An alternative to bombing Iran

Let's have some fun today.

Let's all telephone and write the White House and tell Dick Cheney to bomb Myanmar and Zimbabwe.

If we can pull it off, it will be the biggest -- maybe the only -- win-win deal of the Bushcheney years.

I'm betting that even countries like France and Australia –- only recently come to its senses and out of Iraq –- will join us, and won't that be a hoot? Could be a great party.

Progressives and neocons alike would satisfy their basic desires. Liberals could support an action benefiting a large number of suffering human beings, and the Bushies would get to drop something out of airplanes onto people of tawny hue. With luck, they might even get to kill a few folks, though probably not many.

The only possible losers would be the bloody bastards who rule those two rotten and destitute countries, and not even Dick Cheney cares about them, really, even though they're his kind of people in a general sort of way. They recognize no law but themselves, and are perfectly comfortable with letting thousands of human beings suffer and die for the sake of maintaining their holds on power.

(Yes, I know. Cheney doesn't care about anyone, really, but he doesn't even need to coddle those butchers. Zimbabwe has no oil, and Myanmar produces barely enough to keep Blackwater's new Brazilian-made fighter plane in the air; it's 12,000 barrels of crude a day probably wouldn't pay the rent on Cheney's various secret hiding places.)

OK, I'll come clean. I'm not advocating that the American military drop explosives on the starving, parched, homeless and increasingly ill masses of Zimbabwe and Myanmar. I figure the neocons can live with the lack of explosive death and destruction, given the other goodies that undoubtedly would come their way.

What I am proposing is the biggest airlift in almost 60 years, maybe ever.

We could send cargo planes over Myanmar and Zimbabwe and drop huge quantities of drinking water, food, basic medicines, large tents, sleeping bags and whatever else international aid agencies say is necessary. To hell with the rulers and their refusal to let foreign help reach their suffering people.

We could keep it up until all of the Burmese and Zimbabweans are adequately cared for, until sufficient medical teams are on the ground and water supplies are adequate and safe and everyone has shelter.

It might even inspire the citizens of our two target nations and give them the strength to rise up against the tyrants and install democratic governments, and that is what we want for everybody, right?

Right George? Right Dick?

The Myanmar generals might send up a couple of fighter planes to threaten our cargo craft, but we could chase them off with war planes of our own. Maybe our pilots would even get to shoot down a couple of the generals' craft, thus giving the White House a taste of blood and a chance to strut in military fashion. George could haul out his flight suit for a press conference.

What's that, you say Mr. Minority Leader McConnell? It would cost too much and threaten our economy?

Ummmm.

We maybe could reduce the payments to various Halliburton entities by the amounts they seem to have stolen from us and use that for the humanitarian aid. Ditto a bunch of other crooked contractors. We could cut off all government contracts with Blackwater, which perpetrates one criminal outrage after another, and let the military do the jobs that are rightfully theirs. (Cheney can pay his private army himself, if he insists on keeping it around.) We could stop preparing to bomb Iran.

Or we could haul our sorry behinds out of Iraq over the next few months and come out billions of dollars ahead.

Yes, of course the Cheney cohort, supported and nudged by Israel's right-wing leadership, wants to kill Iranians by the thousands. The neocons -- please, may the day come when they are just cons -- figure killing more Muslims will put Bush III in the White House so they can continue gathering power and the world's wealth to themselves.

They haven't thought it through yet.

If we come around all big-time humanitarian, most of the world will swing quickly from despising the Bushies and all they touch to praising them. Many Americans who won't touch John McCain because of his taint of Bush will feel free to vote for him. Think the the relief they'll experience in the South and places like Kansas and rural Ohio because they won't have to stretch for excuses not to vote for the black man.

For a brief period leading up to this fall's election -- before everybody notices that Americans still are going broke, lack decent health care and are losing their jobs and homes –- the neocons will have a chance to hold power without getting into another shooting war that even they must recognize they cannot sustain. (They aren't that stupid, are they? Are they?)

C'mon, gang. Let's make those calls and send those emails.

Another Big Lie campaign

In case you missed the two or three 12-second reports on the news: Shaul Mofaz, deputy prime minister of Israel, said Friday that an attack on Iran's nuclear sites is “unavoidable” if Tehran refuses to halt it's alleged nuclear weapons program.

He didn't say “alleged,” however. That's my word, a proper modifier, but not something he or the Bushies would use, any more than they talked about “alleged” WMDs in Iraq.

Mofaz failed to specify how Iran can now halt a program that all U.S. and European intelligence agencies and top scientists agree was halted in 2003.

(Stop your car right now. Never mind that it's been stored in a garage with the engine removed for five years. Stop it now or we'll kill you. By the way, have you stopped beating your wife?)

The Israel minister also said that the attack will occur if international diplomacy fails to make Iran stop that already stopped weapons program. But, of course, Israel and the Bush administration flatly refuse to engage in “international diplomacy” with Iran, although Iran has several times offered to negotiate without restrictions on topics.

In case you haven't quite got it: Israel, with timing almost certainly coordinated with the American White House, is pushing for an attack on Iran. If Israel attacks, we'll soon take over the major portion of the killing, of course.

Isn't it interesting to live in a very big and powerful country that allows a much smaller country to call the shots on key portions of its foreign policy?

OK, hard to tell who's manipulating whom sometimes, but that this country's politicians are frequently the intimidated stand-ins for Israel's right-wing government and its big-buck U.S. backers is not in question.

A little prayer, of sorts, for Obama

To whom it may concern:

Please, do not let Barack Obama be pressured or suckered into accepting Hillary Clinton as his running mate.

If you have any warm feelings at all for humanity, please do not even let him be conned into accepting her into his cabinet, should he be elected President of the United States.

Suicide is not a healthy action, nor is it an action a rational and physically healthy person should take. Neither is putting yourself needlessly into the position of requiring the services of a full-time food and drink taster – metaphorically speaking, of course.

It is obvious to all but the most passionate of Clinton supporters that her hubris is at least equal to that of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Combined.

There is no question but that she believes she has an absolute, divinely ordered, right to the presidency. She and her most ardent followers believe that anyone -– that is, Mr. Obama -- who stands in her way is somehow evil, a liar and a cheat surpassing even the aforementioned Bush and Cheney.

They cannot fathom that anyone could legitimately prefer another candidate, nor that she could lose in a fair contest, let alone one in which the nasty tricks and ugly innuendo were mostly on her side. (She made a blatant appeal to racists; he made no such appeal to sexists.)

There is no question that should she be named the vice presidential candidate, or should she be elected vice president, or even if she is placed in the presidential cabinet, she will use all of her skill, devote all of her energy and time to undermining Mr. Obama. Her life will be devoted to “proving” that it was she who should have been nominated and elected.

Whether subtly or obviously, she will try to foment opposition to his positions, to make him look weak and inept, to sell to other insiders and, especially to the public, the idea that she could do better. She will weaken an Obama presidency, and thereby do harm to the country and the world, for the sake of her own overweening ambition.

I plead, therefore, that you protect Barack Obama from what would be his greatest possible blunder, and keep him resolute against the wailing and gnashing of teeth and threats of the Clintonites.

I ask this for the sake of the United States of America and the world.