For FastEddie_Felson: a belated response

For those of you who aren't coming over to my humble blog from Gaijin Biker, a short synopsis of the debate I have been in with FastEddie. We got into a discussion (click on the Gaijin Biker link above) about whether or not the concept of torture can be applied to the conduct of U.S. armed forces and secuity personnel in Iraq, specifically Abu Ghraib. Among his arguments were the following points:

"Looking from the perspective of you and I who love our country, we should be unhappy when the principles of moral correctness that the U.S. stands for is disregarded. The psychological damage done to the Iraqi people, and what is trying to be accomplished in Iraq seems to have been high. I think it would have been much better if those pictures never came out, but what was happening stopped and those responsible punished.

Do you allow for bending of your morals for what ever cause you support? I can not and that was the point of my last posted comment. I can not excuse what happened to those prisoners by saying it was "overblown" and these things happen during wartime.

I hate the murder of innocents, such as the beheadings the insurgents have used to incite fear. Because the insurgents are dirty and evil we are allowed to lower our ideals too?

The torture of the prisoners was not beheadings, but it was not what I believe the U.S. stands for, it was evil.

I am not naive to believe that atrocities do not happen during war. War is defined by atrocities, hence my distaste. I can’t defend insurgents killing innocent people; I can’t defend torture of Iraqis or Afghanistanis, innocent or prisoners of war by American guards."

Good points all. I'm also guilty of not having checked my comments for the previous posting here at Langtry, so I feel honor-bound to feature, if you will, my response in its' own blog entry. I'll start with a tidbit of my response to FastEddie's note:

"Fast Eddie: To be perfectly frank with you, I do not understand the fetishization of Abu Ghraib, and I will not classify what took place there as torture. Humiliation, without a doubt: but torture? Only in a post-modern world where words no longer have any meaning would making state-sponsored rapists and murderers "feel like women" (a quote from one of those "tortured" as to what was the most horrifying aspect of having been an inmate at Abu Ghraib) qualify as torture. Let me also say that I believe you are sincere.

I know it disturbs you that we can't fight a war as the moral people we hold ourselves up to be: my response to you is to be realistic about the morals of those whom we are up against.

As I said before, I'll own that I possess a double-standard when it comes to the broad-based definition of torure that FastEddie advocates. My definition is more precise in that I don't include huimiliation as a constituent component of the concept of torture. Torture is having metal files pushed under your fingernails. Torture is having your arms tied together behind your back and being hung by same from a hook in the cieling, as was done to Sen. John McCain during his years as a P.O.W. in Viet Nam. Torture is having to witness your wife or daughter being raped, because you didn't respond to questions quickly enough. Torture is having your body crammed inside a crudely constructed (yet terribly effective ) "Iron Maiden" for the offense of having missed a goal in a soccer/football game. Torture is being paraded into a room in a large warehouse for the express purpose of seeing one of your friends fed, slowly, into an industrial shredding machine.

The last two atrocities I noted above were, in fact, committed by Sadam Hussein's son Uday, and members of the Fedayeen Sadam, in that order. The inmates being held at Abu Ghraib were, by and large, members of the Fedayeen Sadam, nefarious men who terrorized anyone who didn't have the priviledge of being among Sadam's Sunni minority, and who held all of the power in the government and society we (the U.S.) recently abolished. These were not poor saps who were forced at gunpoint to march with Saddam's militias and serve as frontline canon fodder. The inmates at Abu Ghraib were sadists, rapists, child molesters, grifters, "knee-cappers", and murderers. I'll gladly admit to a double-standard when it comes to acts of humiliation such creatures are be subjected to upon apprehension.

I say humiliation, FastEddie, because I do not yet know of any credible reports of soddomy, dog attack, electrocution, murder, and other incidents of terror having been committed by U.S. forces at Abu Ghraib. You may be more up-to-date than me: as of this moment it still appears to be at the "He Said/She Said" phase, and I am more apt to believe our guys than Saddam's. More time needs to be allowed for an objective, and comprehensive, investigation of the allegations. Until I have more credible information, I'm sticking to my guns (I know, bad choice of words, lol).

Is this to say I support the likes of Lyndie England and her co-horts? Absolutely not. Those asshats, in an ideal world, would have been recognized as head cases and underachievers and discharged from the military before being shipped out to Iraq. As it stands, we needed the manpower, and their true natures would not be known until the publication of the pictures those mental midgets managed to take of themselves, let alone distribute to family and friends. I hope they spend many years in prison, as they have tainted the achievements of their more dedictated compatriots.

Getting back to the issue of whether or not the case of Abu Ghraib is synonymous with torture, I just can't equate humiliation with what I understand to be the true nature and scope of the act. In the New York Times article that broke the this story, what I remember most from the article was the admission, by many of the detainees quoted, that the worst aspect of what they endured at Abu Ghraib was not having wires attached to their scrotums, or being forced to pose for naked cheerleader-style pictures. It was being (for the first time in their lives) in an inferior postition of power and having no control over their situation. It was, as one inmate put it, "being made to feel like a woman." In other words, they felt psychic pain over being powerless, and having no recognized rights or privileges. That's not torture. That's justice.

I'm not making this point to be a smartass, although it first blush it might appear that way. I appreciate the fact, FastEddie, that you want the U.S. held to a higher standard, one that we, as a nation, profess to hold. As I said before, I believe that making a determination about whether or not what we currently know to have occurred at Abu Ghraib constitutes torture, we have to look closely at those making the accusations. In doing so, we may find that our concept of morality becomes more fluid, more Machiavellian, especially when the concept of morality is being defined by those whom are wholely unfamiliar with the concept.

These men are not, in my opinion, credible witnesses. In the twisted world they live in, being humiliated is the worst kind of offense, and therefore their braying is likely to be loud and lasting. They are experts at playing to the vast wellspring of inferiority the Arab world feels when they are compared to their Western counterparts, and adept at using our moral standards against us. They hate women, they believe Jews are at the root of a conspiracy to rob them of their rightful place in the world, and they are quite adept at using the superior morality of Western nations to undermine us. They are not like the enemies we have faced in the past. Therefore, we cannot presume that they hold the same values we do, or that they define torture in the same way we do. You can be sure, however, that they will exploit our moral "failings" in the court of public opinion, whether or not they believe in the veracity of their assertions. This is realpolitik and it's most cynical manifestation, and we cannot afford to back down in its' face.

It has been shown, long before September 11th, that radical Islamic extremists do not value life, and that they abhor achievement, especially the sort gained through sustained effort. They would rather their children grow up to wage jihad than study medicine, or law, or education. They are a culture whose well has been poisoned for decades; not at the hands of despotic Western powers, but rather their own so-called "Leaders", who would rather wage terror for their own personal gain than work towards peace and prosperity. Radical Islam is a different enemy, and our standards must change in acknowledgement of this fact. I wish we could be more moral in fighting this enemy, but adherence to such standards may hurt us more than if we adapt, and use the standards our enemies against them. This may involve doing some things that feel foreign, and quite possibly immoral: however, they must be done.

But for the lipstick on my teeth, I like this picture! 

Curiouser and curiouser ...

The story about Sandy Berger "inadvertently" removing classified documents from their files during his preparations for his appearance before the 9/11 Commission is getting really weird.  Berger, Bill Clinton's former chief of the National Security Agency (NSA), claims that his souvenir taking was limited merely to his hand-written notes, along with  documents that he accidentally packed away in his binder. 
 
Perhaps this is indeed more innocent than it would appear, as former Republican strategist and one-time Clinton Adviser David Gergen asserts.  Perhaps.  But do you know anyone who "inadvertently" misplaces classified papers in their suit jacket, pants and socks? 
 
Neither do I.
 
Federal probe targets Clinton's national security adviser
 

"In a statement, Berger acknowledged that he removed his handwritten notes without first having them reviewed for sensitive information, and he also said he "inadvertently" removed some of the classified documents he had reviewed during his time at the Archives.  National Archives' policy requires that if someone reviews classified documents and wants to take their handwritten notes with them, those notes must first be cleared by archivists. 
 
In his statement, Berger said that "when I was informed by the Archives there were documents missing, I immediately returned everything I had, except for a few documents that apparently I had accidentally discarded."

"I deeply regret the sloppiness involved, but I had no intention of withholding documents from the commission, and to the contrary, to my knowledge, every document requested by the commission from the Clinton administration was produced," he said.

Fox News Online includes this critical tidbit:

"Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed the handwritten notes by placing them in his jacket, pants and socks, and also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio."
 
In the world I live in, that last statement is called Bulls$*t.  How do you knowingly place papers in your pants while inadvertently taking evidenciary papers in your portfolio?  It's clear to me that Berger wants to have it both ways, and with the precedent set for him by his former boss, I'm not surprised to see a reappearance of such bald-faced equivocation.
 
 
 
 
 
 

This is an issue I hoped not to have to discuss on this blog ...

but Rosie O'Donnell has forced my hand.

Anyone who reads this blog with any regularity knows that I consider the War on Terrorism to be the preeminent issue of our time. In fact, if we fail against our enemies, it makes all other issues moot. Especially the issue of Gay Marriage.

Sorry if this offends my gay friends. I am not making a judgement about your commitment to your significant others, but rather the extreme insensibility of focusing on this non-issue, and demanding the same level of focus from our political leaders, when there is a struggle for the survival of our country, our civilization taking place. If you cannot see how, should the Islamist way of life prevail, there will be no possibility of your living your lives as homosexuals, let alone marrying your partner, then there is no sense in paying you any attention. Your assertions to the contrary speak of narcissism in its' worst possible form, and those who would capitulate to your demands are ambitious narcissists who do so only to gain your vote.

So what, you ask, did Rosie O'Donnell do?

Rosie Takes Shot At Bush During Gay-Friendly Cruise

On a chartered "Gay Cruise" to Key West, O'Donnell castigated the Bush Administration:

"O'Donnell, who is a strong advocate of gay marriage and adoption, railed against President George W. Bush and the administration, according to the report.

"It will be the first time, except for prohibition, that bigotry has been added to the Constitution," O'Donnell said. "That the prevention of rights and exclusion of rights takes paramount over some religious ideology. And, supposedly, that is what we are fighting in Iraq -- A religious extreme government that is not letting people live freely."

I got news for you, Rosie: Any country where you and 2,000 others like you can charter a ship and cruise with your families in the Caribbean IS NOT beholden to a religious ideology. Any country where you, and your partner, can live a as a family IS NOT extremist in nature. A government that allows you to flourish as an entertainer, a celebrity and a capitalist while persuing a secular life free of any religious affiliation IS NOT a theocracy.

Yes, the Bush Administration supports an ammendment to ban gay marriage. They have their reasons for doing so, and I will admit that it would be much more prudent for them to ignore the sentiment of the "Religious Right" at this time. It's an election year, however, and both sides of the political spectrum in this country are seeking to solidify their traditional bases. Get over it.

In the meantime, your political panderers of choice, John Kerry and John Edwards, are busy trying to make you think that they will speak up on your behalf: "Where Bush seeks to deny, we will provide," if you will. Perhaps they will do a better job at promoting your particular interests. I just happen to think it's unfortunate that you put your own unique interests above the interests of our country and its' survival, which is the point of my screed. Far be it for some gays to stand united with everyone in protecting our country from harm and preventing another 9/11.

No, your largely manufactured issue of discrimination against gays is so much more important than a little thing like that.

P.S.: Prohibition banned the posession and sale of alcoholic beverages. It had nothing to do with discrimination.

Kerry/Edwards: 60's Narcissism Comes to Friution

My father was born just before the "Baby Boomer" era, as was my mother. Eminently sensible they continue to be, while most "Baby Boomers" seem devoted to being anything but. Why bother? Sensibility means considering others as well as yourself, and that just gets in the way of relating everything to one's self - the "Baby Boomer" obsession.

I'm not saying every person between the ages of 45 - 60 years is self obsessed: however, a remarkable number of those men and women in that category are. "Baby Boomers" control the media (not "The Jews" as many half-wits believe), and every event is filtered through their perception of reality. Consider:

Quagmire ... Viet Nam ... The 60's ... John F. Kennedy

With all due respect, I for one am sick of everything being compared to Kennedy, Viet Nam, Peace, Make Love Not War, The Man, etcetera ad infinitum. Scores of things just as important have happened in every decade since man began to record history.

My generation has seen just as much of triumph and tragedy as yours: you hold no monopoly on moral imperative.

"Daniel Henninger" weighs in on today's most glaring example of generational dissonance: the John Kerry / John Edwards democratic ticket:

Ditto, Ditto:
Kerryedwards is the most narcissistic ticket in 55 U.S. elections.

"Another thing that is unfair to say but hard not to notice: This may be the most narcissistic ticket in 55 U.S. presidential elections. These two guys really radiate self-awareness.

The oft-seen footage of the two emerging from a car after the VP announcement looked like a ZZ Top video for "Sharp Dressed Man." John Kerry slides a hand down his already smooth tie and deftly buttons his suit jacket. John Edwards checks the flaps on his coat pockets. "Silk suit, black tie." Both of their heads are rotating like satellite dishes scanning for signals. Light is ricocheting off porcelain in every direction. Come November, these two Power Rangers may have just worn out the electorate."

We're in a battle for our civilization here, and yet that fact seems to be anything but self-evident in the Democratic Party. After all, John Kerry, the man who expects to be our next President, has made two gigantic blunders in as many days: riding a wave of flotsam and jetsam, Kerry asserted that voters consider "We've got better hair!" Couple that with his statement on last night's "Larry King Live" that he hadn't yet had time to sit for his terror briefing. His stop right after Larry King? A fundraiser where emcee Whoopie Goldberg made graphic double entendres about the current President's last name. Far be it for a child of the 60's to give up scatalogical sermons in order to focus on the greatest threat in our country's history.

Holocaust deniers are "Murderers of Memory"

Timothy Ryback, author of the book "The Last Survivor: Legacies of Dachau", has written a compelling essay (Wall Street Journal online edition) on the very real possibility that rock solid evidence of The Shoah, commonly known as the Holocaust, may one day cease to exist.

Reasonable people everywhere might surmise that "this couldn't really happen, could it?"

Time has a way of erasing all remnants of people, places and things: it does not discriminate. The threat to historical sites such as Auschwitz and its' physical connections to the atrocities committed there is very real: for this the deniers lay in wait and, if historical ambivalence prevails, will be the inevitable fate of of that which the world cannot afford to forget ...

Preserving Auschwitz: Forensic evidence of the Holocaust is the best answer to the deniers.

"Last month, Jarek Mensfelt, spokesman for the Auschwitz memorial site, announced plans to preserve the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoria in the notorious death camp at Birkenau near the Polish town of Oswiecim. "This is an attempt to keep it as it is now--in ruins--but not let the ruins go," he said. "It was meant to be here forever as a warning."

In the coming weeks, as the Auschwitz preservationists begin their work, they should be guided by the knowledge that these heaps of dynamited concrete and twisted steel are not only historic artifacts but among the few remnants of untainted, forensic evidence of the Holocaust.

Of course, the historical and circumstantial evidence of a premeditated Nazi plan to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe is overwhelming. There are the watch-tower-girded enclosures of Nazi concentration camps and the extensive testimonials of Holocaust survivors, as well as the court protocols of Nazi war criminals, but there is little forensic evidence proving homicidal intent. The Nazis were scrupulous when it came to obscuring the "Final Solution" in bureaucratic euphemism and also dismantling or obliterating their machinery of death. The dearth of hard evidence has fueled a growth industry in Holocaust-denial.

The revisionists' plaint is simple: They demand a proverbial "smoking gun" to prove that the Nazis deliberately and systematically designed an industrial system of extermination. They do not deny that millions of European Jews died from malnutrition, exhaustion and disease. They do not even deny that Zyklon B gas was employed at Auschwitz, but they claim it was used for delousing rather than homicidal purposes. One French critic has denounced them as "assassins de la memoire"--murderers of memory.

Never Forget.

David Brooks: Age of Political Segregation

Is the information age responsible for an increasingly polarized American society? In today's online edition of The New York Times, David Brooks asks this question, and provides compelling evidence for the affirmative:

"I've been writing about polarization a fair bit recently, and the more I look into it, the more I think I'll just move to Tahiti. That's because the causes of polarization — at least among elites — have little to do with passing arguments about the war, the Bush leadership style or the Clinton scandals. The causes are deeper and structural ... to a large degree, polarization in America is a cultural consequence of the information age. This sort of economy demands and encourages education, and an educated electorate is a polarized electorate.

As examples of this, Brooks offers the following points:

+ That's because college-educated voters are more ideological.

+ Once you've joined a side, the information age makes it easier for you to surround yourself with people like yourself. And if there is one thing we have learned over the past generation, it's that we are really into self-validation. * Editor's Note: This is so true! Why else do I blog?

+ We don't only want radio programs and Web sites from members of our side — we want to live near people like ourselves ... the political result is that Republican places become more Republican and Democratic places become more Democratic.

+ When we find ourselves in such communities, our views shift even further in the dominant direction. You get this self-reinforcement cycle going, which social scientists call "group polarization."

+ People lose touch with others in opposing, now distant, camps. And millions of kids are raised in what amount to political ghettoes.

Brooks is worth a regular indulgence for a multitude of reasons. Not only is he amazingly erudite, but he's eminently sensible and always a gentleman. That can't be said for his colleagues in Op-Ed at The Times. Go and read the whole of it.

TCS: "The Real Air War Has Now Started"

Tech Central Station online has an essay by James K. Glassman that everyone concerned with the affect of left-leaning non-profit media sites on the presidential election should read ...

" A free-market conservative organization -- called a "527 political organization" after a section in the tax code -- goes public on Friday with hard-hitting independent issue ads on television. It's about time.

The ads ask viewers to imagine how Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass), the likely Democratic presidential candidate, would have reacted to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, especially considering his voting record of opposition to spending on measures to increase U.S. security.

The ads, which may provoke an uproar in the media because they show footage shot at the World Trade Center site after the attacks, contrast Kerry's likely reaction to the courage and determination shown by President Bush.

The new commercials, the work of the Progress for America Voter Fund, place conservative messages on a field that has been dominated, up until now, by the Left."

Of course, the LLL's are livid at the thought. (BTW: Don't bother trying to equate this with the Liberal's latest rant - that the media is controlled by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (VRWC), the proof of which can be found in the advertising embargo on Michael Moore's "FarenCrap: 9/11" - they'll never see the light of reality.) LLL's will also try to paint Progress for America as not being eligible for designation as a 527. This can be a dangerous tack for them to take, as the media/internet darling MoveOn.org, a creation of the truly nefarious George Soros, is also a 527:

"According to press reports, liberal 527s, including the MoveOn.org Voter Fund, the Media Fund, and Americans Coming Together (ACT) have had a huge head-start, fueled in large part by the donations of one person, the billionnaire George Soros, for whom defeating George W. Bush has become an obsession. Soros has given $2.5 million to MoveOn and $10 million to ACT.

Soros's spending makes a mockery of the intentions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, which sought to bar large contributions. Critics of McCain-Feingold pointed out the loopholes, but the bill passed anyway, and groups backing Democrats immediately exploited it.

Through April 15, the latest reporting period, MoveOn had spent $15 million; the Media Fund, $10 million; and ACT, $11 million. MoveOn's commercials have been especially inflammatory. In January, MoveOn apologized for posting on its website two commercials that compared President Bush with Adolf Hitler.

The playing field is on its' way to becoming level, despite the early attempts by Soros and his ilk to prevent conservatives from being able to share the media pulpit. You can be certain there's a great deal of concern yonder the Democratic National Committee's way, as it would appear their media & internet advantage is short-lived.

Sarasota principle defends Bush from "Fahrenheit 9/11" portrayal

NaplesNews.com Article

"Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11" criticizes President Bush for listening to Sarasota second-graders read a story for nearly seven minutes after learning the nation was under attack on Sept. 11, 2001.

But Gwendolyn Tose'-Rigell, the principal at Emma E. Booker Elementary School, says Bush handled himself properly.

"I don't think anyone could have handled it better," Tose'-Rigell told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in a story published Wednesday. "What would it have served if he had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?"

"If Bush is another Hitler, what words are left to describe Hitler?"

In today's Wall Street Journal online edition, Bret Stephens asks a question that, were this world (or at least its' media) sane, wouldn't even need to be asked. Yet it does, and should be shouted from the proverbial rooftop. In case you are unable to access it, I have reprinted it in its' entirety below.

Just Like Stalingrad:
If Bush is another Hitler, what words are left to describe Hitler?

According to Sidney Blumenthal, a onetime adviser to president Bill Clinton who now writes a column for Britain's Guardian newspaper, President Bush today runs "what is in effect a gulag," stretching "from prisons in Afghanistan to Iraq, from Guantanamo to secret CIA prisons around the world." Mr. Blumenthal says "there has been nothing like this system since the fall of the Soviet Union."

In another column, Mr. Blumenthal compares the April death toll for American soldiers in Iraq to the Eastern Front in the Second World War. Mr. Bush's "splendid little war," he writes, "has entered a Stalingrad-like phase of urban siege and house-to-house combat."

The factual bases for these claims are, first, that the U.S. holds some 10,000 "enemy combatants" prisoner; and second, that 122 U.S. soldiers were killed in action in April.

As I write, I have before me a copy of "The Black Book of Communism," which relates that on "1 January 1940 some 1,670,000 prisoners were being held in the 53 groups of corrective work camps and 425 collective work colonies. In addition, the prisons held 200,000 people awaiting trial or a transfer to camp. Finally, the NKVD komandatury were in charge of approximately 1.2 million 'specially displaced people.' "

As for Stalingrad, German deaths between Jan. 10 and Feb. 2, 1943, numbered 100,000, according to British historian John Keegan. And those were just the final agonizing days of a battle that had raged since the previous August.

Mr. Blumenthal is not alone. Al Gore last month accused Mr. Bush of creating "more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation." Every single column written by the New York Times' Paul Krugman is an anti-Bush screed; apparently, there isn't anything else worth writing about. A bumper sticker I saw the other day in Manhattan reads: "If you aren't outraged, you're not paying attention."

There are two explanations for all this. One is that Mr. Bush really is as bad as Sid, Al and Paul say: the dumbest, most feckless, most fanatical, most incompetent and most calamitous president the nation has ever known. A second is that Sid, Al and Paul are insane.

The best test of the first argument is the state of the nation Mr. Bush leads. In the first quarter of 2004, the U.S. economy grew by an annualized 4.4%. By contrast, the 12-nation eurozone grew by 1.3%--and that's their highest growth rate in three years. In the U.S., unemployment hovers around 5.6%. In the eurozone, it is 8.8%. In a recent column, Mr. Krugman wrote that the U.S. economic figures aren't quite as good as they seem. But even granting that, the Bush economy is manifestly healthy by historical and current international standards.

There is the situation in Iraq, where the U.S. has lost about 800 soldiers in action over the course of more than a year, as well as several thousand Iraqis. The fact that events have not gone well over the past two months is somehow taken as proof that they've gone disastrously. Yet in the run-up to the war, the German Foreign Ministry was issuing predictions of about two million Iraqi deaths, making the actual Iraqi death a very small percentage of that anticipated total. As for the American rate, the U.S. lost more than 6,000 soldiers in Vietnam in 1966, the year U.S. troop strength there was comparable to what it is now in Iraq. That's about nine times as many fatalities as the U.S. has so far sustained in Iraq.

There is the charge that, under Bush, the United States has qualified for most-hated-nation status. Maybe so. But it is not entirely clear why this should be so decisive in measuring the accomplishments or failures of the administration. President Reagan was also unpopular internationally back in his day. Nor is Israel an especially popular country. But that's no argument for Israel to measure itself according to what Jordanians or Egyptians think of it.

The point here is not that Mr. Bush has a flawless or even a good record or that his critics don't have their points. The point is that, at this stage in his presidency, Mr. Bush cannot credibly be described as some kind of world-historical disaster on a par with James Buchanan and Herbert Hoover, nor can he credibly be accused of the things of which he is accused.

This brings us to our second hypothesis, which is that his critics are insane.

This is an easier case to make. Mr. Blumenthal, for instance, is the man who described Bill Clinton's presidency as the most consequential, the most inspiring and the most moral of the 20th century, only possibly excepting FDR's. Mr. Krugman spent his first couple of years as a columnist writing tirades about how the U.S. economy was on the point of Argentina-style collapse.

What makes these arguments insane--I use the word advisedly--isn't that they don't contain some possible germ of truth. One can argue that Mr. Clinton was a reasonably good president. And one can argue that Bush economic policy has not been a success. But you have to be insane to argue that Mr. Clinton was FDR incarnate, and you have to be insane to argue Mr. Bush has brought the U.S. to its lowest economic point since 1932. This style of hyperbole is a symptom of madness, because it displays such palpable disconnect from observable reality.

If you have to go looking for outrage, the outrage probably isn't there. That which is truly outrageous tends to have the quality of obviousness.

So here is one aspect of this insanity: no sense of proportion. For Mr. Blumenthal, Fallujah isn't merely like Stalingrad. It may as well be Stalingrad, just as Guantanamo may as well be Lefertovo and Abu Ghraib may as well be Buchenwald, and Mr. Bush may as well be Hitler and Hoover combined, and Iraq may as well be Vietnam and Bill Clinton may as well be Franklin Roosevelt.

The absence of proportion stems, in turn, from a problem of perspective. If you have no idea where you stand in relation to certain objects, then an elephant may seem as small as a fly and a fly may seem as large as an elephant. Similarly, Mr. Blumenthal can compare the American detention infrastructure to the Gulag archipelago only if he has no concept of the actual size of things. And he can have no concept of the size of things because he neither knows enough about them nor where he stands in relation to them. What is the vantage point from which Mr. Blumenthal observes the world? It is one where Fallujah is "Stalingrad-like." How does one manage to see the world this way? By standing too close to Fallujah and too far from Stalingrad. By being consumed by the present. By losing not just the sense, but the possibility, of judgment.

Care for language is more than a concern for purity. When one describes President Bush as a fascist, what words remain for real fascists? When one describes Fallujah as Stalingrad-like, how can we express, in the words that remain to the language, what Stalingrad was like?

George Orwell wrote that the English language "becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." In taking care with language, we take care of ourselves.

Mr. Stephens is editor of the Jerusalem Post, where this article first appeared.

Link to Article

Safire Assails 9/11 Commission Posturing

In his op-ed piece entitled The Zelikow Report, New York Times columnist William Safire (one of the few reasons to read The Slimes nowadays) assails the swiftness with which major media outlets jumped on the report of what the Commission stated was a 'lack of connection between Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Regime and the perpetrators of 9/11.

Did you know that the report detailing these findings was not the final report on the matter? Did you also know that contradictory information came out within twenty-four hours of this interim report? Not if you didn't read beyond the headlines of the Washington Post, the Times, or the Associated Press reports that headlined many of the world's front pages, you didn't.

A Unique "Eye" on Chicago

Chicago Sun-Times WeatherCam

This webcam is situated atop the Chicago Sun-Times building at Wasbash Avenue and the Chicago River. It's panoramic and fully controllable through a unique (I've never seen one like it) feature located below the live-updated image. Catch it while it's still there, folks, because come October 2004 the Sun-Times will be moving out so that The Donald can move in and build his latest phallic substitute (I'm kidding, as I kinda like Trump and his limitless chutzpah). It's his "Apprentice", Bill Rancic that I can't stand. Go to work, already!

Anti-Zionism Does Equal Anti-Semitism

From Little Green Footballs comes a must read:

Because They Are Jews:
Enemies of Israel insist their hatred has nothing to do with Israel being a Jewish state. Can this be true?

In BeliefNet online, Rabbi David Wolpe clearly and concisely outlines the reasons why those who claim to be Anti-Israel / Anti-Zionist but not Anti-Semitic are deluded at best, amoral at worst. One could call this essay "The LLL Alternate Universe for Dummies". The Rabbi tells it like it is. During the darker moments where I consider what it means to be an American and what it means to be an Isreali (and in the 21st Century they mean exactly the same thing - the alchemy of envy, hatred and intolerance made terrifyingly whole in terrorism), I really do think that God is testing the world. Not Jews and Americans, specifically, but those who would target and murder them.

"It may be happenstance that people who live in countries where Jews were hated for millennia are saying that only Jews should not have a country, or criticize that country exclusively, or ignore atrocities perpetrated by other countries, or have deep understanding of those who are moved to murder Jews. It may shows nothing but a sensitivity bordering on paranoia to be troubled at the juncture of ancient, enduring hatreds with modern censure. Criticism of Israel across Europe surely has nothing to do with the searing observation by David Cesarani in London's Guardian that "Indeed, the 'final solution of the Jewish question' was probably the only genuine pan-European enterprise of the 20th century." The last thing all Europe agreed upon was the elimination of Jews, and now it agrees on the unredeemable savagery of Israel. To assume a relation between the hatred that was and the vilification that is risks being called "a Zionist propagandist" one of those phrases designed not to describe, but to strangle discussion.

I know people in Israel whose children have been killed. Not because someone else was the intended target, not because of clumsiness or the heedless use of great force, but because the children were deliberately targeted. After all, the murderers last month of the Hatuel family stopped a pregnant woman and four children in a Jeep, and systematically shot each of them. Neither the mother nor the little children were armed. They were merely Jews. Imagine if it were done on the streets of a major American city. Here such a person is called Charles Manson; in the halls of the Hague, they are fighters for freedom.

Are Jews always the victims? Certainly not. Israel is in a grip of mutual despair with Palestinians who have suffered much, and their plight is intolerable. That is why more than 150,000 people showed up to demonstrate in Israel on May 15 in favor of a Gaza pullout, the only country in the area where such a demonstration could peaceably take place."

Read it all, and emerge with enough intellectual arms and armor to debunk any and all who would attempt to spew anti-semitic hatred as anything but.

From the "That's News To Me" department ...

In a deposition regarding sexual harassment of females by University of Colorado football players, the University of Colorado President, Elizabeth Hoffman claims (President)says slur can be "term of endearment" . Hoffman, a Medieval History scholar, asserts that the "C-word" (used to refer to a woman's private parts) hasn't always been a pejorative one. Perhaps this was so in 500 - 1400 AD, but there's no positive connotation in the 21st century:

In the deposition, Hoffman was asked whether the "c-word" is "filthy and vile."

She said she knows the word is a swear word, but "It is all in the context of what--of how it is used and when it is used."

She was asked, "Can you indicate any polite context in which that word would be used?"

Hoffman answered, "Yes, I've actually heard it used as a term of endearment."

Clearly, President Hoffman runs in a far racier crowd than I do.

Tammy Bruce in Townhall.com: President Reagan Changed Me

I haven't written yet about former President Reagan's passing, and for good reason. Reagan was President during my formative high school & college years, and during that time there was a certain degree of indoctrination that had taken hold in my still-forming socio-political psyche. It wasn't considered compassionate, or particularly intelligent, to allign oneself with an unabashed conservative. My views of feminism, as practiced at my small womens' Catholic college, caused me to think most of its' adherents were zealots of the 'Man Haters 101' ideology, but I still held hopes of its' being redeemed as a source of self-reliance. It was easy to think that the world, and the people who lived in it, could be perfected. I have changed since then, profoundly so.

Many of those memories I've reconnected with today have come as a result of reading Tammy Bruce's President Reagan Changed Me in today's online edition of Townhall. It's an especially compelling piece when you consider that Ms. Bruce, ten years ago, was the President of the National Organization for Women (NOW).

"Ronald Reagan was hated, and still is, in the feminist-establishment circles in which I grew up. That milieu subsists on enemies and hatred. I took my cues from the women around me, women I admired. They were strong and confident, and they knew. They knew who was out to get us. They knew who was determined to throw us back into the Dark Ages. They knew Reagan was evil.

I tell you this not as an excuse for my past actions but as a further illustration of what I’ve been discussing ... the way malignant narcissism is spread. You see, the seed of my politics, the politics I espouse now, were already manifested in my voting for President Reagan 10 years earlier. I liked him, and I believed he had the best interests of Americans in mind. During my involvement with NOW, however, what took over was my need to be accepted, the romanticization of my “victimhood,” and the power I could achieve by following the models of the women at the top. Those women were happy that Reagan was sick, so I would be, too.

The conditioning of the Left Elite works so well partly because the people attracted to that camp are looking for family, they are looking to belong; consequently people like that – people like me – are easy pickings. My emptiness compelled me to cheer when a decent man who followed his principles was struck down by an unforgiving assailant. Alzheimer’s had done what many feminist leaders fantasized about doing themselves, if only they could get away with it.

It's a long yet worthwhile essay, and I admire Tammy Bruce's ability to be true to her core beliefs, incl. stem cell research, and the right of a woman to choose an abortion, even if I do not agree in principal with those beliefs.

Why? Because she is able to do so, at least now, without the need to eviscerate the reputation of a those on the other side, be they politician, public figure, or a plebian like me who disagrees with her. She seems to be someone with whom I could engage in a sober and civil discussion about important issues we disagree upon.

Maybe that is what strikes me about this essay, not just her admitted admiration for Ronald Reagan or her political transformation. It's that so much of our political discourse has devolved into shrill and nihilistic raging from The Left, who regard all conservatives as "Right Wing Religious Fanatics". This is met by The Right, to whom much of The Left looks increasingly out of touch with reality. Civility is gone, and all differences are reduced to life and death struggles.

I would argue that most Neo-Cons (myself included), believe not in the sovreignty of the bible in all personal and political matters, but rather in the need to support existing democracies while establishing new ones where they are most needed as the only effective way to deal with the problem of terrorism. Many of us started out as Democrats, may still grudgingly call ourselves so, but the Democratic Party of the 21st Century, with it's continued obeisance to group-think and divisivenes, and its' continued denial of the threat we are facing, is not the one we grew up with.

Thinking about these matters, however, requires introspection into areas that are challenging, and scary, too. Humility is required, as well as listening to others whose views we have been conditioned to think of as foreign and therefore distrustful. Tammy Bruce went looking anyway, and her story is deserving of our attention.

Peggy Noonan on Today's College Graduates

It's commencement season, readers (all 3 of you, lol!), and Peggy Noonan takes an optimistic yet measured look at the next generation in today's online Opinion Journal:
Big Mike, No Message: Sizing up college grads, secular Europeans, antismoking zealots and John Kerry.

In this first portion of the piece, she remarks how struck she is by the number of young Ivy League graduates planning to go into television and journalism. What concerns her is their desire to be communicators, when they are unable to convey just what it is they want to communicate.

A short aside before you click on the link ... Peggy is an amazing writer, probably the best speech writer in the business (she wrote one of Ronald Reagan's most eloquent speeches - the one he delivered at the eulogy for the space shuttle Challenger astronauts), but she can sometimes wax a bit loony, as she does here when she writes: "I have been paying attention to the graduates of Ivy League universities. Every one I see the past few weeks is beautiful. They are tall and handsome and gay-spirited; they are strong and laughing and bright." Sometimes you have to take the goofy with the great, and her stuff is often times the latter:

I see no sign they are going to start thinking anything truly unusual for their time and generation--that religious conversion can be a wholly beneficial and life changing event, for instance, or that breaking with liberal orthodoxy might be the beginning of wisdom.

It must leave them finding it a challenge to speak of their beliefs in an interesting way. They often seem to fall back on attitude--wit, irony, poking fun at the thick-witted--in place of sustained thought, or meaning. And still they want to communicate for a living. I think of this problem as "big mike, no message." They are trained in the finest points of communication, but when they turn on the microphone, they have nothing serious to say.

I'd be interested to know if you are in agreement with her general sentiment, as I am.

The Onion comes to the rescue with Tornado Safety Tips!

A little humor as we head into the first weekend in June - Yippee!

Sorry to admit that I am clueless about photo-hosting for the site, so I will have to link up to my favorite The Onion infographic in many moon: Tornado Safety Tips

My personal favorite?

"In the event of a tornado, lie down in a ditch. If you are already lying in a ditch, do not attempt to sit up."

Walter Williams: "Three Cheers for the Cos"

In today's Townhall.com columnist Walter Williams weighs in a the controversy surrounding Bill Cosby's recent statements at a service commemorating fifty years since the landmark "Brown v. Board of Education" decision. Williams provides a good intro:

" May 17 saw several gatherings commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court school desegregation decision in Brown vs. Board of Education. But the event held in Washington, D.C.'s Constitution Hall will be the one to be remembered because of Bill Cosby's remarks, which won him scathing criticism from some in the black community.

For years, I've argued that most of the problems many black Americans face today have little or nothing to do with racial discrimination. For the most part, the most devastating problems encountered by a large segment of the black community are self-inflicted. Bill Cosby mentioned several of them, such as black parents who'll buy their children expensive clothing rather than something educational, poor language spoken by many children and adults, and criminals who prey on the overwhelmingly law-abiding residents of black neighborhoods."

Many in the audience apparently agreed and laughed and applauded at Cosby's chutzpah. The reaction of the NAACP leaders, however, was one of horror. Horror that Bill Cosby would make statements outside of what the NAACP deems appropriate and acceptable.

In a recent column, my colleague Thomas Sowell explained, "Bill Cosby and the black 'leadership' represent two long-standing differences about how to deal with the problems of the black community. The 'leaders' are concerned with protecting the image of blacks, while Cosby is trying to protect the future of blacks, especially those of the younger generation."

Go and read it. It says a lot about why the NAACP and other orgnaizations that claim to represent black americans are probably those least suited to alter the landscape of the black working-class / innercity experience.

Just when I think I can't take my job anymore, some little thing makes it all worthwhile ...

Yes, I work in a hospital. No, it's not very interesting work, as I am not a clinician (medical staff). Once in while, though, the comedic value of this place outweighs all other considerations. Case in point?

This morning the caffiene intake from my morning joe isn't proving sufficient, so I head over to the vending machines in the Emergency Room waiting area to grab a Diet Coke. To get to the machines, I circumvent the security check-in, where a young man is removing all metal objects from his pockets. Smells like an ash tray. So far, nothing new.

However, his T-Shirt caught my eye. It's caption:

Will Work For Weed

I kid you not.

Jose Padilla is right where he belongs

Seems like a fairly strong emotion for someone I do not know personally, hmmm? After all, say the LLL's, I am affected more by his denial of civil rights than his murderous plans. To hyper-intellectualized (or perhaps dissociated is a better word) asshats, this may be true; to me, Jose Padilla is a direct threat that's been neutralized, and that's a very good thing.

U.S.: 'Dirty bomb' suspect planned to blow up apartments

``Padilla and the accomplice were to locate as many as three high-rise apartment buildings which had natural gas supplied to the floors,'' the government summary of interrogations revealed. ``They would rent two apartments in each building, seal all the openings, turn on the gas, and set timers to detonate the buildings simultaneously at a later time,'' the papers alleged. The documents said al-Qaida officials were skeptical of Padilla's ability to set off a dirty bomb but were very interested in the apartment operation. Top al-Qaida officials ``wanted Padilla to hit targets in New York City, although Florida and Washington, D.C. were discussed as well,'' the summary said.

I find little comfort in the fact that he apparently intended to target buildings on the East Coast. As some of you may remember, Padilla (a Chicago native) attempted to enter Chicago's O'Hare International Airport via Pakistan, not Mexico or Puerto Rico, as the Chicago Tribune article states. How do we know that Chicago apartment buildings were to be spared? We don't, and that makes me angry and scared.

I'm not angry at the Bush administration, nor the Department of Homeland Security or the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA). They did their difficult job well, and caught this former Humboldt Park gangbanger-turned-terrorist creep before he could carry out his (and Al Qaeda's nefarious plans). I'm angry at the people who continue to pretend that we aren't in a fight for our very lives, and sad for myself and my friends who live in apartment buildings here in Chicago and throughout the US. These apartment buildings are our homes, and it is where we live with our loved ones, be they spouses, boyfriends, children or pets. I take it personally when someone means to do us in.

So should the LLL's.