Old Myths/New Truths

Body Politic

by Larry Beinhart, May 27, 2008

The Great Republican Disaster, from Reagan to Bush the Lesser, has been the Time of the Unreal. (Yes, people possessed by the unreal are very much like the undead. They’re mindless, lethal, they infect others, they’re very hard to stop, and their existence is a complete surprise to people who live in the real world.)

Those forces of darkness derive their power from their Great Myths.

No matter how powerful a myth is, if it is essentially false, reality has certain methods fighting back. It uses Failure. If Failure fails, it moves on, through Fiasco, to Disaster.

Recently, there have been signs of hope. Yes, “hope” means Obama. He speaks of reality, whether it’s about race or a gas tax holiday.

Lo and behold, people actually have heard, listened, and agreed.

Let us seize the time and create New Truths, based on reality, to replace the Old Myths, based on bullshit.

Old Myth: 9/11 was an act of war.
New Truth: 9/11 was a criminal act.
Osama bin Laden was not a head of state or an agent of a state. He was a religion-crazed gangster with a relatively small gang. His acts were crimes. To elevate them to acts of war was to elevate him. Worse, it created the wrong response. So wrong, he’s still out there. Proof that you can commit a mass murder against the United States and get away with it. Only when we redefine 9/11 will we be able to figure out a sane response to replace the current insanity.

Old Myth: The War on Terror.
New Truth: The War on Terror is bogus.
There is no War on Terror. It was a PR ploy to invade a country that annoyed George Bush and Dick Cheney, to transfer mad amounts of money to the military-industrial complex, to win elections, and to allow George to play dress-up.

Old Myth: The war in Iraq was not a war of choice.
New Truth: The war in Iraq was a war of choice.
Even if someone actually believed that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous man with weapons of mass destruction, the problem was solved the moment that the weapons inspectors got full access to all sites in Iraq. At that point, going to war was like the police going into a man’s house to look for guns, then shooting him while he is sitting on the couch because they couldn’t find them and were tired of looking.

Old Myth: The war in Iraq can be won.
New Truth: The war in Iraq was lost years ago.
It was lost through belief in stupid mythologies and the failure to heed reality. It was lost through poor planning and worse execution. The administration does not have a plan, the means, or the will to win in Iraq. Their only plan, their only goal, is to pass the problem on, so they can blame the next president for their failure.