Blogging on and off since 2003
A piece in Capitol Hill Blue begins as follows:
On an unspecified day last week an employee of a federal agency that cannot be revealed delivered a document that cannot be identified to a company that cannot be named seeking information that cannot be discussed.
And the depressing thing is, it‘s true. Or I think it is. But since all of the facts are secret, we’ll never know. And that’s the whole point.
HuffPo has just posted a piece by John Zogby about a new poll of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. So do they know why they’re fighting in Iraq?
The wide-ranging poll also shows that 58% of those serving in country say the U.S. mission in Iraq is clear in their minds, while 42% said it is either somewhat or very unclear to them, that they have no understanding of it at all, or are unsure.
OK, so what’s the mission?
Nearly nine of every 10 – 85% – said the U.S. mission is “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks,” while 77% said they believe the main or a major reason for the war was “to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq.”
So how do you tell someone that s/he’s fighting for a lie?
Mind you, they don’t want to stay. When do the troops themselves think that they should be withdrawn?
That seems pretty clear.
Here’s an interesting perspective from the BBC’s John Simpson:
Looking back on the events of the past year, it is clear that the three different popular votes which were held in Iraq, two elections and one referendum, played a big part in whipping up the violence.
People who had tended to regard themselves primarily as Iraqis were suddenly forced to focus on the fact that they belonged to a particular group: Sunni, Shia, Kurdish, Christian or whatever.
The act of voting was as divisive as it was empowering, and the fact that it happened three times in 11 months added to the intensity of the problem.
Let’s see: the British police can’t catch members of al-Qaida, so instead they decide to harrass actors who play al-Qaida suspects in a British movie. Now that’s really clever.
Remember this picture from my tour of Hyderabad last year?
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The tower is front of us is the Charminar, in the heart of the old walled city. Just a few hours ago, according to The Times of India:
The city had another Friday convulsion as rioting erupted in the Old City over the Denmark cartoon controversy, with Islamic protesters burning and damaging vehicles and stoning shops in the area around Charminar.
This time, the walled city teetered on the edge of a communal riot as the rioters lobbed stones at shops at Gulzar Houz
Of course most of the property that was destroyed will have belonged to Muslims…
Andrew Sullivan reports that the planned Gay Pride march in Moscow has been cancelled after threats from the Russian Muslim community:
Earlier this week Chief Mufti Talgat Tadzhuddin warned that Russia’s Muslims would stage violent protests if the march went ahead. “If they come out on to the streets anyway they should be flogged. Any normal person would do that – Muslims and Orthodox Christians alike” … The cleric said the Koran taught that homosexuals should be killed because their lifestyle spells the extinction of the human race and said that gays had no human rights.
If this represents mainstream Muslim thinking, then a “clash of civilizations” is inevitable. If not, it is the responsibility of moderate Muslims to take back their faith from the extremists. I really don’t see any alternative. But the most depressing thing about this choice is that the Chief Mufti claims to speak for the Russian Muslim community as a whole. He, like Sistani, is supposed to be a moderate.
UPDATE: In today’s L.A.Times, Mansoor Ijaz tries to have it both ways: to argue that on the one hand the extremists do not represent Islam, while asserting that there is no such thing as a “moderate Muslim”:
You either believe in the oneness of God or you don’t. You either believe in the teachings of his prophet or you don’t. You either learn those teachings and apply them to the circumstances of life in the country you have chosen to live in, or you shouldn’t live there.
But this is simply disingenuous: it assumes that there is only one possible interpretation of those “teachings”, and that there is only one way to “apply them to the circumstances of life”. Admit that neither is true, and his entire thesis falls apart.
From a comment on Doug’s Rant, a link to an excerpt from “They Thought They Were Free”, Milton Mayer’s history of Germany from 1933 to 1945. Key paragraph:
What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
Sobering stuff.
If you didn’t catch last night’s Daily Show piece on Cheney’s hunting incident, check it out when it comes up on the streaming video page. Salon’s transcript doesn’t do it justice:
Jon, in a post-9-11 world, the American people expect their leaders to be decisive. To not have shot his friend in the face would have sent a message to the quail that America is weak.
UPDATE: Comedy Central seems to be swamped – as an alternative, CrooksAndLiars has a postage-stamp sized video available.
Glenn Greenwald nails the state of conservatism in the United States today:
What it takes to make someone a “conservative” in Bozell’s eyes is the same as what is required in the eyes of all Bush followers — a willingness to support Bush’s actions because they are the actions of George Bush…. That’s because “conservatism” is now a term used to describe personal loyalty to the leader (just as “liberal” is used to describe disloyalty to that leader), and no longer refers to a set of beliefs about government.
Welcome to North Korea (or is it 1984?).
[Hat-tip to Sully.]
UPDATE: Glenn has posted an interesting followup which demonstrates beautifully how most of the vituperative criticism of his original piece simply reinforces his thesis.
As Susie says, you can’t make this stuff up. From the NYT:
The Energy Department will begin laying off researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the next week or two because of cuts to its budget.
A veteran researcher said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol. Those are two of the technologies that Mr. Bush cited on Tuesday night as holding the promise to replace part of the nation’s oil imports.
