Am I dreaming, or did Joe Biden just blow another presidential bid with that big yap of his? I feel like I’ve been transported back to 1987, when the old media knockout machine first kicked into high gear. First it was Gary Hart, presumptive front-runner, derailed because of what — some kind of heterosexual liaison with an adult woman? God, no! He was out of there, his morals not up to the high standard set by the ersatz Hollywood cowboy then ensconced in the White House — a man who had cavorted with the likes of Errol Flynn back in the day, for chrissake. Then Biden got caught cribbing British Labor party leader Neil Kinnock, and he was out. Would that work today? Not as well as Biden’s clumsily phrased comment that seemed to suggest Obama is cleaner and more palatable to, well, white people. The insufferable NPR Morning Edition team brought up Obama’s comment that he did not take the remark personally, about which one of them commented, well, why should he? It wasn’t about him. Ummm… well, yeah, it was about him, if the comment was a reference to “blackness” in general.

Anyway, that’s Joe Biden. Less newsworthy, apparently, is his contention (which he shares with nearly all of his fellow Democratic presidential contenders) that the Iraqis need to, in essence, get their shit together. This is positioning for our eventual exit from Iraq. It’s the same exit strategy we applied to the Vietnam War — blame the victims, as though what we did to them was something we did for them. That’s the Vilsack line, as well, and of course Hillary is all about “benchmarks” for the Iraqi government, etc. Meanwhile on the other side of the aisle, the “hang tough” Republicans (all safely beyond fighting age, one might notice) have added “benchmarks” to their resolution of support for Bush’s escalation, though the rhetoric is still designed to set their opponents up for blame when (not if) this “strategy” doesn’t work. And when it doesn’t work, you can bet it will be because people just slightly to the left of them doubted it, and not because it is an utterly bankrupt policy.

Yes indeed, you can see the outlines of a “knife in the back” explanation for our failure in Iraq when the war is finally over. Again, this is Vietnam redux. Those antiwar protesters, press critics, and wishy-washy liberals emboldened the enemy, undermined our troops, compromised the mission, stabbed the president in the back, etc. Hey, it worked great for Nixon… and for Hitler, come to think of it. Mark my words — this catastrophe will be blamed upon the very people who counseled most strongly against it in the first place. We will be lumped together with everyone from Osama and the crew to those French “surrender monkeys,” whose Gaullist president Jacques Chirac recently had the temerity to suggest that an Iranian nuclear weapon would not be the disaster the U.S. makes it out to be, since its use would result in Teheran’s utter and immediate annihilation by the enormous Israeli and U.S. nuclear arsenals. (The Morning Edition crew seemed utterly flabbergasted at this remark, as if they’d never heard anything so outlandish as the concept of nuclear deterrence that we’ve lived by since the start of the Cold War.)

So by all means, oppose this stupid war. But don’t for one minute suppose that you’ll be thanked for it later. As my mom always told me, no good deed goes unpunished.

Watch the state of the union address? Nah, neither did I. At this stage, I won’t give Bush the satisfaction of irritating me for the better part of an hour. (I understand the word “strong” was employed more than once. How novel.) This has become such a highly ritualized tradition that I feel as though I watched it anyway. I mean, since Reagan (the cardboard commander-in-chief), the state of our union has always been “strong,” regardless of what horrible hell-disaster the president had propelled us into during the previous year. There is seemingly always some anecdotal tidbit about a soldier or a mother or a small business owner or a virtuous immigrant who just happens to be seated next to the first lady. No real new information is imparted, since the previous week is choked with trial balloons sent off from the White House to preview all new policy proposals. So aside from bad television, there is no meaningful content… though that doesn’t stop the various news organizations from yammering about it for days afterward (when they’re not talking about who is and is not running for president next year).

Not that any of them care what I think, but I think they should be concentrating more on the impending war against Iran, which is seeming more inevitable all the time. I mean, a carrier battle group added to the Gulf fleet, an admiral in charge of middle east operations, attacks against Iranian diplomats and other personnel in Iraq? Sounds like provocation mode to me. Have the major media taken note of the catastrophe in Iraq they report on each day with clinical detachment? I mean, don’t they feel as though they should give us a head’s up when a very similar danger is fast approaching? I presume they would fight to be the first to tell us that another Katrina-scale hurricane was bearing down on us. Well, what the hell — here comes hurricane Iran: another ill-defined, open-ended conflict in the Persian Gulf, only this time it will be against a relatively functional society with a long record of repulsing well-armed invaders. Where is Anderson Cooper on that one?

It’s happening again. Forget all the lofty mea culpas about the press’s failures during the run-up to the Iraq war. They’re once again performing that vital function of amplifying the administration’s bogus claims about the perils we face from a third-rate power — a nation surrounded by hostile armies (and navies!); a nation under existential threat from both the U.S. and Israel (both of which have the capacity to make good on that threat); a nation that shares a long border with the chaotic clusterfuck we’ve created in Iraq. Our major news organizations should put a freaking laugh track under any administration official that accuses Iran of destabilizing Iraq or of having undue influence in a country that invaded them (with our help). Instead, such claims are treated with seriousness and are seldom subjected to the kind of scrutiny that elevates journalism above public relations. One such failure in a single decade is inexcusable; two is simply criminal.

Peace Machine. With a major peace rally in Washington under way this weekend, I wanted to give a call out to Dennis Kyne, veteran, activist, and member of the band Peace Machine, whose song Ain’t Goin’ Back Again has risen to #28 on Neil Young’s Living With War chart. Dennis is a friend and supporter of Lt. Ehren Watada, on trial for refusing to deploy to Iraq. (Learn more about him at www.thankyoult.org ) Incidentally, Big Green’s The President’s Brain is Missing is now up to #154 on that little list.

luv u,

jp