It's about Iraq, stupid!

It's taken me awhile to get around to blogging about Cindy Sheehan. (For that matter, it's taken awhile for me to blog anything lately. I've been lazy, sorry.) I wasn't going to get too worked up over the RWPM (Right Wing Political Machine -- I'm coining a new acronym tonight) attacking Cindy. We all know they just spew nonsensical gibberish most of the time. But I couldn't ignore this group of soldiers' moms going to face off with Cindy in Crawford. And where to start but with the media coverage?

The S.F. Chronicle has a story today titled "Families Share Sheehan's pain, but not all share her politics." But I really don't think it's about politics for Cindy. I know Fox News will have you believe that she's "aligned herself with Michael Moore and the political left," but Cindy has never once discussed her views on abortion, gay marriage, or gun control, and she's not hanging out in Crawford hoping to discuss Social Security and the deficit. She's simply enraged that her son had to die in a counterproducture war that this country was duped into through lies and deception. That's what she wants answers for.

How can the "You don't speak for me, Cindy" crew disagree with that? I can't comprehend the idea of any mother who's lost a son or daughter in this war actually believing they died "defending our freedom." This war has proven to be the wrong move on every level. This war has NOT made us safer from al-Qaida. Quite the opposite, actually (though 43 percent of Americans are somehow still blind to that). We were flat-out lied to by a "compassionate conservative" Christian about Saddam's nonexistent WMDs. And if all that weren't bad enough, we're not even winning. Hell, we hardly even know who we're fighting. It has truly become Iraqnam. (Ooh, did I just coin a term?) Even Republican Senator and possible 2008 presidential candidate Chuch Hagel thinks so. How is dying for that something to be proud of?

Some people's blindness to this administration's deception is, to me, quite a baffling phenomenon. It's not even really like they do it with any tact at all. The following, in direct response to Cindy's presence in Crawford, could be the most callously selfish, insensitive thing a sitting U.S. president has ever said into a microphone:

And I think it's important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say. But I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life.

I think it's also important for me to go on with my life?!? Sorry, Cindy, I can't spend time worrying about your grief over your dead son. I'm the president, for Pete's sake. I've got a whole country to run...from my ranch...while I take my 49th vacation to Crawford in five years. I mean, you wouldn't believe the upkeep a ranch this size takes. I have trees to cut down, fish to catch. I've got to put Casey's death behind me and move on.

Also in a more indirect response to Camp Cindy, the president took a few days out of his vacation to talk to thousands of other people who weren't camped out by the ranch. Yes, instead of just taking the 15 minutes that Cindy is requesting, he took three days to fly to Salt Lake City and Idaho (Jon Stewart: "a brave tour through red states") to talk to veterans and guardsmen and unveil his new plan for Iraq: stay the course.

And I can't prove they did it on purpose, but it seemed like the AP showed some bias, at least in Salt Lake City. Out of no less than 23 pictures on the AP wire related to the visit Monday night, there were only two pics available that showed people who were protesting Bush and/or the war, and neither was suitable for a newspaper. One showed protesters holding signs, and one sign prominently read, "I (heart) Bush and I don't mean George." The other was of a man listening to the VFW speech, who had covers for his ears that said "Bullshit Protector."

There were, of course, plenty of pics of Bush shaking hands with vets, of 5-year-olds waving American flags at Marine One as it landed, of some Marine polishing the bannister of the stairs Bush would use to exit his aircraft. All the cliches were covered. But there were zero usable pics that showed anyone who disagreed with this war.

It seems almost like a conscious effort on the part of AP photo editors to limit the choices of anti-war photos to A) a not-very-subtle dirty joke, and B) outright explicit language, neither of which your average newspaper will run, though I would run the second one if I were editor. Where's the picture of the mayor of Salt Lake, who's telling residents to protest? Where's the picture of "Republicans for Peace?"

The AP's international editor has already had to apologize on Salon.com for "dropping the ball" when the Downing Street Memo was discovered. Are they trying to succeed NYT's Judith Miller as Dubay's next PR rep? Pardon me, but I must put my Bullshit Protectors on.

Right off the deep end

goes another member of the Religious Right. On Monday, televangelist Pat Robertson advocated the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez because it's cheaper than another war:

We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.

Wow. Now there's a fabulous example of God's love at work. I can really see how this nut has made a career of preaching the Word of God to the masses. The compassion! The humility!

On Wednesday, to further glorify the Lord, Robertson promptly broke the Ninth Commandment:

I didn't say 'assassination.' I said our special forces should 'take him out.' 'Take him out' could be a number of things including kidnapping. There are a number of ways of taking out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted by the AP, but that happens all the time.

Alright, let's go to the tape of Monday's show:

You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war, and I don't think any oil shipments will stop.

Umm...yeah. How exactly can that statement be "misinterpreted?" Leave it to Jon Stewart to find a way: "To be honest, he did use it as a verb and not a noun, so I guess he's right."

In some ways, the pathetic lies of his "damage control" are sadder than the original statement. People say, then retract stupid things all the time. You can always just say you made a mistake or got carried away and you're sorry. But to flatly deny saying something when you said it two days earlier on your own TV show? That's not how it works. You see, there's this amazing new invention called "videotape." It creates a record of television shows that you can go back and review, to hear you say what you said again. So call this a lesson learned: When you lie, try not to do it on television. Do it so it's hard to prove you're lying. But hey, it's OK. I know God will forgive you.

You did, however, lose any credibility you may have had with the general public. You've pretty much hit rock-bottom when you're a hard-line conservative and Morton Kondracke is on Fox News trying to discredit you as an insane man whose "day is past." Actually, maybe you could learn from the Fox News people. They know how to lie. (Right, Bill O'Reilly? You've never told anyone to SHUT UP, have you?)

A test for Iraqi democracy

Our esteemed leader, George Dubya, has been presented with a true test of whether he is truly committed to "democracy" in Iraq. Between 50 and 120 members of a Shiite militia stormed a Baghdad municipal building on Monday and replaced the capital's secular mayor with a member of their own group.

The newly installed mayor, Hussein al-Tahaan, had been the governor of Baghdad the province, though the mayor actually has more power. (Baghdad is like San Francisco, where the city and the county are the same area but different entities.) The man who led this "municipal coup d'etat" is the democratically elected chief of the Baghdad city council. So it is clear that the radical Shiites are trying to gain control of Baghdad in the power vacuum that currently exists there.

If Dubya is truly interested in democracy, he cannot allow this. Up until now, our "enemy" has been the Sunni resisitance. But that cannot mean democratically elected Shiites can run around with guns trying to consolidate their power days before a constitution is due by forcibly removing the mayor. For Dubya, anything short of the restoration of the old mayor -- by force if necessary -- would be sheer hypocricy and prove that this war is not about Democracy in the Middle East, but about oil and revenge for the attempt on daddy's life.

That is not to say that I advocate any violence for political ends. I wish force were not used by any of the sides in this conflict. I wish the conflict had not happened in the first place. The world -- and the war on terror (No, it's the global struggle against extremism.) (NO, IT'S THE WAR ON TERROR!) -- is decidedly worse off because of it.

But Dubya must at least stand on the principles for which he ostensibly entered this conflict. (Oh, wait, that was the post-invasion reason; where are those WMDs anyway?) He must treat both the Shiites and the Sunnis equally in the quest for democracy. If he lets this Shiite militia hold its newly acquired mayorship, he loses all credibility in the eyes of all Sunnis, probably most secular Iraqis, and quite possibly the entire Muslim world -- if he has any credibility left to begin with.

If Dubya truly believes in democracy, this action must be dealt with. Whether democracy is possible in Iraq is another issue, and a much more important and dubious one.

In Iraq-related news of a different sort, Major Bob, an army officer who is a brilliant regular on Altercation, examines the issue of infidelity in the military from both sides in a way I'd never really thought of before:

Some of those on our plane have had the message, “I’ve found somebody new…” There may be some who, calling back from that terminal itself, hear an unfamiliar male voice answer what they thought was their home phone. It is a poisonous situation when you are Stateside, and none of us have been Stateside, for six months. All of this helps explain another recent event.

Yesterday the news hit the wire that General Kevin Byrnes has been relieved of command. A four-star general, sacked, while we are at war. What sort of massive misbehavior must he have committed? Well, if CNN is right, he is under investigation for “Sexual Misconduct.” Usually, though not always, that means adultery in some form.

These two things are related, the first explaining the second. To understand why we would destroy a part of ourselves, the very real 30+ years of training and millions of dollars of education the Army invested in a four-star general, one need only juxtapose these two items. Nothing, but nothing, can destroy the moral[e] of individuals, and entire units, faster and more completely. Soldiers, deployed far from home, in a foreign land with people trying in earnest to kill them, will spend their days mooning about events half a planet away. It is illogical, it is also eminently human. The possibility that it is another soldier, back at the home-station, who is the proximate cause…

Please read his entire entry. I think it's quite poignant, in explaining both why they take infidelity by a four-star general so seriously and why they so strongly encourage counseling to men returning from war. Could you imagine surviving six months in hell, only to come home and find that your love is loving someone else? It is not hard to imagine a man snapping under those circumstances, to disastrous consequences.

And finally, Jon Carroll had a one-two punch of great columns this week, one on Iraq, and the other on "the eye":

When Tracy enters the kitchen, she does not see chores. She sees, you'll pardon the expression, a gestalt. She sees the kitchen as a unit. She notices, say, a streak of food on the refrigerator door, or a small pile of crumbs in the corner near the calendar, or a certain unaesthetic arrangement of the pillows on the window seat.

As she is dealing with those problems, she notices other problems. She sometimes solves the new problem first, which leads to another problem, so by the time the phone rings she still hasn't gotten to the pillows. In essence, she has asked the kitchen what it wants, and the kitchen has responded to her. I have asked: "What am I contractually obligated to do?" and I have done it. I literally do not see the other issues. If someone wanted to add pillow fluffing to my mandate, I would fluff pillows. Otherwise: No.

Read them here and here.