Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Main Stream Media dispise those who keep and have kept us free

In the aftermath of the Civil War, General John Logan, commander in chief of the Army of the Republic, proclaimed a day for memorializing the slain. "Let us, then, at the time appointed gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with the choicest flowers of spring-time; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved from dishonor," he wrote. "It is the purpose of the Commander-in-Chief to inaugurate this observance with the hope it will be kept up from year to year, while a survivor of the war remains to honor the memory of his departed comrades. He earnestly desires the public press to call attention to this Order, and lend its friendly aid in bringing it to the notice of comrades in all parts of the country in time for simultaneous compliance therewith."

So how does the "public press" celebrate Memorial Day this year? By plastering stories across the front pages featuring alleged atrocities by our troops in Haditha, Iraq. "The Shame of Kilo Company," banners Time magazine, which originally reported the story. "Bloody Scenes Haunt a Marine," blares the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times proclaims, "Iraqis' Accounts Link Marines to the Mass Killing of Civilians." On the day before Memorial Day, anti-war Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., appeared on ABC's "This Week," demanding to know "Who covered it up, why did they cover it up, why did they wait so long? … We don't know how far it goes. It goes right up the chain of command … I will not excuse murder, and this is what happened."

Against the war, but for the troops? It's hard to maintain that hairsbreadth distinction when you're publicizing alleged misconduct by American troops before the facts are in, while American soldiers remain on the ground in Iraq. The military is already engaged in an ongoing investigation into the killings and will likely bring up Marines on charges that may carry the death penalty.

War is ugly. Horrible things happen. Those Americans responsible for reprehensible acts will be punished by the military itself. Why is this news?

Why the need for the press to trumpet this news as though civilians had never been slain in the history of modern combat? Why the constant reminders of Abu Ghraib? Why the continuous focus on what Americans have done wrong, rather than what we're doing right?

Simply put, the mainstream press does not give a hang about troops in the field. The mainstream press is worried about what it has always been worried about: maintaining its own status. Mainstream media breathlessly await reports of atrocities by Americans because media outlets gain authority by attacking governmental authority. It wasn't enough for Time magazine to turn over its information on the alleged massacre to the military; it had to "alert the public." This story isn't about alleged misconduct -- it's about the press feting its own bravery for exposing what should have remained private.

This is what the press has done for decades. Since the advent of television, media outlets have been engaged in a systematic attempt to tear down the credibility of the United States government in order to bolster their own authority. "You can't trust the government," the media says, "but you can trust us."

The Vietnam War became more about journalists (Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite) than about a war for the survival of liberal democracy in Southeast Asia. The welfare of the troops took a back seat to the press' sense of its own importance. It is a happy accident of history that this ongoing ego trip began after the rise of Hitler, or Nazism might well remain the dominant ideology on the European continent. Just imagine what the modern press would have done with Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki. As it is, Communism lasted far longer and took far more lives than it should have, largely due to the arrogant self-aggrandizement of the American press; Walter Duranty had little on mainstream media's feting of Gorbachev, degradation of Reagan and purposeful opposition to the rollback of global Communism.

Until the press realizes its authority is far less important than the lives of American soldiers -- the same soldiers who fight to protect the rights of the American press -- American soldiers will continue to face heightened hatred brought on by superfluous and counterproductive media attention. The press wishes to both undermine the mission of American soldiers and simultaneously decorate soldiers' graves with flowered copies of the daily newspaper. This is perversion. The press' sick delight in its own glorification continues to increase the number of "passionless mounds" in Arlington National.

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Iraq and Memorial Day

There may be a lot to regret about the past policy of the United States in the Middle East, but the removal of Saddam Hussein and the effort to birth democracy in his place is surely not one of them. And we should remember that this Memorial Day.

Whatever our righteous anger at Khomeinist Iran, it was wrong, well aside from the arms-for-hostages scandal, to provide even a modicum of aid to Saddam Hussein, the great butcher of his own, during the Iran-Iraq war.

Inviting the fascist Baathist government of Syria into the allied coalition of the first Gulf War meant that we more or less legitimized the Assad regime’s take-over of Lebanon, with disastrous results for its people.

It may have been strategically in error not to have taken out Saddam in 1991, but it was morally wrong to have then encouraged Shiites and Kurds to rise up — while watching idly as Saddam’s reprieved planes and helicopters slaughtered them in the thousands.

A decade of appeasement of Islamic terrorism, with retaliations after the serial attacks — from the first World Trade Center bombing to Khobar Towers and the USS Cole — never exceeding the occasional cruise missile or stern televised lecture, made September 11 inevitable.

A decade was wasted in subsidizing Yasser Arafat on the pretense that he was something other than a mendacious thug.

I cite these few examples of the now nostalgic past, because it is common to see Iraq written off by the architects of these past failures as the “worst” policy decision in our history, a “quagmire” and a “disaster.” Realists, more worried about Iran and the ongoing cost in our blood and treasure in Iraq, insist that toppling Saddam was a terrible waste of resources. Leftists see the Iraq war as part of an amoral imperialism; often their talking points weirdly end up rehashed in bin Laden’s communiqués and Dr. Zawahiri’s rants.

But what did 2,400 brave and now deceased Americans really sacrifice for in Iraq, along with thousands more who were wounded? And what were billions in treasure spent on? And what about the hundreds of collective years of service offered by our soldiers? What exactly did intrepid officers in the news like a Gen. Petreus, or Col. McMaster, or Lt. Col Kurilla fight for?

First, there is no longer a mass murderer atop one of the oil-richest states in the world. Imagine what Iraq would now look like with $70 a barrel oil, a $50 billion unchecked and ongoing Oil-for-Food U.N. scandal, the 15th year of no-fly zones, a punitative U.N. embargo on the Iraqi people — all perverted by Russian arms sales, European oil concessions, and frenzied Chinese efforts to get energy contracts from Saddam.

The Kurds would remain in perpetual danger. The Shiites would simply be harvested yearly, in quiet, by Saddam’s police state. The Marsh Arabs would by now have been forgotten in their toxic dust-blown desert. Perhaps Saddam would have upped his cash pay-outs for homicide bombers on the West Bank.

Mohammar Khaddafi would be starting up his centrifuges and adding to his chemical weapons depots. Syria would still be in Lebanon. Washington would probably have ceased pressuring Egypt and the Gulf States to enact reform. Dr. Khan’s nuclear mail-order house would be in high gear. We would still be hearing of a “militant wing” of Hamas, rather than watching a democratically elected terrorist clique reveal its true creed to the world.

But just as importantly, what did these rare Americans not fight for? Oil, for one thing. The price skyrocketed after they went in. The secret deals with Russia and France ended. The U.N. petroleum perfidy stopped. The Iraqis, and the Iraqis alone — not Saddam, the French, the Russians, or the U.N. — now adjudicate how much of their natural resources they will sell, and to whom.

Our soldiers fought for the chance of a democracy; that fact is uncontestable. Before they came to Iraq, there was a fascist dictatorship. Now, after three elections, there is an indigenous democratic government for the first time in the history of the Middle East. True, thousands of Iraqis have died publicly in the resulting sectarian mess; but thousands were dying silently each year under Saddam — with no hope that their sacrifice would ever result in the first steps that we have already long passed.

Our soldiers also removed a great threat to the United States. Again, the crisis brewing over Iran reminds us of what Iraq would have reemerged as. Like Iran, Saddam reaped petroprofits, sponsored terror, and sought weapons of mass destruction. But unlike Iran, he had already attacked four of his neighbors, gassed thousands of his own, and violated every agreement he had ever signed. There would have been no nascent new democracy in Iran that might some day have undermined Saddam, and, again unlike Iran, no internal dissident movement that might have come to power through a revolution or peaceful evolution.

No, Saddam’s police state was wounded, but would have recovered, given high oil prices, Chinese and Russian perfidy, and Western exhaustion with enforcement of U.N. sanctions. Moreover, the American military took the war against radical Islam right to its heart in the ancient caliphate. It has not only killed thousands of jihadists, but dismantled the hierarchy of al Qaeda and its networks, both in Afghanistan and Iraq. Critics say that we “took our eye off the ball” by going to Iraq and purportedly leaving bin Laden alone in the Hindu Kush. But more likely, al Qaeda took its eye off the American homeland as the promised theater of operations once American ground troops began dealing with Islamic terrorists in Iraq. As we near five years after September 11, note how less common becomes the expression “not if, but when” concerning the next anticipated terror attack in the U.S.

Some believe that the odyssey of jihadists to Iraq means we created terrorists, but again, it is far more likely, as al Qaeda communiqués attest, that we drew those with such propensities into Iraq. Once there, they have finally shown the world that they hate democracy, but love to kill and behead — and that has brought a great deal of moral clarity to the struggle. After Iraq, the reputation of bin Laden and radical Islam has not been enhanced as alleged, but has plummeted. For all the propaganda on al Jazeera, the chattering classes in the Arab coffeehouses still watch Americans fighting to give Arabs the vote, and radical Islamists in turn beheading men and women to stop it.

If many in the Middle East once thought it was cute that 19 killers could burn a 20-acre hole in Manhattan, I am not sure what they think of Americans now in their backyard not living to die, but willing to die so that other Arabs might live freely.

All of our achievements are hard to see right now. The Iraqis are torn by sectarianism, and are not yet willing to show gratitude to America for saving them from Saddam and pledging its youth and billions to give them something better. We are nearing the third national election of the war, and Iraq has become so politicized that our efforts are now beyond caricature. An archivist is needed to remind the American people of the record of all the loud politicians and the national pundits who once were on record in support of the war.

Europeans have demonized our efforts — but not so much lately, as pacifist Europe sits on its simmering volcano of Islamic fundamentalism and unassimilated Muslim immigrants. Our own Left has tossed out “no blood for oil” — that is, until the sky-rocketing prices, the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal, and a new autonomous Iraqi oil ministry cooled that rhetoric. Halliburton is also now not so commonly alleged as the real casus belli, when few contractors of any sort wish to rush into Iraq to profit.

“Bush lied, thousands died” grows stale when the WMD threat was reiterated by Arabs, the U.N., and the Europeans. The “too few troops” debate is not the sort that characterizes imperialism, especially when no American proconsul argues that we must permanently stay in large numbers in Iraq. The new Iraqi-elected president, not Donald Rumsfeld, is more likely to be seen on television, insisting that Americans remain longer.

A geography more uninviting for our soldiers than Iraq cannot be imagined — 7,000 miles away, surrounded by Baathist Syria, Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, and theocratic Iran. The harsh landscape rivals the worst of past battlefields — blazing temperatures, wind, and dust. The host culture that our soldiers faced was Orwellian — a society terrorized by a mass murderer for 30 years, who ruled by alternately promising Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish collaborationists that cooperation meant only that fewer of their own would die.

The timing was equally awful — in an era of easy anti-Americanism in Europe, and endemic ingratitude in the Muslim world that asks nothing of itself, everything of us, and blissfully forgets the thousands of Muslims saved by Americans in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Somalia, and the billions more lavished on Jordanians, Palestinians, and Egyptians.

And here at home? There are few Ernie Pyles in Iraq to record the heroism of our soldiers; no John Fords to film their valor — but legions to write ad nauseam of Abu Ghraib, and to make up stories of flushed Korans and Americans terrorizing Iraqi women and children.

Yet here we are with an elected government in place, an Iraqi security force growing, and an autocratic Middle East dealing with the aftershocks of the democratic concussion unleashed by American soldiers in Iraq.

Reading about Gettysburg, Okinawa, Choisun, Hue, and Mogadishu is often to wonder how such soldiers did what they did. Yet never has America asked its youth to fight under such a cultural, political, and tactical paradox as in Iraq, as bizarre a mission as it is lethal. And never has the American military — especially the U.S. Army and Marines — in this, the supposedly most cynical and affluent age of our nation, performed so well.

We should remember the achievement this Memorial Day of those in the field who alone crushed the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, stayed on to offer a new alternative other than autocracy and theocracy, and kept a targeted United States safe from attack for over four years.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Can it get any better?

And Now, A Word From Representative William Jefferson (D-LA)

Wjefferson
...so, in closing, let me just assure you once again that I am completely innocent of these baseless charges.

Wjefferson
And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to the business of fighting for the people of the great state of Louisiana.

Williamjefferson
Thank you, and good night.

A Left Wing Moonbat Fantasy (Satire Alert)

Oh What a Night!

Sunday marked the 63rd year since my teenaged mother was forced by her right-wing fascist parents to carry her unwanted pregnancy to term. What better way to forget my shame for being born than to enjoy a night of good food and good music with some good company?

So after a nice vegetarian dinner at Applebee’s, Tandelayo Schwartz and I went over to the Stillakoomish Riverboat Bingo Palace for the much-anticipated Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons concert. It was only six o’clock when we arrived at the venue, but the place was already SRO with geriatric, blue-haired groupies trying to relive their glory days. From wall to wall, the dance floor was a polychromatic sea of open-seated sweat pants, polyester leisure suits, and faded poodle skirts hiked up to reveal pasty white thighs covered with roadmaps of varicose veins.

“Woo Nellie!” I bubbled, rubbing my hands together with anticipation. “We’re in for one wild show! Ol’ Frankie V. never disappoints!”

“Aren’t these guys a little old?” Tandelayo asked. “I mean, my gramma listens to their music.”

“Music?" I replied with a snort of derision. “Who cares about the music? It’s all about the message, baby! If you want candy-ass, bubblegum pop tunes, go to a Neil Young show. People come to see Frankie V. for his biting political commentary and knock-your-socks off stage act!”

“I think I just got felt up by Larry Linville,” she said dryly.

I brushed aside her negativity and lead her to our seats. “Just relax. Sit down. Ignore the old people smell and fasten your seatbelt, Dorothy, because you aren’t in Kansas anymore and this ain’t your father’s Oldsmobile!”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

But before I could explain, The Jersey Boy himself took the stage to a standing ovation. A ray of pink light glanced off his sequined tuxedo and shot straight into my eyes, and for a moment I existed on several planes of both space and time simultaneously. Frankie’s trademark falsetto rang out the familiar words from Dawn, a Sting-esque ballad railing against Bush’s reckless environmental policies that snapped me out of my euphoric trance. Next came Rag Doll, a touching tribute to all the innocent children murdered in Bush’s illegal and immoral war for oil, followed by Sherry, an obvious jab at Bush’s drinking problem. They finished the set with an up-tempo version of Can’t Take My Eyes Off You that brought that house down.

I glanced over to catch Tandelayo suppressing a yawn.

“Don’t you GET it?” I snapped at her. “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You? He’s talking about Bush’s domestic spying program!”

She shrugged. “Can we go now?”

Not a chance, toots. I stood in line for nine hours buy these tickets before realizing I was actually at a Marlo Thomas book signing. Nobody, not even an androgynous, hatchet-faced wannabeatnik with a goofy beret and lensless glasses was going to ruin my special day. But before I could tell her to go catch herself a cab, a hush swept across the crowd as Frankie called for the stage lights to be dimmed.

“I’d like to dedicate the next one to the peeResident SElect and Commander in Thief,” he announced, his dentures punctuating each word with a profound clack, like a judge's gavel pronouncing Bush guilty as charged for all his crimes against humanity.

Suddenly, the stage erupted in an explosion of smoke, and a giant image of Bush’s face with a little Hitler mustache materialized overhead, seemingly floating above the astonished crowd as the familiar opening chords of Walk Like a Man blasted out the speakers.

Tandelayo sprang from her seat with excitement. “OmiGoddess! It’s so true! Bush IS Hitler! Why didn’t I think of that?”

The crowd erupted with wild applause as Frankie donned a rubber Bush mask and performed simulated oral sex on a crucifix while riding a donkey draped with the American flag. Behind him, a procession of shaved monkeys wearing Pope hats threw feces-smeared Bibles and used prophylactics at the audience while all four of the Seasons ignited their farts to the tune of the National Anthem.

And after all these years, it was good to see that age hasn’t dulled Frankie’s edge one iota. Way past their music prime, many artists feel the need to perform increasingly obscene acts on stage in order to maintain their fan base. Others slam the peeResident just to sell records. Not ol' Frankie V. he's still the same rock n' roll rebel he was late December back in '63. In these American Dark Ages of fascist oppression and squashed dissent, Valli is a modern day Paul Revere, riding roughshod through the streets of conformity, unafraid to yank our collective doodle dandy to make his point.

After the concert, Tandelayo and I stood in the parking lot, soaking in the afterglow.

“Oh Jeffy, you were so right!” she breathlessly confessed. “Everything he said is exactly what I as a progressive have known deep down for years, but have never had the musical talent nor the flatulence to properly express! I haven’t seen anything so politically relevant since Bob Goulet sodomized Bush in effigy at the Evergreen State Fair. Frankie Valli is a God amongst mere mortals!

Monday, May 22, 2006

Thank you Bobi

Sheesh:

The Senate voted Thursday to make English the national language of the United States. Sort of.

Moments after the 63-34 vote, it decided to call the mother tongue a "common and unifying language."
...
Democrats...said the proposal would curtail rights established by an executive order President Clinton issued to extend language assistance to individuals not proficient in English.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada went further:


Reidsp1
"I really believe this amendment is racist. I think it's directed basically to people who speak Spanish."


Excuse me, Senator.


Reidsp1
"Yes?"


Shouldn't that be "at people who speak Spanish"?


Reidsp1
...


Reidsp1
"Racist!"

I'm Baaaaaaaaaaack - SATIRE ALERT!

Bush Opens New Torture Frontier

This week, Bush announced plans to send 10,000 National Guardspersyns to our southern border to help stem the tide of what some call “illegal immigration”. He assured us that their role would be a purely supportive one, their activities restricted to carrying the Border Patrol's softball gear and handing out Gatorade between innings. But let's not fool ourselves. The troops are headed to Mexico for one reason and one reason only: to torture people.

Torturing people is, after all, what our troops do best. And if there's one thing Mexico has plenty of, it's people. Every year hundreds of innocent men, women, and teddy bear-clutching children with big puppy dog eyes like that velvet painting I picked up in Tijuana pour across our border in search of the American Dream, but now they will find only the stinging humiliation of mishandled Qurans, forced lap dances, and pig-piles of naked Chicanos three miles high. To our murderous troops, these helpless innocents are not human beings who deserve compassion and respect, but merely nameless Latino gonads ready to be hooked up to portable telephones in a fashion reminiscent of Jingus Khan.

Democrats on The Hill are concerned. With most of our troops already torturing people in Iraq and Afghanistan, and thousands more watching Blacks drown in New Orleans, they worry that a prolonged deployment to Albuquerque might be stretching our military too thin - like beef in a Taco Bell Burrito Supreme. But their pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

Obviously, Bush doesn't give a damn about our troops. Vicente Fox's torture chambers will remain open, under new management, and an American Flag.

Thursday night is Ladies Night and Well drinks are always $2 on Wednesdays.