Aren't They Cute?

While I’m sure some would argue that I’ve already filled my niche for Quirky Obscure Sport Familiarity, I have to admit to being frequently tempted to follow the CFL; it's like college ball without the recruiting scandals.

Confidence

The appalling spectacle in the wake of Hurricane Katrina has exposed many unpleasant realities about our nation, few of which should surprise anyone.  But perhaps the most alarming revelation is the stunningly poor response by FEMA and the Department of Defence Against the Dark Arts Homeland Security.  From the cronyism of Michael D. Brown to the inattention of Michael Chertoff, the Federal agencies charged with catastrophe prevention, mitigation, and relief were woefully unprepared for a large-scale emergency that not only could have been but in fact was predicted.  Multiple times.

As even the press have realized, this failure goes beyond extreme conditions, incompetence, and red tape.  Some may be inclined to attribute it to the institutionalization of our national, "I got mine, fuck you and yours" ethos.  Others see the fruition of the campaign of hostility towards government itself.  But it is clear to me that the images and sounds of last week most strikingly revealed the great fraud that the Bush Administration has perpetrated upon the American public: that after 9/11, whatever else you might think of George W. Bush and his policies, he will use all the powers and resources of the government to protect the American people.  The fear and chaos of 9/11 drove many Americans to suspend their judgment of Bush for the promise that he put their security first and would not suffer it to be compromised for any reason.  For those who care to look, this promise can now be seen to have been a base, venal lie.

In the weeks after 9/11, the public was cautioned against scam artists posing as charitable organizations, soliciting donations that would never reach the victims and their families.  From the criminal neglect of FEMA to the Kafkaesque reorganization of Homeland Security to the hostile indifference to post-invasion planning for Iraq, the Bushies have made a big pitch for security while hastily erecting the thinnest possible scrim between the American people and whatever peril awaits them.  Meanwhile, the national debt has exploded, the middle class has shrunk, and now we’re repealing the estate tax.  As political grifters go, Rove, Bush, and Cheney are masters of the long con.

Governing Best, Governing Least

Critics of the Global War On Terror™ have often chided Bush for squandering post-9/11 national unity by not asking Americans to make sacrifices.  I hope such critics are happy now.

The Last Worst Hope

While some might be tempted to derive churlish pleasure from the sight of President Bush chased out of Texas for the only state that could possibly be redder, I don’t find the Cindy Sheehan story to be anything other than depressing.  A woman, driven by an unknowable combination of grief and narcissism, is nevertheless canny enough to capitalize on Bush’s Louis XIV-esque vacation habits and captures the attention of an August-neglected press corps, who then squirt out self-congratulatory maunderings on the redoundingly obtuse question, "Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea after all, was it?"

Some lefties have dared hope that Sheehan’s vigil will snowball into a widespread peace movement that will compel an American withdrawal from Iraq, a triumph of inarticulate moral clarity à la Amazing Grace and Chuck.  I surely sympathize with holders of such hope; one of the most dismaying effects of the 2004 election was the false impression that Bush opponents were in the gross minority, and it would sure be nice to feel a rush of righteous solidarity.

It would also be nice to hope for something positive again.  For over four years now I have been of the opinion that the Bush Administration is an opportunistic cabal of kleptocrats and bullies who have studied the Atwater-Rove school of exploiting fear, rage, racism, xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, and religious bigotry to preserve and expand their political power, and who would think nothing of jeopardizing the strength of America’s reputation, the health of the American economy, or the lives of American servicemen if it meant winning another election.  Before the 2004 election, I had hoped the catastrophic incompetence and malfeasance of the Bush Administration would become apparent to the American electorate, but for the sake of my country I had difficulty with how that hope might be fulfilled.

This is the fundamental dilemma of our executive war powers; once war is approved by Congress (and make no mistake: they approved this war), there is no check on the president short of electoral defeat.  Certain terrible things are inevitable in war: innocent civilians will be tortured and killed; patriotic citizens will repeat and defend governmental lies; brave servicemen will suffer disabling wounds and death.  Our only hope that our war aims justify such atrocities lies in the wisdom and honor of the president.  Recognition of this reality, and that in 2004 a majority of American voters approved of Bush’s job performance, left one feeling very cold.

Nevertheless, for two reasons I cannot indulge in the hope that the "moral authority" of Cindy Sheehan and other bereaved families will succeed in turning public opinion against the war.  The first reason is one of perception.  If the decision to withdraw American troops from Iraq becomes primarily identified with "peaceniks," giant-puppet-protesters, and the casualty-averse, then supporters of the war will have all they need to peddle their "stab-in-the-back" theory (and don’t fool yourself; they’ve got it all ready to go).  I know that in democracy one often has to take allies where one finds them, but some allies do more harm than good.  It’s to maintain this rhetorical distance that Democrats need to tread firmly but precisely.

The more fundamental reason to fear the Sheehanization of the anti-war argument is that it is bad policy.  The logical conclusion of Sheehan’s position is that Bush’s war would have been acceptable had it resulted in fewer American casualties.  There were a host of conceptual flaws to the invasion of Iraq, but the risk to American servicemen was not one of them (indeed, the hyper-aggressive security policies and rules of engagement intended to minimize risk to American troops have almost certainly contributed to Iraqi discontent with the occupation).  The lesson that the Bushies seem to have drawn from Vietnam is that as long as the American body count is kept low, no other rationale for war is required.  Sheehan’s position validates that lesson.  By appealing to Sheehan’s putative "moral authority," opponents of the war abdicate their responsibility to make a rational argument against the war.  Exploiting such sentimental demagoguery has been the modus operandi for the Bushies from stem cells to 9/11 to gay marriage to Terry Schaivo, and for the left to indulge in it would be no less despicable.

So, for believers in reasoned, democratic discourse, it’s pretty much hopeless.  Indulging in petty Schadenfreude only emphasizes that once the troops went "over the berm," there have been no good solutions.  I’m not even above suspecting that Rove has also provided for a foolproof exit scenario.  What’s truly depressing is that, given the Bushies’ penchant for energizing their base by categorically opposing anything supported by Democrats, it may be our only hope.

Penn'd

I suppose this means I’ll have to dig out my old Eva Gabor LP from 1970 now.  You’ll never look at a bloodhound the same way again. (via Colby Cosh)

I Guess We're 11 And 2 Now

As the upgrade of our video library to DVD continues its inexorable march, I picked up Stripes - The Extended Cut.  As is typical of such warmed-over editions, the extra footage doesn’t really add anything to the original movie; they were right to cut it.  The commentary track does highlight the misbegotten pitch behind the film ("Cheech & Chong join the army") and wrestles (sorry) with the potentially fatal problem of why would two ostensibly intelligent guys enlist in the first place.

The "legendary" South American scene is completely dispensable from a plot perspective, but Harold Ramis acting stoned is eerily entrancing somehow.  P.J. Soles finally has a good topless scene, for those who have been feeling that particular void for the past couple of decades.

On a demographic note: repeated viewing of the army barber scene may prove helpful in helping my three-year-old son overcome his terror of hair clippers.  He has already become enamored of Bill Murray’s esprit de corps, which should come in handy when we’re setting up the New Model Army that we’ll be needing pretty soon now.

Don't Bring The Boys Back Home

Jim Henley nicely nicely summarizes why I have little patience with those who advocate unconditional withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.  What’s particularly demoralizing about this is that was depressingly obvious before the war, yet no one in either the pro- or anti-war camps wanted to consider it at the time.

King Of The Shaggy Dogs

Eric reads all three volumes of Neal Stephenson’s The Baroque Cycle, and then proceeds to spoil it.

The Bomber Always Gets Through

It took less than 24 hours after the London bombings last week for me to get so tired of Edward R. Murrow impersonations that I was ready to report the next violator to Gregg Easterbrook.  Then on Sunday I was listening to NPR’s Weekend Edition interviewing Charles Wheeler, a BBC correspondent who lived through the Blitz, and I decided that we could learn something from the comparison after all:

Well, I was very young—I was about seventeen, eighteen—and to be honest with you, I quite enjoyed it.  It was exciting.  The main thing about it was we expected bombing; we’d been told for years that the bomber always gets through.

What was true for easily-identified Luftwaffe planes is as least as true for domestic terrorists, as the British population learned in the 1970s.  Andrew Sullivan waxed Churchillian in his praise of the British response to the recent attacks, but (perhaps it would sound flat coming on the heels of his annual Independence Day bathos) he stopped short of judging the British attitude toward terrorism superior to that of Americans.  Such restraint is polite but misplaced.

It has been nearly four years since 9/11, and the American government has shown much more interest in keeping its population in a state of paranoid narcissism than in instilling public resolve.  We’ve added two hours to everyone’s air travel time and confiscated a landfill of nail-clippers, even though it’s an open secret that baggage screeners are under-trained and over-worked.  We’ve declared open season on harassing, detaining, and extraordinarily rendering immigrants and foreign students, despite the fact that welcoming such pilgrims has always the best way to spread the modernity meme/virus that so threatens the jihadists.  We’ve made it politically feasible to discuss extra-Constitutional incarceration of U.S. citizens, as if this weren’t the gravest possible insult to every serviceman who gave his life defending "The Land of the Free."  And we’re conditioning ourselves to accept an ever greater level of militarization and fear-mongering in every area of our lives, even though it in no way decreases the likelihood of a terrorist attack.  This is not how you win a war.  It is, apparently, how you win elections.

At the end of this month, I’m taking my three-year-old son for a weekend trip from Seattle to Portland via Amtrak.  As an urban resident in the 21st century, I fully expect to observe plenty of unattended packages and suspicious behavior, but I do not expect to notify the authorities of anything more threatening than an unsanitary restroom.  I owe my son what we as a free society owe ourselves: the dignity to live our lives unbowed and unfettered by either the solipsistic fantasies of our enemies or the paternalistic bullying of our government.