It seems like there is a project underway aiming to Bait Bush. He’s here on the 15th and although I have no idea what exactly the plan is I am certain that I want in.

Unfortunately when attempting to defend Bush this gentleman forgot some minor historical details. This is revealed half-way through this video in a fashion reminiscent of Paxman on Howard, only far more hilarious:

Michelle Malkin is left bitter. LOL.

Now, prepare to be confused.

(more…)

Gerard Baker really is a lousy American correspondent.

Why? Because he understands half of America fine. Really well, in fact. There are better but he does an immensely decent job at reporting the right side, he has quite a feel for them and although he occasionally gets carried away {see: ham-fisted jingoism when it mattered} he actually seems to know nothing at all about the other side of America, about the left.

This article today simply confirmed it.

It dubbed Obama a “Dangerous Leftwinger” in a fashion that was positively McCarthian in the headline and then got worse from there:

He began with a jab at Obama’s wife, attempting to stage a critique-via-proxy to mask his real offensive on her husband, stating:

In what might be the most revealing statement made by any political figure so far in this campaign season…

in reference towards her views on America and pride. Apparently John McCain’s infamous “Iraq for 10,000 years” is effectively negligible. He then acted as the Thought Police and stated that she had a “remarkably narrow view”. I suspect that it was simply her breadth allowing her to note all of the atrocities that he acted as an apologist for.

He then proceeded to tout the moronic “Messianic” line, when Obama’s speeches have always told the American People that it would be a collective effort {perhaps something that Baker has trouble understanding} and been far from technocratic.

But then the idiocy gets further:

Secondly, and more importantly, I suspect it reveals much about what the Obama family really thinks about the kind of nation that America is.

It seems that Baker, although encouraging us to listen to Obama’s speeches has really never done so himself. Obama’s passion for America is blatant and only somebody lacking both internal ears and eyeballs could fail to observe it. Her view is her view, she will not be president. Barack’s is obvious.

He attempts to get around this by saying that he is on the “Wing” of the party that hates America {since obviously trying to get a country’s children educated and attended to by doctors is the signature for somebody who loathes it} but it here that Baker is worst of all.

I have observed a phenomenon amongst American correspondents that I dub the “Defensive Snarl”, usually accompanied by its applied aural form the “Hypocrite’s slur”. America is the target of a good deal of leftist bile and those who are in America tend to enjoy at least some element of their existence. Accordingly their tendency is to smear all of these critics as ferociously I can, in the most disingeious approach imaginable.

Calling all Americans “A bunch of bigots” is immensely ironic. Calling all critics of America those that call all Americans “A bunch of bigots” greater still.

Observe:

There is a caste of left-wing Americans who wish essentially and in all honesty that their country was much more like France.

I am almost in tears by this stage.

They wish it had much higher levels of taxation and government intervention, that it had much higher levels of welfare, that it did not have such a “militaristic” approach to foreign policy.

Yes, they do. Note the way that the use of ” ” to enclose the word militaristic. Why are they there? Presumably Gerard considers the USA’s foreign policy to be other than militaristic, and wants to let us know that he does not endorse such crazy traitor-talk as alleged that a President waddling around in an airforce jump-suit and beginning and then sustaining wars that cause a deranged amount of damage to entirely innocent people is something other than militaristic.

If that is his view then he should damn well say so and write a proper article explaining this idiocy.

But this has never been Baker’s style.  He prefers to keep himself in a rush, thinking that so long as he keeps on churning out the nonsense he can excuse not backing a word of it up.

Above all, that its national goals were dictated, not by the dreadful halfwits who inhabit godforsaken places like Kansas and Mississippi, but by the counsels of the United Nations.

This is the part where I began to imagine that Baker’s understanding of leftism and its priorities consisted of reading a few Those T-shirts and setting finger to key while still chuckling. I’ve read a good deal of leftist material over the past few years, much of it originating from America, and the one argument that I have not seen is the case for the UN taking over US foreign policy.

I am shocked that I have seen no blog, article or website promoting this cause if it really is as prominent a thing that we lefties covet. Strangely the impression that I got was that what the American Left really wanted was an end to torture, an end to the absurdity of an industrialised nation in the 21st century having citizens dying for want of healthcare or, oh, an end to the War?

This supports my long-held view that Baker really has no idea who the left are and what they believe in and as such his articles on them are bound to be that of a blind-man staggering about and bumping into things. Obviously he never reads any of their output since he has failed to note that the left really barely ever talks about the UN any more, perhaps because it now seems like the majority of Americans are coming around to its stance on the War. The American people, just like the majority of the American left always has, wants the troops out and wants it now. That’s what is spoken about, not the UN. Why would that be advocated when it looks like a President who agrees with them stands a strong {perhaps the strongest} of getting elected?

Ah, but what a fool I was to imagine that Baker would leave that uncovered:

He continues to insist, despite the growing evidence that this left-wing nostrum would be lunacy, that the US must pull its troops out of Iraq with the utmost dispatch.

Yes, nevermind the growth of actual Americans of the view that we need to leave, the lack of consensus towards remaining embedded in a country where we are causing damage to all democrats by associating western values with the presence of a unwanted military force is no concern for dear Gerard, for he can simply generate one from his mind’s never-ending fantastical capacity.

It is “Lunacy” to depart from a country that does not want us, where we are confined to a fortress city-within-a-city euphemistically termed “The Green Zone” to contrast it to the colour the streets turn whenever American soldiers try and travel anywhere else. Utterly absurd, of course. What could Barack be thinking? It is so beyond the pale, so in opposition to the almighty empirical data that I allude to but never cite, that we must not address his actual argument. Far better to dismiss him off hand, far better to use this as fodder for further idiocy.

Let the Fisking continue:

There was no shortage of proposals. He plans large increases in government spending on health and education.

As did Bush and as Bush did. If Baker is arguing that this is somehow still an approach advocated solely by the far left he has clearly not even heard of Huckabee, let alone noted that there is a candidate suggesting we shrink the state, Ron Paul, and that he has rarely received the support of more than 10% of Republican voters, often much less.

And we would have to overlook the trillions of dollars spent by Bush {indeed, the billions he has taken from China in order to stage Baker’s beloved war} as well. Of course.

He wants to tax the rich more to pay for it. He is against companies using the opportunities of free markets to restructure their operations in the US. He is vehemently protectionist.

These are policies of the left. However Baker is wrong in that he botches his follow through:

 when you cut through the verbiage there is nothing to suggest he believes anything that is seriously at odds with the far Left of his party.

Where he is utterly wrong.

Firstly he seems to have conflated verbiage with eloquence, when they are two clearly distinct concepts. When eloquent you say something with the same clarity but superior aesthetics to the most basic form that meaning could be gleaned from, while with verbiage the meaning is obscured by unnecessary clutter.

Baker is also wrong in that the left is actually considerably wary of Obama. He is barely distinct from Hillary but where he is it is to the right. The choice of the left would have been Edwards, by a merry mile, but in his stead they balked from Clinton owing largely to her blatant lack of integrity and ruthless opportunism. Obama is clearly a winner and the left are rather keen on enjoying a spot of that, since it really has been quite a while.

In a sentence less cloying than nauseating, he continues:

If you think about it for a second, it’s not really an accident that he has been endorsed by the likes of Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson.

Which makes it a mystery how he had such an easy time carrying all of the Red States, does it not? A total enigma, given that he is really a being of the hard-left.

Hang on though, I haven’t thought for a second…

Alright.

A second’s thought leads me to conclude that Obama is a centrist.

Though he talks with great eloquence about the future, he sounds for all the world like one of the long line of Democrats from George McGovern to Walter Mondale to Michael Dukakis, who became history by espousing policies and striking a rhetorical pose that was well out of the mainstream of American politics.

The absurdity of Obama being at all like McGovern, Mondale or Dukakis is just one that I am going to disregard entirely. I would feel defiled even debating that point.

Note, however, that he thinks that his perception is “For all the world”. Baker lives in his own fantastical planet, this much is clear, one with it’s own Iraq, not to mention its own America where the “Ordinary” American is in favour of remaining engaged within the aforementioned fantasy Iraq {and why not? It sounds like such a nice place} and now, it seems, Obama’s talk of working with Republicans, his strictly limited {but still utterly shocking to almost all leftists} praise of Reagen and his flanking of Hillary over healthcare from the Right simply never occurred.

This is a fantasy world where amongst the “real causes for American pride in the past 25 years” is “the victory in the first Gulf War in 1991″, where Suddam was left to slaughter the Kurdish rebels rising against him at his own leisure with helicopter gunships and other weaponry bought by the US as GIs stood by and did not even blast those airborne artillery batteries flying through their no-fly zone. A true triumph, that was.

This is a world where when an American sees an American will

fill up with understandable emotion whenever they see a report on television about the tragic heroics of some soldier or Marine who gave his life in Iraq or Afghanistan.

and amongst those feelings will not be blood-curdling rage at the pointless death of someone killed for no cause at all or remorse that this absurd spectacle of aimless carnage had been permitted to continue.

I could caustically rant on for hours about this fool and his distorted vision of an already warped country that deserves far more hatred than its earned yet at times seems defended solely by the blind to the bloodstains rather than those who can accept the horrors it has committed yet do not consider it the Great Satan but this commenteer on the Times website has already done my job for me:

What you claim as the “mainstream of American politics” is neither mainstream nor American. You are simply expressing the age old fear of the status quo, a fear of loosing the lucrative control the status quo has over Americans….You are afraid of Obama and what he stands for and frankly you should be.

Believe it or not R.E. Vamp had difficulties sleeping last night.

I decided to put my insomnia to some good use and so fired up C-Span to try and cover this deranged contest despite being across an ocean. Their coverage is perhaps best described as “Uninspired” but it certainly seemed to do the job. Idiot callers served as time fillers, perhaps the stupidest saying that we ought to “Draft Al Gore into the race, a suggestion that made me lose what residual faith in human reason that remained.

The results for the Democrats Douglas has already dealt with. I shall add no more but to say that I am horrified and sickened and the prospect of her triumphing looms yet greater. It remains a tight contest and I hope deeply that she gets thrashed but, stronger than at any point since Iowa, I find that unlikely.

In short it was the least pleasant surprise of the year thus far, joint with me opening up my laptop to find the screen thoroughly fucked a few hours ago. Yeah, it’s been quite a crap day.

I, thankfully, got to sleep before the votes could be completely counted {a process which took far longer than I imagined it would} and before any of the Democratic speeches, besides one of them who’s name I forget. He was bloated and boring and as delusional as any outside the big three {and Edwards is lucky not to be included} who reckons that he is still in with a shot. I listened to his bluster absently while scouring polls with increasing desperation.

Edwards was not on for a while longer but instead that guy from Desperate Housewives, you know, the one who fucks the neurotic weird one with more surgery than face {who used to fuck Superman, which I imagine might not have been as fun} and has that wonderful down-to-earth attitude. Well, it turns out that he is pretty similar in real life and loves Edwards. I enjoyed hearing him, actually, so it was a pity that C-Span randomly cut him off half-way through to “Take a look at the locations” or whatever the fuck they were up to.

The Republicans, meanwhile, were far more fun.

First up was Giuliani, everyone’s favourite fascist. This neo-con intoxicated pleb knew that he had lost and lost hard and effectively told his crowd as much, saying that they should help him “In New York, help me in Florida…Help me in California!” with this last one receiving a massive cheer. Presumably they wanted to get out of the cold, or perhaps meet a Hispanic person.

He made repeated reference to the fact that he was about to “Get on a plane”, perhaps making some subtle subliminal reference to Top Gun that would whip up his idiot fan-base. Thankfully he left quickly so that I didn’t have to bear too much of his rhetoric. Like many that night he made himself sound reasonable until he suddenly went far too far and revealed himself.

Second was Romney, who is a loathsome little pustule that I truly despise. Oddly though, it was hard to muster up much hatred for him here. He was on stage surrounded by his family and started by thanking roughly two thousand people {I started to think that he was giving gratitude to everyone who had voted for him, by name} and then proceeded to heartily congratulate McCain and attempt, with very limited success, to cajole the crowd into clapping their foe.

It was never going to work, ever, with the Republican Party in its present state {or perhaps ever} but it was nice that he tried.

Watching Romney for an extended amount of time makes you realise two things:
1) He has a strangely hollow voice, which is befitting of his views.
2) He has an immense amount of charisma and charm, at times. So much that you can actually get fooled, until a phrase or two {his claim that all Americans were “Of faith” was at least, on this occasion, moderated with the proviso “Or something greater than themselves” but still stuck in my craw something dreadful} snap you out of it.

It is very hard indeed to hold onto his record, his rank opportunism and his clear disregard for the actual worth of rights and liberties. His desire to “Double Guantanamo” and simply revolting apologism for the Bush regime’s policy of torture were far from my mind when hearing him speak.

So, he’s scum, but skilled at hiding it.

After this it was time for Huckabee, who seemed astoundingly pleased for coming 3rd place. But then, this is a big-government theocrat running in a state holding the motto of “Live Free or Die” and at that one who had said that he would be perfectly happy for 4th place.

He gave a roaring, populist speech and comparing him to Romney was fascinating. They seem the closest in this race but yet the furthest away. Romney lacked substance while Huckabee seems to be dusted with merely a light dusting of bright charisma.

For some reason McCain did not go last, but penultimate. His speech was wonderful and hearing his voice made me realise that not just regions but generations have accents. His tone is one that will never return, I suspect, but one that harks decades back. You can almost hear the history dripping from it, it evokes Kennedy and the 1960s and all of that. It seems the last chance that those years can reach out and touch the present directly, perhaps at all.

McCain is widely considered a RINO, Republican In Name Only, but his backing of the Iraq War has underwhelmed this substantially. He mentioned it lightly in this speech, instead relishing the triumph. Well, not exactly relishing, his hands seemed unused to such force and enthusiasm behind his speeches, seeming to be an instance of futureshock. The baying of the crowd were not something that he bathed in, indeed if anything he seemed vaguely wary of the joy filling the room.

Then on to Paul.

Poor Ron Paul managed to make barely any impact upon the race, managing to get less than autocrat Giuliani and basically reaping the reward of someone who featured adverts attacking immigrants instead of talking about things he cares about instead of what he thinks the voters wish to hear.

His speech was the same as usual, using buzzphrases that get violent reactions to enthuse the room. He stated at the start that he was surprised to have gotten this far and to be able to receive massive cheers when attacking the Fed. The room responded violently and chanting “[Something] the Fed”.

I can not say for certain but I doubt it was “Hug”.

Ron Paul has a truly vigorous fanbase and seems just as surprised at this fact as are any of the establishment. He seemed delighted at their jubilation, at one stage waving his arms in the air to up their chants {a curious activity for a pack of libertarians to engage in, yet utterly thrilling} and at others just beaming eagerly. It seemed easy to forget that this was a gentleman who had come fifth, with 8% of the vote.

Also easy to slip from the mind were the accusations in the New Republic concerning articles in his paper which almost certainly did not write but could possibly have authorised or encouraged, that expressed striking and barely covert racism and out-right homophobia.

He could have addressed this, but instead stuck to what he is best at: lambasting big government, proclaiming a Heyekian message that there was no division between economic and social freedom and that he would protect both, attacking the relevance of the IRS, declaring the Income Tax only required due to the Iraq War and American troops being stationed abroad and something that he would eliminate along with the Central Bank. His loathing was reserved not for any minority, but for money printed as paper alone instead of being tied to to gold.

As unpromising material as this may sound, from his lips it was truly thrilling, causing the whole room to erupt riotously on a regular basis, leaving him grinning and cheering their cheers.

He dropped the ball here, he truly did. The message was taken to those that did not require a new candidate and the approach inefficient. But this is not over. Far from it.

I doubt that even the death of this old man could halt it now.

Here is a handy little image showing the relative wealth of the candidates. Unfortunately a few are so poor as to be invisible but perhaps that makes the point even more clear.

Romney is rich, filth. Just to put things into some sense of proportion: the estimated wealth of all three Democratic front-runners piled into one is $90.6 million, while Romney’s alone is $294.6 million.

So why isn’t he winning? The obvious suggestion is that that is his personal wealth, rather than the money accumulated for a run. But this is not good enough: in addition to being partially self-financed he has accumulated a vast amount of donations from the typical sources. He seems suitably…Flexible for the billionaires that generally finance such endeavours and while most see his shift of ideology to exactly what votes want him to be as base opportunism and a worrying lack of actual earnestness the backers consider a suitable reverence towards power.

So of all the campaigns only Giulini’s even verges on being as financially lubricated and the others are minuscule by comparison, record breaking web-based fundraiser extravaganza or no record breaking web-based fundraiser extravaganza. McCain’s managed to almost bankrupt itself in the middle of last year and Huckabee has been using what Romney probably used to earn in an hour or so to fund his entire campaign.

And yet, and yet…

Romney seems to have become this elections equivilant of the Liberal/SDP coalition back in the ’80s: coming second just about everywhere and thus getting fucked over merciless by the FPTP system. The only difference being that Romney deserves it.

So what does this tell us? That the vast amount of money at his disposal is not enough, I suspect. That slickness and vast funds do not a winning campaign make and no matter how many adverts you bombard hapless viewers with if you are a reneging two-faced flip-flopper who distorts and reforms to fit the mould desired of him by whoever he is performing to then you may make a damn fine used car salesman {a common comparison} but will struggle to get popular enough to be voted in.

Much the same is true of everyone’s least-favourite ex-feminist Hillary Clinton, who had much more money than Obama after a few wealthy backers and a Hollywood entourage puffed up her coffers with maximum-donations and used a tactic of filling every television screen available as regularly as advertisement breaks would allow in Iowa, yet still received a pumelling.

It is possible that this could not hold true: perhaps Hillary or Mitt will resurge in the fashion that McCain remarkably did. But if New Hampshire’s outcome is a victory for Obama and a second triumph over the state for McCain then, especially given Huckabee’s savaging of Rich Romney in Iowa, we will be forced to the conclusion that the purchase of votes is not possible, scotching a long-standing legend that has bolstered cynics the globe over for many decades. It would seem that extreme wealth can give you economic power, control over the media if you are dedicated enough, but falters when in terms of political.

Which could have some very pleasing implications closer to home…

Today is, of course, the day of the Iowa Caucuses. The system which these take place under is so absurdly complex that only the Democratics could tolerate it and if you want to know then I would suggest Wikipedia.

The point of the matter is that what will take place is one vote that is conducted far too convoluted and social a fashion to be able to predict via any existing statistical methods while there is another which is far too close and tight to be able to predict via any existing statistical methods.

What we do know is that there is a strong chance that Hillary Clinton will be defeated either by Barack Obama {a personal favourite} or by John Edwards, or {best of all} by both. The prospect of this is one that I find highly pleasing as, quite frankly, I hate the idea of her dominating American politics for the next four years, or ever {as seems more likely} at least the next eleven months.

I have come to learn a bizarre amount about this election for somebody not actually within the country, certainly far more than I have done about my own country’s. To be honest this is all so instantly dated and thus tediously dull that I will not bother you with it, instead let me give you the basics:

1) Obama seems the only one likely to take down Clinton. He’s amazing.

2) The Republicans seem to have torn themselves into messy chunk.

Clinton brings the Republicans together, uniting them into a tight, cohesive union of loathing. Obama drags the less extreme ones towards him and none of the shit that they have flung yet seems to stick. When even the hard-right seems to be unenthusiastic when insulting a black man you know that you are onto something.

Meanwhile the Republicans are torn between a plasticated Mormon that will make himself whoever he needs to be {apart from a consistent person with a good memory for his former positions, of course} or an autocrat that, having closed his mighty fist around the nation’s mightiest city, now wants to crush the entire country and possibly sizable chunks of the entire world; an immensely charming and amusing Arkansan that is from the same town as Clinton and wants a massive, philanthropist state; a neo-imperialist torture-victim who wants to rout the special interest groups and stay in Iraq until they obtain “Victory”; or perhaps an elderly libertarian who calls himself a Constitutionalist and wants there to be hardly state at all, along with quite literally no troops abroad, anywhere…

If that sounds immensely diverse then that’s because it is.

So they are probably going to be torn in almost all directions while the Democrats, by contrast, established a creeping consensus before tearing it down. Clinton seemed invincible and pundits grumbled that she was treating the affair more as foreshadowing of a coronation than a contest.

Thankfully it turned out that they did have a decent alternative and one that would still be a “First!” if he won, the “First Black President”, that is. Surprisingly the race issue rose only occasionally, with the Clinton posse insinuating that he may have been a Muslim {could you imagine such an “Allegation” being aimed at a white Christian?} or a drugs dealer {fuck it, Bush was a known cokehead and nobody ever made that claim}.

But it turns out that besides this nonsense he is actually an immensely strong Conservative. Hillary Clinton’s style was best described by Andrew Sullivan as a “Defensive Crouch”, while Barack’s seems to be strong, confident and hopeful.

Hillary will force you to sit through a bunch of nauseating, focus-grouped-to-fuck platitudes that are effectively the spoken word equivalent of the overly numerous Bland FM stations that clog our airwaves {it is best that we do not even get started on my views on them} while Obama actually seems to have some fresh ideas and outlooks.

The only Republican anywhere near as exciting is Ron Paul, which is odd since he is a well known figure in congress and has been such for a very, very long time. He argues a fundamentalist Constitutionalist line that he takes to the extremes of desiring full-scale withdrawals from everywhere {fuck Iraq: we’re talking South Korea, Japan, Germany here…}, the total demolition of the IRS, CIA and pretty much any other easily-initialed government committee going, the destruction of the centralised economy and thus a de facto return to his beloved Gold Standard and {for some reason} far tighter immigration controls, to a draconian extent.

A radical, in short.

I disagree with him over a massive number of issues {he wants pensions, education, all sorts of shit gone} but he has effectively had a movement spring to life around him, with only the mildest of encouragement and, primarily, some bafflement and bewilderment from its focus, a 77 year old man who has been saying the same things for almost as long about just about everything.

The reason that he is so striking is that if you compare him to the slimy, slippery creature that the Establishment has decided upon the contrast is much like observing Johnny Cash and Bon Jovi side by side. Cash’s lyrics may have focused upon topics like taking cocaine and shooting “That bad bitch down”, or shooting his one true love to death with a gun, or committing manslaughter, or being a bastard that murders people, or some cunt who “Shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die” but by fuck he was cool.

Glamourise violence, attach macho legend to acts of random brutality, whatever, if you can sound that intense and earnest while doing it and you earn my respect.

As for Bon Jovi…Well, enough said. That insult is self-explanatory.

Romney is a noxious, irksome little worm, who has thus far based his bid entirely around two things:

1) Lies.

2) Money.

Standard fair for a Republican, you might think. But he has taken it to soaring new levels, heights never even reached by Bush, since at least he shared a religion with the scum that he required to get him into power. Romney has required what is estimated at around $100 and some of the most bare-faced dishonesty ever seen in American politics {and it has a long and dishonourable tradition} to build himself some form of popularity.

Whether it is claiming that “We will see more progress in the next ten years than in the past ten centuries”, shifting his views on abortion and immigration a full 180 degrees for reasons of pure political expediency, pretending that Mormonism is almost identical to Christianity, claiming to be a more legitimate social conservative than true idiot Mike Huckabee or…Well, any of the nonsense that he has spewed, he has proven himself to be an utter and absolute foul demon of a moron.

He has not an ounce of wisdom, of intelligence or decency within him. All that he has is cunning but with the Republicans that, plus a fortune of a few billions of personal wealth, could well be enough. The copraphiliac crowd of the Republican Establishment has, of course, lapped up his bullshit eagerly. Any smarmy, smug cunt with enough cash and a suitably thick slime-coating will be embraced eagerly by them and any person lacking enough dignity to accept their cash with a happy grin will be the darling of the massive corporations.

And so it was that Romney has overtaken the balding thug Giuliani {always a little too keen on the gays, always a tad permissive cocks when it came to abortions…}, who’s gruesome growlings towards Iran were bettered by the arch-bastards pledge to “Double Guantanamo”.

{Incidentally: the Communists claim that the only gulag in Cuba is in Guantanamo Bay. Yet they claim that the British government’s assistance to American rendition is yet another instance among many of them having blood on their hands. Do I detect something of a double standard?}

Anyway, Romney is a putrid, foul construct that fits any shape which is required of it and is devoid of a single shard, an isolated iota, a lonely quark of honesty, reason or earnest.

He will say whatever suits him and when required to give a key-speech will respond by proving himself yet further devoid of any value. When the worry over his bizarre faith came to a head and he was forced to confront them this former Bishop entirely ignored the dark and daft past of his organisation {the institutionalised racism stamped out only just in time for them to remain legal and not banned along with all of the other white supremacist nut-jobs, an amendment made supposedly as a consequence of divine revelation to their leaders in the nick of time, the way in which when their founder’s wife confiscated the Holy Scrawlings he had ordered written he was incapable of remembering the supposedly divinely dictated words, their belief that Satan and Jesus are brothers…} he instead claimed that:

-He believed in Christ as the Saviour, so all was well.

-That said, though, he did not believe in religious tests.

-Religion and freedom walked hand-in-hand {a revelation, surely, to those living in Saudi Arabia or Iran}.

-Americans are wary and sick of atheists.

-You have to be a believer to be an American.

And this was what was supposed to be his “Kennedy Detaching Openly from the Vatican” moment?

If both Romney and Clinton are victorious I am perfectly happy to focus upon British politics again. At least watching Brown get slapped around from all directions will leave me caring, since despite reservations I truly do want him to win the next election instead of the Tories. Between those two I have no fucking concern, they could both die slowly in a chemical fire for all I care.

Either of them would ruin the country and both against each other will be sure to tear it into two. The only thing that can possibly hold the Republican Party together by this stage is Clinton and the only fucker content-devoid enough to beat Bush’s record is…

Actually, wait, all of them.

Recently, my mind has (tragically) been occupied with the neocons. More specifically, I mean their foreign policy, and its relationship to the pro-Iraq War section of the British left.

There is a section of the British left in favour of an interventionist foreign policy. Given the outpour of overwhelming anger at this group from the outraged anti-war left (“How dare anyone disagree with us!”), it’d be hard to blame anyone for not knowing it. But they’re the people behind the Euston Manifesto, who wanted Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Iraq, and who supported Blair abroad in Labour.

What do they want? In their own words a, “reconfiguration of progressive opinion,” to what they perceive of as a more moral stance, especially in foreign policy. They’re pro-democracy, pro-human rights and pro-freedom. And they want to see this everywhere. Perhaps the Eustonians most distinctive commitment is a total opposition to tyranny across the globe – the cause of their international interventionism.

Essentially, the origins of the Eustononians were almost in the bad behaviour of the anti-war left. Disgusted at the stark apologism of RESPECT and other parts of the anti-war movement, they felt the need to take a stand and mark out the principles they felt the left has lost. It’s often hard to blame them. The behaviour of the anti-war movement has all too often been questionable. I find it hard to be comfortable with the elements in it that are quite happy to declare the UK a police state while denying that Saddam Hussein was actually a dictator. Jan Sloboda, I’m happy with; George Galloway, not at all.

So I can sympathise with the Eustonians, up to a point. They clearly want to do some good. Moreover, they’re certainly preferable to much the liberal-left these days, with its Michael Moore-esque fixation on eternal whinging. Often, the strongest argument of the pro-war left is that it’s all very well to moan about sanctions or a war to topple a tyrant as immoral, but what else is there to do? You’ve got the choice of denying that a dictator is a dictator (which is wrong), or doing nothing and practically supporting the dictator (which is also wrong). Take your pick.

No, I wouldn’t want to either.

When I disagree with the Euston Group, it’s usually over practise, not principle. In simple terms, I don’t believe it’s possible to import democracy on the barrel of a gun. War unquestionably brings out the worst in humanity. The senseless slaughter of man against man reveals a bestial, irrational side perfectly at home with narrow tribalism. How couldn’t it? When two groups of men are trying to rip bloody chunks out of each other, the, “us and them,” mentality must solidify pretty fast. Add to this the differences of language, culture and, most visibly, skin, that are present in situations like Iraq, and there’s even more material for opposition to work with. It’s not hard to see how a determined militant could turn a man against someone who, rationally, is their best friend.

Robespierre may not have known much (of use, at least; I’m sure he was very bright), but he was spot on when he said, “No one loves armed missionaries; the first lesson of nature and prudence is to repulse them as enemies.” (Ironic, given that that’s what he tried to do to the French…) No-one loves armed missionaries. You cannot force someone to be free. It must come from within – the people must want it. Support that revolution if you will. Seek it. But it must be perceived as from the people, not from abroad. Otherwise, it will fail – as has done from 1792, right through until 2002.

But, I can sympathise with that the Euston Group want, at least. They want democracy. They want freedom. They want to help people. How can I oppose that and keep a conscience?

Now let’s have a look at the neocons. They say they want freedom and democracy too. Do they? No. They act in America’s interests – which they feel are served best by their conception of freedom (that is; laissez faire capitalism), their conception of democracy (sometimes) and their international stability (always).

“But look at our commitment to freedom around the globe!” They cry. “We love freedom and hate tyranny. We saved Iraq! We oppose North Korea! We stop Rogue States from having the Bomb, and you wouldn’t want them having that, would you? Think of the children! We’re the true democrats, buddy.”

And, of course, superficially they’re right. They have, theoretically, been some of the strongest supporters of democracy around the globe in the last few decades.

That’s theoretically, though. Look a little closer, and you’ll realise that the neocons haven’t pursued a moral foreign policy since the days of the democratic revolutionaries in the early eighties. Even before Reagan was out, the old realpolitik of Kissinger that neoconservatism began as a reaction to was back in – Nicaraguan nukes, anyone?

So how can we go about exploding the myth that neoconservatism is freedom’s best friend? We’ll start with the wars they have fought. Iraq will do. The Americans had three priorities when the dust first settled; stability, their conception of democracy (everyone has a vote, and screw the civil freedoms to make it work) and the speedy introduction of a free market. Why? Because it suited America. The stability because less troops would be killed, and because it’s necessary for capitalism to function properly. The democracy because they believe that it works for stability, because it works well with the free-market, and maybe because they actually believe in it.

And the free-market? The money, my friend, the money.

Of course, the neoliberal officials sent to sort out the country thought the best way to do so would be to cut back the government as far as possible. This process, known as de-Ba’athisation, went a very long way. As well as very legitimately cutting out the totalitarian regime and the Ba’ath party almost totally, it virtually removed the government from every aspect of life in Iraq, theoretically at least. This was to free the market. This, happening in the midst of a war which rather made stability impossible, didn’t work hugely well. We’re – or rather, the Iraqis – are living with the consequences today.

What does this tell us, though? Ultimately, that the greatest concern of the neocons when they went into Iraq was the free market. I won’t judge whether that this was through greed, or a doctrinaire commitment to neoliberal economics, or the fact that they genuinely thought it would be best for everyone. A stable free-market on good terms with America – which, if the war had worked, Iraq might have been – would work in their interests. That it didn’t was perhaps their fault, perhaps not – but they certainly didn’t help by pursuing what they perceived to be those interests.

Now, let’s look at the wars that the neocons haven’t fought, and the fusses they haven’t made. Pakistan. Musharraf isn’t democratic in the slightest, and yet they support him. He keeps the terrorists down, they say. He supports them in Afghanistan, they say. He maintains stability, they say. But now the country is a powder-keg ready to explode, with the distinct possibility of the Islamists rather than the democrats taking over. Musharraf has recently been actively crushing democratic movements. One of the leading Pakistani democratic leaders has been murdered, and he wasn’t able to stop it. The country is manifestly not stable.

And yet the neocons aren’t calling for him to go.

Russia. Their economy collapsed after the neoliberal disaster of the nineties, and from the ashes rose Putin’s stern, unbending and very possibly undemocratic nationalism. Virtually every independent observer said the recent elections were not fair or free. He is holding onto power after he goes as president. It’s sliding towards the possibility of dictatorship.

And yet, the neocons aren’t calling for him to go. There is some rhetorical opposition, yes – but on neo-Star Wars, not the brutal silencing of opposition.

So why don’t the neocons get their act together and start complaining here? What makes these attacks on democracy so different to Iraq and Iran? What makes them swallow their apparent principles here?

The answers to these questions could be long and complicated. But one thing is notably true in both cases, and many similar cases. Pakistan and Russia both have open free markets to which the US economy, to one extent or another, has access. So does the massively repressive China, to a limited degree – along with many other authoritarian, anti-democratic regimes the neocons tolerate. There’s a strong government to maintain stability so that a free-market can function. Foreign companies – the American market – can invest. This means profit for America, it means strength – it’s in the national interest. Capitalism prevails.

But, what about Iran, North Korea, and pre-invasion Iraq? Would they let American goods on the market? Of course not. More than that, their leaders are often hostile to foreign involvement, and provide a theoretical threat to the USA, relative sizes notwithstanding and ignored. In their current states, they don’t represent anything in America’s interest – and might even harm it.

That’s ultimately the difference between the neocons and the pro-war left, on the foreign policy front. The neocons now want to serve America’s interests – which they best feel are guaranteed by a global free market. If democratic guarantees that, then they’ll support it – and if a brutal dictatorship guarantees the stability required, they’ll support that too. They want their type of freedom – economic freedom. The Euston Group types, on the other hand, are genuinely interested in freedom, democracy and human rights – real freedom.

That’s what the neocons wanted thirty years ago, when they were the democratic revolutionaries. That’s where the Eustonians should stay – on the principled, truly democratic side. And to stay there, they mustn’t engage in the sort of realpolitik that got the neocons where they are now by allying with the neocons. They’ve as much business doing that as the anti-war left has grouping with Islamic fundamentalists – none whatsoever. The enemy of their enemy is not their friend.

Given that America was only deflated in its momentum to attack Iran when it turned out that the claims made by the White House did not match the findings of the CIA with regards to nuclear weaponry it is safe to say that the new neo-conservative reasoning and justification for waging unprovoked wars of aggression is not that Communism must be defeated, or that civil and political liberties have to be established, but instead that a country which is not in Europe and is not, of course, Israel or America can and should be invaded if they have a will for nuclear weaponry.

This was something of a development of their previous argument, that any country with the dreaded WMDS {besides, of course, Europe, America or “Plucky little Israel”} needed to be invaded.

But I am not interested in going through a history of the “Development” of neo-conservative thought, but instead to make a small suggestion: bomb Pakistan.

Yes, fairly simple when you consider it, isn’t it?

The country is at severe, constant and severe risk of fundamentalist overthrow by a bunch of deranged Islamists who could well be perfectly happy to fire nuclear weaponry at Israel, if they can reach it, or if not the more obvious, immediate and historically appropriate target of India.

Yes, the same India which is estimated to have enough atomic stockpiles to initiate a Global Winter should both it and Pakistan launch their warheads in quick succession, thus literally causing the End Of All Life On Earth As We Know It.

The most viable opponent to the present autocrat was shot in the neck and then blown up yesterday. Either these forces or those belonging to the countries’ own leader could have done this and either way it seems like the region is in for some more havoc and carnage over the next few days.

And…They. Have. Nukes.

So…Brutal, totalitarian leader with a pack of deranged religious types as the most viable alternative. Quite possibly Bin Laden himself is somewhere in the country.

So why the entire absence of suggestions from the neo-cons that we implement some pre-emptive military strikes upon their nuclear weapons facilities? Why are we not mangling the infrastructure surrounding these areas to ensure that they never fall into Islamist hands?

Why were all the guns readying themselves to aim at Iran when a nation which actually has the weapons that America was so afraid of and is rapidly disintegrating politically with no end in sight except perhaps a new, brutally enforced theocratic hegemony is bordering with another nation capable of obliterating the Global Ecology and, quite literally, wiping out every living being upon the face of the planet, or at very least the entirety of the Indian subcontinent?

Surely even brown people must count for about as much as Israel when there are over a billion of them?