"When You Eliminate the Impossible, Whatever Remains, However Improbable, Must Be the Truth."
So I'm watching and I'm waiting
Hopin' for the best
Even think I go to praying
Every time I hear them sayin'
That theres no way to delay
That trouble comin' everyday
No way to delay
That trouble comin' every day
-- Frank Zappa - Trouble Every Day
Today's rich Soup du CBS-Merde being served up steaming hot throughout the blogsphere and, slowly, the once-mainstream media is the "There's Gonna Be A Draft" scare.
This email virus/hoax has been going around and it would seem CBS, with its weakened BS immune system, got a dose. At least that's how CBS' allies like to swing it. Indeed, that's how a lot of outright enemies of CBS are swinging it -- "Damn! Snookered again!"
Two things are wrong here.
CBS is just another word for nothing left to lose
The criticism of CBS for letting the virus mutate from email into video land is justified, but the explanation that they were "fooled again" is bogus -- no matter which side of the political mosh pit is slinging it. The internal culture at CBS News has been, for a very long time, dedicated to the removal of George Bush by any means necessary. That includes forgery, distortion, and lies known to be lies by the people looking into the camera and lying to your face.
Dan Rather and his merry pranksters have nothing to lose and everything to gain by doing all they can to elect John Kerry. Rather is at the end of his career. He needs no more money. Besides, his value as an author of crapulous memoirs and a speaker on the rubber tofu circuit, even if he should be sacked tomorrow, is worth many millions of dollars. It has paid off handsomely for Jimmy Carter, hasn't it?
And reputation, schleputation, Rather doesn't face any kind of ostracism among the people who matter to him -- his "set"-- since they would only see him as a great "hero" who took one for the team. Rather's social stature will only rise among those who make up his lunch and dinner party list. You don't really think he cares one whit about "the little people," do you. The man's arrogance streams off of him like Michael Moore knocking back a whole roast suckling pig with a side of bacon slathered in butter.
As for the rest of CBS News, they might as well belly-up to the Kool Aid Bar now because, should Bush win, the number of choice "exclusives" that are going to be handed out to CBS in the next four years can be counted on Karl Rove's middle digit. The only hope for "Oval Office Access" is a Kerry victory. Absent that, look for CBS News to finish behind MSNBC in viewership by late 2005.
Which is why you can look for CBS News to actively, consciously, and shamelessly spread any scurrilous rumor as a certified fact between now and November. They don't have to find "sources," they are the sources. And "when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose."
Now to the second part of the story. The beauty of the "There's Gonna Be A Draft" lie is the fact that, like all great lies, it contains the truth:There will be a draft in the United States and it will happen within the next four years. But it won't happen because there are "stealth Republicans" disguised as Democrats pushing a selective service bill through the congress. It will happen for one serious and terrible reason -- a devastating terrorist attack on United States soil.
Is there anyone, right, center, left, who seriously doubts that a second attack is not just likely but a certainty? Not a soul who is not either institutionalized or wandeering the naked streets at dawn with a bullhorn and a bucket of Lithium.
The second attack will be worse than 911 even if, through some miracle, the dead are less. The second attack, which will happen in some city, suburb, or mall, will involve the death in large numbers of American children.
911 took down a section of the Pentagon and the Twin Towers. Although 3,000 Americans were murdered except for the children who rode the planes into the towers, the dead were all adults at their day jobs. There was no Beslan factor involved. The next attack will not spare American children and, if it is violent enough, it will take the lives of hundreds if not thousands.
We've had our Pearl Harbor and we've had our 911 and in neither case were the deaths of children a large factor. We will not be as fortunate in the second attack. After 911 we saw a great anger rise in the United States. The next time the reaction will be rage.
The killing of our children in this attack, combined with the deaths of adults, will, at last move the country onto a real war footing. The era of the "little" Terrorist War will end on the day of the second attack and the "big" Terrorist War will begin.
This means that at last "sacrifice" will mean something larger than shopping to support the economy. It will mean real "sacrifice" and an expansion of the war's goals and strategy.
It will mean that we will be required, among many other things, to put several million citizens under arms.
And that means, finally, without equivocation, a draft.
But the people who will bring a draft to America will not be either the Republicans or the Democrats, but our enemies from the realms of Islam.
They will live to regret it. But not for long.
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POSTSCRIPT: As I was saying.... This morning brings this headline: Baghdad Bombings Kill 35 Children. Car bomb. Set off as children were gathering for sweets handed out by American soldiers.
Posted by Vanderleun at September 30, 2004 12:56 AM | TrackBackIf your suggested attack materialises, I doubt we will need a draft to unleash Hell on Earth(TM) throughout the ME.
Posted by: Oscar at September 30, 2004 7:21 AMNo, we won't need a draft to annihilate the Arab and Persian races once and for all. We have plenty of nukes for that.
But we will WANT a draft so we can kill with our own hands the filth who dared to kill our own children in our homes. We could not call ourselves men if we did not.
Gerald, I hope you're wrong about the next attack being inevitable, but given our crappy homeland defense, I suspect you're right.
Posted by: Steve Johnson at September 30, 2004 12:06 PMTo take your analysis a bit further (hopefully too far):
if terrorists murder enough people (especially with weapons above and beyond "conventional" means), they could effectively destroy our nation - not physically, but institutionally.
People would demand the most basic physical security at the expense of "freedom of the press", "representational government", "checks and balances" ... these would be considered luxuries if the economy and social fabric of our nation were shredded by hundreds of thousands of murdered civilians, happening anywhere, anytime.
Martial law would be deemed to be too weak, too concerned with Constitutionality. People would want a "strong" leader who would "know what to do". The basic creed of this Strong Leader would be "if Islam is trying to kill us, we must kill Islam". Of course, some people claim that this is already the case - the difference would prove to be instructive.
While our nation (as we care to live it) would be institutionally destroyed, the tens of thousands of thermonuclear warheads in our arsenal would remain intact.
Any nation that could be at least nominally described as Muslim or Arabic would be reduced to a glow-in-the-dark pool of glass.
The evil, craven, cynical, culturally sympathetic, disinterested, politically agnostic, and (most importantly) understandably fearful moderate people in these potentially "nominal" regions need to grasp the simple causation that would result in their existential demise.
Posted by: Keith Macdonald at September 30, 2004 1:09 PMThe dreadful scenarios in the comments above are too possible.
The only conclusion one can draw is that an aggressive, pre-emptive war against the sickbags who are very likely plotting the next terrorist atrocity is our best hope of avoiding a vicious death spiral of mutual destruction. There can't be any assurance that the next outrage is preventable, but we can do our damnedest to make it as hard as possible to carry out.
I agree with Steve Johnson: what kind of "homeland defense" is it when the Department of Transportation fines airlines for refusing to fly passengers they consider security risks, TSA screeners can't "descriminate" against passengers who are more likely to be hijackers and several million illegal immigrants a year get a wink and a nod?
All that will probably change, but I fear what will have to happen before it does.
Posted by: Rick Darby at October 1, 2004 9:34 AM"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.