietnamese or you would be accused of ‘giving aid and comfort to the enemy.' Now speaking for myself, the Vietnamese were not my enemy, just as the people, mostly children, of Iraq are not my enemy either, so the charge that perhaps I might be aiding and comforting my enemy are false. Quite the contrary I always harrass block and hassle and just generally battle my enemy all the time, so trying to charge someone like me of ‘aiding and comforting my enemy' is a false charge on the face of it.

Another charge that the rightist will hurl at a time like this, is that in addition to aiding and comforting the enemy, protestors are also misusing their freedom, given to them by the military and all its various combats, by using it to subvert that very same freedom bringing military by giving that aid and comfort to the enemy. Yes truly only in such a wonderful place can one commit acts of outright treason, and get away with it, at least for now, well, at least until that new Patriot Act goes through and then everyone will be forced to be ‘patriotic' whether they like it or not, OR ELSE.

Yes, in Vietnam they fought for freedom and democracy, to save the Vietnamese people, a truly noble cause, while at home that very freedom so cherished and protected by our military industrial complex was misusing democracy to commit acts of treason by giving aid and comfort to the enemy. However I think it is time to shoot down that particular canard as well and just get it over with. Protestors protest not 'because of our brave military' and the way it fights for our freedoms, but rather in spite of the military and every effort made by the military industrial complex to control all debate, squash the release of all humiliating government documents, and stop all dissent and protest. As Eisenhower warned, there is no greater threat on the planet to freedom and democracy and the progress of a half decent civilization, with stuff like health care for example, or babies that don't starve, yes there is no greater threat to freedom than the military, and its ever increasing powers. But then you could ask the democratically elected governments of such places as Chile, Iran, Nicaragua, and yes, if they had been allowed to vote by the American military, the Vietnamese as well. You see, if you let people have democracy and protest when they don't, you and your friends would not have been in Vietnam in the first place, or a lot of those others places you had to go to protect the imperialism at the heart of the interests of the military industrail complex.

And they just can't do it without you... ‘We arm the world, we arm the children...' Fortunately they are willing to play both sides of the fence on that one and disarm the world on those rare occasions when that is actually on the agenda. After all, just think of all the stuff that will get used up and then have to bought all over again during that disarmament war. They just can't do these things without you, and they also need you to die in Vietnam, you know, to make sure they don't get any democracy or freedom in Vietnam, which is what would have happened if you hadn't saluted the flag and went when you were told to ... This is a classic example of giving aid and support to the enemy, doing things like obeying the draft and fighting in the war instead of fighting against it...Its wrong and it should be stopped...