Ghost Troop Home Page    April Fools Part 4

 

October 29, Email to Thom Shanker, New York Times

Yo Thom, I’ve got a letter pending for you which I started before your foray into Iraq (which ended better for you than for some).  I’ll be sending it along when I’ve tweaked a couple of words…

I just wanted to let you know that I’ve cut out the piece you wrote while on your adventure downrange with Wolf-wits.  I’m pleased that it wasn’t your last, because I’d hate your final article to be something entitled “Wolfowitz Is Cheering and Cheered in Iraq.”  Man, talk about headline editors screwing you.  By the way, I’m pissed at the Times for not running you on page-one like you deserve, boy, and I want you to know that if I actually read the Times (or more ludicrous yet, paid for it) I’d cease and desist that shit right now on general principle.  [Editor’s emphasis, in all cases]  I expect everybody to know by now that the Ghost Troop, 3/7 Cavalry mascot (you) is the best, busiest journalist in America, overworked and underpaid, unrecognized by a blind humanity even though recognized as a mensch by Captain May.  My Jewish shrink has been using the word “mensch” to describe me, too.  Does that make me and you both crazy?

Speaking of Dr. Pesikoff (splendid listener, highly recommended), does it mean I’m anti-Semitic if I only use Jewish shrinks?  You see, I think Jews are smarter than crackers like me, and that makes me a racist – doesn’t it?  Or is racism anti-Semitism at all?  Or am I a Baptist neo-Zionist and don’t know it yet?  I might even be Jewish, ‘cause my mama was adopted from parents unknown.  The only thing that’s sure about me is that I’m confused.

Anyhow, I paid five dollars for y’all’s inflated rag, and I marveled at the stupidity of white people for the majority of the day.  It was worth the price just for the laughs I got reading the Times news articles, but your offer to reimburse me for my expense was kind.  Send the five-buck check to X.  I’ll put it on the wall of honor, right next to Rachel Corrie’s picture.

Remember what I told you the colored and crackers are saying in the basic training units lately, tovarisch pisatel?  “Bush started the war to get even for Dad and make a reputation for himself.”  How do they know what y’all are too dumb to figure out?  ‘Cause they’re a bunch of kids themselves, and they know how immature folks think.  So do I – and that gives me an edge.

Boy George ain’t grown up, Thom.  Ain’t it just like a kid to tell lies to get permission to go somewhere (in this case, to war), then cover up his first big boo-boo in Baghdad when Saddam drew some blood.  He fixed his own hurt feelings though, because he got to dress up like a fighter pilot and have a victory party on a boat!  You guys are dressing a child up as commander in chief.

I thought all this bullshit would be over in July.  The day after I dropped the AJC a line on the battle of Baghdad, Cynthia Tucker was on Wolf Blitzer’s show condemning the war and the bogus WMD argument.  Old Wolf wasn’t being a good, obedient dog though – he was whimpering that things weren’t that bad.  He should have been kicked, but Ms. Cooper was too nice.  I wish she’d have acted a little more like the good black folks of my hood would have acted.

Mike Luckovich from the Journal-Constitution was on CNN July 21 – the day after George Porgie got all shook up in Texas, and stayed in Crawford an extra day to get his nerves steady, waiting for his hands to stop shaking and his eyes to stop darting looks left and right.  Yep, while Gorgie Porgie sat in Crawford looking like the loser he is, Luckovich was showing the Ramirez cartoon of Bush with a gun to his head, talking about how Ms. Tucker was “very heroic” and was going to hold the prez to task for the war.

Yep, I though it was coming to a head.  CNN was starting to blow the lid of the Private Jessica story.  John Kerry was suggesting that we should turn the Iraq thing over to the U.N.  Hell, I was thinking you journalists were going to do your jobs, but naw, I overestimated y’all’s decency yet again.  I’m the ultimate fool in “April Fools, Captain May.”  I just want to make that clear, or you and a hundred others will vie for the claim.  Yep, Toms-a-fool.  Ain’t that a line from some character out of Lear?

Anyhow, get back to asking irrelevant questions irrespective of the iridescence that awaits us when you media boys and girls chickenshit us into a nuclear war.  The preppy prez calls it a nookyooler war but inability to talk right or think right has never stopped an idiot from starting a fire or a war.  Thom, here’s something for you to post over your desk from Captain May.  I wrote it to teach my students about love and life and humanity, and you can share it with the folks you care about:

 

Evolution

 

When I was a cell and you were a cell

in the dark, primeval time,

we loved each other long and well

within the teeming slime.

 

But now we’ve evolved to nobler heights,

my love – and soon (I trust)

we’ll love on dark posteval nights

as radioactive dust.

 

---Captain May, (B4 WWIII)

 

PS:  I think I’ll try it out on the Dixie Chicks, Thom.  Hell, they may be Southern and crackers, but they had enough sense to denounce Bush and Iraq.  Maybe blondes ain’t as dumb as they think.

PPS:  Hey, what do you think of the triumph of the swill in Kalifornia – that’s how Arnold pronounces it (you can’t talk good English and be a Bush buddy).  For all I know the quasi-Nazis of the right will let him be president of Amerika next.  Oh well, you New York folks gonna cotton up to the Germinator?  Germinator?” I hear you say, hoping to catch me in another literary abuse, “Captain May, sir, Arnold is from Austria.”  I know, little buddy, I know, but so was Adolph.

 

 

October 30, Email to Thom Shanker, New York Times

Always good to hear from you, little buddy.  I appreciate your appreciating my irony just as much as I reveled in hearing you say the last time we talked that my logistical and exit-strategy concerns for Iraq were “valid.”  Damn, Thom, I just live for your appreciation, so keep on appreciating.  (OK, did you catch the irony of the last line?  I knew you did, little buddy, ‘cause you’re just that good, kinda like the smart linguist kids out at DLI – where’d you train to learn your Russian?)

Hey, thanks for telling me to be safe.  Yeah, right, like prudence is my middle name.  Thom, I’ve got even less sense than you, and I wrote you yesterday that you were a fool for sticking your neck out in Baghdad.  I’ve said “fuck you, wimp” to Boy George so many times, in so many ways, that he’s itching to sick some black ops folks on me, or contract it out through Halliburton, main headquarters just a few miles up the road.  I’ve tried bunker accommodations for three months, but I didn’t really like it.  I’ve been maneuvering in the clear again for nearly a month now, and like the freedom too much to hide out any more.  Plus that, I’m too pissed to wait while drag-asses in media and government get around to showing some sense and guts in a crisis that’s got us on the brink, my friend.

I’ve talked to Moslem friends I’ve known, taught, learned from and respected for decades.  They are sounding and acting a lot like the Jews of Hitler’s pre-war years in Germany, dreading the spread of Gitmo’s and waiting for burnings of their mosques, like the one in Savannah, Georgia torched in retaliation for the bleeding the 3rd Infantry Division did in the Battle of Baghdad.  Did y’all cover that burning, Thom?  Was that little bit of Krystalnacht page-one stuff for the torch of truth, The New York Times?

Well, fuck Bush again just for good measure.  If I get popped by that jackass, maybe guys like you would really stick your neck out for the folks who have become (sand) niggers in the jingoistic weltanschauung of Bushlings.  Shit man, standing up for Moslem minorities is the new Civil Rights movement in America, and you’re going to be late, as always, alas.

Thom, it’s because too many good bourgeois, German professionals were afraid in the early Hitler days that their country went so far astray and entered a world war.  That generation of Germans stained their people’s memory with being the most vicious exterminators to ever persecute the Jews – and that’s some feat, brother.  I get pissed off for my Jewish friends every time I think about it, and I’m glad as hell that the Americans machine-gunned the guards at Dauchau, then marched the whole town through to see and smell the corpses.  I just hate hate, don’t you?

Fuck Bush – now I’ve said it a third time for dramatic emphasis.  There are still decent folks in America who know how to lead from the front, just like Iron Mike in Ft. Benning, Georgia.  Follow me, Thom, follow me, y’all.  The good guys are going to win, and that’s been all I’ve wanted from the start.  That’s what all sane folks want.  Hell, even Sharon’s war chief over in Israel is starting to say that we’re in a hand basket to hell, and they’re calling Sharon a madman in the Knessid (sorry, no disrespect with the spelling).  More and more patriotic American officials are coming clean with what they’ve been holding back because they wanted to give this idiot prez a chance, and another chance, and another chance… ad nauseum.

I’ve been handing out the condensed manuscript by the dozen in coffee houses.  Today I gave one to a cop buddy of mine down the road, as well as a couple of cop buddies I’ve taught some martial arts to.  Guess what, Thom?  These guys are trained to look for perps (cop talk for perpetrators) and they’re smiling to themselves at just how guilty of crimes and war crimes Boy George is starting to look.  How about you tell the folks at the Times that Captain May sez it’s time for some American glasnost.

Just to make sure you don’t bear me a grudge, I’ll tell you one last thing now in case I don’t get around to it later:  I didn’t know which of you media/political/military boys had handed me over to Bush for retaliation, but I figured you were a good candidate because you knew what I knew and what I had done to investigate it, and you knew what Kelly’s death meant.  It would have been a brave thing to think of Captain May on that dark day, then call him with a warning call…  Thank God I had a couple of sentinels who weren’t scared or sleeping.  Well, after that I was plenty pissed at you, and you were lucky you weren’t at hand, but as soon as we had our Russian talk in late July I knew you weren’t the Judas.  The only reason I badgered you and eventually set you up on the gallows was to make sure everyone kept reading my emails as I downloaded my book into their computers, and knew that I was pissed.  Sorry to have to be a hard-ass, mascot, but it was wartime.  And tell that boy that’s trying to run the Times (I must learn his name someday) that of all the castrated creatures we call our media, the Times came the closest to acting like it had balls.  And tell him to keep running Freedman – it’s better chuckles than Peanuts.

Proschay tovarisch pisatel, moy drug y (kak ya) durak.

Captain May

PS:  I’d write more, but Mr. Coleman, my black mentor, is back home from the hospital and needs a loaf of bread.  He’s feeling well enough to talk, so I just say “yessir” and jump over to his bedside.  After all, he’s the wisest man in America (Professor G’s just the smartest).

 

 

November 1, Email to Thom Shanker, New York Times

Hey little buddy, did you notice that Brenner Saturday slipped and said that we were winning the “world war” on terror? Yep, the Bushlings are giving the signs of their true intentions.  By God, we aren’t going to lose any wars under George XLIII, even if it means the war to end all wars by ending us!  If we win (which we won’t) we get the New American Century, which appeals to the upper crust of the party and our “special friends” in the region.   If we lose we get Armageddon, which appeals to my Brother Baptists, of whom the prez is one at heart, though he’s posing as a Methodist for dignity’s sake.

Here’s an old cracker joke about Southern Protestants:

Question:  What’s the difference between a Baptist and a Methodist?

Answer:  A Methodist wears shoes.

Well, Bush is well-shoed (jack-booted, in fact), but I’m a barefoot (fallen) Baptist most of the time as a matter of martial arts training.  My way teaches me to avoid shit, whereas the prez has learned to stomp right through it.  Those who follow me prefer my way, but if you guys want to get splattered by following Boy George, keep trailing the turd trampler.  Congratulate the New York nomenklaturi for getting the country to make the same choice as y’all:  It’s a Bush-league approach to walking or war-fighting, but I wouldn’t expect those boys and girls to know the difference.

And hey, kudos to FOX for having a three-star (retired) who told it like it is.  A couple of nights ago he explained to one of the fair and balanced hosts that things like eliminating WMD, deposing Saddam and freeing the Iraqis were only "intermediate objectives."  So what was the main objective of the war, according to a man who’s (presumably) read his Clausewitz?  He says the main objective (the mission) is to establish a foothold in the region to place hostile religion and heaps of resources at the disposal of the U.S.  Hats off to the general.  He’s as wrong as Colonel Dennington, my Special Forces buddy out at Ft. Stewart who urged me on May 14 to fall in line with the world war (Oops!  I meant global war!) on terror.  The whole bunch of SF, who used to be a lot of fun to play with, have turned crazier than Dr. Strangelove, but at least they can be candid about our motives.  The nation should have known the real scoop from the git-go, don’t you think, tovarisch pisatel?  You folks think Lt. General Boykin is the exception, just like the German nomenklaturi told themselves that Goebbels was just being a professional pitch man and Hitler himself was just a puppet for forces who could control him.  You guys just don’t understand that it’s brutality of method that rules, not intelligence.  Y’all are scared, huddled and reassuring yourselves, just like sheep at a slaughterhouse or the Jews entering the death camps.

Time to wake up, Thom.  Man, I’ve learned something by visiting sick folks:  The later you face the truth of your health the bigger an operation you’re going to suffer…, and you can actually wait too long, Thom.

The Germans wanted to avenge WWI, and they found Hitler, a coached speaker, who could reach their fears.  Well, we had 911 as our WWI, and but it sparked the same vengeance lust, and we had a guy who (we thought) could stomp right in and stomp some ass for us…, except he stomped right into quicksand – whither we followed him (and still follow him) like scared sheep, or brutalized Jews.

You know about the Holocaust Museum in Houston, Thom?  Stark, excellent architecture; superb, effective display.  Linda Toyota is their media director, if y’all want to know about the place.  Tell her Captain May sez hi, since I haven’t seen her since I went underground July 17.  Well, back in the fall of 1999, with the millennium pending and all, I thought it was supremely important to teach all my history students the Holocaust for a week and finish off by visiting the Holocaust Museum.

I made them a deal for that Friday foray:  They would give the genocided Jewish People their respectful observance for the couple of hours of the tour, as if they were going to a funeral, and not display blow-off, grab-ass field-trip manners.  If they met my terms, afterwards I promised I would march them over to nearby Herman Park, where we would storm Hippie Hill (the one place in Houston above sea level) and buy them burgers and let them raise hell to the full extent of the law for afternoon.

So did they keep their end of the bargain by acting right?  Hell, Thom, I saw immigrant girls who couldn’t write their answers in good English straining to listen to the survivors; some of my folks were fingering rosary beads.  After we finished the tour the kids wanted to take time for silent prayer before they left.  Mission accomplished.

I kept my end of the bargain, too.  We ate, listened to gangsta rap (yeah, Thom, the kind that uses words like fuck and ho, and mixes the two together a lot), played football, ate, and generally partied.  Someone soaped the nearby Meacom Fountains on Main Street, making them look like a bubble bath…  Good, clean fun, huh?  Some folks said we should have put on sack cloth and ashes for the whole day, but I’m a pagan beneath my Baptist exterior, and pagan tradition says funeral games were in order, so we played our hearts out and went home grimy, tired and fulfilled.

So what’s the point of telling a journalist a story about constructive, innovative education and regard for the past?  Good question, seeing the kind of work y’all have been doing since Boy George decided to go to war.  Well, here’s the answer:  Captain May has always preached remembrance of the Holocaust.  Hell, Thom, I’ve read everything I could get my hands on from the Third Reich, from William Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to Albert Speer’s Inside the Third Reich and Spandau Diaries to Ellie Wiesel’s Night.  Man, I could spit book names at you for thirty minutes.  Wanna talk Goebbel’s Diaries?  Which years?  (I’ve read ‘em all).  Hitler biographies?  Try Tolland’s Adolph Hitler or someone’s The Psychopathic God (I forget the author, ‘cause it’s been twenty five years since I read that one, but it’s a good read).  See Thom, there’ a great April Fools joke for you:  Cracker Captain May has spent a good part of his life studying the signs of democratic collapse in its most monstrous case, and on April Fools day he wrote the famous essay that warned we were imitating paranoid Nazi Germany by entering a quicksand war, and might repeat their error of starting a world war ending in their destruction.  (Houston Chronicle Outlook, April 3).

So what’s so funny about my April Fools joke?  Black humor, Thom, and here’s the blackest part of it:  a lot of my Jewish friends were silent while their community made an alliance with my dumbass Baptist Brethren, and other hawkish Bushlings.  They’re starting to regret it, because they’re remembering that it’s hard to have a high and mighty empowered whitey for prez and still keep your civil rights, little buddy.

Y’all should have been reading the books I read, Thom.  The Holocaust of the 40’s started in the halls of the Reichstag in the 30’s, when the government granted Hitler emergency powers that led to the SS, the Gestapo and the concentration camps.  Things didn’t reach their final solution for a few years, of course, but clever folks could see it coming – they just couldn’t print it in the papers or utter it in public, ‘cause it would have put them at risk, first of losing their careers and friends, later their family and lives.  Unfortunately, the failure of clever folks to inform their simple brethren and sistren led to the virtual extinction of European Jewry.  I’ve been horrified by the Holocaust all my life, from the killing of six million human beings in the death camps – committed by German professionals, to the hundreds of Americans killed in the Battle of Baghdad – committed by our own professionals.  I don’t want to be remembered as one of those who forgot the lessons of history, and I don’t want my country to be condemned to repeat them.

The worst black humor of all is when the folks who are supposed to remember the best become the first to forget, and empower the guy who longs for Gotterdamerung – or in this case, Armageddon.  Before it’s all over I won’t be the only guy living underground, looking over his shoulder, or worrying about Gitmo.

Captain May

PS:  I hope your Halloween didn’t have too many tricks in it.  I’m writing a scary story about my October 29 night for you as a late treat.  I’ll send it later.  Yep, Thom, I spoil you rotten.

Ciao, Captain May

 

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