Let me be clear: I like men. I just think men are more heroic when they are NOT swaggering bullies. This is the story of two alpha baboons whose hero quest for “hardness” has harmed us all.
Cofer Black was a former CIA official who served as George Bush’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism. Even in Bush’s NeoCon cosmos, Black stood out for his gung-ho aggression.
According to an interview in Men’s Journal, two months before 9/11, Black claims he told the administration that terrorists were going to hit America. “It was lock and load time,” Black says. Then he says Condi Rice asked him, “Cofer, what do we do?” (the damsel in distress) “This country has to go on a war footing-now!” he affirmed.
Black had war on his mind and not just some tactical war, real blood and guts Viking stuff. He said of al Qaeda, “When we’re through with them they will have flies walking across their eyeballs.” He also said he wanted to bring bin Laden’s head back to Washington in a cooler of dry ice.
“We’re going to kill them. We’re going to put their heads on sticks. We’re going to rock their world.” Black was, naturally, in favor of torture and indefinite detention, mild tactics compared to heads on sticks. When he left the administration he went to work for Blackwater, then started his own private spy company.
Alpha Baboon Number Two is James Goldsmith, a wealthy citizen of France-England who was known for his aggressive and shady business dealings, as well as the three families he maintained. He worked as a bulldog for a vulture capitalist firm in the 1980s.
Known for his addiction to risk-taking, he was also a “frantic user of shell companies, offshore trusts and other tax-dodging paraphernalia,” according to The Economist. He struck back at publications that criticized him, claiming that to tolerate them would be weakness and apathy. He was “hard” and on a quest to rid the world of lefties, anything less was treason and “soft.”
When the corporate raiders came under investigation for fraud nationwide, Goldsmith was unrepentant. When asked about the harm inflicted by asset stripping, closing down companies and throwing workers out of jobs, he replied to the senators that there is a difference between doing business and doing good and lectured them on his superior dog-eat-dog style, without which a country has no “vigor.”
In the end, Goldsmith did the same thing Cofer Black did-he went into the private spy-biz. He flew defectors from Russia and personally debriefed them. He paid infiltrators to the World Peace Council on the theory that anyone who wanted peace must be a Commie.
“Soft on crime,” “Soft on communism,” “pulling out” of a conflict, “full spectrum dominance”-C’mon guys, these all have sexual overtones-which is why they strike us-at least the alpha baboons among us-so powerfully.
Someday we will grow up and value super-functional brains much more highly than super-functional penises. We will have ticker tape parades for brilliant diplomats that make brilliant deals and avoid armed conflicts. We will beat missiles into rototillers and grow our own healthy food…
I’m sorry, was I daydreaming again? 🙂
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