Damned by Leaders

American leaders, Dims and Rips alike, lined up for Israel's right to respond to rocket fire with its turkey shoot in Gaza. I will spare you the gruesome and abundant details in this appalling international ritual we have seen many times. But in reference to our favorite social group, the American middle class, it is amazing that they seem not to realize that the war, the defense, the killing, the expense, will make everything good impossible for them.

I mean that literally. There will be no real economic recovery, no redevelopment of US society without peace in the Middle East, whose conflicts are draining the world. For US society, more crudely, there will be no money.

See Robert Fisk for the noir leadership vision of what keeps it going, "Leaders Lie, Civilians Die."

And speaking of leaders who lie, Dan Rather is suing CBS for $70 million, claiming breach of contract by CBS in caving to political pressure to retract his story that George W. Bush had a very poor national guard service record.