Great line of the day

skdadl puts her finger on the problem with Obama's more-troops-for-Afghanistan pledge -- The unbearable inevitability of U.S. foreign policy:

Obama is more socially enlightened than the other guy. He is many other good things domestically more than the other guy. But in international affairs he will be sitting atop an unstoppable tragic juggernaut that is already controlling him more than he will ever control it. Well: they are unstoppable internationally until the rest of the world finds the sense and the courage to stop them.

Duck rescues

I love stories like this one and this one and this one.

Guts

Obama makes a 3-point shot

One of the things that made me a Hillary supporter was when she had the guts to take that shot of whiskey -- can you imagine what would have been said if she had choked on it?
Now in front of American troops, Obama takes a 3-point shot and makes it -- can you imagine what would have been said if he had missed?
I know this is trivial and essentially meaningless in the larger scheme of things, but I'm glad he did it.

New links

I fiddled around with my Blogroll again and added some interesting new links. Check them out.

Great line of the day

From Chet at Vanity Press But But But the Libruls!!!:

. . . this is what drives me nuts about [the Harper] government: seeing everything through their own partisan lenses is all they ever seem to do. As far as I can see, they have never, except nominally, settled into being the Government of Canada; they are always and only the Conservative Party, and all they seem to care about is hating the Liberal Party . . . At this point, I'd just like to see an actual government, please.

Seven stages of shame

Bit by bit, the United States is edging toward the realization that they are wrong.
Not wrong like the Democratic Party was "wrong" when it didn't nominate Edwards or Dean. Not wrong like Karl Rove when he didn't show up to testify before Congress.
Nope, I mean wrong like Nazi Germany was wrong, wrong like the KKK was wrong. Wrong morally and legally and strategically and in every other way. The conduct of the Bush administration in their so-called War on Terror, and the complicity of their political and military leadership, is finally triggering a gag reflex.
We've been reading about this stuff in the lefty blogs for years, of course, but now the major US media are starting to publish articles about war crimes and worldwide condemnation of US behaviour. If the seven stages are Disbelief, Denial, Bargaining, Guilt, Anger, Depression, and Acceptance, I think the US may now be getting closer to Stage Four.

Thanks

I wanted to note my thanks to Dr. Dawg, Dave, and skdadl for the posts they made to CathiefromCanada while I was away. They are fine bloggers all, and not surprisingly the site visit stats have increased!

Bullying Omar

The Omar Khadr interrogation is pretty sad, isn't it. First, they try to get Omar Khadr to implicate himself:

"Let's just be honest with each other this one time," said a Canadian Security Intelligence Service agent. . . He urged Mr. Khadr to reveal his role in the deadly battle in Afghanistan, saying the teenager should have run away from the fight.
But Mr. Khadr said that at age 15, he was "too young" to quit the fundamentalist fighters to whom his father — an al-Qaeda suspect — had entrusted him.
That prompted an angry retort from the CSIS agent. "You're not too young; you're a man," he said.
He added: "Your dad dropped you off there for a reason … you think it's fine what you did."
"I didn't do anything," Mr. Khadr replied. "What did I do? I was in a house."

Then they try to get him to implicate his family:

When Mr. Khadr breaks down on tape, a Canadian agent is heard telling him that the solution to his pain is talking. "We can't protect you if we don't know what it is you have to say," he said. The CSIS agent added that if the detainee truly cared about his family he would talk, so that "other members of your family … don't end up as the same situation you are in."

The worst part of the article is this:

The last shots, taken after the Canadian agents left the room, show Omar Khadr putting his head into his hands and weeping.

Ooh, scary, isn't he?
So this is what Canada is reduced to in the War on Terror, trying to bully a teenager. Good thing they weren't interviewing him in Alberta.

Shorter

Shorter New Yorker cover controversy:

We don't understand why all you lefties don't get the joke. If we had drawn Obama eating watermelon and Michelle wearing an Aunt Jemima headscarf, that would have been simply hilarious, too!

What I learned on my summer vacation

We haven't done much travelling really, not outside North America.
Now that I have spent ten days in London and four in Edinburgh, speaking to numerous cab drivers in both cities, I am an expert on all things United Kingdom -- or at least just as much of an expert as most journalists think they are following similar trips!
What I found reassuring was how much we are all alike -- the pervasive worldwide American culture, with Starbucks on every corner everywhere -- but also our newspapers are full of basically the same concerns, politics and jobs and kids and crime and the economy and celebrity scandals and Bradjolina's babies. And the people were all just as busy as we are with working and raising families and shopping and walking the dog.
I also treasured the uniqueness and differences -- absolutely expert fearless drivers, department stores that are a maze of interconnected rooms, paving-stone sidewalks, news-agent greengrocers, delicious pastries, decorative flourishes on just about every building, streets created out of alleys, tiny neighbourhood pubs, "private" parks, statues everywhere, light switches that flicked down for on and up for off . . . and just the sheer age of it all, compared to Saskatoon (where the very oldest house is just 125 years old).
So, I don't have any great insights or philosophies, but it will take me a long time to absorb it all. I guess that's what travel is all about.

Home sweet home

After 24 hours in transit, I am shouting "home at last, home at last, thank God Almighty we're home at last."
I have concluded that these large airports, like Heathrow and Pearson, are just beyond any human scale now.
There should be a sign above their entrances, Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.
Sweating thousands clump along endless corridors toward their mythical airline gate, now harassed by airline staff at desks in the hallways who demand to see boarding passes or passports or both, then emerging into another vast hall of chaos where serpentine lines must funnel through yet another security checkpoint - sometimes shoes off, sometimes laptops in a basket, sometimes not -- then up another escalator and down yet another grey corridor.
The tedium is relieved only by muttered complaints about people who ignore the "stand on the right, walk on the left" convention.
As we were pell-melling through Heathrow to make our flight, I found myself pushing a 12-year-old boy who had stopped at the end of an moving sidewalk to look at something interesting. "You can't stop, you have to keep moving!" -- sort of a motto for today's airport, I guess.
We experienced the usual airport horror stories, culminating in this one -- when another pell-mell effort finally got us to the gate for our last Air Canada connection, from Toronto to Saskatoon, we were told our seats had already been cancelled because our luggage could not possibly have made it.
So we sat in Pearson for the next three hours waiting for the next flight.
And of course, our luggage was waiting for us when we finally arrived in Saskatoon.

The sin of pride

A nun makes a choice--about somebody's else's Order of Canada medal.

In the same spirit, I hereby freely renounce former Canadian citizen Conrad Black's Order of Canada, and would swiftly return his medal to Rideau Hall were it to come into my possession. And the old robber-baron isn't even dead yet. I'm not certain, however, that I would do more than post a short entry here about it. I enjoy the odd bout of self-righteousness, as some of my more ardent critics (and, privately, even some of my friends) might be quick to agree. But there are limits. No press conference, no op-ed piece. The gesture itself tells, I would think, the entire story.

Those who have read Murder in the Cathedral might already know where I'm going with this. Archbishop Thomas Becket is facing imminent martyrdom. The most difficult question with which he must wrestle is whether pride, rather than devotion to God, is motivating his decision to remain in Canterbury to be killed. Does the Archbishop covet his martyrdom, and the ensuing devotion that will be paid him?

Sister Suzanne Stubbs, it seems to me, has not grappled sufficiently with this question. She might, after all, simply have returned the medal, even if it wasn't hers. But she chose, instead, to accompany this dubious act of sacrifice with an article in the National Post and a press conference at Michaëlle Jean's place.

The article fairly reeks of prissy self-satisfaction. And, of course, not only are we called upon to admire the Sister's spotless conscience, we must also hold in high regard the sheer courage it took:

We knew we were taking a risk. We could expect some nasty feedback from friends and strangers. We certainly would be labelled in some way: right, left, pro, anti. We might be made to look foolish. I might even feel foolish at some point. Still, I made a choice to go to Ottawa.

To a gathering of media, the Sister claims, "We had no agenda except to perform a symbolic gesture. That is, we made a statement about what we believe to be true." In the full glare, of course, of as much publicity as she and her fellows could drum up in order to put their virtue on public display.

And how she drones on:

In my work at a Catholic organization, I try to help people know that they matter, too. It is a blessed work, and it gives me peace. In the work of our group, we spend time listening to people. We try to pay attention to them and be concerned for their concerns. We try not to give handouts in our charity work without befriending the person in need.

Yes, she feels their pain:

In my personal work, I've listened to the anguish of women who have suffered abortions. I have listened to the questions of the young who want to inform their consciences about abortion. In some cases, our friends are helped to consider and choose other options than destroying life. I guess my heart has taken in a lot of the pain of the others.

Now the point is not that she isn't sincere about all this. I have no reason to suppose that Sister Stubbs is a hypocrite. But there is something mildly disturbing about the apparent hunger for publicity that accompanied her grand gesture of renunciation. Was her trip to Ottawa simply an opportunity to bear witness against the award of the Order of Canada to a person anathematized by her Church? Or was it, as Catholics might put it, an "occasion for sin"--in this case the cardinal sin of hubris?

(Crossposted from Dawg's Blawg.)

The truth about global warming

H/t commenter Kobra, at Pharyngula

(Crossposted from Dawg's Blawg.)

Nothing hides incompetency like a war

There are a few people who use it with skill while others fumble about trying to locate the formula used by so-called Great Leaders in history.

George W. Bush, essentially a useful idiot for a much larger force, continually tried to shift the focus of Americans from his repeated acts of incompetency by deflecting their gaze in the general direction of war. He declared himself a "war president", even after he told Americans the best thing they could do was to "go shopping".

Surprisingly, the current US antagonist isn't in much better shape. In fact he could be worse. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, has made an incredible mess of the place and despite public sabre-rattling, may be more unpopular with his electorate than Bush is with his.

Thomas P.M. Barnett illuminates the conditions which make war for two people in particular very appealing.

One is US presidential hopeful John McCain who, without an elevated level of fear among Americans, doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of actually winning.

The other is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who, without a war with the US or Israel, is almost certainly going to find himself on the unemployment roles and trying to survive in an economy which he is personally responsible for wrecking.

Looming behind the most crucial dynamics is the possible presidency of Barack Obama, suggesting that war may become inevitable due to the fear of peace. [...]

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency has been a disaster for the Iranian people. Despite all the oil wealth, inflation is raging and the economy goes nowhere. Add in a stunning birth dearth, the world's worst brain drain, plus Iranian prostitutes headlining European brothels, and this is clearly a society in a death spiral. With restless students chanting in public for Ahmadinejad's death, little wonder the man pines for a splendid little war.

Ahmadinejad's one popular success has been to champion Iran's brazen reach for nuclear capacity, an effort cleverly designed to emphasize the strategic dangers of attempted regime change by outsiders. [...] But Ahmadinejad's time grows short. A bevy of candidates seeks to oust him next year, and his opponents now head the parliament, the crucial Assembly of Experts and Tehran's city hall. With Obama currently leading decisively polls for the U.S. presidency, Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, faces the prospect of losing his most useful -- for internal politics, that is -- external enemy, reducing Ahmadinejad's utility as frontman.

You really do need to read the whole column. For even more though, Barnett provide even more clarification on his blog.

That too, is something you need to read.

Problem right now is how many sides would welcome war. "U.S. Plays Down Military Showdown" is a couple of quotes from Gates and an Undersecretary of State, meaning two counties heard from but hardly the "U.S." that matters right now on this subject (Bush-Cheney). Both, in my mind, have no problem with an Israeli strike on their watch that could easily suck us into combat. Time is short.

Of course, you'll want a bottle of something after all of that. 151 over-proof should work for a short time.

Cross posted from The Galloping Beaver

Always wanted a pony? General Natynczyk will give you a pony.

The Harper government and the senior leadership of the Canadian Forces have been roundly criticized in the past for failing to communicate the truth about conditions in Afghanistan. Boris pointed out that when the senior leadership of government downplay the indicators which suggest that serious problems exist, it is intellectual dishonesty and done with a clear intent to hide the truth from the public.

There was some speculation that, as Rick Hillier stepped down and General Walter Natynczyk took over as Chief of Defence Staff, that there might be a chance to provide unsanitized information surrounding the Afghanistan mission. Well, the speculation is over and it looks like the same Harper standard is to be maintained as General Natynczyk took the opportunity to blow sunshine up everybody's ass in the face of data which makes his statement worth nothing. (Emphasis mine)

The new head of Canada's military has completed a five-day visit to Afghanistan and offered a uniquely cheerful assessment of the security situation that contrasts sharply with the grim data.

The upbeat prognosis from Canada's new chief of defence staff that the violence is holding steady in Kandahar province this year flies in the face of independent analysis documenting a 77 per cent surge in Taliban attacks.

That increased violence was underscored Sunday in a pair of devastating insurgent strikes.

Nine U.S. soldiers were reported killed as militants launched a fiery assault on a remote outpost, and 24 Afghans died in a separate suicide blast on a police checkpoint in the province next to Kandahar.

The comparatively sunny estimation from Gen. Walter Natynczyk after his tour of Afghanistan was also at odds with the increasingly bleak portrait being painted by Canada's allies.

The Pentagon has cited a 40 per cent increase in insurgent attacks in eastern areas of Afghanistan where U.S. forces operate, and notes that it is now losing more soldiers here than in Iraq.

Anyone else want to weigh in?

Britain's defence secretary calls Afghanistan a generational struggle that will require a foreign troop presence for many years.

Local businesspeople say they're increasingly discouraged about the security situation in their city, and fear that economic gains made after 2001 are being wiped away.

As Ottawa continues to be a font of "good news" Afghanistan is spinning into oblivion. Natynczyk has plenty of experience in Afghanistan so he would be fully aware of how things are actually going. That makes this even more curious.

"We're generally along the same lines as we have been the past few years," Natynczyk told a news conference at Kandahar Airfield.

"Looking at the statistics, we're just a slight notch - indeed an insignificant notch - above where we were last year."

Yeah?! I wonder if Natynczyk was in the right country because everyone else in Afghanistan is seeing something completely different.

According to a prominent security firm that compiles insurgent incidents reported by NATO and local security forces, that insignificant notch is actually a 77 per cent increase in attacks from 2007.

Statistician Sami Kovanen at Vigilant Strategic Services Afghanistan says the number of assassinations, bombings, kidnappings, suicide strikes, mine explosions, and mortar assaults by pro-Taliban insurgents through July 6 was 532 incidents this year, compared to only 300 last year.

That coincides with what the United Nations is reporting.

So what do Canadian defence officials have to say when they are shown the numbers? (Hang on to your ass, this gets really good.)

They note that the economy has grown since 2001, far more children are going to school, and human rights have expanded exponentially since the days of the Taliban.

But when asked about security, their optimism appears based on anecdotal evidence; some locals have tipped them off about the location of a roadside bomb, they've seen a traffic jam - a sure sign of activity in Kandahar city, a bazaar has reopened and there are new businesses.

Rrrriiiight! A bazaar opens and a traffic jam happens therefore the economy is expanding. And as for talking to the locals, perhaps those Canadian defence officials should have done a little more of that to see how their observations stacked up.

A well-known Kandahar businessman offers some anecdotal evidence of his own.

"I don't see businesses opening," says the restaurateur, shaking his head when asked if things are getting better in the city.

"All I see are businesses closing."

And as for the exponential increase in human rights, Canadian defence officials and the new Chief of Defence Staff should talk to a few of the organizations that have compiled statistics which tell a completely different story.

From Womankind Worldwide:

Seven years after the US and the UK ‘freed’ Afghan women from the oppressive Taliban regime, our report proves that life is just as bad for most, and worse in some cases. Maternal mortality rates ? one in six women dies in childbirth ? are the highest in the world alongside Sierra Leone. Afghanistan is the only country in the world with a higher suicide rate among women than men.

You can read the juicy details in this (pdf) report. Terri Judd of the Independent read it and reported under the title Women's lives are worse than ever:

The statistics in the report from Womankind, Afghan Women and Girls Seven Years On, make shocking reading. Violent attacks against females, usually domestic, are at epidemic proportions with 87 per cent of females complaining of such abuse – half of it sexual. More than 60 per cent of marriages are forced.

A more recent report from the New England Journal of Medicine this past May paints the same picture: An increase in self-immolation among women because nothing in their lives is improving.

Then this from Canada's new CDS:

The defence chief says he's encouraged that the Taliban no longer even bother trying to muster up forces for conventional battlefield fights because they are crushed every time.

"They are not 10 feet tall," Natynczyk said of the enemy.

"They know that if they take us on directly, they'll either lose or they'll have to flee."

Now there's a dangerous metric. One would expect a full general to be a little more careful tossing that kind of statement around.

The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese never won one major engagement in head-to-head combat with US forces. Not one. Shall we discuss the results?

Mushrooms. Natynczyk is feeding the mushrooms.

Cross posted from The Galloping Beaver