His Name Should Become a Synonym for Murderer.

A harsh judgment on a man who richly deserves it--Henry Kissinger--in Michael Yates' review of the Vietnam episode of Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States.  Beyond that nice turn of phrase, Yates is appalled that Barack Obama is commemorating what Oliver Stone shows to be a a true crime against the peoples of Southeast Asia.

It is appalling but, as Yates points out, Americans have no sense of the destruction we wreaked in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.  Our national myths will never allow us to honestly acknowledge our responsibility for that destruction.  Maybe the reason we must continue to commemorate the Vietnam War (the American War to the Vietnamese) is because it we can never escape the fact that it was a crime based on a lie compounded by ignorance, arrogance and greed.  So we keep piling on the patriotic bullshit to keep that truth away.

And because we refuse to learn that lesson we continue to wage war.   And need ever more of that bullshit to cover our doubts.

I'll pass on the commemoration.  I saw that shit in Vietnam and learned that lesson.  I haven't forgotten.

Clusterfuck Nation

US spends $80 million to figure out than an exposed position for a consulate in Afghanistan is not a good deal.

Duds

My first reaction to North Korea's failed rocket launch was good fucking riddance. Who more deserves failure than a ruling elite of a militarized totalitarian slave state? But North Korea remains problematic, so whatever schadenfreude I may experience at the very public failure or the rocket launch may be counterproductive.

Still, It's not hard to wish a quick end to DPRK, although after almost seven decades even an immediate demise would not really be quick.

North Korea's failure reminded me of early disasters in US rocketry. Those failures are well chronicled in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff ("Our rockets always blow up").



It's definitely rocket science.

A Considered Judgment

Best comment on GWB's Decision Points:

Bush wants us to believe he tried his hardest and did the best he could. This thin, shallow book strongly suggests that he did.