Friday, March 31, 2006
Definition: Green Zone
From the war glossary:
Green zone: (a) the heavily fortified area in Baghdad that the American forces in Iraq call headquarters; (b) the only place in Iraq that anyone feels safe; (c) the place in Iraq where people go to get morally compromised.
Green zone: (a) the heavily fortified area in Baghdad that the American forces in Iraq call headquarters; (b) the only place in Iraq that anyone feels safe; (c) the place in Iraq where people go to get morally compromised.
Definition: Iraqi Government
From the war glossary:
Iraqi government: (a) a large number of nervous politicians holed up in the Green zone who have trouble agreeing with each other; (b) Iraqi government? Come on, you know Iraq has no government. It's just convenient for America to pretend that it does.
Iraqi government: (a) a large number of nervous politicians holed up in the Green zone who have trouble agreeing with each other; (b) Iraqi government? Come on, you know Iraq has no government. It's just convenient for America to pretend that it does.
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Franklyn Nofziger, Reagan spokesman and adviser, dies of cancer at 81
Franklyn Nofziger, Reagan spokesman and adviser, dies of cancer at 81
"Asked why he was leaving the White House, Nofziger replied, 'I don't like government, it's just that simple.' "
"Asked why he was leaving the White House, Nofziger replied, 'I don't like government, it's just that simple.' "
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Scripps Howard News Service
Scripps Howard News Service:
"Does Giuliani call himself a Reaganite?
'Absolutely!' he exclaims. 'He had strong beliefs. He knew what those beliefs were. He stuck to them whether they were popular or unpopular. And he did it in a way in which he was civil and nice to everyone. It was a beautiful combination of tremendous commitment to what he believed in, but not anger.'
'Ronald Reagan was a role model for me,' Rudy Giuliani says. 'I consider him a hero.'"
"Does Giuliani call himself a Reaganite?
'Absolutely!' he exclaims. 'He had strong beliefs. He knew what those beliefs were. He stuck to them whether they were popular or unpopular. And he did it in a way in which he was civil and nice to everyone. It was a beautiful combination of tremendous commitment to what he believed in, but not anger.'
'Ronald Reagan was a role model for me,' Rudy Giuliani says. 'I consider him a hero.'"
Monday, March 20, 2006
Iraq: from Vietnam to Lebanon
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2006/03/19/2003298208
Martin Van Creveld, a prominent Israeli military historian who is the only non-US author on the US Army's required reading list for officers, offered a brutal assessment of the decision to invade Iraq. It was, Van Creveld said, the worst military adventure in 20 centuries. "For misleading the American people and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9BC sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial," Van Creveld wrote in the Forward, a mainly Jewish-readership newspaper in New York.
Martin Van Creveld, a prominent Israeli military historian who is the only non-US author on the US Army's required reading list for officers, offered a brutal assessment of the decision to invade Iraq. It was, Van Creveld said, the worst military adventure in 20 centuries. "For misleading the American people and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9BC sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial," Van Creveld wrote in the Forward, a mainly Jewish-readership newspaper in New York.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Beyond Ridicule, Beyond Lying (Part II)
All right, I raised the issue of whether or not Bush is evil. A lot of the people who oppose the war think he is...
Bush is interested in power, and he has no understanding of democracy.
In the previous post I wrote: Bush and his advisors are not bad leaders because they are bad people, or because they are evil. They are bad leaders because they don't know how to lead. They are incompetent and they have no judgment. I came back to that topic while I was running on Saturday. These thoughts are in the form of a postscript to that post.
I said that Bush and his advisors were not bad people, and I traced their poor leadership to incompetence and poor judgment. But there are two more things about Bush and his group that are more insidious and scary. First, Bush and his inner circle are primarily interested in power, not leadership. Leadership and power are not the same thing. (Hannah Arendt distinguishes between power and authority in On Revolution.) Power gives you the ability to make people do what they don't want to do. Good leaders give people the will and energy to do what they want to do, but find it difficult to do on their own. Good leadership is not coercive, it is persuasive.
Well, back to Bush and company - or I should say, back to Karl Rove and company. Karl Rove and George Bush are not interested in leadership. They are interested in consolidating the power of the Republican party. They do not see a connection between winning the war and uniting the whole country. That is, they do not see uniting the whole country as an essential condition for winning the war. Rather, they use the war to enhance the strength of their own party. You would expect them to use such tactics during the presidential election of 2004. This pattern of behavior extends beyond the reelection campaign, though. Bush would like to unite as many people as he can behind his foreign policy, but his focus has been on Republican unity, not American unity.
The second quality, or failing, grows out of the first. Bush and his advisors do not understand democracy. The two clearest examples of this quality concern torture and warrantless wiretaps. They do not see democratic constraints - natural rights that limit government's power to do certain things - as constraints that balance the imperatives of national security. That is, if national security seems to require a certain course of action, that is it. There is no more argument. National security trumps the limits on governmental power with no more argument necessary.
Well, what can you do in a situation like this? The administration's actions indicate that it doesn't recognize any limits on its power in the area of national security. If that is the case, then we have a terrible case of: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. A sincere desire to protect the American people has led the administration into the corruption of unchecked power. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," is one of the most famous sayings in political thought. If it applies here - and evidence indicates that it does - then our government has suffered the absolute corruption that seemed impossible before 9/11.
I truly don't want to admit that our government is evil. But evil is banal in so many ways. It doesn't always come at you with a blood-drenched scimitar. It shows up in small ways and progresses until you can't escape it...
Back once more to the team that pretends to lead us, but actually does whatever it thinks best, whether or not it is in the country's long-term interest.
Here is the best evidence that the administration is not interested in leadership. It says that its opponents are traitors, that people who disagree with it are helping our enemies. It is ready to turn us against ourselves, to divide us so it may conquer the whole. It can succeed without our friends in Muslim countries. It can succeed without our European allies and without the United Nations. It can succeed without the loyal opposition at home. All of its actions point to one source of success: the power of its own party, the ability to force its way on others.
By letting this government continue, we have reached a true turning point. People still act as if we are living in the democracy we had before 9/11, but we're not. We've allowed our fears to affect the kind of country we are. One of our main qualities in the past was fearlessness. Now we've let fear make us ready to give up our democratic way of life. That's why we have to shrug off 9/11. If we shrug it off, we won't fear our enemies any more. If we shrug it off, we won't care about what they do to us. We'll just destroy them. We'll find out who they are, where they are, and we'll just destroy them.
That's how you have to fight a war - with ruthlessness and with determination. Yes, there's fear, but you shrug that off, too. Where are the leaders who help us face fear and forget it, rather than monger fear for the sake of their own advantage? Where are the leaders who help us face fear and forget it, rather than divide us and make us fear even each other? Where are the leaders who unite us, and help us defeat those who want to destroy us? I tell you, you will not find them among the members of the current administration. They think they are brave and resolute, but they are cowardly incompetents. They think they protect us, but they destroy everything worth protecting. They think they are truthful, but they don't even know what the truth is. They think they will be proven correct in the end, but in fact historians will record a hundred years from now that they caused the loss of our democracy. And we let them do it.
Bush is interested in power, and he has no understanding of democracy.
In the previous post I wrote: Bush and his advisors are not bad leaders because they are bad people, or because they are evil. They are bad leaders because they don't know how to lead. They are incompetent and they have no judgment. I came back to that topic while I was running on Saturday. These thoughts are in the form of a postscript to that post.
I said that Bush and his advisors were not bad people, and I traced their poor leadership to incompetence and poor judgment. But there are two more things about Bush and his group that are more insidious and scary. First, Bush and his inner circle are primarily interested in power, not leadership. Leadership and power are not the same thing. (Hannah Arendt distinguishes between power and authority in On Revolution.) Power gives you the ability to make people do what they don't want to do. Good leaders give people the will and energy to do what they want to do, but find it difficult to do on their own. Good leadership is not coercive, it is persuasive.
Well, back to Bush and company - or I should say, back to Karl Rove and company. Karl Rove and George Bush are not interested in leadership. They are interested in consolidating the power of the Republican party. They do not see a connection between winning the war and uniting the whole country. That is, they do not see uniting the whole country as an essential condition for winning the war. Rather, they use the war to enhance the strength of their own party. You would expect them to use such tactics during the presidential election of 2004. This pattern of behavior extends beyond the reelection campaign, though. Bush would like to unite as many people as he can behind his foreign policy, but his focus has been on Republican unity, not American unity.
The second quality, or failing, grows out of the first. Bush and his advisors do not understand democracy. The two clearest examples of this quality concern torture and warrantless wiretaps. They do not see democratic constraints - natural rights that limit government's power to do certain things - as constraints that balance the imperatives of national security. That is, if national security seems to require a certain course of action, that is it. There is no more argument. National security trumps the limits on governmental power with no more argument necessary.
Well, what can you do in a situation like this? The administration's actions indicate that it doesn't recognize any limits on its power in the area of national security. If that is the case, then we have a terrible case of: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. A sincere desire to protect the American people has led the administration into the corruption of unchecked power. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," is one of the most famous sayings in political thought. If it applies here - and evidence indicates that it does - then our government has suffered the absolute corruption that seemed impossible before 9/11.
I truly don't want to admit that our government is evil. But evil is banal in so many ways. It doesn't always come at you with a blood-drenched scimitar. It shows up in small ways and progresses until you can't escape it...
Back once more to the team that pretends to lead us, but actually does whatever it thinks best, whether or not it is in the country's long-term interest.
Here is the best evidence that the administration is not interested in leadership. It says that its opponents are traitors, that people who disagree with it are helping our enemies. It is ready to turn us against ourselves, to divide us so it may conquer the whole. It can succeed without our friends in Muslim countries. It can succeed without our European allies and without the United Nations. It can succeed without the loyal opposition at home. All of its actions point to one source of success: the power of its own party, the ability to force its way on others.
By letting this government continue, we have reached a true turning point. People still act as if we are living in the democracy we had before 9/11, but we're not. We've allowed our fears to affect the kind of country we are. One of our main qualities in the past was fearlessness. Now we've let fear make us ready to give up our democratic way of life. That's why we have to shrug off 9/11. If we shrug it off, we won't fear our enemies any more. If we shrug it off, we won't care about what they do to us. We'll just destroy them. We'll find out who they are, where they are, and we'll just destroy them.
That's how you have to fight a war - with ruthlessness and with determination. Yes, there's fear, but you shrug that off, too. Where are the leaders who help us face fear and forget it, rather than monger fear for the sake of their own advantage? Where are the leaders who help us face fear and forget it, rather than divide us and make us fear even each other? Where are the leaders who unite us, and help us defeat those who want to destroy us? I tell you, you will not find them among the members of the current administration. They think they are brave and resolute, but they are cowardly incompetents. They think they protect us, but they destroy everything worth protecting. They think they are truthful, but they don't even know what the truth is. They think they will be proven correct in the end, but in fact historians will record a hundred years from now that they caused the loss of our democracy. And we let them do it.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Quotes from Ronald Reagan
Google Groups : alt.politics.usa.republican
Quotes from Ronald Reagan:
When you see all that rhetorical smoke billowing up from the Democrats, well ladies and gentleman, I'd follow the example of their nominee; don't inhale.
~ Ronald Reagan, Republican National Convention, 1992.
The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern.
~ Ronald Reagan, Address to the National Alliance of Business, October 5, 1981
We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.
~ Ronald Reagan
There are no such things as limits to growth, because there are no limits on the human capacity for intelligence, imagination and wonder.
~ Ronald Reagan
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
~ Ronald Reagan
The other day, someone told me the difference between a democracy and a people's democracy. It's the same difference between a jacket and a straitjacket.
~ Ronald Reagan
Quotes from Ronald Reagan:
When you see all that rhetorical smoke billowing up from the Democrats, well ladies and gentleman, I'd follow the example of their nominee; don't inhale.
~ Ronald Reagan, Republican National Convention, 1992.
The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern.
~ Ronald Reagan, Address to the National Alliance of Business, October 5, 1981
We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.
~ Ronald Reagan
There are no such things as limits to growth, because there are no limits on the human capacity for intelligence, imagination and wonder.
~ Ronald Reagan
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
~ Ronald Reagan
The other day, someone told me the difference between a democracy and a people's democracy. It's the same difference between a jacket and a straitjacket.
~ Ronald Reagan
Friday, March 10, 2006
Beyond Ridicule, Beyond Lying
We can't blame Bush for 9/11 any more than we can blame FDR for Pearl Harbor. But if FDR had handled the war against Japan as poorly as Bush has handled the war against Al Qaeda, we'd be learning Japanese in all our schools right now. That's what is at stake in this war - leadership of the world. That's where Bush's failure is greatest, He is not a world leader, and it's plain to see.
I still grieve over the loss of the pieces on torture. All right, you know what I mean. Torture's not the current topic now, anyway. Civil war is the current topic. All the questions now are about what we should do if Iraq descends into civil war. Rumsfeld says that the Iraqi security forces will have to deal with a civil war. That's the only chance we have to form a stable, democratic government, he says.
You know what, I'm not going to ridicule our leaders anymore. They are beyond ridicule. I don't even like to ridicule people. It doesn't do any good: it doesn't persuade anybody to see things differently from the way they saw things before. But let me say this: these leaders have no claim on our trust, our loyalty, or even our forgiveness. They are the worst: arrogant, unforgiving, unreflective, and untruthful. One kind of dishonesty implies that you know you are lying. Another kind of dishonesty occurs because you don't care whether what you say is truthful or not. That is the kind of dishonesty we observe in our leaders. They are beyond lying. They are beyond ridicule. Nothing we could say now could describe how bad they are. They are not bad leaders because they are bad people, or because they are evil. They are bad leaders because they don't know how to lead. They are incompetent and they have no judgment. They don't know what they are doing.
I don't really get angry anymore. When Bush comes on the radio, even when it's a pretty short sound bite, I usually turn it off. I can't stand to hear his voice. The thought that he represents our country is horrific. Even though he does not sound very intelligent to me, I don't think he is stupid. The Democrats have harped on that canard - he's an idiot - for so long. It's a substitute for good thinking. President Bush is not stupid. But he's not smart in the ways that he needs to be, given the position that he's in. He may be shrewd and disciplined, but those aren't the qualities he needs now. He needs so many qualities that he does not have, and it's sad to see him so sure that we're doing okay. If we're doing okay, he's doing okay. And we know that he's deceiving himself. We are not doing okay, and neither is he.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. The thought reminds us of Lincoln and the beginning of the Civil War, but Jesus said it first. Who predicted during those weeks that followed 9/11 that we would be so divided now? A good leader would have kept us united. The people who support the war in Iraq are not traitors, no more than the people who oppose it. Yet the two sides in this argument do not listen to each other. Indeed, they don't listen because they don't care that much what the other side has to say. I'm part of the national deafness. I made up my mind on the question when the president first announced his plan to invade Iraq. I had never been more vehement on a question of war or peace, not even during the Vietnam war. I knew I wouldn't change my mind, no matter what the other side said. Lincoln wasn't going to change his mind about human bondage, either.
Had enough? Have you had enough? Have you had enough of an illegal war, and all the lies that surround such a horrendous enterprise? We don't have to follow this path any longer. We've already done so much damage - yes, to ourselves as well as to Iraq - but we can still turn back. We can't redeem the past three years, but we can still make things turn out for the best. We have to believe that's true, that no matter how bad things seem now, we can turn the dross into something brighter. If we lose that essential hope, then 9/11 and its depressing aftermath will truly have destroyed us.
I still grieve over the loss of the pieces on torture. All right, you know what I mean. Torture's not the current topic now, anyway. Civil war is the current topic. All the questions now are about what we should do if Iraq descends into civil war. Rumsfeld says that the Iraqi security forces will have to deal with a civil war. That's the only chance we have to form a stable, democratic government, he says.
You know what, I'm not going to ridicule our leaders anymore. They are beyond ridicule. I don't even like to ridicule people. It doesn't do any good: it doesn't persuade anybody to see things differently from the way they saw things before. But let me say this: these leaders have no claim on our trust, our loyalty, or even our forgiveness. They are the worst: arrogant, unforgiving, unreflective, and untruthful. One kind of dishonesty implies that you know you are lying. Another kind of dishonesty occurs because you don't care whether what you say is truthful or not. That is the kind of dishonesty we observe in our leaders. They are beyond lying. They are beyond ridicule. Nothing we could say now could describe how bad they are. They are not bad leaders because they are bad people, or because they are evil. They are bad leaders because they don't know how to lead. They are incompetent and they have no judgment. They don't know what they are doing.
I don't really get angry anymore. When Bush comes on the radio, even when it's a pretty short sound bite, I usually turn it off. I can't stand to hear his voice. The thought that he represents our country is horrific. Even though he does not sound very intelligent to me, I don't think he is stupid. The Democrats have harped on that canard - he's an idiot - for so long. It's a substitute for good thinking. President Bush is not stupid. But he's not smart in the ways that he needs to be, given the position that he's in. He may be shrewd and disciplined, but those aren't the qualities he needs now. He needs so many qualities that he does not have, and it's sad to see him so sure that we're doing okay. If we're doing okay, he's doing okay. And we know that he's deceiving himself. We are not doing okay, and neither is he.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. The thought reminds us of Lincoln and the beginning of the Civil War, but Jesus said it first. Who predicted during those weeks that followed 9/11 that we would be so divided now? A good leader would have kept us united. The people who support the war in Iraq are not traitors, no more than the people who oppose it. Yet the two sides in this argument do not listen to each other. Indeed, they don't listen because they don't care that much what the other side has to say. I'm part of the national deafness. I made up my mind on the question when the president first announced his plan to invade Iraq. I had never been more vehement on a question of war or peace, not even during the Vietnam war. I knew I wouldn't change my mind, no matter what the other side said. Lincoln wasn't going to change his mind about human bondage, either.
Had enough? Have you had enough? Have you had enough of an illegal war, and all the lies that surround such a horrendous enterprise? We don't have to follow this path any longer. We've already done so much damage - yes, to ourselves as well as to Iraq - but we can still turn back. We can't redeem the past three years, but we can still make things turn out for the best. We have to believe that's true, that no matter how bad things seem now, we can turn the dross into something brighter. If we lose that essential hope, then 9/11 and its depressing aftermath will truly have destroyed us.
