Lughnasa\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Harvest Moon<\/p>\n
On September 11, 2011 we will have a full Harvest Moon in the sky.<\/p>\n
What has been the harvest of the September 11th terrorist attack in New York City?\u00a0 Is it one we want?\u00a0 It is the one we have created.<\/p>\n
Shock and awe.\u00a0 The neo-cons Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld’s favorite description for the blitzkrieg-like attack we promised the Iraqi government of Sadam Hussein.\u00a0 More like a description of our response to 9\/11.\u00a0 We sat back, stunned, shocked by the devastation and awed by the daring of this sudden disruption to our national consciousness.<\/p>\n
It inflamed our imaginations, brought us together as a people, a people under attack by a faceless, but brutal enemy.\u00a0 What to do?\u00a0 Instead of letting the shock fade and the awe give way to a reality based understanding of what had happened we blundered into the most mistaken metaphor of my lifetime:\u00a0 A War on Terror.<\/p>\n
Wars are fought by armies and air forces and navies.\u00a0 In wars we blow things up, take people down, topple regimes and conquer nations.\u00a0 We fight uniformed adversaries with our own uniformed champions, a sort of contemporary knight errantry hired to settle claims between or among rival powers.<\/p>\n
Only this wasn’t really a war.\u00a0 It was a struggle more like an armed criminal investigation.\u00a0 Their gang, Al Qaeda, against our gang.\u00a0 Only we chose as our gang the US military instead of, say, the FBI or the CIA.<\/p>\n
We know this now, ten years on.\u00a0 We’re gradually scaling back the ten years war, leaving the field to special forces, blends of military and intelligence operatives, working much like investigative agencies.\u00a0 OK, really, really well-armed investigative agencies.<\/p>\n
In the meanwhile we have followed Paul Kennedy’s prescription in his Decline and Fall of Empires.\u00a0 We have spread treasure and lives so freely across the Middle East and Central Asia that we have created a weakened economy, one vulnerable to severe shocks like the recent great recession and, possibly, yet a second recession.<\/p>\n
Not only have we weakened ourselves economically, we have impoverished once cherished civil rights through such draconian legal measures as the Patriot Act (Orwell, anyone?), extraordinary rendition and the prison at Guantanamo.<\/p>\n
We have also created a secret America that continues to expand at an increasing rate, its budgets hidden, its employees unknown and its mandates invisible.<\/p>\n
The fruits of this full Harvest moon come from poisoned fields:\u00a0 people killed and injured, money missing by the pallet load, our own civil rights constricted and a Pentagon of occult agencies both outside and beyond our control.<\/p>\n
If we continue to gather in this crop, then, as George W. was fond of saying, the terrorists have won.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lughnasa\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Harvest Moon On September 11, 2011 we will have a full Harvest Moon in the sky. What has been the harvest of the September 11th terrorist attack in New York City?\u00a0 Is it one we want?\u00a0 It is the one we have created. Shock and awe.\u00a0 The neo-cons Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld’s favorite description … Continue reading A Black Harvest<\/span>