Dick Cheney

I know that nobody who needs much persuading is reading this, but I need to voice my frustrations over how the White House and Democrats are handling Dick Cheney's latest attack. We get it, that President Obama is pursuing a more thoughtful Afghanistan strategy that synthesizes diverse points of view, whereas the previous administration seemed only to listen to generals who agreed with them in the first place.

But here's the real point: If Dick Cheney is so concerned with the American war effort, why doesn't he arrange for a meeting with an Obama administrative official? Why doesn't he submit memos and suggestions based on his experience and views on a subject that he claims consume him so much? Why can't the White House point out that Dick Cheney's actions are not those of someone interested in winning a war, but someone using a war to take cheap shots at the President? Dick Cheney is a guy who thinks that torture is a more valuable tool in the war on terror than working knowledge of Arabic. In essence, he is so clownishly wrong that it is the White House's solemn duty to exploit that wrongness, that unpatriotic, indefensible, whiney and disgusting display of meanness for meanness's sake by associating any Republican candidate or leader with this horrible person.

Again, I know I'm not talking to anybody who needs convincing, nor am I saying anything that Keith Olbermann doesn't say better, but that's the blessing and curse of the blogosphere- that our self-indulgent venting is available for anyone who may stumble across it. Therefore: cocaine jihad Freemason Kennedy!

Healthcare

That's it. I can not take it anymore. The New York Times says that Obama's grass roots movement is fizzling. Sarah Palin is feeding red meat misinformation to the already ill-informed, and I fear that the huge moral step forward that health care reform represents is being scuttled by forces of greed, ignorance and bigotry.

So please. Write your congressman. I don't know what else to say. I'm happy to argue or debate with anyone who impugns the morality or economic imperative of joining the rest of the developed world in offering all citizens healthcare, but whoever is reading this- your Congressperson needs to hear from you. Stand up. Please.

Chas Freeman

You know, this is really disgusting. And here's the scenario that could be provoked:
In scuttling the nomination of an able intelligence analyst because he is unabashed in his criticism of Israeli policy and U.S. obsequiousness to said policy, someone else will become our foremost national intelligence analyst- the person responsible for those Presidential Daily Briefings with titles like August 6, 2001's "bin Laden Determined to Strike in US". And this person, who presumably has to pass an Israeli litmus test, may offer a report to the president that contains flaws upon which Chas Freeman would have improved. I don't apologize for trafficking in hypotheticals on my own fucking blog, but what if the analyst who is appointed screws up and it leads to another horrible attack on U.S. soil? Would it not follow that the people responsible for pillorying Chas Freeman bear some responsibility for this? And would it not be difficult for an ambitious and charismatic politician to translate this debacle into the message that powerful Jews are not as concerned with American security as they should be? In fact, I raise that question right now. Do Senator Charles Schumer, Congressman Steve Israel, and the jackanapses at the National Review, New Republic, Weekly Standard care enough about American security to allow for more criticism of Israel? The blogosphere is crackling with outrage over the velocity with which protests against this nominee registered in the corridors of American power, and the alarming resemblance that these machinations bear to Mearsheimer and Walt's big bad Israel Lobby. My favorite meta-summary of commentary on how this has all gone down comes from Salon's Glenn Greenwald.

Of course, many opponents of the Freeman nomination claim that their objections stem from his genuflection toward authoritative regimes like the Saudis and Chinese. But to me, this is like taking Donnie Brasco's badge because he's too cozy with the mafia.
If I were not theocentric enough to worry deeply about the fate of my own, obnoxious people, I wouldn't care about this. But I feel ever more certain that American Jews, who have prospered to unprecedented degrees thanks to America's freedom, are now doing exactly what Pharoah said they would- exporting their highest national allegiance to Israel at the expense of American well-being. I am not naive enough to think that all anti-Israel propaganda is true, nor am I unaware of the frightening alignment of certain Islamo-fascist engines of propaganda with "progressive" causes in America (hence general global opinion that, say, George W. Bush is more evil than Osama bin Laden). But that insidious does not apply to all criticism of Israel. If Israel cannot tolerate official criticism from America, then they need to work on their statecraft. But mark my blog folks, American Jewish insistence that all national public servants slavishly support everything Israel does is bad for America. And Americans who want bad things for America are bad Americans. Wake up, Jews!

Mass Murder

Around four minutes into his 13 minute farewell address, George Walker Bush had this to say:

"When people live in freedom, they do not willingly choose leaders who pursue campaigns of terror. When people have hope in the future, they will not cede their lives to violence and extremism. So around the world, America is promoting human liberty, human rights, and human dignity. We are standing with dissidents and young democracies, providing AIDS medicine to bring dying patients back to life, and sparing mothers and babies from malaria. And this great republic born alone in liberty is leading the world toward a new age when freedom belongs to all nations."

Moments later, there was this:
"Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere."

The disconnect between these two statements is profound. Yet to most people watching the speech, including major media outlets, the myriad tragedies of the Iraq War are measured primarily in the heroic deaths of coalition personnel. But what about the number of Iraqis who have died as a direct result of the war? It is worth noting that this number, or even an estimate within the nearest 10,000, is obscured, and perhaps consciously so. Data is available here, here and here, and corroborated by various studies, but is our national moral stupor so deep that we don't want to know about such things? George W. Bush, proponent of a culture of life, has claimed absolutely no public responsibility for the deaths that are the direct result of his decisions, decisions we now know were based on cherry-picked intelligence. As public reaction to Kanye West's statements has proven, it is in poor taste and ultimately ineffective to charge Bush with valuing life along a scale of pigmentation. Further counterclaims to Bush's racism can be found in his truly commendable efforts to save lives in Africa.

But back to the war that he started, where is the remorse, or even the acknowledgement of the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of innocent lives lost by bombing, strafing, shelling and scorching in Iraq? How does one reconcile dodging responsibility for such a grand scale of suffering with having a clean conscience? I am careful about calling people evil and believe it is worth noting that there are huge gulfs between George W. Bush and history's great villains. I also acknowledge that I am guilty of being nearly as outraged by his public displays of hubris as I am by the horrible strife for which his policies are responsible. I want to see sorrow, doubt, recapitulation, or even mere weight on his conscience. But I would gladly countenance more smirking and linguistic belly flops if we could see fewer human beings killed for bullshit reasons. Were such a statement to find its way into the purview of fans of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, I would expect to be accused of caring more about towelheads than about Americans. But that's a false choice. And in case you really are reading this, that's a false choice you stupid motherfucking life-devaluing piece of pigshit. Put down your fucking Doritos, turn off your fucking football game and ask your senator, congressman, and media outlet of choice to publish the number of non-combatant Iraqis who have died violently since March, 2003. You want to tell me that I value cameljockey lives more than American heroes, well I'll tell you that you value third down conversions and the orange dust on your fingertips more than the lives of innocent women and children. And if that isn't true, then I'll re-suggest my solution: ask your senator, congressman and favorite media outlet to publish the number of civilian deaths caused by our invasion of Iraq.

Everybody knows that approximately 3,000 people died on 9/11 [actual official # including WTC, Pentagon and airline passengers is 2,975]; and that the US Troop death toll in Iraq is approximately 4,000.

But how many civilians have died in Iraq? Why don't we know this? Why don't we care that we don't know this? Well, I care. George W. Bush is about to end his Presidency without being accountable for his actions. Obviously, the failures of his policies have extended beyond the battlefields in Iraq. But let's focus on this.
Please contact your senator, congressman and preferred media outlet and urge them to publish the number of Iraqis killed as a result of George W. Bush's war. It's a number he should carry.

Israel

Here is a "nightmare scenario" as envisioned by many proudly pro-Israel Americans:

President Obama: Israel must accede to the demands of the UN Security Council and immediatley cease all military activity in Gaza.

Pro-Israel American: The UN has an anti-Israel bias.

President Obama: It is not in America's best interest to support Israel in their campaign. If they continue their current policies, we will cut aid to them.

Pro-Israel American: Israel is America's closest ally!

President Obama: How would America be hurt if Israel were not its ally?

Pro-Israel American: Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East!

President Obama: So what?

Pro-Israel American: Anti-semite!

Of course, Israel is a watchdog for America and our aid to Israel is cheaper than setting up our own military outpost in the territory. And since we depend on instability in the region to keep oil cheap, Israel offers further economic value in terms of her advanced infrastructure. In nearly every industry, Israel's manufacturing and distribution capabilities are superior to that of her neighbors. Were more of her border states to enter into open trade, Israel's products would dominate regional marketplaces and put thousands of Saudi, Yemenite, Libyan, Moroccan, Syrian and Lebanese companies out of business.

But what is any of that compared with the violent antipathy that Israel and her patron superpower evoke in the world?? Pro-Israel Americans use this very violence to justify America's need to stick with Israel. But why? What if America told Israel to go fuck herself? How would that hurt America?

To be more frank, how would it hurt America if Israel were to be wiped from the map- not with all of her citizens murdered, but with the nation militarily defeated to the point of political dissolution? How? Would I as a Jew no longer be able to worship or practice my faith? Would the sudden shift in the rights of former Israeli citizens somehow make America less free or secure?

The folks who stick up for Israel care about Israel. They never state exactly what America gains from this costly friendship. And just like in the Middle East, pro-Israel interets are able to dominate the free American press and convince Americans that the Palestinians are just a bunch of expendable extras in an Indiana Jones movie. Per the latest conflagration, we are asked to imagine how we would react to rocket fire from Mexico? The analogy is more apt than one might think, since a majority of Mexicans are indeed descendents of the indigenous folks the white man colonized not so very long ago. And though the acolytes of Benjamin Netanyahu believe that the solution indeed is to beat these primitive people into submission until the idea of attacking their rich and successful neighbor is as absurd as Mexico attacking Texas, I offer this analogy:

A man and his pregnant wife are seated on a bus. A man of greater means gets on the bus and pushes the pregnant woman out of her seat so that he can sit down. The woman's husband spits in the wealthier man's face. The rich man slits the spitting man's throat, claiming that the dead man started it, and that he is now entitled to push everybody to the floor while his friends, family and business associates take the seats. And if the people writhing on the floor complain, the rich man and his cohorts are justified in kicking them.

Maybe the man who spit was an uncouth asshole, but he and his wife were there first. But since the killer is more "important" to society, we seem inclined to side with him. And anyway, isn't it just dangerously naive to think that the value of the spitting man's life is equal to that of the captain of industry? Why, if we thought that, our infrastructure would be in shambles and we might go around spitting in each other's faces right? Well, actually hell fucking NO! Does the insult of spit negate the outrage of shoving people out of their seats.

For 60 years, Israel has paraded that spit on her face around as justification for wielding her ax. All questioners of this equation are referred to Europe in WWII. But the pregnant woman on the floor is omitted from American discussion of the issue. And now Israel is saying that her heartache is greater than that of the folks they drove off of their land, because those folks are too primitive to know the difference between their normal chaotic lives and the death and destruction wrought by a truly industrialized nation. And when the Palestinians complain of the injustice dealt to them, they are accused of aping their conqueror's heartache over every retaliatory act. My upbringing makes it hard for me to admit, but even harder for me to avoid that Israel's case is an insult to my sense of logic and compassion.

Matt Drudge is Gay

Yesterday, the New York Film Critics Circle named Milk the best film of 2008. A Drudge Report headline touting this story was linked to Breitbart's reportage. That Andrew Breitbart apprenticed with Matt Drudge for several years before starting his own internet news service is not particularly relevant, because Drudge could have led the same pack of ignorant hate-mongerers to any news outlet he chose and the results would have been the same.
If you aren't into impotent rage, then I don't suggest reading some of the comments that people made- about Sean Penn, New York, Hollywood, and of course, homosexuals. But it is worth noting that no one mentioned director Gus Van Zandt, no one suggested a movie they felt was more deserving of the award, and no one who lambasted the critics' choice betrayed any intention of seeing Milk.

It is one thing to identify the hypocrisies and cruelties on display in the message board below this article. But what is to be done? What steps can we take to defeat such rampant, misguided nastiness? It's not just the homophobia and cultural antipathy, it's that people, in the most democratic of forums, an internet chatroom, still claim the infantile helplessness of decrying New York's and Hollywood's gay culture being jammed down their throats. The question of how a person capable of logging onto the internet is not capable of preventing himself from driving to the local movie theater, buying a ticket and watching over two hours of Sean Penn and co. playing gay rights advocates is too simplistic. So is blaming arch enablers like Limbaugh and Hannity. But these folks are out there and they are a force to be reckoned with.
Personally, I want to line them up and punch them in the face and kick them in the shins, one by one until my knuckles break and my laces pop. But I am open to better suggestions.

Teaching the World How To Work With Our Allies and How Not To Invade Other Countries

At 30:03 of this interview with Barbara Bush from September 13, 1994, watch what she says. In fact, watch any interview in Charlie Rose's archive from before 2000 to see how unbruised we were in pre-millenial America.