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By Weldon Berger, on September 19th, 2006
A recent Pew poll shows that 72% of Republicans believe the war in Iraq is going fairly well or very well. The surprise in the number isn’t that most Republicans remain solidly in favor of the invasion and occupation; it’s that their assessment is markedly more cheerful than the ones coming from the administration and the US military.
Never mind the conflict with reality: it’s the party’s stock in trade. But when one military official says an entire province is in the hands of insurgents and the regional commander doesn’t have the manpower to do anything about it, and another says the worsening security situation required an injection nearly 20,000 additional troops over the past few months rather than the projected steady decrease, and the administration describes the country as gripped in a life-and-death struggle with insurgents, death squads and terrorists, you have to wonder where that 72% are getting their news. Even Fox isn’t brimming with good tidings.
Continue reading 72% of Republicans think Iraq is going “fairly well”
By Weldon Berger, on September 19th, 2006
Slate’s Fred Kaplan narrowly avoided quoting Shakespeare in a story about George Bush’s phoned-in UN speech today. Kaplan said the speech “was full of stirring words, signifying nothing,” but that was an exaggeration in service to art: the words were stirring only in the sense that they stirred Kaplan to exasperated puzzlement, which was itself most likely simulated.
In his closing, President Bush posed a challenge to the General Assembly: “The nations gathered in this chamber must make a choice. … Will we support the moderates and reformers who are working for change across the Middle East, or will we yield the future to the terrorists and extremists?”
Which “moderates and reformers” is he talking about? What kind of “change across the Middle East”? What actions is he proposing the nations take? Or is he just reciting bromides, uninterested in the answers or in how “this chamber”—which, undeniably, has a dreadful record on such issues—might try to deal with them?
Continue reading Sound and fury, signifying nothing. Minus fullness and fury.
By Weldon Berger, on September 19th, 2006
The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.
– George W. Bush
Do you remember how the US responded to Pearl Harbor by bombing Tokyo and then running off to invade Mexico? Do you remember how we struggled for three and a half years to gain control of Mexico City, and how Roosevelt and Churchill said “Trust us, we’ve got it covered, but be very afraid” and exhorted us all to pay fewer taxes in support of the war effort? Do you remember how Hitler operated from a lawless haven in the Black Forest, relying on a small network of like-minded fanatics using improvised weapons and pickup trucks to roll across Europe and hold the world hostage? Do you remember how the Soviets brought the world to the brink of nuclear annhilation when they sent some guy to Cuba who Kennedy suspected might want to make a dirty bomb?
If so, George Bush wants you in his corner. If you know the actual history of World War II and the Cold War and you still see more than the vaguest parallel between those episodes in our history and the War on Terra®, George Bush really wants you in his corner; anyone capable of the heroic effort of will required to conflate those histories with the current conflict is capable of just about anything. And if you’re cynical enough to recognize the hollowness of that truly repugnant analogy while pretending to take it seriously, there’s a GOP staff job in your future (or present).
Continue reading Bush Thinks You’re Stupid: Streets of Baghdad Edition
By Weldon Berger, on September 17th, 2006
They can call it Good vs. Evil all they want to, but to me it just looks like two teams of right-wing religious loonies fighting with each other, and the rest of us are just cannon-fodder or part of the battleground.
– Avedon Carol
With a strong assist from Pope Benedict, president Bush has connected the War on Terra® with a putative religious revival in the US. Unlike Benedict, the president didn’t explicitly identify Islam as the evil part of his “confrontation between good and evil,” but with the very great majority of people who are dead at his hand being Muslim, connecting the one with the other doesn’t seem a stretch.
Bush made his comments to a group of right-wing journalists, and said his sense that a new religious tide is rising comes from hearing “more open expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels.” Whether or not Bush believes what he said, his choice of audience was obviously intended to throw a sop to the increasingly restive reactionary religious Republican base. Whether or not he’s right about an increase in national religious sentiment, the people he’s hearing from are, as has always been the case with this president, hand-selected and carefully screened to avoid any harshing of the presidential vibe rather than to provide him with a representative census of religious sentiment.
Regardless the value of Bush’s evidence or the sincerity of his citation of it, he clearly approves the possibility of a new Awakening, or at least a new Awakening as filtered through whatever he’s been told of the previous ones. Since most of the policies embraced by Bush and the events celebrated by him tend to damage the interests of most Americans, one has to ask just what an Awakening has to offer.
Continue reading President Bush senses a great disturbance in the Force
By Keifus, on September 11th, 2006
Not every science fiction author is a clumsy stylist…nor is every storytelling conceit tacky . . . → Read More: Book Reviews: Vinge, Clarke, LeGuin
By Weldon Berger, on September 10th, 2006
Iran is the ascendent power in the Middle East. Iraqis are dying by their thousands. Afghanistan is disintegrating, again. Osama is still at large. North Korea trudges toward membership in the nuclear club.
Our foremost ally in the War on Terra®, Pakistan, appears not only to have given up on controlling the border between it and Afghanistan — striking truces with leaders in the border regions — but to be actively supporting an increasingly deadly Taliban insurgency, a situation with which the Bush administration apparently feels comfortable enough to help fund despite complaints from the Karzai government and NATO commanders, who are desperate for more troops.
The economy of Lebanon, the only more or less successful secular Arab democracy in the Middle East, is in tatters after the recent US-approved Israeli assault on the country. After fighting the Israelis to a stand-still, Hezbullah is not only more popular than at any time since the Israeli occupation ended in 2000, but more politically powerful among traditional opponents as well, courtesy of its well-coordinated relief efforts in southern Lebanon and areas of Beirut. When the fruits of Israel’s quiet negotiations for the return of its missing soldiers become public and large numbers of Lebanese return home in exchange for the two Israelis, Hezbullah’s currency will only increase.
Continue reading Worst National Security Administration Ever: Global Edition
By Weldon Berger, on September 9th, 2006
Is it possible al Qaeda is a bigger threat to us than we are to them? The increasingly hysterical rhetoric of the Bush administration would suggest so.
After three years of occupying Iraq, the US military enjoys less control over the country than at any time since the invasion. Yet Bush says that “[i]f we were to leave (Iraq) early and concede the Middle East to the enemies of freedom, imagine a world in which moderate governments get toppled. Imagine a world in which extremists and radicals have control of oil that they’ll be able to use to inflict incredible economic damage on those of us who love liberty.” The clear implication is that al Qaeda and whoever else he has in mind are more powerful than the combined forces of the US and Iraqi militaries. (Those comments, from the president who swears he isn’t politicizing the War on Terra® and the occupation of Iraq, were delivered at a campaign appearance for Georgia Republican Max Burns.)
Never mind the notion that leaving Iraq will bring down whatever moderate governments exist in the region: Are we really such weenies? Is it possible the country that fought and won simultaneous wars with Japan and Germany in not much more time than we’ve spent in Iraq, the country that for decades contained the threat of the Soviet Union, is now the underdog in a fight with stateless terrorists and relatively lightly armed insurgents who have no armies and only a tiny fraction of our bankroll?
Continue reading Bush: Al Qaeda more capable than US military
By Weldon Berger, on September 9th, 2006
As John Aravosis and others have noted, one voice is conspicuously missing from the controversy over ABC’s “The Path To 9/11.” 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton has yet to speak publicly about the issue. The program will apparently air as scheduled, complete with key scenes that distort and in some instances completely fabricate the conclusions of the Commission.
Since Hamilton has chosen to absent himself from the controversy prior to the broadcast of “The Path to 9/11,” I’ve written a letter urging him to disavow the program afterward. Anyone who would like to join me in doing so can contact Hamilton at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His email address is lee.hamilton@wilsoncenter.org, and his telephone number is 202-691-4204. If you do contact him, please be polite.
Continue reading “The Path To 9/11″: An open letter to Lee Hamilton
By Weldon Berger, on September 5th, 2006
According to ABC News, sourcing Pakistani officials, that country has offered Osama bin Laden safe haven if he promises to behave himself.
If he is in Pakistan, bin Laden “would not be taken into custody,” Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan told ABC News in a telephone interview, “as long as one is being . . . → Read More: Oh, my: Pakistan offers bin Laden safe haven
By Weldon Berger, on September 5th, 2006
The hardest part of writing about the Bush administration’s record on national security is knowing where to begin. The second hardest part is knowing where to end; it’s simplest just to let physical exhaustion be one’s guide. Today, we’re going to begin with the draft.
Very few people think the Bush administration will institute a military draft, the most popular argument being that a draft is politically unacceptable. But in slightly less than two months, regardless the outcome of the mid-term elections, this White House will no longer be constrained by political considerations; no matter what happens on November 2006, they’ll all be out of work in January of 2009. Unless Democrats pick up a couple dozen Senate seats, the brakes are off.
It’s not that the Bushies want to implement a draft: they don’t. It’s that they’re going to do something so irredeemably dangerous and stupid that they’ll have no choice, and Congress will have no choice but to go along with it.
Continue reading Worst National Security Administration Ever: Iran Edition
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Word of the Decade Ignoranus: An ignorant asshole.
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“The Path To 9/11″: An open letter to Lee Hamilton
As John Aravosis and others have noted, one voice is conspicuously missing from the controversy over ABC’s “The Path To 9/11.” 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton has yet to speak publicly about the issue. The program will apparently air as scheduled, complete with key scenes that distort and in some instances completely fabricate the conclusions of the Commission.
Since Hamilton has chosen to absent himself from the controversy prior to the broadcast of “The Path to 9/11,” I’ve written a letter urging him to disavow the program afterward. Anyone who would like to join me in doing so can contact Hamilton at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His email address is lee.hamilton@wilsoncenter.org, and his telephone number is 202-691-4204. If you do contact him, please be polite.
Continue reading “The Path To 9/11″: An open letter to Lee Hamilton