shorter bushbeat/village voice...,
2005-06-21 12:55:37
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independent broadcast media...,
2005-06-21 15:09:09
max speaks:
...Hillary, who has the nomination in '08 so locked up it isn't funny, is that there is no middle ground. If she extends her centrist performance to some kind of failure-is-not-an-option position, she follows in Hubert Humphrey's footsteps and ensures the participation of a peace candidate. Democrats can only hope that her center leanings are aimed at insulating her from advocating withdrawal.
Sure as hell isn't getting my vote, the only thing worse that this war on Iraq was her husband's disasterous, seemingly purposeful mismanagement of the sanctions regime. Could have flooded the country with NGOs and aid workers and engineers to rebuild civillian infrastructure all the while engaging the weapons inspections regime and turned it into a propaganda victory for the West, but no, had to underfund oil for food and turn a blind eye to massive black market sales to keep unnecessary military bases in Turkey, etc. etc.. Can't really imagine a worse person to lockup the nomination.
update: Had a chance to read "The Conversation We Need" that initiates Max's speaking.
Good grief. This: "blaming the military for what the policy-makers sent them to do is one aspect of Vietnam that we should not repeat", is not something that could be repeated because it never really happened. People seriously have to doubt the credentials of anybody who starts out by reinforcing the fictions of Rambo movies.
The "movement", the major organized segments of anti-war opinion, didn't impunged the military during Vietnam. The military leadership impunged itself, the rank and file was the anti-war movement, just as the most mobilized and active anti-war voices now are from the military and their families and supporteres, while the military leadership is dealing with its ongoing self-destruction on the horns of a viscious, unending guerilla war. Too few Americans are out on the streets supporting those military families, as it happens. Most Americans are at best respectfully writing their representatives or something, if that. Most are probably watching some dipshit "reality tv" contest to escape from their lifesucking, mindnumbing jobs.
Get out 'now': set a timetable, withdraw responsibilty and toss the problem at the UN, and then the Right can blame it all on them later, they're already blaming anti-war opinion and the UN anyway. They're blaming anybody but themselves for their own policies, and why should we care when we can blame them for their own policies.
There's no concievable way this administration is ever going to adopt a responsible position, least of all one that puts Iraqi interests ahead of their own, the ostensible cause for this debacle. And few in this country are sold on altruistic sacrifices of military lives. Maybe they would be for a volunteer military openly dedicated to altruistic peace-keeping initiatives, it's worked in other countries, but that's not what we have nor particularly what we should do.
So far as getting a withdrawal goes, just passing an emergency Iraq appropriations bill is, by itself, going to be one hell of a fight. Either the sadly pathetic Ds take congress back or we find a way of carrying a decent chunk of the Republican party with us (not impossible), and we need to find a way to do either without making Iraq the subject of further punishment from congressional nationalists, R and D both, afterwards.
Or it's all utterly pointless: their lives are just as important as ours, and if we were to actually judge this on its rhetorical humanitarian pretenses their lives are more important than ours. It's called sacrifice, like what you'd do for a neighbor in need, and so far freedom loving average everyday Iraqis have done most of the sacrificing for our good intentions, and I'd like to think that most of us still have some.
update update: this is timely and idiotic: "The left is scrambling to disassociate themselves from Phleps's insane protest at military funerals and still maintain that they support our troops". That's rich. Fred Phelps is a far-right fundamentalist with which "the left" was never associated, so there couldn't be any scrambling involved. Is it the right's responsibility to eat their Phelpian assholes? It ought to be enough for anybody to say "I disagree", and thence be disassociated, but that might dangerously lead to people having reasonable discussions.
