Dirty Dishes	Dirty Dishes Archive

The past two months, Dawn has outlined the catechism required of CelebriJournalistPols who blather on the small screen, posing as television "news" people. Dawn has noted that when speaking of the Orwellianly-monickered "Operation Iraqi Freedom," such CJPs must say: A) the war has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the trillion dollars worth of oil under Iraqi sands, and B) that America is a peace-loving country that abhors violence. Add to these whoppers one more item, and you complete a triptych of lies, the alter at which CJPs, along with Washington insiders, must worship: C) the notion that September 11 represents some unfathomable horror, after which the entire planet is transformed.

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As horribly, personally tragic as September 11 was for the thousands directly affected, it need not have been an excuse for a global pillage-and-plunder bloodbath. It could have been treated as a police matter (like the 1993 WTC bombing or Oklahoma City), not carte blanche for militaristic hooliganism. Americans, who've routinely inflicted greater casualties on other peoples throughout the last century, have a sense of divine privilege: this can't happen to us! And while this pride is repulsive to untermenschen (i.e., the rest of the world), it is exploitable by domestic yahoo politicians, eager for a Reichstag fire they don't have to set themselves. Proto-fascists in Washington find common cause with ratings-driven television "journalists" in hyping the-tragic-events-of-september-eleventh as an unparalleled cataclysm. But even casual students of world history understand that maintaining a global empire carries a price. The rabble's potshots aimed at the royal court may be morally unjustifiable and politically counterproductive, but they should not be unexpected....