Categories
Political

Game over, US won

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Doc wrote today:

We’ve won in Iraq. The citizens of Bagdad are elated. Nothing like a toppled statue to make a conclusive point.

The sounds I heard coming from Cheney this morning were very encouraging. If we do what he says we’re doing, maybe we can restore some level of trust in an Arab world that’s still very skeptical.

Right now I’m just looking forward to the day when some Las Vegas theme hotel has a headless statue of Saddam outside one of its bars

Well, hmm. Hmm.

To which I then responded with:

Let’s see – over 3000 Iraqi dead, several journalists dead or injured, battles raging all over the country, just starting to see the so-called terrorists activities start, Arab world furious, and the United States beat a tiny, ill-equipped people, and has forced them to scramble in the dirt for food and water.

Cheney basically saying that we’re occuping the country, but the UN can handle all those rag tag people that are hungry and thirsty. We’ll take care of the oil and the wealth.

Of course, we showed the world the chemical and biological weapons that made Iraq such an imminent threat. Didn’t we?

And best of all, all the webloggers don’t have to talk about this anymore – they can [go] back to talking about how great we webloggers are.

How humane.

How well informed.

Oh by the way, did you see this neat trick you can do in Radio?

A bit confused, Doc re-reads posting, and responds with:

Ah fuck.

Trying to make sense of this, I go back and re-read my post and realize there’s yes-I’m-still-peaceblogging paragraph missing.

O well.

For what it’s worth, here’s just one chunk of what Cheney said:

“Exactly what it will look like is something the people of Iraq are going to have to determine. I think it would be a mistake for we, as Americans, to say, well, look, here’s a cookie mold, this is how we do it, this is, therefore, exactly how you have to do it. I don’t think that will work. I don’t think that takes into account their unique culture and historical experience and so forth. They’re going to have to work it themselves and figure out what makes sense from their standpoint, given the social organization and the way their society has functioned in the past. And it’ll be a difficult task. But they’ve got some very able people already engaged in thinking about those kinds of thoughts and issues.”

For now I’d like to take him at his word. Let’s see what happens

I then see the following paragraph in the posting:

Later I’ll get around to blogging more about what the Mayor of Hiroshima has to say about our successful new National Security policy. And the fine time Mike Hawash is having, enjoying his protected American freedom in jail.

I think about what Doc says – let’s see what happens. Already happening:

“Where is General Garner now?,” Chalabi said in an interview with CNN from his base in Nassiriya. “People are hungry, their supplies are going to run out. Why are they not here? Why are they in Kuwait?”

Chalabi, who earlier said he was to meet U.S. officials and Iraqi politicians on Saturday to begin planning an interim authority for Iraq, also said members of President Saddam Hussein’s Baath party still posed a danger.

“The remnants of the Baath party will continue to pose a threat…as long as there is no electricity, security or water,” Chalabi said in the interview monitored in London.

“They are rapidly trying to ingratiate themselves…and try to bamboozle the American commanders into cooperating with them. The ‘de-Baathification’ process must begin here,” he said.

Doc and I might not always come from the same direction, but we’re both saying the same thing:

What makes anybody think this is all over because a statue gets pulled down?

statue_big.jpg

Categories
Diversity Political

Ladylike behavior

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Under the banner of equal opportunity, the demand for full integration of women means special treatment for women. They want special breaks-a woman shouldn’t have to perform the same physical tests as a man. This agenda is driven not by women in uniform, but by their civilian advocates, who would never find themselves or their children serving in the military. The most powerful argument against women in combat, however, is not their relative physical strength. It is that decent men protect women in the face of a physical threat. The typical American male cannot pretend that the soldier to the right of him is a man and not a woman. If this bizarre social experiment of moving women closer and closer to the front lines is going to continue, American mothers had better be put on notice that we’ve got to start raising our sons differently. We’ve got to start telling them, “You’d better go hit that girl. Well, what did you do when she called you a name? Did you hit her?”

Kate O’Beirne, Washington Editor of the National Review in interview

soldier_loripiestewa.jpg    soldier_johnson.gif  soldier_jessicalynch.jpg  soldier_both.jpg

I was struck by the ethnic diversity of the photographs of the women who were killed, captured, and injured from the 507 Maintenance Company. Pfc. Lori Piestewa was a Hopi indian, as well as mother of two children. Shoshana Johnson, an African-American, is also a mother, described as kind and friendly, and who loves cooking. And of course, I don’t need to link to anything to describe young, blonde Jessica Lynch, do I? The news is full of her rescue. She and Pfc. Piestewa were roommates and close friends.

‘This is a national security issue,’ said Bartlett. ‘They will rape and torture women in front of the men and break the men. They say that’s a problem with men. I hope we never live in a society in which men are not deferential to women”

Human Events

The stories about Pfc. Lynch, in particular, have been pretty wild. Real GI Jane stuff, with her firing back until she ran out of bullets. Chances are all of the troops, including Johnson and Piestewa, fired back until they ran out of bullets. Unless they were dead, of course.

‘We join the Marine Corps to be good Marines and fight for our country,’ Malugani said. ‘I recognize that there are physical differences between men and women, but it all comes down to the same thing: whether you can do the job.

‘Everyone is faced with challenges, everybody has weaknesses and everybody has strengths,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t come down to a male-female thing. It’s a human being thing.’

Marine lst Lt. Amy Mulugani, for Stars and Stripes

I think we now have an answer to the age-old question about what will a woman soldier do in war? Just what the men do – their jobs. And trying to stay alive to come home again.

Of course, women are excluded from combat roles in the United States. Unfortunately, this doesn’t block them from combat – just the promotional possibilities associated with combat roles.

They know that there already is a khaki ceiling. The ladder to the top jobs has to include combat positions, yet women are still formally prohibited from most combat units. (This although the lines between deployments is so thin as to be semipermeable; Shoshana Johnson, now a prisoner of war, was sent to Iraq as a cook.) The group that lobbied for a change in the combat ban, the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, has been weakened by the Bush administration, swayed by conservative critics who howled about its “feminist agenda.” Among the new female voices in the Pentagon is one former master sergeant who opposes women in combat because “women enjoy being protected by men.” She says that the skills needed for fighting are “to survive, to escape and to evade,” adding, “clearly, women don’t have those as a rule.”

Quindlen: Battlefield Rape Is Less a Concern Than It Is in Service at Home

Women enjoy being protected by men.

Unfortunately, coming home means coming home to the very real possibility of sexual assault at the hands of their own commanders and fellow soldiers. I guess it’s just an example of that old male deference and protectiveness paid to women.

In times of peace the powers that be may conveniently forget how many women there now are on the battlefield, how hard they work and how well they perform. Military leaders may forget that if the number of women willing to enlist drops significantly, the ability of America to defend itself will drop significantly, too.

And they may forget how terrible it is that women who must face sexual assault from the enemy as the price of war too often expect to face it from their compatriots in peacetime. As a colonel in the Air Force whose daughter says she was attacked by a fellow cadet told The New York Times: “She knew she could have been captured by an enemy, raped and pillaged in war. She did not expect to be raped and pillaged at the United States Air Force Academy.”

In fact, no soldier should expect to be assaulted by another without significant consequences. Yet that is what has happened. Those who have always been hostile to female soldiers say that this is inevitable, given the atmosphere of esprit with which women interfere, given the machismo that is essential for trained fighting forces. This is insulting to male soldiers. The suggestion is that they are always one beer away from a sexual assault, no more able to control their violent impulses than an attack dog.

As their sisters did in Desert Storm, many will return from the Middle East, having served in combat despite the ban, with an official wink and a nod. Maybe it’s the same wink and a nod you get after you’ve been pinned down and penetrated by a fellow cadet, the one that says you have to go along to get along.

Quindlen: Battlefield Rape Is Less a Concern Than It Is in Service at Home

(Thanks to Norm and Joseph Duemer for links to stories)

Categories
Government

What’s next

I have been sending emails to groups that have and still are organizing marches for peace, basically posing to them the question: what’s next. Specifically, I sent emails to MoveOn and a more local organization Instead of War. The only email I’ve gotten in return from both is group emails for new actions.

Instead of War sent an email listing several new peace marches, some focused around the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. According to the note, one of the marches is sponsored by the Martin Luther King Jr Holiday Committee. I’ll be honest that even if I were still marching to protest the war in Iraq, I would not march in a protest sponsored by a committee that considers the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr a ‘holiday’. I’m sorry, but I only commemorate Dr. King’s life. This march has a very confused message.

I’m not surprised that I haven’t received any response from Instead of War in regards to “What’s Next?” From my previous experience with protests against the Vietnam war and transporting nuclear waste across Washington state as well as several other environmentally and politically related issues, I have found that protest organizations are very conservative.

The MoveOn organization, though, sent an email that started with the following:

The war with Iraq continues. No one knows if it will last weeks, months, or years. Even after the fighting stops in Iraq, the fallout from this war could span decades. We can only hope that it ends quickly, with an absolute minimum loss of life.

The email addresses the question of What next? by starting a letter to the editor campaign focusing specifically on the issues that I find myself focused on — working against a US controlled occupation of Iraq:

Even as the troops march towards Baghdad, a big controversy is brewing over what will happen when the war does end. The neoconservatives like Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle envision a longer U.S. occupation of Iraq, directed entirely by the Pentagon and with only minimal participation by other countries and the U.N. Their scheme calls for setting up a provisional government in which Americans head each of the 23 ministries. In essence, they want to win the peace the way the U.S. has pushed for war: alone.

The U.S. State Department, the C.I.A., Prime Minister Tony Blair, the major humanitarian relief organizations, France, Germany, and most of the rest of the countries in the world disagree with this plan. They’d like to see the reconstruction of Iraq as a collaborative, international effort lead by the U.N. And many of them believe the Pentagon plan is a recipe for disaster.

The decision on how post-war Iraq is to be managed will be made in the next several days, and the Administration is split. The consequences will play out in Iraq and around the world for generations. By writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper, you can help to sway the balance away from the unilateralism that has done so much damage and toward a collective rebuilding process.

I’m not sure that a letter to the editor campaign will help sway the balance away from the unilateralism but it will start the conversation in that direction, and this is not a bad thing. In fact, the same letter should be sent to congressional members and local politicians, in addition to those who are campaigning for political positions in upcoming elections. Start the letters with, “I am a registered voter…”.

Categories
Government History

Not saying stop is not the same as saying go

In some ways I regret my Peaceblog no more writing, not because I don’t believe what I wrote — I do. And not because I feel like I’m selling out — I’m not. It seems to me this issue is on the minds of other people who marched and worked for peace. And it’s not an easy issue to discuss either.

I am aware that there are some people who are unhappy that I’m not continuing to protest the armed conflict in Iraq. That doesn’t bother me, as I knew that there will be people protesting the war until the end and that some will understand where I’m coming from, others won’t. I can accept this.

No, what does bother me is that others see this as a form of support for the war, as some sort of right-thinking move. (I hate that term with a passion, almost as much as I dislike neo-con.)

Let me be blunter: I am still against this war in Iraq. I believe, strongly, that the United States has no right to make what amounts to a unilateral invasion of Iraq. People are suffering and dying because of super inflated egos who have worked out a ‘strategy’ on paper and who refuse to acknowledge that they don’t have all the answers; in most cases, they don’t even know what the questions are. No, I believe the US screwed up.

However, I am also most interested in focusing my energy on what we can do to help the people of Iraq as soon as possible, as well as minimize the anger in the rest of the Arab world. In my opinion, this means establishing an interim government that will be acceptable to the Iraqi people and the majority of countries in the Middle East. At least until the Iraqi feel comfortable enough, as a whole, for everyone to “please just leave now”.

To me, this interim government should be overseen by more neutral parties, in my opinion, something joint between the Arab League and the UN.

I think the worst possible thing will be for the United States to continue in any form of controlling position in this country. Not only will this increase the stress and the anger in the Middle East, quite bluntly, I don’t trust the current leadership of this country not to screw up.

I also want to ensure that the US does not invade any other countries without cause. Not on my watch at least.

Now, taking all that, and borrowing from Jonathon’s upcoming “‘How to Respond to Idiots’ for Dummies” book, I don’t know how one gets from being sadly resigned to the belief that pulling troops out at this time would do more harm than good to the Iraqi people to I am now behind this war to give freedom and human rights to the Iraqi people.

However, there may be some confusion because of a mixed message I’m sending. After all, I am behind a war for freedom and human rights; it’s just that this war is being fought within the United States, not Iraq.

Archived with comments at the Wayback Machine

Categories
Government

From the Ashes arises the bird of converse

Sheila probably spoke for many yesterday when she declared no more war. The anger and bitterness surrounding the issue of the war in Iraq can drain even the most energetic of people. However, my hope is the war of rhetoric has managed to burn itself out, and from the ashes can come true conversation.

Soldiers are heading to Baghdad, and eventually, this city will be in US hands. This isn’t to say the ‘war’ will be over — this is not a typical war, fought by typical warriors. The question was asked — what next? Steve Himmer made a start on answering this question, without rhetoric, providing practical suggestions as to directions. In particular, his suggestion of the UNESCO loan program is a viable, reachable start to helping the people in Iraq. However, equally important, in my opinion, was that he was making an attempt to bridge differences between people with different views of the war in Iraq. And doing so in a non-confrontational manner.

Jonathon Delacour commented on Steve’s efforts, in the same writing where he responded to an accusation of racism levied against him in his comments. His remarks are about the most rational and effective response to that type of accusation I have seen. Rather let loose a stream of invective, and wade in with shirt sleeves rolled up, ready for a virtual showdown, he calmly refuted the accusation; managing to deflect the anger of the accusation, not back at the accuser, but outside the conversation, completely.

That’s what we need to do.

Primarily because of Steve’s reasoned response, Jonathon has also re-directed his discussion about protest marchers into expressing a specific issue rather than the use of more colorful and rather pithy adjectives.

Their conversation, and the comments associated with them give me hope. Hope that could only be increased if other voices join in.

(Hint. Hint.)

There is a conversation waiting to be born about the presence of the US in Iraq, about UN involvement, and the makeup of an interim government. There is also a conversation waiting to re-born about human rights at a global level — a closely related topic. Allan Moult pointed to two documents detailing human rights abuses in the world, including violations in this country. These are a start.

(How poetic that the twin issues of freedom and human rights for the people of Iraq are the same issues that we need to address here in the United States. )

From these conversations, common agreements can be found, perhaps even unified, positive actions. At a minimum, we may come away with a better understanding of our own reactions to the war, the UN, the US involvement, and human rights in general.

It’s just too bad we’re all so burned out. And I’m fresh out of Burningbird magic Rising from the Ashes Pixie Dust to sprinkle about.

And as I was finishing this, I looked up and out the window at a sky filled with black smoke. But it was just a fire at an auto shop nearby.