Liberal Media Elite

The United States has tried the neoconservative’s wacky foreign policy ideas in the Bush administration for eight years. Polls show that it’s the main reason Bush is unpopular.

Despite this, neocons like Fox News  cheerleader William Kristol, attempt to find ways to expand the neocon foreign policy. Neocons also need an “in” in the next four years, a new Dick Cheney.

But with the Iraq war and democracy building at gunpoint turning out to be unpopular with the democracy that  allowed it to happen, neocons need new blood to sell their worldview of invading other countries. Who will the neocons point to as their star on the horizon?

“Sources in the McCain camp, the Republican Party and Washington think tanks say Mrs Palin was identified as a potential future leader of the neoconservative cause in June 2007. That was when the annual summer cruise organized by the right-of-centre Weekly Standard magazine docked in Juneau, the Alaskan state capital, and the pundits on board took tea with Governor Palin.

Her case as John McCain’s running mate was later advanced vociferously by William Kristol, the magazine’s editor, who is widely seen as one of the founding fathers of American neoconservative thought - including the robust approach to foreign policy which spurred American intervention in Iraq.” Sept 13, 2008 Telegraph UK

Is this how they came up with Palin as McCain’s third choice for VP? A spot of tea with William Kristol and ‘poof’ you’re a contender for the number two job in the country.  It appears that Kristol and Charlie Gibson from ABC have interviewed Palin more than McCain did before he selected her.

It is telling that after becoming pals with Kristol that she still looked like a caribou in the headlights when Gibson asked her about the Bush doctrine. Or maybe she was stiffling the answer that Kristol told her: the Bush doctrine didn’t go far enough.

DO WE NEED FOUR MORE YEARS OF THIS?

So I dutifully spent my Treason Day as every American should: seeing good theatre, drinking good beer, and watching shit blow up.

While I was waiting for my bus on Nicollet Mall, a cadre of naked bikers coasted past, singing The Star-Spangled Banner. Near me, an Old White Dude shook his head in disgust.

OWD: I like bicycles, but there’s no excuse for that. That’s why I live in the suburbs.

He notices me leaning against a pillar and reading City Pages.

OWD: Excuse me. Move that newspaper.

I do so, hesitantly. Now, note that I’m wearing a T-shirt with an image of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, with the caption “I’m from the government. I’m here to help.”

OWD: So, that’s Beijing?
ME: Yeah, man, Tiananmen Square.
OWD: Oh.

(pause)

OWD: China deserves to be fucking crushed.

(pause)

OWD: I’m going to go get a copy of The Onion.

(pause)

OWD: Thanks for talking to me.

(pause, then, walks away)

Now, I know I don’t look Chinese — my Hennepin County Jail wristband blandly identifies me as a “WHITE MALE”. And it’s not as though I disagree with the underlying sentiment. Although I wouldn’t necessarily use the word “deserves.” Or “crushed.” And I might want to add a couple of qualifiers to “China.” But “fucking” I’m totally on board with.

This exchange, edifying as it was, did get me to thinking. Even if China’s current government could be easily, peaceably dismantled, would that be desirable? It’s not even close to addressing the underlying problem of what China is, and has been for longer than any other country. The citizens of every nation are indoctrinated by their respective societies, but the Chinese people have been subjugated to a single monstrous intellect for two and a half thousand years. I’m not referring to Mao Zedong or Karl Marx, both of whom are fairly late comers to the party; I’m referring to Confucius, whose collectivist philosophy perhaps found its ultimate expression in Communist doctrine.

After all, isn’t this one of the underlying problems of the occupation of Iraq? We tear down a secular dictatorship, only to find a significant body of people who want to set up a theocracy. Contrary to what The Rascals would like to believe, ask me my opinion, my opinion will be — people everywhere don’t want to be free. Certainly one of the many issues I struggle with within my own faith is the concept of one man dying for another’s sins. Is it possible to pay for somebody else’s sins? Isn’t that something like what we’re trying to do? And from whence does the moral authority come to make a sacrifice like that meaningful?

My understanding is that the most rational and moral course available to us is one of non-interventionism. It’s certainly possible that that’s a mistaken belief, based on a poor education. And it’s certainly true that that understanding rejects me from the two major parties, both of whom seem to believe that overseas intervention and entangling alliances are necessary to our continued stability — a fact making this November’s election yet another no-win scenario for me.

But thinking about all of these ideological and geopolitical conflicts leaves me with one clear thought: that our own revolution, two-hundred and thirty-eight years ago, was nothing short of a miracle, in both a military and philosophical sense.

So thanks, Old White Dude. And a happy Treason Day to you, too.

This story in the PiPress made me angry. Really angry. And, yes, by criticizing it, I’m sure that it proves that I hate America and freedom, etc., and that liberals are traitors and, really, I think I’m fine with that, because I was born after Vietnam was fought and lost and, frankly, I can’t wait for the rest of that goddamn generation to die, die, die so we can stop talking about it, and being obsessed with it, and start talking about other things that Baby Boomers aren’t obsessed with:

The 60-year-old Forest Lake woman, concerned that Vietnam veterans have not gotten their due, is pushing for a state day to honor them. She also wants a program to educate students about the unpopular war and its psychological effects on soldiers.

Yes, that’s correct. Diane Finnemann is “concerned that Vietnam veterans have not gotten their due.” Apart from being among the most massively overcelebrated group of people on the planet, of course. I mean, come on to say that Vietnam hasn’t been remembered is… How is that even possible to say such a thing? Even entertaining that notion requires such a massive denial of the last 35 years of American history. And surely they are more remembered the Korean War vets. And the nice Marines who died in Lebanon in the ’80s. Hell, even Gulf War I gets less fuckin’ ink these days than Vietnam. Do they get special days in Washington County? I don’t think so. But they’re not Baby Boomers, so they’re not special. God, I hate the ’60s.

In the meantime, I just have this to say about Vietnam, the idea of another fucking holiday and, well, the entire Boomer generation: Jesus Christ, we remember, alright, Boomers? The ’60s were the most amazingly liberating and mistake-laden decade that ever there was, and we should just keep fixating on it. I GET IT. YOU’RE AWESOME. FUCKING SHUT UP ABOUT IT NOW.

Stop thinking your pain is so special, Boomers. Really. It’s only going to get worse as you age and get all sentimental and nostalgic, and it’s already at critical heights of navel-gazingly annoying, so just CUT IT OUT.

The amount of money Saddam Hussein supposedly requested in order for him to step down and go into exile before the war even started: $1 billion.

Total cost of war in Iraq to date: $455 billion.

Being able to say “screw you” to your allies and to force other countries into compliance by blackmailing them while indulging in absolute self-delusion: Priceless.

Alright. I watched the President’s speech to the nation. I cannot really decide if it was shockingly delusional—the kind of delusion you’d run across talking to Madonna or Barbra Streisand or Céline Dion, someone who is so convinced of their Greatness of Person that they’re always thinking, “Of course I’m the Angel of Righteousness! My talent and vision is so beaming, so pure that I feel uncomfortable in this mortal skin. Quickly, we must make the world beautiful!”—or if it was merely pathetic. It’s sort of a fine line the guy’s walking these days.

But that’s really the big thing, isn’t it? He’s turned into the GOP’s Streisand: a big, floppy, cringe-inducing embarrassment of a thing that can’t be easily swept under the rug because there’s a tiny minority of fiercely committed fans who won’t allow it to happen, perhaps because of some sort of secret blood oath.

Except, you know, that Barbra Streisand never invaded Iraq under false pretenses, plundered the nation’s wealth and destroyed our moral standing for a generation. With this analogy, “Yentl” seems almost forgivable.

I dunno… All I want to do is look at the guy and think, “It’s almost over, it’s almost over…” Except that lets me off the hook. And I’m not interested in letting myself or any American off the hook for this disaster.

More later… From all of us, I mean.

The two dudes with the worst jobs in America are Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. They’ve just gotten through getting grilled by the Senate and now they’re being ripped in the press and the blogosphere. Interesting. They work for the Prezzz. They were given a task with a set of parameters and they’ve set forth to achieve that task (stabilize) within those parameters (whatever it takes).

One thing worth pointing out with both of these gentlemen is that they’d been critical of the war and/or its execution and tactics since the initial blast into Iraq.

The most revealing part of the testimony to my mind was the inability or utter resistance put up by both men to answer the question “Tell me how this ends?” There is no defined mission beyond the short term one of stabilize the country (not the democracy, you’ll note). This isn’t surprising as there has never been a clearly defined mission. There were no answers to the long term questions…what’s the strategy to put the whole country back together and bring our forces home? None. Zip. Again, not surprising. The closest we ever had to such a strategy was “kick their asses”. Again, not a surprise, then, that there were no answers forthcoming from the two sacrificial lambs, nor will the Prezzz offer any in his speech tonight.

So when, then, will we leave Iraq? Certainly not during the Bush presidency. The Dems, despite their bluster, conceded the timeline through next June, during which the big change will be that the additional 30,000 troops who went over as part of the surge will come home. Leaving us exactly where we were in 2006.

The answer to that question?…When the Democrats find their collective spine and the Republicans find their collective conscience. In other words, no time soon.

A new national intelligence estimate has concluded that the Bush strategy of escalation has accomplished nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada.

Things have gotten so bad that John Warner (R-VA) and Gen. Peter Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs have called for us to get out of Iraq. Warner…hmm…Warner has been a subtle critic of the war for awhile now. So, you know, whatever…give him props if you must while ignoring that he has supported the President on every single war related vote up to the present moment. So…nice of you to voice your concerns, how’s about doing something about it? Pace…well, that’s interesting. The General’s argument is that the army simply cannot keep doing this. That it is stretched to the breaking point. That its ability to protect the country is being compromised. Fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight ‘em here? Remember that. Hell, I just heard it in a conversation earlier this week. The General would appear to be saying that we ain’t accomplishing shit over there and we’re straining our resources so badly that we couldn’t fight ‘em over here if we had to.

Neat, huh? So…escalation (the “Surge” as it is more commonly known) was a failure, right?

Depends on what you wanted it to accomplish. In terms of the Prezzz’s dirty little war, in terms of our security, yes…an abject failure. But that’s not what the Prezzz ever set out to accomplish. Ever. What he wanted to do was look good (presumably to his base) and put off the decision for another year. Remember, he’d just gotten his ass handed to him in the 2006 elections when he dreamed up the Surge. Why another year? Because starting in about a month, gloriously coinciding with the timeline on which we’ll hear from Petraeus how fucked up things are, he’ll be able to change his tune to “it wouldn’t be right to make a decision with such grave consequences given a new President will be coming in”.

You heard it here first. My money is on Friday, September 21st.

Maybe we should start an office pool. Like March Madness but with people dying.

Andrew Sullivan has a discussion going on his blog (inspired by Rod Dreher) about the lists of certainties he and his readers have abandoned in the W years. An interesting exercise. Here are mine:

1. I’m sick to my stomach from all the validation. I opposed the war in Iraq (although not Afghanistan) and during the entire debate, my sister Carole and I would scream at one another on the phone—screams of agreement, screams of frustration. I remember her saying, “Fox is saying that the president will have no choice but to go into Iraq because he’d lose face! All of these people are going to die because our president can’t back down?!?” It’s a valid point: Foreign policy at the barrel of a gun can lead to disaster. It’s a lesson we’ve got to learn, no matter how much in love the American people are with the idea of a Dirty Harry Doctrine. I had a visceral reaction to Iraq. I just had a feeling—more than any intellectual, quantifiable reaction to the evidence—that getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a damn fine idea, but these were not the people to do the job. I set aside my qualms as the war started and gave the president the benefit of my doubt and hoped and prayed the war would go quickly and well—just as any American citizen would do (with the exception of the Republican Congress under Clinton, natch, because as we all knew as gospel, the Republicans were always right about military stuff!). Now we know the mistakes are mind-boggling. The betrayal is incalculable. How I wish all of us anti-war types had been wrong. Even if it had meant the much-fabled permanent Republican majority. Better that than this.

2. The reason that liberals fight within their ranks so much is because (perhaps) we’re a lot more honest about ulterior motives, the ability of power to corrupt and the dangers of partisanship. I often lament the lack of unity among the left’s rank-and-file. But I won’t do so as frequently any longer. After seeing the lockstep marching toward a conservative decadence, I like belonging to a side that sometimes sacrifices its own power to principle (see also: Nader 2000, though I still think Nader’s a weenie). The fact that we’re willing—hell, eager to take our own down from time to time, not rally ’round, not circle the wagons… Yeah, that’s because we have some integrity. Laugh at us lefties all you want to for being multiculti do-gooders, but we’re not half the moral relativists of right-wing thinkers-cum-professional rationalizers. Maybe it’s because of our long history with being wrong and getting burned: communism, Vietnam, Monicagate. Anyway, there’s a lot of integrity among modern American liberals—a quality that the Wall Street Journal editorial page and National Review and Ann Coulter and Fox and all the other true, blind believers will never be able to buy, no matter how much cash is injected directly into their bloodstreams.

3 (a). Also, I’m glad the left doesn’t have a version of Karl Rove. I used to think we needed our own Turd Blossoms. No longer. They’re filthy people, and traitors to everything we should stand for as a country. Democracy isn’t a fucking game of football, it’s not war. It’s for the betterment of our country, the unity of our nation. Fuck you if you think you’re the only guy who should win.

3 (b). I know it won’t happen, but I’d love to see the Federal Elections Commission ban the use of market research tools in campaigns. The technologies are too sophisticated now. The spin is too refined. The line between opinion and lie is too fine, especially with the news media having been beaten into submission by the right. Market research is useful to bilk people out of disposable income—and I welcome that as a good capitalist. But focus groups and microtargeting are a pretty shitty way of engaging people in a democracy.

4. No one ever gets to use the term “Bush hater” or any term like that ever again. Those of us who were smeared with it have earned our wings: We were right. You were wrong. So maybe listen to us next time. Oh, and I think France deserves an apology, too.

The White House delivered its interim report on the surge to Congress today saying that there had been satisfactory movement on 8 of 18 critical benchmarks while giving the other 10 either unsatisfactory or grading them as worse than when the surge began. The White House has said that in light of a report where satisfactory progress has been made on fewer than half of the critical benchmarks it identified back at the beginning of the year (when it said it needed to see satisfactory progress on all of the benchmarks) as justification to continue with the surge strategy.

Yesterday, high ranking intelligence experts testifying before Congress gave an even more grim assessment.

Meanwhile, in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee yesterday, senior intelligence officials said there has been no meaningful positive change in Iraq since January, when a starkly pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate warned that even if security improved, violent sectarian divisions threatened to destroy the government.

Thomas Fingar, the deputy director of national intelligence and chief of the National Intelligence Council, which wrote the January estimate, said that assessment did not change. (snip) Communal violence and scant common ground between Shias, Sunnis and Kurds continues to polarize politics,” Fingar said yesterday. Even the majority-Shiite bloc that Maliki heads, he said, “does not present a unified front” and has continued to deteriorate in recent months. Meanwhile, the provision of essential services seen as crucial in building support for the government, including electricity and oil production, remains below prewar levels, he said. Some have declined during the past six months.

(snip)

“It will be difficult and time-consuming to bridge the political gulf when violence levels are reduced, and they have not yet been reduced significantly,” he said, in what he called his “most optimistic projection.”

But wait! There’s more!

Retired Maj. Gen. John R. Landry, also a member of the intelligence council, said there have been some improvements in the Iraqi army, although much less so with the Iraqi police, who are charged with holding urban areas. But Iraqi security forces remain “ridden with a certain degree of sectarian infiltration” and lack the logistics and support capabilities that would allow them to take over from U.S. forces in most of the country, he said.

Asked by Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.) whether the Iraqi forces were in a position to bring “some sort of successful closure” to the U.S. troop presence, Landry said that was “not likely.”

Iraqi military leadership and capability will require “years to develop, not months,” he said.

This is totally why the West will win the War on Terror™:

Omar bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader’s fourth son, has married a British woman he met in Egypt last fall, British media and colleagues of the bride said Wednesday.

The bride? Not exactly blushing. This is her sixth marriage and…

Jane Felix-Browne, 51, of Moulton-Cheshire, in northwest England, was in Egypt for medical treatment of multiple sclerosis, the Times and Sun newspapers reported. She told the newspapers she met bin Laden, 27, while riding a horse near Egypt’s Great Pyramid.

WAY TO GO, JANE! I cannot but find this delicious. Mostly because it confirms, in a very weird way, the idea that sexual honesty (or, if you prefer, liberation) cannot be contained. A fine British fox—albeit a silvery one—bags some demon spawn. His dad cannot be pleased—and, really, the possibility of bin Laden’s family being corrupted morally (although this does sound technically moral, I must say) is really a fine form of revenge. Score 1-0, advantage sinful West.

This American salutes you, Jane. No, not in that way. Here’s to all the fine older ladies out there who can still teach those youngin’s a thing or two. Woooooooooo!

A lot of the “Support our troops” rhetoric has been re-emerging lately, seemingly not unlike Prometheus’ liver in its ability to regenerate itself, and it’s continuing to do a very good job of the thing it was designed to do, which is shutting me up.

There’s a number of reasons why it leaves me scratching my head, slack-jawed and unable to respond, not least because it’s always seemed to be such an obvious straw man argument to me: nobody *doesn’t* support the troops. Nobody’s cheering at the idea of American soldiers getting shot at. People bring up the military men returning from Vietnam who were spit on: but I find it extremely difficult to credit that that’s going to happen now. The cultural climate’s changed, not least because of people yelling about supporting our troops.

Taking the argument at face value, I just plain don’t get it, and I’m the first to admit it: I don’t see how claiming that the invasion of Iraq was a horrifically bad administrative decision, a bureaucratic fuck-up for Blobby’s Big Book of Bureaucratic Fuck-Ups, is somehow an expression of contempt for the guys on the ground.

Probing a little deeper, I think it has to do with a differing concept of love: that for them, love of country must be composed of a kind of blind adulation, an unwavering support for everything it does. Let’s add this to the list of the things I fail to get. I mean, I love my family, but I can acknowledge that they’ve done some pretty fucked-up things. If I found out that, say, my nephew had murdered somebody, I would do everything I could to help: speaking in his defense, getting him a good lawyer, trying to get his sentence reduced, et cetera. I get the impression that the “Support-our-troops” camp would be helping him hide the body.

But we can get a little deeper than that, can’t we? Ultimately, the reason I have such a hard time responding to the slogan is because there’s a grain of truth to it: I *don’t* support our troops. I support the American people; in a broader sense, I support the human race, the species into which I was born, of which the military branch of the United States government comprises a very small percentage. As long as that percentage is doing work that I feel is beneficial to the rest of the species — including my favorite component of it, me — then, yeah, I’ll support it. When I feel that it’s doing work that’s actively harmful? I’d be nuts to.

None of which, none, is passing any kind of judgment upon the individuals inhabiting that percentage. I don’t have any issues, good or bad, with the individuals. It’s collectives I don’t trust: and that’s the case whether they’re parties, corporations, governments — or militaries. As James Madison put it, “A standing army is one of the greatest mischief that can possibly happen.” (His syntax, not mine.)

One of the better concepts drilled into me growing up was “Love the sinner, hate the sin” — and if we can sidestep for the moment how terribly loaded those particular word choices are, all it’s really saying is that people can do shit you don’t approve of without you passing judgment on them.

In my last political satire, Libertarian Rage, I made a conscious decision early on not to mention any politicians by name — because I wasn’t interested in ridiculing *people*, I was interested in ridiculing *ideologies*. I may object to just about every decision Bush has made since he was appointed to his office by the Supreme Court (including, y’know, that one) — and I will call him on every bullshit decision he makes — but I am singularly ill-equipped to pass any judgment on him as a person, as a human being, because I *don’t fucking know him*. I honestly can’t tell if he’s a bumbling puppet or brilliant con-man or a dangerously wide-eyed idealist. And even if I could, I don’t know what his private thoughts are in the dead of night, nor do I have any desire to. Not my job.

Christ’s injunction to “Love thy enemies” is one that gets thrown around pretty glibly, but its implications are terrifying: it means, well, loving your enemies. It means loving Osama bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein; it means loving both your military and political opponents; it means finding a way to love George W. Bush. Not letting them get away with shit. But not passing judgment on the contents of their hearts, either.

Vengeance is easier. Rage is easier. Hell, a lot of the time it’s useful, too — witness this site. But left unchecked, it leads to things like blood feuds, crusades — and wars. Compassion, mercy, forgiveness — they’re hard. They’re *fucking* hard. But if we entered this raging inferno in a state of grief and anger, we’re not gonna crawl our way out for as long as we’re clinging to the things that brought us here…

…e quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.

Four years ago today the Prezzz showed up in flyboy drag on a Destroyer or Carrier or something and declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq. He celebrated that anniversary today by vetoing the long overdue bill that finally would, if it were to become law, hold him accountable for his dirty and floundering little war.

The only gripe I have about the Democrat approach to this legislation, to the entire topic, is that we continue to derail into ideological debates about the war. One need do nothing other than judge the Prezzz on performance to damn this war. Forget the critical thinking debates. Focus on what he has done and what the Iraqi’s have done. Forget about predictions of what will or might happen if we leave. Nobody knows. The exit of US troops may, in fact, cause Iraq to implode. Then again, maybe not. Focus, instead, on what has happened and is happening in the current state.

Today as he sharpened up his veto pen (for only the second time in his Presidency), the Boy Who Would Be King spake thusly, “This is a prescription for chaos and confusion and we must not impose it on our troops.”

Yes. Yes, indeedy. Quite unlike the current state of affairs. A sampling of what’s gone down in Iraq in just the recent past.

-April was the most deadly month for US military personnel in the last two years. Sounds stable to me.
-Two weeks ago the supporters of Al-Sadr pulled their cabinet ministers out of office. They have yet to be replaced.
-Yesterday, the five Sunni cabinet ministers threatened to pull out of the government because said government is either incapable or unwilling to ensure access to supplies and food in Sunni areas of Baghdad. They also site the inability of Maliki’s government to make any headway on critical legislation divvying up the country’s oil revenues.
-Insurgents launched a coordinated attack on a US outpost featuring mortar rounds and suicide bombers.
-The heavily fortified Green Zone came under mortar attack for the second time in two weeks.

Yeah…whatever we do, let’s keep things stable like they are now.

For those interested, there’s an excellent article in today’s Washington Post on the mixed results coming from the Surge in Baghdad. I know it’s easy to lock into a position and not see that there are complex realities. There has been progress made in areas of Baghdad, and that’s a good thing. There are parts of Baghdad where progress ain’t going on. There has been a decrease in sectarian violence and organized activities from both Sunni insurgents and Shia militias. If it means fewer of our guys are getting killed I’m all for it.

On the flip side, suicide bombings have skyrocketed and the infrastructure to limit the likelihood of horrific damage from them is limited and not expanding at an adequate pace. And, predictably, as the US and Iraqi’s focus on Baghdad and Anbar province there’s a scary spike in insurgent activities, and an accompanying heartbreaking spike in US deaths, in Diyala.

I have great sympathy for the relatively new military command team in Iraq. What they’re doing right now is embarking on the first cohesive and comprehensive counter-insurgency campaign of this war. Counter-insurgency is slow moving by nature (at least according to what I’ve read from military strategists who know one hell of a lot more than I do) and fraught with risk. Meaning that results are incremental and it can take awhile before you can truly evaluate the results and determine if it’s working. Awhile in this case being defined as a matter of years, not months. Had this policy been launched earlier than four years into the war I might be more receptive to it. As it now stands, I still think we gotta get our forces out of there. It is still a civil war and it still is costing US lives.

But that’s my opinion from reading the article. This piece of writing, I think, gives you both sides of the story pretty effectively. You may well walk away with a different view. So, you know, it might be worth a gander.

I hope nobody minds if I respond with another post — I have a few too many thoughts to justify a comment.

First of all, an apology. My last post was intended to be an examination of my own thoughts and impulses — not anybody else’s. I in no way meant to imply that there was anything wrong with your emotional response to tragedy — merely that I suspected that there was something wrong with mine. I don’t know you, and I have no desire to pass judgment on anything going on on the inside of your skull.

That said, I’m prepared to defend my, er, cheap ideological point — which is that, yes! Compassion and empathy are noble human impulses! And that, unchecked by other noble human impulses, such as prudence and careful self-examination, they can lead us to unintentionally harm others. Does that really qualify as defamation?

If I’m not belaboring the argument, I’d like to specifically respond to your point about Iraq. Whatever the motives of the people at the top, in a democracy, international crimes have to sold to the people. (Well, at least in theory.) Nobody (outside of weapons manufacturers) is pro-war. Everybody knows that war is an evil. The only way to sell it to a population is convince them that it’s *necessary*.

Points that were used to sell it to us:

1) Liberating the Iraqi people. Empathy. (Bullshit, of course — our own government’s done plenty to create or support oppressive governments when it suited their purposes.)

2) Strategic movement in the larger war on terror. Empathy — nobody wants to see anyone else die in terrorist attacks. (Bullshit — there are plenty of other nations that form a more credible threat.)

3) The development of WMD’s. Empathy — nobody wants to see *those* unleashed on the planet again. (Bullshit — see last point. And, y’know, there were none.)

4) Control of and access to oil. Okay, not really empathy — but nobody used that as an argument to *sell* the war to anyone.

The only way anyone could be convinced to sign up for this was through the *manipulation* of that noble impulse. The impulse isn’t evil. Sometimes the application of it is.

One more point — not only in response to your post, but something I’ve been meaning to say for a while and this seemed to an appropriate place to do so — I’ve been hearing a lot of people complaining about the apathy of the American public when it comes to Iraq. I don’t think that’s true. I think that people are every bit as angry and disgusted with the situation as they ever have been. The reason we’re not hearing about it anymore isn’t because we don’t care, it’s because we’ve been worn out — we’ve been shouting and complaining and arguing for going on four years now, and all we’ve really gained is the knowledge that we *don’t* have any real influence on the situation.

It’s like when someone close to you dies — eventually, you pick up and find a way to move on. This is like someone close to us has died, every day, for four years. We’ve never been able to heal our wounds and move on from it, so eventually I think we’ve just started shutting down.

I’m not condoning it. I’m not condemning it. I’m just saying that I think the response has been mischaracterized. It’s not apathy. It’s exhaustion.

And, y’know — I can justifiably be accused of being a lot of unpleasant things, but apathetic is hardly one of them. A big part of the reason I’m a Libertarian is because I genuinely believe that a free-market economy works best for people on every rung of the economic ladder, including the bottom. Outrageous nonsense? Perhaps. But sincere outrageous nonsense.

So there’s a bunch of guys in a lunatic asylum. One night (stormy, of course) there’s a power outage, and the lunatics murder their guards, steal their weapons, and (in some cases) eat their flesh. The next several days are harrowing, as they find themselves running up and down the halls trying not to get killed by each other. Finally, one of the inmates is sufficiently charismatic to call together a meeting without anybody getting shot.

“Because I’m trustworthy,” he responds, with a wounded expression. “Besides, the other folks in here are CRAZY!”

Nobody’s surprised that I’m a Second Amendment supporter, right? Whatever the risks of private gun ownership, disarming your populace is pretty much step one of establishing their dependency on you.

So Iran’s refused to back off on their uranium-enrichment program, and the UN’s imposed sanctions on them, setting up a chain of events that will almost certainly lead to another war. President Ahmadinejad (try saying that ten times fast) warns that any nations “seeking to impose sanctions against Iran will suffer a greater damage themselves.”

Let’s get the obvious statement out of the way, that nobody has the warm fuzzies about a gang of undersexed theocrats like the Iranian government getting their hands on something as delightfully phallic as a nuclear warhead. That said, as long as any one government has access to WMD’s, every other government would be crazy for not trying to develop them. It’s the only credible defense in a post-nuclear age. In fact, as the technology improves, they’re only going to continue to become easier for developing nations to obtain and conceal. Trying to fight that process — to turn the technology backwards — isn’t just crazy, it’s rapidly becoming impossible. We’re fighting the most basic biological imperative of our species, to build, to construct, to grow.

Unfortunately, it’s not like the alternative is any less crazy. The last several decades taught us the madness of nuclear proliferation. Now, it seems, we must learn the madness of nuclear disarmament. It’s a true Gordian Knot, and one that, sadly, may take a stroke as brutal as Alexander’s to sever.

I used to be a part of the Minnesota Anti-War Committee’s listserv. They’d send emails, most of which I just deleted. Whatever. I was against the war, they were against the war. It should have been at least a symbiotic relationship. Well no more. They just pissed me off.

I woke up the other day, rather proud of my Congressman for voting in favor of the Iraq Supplemental bill. Then some woman who has been sending me emails to make posters or some shit is on MPR attacking Ellison for the vote and talking about how they were now going to be holding vigils at his office to protest his vote for the war.

WHAT? Now let me be clear. It wasn’t the perfect bill. It was the bullshit compromise 2nd 18th draft. Admittedly. But, uhh, it did kind of draw a line in the sand. Troops out, no permanent bases. And he voted for it. I thought that’s what you people wanted.

If that’s not what you wanted, what was? Did you think that the second Ellison placed his hand on Jefferson’s Koran that all the troops would somehow teleport home? Would you have rather he put his foot down and voted against it? Ok, you wanted him to vote against it. But how is that different than our Boy King huffing and puffing and vetoing the bill down? They’re both stubborn and not accomplishing a lot to actually end the war. I mean, if you want good anti-war theatrics, congress could go back to writing non-binding resolutions.

So I’m done with them. I wrote them a polite email explaining why. They can march up and down the streets and wave signs and yell and bang on drums all they want. I’m going to stick with the guy in Congress who actually has a prayer of bringing this fucking war to an end.

For a much better written version of what I just said, read today’s Strib Editorial. ‘xactly.

The irony here is that it’s from Fox.

Michele Bachmann, looking a lot less like a dairy farmer’s wife and a lot more like Gina Piccolapupula in the Strib today*, offers some clarification for her preternatural knowledge of a secret plan to divide up somehow involving Iraq peripherally:

…she meant that she believes “America’s adversaries are in agreement that a divided Iraq benefits their objective to expel America from the region, resulting in Iraq being a safe haven for terrorists.”

So nothing formal, then—no treaties, no alliances, no storyboards scribbled on the back of a bar napkin? So you overheard them in the employee break room but your microcasette recorder was on the fritz? Must be, because this is what she said just a few weeks back:

“…and half of Iraq, the western, northern portion of Iraq, is going to be called … the Iraq State of Islam, something like that.”

That sounds so specific. And coherent. These days, however, the evidence of Stillwater’s Firecracker derails within mere syllables:

Let me make myself clear: Both Al-Qaida and the Iranian regime hope for the United States to fail in bringing democracy to Iraq. Destabilizing Iraq is one of their tactics. Moreover, they wish for the destruction of the United States and Israel.

Reuters reported in October 2006:

“[A]n Iraqi militant group led by al-Qaeda has called for a separate Islamic state in Baghdad and other areas with a large Sunni Arab population, according to a video posted on the Internet on Sunday.” ‘Your brothers in the Mutayibeen Coalition herald the establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq … ,’ a speaker for the coalition said on the video.”

Ohhhhhh… So the division of Iraq is coming from an annonymous YouTube video? Have the Republicans extrapolated an entire foreign policy track not on solid evidence but on an Internet video attributed to an unnamed group that appeared in a Reuters wire story? How many times do we have to keep going through this kind of crap? Shouldn’t we be doing some, I don’t know, actual intelligence work? Maybe? Guys?

It was suggested that I might have revealed classified material. I was referring to publicly available reports out of the Middle East that declared the intent of the Iranian regime and Al-Qaida.

AH HA! THERE’S THE LINK! HOW COULD WE HAVE BEEN SO BLIND?!?!? COMMENCE BOMBING!!!!

At the end, I do agree with her summary:

The United States faces very real and clear threats from both Al-Qaida and Iran. We must stand strong in the face of terrorism and support our troops in Iraq.

Well, duh. Who knew that the foreign policy version of “Hot enough for ya?” was still so viable. (Confidential to Rep. Bachmann: Put down the Platitude-O-Matic 4000 and get a human speechwriter. You shouldn’t be writing these things yourself. You’re not very good at it. Although if you want to tell yourself you’re important and busy, that works, too. Just get some help. Repeat after me: The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.)

* I mention the attractiveness of her photo, as it is deeply important to her supporters that the liberal press only present Congressmodel Bachmann at her glamorous best. At least according to many comments on the Strib’s Web site. But I’m an unrepaired homosexual, so what the hell do I know?