Sunday, December 28, 2003
Why the Iran Earthquake Death Toll is a Failure of Governance
I'm attending a First Responder (FR) advanced emergency care course these days. One of the instructors was involved in an incident this month where he came across a man laying in the middle of the road. He stopped, called 911, and within one minute he had an ambulance, a fire truck, and three patrol cars. One minute.
He told us about this incident because it was somewhat remarkable for its speed and scope of response, but it also illustrated an important point about the level of coverage in the metropolitan area. Anywhere in urban Portland, within five minutes of calling 911, the standard level of response is three EMT-Paramedics on site and treating the patient.
While we complain about our government, often with good cause; as an entity to serve the populace, it does really quite well. The communications system needed to transfer the emergency messages, the road system to carry the emergency vehicles, the building codes to prevent emergencies, the response coordination, the emergency services training, and the emergency responders are all there either because the government led the way, did the work, or in many instances had the decency to get out of the way of others who lead. Of paramount importance to our national emergency care apparatus is that lives are not wasted because of insufficient response.
Dictators care about power, not people. Regardless of the inane revolutionary mouthing of the chattering class, the fundamental indication of a government for, of, and by the people is their treatment of the people. This summer, more than fifteen thousand people died in France because the labor leadership is stronger than the people they pretend to protect. Mandated short work weeks, onerous overtime rules, and a month of vacation caused systemic failure of their emergency management system and more civilians died needlessly in France than in Iraq since the invasion.
This week in Iran, more than forty thousand people died needlessly because militant Islam does not care how many people it kills in its drive to religious purity. Twenty-five years ago, a quake more than ten times as powerful killed fewer people. Thirteen years ago, fifty thousand people died in an earthquake five to ten times as powerful. Location of the epicenter plays some part, but an institutional indifference for the people of Iran is the real culprit here. The nation is going to be hit by earthquakes, and no fatwah is going to change that. By any reasonable standard, the government of Iran failed its people this week. Again. When will the Mullah's yield power to a government that cares enough about its people to prepare for earthquakes and other emergencies that will come? How many more hundreds of thousands must die so the Mullah's can indulge their addiction to intolerance?
Wednesday, December 24, 2003
Perpetuation versus Success: Why Sanguinocracy Lingers
One of the very greatest advantages about America, one of the reasons people give for doing whatever they have to for a chance to live here, is that there are few structural obstacles to success. Arguably the best result to come out of the Civil War was the demolition of the largest artificial obstacle to success; our nation's holding people in bondage. Denying people the chance to succeed is not what this country is about. When explaining the economic, artistic, cultural, technical, military, and scientific dominance of this country, it is hard not to point to this aspect of our national character. While this is not an absolutely open country without barriers to success, it is head and shoulders above anywhere else.
Many of the other nations of the world operate their governance with a different agenda. The most important function of government for most of the world is perpetuation of power. Regardless of whether the form of power is trade unionism or secret police, the continuation of that authority has a price and one of the first penalties imposed is freedom to innovate and succeed. In many instances, self-perpetuation operates through informers and commissars. All that is needed to get imprisoned or killed is to become the subject of an informer's envy, hostility, or fear. This is the reason why commissars brutalize regardless of consequence; to admit fault would cause your superiors to fear you.
At its worst, in places like North Korea and Iran, and formerly in Iraq, the Soviet Union, and the First French Republic; the government devolves into sanguinocracy. Blame for the myriad failures of a system structured against success is assigned to anyone other than those in charge. The best way to prevent awkward testimony is to eliminate any possibility of a trial where opposing evidence is heard, and then permanently silence the suspicious person.
While the radical intellectual left has not gotten control of a government lately, they have extensively shown their willingness to use the methods of the sanguinocrats in public discourse. Socialists in the UK who dispute the party line are "tried" for their lack of unity to the Communist Party. Michael Moore claims that all the facts in his book are true, despite the well documented lapses in accuracy. Green Party scare tactics regarding genetically modified foods are centered on irrefutable public spectacle, not open debate. The anti-war demonstrations of the last year was run by an openly Stalinist wing of the Communist Party. These people are not interested in the environment, national success, or development; they are interested in perpetuation and expansion of their power.
We do not see the organized left condemning Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, or Khamenei and the Mullahs because they are using exactly the same methods. The bloody handed dictators empower the commissars of the radical left and validate their choices. By dressing their rhetoric in revolutionary drag, they ease the suffering of would-be commissars through their frequent failures. This sick co-dependency has shown tremendous resiliency in the face of all peaceful efforts to hold it morally accountable. Arguably the best argument for the War in Iraq was how shockingly weak it showed the commissars to be. When confronted with reality at the barrel of a gun, sanguinocracy folded.
NOTE: Posted in response to Cara's post here.
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
Reviewing the Math
Earlier this year, I was struck by the remarkable event of the CIA openly announcing the names of two who passed in their service. Rather than let the opportunity pass unnoticed, I posted a commentary on the event and a momentary eulogy for those who died in the service of what I believe is right. Today I received this:
interesting blog Patrick. I am the brother of Chris Mueller whom you wrote about. not sure I understand the whole "fuzzy math" issue you spoke of.
care to expound? I do appreciate your respect for his service and
sacrifice.
Brandon Mueller
I greatly respect the people who fight for the US in the Special Forces and covert communities. I joke about some of the things I had to endure in my term of service; exploding toilets and decaying goat carcasses on Haitian smugglers to name two. My service had some rough spots, but nothing like what the Special Forces operators go through. The saying in the Navy is: you choose your rate, you choose your fate. I choose to spend the bulk of my time in air-conditioned spaces staring at squiggly images. Chris Mueller chose to go a much harder route, and he did so repeatedly. You do not end up in Central Asia getting shot at by unpleasant religious enthusiasts either accidentally or just because you needed the money. You end up on the far side of the world, fighting on the CIA's dime because you are very good and very trustworthy. In order to be fighting in operations beyond the traditional scope of military control, a lot of professionals had to have trained you and believed in you. You have to be somebody special.
As much as we might like to, we can't just push a button and produce people like Chris Mueller. Not to disregard the decade of hard training it takes to get somebody in the zone he was in, the character it takes to stick with it through all the training isn't easy to come by. I never was in Special Forces, but I was around them enough to pick up on the subtle differences between those who want to be SF and those who could make it. There were a lot of insecure jocks who tried out for the SEALs, and a small number of serious hard cases who had the supreme disregard for their own comfort that was needed to accomplish the mission. We can't afford to throw away people like Chris; we need every one we can get.
So here's the math on this. We cannot afford to lose these special people. We cannot afford to not use their special skills and character to accomplish the missions. People like Chris Mueller keep thousands of soldiers and millions of civilians from getting slaughtered by being tougher, smarter, faster, and better than anybody the enemy has. They deserve all the support we can give them without that support becoming an easy target or a distraction to their mission. We certainly owe them our thanks and remembrance.
I have no idea how many critical missions Chris Mueller and his partner William Carlson accomplished before they died in an ambush. I know they died while receiving air support and their team inflicted serious harm to those who attacked them. I strongly suspect that they were just unlucky that day. I also suspect that the casualties their team inflicted on the enemy will reduce the likelihood of that bad luck repeating. It's a shame they went down, but they didn't go down easy. In the final accounting, Chris Mueller and William Carlson made ambushing our forces a net loss for the ambushers, and that's the only math that really matters.
I wish that Chris Mueller was still alive and out there operating; Brandon must feel the same thing a thousand times more. This year, I've lost my grandmother, an aunt, and my father; grief is no stranger to me these days. All of my family went well, though. They lived their lives in worthwhile ways and I am better for it. I am also better for the life of Chris Mueller and I thank his family.
The League of Sanguinocracy
I was just reading an old Raphael Sabatini novel, "The Master of Arms" and got reminded why I do so. In it he describes the government of revolutionary France as "sanguinocrats", or those who rule in blood. Gems like this are why you read old Raphael Sabatini novels. Anyway, it occurred to me that the bloody rule of Marat, Robespierre, and the mob was not the only sanguinocracy in modern history. Germany gave itself over to governance by phlebotomy for a time as well. States under the rule of blood have are defined by their tendency to kill people on accusation alone. It does not matter if the people dragging you to the block are the Committee for Public Safety, Gestapo, Saddam Fedayeen, Taliban, or the Revolutionary Council. This behavior leaves lasting scars on the psyche of a people, and their ability to perceive justice. Perhaps this explains the reluctance of France and Germany to chasten its current practitioners.
It is harder to spell the League of Sanguinocracy than it is the Axis of Evil. God forbid that George W. Bush might be forced to stake our nation's dignity on his pronunciation of that phrase. It does seem to fit, though. So, I suppose that if you do not like to use the word "evil", you can just call them "sanguinocrats". How you distinguish somebody who supports sanguinocracy from somebody who is evil is your own lookout.
Now as for the death penalty issue. There is a difference between the death penalty administered by a Democracy under the rule of law and the violation of reason allowed in a Sanguinocracy. If you cannot make that distinction, perhaps you can step over here to the guillotine and the Committee for Public Safety can explain it to you. By the way, anyone who cannot tell the difference is an enemy of the state and must be executed. Good luck in your role as Champion of the League of Sanguinocracy, shorty!
Sunday, December 21, 2003
Anywhere But Blogs
The primary "are you with us or against us" line has been drawn on the morality of war in the current era, and a lot of blogs have fallen to the right side of that line. Many of those who chose to defend the "only moral choice is peace" have been pushed further and further into indefensible positions as evidence of genocidal fascism mounts. Since one of the key elements of the blogsphere is feedback, the viability of maintaining a forum on an indefensible position is limited.
"Anybody But Bush" may look great on a bumper sticker in traffic, but having to argue that you would prefer the leadership of the free world in the hands of the Gambino crime family in the comments section of your blog is somewhat less rewarding an activity. Now when I saw that bumper sticker in traffic last week, I was only able to prevent the person from cutting in front of me. On a blog, I could have destroyed that person's worldview in a few terse paragraphs.
One of the critical problems for the leadership of the left is that they have chosen to a political identity that can be defended in the tight space of a bumper sticker slogan or the clamor of a protest rally chant and not elsewhere. The ability of your accusers to hyperlink to reams of contradictory evidence and commentary is not faced in rush hour traffic or the packed confines of an angry mob. The quantity and quality of the methamphetamines you are taking diminishes precipitously over time, and if you post something particularly stupid it sticks around on the Internet much worse than bumper sticker glue.
Saturday, December 20, 2003
The Left is Gripping
One of the great things about the living for years in the same room with more than thirty people where the toilets occasionally explode is that you gain tremendous stress management skills. Behaviors and events that would cause many to run screaming from the space barely cause you to lift your eyebrow. After I got out of the Navy I ran science fiction conventions and wore business suits. At first, strange people would try to "freak the mundane"; until it was rather conclusively proven that almost nobody could by being weird. They couldn't make me grip.
The term we used on my first ship often used to describe people who were not composed was "gripping". If your way of handling a situation was to take a death grip on anything solid and hold for dear life, you were gripping. People who had been afloat successfully for a number of years knew that the way you dealt with a fluid world was to stay mobile. The term was used to describe any kind of situation where excessive attachment to one particular was wasted effort and an imposition on those around you.
After 9/11, much of the Left is gripping. One of the things they are gripping to is the failed Presidency of Geo. Bush & Co., and all the rest of their world view circa September 10, 2001. Another thing they are gripping to: the notion that it is still acceptable to say out loud, "…by any means necessary." With their world crumbling around them, they grip tight to anything they can hold, even if what or who they have attached themselves to is falling into the abyss.
I suppose this is a predictable form of behavior, not limited to Western intellectuals. It still doesn't make it pleasant to watch or be around. It's not the kind of thing you want to happen to your friends or family. It certainly is not the behavior you want in a leader, as I can tell you from too much experience. You can say what you want about Geo. Bush & Co., but you can't say that they are gripping.
In the Spirit of the Holidays: EVIL!
Every morning I get up, pick the paper off the porch, and look at a summary of the important events happening around the world. Bad things happen all the time, but I am only exposed to a heavily edited and brief summary of them. I really don't see a lot of things that I can do about them, and I rarely see anything hideous that I might possibly be capable of.
Every morning, George W. Bush gets up and hell comes off the porch to visit him. The kinds of photos that no responsible editor would allow published are on his desk every morning. As much detail as he can stand is put into the reports he sees. Thousands of important things are presented for him to do and he can maybe glance at a tenth of them. Every day he sees horrors that he could reproduce, for a while, with the easy stroke of a pen.
It doesn't really bother me that George W. Bush uses the word "evil" to describe that which is abhorrent. A situation my detached perspective might see as shades of gray, his unfiltered view probably has to measure by the surrounding light it absorbs because it is so black. My friends and I who support the overthrow of fascists like Saddam talk about the existence of wood chippers and rape rooms. George W. Bush has access to videos of the real things in use and other horrors beyond our comprehension. What is more, George W. Bush has the capability to make those things happen here. If using the word "evil" helps him distance himself from the behavior that causes those atrocities, let him say it a thousand times a day. If using the word "evil" helps him eliminate the actual horrors, let him say it a million times.
Monday, December 15, 2003
The Difference It Makes
For the first time since World War II, the free world has caught the monster itself. Instead of delirious fantasies of glorious Saddam holding out against the oppressive forces of the west in a moodily lit cave, we have been shown the reality of a cranky old fugitive from justice hiding in a hole. That reality adjustment will certainly not slow the passionately delusional from calling foul at every imagined slight, but it does have some benefits for those who live in the real world.
First and foremost, the real Saddam loyalists have just gained a new focus. Instead of trying to hurt Americans and Iraqis who would be free, they have an obligation to discover Saddam's location and free him. As of right now, the criminals using terrorism to obtain control in Iraq have a substantial split in their ranks. The people just in it for racist violence will continue to attack our troops, but many of their local experts will be looking to other activities. How well the foreign fascists will do without the full support of indigenous fascists remains to be seen. The fissure this causes is only an opportunity, but Coalition forces have shown great enterprise when presented opportunities.
Next, this provides the fledgling government of Iraq a method of legitimizing the coming democracy in Iraq. The trial of Saddam Hussein will provide a solid foundation for a government by systematically analyzing the crimes of its predecessor. In exactly the same way that the Declaration of Independence denounced the failures of George III and the Constitution denounced the Articles of Confederation, this trail can put to rest the failures of the past and point a nation to a desired future.
The proof of the systemic atrocities committed with the complicity of those opposed to the United States and the Coalition will change how things are done going forward. Those opposed to the war will be forced to contend with the reality of the monster they supported or forever wander in denial and irrelevance. Chirac will have to explain away his pandering to Hussein. Schroeder will have to explain his pandering to Chirac. The Hollywood image factory will be working full time to sustain their tenuous political relevance once imagination is held accountable. It will be difficult to maintain that Halliburton overpricing is high drama during the trial of real genocidal fascist.
Finally, the accounting of the genocidal purges inflicted to keep Saddam in power could be the end of the legitimacy of the anti-war movement. Since the end of the horrors of trench warfare stalemate in WWI, the anti-war position has held the moral dominance of being more humane. The brilliant success of the Coalition forces has shown that wars fought decisively with the best troops and most precise weapons can be safer for an invaded people than their own leadership. It is extremely difficult to have moral reservations about attacking a country when you know that application of military force is much better for the people in question than leaving them in the hands of genocidal fascists. In many ways the abandonment of moral legitimacy has already happened with the rise of Stalinist A.N.S.W.E.R. to anti-war organization dominance. Now decent people will have to re-examine their prejudices or accept being stooges for a failed political position.
This is the difference it makes that Saddam Hussein is in custody. Bringing the monster to justice is something we were denied by Hitler's suicide. Stalin was never brought to trial and Fidel still holds on to power. Kim Jong Il has to know that hiding in a hole only lasts so long. Today the world knows that we can chain the beast. This is a great day.
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Letter to Congress Regarding the Coming Revolution in Iran
I believe that Iran deserves to be free and that it will be free soon. The amount of suffering that takes place in accomplishing that freedom is largely dependant upon the amount and kind of support rendered by the United States in the coming months. I think that the people of Iran have already suffered too much at the hand of their totalitarian leadership and that we have an obligation to reduce that suffering.
I ask you as my representative to make it known to the President that coherent planning and action are needed. I realize that we have a substantial obligation to support the development of the freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I support those efforts also. I realize that the demands of freeing fifty million people from decades of oppression are tremendous and that setting free another seventy million more is a substantial task. It is work worth doing and worth doing well.
I ask you to support the administration in accomplishing lasting freedom in Iran by the most humane means available. I understand that military invasion might well be one of those means. I do not believe that a prolonged insurgency against the standing government in Iran to be a humane or successful means. History shows that decisive actions are much less cruel than the blind slaughter of a protracted stalemate. With that in mind, I ask you to seriously consider supporting overt military action in Iran to reduce suffering. We do have the advantage of multiple entry routes in any such action.
Finally, the totalitarian government of Iran is a shelter and supporter of terror. They have actively worked for decades to destroy democracy in the region and the world. They label us "Satan" and they are developing nuclear weaponry. They already have motive and opportunity to create an atrocity against us, and we can no longer allow them time to develop the methods. Perhaps you remember the day two years ago when you were hustled out of the Capital due to the threat of a conventional attack. Do you really think you would have made it out if the attackers had possessed an atomic bomb? Have you seen any indication that the theocracy in Iran is sufficiently interested in progress that they would not risk a nuclear cataclysm? I am not so safe in Portland that I would risk you in Washington, D.C. to find this out.
I ask you to seriously consider the benefits of a Free Iran and to work with the administration to help accomplish this worthy goal.
Patrick S Lasswell
Portland, OR
Please consider writing to your Senators and Represenatives about this. If you want to steal my text, I ask that you give me some attribution because I am deeply vain.
http://www.house.gov/
http://www.senate.gov
Saturday, December 06, 2003
Test for Blog button
A fish eye for you!
The source of the image: My dad and I last summer with the largest salmon anyone in our family had ever caught from a boat.
For reference, I don't have a gap in my front teeth like it shows on the picture. I realize that dad doesn't look so good, but he's just spent all day on a boat, well after he should have been resting. It was vitally important that he make this trip though. He knew he could die at any time. Less than a year later, he did.
By the way, this is a 42 pound salmon I'm barely keeping held up in my arms. This is a BIG fish! I caught it.
Friday, December 05, 2003
IRAQ NOW
This is a really good blog that covers some interesting things from a military-literary (!) viewpoint. http://iraqnow.blogspot.com/ Some of the entries are truly of historical value in that they depict the mindset of military leadership in the most effective military in the history of the world.
If you favored the war in Iraq and are willing to consider further humane military options, you might like to see them in action. If you opposed the war, you might want to leave off obsessing about the minute size and deserved inactivity of your own genitalia and look at what is really happening in the world.
Thursday, December 04, 2003
Opposed To and Living With: Fascism
From September 1969 to January 1970, my family lived near Malaga, Spain. It was beautiful, on clear days we could see the Atlas Mountains and the Rock of Gibraltar. One morning fishermen pulled up a huge net of anchovies on the beach behind our house, it was the best catch they had in quite some time. Our maid cooked some of the fish immediately and they were as delicious as anything you can imagine. I was old enough to buy alcohol, because I could reach the counter with money standing on my tip-toes, and champagne was cheap and wonderful. Spain at the time was also a fascist dictatorship that my radical minister father was actively working with the brutally suppressed opposition to overthrow.
There are varying levels of fascism and varying levels of opposition. Just because a government has elements and practices that do not fully respect the freedoms of the people does not mean that blood has to run in the streets tomorrow. There certainly is a very grave risk that active opposition will cause greater harm and oppression to the people concerned than passive strategies. Arguably the hardest correct thing to do is nothing. If you doubt this, look closely at any number of tragic farces played out in South America over the last forty years. Look at the outright tragedies currently in play in Africa. Sometimes the only humane behavior is to try to do no harm.
There are limits to this inaction for humane reasons. At some points, you have to admit that you have done all that you can with restraint and move forward for humane reasons. At other points you must admit that a fascist regime is more than a danger to itself and is in fact a danger to all around it. It can be argued endlessly before and after when the moment to act came, and no answer will ever be satisfactory to more than a handful. It is always too late to overthrow a standing fascist government and always too early to go to war.
I have the privilege of living in the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth. The United States is a beacon of freedom and accomplishment in a dark and hostile world. There are limits to what we can accomplish. We can put a man on the moon, but we cannot put all men on the moon. Even if we could, snotty teenagers would still complain about the lines. Within those limits we have a capacity to act, and a responsibility to make those actions count. Priorities must be made, although it is reasonable to argue passionately for placement.
No small part of freeing the world is getting people here to have some awareness of the function of their opinions. Explaining to the "Meat is Murder" crowd that genocide is also murder needs to happen. People committed to giving cattle voting rights may not be reached, but certainly the time has come to take the forum from them. It is also time to tell people that stating "By any means necessary…" is exactly the same as giving a fascist salute. Wearing tie-die does not mean you support freedom, wearing a tie does not mean you are a fascist.
In light of the current flood tide of fascist governments, it is incumbent upon us as free people to increase our capacity to act. Ethanol subsidies and wildly out of control civil lawsuits diminish our capacity to free others around the world without providing us with any meaningful benefit. I do not think we absolutely must increase the size of our military, but I do think that we need to improve its quality. We do not need another fifty battalions ready to resist the Soviet hordes. We do need at least another fifty fully trained special operations teams active in the field. We also need a very strong training and operations budget for the people we do have. Being able to act capably and repeatedly is what the money goes to. Having a limited force for threatening people does not do the job of setting people free.
It has always been about freedom, and if we have forgotten that, we must remember it again. Although it is inflammatory to describe the political spectrum as pro-fascist and anti-fascist, the clarification is needed. There are some fascisms we can be opposed to and living with. We do not need to declare war on everyone immediately. We must shift the debate from the trivial to the crucial, and we must become better able to strike when the moment comes.
Wednesday, December 03, 2003
Slightly to the Right of Attila the Hun
Growing up in a liberal household, I honestly could not tell you how many times I heard the phrase used to describe somebody to be dismissed. Discounting a person's ideas, making them a non-person was as simple as reciting a magic charm. Since the subject of these dismissals was usually not Vlad the Impaler, a case could probably be made that the character of the person in question was more nuanced than the dismissal allowed. That never happened, though. The charm was cast, the demon vanquished, and the world was restored to a glorious black and white certainty of us versus the fascists.
Roger L. Simon, an interesting person who has made a long intellectual journey against a tidal change in beliefs has come to the conclusion that the primary distinction in international politics today is in fact that simple: pro-fascist versus anti-fascist. What distinguishes his current insight is where he draws those lines. He claims that people in support, for whatever reason, of fascist regimes in Syria, Iran, Palestine, North Korea, or elsewhere are pro-fascist. People opposed to the continuing of totalitarian dictatorships are anti-fascist.
There is some concern amongst his readers that he should not be using the word fascist so often. They claim that it cheapens the word and reduces its impact. I understand that concern, the need to keep the word up on a high shelf and use it only sparingly to preserve its power. Regrettably, that semantic strategy functions only to preserve the power of the word, and does nothing to dissuade the hateful crime the word represents.
One of the things preserving the power of the word fascist on the internet has been an acceptance of Godwin's Law, which states: "if you mention Hitler or Nazis in a post, you've automatically ended whatever discussion you were taking part in". Although this law functioned to hold down a veneer of civility in the early days of the internet, it also functioned to suppress discussion of very real threats to human freedom. It is time to repeal Godwin's Law in our own minds and have a discourse on the very real existence of totalitarian oppression in the world today. We also need to have a very clear idea of what our belief, statements, and actions do to empower or dissuade oppressive regimes, and that cannot take place if certain words are given magical powers.
Saddam Hussein made Vlad the Impaler look like a piker. The death toll in his war against Iran made the top-five list of wars in the industrialized killing twentieth century. Hundreds of thousands of his own countrymen were brutally murdered to maintain a constant terror of his regime. It can never be known how many women were raped by the official "defilers of women's honor" employed by his security apparatus. He was more than slightly to the right of Attila the Hun. Sean Penn and many others supported Hussein's regime, openly and without coercion. Sean Penn and many others need to be confronted for this, not on the basis of left versus right or conservative versus liberal. Sean Penn and many others need to be confronted with their decision to be pro-fascist, just like Lindbergh was.
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
Thanksgiving in Baghdad
My Uncle Roy wants to know what I think about Bush's famous visit to Iraq last week. I mentioned the visit at both Thanksgiving dinners I attended this year, my aunt's and my brother-in-laws. My Cousin Michelle was dismissive in the extreme and was more than eager to go off on an anti-Bush tirade; amazing everybody familiar with my willingness and aptitude to destroy family gatherings, I chose to discretely close the subject. My Mother-In-Law's immediate reaction was positive; she is a dear woman who served in the diplomatic corps and is quicker than a whip at salvaging social occasions. In both cases I brought it up because I thought the event very important.
Some in the press have complained about not getting the chance to cover the story. More than a few would have liked to cover it well enough to have caught footage of every SAM in the Middle East heading towards Air Force One. It was frankly humorous to hear CNN and the New York Times complain about how they had been excluded from covering it. I am sure that the President's staff thought long and hard about excluding these people from the trip; it probably gave them the kind of soft warm glow normally found only in a bottle of really good scotch. Perhaps the CNN and NYT folks should watch more episodes of "West Wing" to understand the kind of smarmy self-righteousness the White House staff felt about this. Oh wait, only the politically correct get to feel good about harmless petty triumph over their opponents!
I have a notion how good it feels to have somebody care about me while I served in the military. My Uncle Roy and Aunt Maxine visited me for graduation from Navy boot camp. I will forever be grateful to them for doing this. My immediate family never showed even the slightest interest in coming to see me during my service except in those occasions when they were in the area for their own reasons. I have the feeling that they didn't care for what I was doing. I got that feeling after my sister told me that I was a worthless brainwashed idiot for defending the US and its interests. This was after I had spent three years on a half-crewed frigate breaking my heart to keep her a fighting part of the fleet only to have her decommissioned on me. It was not the best time of my life.
Building Iraq is hard work and the people who are out there risking their lives to make it happen deserve all the support we can give them. Regardless of anything else, President George W Bush has given and continues to give our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan all the support he can. I disagree with some of the deals he is making to get the votes he needs to continue that support. I do not think that he is accomplishing everything that might be done, but I see strong evidence that his administration is doing as close to everything they reasonably can as to not matter. Flying to Iraq, sneaking past vicious criminals, not further endangering the troops, and providing a clear appreciation for the efforts of dedicated people is in the highest traditions of service to the United States.
Monday, December 01, 2003
Turnabout Is Fair Play
Almost thirty years ago I started reading Doonesbury. We didn't get the comics in the local paper; we got them in book form and read them over and over again. In the early 1970's they were a revelation, funny, topical, and above all liberal. About twenty-five years ago, Trudeau turned his eye on the situation in Iran and the "Stop the Shah" crowd. He was in favor of overthrowing the ancient dynasty and letting a new government take charge. I clearly remember the comics of Kissinger being confronted by his students wearing cardboard masks, one of whom had to cut an additional hole for his nose. The thing about the "Stop the Shah" masks was that they were worn to prevent the Iranian secret police from hurting your family. The joke was that the big-nose student was readily identifiable.
There are today some very dedicated and brave people working to free Iran from the control of the intolerant mullah's who are abusing the Persian people, but they aren't being covered in Doonesbury. This makes sense in a lot of ways because they aren't a joke. They don't wear masks for a lot of reasons, probably because the terror squads have already imprisoned or brutally killed their families. The other statement of not wearing masks is that they are prepared to be accountable for a democratic Iran. In the spirit of fair play, though, I think that Trudeau owes these people some coverage. Arnold in
California is undoubtedly an easier target and carries less anguish than admitting naïve stupidity. Can Doonesbury stay relevant another? Can Trudeau respect turnabout?
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