Wait a minute...

So let me get this straight. If you're a Republican, you want me to vote for a person that 62% of you believed would make a worse president than George W. Bush in 2000?

Saved from ourselves

Sorry about the lack of posts. I've been pretty much catatonic with the presidential election going on. I believe in our democratic system as much as anyone can, but comparing campaign propaganda with actual facts, as seen below, can be pretty dispiriting. The picture on the top was taken yesterday around 11 AM as my wife and I canvassed in Virginia. The chart on the bottom comes from a blog by the editors of Foreign Policy magazine.

Summary

This pretty much sums up why I loath the GOP right now and think I would vomit if I watched any of their despicable, hypocritical, shameless convention.

Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York mocked Mr. Obama for, he said, avoiding discussion of the Sept. 11 attacks and advocating taking the Russian invasion of Georgia to the United Nations Security Council.

“Apparently, none of his 300 foreign policy security advisers told him that Russia has a veto power” in the Council, Mr. Giuliani said, skipping over the fact that after the bombing began, Mr. Bush’s secretary of state spent days helping draft a Security Council resolution on the subject. (Source)

I can't stand this shit. And I know that the next thing they'll do now that The Times called them on it is simple: call the media biased. (Ok, I exaggerate, a little.) To repeat: I can't stand this shit.

Paying our debts

I just watched this Bill Moyers interview with Professor Andrew Bacevich on the challenges facing America as we move further into the 21st century. Pretty sobering stuff. I agree with his essential premise that the American people are addicted to cheap consumer goods and energy, and won't stop consuming absent leadership of a type we're not likely to see until after our debts come due.

As you watch this interview with Professor Bacevich, I feel it lends extra weight to his testimony to bear in mind that this is a man who recently suffered the loss of his son, 1LT Andrew J. Bacevich. 1LT Bacevich was killed by an IED south of Samarra, Iraq in just the sort of haphazard war of empire his father criticizes.

Double Standards in the Global War on Terror

This is a provocative essay on GWOT policy that basically asks why the suspects in the FBI's anthrax investigation weren't kidnapped and tortured. After all, it was a bioweapon terror attack on institutions of American government, among others. The short practical answers are:

1) It was the FBI, not the CIA; and

2) To put it politely, they weren't the rootless, anonymous figures swept up into military detention.

Nevertheless, it is instructive to remember that this is where the Bush administration's terror policy should have led; in fact, where the Bush administration's terror policy did lead for Jose Padilla. Jose Padilla was a U.S. citizen. He was arrested in Chicago. Under the president's executive authority, he was declared an illegal enemy combatant and transferred to a military prison. The Bush administration argued that he was not entitled to trial in civilian courts. Padilla's legal history is a very tangled one by this stage, but it should be a reminder to us of the extraordinary powers the Bush administration has asserted.

Call me a jingoistic sucker, but

I actually find Bela Karolyi's America-boosterism quite charming.

“Exactly the truth came out, who had the nerve, the preparation, who can stay on the apparatus!” Bela Karolyi said afterward. “The best team and the best ones are ours! Yes! Yes!”

Why was I not informed

There's such a thing as a soft-shelled lobster?

Be still my beating heart

The substance of what he said

There are a lot of reasons that I oppose Senator McCain's candidacy for President of the United States. One of them, however, is more personal than the others:

"I hate the gooks," McCain said yesterday in response to a question from reporters aboard his campaign bus. "I will hate them as long as I live." (San Francisco Chronicle)

Of course, Senator McCain apologized within the week, vowing never to use the term again. This presents one with the sort of entertaining "lesser evil" dichotomy only to be found in politics and, perhaps, video game reviews. Either Senator McCain is able to overcome his supposedly deep-laid hatred of "gooks" in a mere three days, in which case it must not have been that deeply laid to begin with, or he is lying. He is either a liar or an opportunistic racist: choose one.

It is entirely understandable for a victim of torture to hate his torturers. However, I cannot support the same person, harboring that kind of virulent racial hatred, for the office of President of the United States. Others seem to have entirely forgotten this incident. I have not.

On second thought...

Maybe we shouldn't be looking to rely on European allies, at least not the Norwegians. Except for Arctic and undersea maneuvers.

Rock, meet Hard Place

I'm sympathetic to the betrayed feeling that Georgians may be feeling toward NATO. And I'm darkly amused by the way the Bush administration et al. are running to the UN and blustering about how there will be "serious consequences" and are being "very firm" with those naughty Russian leaders. And I'm not convinced by the articles coming out that say that everyone should have known this was coming.

But I'll be damned if I know what the US should do. Military response is impossible for at least 3 reasons. 1) My understanding is that we don't have troops to send. 2) Our standing in the world isn't so high, so I don't think we can get people to send troops. And, most importantly, 3) You don't mess around with a nuclear-armed country--Russia. And Russia can get away with (assuming the target of the aggression doesn't pull a Poland or Afghanistan...hey!) being bellicose as long as it has these weapons because it's not worth intervening in a fight.

A few other thoughts.

• This shows, yet again, the bankruptcy of the Bush administration. There's no morally coherent reason that we aren't intervening here, but continue to crow the benefits of democracy and seek to impose it. In fact, this is pretty damn despicable--we're unable to back up our friends. If we couldn't back them up when they're caught, should we have tightened ties so much? It's a tough question, but, regardless, we look bad.
• I loathe the McCain campaign.
  
• Pandering to Christian wackjobs who view everything as a holy war? Check: "[We should care about Georgia in part because it] is . . . one of the world’s first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion."
• Being hypocritical by doing what he attacked Obama for doing--trying to act "presidential"? Check: "I urge the NATO allies to revisit the decision." (emphasis added).
  
• Note that in keeping with the way the McCain campaign operates, I'm ignoring the substance of what he said and, instead, taking isolated sentences and focusing entirely on surface issues.
  

Bitter with the sweet

I humbly submit that if you choose a presidential candidate who looks like a naked mole rat, while the other side nominates a good lookin' man, you have no right to complain when people would rather see pictures of one than the other all day.

Military Operations in Port-a-John Terrain

Through an odd series of circumstances, I have noted that there are an amazing number of clips of American soldiers practicing room clearing drills for urban combat on tiny, plastic port-a-johns.

Enjoy.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1918-2008

Oddly enough, I just started reading the GULAG Archipelago. If you've never read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, I wholeheartedly recommend it. The book is a powerful meditation on the relationship between the citizen and the state; between criminal and prisoner; guard and dissident. I've been entranced by the stark simplicity of prison camp literature since I first read Kolyma Tales, by Varlam Shalamov. Sitting here, well-fed and warm, it is difficult to express the value of reading literature written by people whose primary teaching was that everything in the world can betray you to suffering: the instruments of the state, friends, family, your own body and the ground you walk upon. It is difficult to reference their bitter struggle without sounding fatuous. Nevertheless, reading about the brief, fragile victories the zeks were able to snatch from their oppressors has lent me inexpressible support.

Terms too deep for me

I'm sorry, I haven't gotten to a place yet where I can worry about how Europeans will react to Barack Obama when (if) Barack Obama becomes president. This is apparently a disability that is not shared by the Times of London's op-ed page:

Some on the Left are getting their count-me-outs in already, realising that Mr Obama is, after all, a big-game hunter, a full-trousered American candidate. They, I think, are more realistic than those who manage on one day to laud the Democrat as not being a real politician, and on the next to praise him for his sensible left-trimming when seeking the party's nomination and his equally sensible centre-hugging once it was in the bag. I say the antis are more realistic because, eventually, we will hate or ridicule Mr Obama too - provided, of course, that he is elected and serves two full terms. (ToL)

Provided. That's a selective quote, of course, and the full editorial is a lot more supportive of Americans than we might deserve at this point from a European editorial page. But it just reminds me of all the second-guessing and pontification that we're engaging in over here--is Obama experienced enough, has he got what it takes, whatever that indefinable quality is. And the answer is that it's hard to say. There's no real preparation for the office of President of the United States; there can't be, because there are no other reasonably comparable jobs. Governor of a state? To make a quick and dirty calculation, roughly one-fiftieth the responsibility. Senator? One-hundredth. I admit that Barack Obama isn't a known quantity to me. All I know is that Barack Obama is as intelligent as we could hope for; that he is by all indications humble, and that he is not a Republican. In 2001, the Republican Party had the chance to make me a Republican voter and they blew it irretrievably through what I feel to be a misguided war of choice abroad, and a all too well directed war against civil liberties at home. John McCain, for all his touted maverick independence, is still very much a Republican. It took a lot of hard work to get me to the point where I am unconditionally willing to roll the dice with Barack Obama because the last eight years were so lacking in leadership except on those issues that made me less secure and less prosperous, but I'm there now.

That's some mighty fine strategic defense analysis there, James

"James Jay Carafano, a military expert at the Heritage Foundation, said he finds it refreshing that the Defense Department acknowledges that China and Russia are potential adversaries, but he said he believes the strategy is too heavy on battling extremism.

""It is overstating the case to say that extremist Islamic ideology is going to define the next 20 or 30 years," he said. "I think that's not helpful because you're sacrificing everything for this one fight. But it's a transition document. Either McCain or Obama could walk in the door and live with that document and do all kinds of things."" (WP)

Whereas, you know, losing this one fight will really bolster our strategic deterrence capability. If we can't win in Iraq and Afghanistan against insurgents who, while deadly, lack armor, air support, or any of the other support enjoyed by modern military forces, how the hell do you expect to deter Russia and China? A 40-page powerpoint briefing? I wish more of our so-called military experts would focus on winning the wars we're currently fighting, rather than future imaginary wars. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you go to war with the war you have, not the war you'd like to have.

That's some mighty fine police work there, Lou

From the Washington Post

The Bethesda teenager in whose home investigators found a cache of assault rifles and bombmaking materials was compiling a list of home addresses for teachers at his former high school, police said yesterday.

Police officials said it was unclear why Colin McKenzie-Gude, 18, was making the list of teachers from St. John's College High School, a private school in Northwest Washington from which he graduated this year.

I know that this comment was probably filtered through several layers of hearsay, and legal issues make the police coy. But the way it's presented, you want someone to say, "Now, if we just sit down, hold hands, and think hard enough, I'm sure we can figure out why a gun-toting teen would have been making a list of the home addresses of his teachers."

Selective amnesia

It's probably impossible to pretend that the last eight years of my life never happened, but maybe I can edit out some of the more mind-bogglingly improbable moments.

Trapped in a room with someone watching R. Kelly's trapped in the closet

Have you ever listened to six hours of the same song
Over and over? With no meter or verse, six hours of recitative gone wrong?
Forced rhymes and thuggery, overuse of the n-word,
Seems like it won some sort of award, shouldn't polish a turd
Base thumping through my skull, it's really loud
R. Kelly can't possibly be proud
Of producing trapped in the closet
And I'm trapped watching my wife watch trapped in the closet
She's really enjoying trapped in the closet
Keeps watching trapped in the cloooooset
So much goddamn trapped in the cloooooooooooset
Too much trapped in the clooooooooooooooooset
Please let it be over
But it's not over
It's never over
You should have gone to jail for this, R. Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelly.

Little late

Just back from a trip to balmy San Francisco (temp. 62 degrees Fahrenheit!). Passed the time on the 4th watching fireworks explode in the fog on a friend's roof, thinking about my hopes of joining the Army. I want to prove that I love liberty more than wealth, that I can answer the challenge laid down by our founders and pay the debt I owe to the veterans of the Revolution and the Civil War:

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom — go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

Samuel Adams, State House of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1 August 1776

I do like this city

Walking on 6th Avenue at 14th Street at 11:50pm, I hear and see three employees dancing around inside a closed Pinkberry, singing, "Engine engine number 9, on the New York transit line, if that train falls off the track, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up. . . ." It put a big smile on my face, and other passersby seemed to get a kick out of it, too.