Musing's musings

Mr. Kettle? There's a Mr. Pot on line three for you.

So the Boy Who Won't Be King Much Longer stood in front of the Knesset in Jerusalem today and tried to tag Obama and the Democrats with the mantle of appeasement. True to form, when the Democrats pushed back and correctly lambasted the characterization as unfair, the Hedgemony attempted to pretend it had never happened while privately admitting both that it had, and that it was, indeed, directed at Obama and the Democrats.

Many commenters in and out of Left Blogistan have ripped the Hedgemony several new ones for the sheer gall of using that metaphor in that place at this time--and I concur with their outrage. However, I'm going to rip the Hedgemony a new one in a different place, for a different reason--namely, that they (and the Boy Who Won't Be King Much Longer in particular) are actually guilty of the crime they falsely attributed to Obama and the Democrats. For instance, there's Donald Rumsfeld's famous meeting with Saddam Hussein five years before Hussein committed the crime for which our puppet regime in Iraq hanged him by the neck until dead nearly two years ago.

But that's also not the kind of appeasement I want to talk about. No, what I had in mind was the way that the Hedgemony, and the Republican Party generally, has spent most of the last 30 years appeasing some of the most radical elements of our society, both spiritually and politically speaking--and in fact has depended upon the success of that appeasement for its political life and the maintenance of its power and influence. Can any rational person deny that both Bush père and Bush fils have been in bed with the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, John Hagee, Pat Buchanan, et aliae? Of course not. Nor, I would argue, can any rational person deny that those people have, individually and collectively, wreaked incredible havoc upon our society, our system of government, our laws, and our national well-being. And all so that manifestly unfit persons like the Boy Who Won't Be King Much Longer, Abu Gonzalez, Michael D. Brown, John Yoo, the cadres of Young Republicans who managed to lose several billions of the taxpayers' money right after the preznit declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, and dozens of others like them, could perpetrate fraud upon the body politic and pretend to be a legitimate government. At least when Sir Neville Chamberlain flew to Munich to meet with Adolf Hitler, he was doing so out of a legitimate desire to keep the peace and not merely for personal gain and filthy lucre, as is demonstrably the case with the Hedgemony.

That is not to excuse the bad acts that Chamberlain committed in trying to keep the peace, any more than the fact that the Hedgemony thought it was doing the right thing excuses all the dozens or hundreds of bad acts it has committed in the span of seven and a half years of our most recent national nightmare. As both instances of appeasement amply demonstrate, the end really does not justify the means: a lesson that the Shrubbery would do well to remember, especially as it now scrambles higgledy-piggeldy around the globe in a frantic (and ultimately futile) attempt to find some kind of a positive legacy to validate its strutting and fretting upon the stage of the world these last few years.

Do us all a favor, Mr. Bush. Go play golf for the remaining months of your term in office. We don't care that you promised you wouldn't do that while your pet war was still going on--and frankly, we'd vastly prefer to have you wasting your time on something that at least wasn't putting anyone else in danger but yourself. Or else go bury yourself on your fake "ranch" in Crawford. Surely there's some more brush that needs clearing? At least you've gotten good at doing that--unlike any of the actual duties and responsibilities of your office as president.

Amazing what turns up

...in the pages of history books and homework assignments. I was working through this week's book for my seminar on the empire and modern Britain (Edward Said's classic work Orientalism) when I came across a series of quotations that Said had dug out of a 1972 article in, of all places, the American Journal of Psychiatry. Here's the passage in question:

"...it is a notable fact that while the ...value system demands absolute solidarity within the group, it at the same time encourages among its members a kind of rivalry that is destructive of that very solidarity" ...only "success counts" and "the end justifies the means"; [they] live "naturally" in a world "characterized by anxiety expressed in generalized suspicion and distrust, which has been labelled free-floating hostility"; "the art of subterfuge is highly developed in [their] life, as well as in [this ideology] itself"; [their] need for vengeance overrides everything, otherwise [they] would feel "ego-destroying" shame.

--Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1994), pp. 48-49

Li'l Ricky strikes out

Via pastordan and the comments on his post at Street Prophets, I was interested to learn that, at least as far as Senator Man-on-Dog is concerned, we're at war with "aspects of Islam." Personally, I've always tended toward a belief that making war on ideas is about as futile as trying to bake a pie without the benefit of ingredients, utensils, or any kind of cooking apparatus. Though given the tenor of Li'l Ricky's remarks, I may have to think about amending that simile to suggest that it's about as futile as expecting any modern rubber-stamp Republican to make sense on anything.

According to Senator Man-on-Dog, we don't hate all Muslims or want to destroy all of Islam--just those parts of it we don't like, and those of its adherents who think God wants them to blow up people who don't think like they do:

"They're in a holy war," said Santorum, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate. "These people are after us not because we oppressed them, not because of the state of Israel. It's because we stand for everything they hate. We stand for modernity; we stand for freedom; we stand for truth. But they don't. They want to destroy everything we have built here in the West."

What's really, truly frightening (though, were it not such a serious matter, it would also be hugely ironic and deliciously funny) is that if you were to take that paragraph I've just quoted and change the verbs from third person to first person, replace the word "Israel" with any standard Republican buzzword--"9/11" would seem particularly apposite--change the last word from "West" to "East," and make a couple of ideologically appropriate cosmetic changes, that paragraph could just as easily have come from Senator Man-on-Dog's mouth, but as a reason for why he and his party hate Muslims so much. Here, I'll show you:

"We're in a holy war," said Santorum, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate. "We're after these people not because they attacked us, not because of 9/11. It's because they stand for everything we hate. They were observing the stars and translating Aristotle while our ancestors were still wearing animal skins and living in caves; they believe in the freedom we like to talk about but seldom allow anyone to practice, including our own citizens; they stand for truth. But we don't. We lie our asses off, because if we actually told the truth, the American people would rise up in a body and rend us limb from limb. Those people remind us of the failure of our cherished ideology of American exceptionalism. We want to destroy everything they have built there in the East."

What fools these mortals be

Why am I having a difficult time giving any credence to this story, which is headlined "Bush and Blair Push Plan to End Mideast Fighting"? Could it have anything to do with the complete cognitive dissonance (to say nothing of logical incompatibility) of the following two paragraphs from the middle of the story? You be the judge:

"Our top priorities in Lebanon are providing immediate humanitarian relief, achieving an end to the violence, ensuring the return of displaced persons, and assisting with reconstruction," Mr. Bush said.

But both reiterated their position that any cease-fire resolution must include a long-term plan to disarm Hezbollah and evict it from southern Lebanon. The Israelis, and the Arab world as well, have taken the United States position as a tacit go-ahead to Israel to continue its campaign.

I hate to have to say it, but I think the Israelis and most of the Arab world are probably right on this. Because as any sensible (or even reasonably sane) individual knows, when two countries are in the midst of a shooting war and you want to get them to stop shooting, the first fucking item on the agenda is that. To get them to stop shooting. You worry about long-term plans and other irrelevancies after the fucking shooting has fucking stopped, OK? I shouldn't think you'd need a postgraduate degree to figure that out, but apparently nobody in the Shrubbery has been able to. Maybe this is what comes of "legacy" admissions to Ivy League schools and the "gentleman's C"?

In any event, it is painful to me to watch the bumbling of the Bushoviki on this matter. If he keeps this shite up for much longer, the few pitiful dregs of credibility we have left are going to evaporate in the fire of a thousand American flags being burned all across the Arab world--and not entirely without reason, I have to add. This is hardly the time to go hunting for a legacy that doesn't involve some colossal Bush fuck-up, or for our secretary of state to polish her chamber music skills.

I am not naive. I am not claiming that all the right (or all the wrong) is on one side in this dispute--that is clearly not the case. There is blame aplenty to go around, and some of it must deservedly fall upon the Shrubbery for dithering (if not actively colluding) while a shooting war erupted. There is also at least some amount of right, and a just grievance or two, on both sides of this question.

Ultimately, however, none of that matters. All anybody with three brain cells to rub together wants is for the fighting to stop. Get everybody to go back to their neutral corners or behind their own borders, and stop lobbing bombs and rockets and artillery shells back and forth at each other's citizens. Then we can sit down like ordinary, civilized human beings and try to come up with a long-term solution to the grievances that will piss off everybody by the exact same amount.

But until then, for the love of God, people, there are people killing each other who shouldn't be. Just stop it!

هذا فوكيد تصل بطرق كثيره

I've come to expect boneheaded moves from the Shrubbery, but this one has got to take the cake:

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn., July 27 — A decorated sergeant and Arabic language specialist was dismissed from the U.S. Army under the ''Don't Ask, Don't Tell'' policy, though he says he never told his superiors he was gay and his accuser was never identified.

Bleu Copas, 30, told The Associated Press he is gay, but said he was “outed” by a stream of anonymous e-mails to his superiors in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C.

[edit]

The accuser, who signed his e-mails ''John Smith'' or ''ftbraggman,'' pressed Copas' superiors to take action against him or ''I will inform your entire battalion of the information that I gave you.''

On Dec. 2, investigators formally interviewed Copas and asked if he understood the military's policy on homosexuals, if he had any close acquaintances who were gay, and if he was involved in community theater. He answered affirmatively.

But Copas declined to answer when they asked, ''Have you ever engaged in homosexual activity or conduct?'' He refused to answer 19 of 47 questions before he asked for a lawyer and the interrogation stopped.

Copas said he accepted the honorable discharge to end the ordeal, to avoid lying about his sexuality and risking a perjury charge, and to keep friends from being targeted.

''It is unfair. It is unjust,'' he said. ''Even with the policy we have, it should never have happened.''

As Andy quipped at Towleroad:

That "community theater" admission must have been the kicker. I'm sure the next question was, "have you ever aspired to be a hairdresser?"

The perfect is the enemy of the good

So our erstwhile secretary of state and her husband boss don't want to force Israel into any solution to the Hezbollah/Lebanon crisis unless it is guaranteed to be a "lasting" one. This is not so much putting the cart before the horse as it is expecting a horse not yet born to pull a cart made from wood not yet felled. Or, to put it in terms that Condosleezza might actually understand, it's as if the United States had refused to negotiate with the Soviet Union on any issue until the Soviets had renounced communism.

When you're confronted with a shooting war, the first thing you do is try to stop the shooting and the killing. Then, and only then, do you worry about negotiating a permanent peace. I would have thought that this was such a simple notion as to be all but self-evident, but apparently the Shrubbery is suffering from oxygen deprivation to its brain due to the long-term effects of having its collective head up its collective ass. That, or else the Boy Who Would Be King and his minions are all so busy trying to find something, anything, that the preznit can cling to as a legacy that they're more interested in making him look good than they are in keeping innocent civilians out of harm's way.

Typical.

Neocons' Viagra (TM)

I am appalled by the news that began circulating this weekend suggesting that the White House and the Pentagon might be considering tactical nuclear strikes against suspected nuclear research facilities in Iran. The fact that the (mis)administration felt the need to send out its spin doctors attack poodles to pooh-pooh the very idea that they might be considering such a thing tends, regrettably, to confirm that they are in fact thinking about it.

To which my response is:

Are you people fucking insane?

Pat Robertson is an abomination

Paranoid Pat is at it again (link is in German; CNN has the story in English here). He's claiming, translating from the German news brief in the first link, that Ariel Sharon's stroke was "God's punishment for evacuating the Gaza Strip." The allegation was made on today's episode of the long-running (God alone knows why) dreck-fest "The 700 Club."

Now, I wouldn't say that Ariel Sharon ranked highly among my favorite people in the world. I still hold him responsible for starting the second intifada five and a half years ago with his ill-advised decision to visit the Dome of the Rock a couple of weeks before my mother and I were due to leave for a Jubilee-year pilgrimage to Israel--and the continuation of that violence is among the reasons that I haven't been back to Israel since then, despite loving the country and having friends there.

I will even confess to feeling a modicum of relief this morning when I heard the news that Sharon had just come out of seven hours of brain surgery to stop the bleeding--not that he had been stricken ill and was languishing in a hospital, but that this episode more or less spells the end of his political life in Israel, and could well kill off his new party before it ever really got launched. For my money, Sharon is one of the bigger obstacles in the way of anything remotely resembling a lasting peace in the Middle East.

This could be good news

Or it could be bad news. Or it could be more of the same business as usual. Fatah has soundly beaten Hamas in local Palestinian elections.

Before I declare it an unqualified victory, I'd want to be sure that the voting was honest and fair, and that the Fatah candidates were not just friends of Arafat's (or friends of Arafat's friends), the same corrupt shower that have been ruining the Palestinian Authority for years. I'd want to be sure the Hamas candidates who were defeated weren't actually interested in using the political process for the betterment of their people, and not interested in encouraging them to blow themselves up for the greater glory of God.

It's undeniable that Hamas has done a great deal for Palestinians in terms of education, social welfare, etc. It's equally undeniable that Hamas has done a great deal to Palestinians, and to Israelis, in terms of inciting violence, suicide attacks, and political terrorism. Just as it is undeniable that Fatah has been inefficient, corrupt, and more interested in the preservation of its political power than in doing much to improve the daily lives of the average Palestinian.

Nevertheless, it's hard not to rejoice at least a little when both sides turn to the ballot box rather than the bullet box to solve some problems. That's a trend I hope will continue, and that it will be successful. The one thing everybody wants for the Middle East is a situation that allows all parties to live in peace.