I have avoided writing about Star Parker for long enough. She’s a former “welfare queen” gone legit, being a mouthpiece of the right, and general enemy to the welfare state. She used this very welfare state to stabilize herself before she started to battle against it with her group: Center for Urban Renewal and Education. She joins her various other minority right-wing pundit class as the poster children of the “GOP cares for all races, not just white rich autocrats”. Since they write about the things the white pundits won’t (for fear of the vaunted “race card” being shoved at them) they are elevated in the pundit class, no matter how poor the delivery device is. Regardless of how out of touch they are with their upbringing, or the fact that they haven’t, no probably ever, lived in the slums and ghettos of America, they’re allowed to be the voice to an entire group of people. Even now I’m getting the racist heebie-jeebies, and I’m trying to speak truth to power.
However it came to be, Star Parker, like most everyone in the pundit class, is simply out of touch with the American Public. The “pulse” the pundit class has their finger on is one another’s, and it’s becoming more evident every passing year we stay in this dire economic situation. We should really harness this anti-incumbency notion amongst us and boycott newspapers that insist of shoving these regressive boobs in our faces and insist on more community voices from our newspapers.
No matter how I feel about the military-industrial complex, war economy and sheer size of our military forces, I always have the utmost respect for our troops and veterans. If taxes need to go up so these men and women get ample higher education, hospital care and any thing that they want, I’m all for it. Especially now with an all volunteer military force. These people weren’t drafted, they chose to serve their country and do whatever the fuck they’re told to do. Some were hampered by stop/loss measures, and extended tours of duty. Even more went back on another tour, seeing as there was no job prospects for them in a failing economy. Even though we are hemorrhaging economically, that is no excuse not to care for and provide for the veterans and soldiers returning from the Iraq War.
That being said Star Parker’s recent article should lead to her future columns being boycotted to prevent further boneheaded cynicism to be printed. It’s so done deaf and condescending to those who’ve sacrificed their lives so people like her could then rub their faces in it. Perhaps I’m being bombastic, but when you’re column essentially reads “Dear Iraq War Veterans: Oopsie”, you’re in desperate need of a reality check.
It’s bad enough that the cost of this nearly decade long engagement is approaching an “estimated” 800 million dollars, the “estimated” one hundred thousand (outside sources say 650,000 to 2 million) Iraqi civilians that were killed, or the four thousand American troops and thirty-eight thousand wounded. The fact that we didn’t learn to avoid quagmires like this from the Vietnam War is awful. I understand that there’s probably always going to be some political war hawks and war economy fetishists out there that live to fill their pockets with government contract corporate lobby cash. Especially is this modern era where America is the “world police” and the fact that our defense budget is equivalent to four other first world nations combined or 49% of our federal budget. But to spend so much “blood and (mostly borrowed) treasure” and then to shrug your shoulders and say “Well, lesson learned huh?” We’re clearly not going to learn anything.
Star Parker recalls traveling over her holiday break and seeing countless soldiers reading W.’s book “Decision Points”, she believes that they’re looking for meaning in their service. I seem to think they were probably issued it from their commanding officers, and little else. Star Parker’s answer to this question of “Was (the Iraq War) worth it?”
You already know what she‘s going to write. It’s that bullshit right-wing talking point conservatives and war hawks been aping since it was discovered that, hey, there aren’t any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There’s no chemical agents, and they’re certainly no proof of nuclear processing activity. The very reason we went in to Iraq and toppled their government! But I digress.
“The downside of freedom is making inevitable mistakes…sometimes big ones.” Star Parker writes. Yea, I’d say “big ones” is probably an understatement. I say when your mistakes begin to take the form of war crimes, downside isn’t the first word that comes to mind. You know, I don’t really think when you’re planning to occupy an entire nation on a faulty premise and no real strategic plan or exit strategy for the months after wards, even begins to quantity the “inevitable mistakes” towards freedom. Of that particular country or in general. I mean we’re talking about very real, human cost here. “The upside is scaling the heights and achieving what could never be achieved without it.” First of all, please, you flatter too much. Secondly, at no point has the Iraq War been deemed an achievement of any sorts. I guess you’re thinking of that buffoonish “Mission Accomplished” banner from that W. speech, when all military operations were ceased after the initial invasion? Yea, we achieved some great heights there, on Mt. Fuckingidiotbizarro!
Maybe this article was written in the glow of a post 9/11, pre “Iraq is clearly becoming a quagmire” haze? Like around 2004 or so? Because this wrapping the flag around horseshit rhetoric laden article couldn’t be a recent one. The only thing that shows the modernity of this piece is the sheer cynicism in which Star Parker approaches the topic. That our soldiers don’t fight to protect freedom, they fight to spread human hope of perhaps a better tomorrow. In truth, our soldiers have actually fought and died for a corrupt political structure and unpopular government already established in Iraq. Iran has more of a political toe hold in Iraq than even before Hussein, says a lot of what our troops “fought for”, and al queda, which had little prescience in Iraq, now is well established there. Mission Accomplished indeed!
This ideology that Star Parker's shares with her fellow right wingers is one of empty gestures to our veterans. This is the same group that flogged 9/11 for every patriotic thing it was worth, getting us in to two unpaid military operations, scaring citizens in to giving up longheld constitutional rights, and allowed military contractors and mercenaries to reign unholy terror on foreign civilians and not be brought to justice, foreign or abroad. These right wingers will then howl and moan for cuts to Veterans Affairs and the associated hospitals, under fund G.I. Bills, and have 9/11 first responders prove that the cancerous tumors and life-threatening illness they currently have, were because of their involvement in rescuing people during that horrible day. They have the audacity to then write articles such as Star Parker’s and not be held accountable as hypocritical shitheads of the highest magnitude.
Newspaper publishers are dinosaurs who are creatures of habit, this has to be the only reason that articles of such daftness permeate a lot of their print business. To get back to my main point, community writers, for the most part, aren’t reimbursed for any of their musings, unlike paying for the wire services that a lot punditry uses to assuage a talking point into the mass media. Furthermore, a lot pundits merely using think tank published talking point memos to shape and define the current buzzwords surrounding modern politics. Job creator, enhanced interrogation tactics, IED’s, Mortgage backed securities, troubled assets…on and on…? All created buzzwords to deflect from the very real word: bullshit! Papers could save money by cutting out the middleman and just print out the various think tanks memos. They’re out there for public consumption. The idea that five or six people writing about it gives the false assertion that this is a mass idea. This is how the right-wing has poisoned a lot of the media culture as a whole. By the mere notion that “a whole lot of people are talking about this…it must be important”. It’s a false narrative and nothing more.
At least with the community writers you’ll get a couple of buzzword wielding, Fox News obsessed junkies spouting illogical ascertains, and it will cost the newspaper as a whole a lot less money to run it. But on the whole, the type of garbage that Star Parker and her ilk expound upon needs to be put away or marginalized to the dark corner from which it came. It’s a dated mode of thought that was outdated the moment they realized that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Vietnam was a powerful anti-war component up until the early 90’s. Obviously the Iraq War along with Afghanistan is a much needed refresher history course on the costs both in bloodshed and perilous economic situation to America, and that we needn’t bother doing this for another forty-odd years or so.
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