In Libya the United States has overthrown a dictator in an oil-rich country without solid plans for the transition to a post-dictatorship regime. WMDs are missing…sound familiar?
2003 Redux
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
10 Comments. Leave new
“General, guard the effin’ oil and otherwise STFU!!! Capisce?”
It’s Generalissimo Obama!
Those much vaunted community organizing skills should come in handy.
And there will be less drooling.
Sheesh. It’s about opening it up for plunder. One of the last solvent countries in existence.
History tells us that this can only get worse. Vote for one thing get another – Not good at all.
*rolls his eyes*…..everything has to fit your model of static history eh, Boss?
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Historically, imperial imperatives never change until the empire in question collapses, either militarily or economically. The future of the US empire doesn’t seem too bright….
Henri
I’d say the future of the US Empire has a MUCH brighter future than the “grand American experiment in self government,” IF it ever existed.
It never really existed Falco. For one, the Monarchists never gave up the fight, they’re still very much alive..just look at the Dick Cheney types. Also, as soon as the Autocracy is threatened, they clamp down with furious vengeance…..we believe our government is benevolent toward us because 1) we have a short memory, 2) there is an entire propaganda apparatus designed to keep us from recognizing what DOES occur (a la Andrew Szasz’s ‘routine regulatory failure’ concept), and 3) the American population is incredibly passive compared to other places in the world…judges can order strikes to end and people complain but fundamentally go back to work quietly….if they didn’t, you’d see the thug gangs coming out to bust up the proletariat in a heartbeat.
The only way this could have been more accurate, is if you added various other president masks, granted Vietnam was communism but it was treated as if ideology was a wmd, the Korean war before that, It goes on and on.
My reading of history, Aggie Dude, leads me to believe that the US population was, in fact, not more passive compared to that of other countries – at least not until those running the country learned to use the modern equivalents of panem et circenses – food stamps and the Super Bowl – and digital pornography – to keep it (relatively) quiescent. But I suggest that the rise of the so-called «Tea Party» movement, funded as it is by people like the Koch brothers, shows that even this strategy is failing, and that something far more dangerous to the plutocracy itself – a real fascist movement is emerging. The Kochs and others of their ilk may think themselves in control, but the Roman-Catholoci monarchist Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen zu Köningen thought he could control the Nazis and use them for his ends, which were more or less the same as those of the Koch brothers – fighting unions and keeping the government in the hands of the established plutocracy. WW II buffs know how that played out….
Henri