JAZZMAN CHRONICLES, Volume II: THE WAR CHRONICLES: PREFACE.

JAZZMAN CHRONICLES
VOLUME II
THE WAR CHRONICLES
BY JACK RANDOM

CROW DOG PRESS
MODESTO CA USA

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication

Random, Jack.
Jazzman chronicles. Volume II / by Jack Random.
p. cm.
LCCN 2003100136
ISBN 0-9727656-1-1

1. United States -- Civilization. 2. United States — Politics and government. 3. Political participation – United States. I. Title.

E169.1.R36 2004 306.2’0973
QBI33-1137

JAZZMAN CHRONICLES
VOLUME II
The War Chronicles

For Sadie

CONTENTS

I. PREFACE: WAR & PEACE.
II. THE GREAT DESTROYER.
III. COLD WAR RESURRECTION.
IV. INFANT NATION.
V. ABSOLUTION.
VI. MEDIA, WAR & PROPAGANDA.
VII. CODE OF SILENCE.
VIII. THE NEW ENEMY.
IX. AMERICAN HEROES.
X. THE CONDUCT OF WAR.
XI. THE LESSONS OF WAR.
XII. AVIEW FROM AFAR.
XIII. THE PEACE CANDIDATE.
XIV. THE WAR PRESIDENT.

PREFACE: WAR & PEACE

In the hearts of people today there is a deep longing for peace. When the true spirit of peace is thoroughly dominant, it becomes an inner experience with unlimited possibilities. Only when this really happens – when the spirit of peace awakens and takes possession of men’s hearts – can humanity be saved from perishing.

Albert Schweitzer

It is the nature of war that it outweighs all other concerns. While I believe that the long-term solution to the systemic problems we face as a nation depends on numerous reforms – most critically, the defeat of the major party system – everything must now yield to the antiwar movement.

In the next election, we confront the possibility that the Bush Doctrine of preemptive strike and perpetual superiority will face no political constraint. Imagine what might have happened if this president had not faced a second election. A reinstatement of the draft becomes a distinct possibility. Expansion of the war on terrorism becomes a certainty. The once unthinkable first use of tactical nuclear weapons becomes a viable military option.
There are many reasons to oppose this president – corruption, incompetence, intolerance, indifference to the poor, the environment and the oppressed. None of these compares to the prospect of four more years of an expanding “war on terror.” Study your history: What this president sets in place will not be reversed by succeeding administrations – be they Republican or Democrat. The strategies of intervention and subversion, under the name of the Cold War, were passed on from generation to generation, from president to president, and the likelihood that it will be different with this war is a dismal proposition. It must be stopped now.

The election is about war. There is no other issue. It is not about the economy. It is not about unemployment. It is not about Medicare or Social Security. It is not about democracy or civil liberties. It is not about gay rights, abortion rights, judicial nominees, affirmative action and racial equity. It is not about fair trade. While all these issues are important, they pale by comparison to the policies of war.

The coming election is about young men and women dying on foreign lands. It is about war without end. It is about a philosophy of dominance that promises decades of war. It is about old men and women, who will never see the battlefield, sending young men and women to their last days on earth. Until the soldiers have come home and the Bush Doctrine is forever buried in the desert sands of Arabia, there is no other issue.

These Chronicles have no other ambition but to stop a war machine led by a president obsessed with the dream of glory. There is no more glory in Iraq than there was in Vietnam. These Chronicles are about pounding home the truth and etching it in the American psyche before it is lost to the government propaganda machine. These Chronicles are about changing the course of history.


Jazz.