Politics and Division

Politics sure divide people in a hurry. Read Zachary Goldfarb's column along with the comments that follow it. It's incredible to me how people with such similar views on the direction this country should take have come to a place of being at each other's throats. Emotionally, I find it hard to take, also. When I hear James Carville saying that Governor Richardson is like Judas for his 'betrayal' of the Clintons, it makes me so angry and disgusted that my gut reaction is to say I'd not vote for the Clintons if they were the only ones running. But in the end, we have to remember that what is best for the nation is for a Democrat to get elected this time around. If we take the comments in this article earnestly, you'd have to conclude that the hopes of the Democrats are dead, and that we might as well get used to saying "President McCain."

Tibet

The decision to hold the Olympics in China was a decision to give China a chance. It was an expression of good faith with the expectation that China would become a member of good standing in the civilized world. Their crackdown in Tibet proves that they are not such a member. The threat of a boycott of the Olympics must begin to ring. We cannot sit by and allow Tibet to be crushed by the Chinese government. Its occupation of Tibet is illegal, and must not stand. Its destruction of Tibetan culture is immoral and must be resisted.

Avaaz has a petition ("End the Violence") against the Chinese oppression here.

Five Years of War

Our president (cringe), George W. Bush, has said that we are making real progress in Iraq and that the 5-year war must go on even longer so as not to risk losing the gains we've made.

When this war started, we were supposedly there to find and destroy the 'weapons of mass destruction' that Saddam Hussein might give to Al Qaeda. We were told that he had connections with Al Qaeda. Both of these remarks were not only wrong. They were lies that went against the administration's own intelligence estimates.

The administration tried to tell us that the war would cost $50-60 billion dollars in total. When their own economic adviser Lawrence Lindsay dared to tell us that the true cost would be between $100 billion and $200 billion, he was fired. The cost of the war is now up to over $500 billion dollars, and counting. Watch the money tick off above in the left-hand column. It's horrible.

Dan Froomkin has an article entitled "Bush's Triumphalist Amnesia" that is right on point regarding the president and his speech. Bush can say that the situation has improved in Iraq since a year ago when the surge began. What he isn't telling us is that he's paying people like the Shiite leader Al-Sadr off, and he's arming the Sunni side (Saddam's side) of the conflict in Iraq. Sadr doesn't like us, and he's just waiting for us to go in order to do things his way. Bush also spent more than $4,000 on every Iraqi in 2007 alone, which (given cost of living differences) is the equivalent to giving over $121,000 to every American. Bush acts as if we've struck a blow against Bin Laden, but he doesn't mention that there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq before we went into Iraq. He doesn't mention that our own intelligence services say that the war has made Al Qaeda stronger.
Froomkin points out that the one place where 'the surge' has helped is in buying Bush time. He has gone from a full rebellion (including Congressional Republicans) a year ago, to passing the buck onto the next administration.

Important Obama Speech

Senator Obama has given the needed speech on race relations and the incendiary remarks of his pastor.

See his website for the video and the written text of the speech.

Many are acclaiming this speech as the most important speeches in America on race since Martin Luther King, Jr. Chris Matthews of Hardball says it's the best speech on race in America ever.

McCain Denounces Torture

Thankfully, Senator McCain put out a statement today that clearly states he is against the waterboarding that George Bush supports. I just wonder--if George Bush supports torture, and John McCain says that it is clearly illegal, then what does that make George Bush? After all, he is the Commander-in-Chief who is giving his administration the green light on this torture. McCain said:

It is unfortunate that the reluctance of officials to stand by this straightforward conclusion has produced in the Congress such frustration that we are today debating whether to apply a military field manual to non-military intelligence activities. It would be far better, I believe, for the administration to state forthrightly what is clear in current law - that anyone who engages in waterboarding, on behalf of any U.S. government agency, puts himself at risk of criminal prosecution and civil liability.

Bush the Torturer

George W. Bush has vetoed legislation that explicitly makes water-boarding illegal. It's already illegal, of course, but Congress was trying to make sure that George Bush and his criminal administration knew that it was. I am ashamed of him as the supposed "leader" of this country. I am ashamed of all the Republicans who support him. They're not part of the America that I was raised to believe in. At least the next president will reverse this immoral behavior. Even Senator McCain, Republican that he is, is against torture. Besides being inhumane, torture has been proven to be ineffective in intelligence gathering. An excerpt from the Washington Post follows:

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Harry E. Soyster, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, suggested that those who support harsh methods simply lack experience and do not know what they are talking about. "If they think these methods work, they're woefully misinformed," Soyster said at a news briefing called in anticipation of the veto. "Torture is counterproductive on all fronts. It produces bad intelligence. It ruins the subject, makes them useless for further interrogation. And it damages our credibility around the world."

Journalists in Iraq

There's an excellent story running on NPR's Talk of the Nation today. Neal Conan (whose photo is to the right) is interviewing four journalists who have been covering Iraq since the beginning of this war: Anne Garrels, Ted Koppel, John Burns, and Hoda Abdel-Hamid. You really get a sense that they know what it's like there from the inside. Anne Garrels impressed me by saying that while the surge has worked, it hasn't improved things much for foreigners. She still operates by a 10-minute rule: she can't be on Iraqi streets in any one place for more than 10 minutes. If she were to stay longer, there's a good chance she'd be attacked or kidnapped. As I'm typing, Hoda Abdel-Hamid is saying it's actually the same situation for any journalist. One caller brought up the important point that while the surge may have been necessary, what has worked more is paying off insurgents like Al-Sadr. Ted Koppel talked about the discouragement setting in amongst troops right from the beginning of the war. The Army was expecting to be greeted, quite literally, by a band and people with flowers. Instead, they were met with RPGs. John Burns talks about how Iraq is such a secret society, partly thanks to Saddam Hussein, that even Iraqis see it as a "land of shadows." Americans, he says, have suffered from a lack of knowledge about Iraq, and in part this is caused by the secrecy that Iraqis had to maintain under Saddam. Hoda Abdel-Hamid talked about how Arabs have seen an entirely different war than Americans have. The American networks sanitize and glamorize the whole war. Ted Koppel agreed, and said he argued that the war ought to be covered more graphically. ABC wouldn't do it. With the elections, now, they say that the war is not going away, but it's taking a back seat in American newspapers and on television.

Clinton Drags the Party Down

Clinton's victories in Ohio and Texas makes a mess of things. There's no way she can win, but she plugs on with a negative campaign that is trying to tear Obama down. I'm disgusted with her. I would find it very hard to vote for her.

She can smile all she wants. The nastiness oozes out way too often.

The Republicans might win again. She's going to drag the Democratic Party down with her.

Ahmadinejad in Iraq (revised)

I was going to write about the incredible contrast between the Bush visit to Iraq and Ahmadinejad's.

But I just discovered Andrew Sullivan saying the more or less the same thing I wanted to say in his Daily Dish: "One telling reflection of the Bush administration's handling of the region: the Islamo-fascist was able to announce his visit well in advance; the American president had to go in strict secrecy. There you have a small insight into the immense damage to American power that this administration has inflicted. And who really won the war against Saddam."

We are in Iraq, according the Bush myth, to defeat the terrorism that threatens both us and the poor Iraqis. You would think that his actions would make him a hero to the Iraqis. In the meantime, however, when Bush visited, he had to sneak into the country and sneak out. Ahmadinejad, the Iranian leader and therefore practically the devil himself (again according to the Bush myth), entered Iraq with great fanfare. He apparently wasn't worried about getting assassinated. A good question for the naive to ask is "How could this be? Why isn't our president the one who is greeted as a hero?"

I am no fan of Ahmadinejad's. He is a simple man who rose to power because of a simplistic view of the world that matches that of other fundamentalists in Iran. But we have to face the fact that the majority of Iraqis are quite happy with Ahmadinejad and his worldview. They share the same view of fundamental Islam: namely, the Shiite version articulated by the Ayatollahs. And by remaining in Iraq, we are unwittingly helping to impose the Shiite will on the minority Sunnis who were ruling under Saddam. The terrorists known as "Al Qaeda-in-Iraq" wouldn't have existed without our intervention, and without our assistance in imposing the Shiite will on the Sunnis. We may say that we want everyone to get along in Iraq. But it hasn't happened and isn't likely to happen anytime soon.

I understand the sentiment that it's a horrible shame if our young men died there in vain. People get incredibly angry if you suggest that's the case. But sometimes that's the reality. Bad presidents make bad decisions and a lot of people die for those mistakes who shouldn't have had to die. We now have a very bad president who makes very bad decisions.

South American Crisis

The Colombian Army has recently started going into Equadorean territory to pursue rebels who have been attacking them. They now say that they have attained information that links the rebel fighters to Equadorean President Rafael Correa. Equador and the Hugo Chavez's Venezuela have responded by sending troops to Colombia's borders. Chavez has warned that any similar movements into Venezuela would result in war.

Chavez is known to have a cozy relationship with the drug dealing rebels in Colombia. He recently helped negotiate the release of some of their prisoners through this relationship in an effort to gain favorable press.

This is a significant crisis not only for Colombia but for the U.S. as well. Colombia is pursuing these rebels with U.S. support, and with U.S. encouragement. Venezuela's leadership is virulently anti-U.S. If war were to emerge between Colombia and its neighbors, the U.S. could not sit idly by. We have little or no national interests in Iraq. But we have significant national interests in South America, especially given the drug trade and our current relationship with a growing number of anti-U.S. governments. We could ill afford the fall of Colombia into the wrong hands. Our activities in Iraq are at least legally questionable. What would happen if we are so stretched by our Middle East involvement that we can't react to real issues of national security in our own back yard?

The Bush administration has weakened our country in so many ways. This is just one more.

Freedom of the Press or a Criminal Act?

The question has come up as to whether Matt Drudge's release of the information that Prince Harry was in combat in Afghanistan is protected freedom of speech, or whether it constitutes an act of treason. The argument for the latter goes that Prince Harry is a leader of one of our allies. He was fighting as much for the protection of the United States as he was for the protection of the United Kingdom. All the major networks apparently had this information, but didn't report it because they were asked not to. Even CNN and Fox News had this information and didn't report it. But the Drudge report, whether to get attention or for some ulterior motive, didn't hesitate to report it. Once the news was online, Al Qaeda started spreading the word, and the U.S. and Great Britain had to risk lives to get Prince Harry out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible. I am not a lawyer. I don't know if this was a criminal act. But I am firmly convinced that it is highly immoral, and I believe that it should be illegal. Drudge knowingly endangered Prince Harry, those he served with, and those who had to get him out of the country. Anytime anyone knowingly endangers someone else who is acting legally, there should be some recourse to charges of criminal negligence at the very least. Shouldn't they? Morally, the question is easier to answer. I can't imagine any morally sensitive person being able to live with themselves if they did something like this.

Gladiator

Lexi and I ended up watching "Gladiator" (2000) after everyone else was asleep last night. She'd never seen it. At first, she asked about it thinking it would be a good one to fall asleep by. When I heard she'd not seen it, I thought I'd watch it again with her. She didn't go to sleep. She said it was too interesting. "Gladiator," of course, is an outstanding motion picture, and it was rewarded with five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. I particularly like the fact that the philosopher-king (Caesar) Marcus Aurelius is portrayed by Richard Harris at the beginning of the film as a setup. It may be the only time a major philosopher has played any role in any action film. Russell Crowe is, of course, brilliant as the Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius. The writer plays a little fast and loose with history, as is often the case in Hollywood, but it's an interesting play on the known history. It's interesting seeing Joaquin Phoenix again in the role of Commodus Caesar after now having enjoyed his performance as Johnny Cash. He's every bit as detestable as Commodus, but I can appreciate his range as an actor better now. Perhaps my favorite line in the film is when Marcus Aurelius is made to say, "There was a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish, it was so fragile."

Never mind that it's unlikely that Marcus wanted to return power to the Senate and restore the Roman Republic. A case can be made for it, I suppose. And like with most myths, the way it's told tells more about us than about the events the myth is about. It's good that this film plays out the way we would like to remember the history.

Prison Talk

Ramesh Ponnuru stimulated discussion this morning by suggesting that it's a good thing we have more people in prison than any other country. I don't care much for his way of viewing things, but I like some of the thoughtful comments he received.