Look out, folks – here comes the straight talk express, charging down the track straight toward you. For what seems like the twelfth time in as many months, John McCain has launched (or re-launched) his presidential bid, trying to trade on any of his former selves that the public will buy – Mister Independent, Mister Inevitable, Mister Iraq Victory, etc. Pick your favorite McCain… or collect all three! At this stage, the Arizona senator’s flagging campaign appears to be centered on his dogged support for the Iraq project, albeit a “better managed” variant of that catastrophe. The calculation is a simple one – McCain supports the troop increase because he believes it’s right, even though it’s unpopular; a position that is supposed to lend him an aura of integrity and moral authority. Everyone else is playing politics with the war, but not McCain. That’s his card, and he’s playing it for all it’s worth, equating troop withdrawals with “surrender” and any war funding conditions with abandonment of our troops (mainstream G.O.P. positions, in essence).

Okay – so here’s my question. How is McCain’s position any less “political” than anyone else’s? He’s just betting on “war futures” like all those who voted for this policy in the first place. If in nine months Iraq is even marginally more quiet, McCain can claim vindication. If things go even more septic and Congress forces even a partial withdrawal of the additional “surge” forces, he will be able to claim that the continuing disaster is the result of not following his sage counsel. And if the American project in Iraq ultimately succeeds (i.e. if a government congenial to U.S. influence and permanent military bases ever takes hold), it will be good news for McCain, though decidedly not for the U.S. troops and Iraqis who will have died in the meantime, not to mention the millions of Iraqis who will have had their national sovereignty compromised by a foreign power, and the millions of Americans who have been made demonstrably less safe because of this stupid war. In other words, no one benefits from “victory” except politicians like McCain.

McCain talks as though he has the right to speak for everyone in uniform. Frankly, I don’t see why. He is not the only person who suffered during the Vietnam War, not by a long shot. Plenty of Americans had a rougher time of it than McCain, and something like 58,000 never came back at all. That’s to say nothing of what the Vietnamese and other southeast Asians endured during that war. From what I’ve seen, I doubt very many of those incarcerated by the Saigon regime or the U.S. military / C.I.A. during those years are now trotting around the countryside angling for votes. (Most are in unmarked graves or sleeping with the fishes, as they say.) Just this week I ran across an article about how the enormous tonnage of high explosives we dropped on Cambodia in 1965 – 1973 was in fact a gross underestimate – a number now revised upwards to more than 2,756,941 tons. Needless to say, that relentless campaign of terror bombing did not lead to peace and prosperity, nor was it intended to. The same may be said of the conflict in Iraq.

War clearly has its uses. For some.

luv u,

jp

It’s one thing to try and scope out why someone would want to gun down dozens of people in cold blood; it’s quite another to consider how so clearly disturbed an individual could get his twitchy hands on such deadly weapons in the first place. The first problem is one experts, talking heads, journalists, psychologists, etc., will be grappling with on television and in print for years to come. The second is a bit simpler: mail order, gun shops, and Wal*Mart. Obviously if you haven’t yet killed anyone or committed a serious crime but are, in fact, dead set on annihilating a whole building full of people, it’s not so hard to procure military-grade weapons designed to mow down as many folks as possible in the least amount of time. And you can even buy your ammo within easy walking distance of campus in Virginia and elsewhere in our bullet-headed nation.

Sure, we have a culture of violence. It’s not something primarily driven by media consumption – it’s more a matter of policy. But our solutions many times deal with the more superficial aspect of violence. Pretty much all of the major broadcast news outlets have pulled the self-made video of the shooter Cho’s lunatic paranoid rantings; I can’t say that I disagree with that decision. But one piece of video I think they should broadcast again and again is the one documenting his firearm purchase – I suggest a super that reads, “See how easy this is.” And while I’m offering suggestions, how about a cable channel that shows how over-the-top these legally obtainable weapons are. Remember – these are offensive weapons. They’re easy to fire, easy to reload, and carry high-capacity ammunition clips that hold 33 rounds. Not exactly what I’d call a reasonable means of self-defense. The gun dealer in Roanoke said he was a good mannered, “clean-cut” college kid. I suppose we should be grateful the guy doesn’t sell rocket-propelled grenades or TOW missile launchers.

This is indeed a time to grieve. A lot of shooting going on – here in my hometown, another cop was shot (young guy doing a traffic stop). My feeling, though, is that the thing that is killing all these folks will once again go unaddressed, particularly since our political culture is so cowardly on this topic. I’ve heard some tepid discussion thus far of re-regulating assault weapons, but it seems like you can only hear that kind of talk when it’s balanced out by some right-wing nut job who wants to arm ALL students so that they can shoot back. (I’m not making this up. Hey dumbshit – Cho was an armed student.) And while boneheads on CNN and Fox debate the merits of facilitating schoolhouse shootouts, over in Iraq incidents like Virginia Tech happen on a daily basis. It’s hard to imagine how soul-crushing that must be.

So while Dubya offers his words of consolation, just remember – what he’s set in motion overseas is Cho times 20,000. Welcome to nutsville.

luv u,

jp