Shorter Billmon

Billmon's newest post deserves thoughtful consideration, but all I have time for now is to summarize what he says:

The obnoxious arrogance and fear-mongering of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (Cheney branch) is actually creating a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (Islamic branch).

Hicks

Yeah, sure -- lets send Sean Penn a ticket for smoking in public. And then we can all mutter about how that'll teach them gol-durned New Yawk city slickers a lesson....

Nobody will follow the US troops home

As Jon Stewart asked, if winning the streets of Baghdad is so damned important, why doesn't Bush send enough troops to do it?
It just demonstrates how this "clash of civilizations" stuff is only another talking point trotted out by the Republicans as they try to save their congressional majority and also try to intimidate the Democrats into voting for Bush's Big Brother phone tap bill.
What made Bush's speech ridiculous is simply this -- the US isn't going to "win" in Iraq, no matter how many troops they send, no matter how many bombs they lob, no matter how many Iraqis they kill.
Juan Cole makes a number of good points in this post about getting American troops out of Iraq. I'll try to summarize them:

. . . the US in the Sunni Arab heartland of Iraq is not fighting "terrorists" . . . The US is fighting Iraqi nationalists and nativists, secular, tribal or religious . . . This is Washington's classical Vietnam error. They thought they were fighting international communism in Vietnam, when they were actually fighting Vietnamese nationalists . . . Just as there was no grand global domino effect from our losing the Vietnam War, so there would be no grand terror effect if we left Ramadi . . . Ramadi is not going to follow the US troops back to Ft. Bragg if they leave. Ramadi will celebrate and then go about its business.
As for al-Qaeda, we cannot make policy on the basis of what it thinks of us . . . Al-Qaeda wants to hit us, whether we are in Iraq or not . . . The French Right kept saying that France could not leave Algeria. But it could, and did, and everything was all right. It will be all right if we get our ground troops out of Ramadi. They aren't winning there, and the occupation is causing more trouble than it is worth. As for who takes over Ramadi when we leave, well, the Iraqis can work that out among themselves. We don't care who runs Rangoon. Why should we care who runs Ramadi?

Great line of the day

In a post titled "September 12th", Steve Gilliard writes:

[Bush] denied Americans the one thing they expected from him: a measure of justice. Not of the dungeon or the gulag, but of the courtroom. And they have not gotten that. Not even Osama killed in a last stand with Delta troopers gunning him down. Just dungeons, gulags and the excuse that these pathetic men are so dangerous that not only did they have to be tortured like animals, but now he needs a kangaroo court to try and execute them in. As if his word should end the traditions Americans have died for.
Bush and Cheney do not trust the courts or Congress . . . they do not trust the American people and that will be their downfall. They are not kings, but men elected by and accountable to the people . . . They rule as the weak rule, by fear, fiat and suspicion. And the weak will fail, because those who live in fear can never truly gain the trust and respect of those they attempt to lead.

Leopard tanks

Dave has a good article about Canadian mission creep in Afghanistan.
At 4 pm on a Friday, Ottawa announced very quietly that they're now sending Leopard tanks to Afghanistan.

Just another sign that the mission in Afghanistan is changing from a peacekeeping and development one to a "direct fire" one, without Canadians being told about the change.
But one thing gave me a chuckle. When I googled for photos of "Leopard tanks", this one also came up:



Is it sexist of me to say that no doubt many of the soldiers would appreciate this kind, too?

"Damp Squib"?

Maybe using the 9/11 ceremonies to try to bolster support for a controversial war wasn't such a great idea.
Maybe 9/11 is a day for rememberence and sorrow, not for trying to promote any cause.
I didn't see Harper's speech. But this Canadian Press analysis makes it sound pretty unimpressive -- "damp squib" is one description. It "lacked punch", it "felt staged", and "Harper was so obviously reading a monitor" while the speech itself was "echoing" Bush.
The Globe and Mail said that the military and 9/11 families behind Harper "sat stoically with grim faces on stage during the speech.

Moderated comments?

On my blog comments every now and then an interesting discussion breaks out -- look at the first eight comments for this post -- but then, like toxic mold, one of my right-wing crazies posts something stupid and the blackness descends.
And boy, am I ever getting sick of them. I must admit, I barely read anything they say, its so garbled and meaningless and rude and bigotted.
I can't understand why they bother pestering me -- why don't they start their own blog, or go read Red State or Malkin or Dead Animals or the Blogging Tories or something? I don't read those blogs precisely because I am not interested in anything these people have to say -- so why do they keep putting comments on just about every post I put up, trying to insult me and the commenters whose opinions I do value? The only conclusion I can reach is that they're a bunch of 15-year-old boys who think its "fun" to annoy the grown-ups -- that seems to be about the mental age, anyway, and that's about the level of their reasoning
Anyway, I just can't keep up with banning them -- I try, but I think they're using library machines or something, because they keep getting back, often using new names.
So should I move to "moderated" comments?
I would likely only be able to check comments two or three times a day, once in the morning and maybe twice in the evening, so it moderating the comments would really slow down the conversation, but should I try it? Would people prefer this?

Decline and fall of the American Empire

Shorter Billmon:

We're fallen and we can't get up.

Great line of the day

Kos alerts everyone to the Democratic message leading up to the congressional mid-terms:

"You -- the Voters -- have ONE DAY to hold the Bush Administration accountable for what's happened in Iraq, and here at home. ONE DAY -- election day. If you like the way things are going, vote Republican. If you think things need to change, VOTE DEMOCRATIC. Seize the day. It's your very last chance."

Great lines of the day

From a comment on Kos, I found this piece from The Week magazine -- a relatively new magazine (started in 2001) which gathers up opinions and news from around the world and presents a weekly "summary". Here's their summary about Katrina:

Hurricane Katrina was the downfall of the George W. Bush presidency, said Reymer Klüver in Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung. The massive storm that destroyed New Orleans and ravaged the Gulf Coast last year also “cost Bush his credibility as guarantor of the nation’s security.” After the 9/11 attacks, the president looked strong and forceful, addressing firefighters through a megaphone at the smoldering rubble of the World Trade Center. Frightened Americans needed to feel protected, and Bush told them he would keep them safe. But Katrina blew away that facade. “Americans realized that the government was still unprepared for a catastrophe.” Katrina was a natural disaster, but something similar could have happened if terrorists had blown up the levees, or attacked another major city. The president’s approval ratings plummeted, and they have never recovered.
Bush had a chance to salvage the situation, said Spain’s El Pais in an editorial. When he toured the disaster zone a few weeks after the storm, the president pledged that the government would launch “one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen.” He promised to rebuild New Orleans better than ever—just as he promised to rebuild Iraq. But “as the Iraqis discovered, allocating money and using it effectively are two different things.” A full year after the hurricane, half the residents of New Orleans are still displaced. Demolition hasn’t even begun on the rotting houses in the mostly black Ninth Ward.
It’s just another in a long string of Bush failures, said Ray O’Hanlon in Northern Ireland’s Irish News. “The man who talks so much about missions and completing them is surrounded by the wreckage of uncompleted missions.” Iraq is the most obvious, of course, but let’s not forget Afghanistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Osama bin Laden still walks free. Even the domestic initiatives Bush tried to push, such as immigration reform and Social Security reform, are dead in the water. The real shocker would be if he had actually delivered for New Orleans.
The blame for New Orleans’ misery is not Bush’s alone, said Andrew O’Hagan in Britain’s Daily Telegraph. American aid agencies are incompetent, if not actively corrupt. Having witnessed international relief operations in Sudan, Mozambique, and India, I can honestly say that the much maligned U.N. is far more effective—and far more caring—than American-run relief efforts. It took UNICEF less than a year to build new hospitals in Mozambique after a severe flood. Yet Gulf residents are still “wallowing in mud,” and the U.S. government simply shrugs. When I went out on patrol with National Guard troops after Katrina, “I was amazed by their inefficiency and unwillingness when it came to helping people.”
That indifferent attitude comes from the very top, said Britain’s The Mirror. The president is guilty of “criminal neglect” of the hurricane victims. “And if cowboy Bush is so callous toward U.S. citizens in his Mississippi backyard, God help Iraqis and all the others he vows to bomb into freedom.”

Lies

After reading all about The Path to 9/11 controversy for the last week, here's the only conclusion I can make:
Republicans and the religious right wanted 911 to be Clinton's fault. They really, really wanted Clinton to be to blame.
But there are no actual facts to support this assertion. There is nothing which Clinton or any of his people actually did or didn't do which would make anyone think he was to blame.
So they made it up. To put across the idea that Clinton was to blame, they had to lie. Sad.

Canada rejects Pope

The headline in the Globe newspaper version for this story is "Canada rejects God, says Pope" -- well, here's the reaction in our family: Canada rejects Pope, says God.
And by the way, Bennie -- if Catholics actually think their religious views are more important than the views of the electorate then I, like thousands of other Canadians, will never again vote for a Catholic.

Bush wants a Mulligan

Raw Story alerts us to this NYT story about the Bush administrations's 'reset the clock' strategy. They want to return to a "simpler time" apparently -- when the towers were still on fire and men were men and women were women and pigs is pigs and Osama was evil -- you know, the good old days when the American public created a "president" suit and shoehorned Bush into it.
Actually, I think they want to go further back than that.
They want a Mulligan on the last 60 years.
All this World War II talk means, I think, that Bush actually wants to go back to the good old days of World War II -- the ones after Normandy, of course -- when Allied troops were greeted with flowers in France and Belgium, and when the the concentration camps proved to the world for all time the evils of the Nazi regime, and when the German people quietly surrendured and then went back to work and rebuilt their country. And when everybody loved FDR and Churchill and praised them as liberators of the world.
You know, like it was supposed to be in Iraq.

Great lines of the day

James Wolcott: Irrationalizations:

Twenty, thirty years from now a new generation of right wingers and armchair warriors will be contending that we could have won in Iraq had it not been for Michael Moore and prissiness over torture. . . . Robb writes, '[T]he simplest explanation for the outcome in Iraq is that we were just beaten by a better opponent (the Israeli's seem to be getting this, why can't we?).' Because such knowledge cuts too deeply into the pride of the American psyche. It's also too painful to consider that the U.S. is beatable. We'd rather believe that we beat ourselves, and then scapegoat liberals as the losers who made us lose.

Could it be possible that the whole Iraq mess might make the United States a more mature nation? Could a national discussion of lessons learned in Iraq result in a realistic assessment of America's weaknesses as well as strengths? Could their political leadership start thinking strategically about global problems instead of going off half-cocked? Could they actually become a nation that acts like most of the other nations on the planet already do, except for North Korea and Zimbabwe?
Naaaaaahhh!

Osama Bin Hollywood

Its just such a dull story, really, all about how a bunch of losers kill 3,000 people one sunny morning. Ya just GOTTA do SOMETHING to sex it up.
It needs yer 'narrative arc', see -- heroes and villians and drama and conflict and turning points and setbacks and tension and good guys betrayed and all that.
But I'm not sure whether turning Sandy Berger and Madeline Albright and the Washington Post into villians, and then making Bill Clinton into a coward, will be enough, really.

We've gone beyond "docu-drama" and "mocku-mentary" to reach the level of "info-tainment" -- by next week we'll be reading about how ABC has written Jason Bourne into the script to stalk Bin Laden.
Over at Hullabaloo they're promoting the 9/11 action figures give-away cross-promotion. Corrente's farmer writes about how excited all the Kewl Kids are:

I like pretty happy endings as much as the next history action movie fan. After the docu-thriller-movie-mini-series-event is over - whenever that is - me and Michael Ledeen and David Horowitz and Peggy Noonan are gonna hop in Peg's Nassau County Seclusion-3D Urban Camo-Pattern Hummer with UTV Floor Mount Kalashnikov Assault Weapon Rack and heated Sheepskin Rumble Seat and thunder on down the parkway to the local All-American drive through fast food slop-shoot for some Happy History Meals and our free ABC-Disney United Front Supreme Council for the Defense of the Motherland moveable mujahidin freedom fighter action hero figure sets which come free with each patriotic ABC/Disney Happy History Meal purchase.
You can bet your liberal ass on it . . .
if you want to get the whole Northern Alliance (United Front) moveable mujahidin action hero set you can just visit your local participating fast food All-american franchise each night following the ABC TV mini-series and get more action figures and then just keep coming back until you have all the action figures you want for your very own. Collect them all! The complete set! . . .

Can this really be true, you ask? How could ABC and Disney be so crude and cruel and crass as to turn 9/11 into a marketing opportunity? Well, who cares whether its actually true or not? Its fun! And its sexy!
The farmer continues:

... my historical pre-emptive recollections of the people and events and "overarching moments" I describe above, which follow the ABC-Disney documentary "the Path to 911," are completely true and accurate as I see them in a composite pre-emptive retrospective documatary dramatic info-tainment context.

So, that's OK then.