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Baghdad fell to US-led forces on this date in 2003. For a war where we supposedly won five years ago, this sure has taken a long time. This is like saying that because we still have troops in Europe that the war has never ended. Didn't the Iraqi government get conquered?
We actually need to send more troops to Iraq, not pull out the ones we have. Institute a draft, spend the next five years with 250,000 or more American troops (not contractors) destroying all resistance and ensuring stability, and then get out.
Not that we can afford that, of course. Ron Paul was right in 2003: invading another nation is stupid because no people wants to be invaded. Liberated, maybe, but occupied, no. Maybe McCain will solve these problems when he gets elected — oh wait: he won't win because Americans haven't elected a combat veteran since 1988.
Ah, well. At least sixteen years of draft-dodging moral bankruptcy will be over, even Clinton wins. I mean, she didn't avoid the draft by leaving the country or "serving honorably" in the National Guard for children of the wealthy. Then we can settle back into just moral bankruptcy.
At least McCain understands that we will be in Iraq for as long as we had to stay in Europe and Japan after WWII. Too bad he won't win just because he has combat experience.
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, today is the the Iraq War's fifth birthday!
U.S. President George W. Bush ordered air strikes against Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, thus launching the Second Persian Gulf War to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Happy birthday, Iraq War! Trillions of dollars, 4,000 Americans dead, many more permanently wounded (but we're not going to take care of them!), atrocities by all sides, and oil prices are still going up! We're proud of you for making it all the way to Five Years Old.
Occupation, war — who cares! You're now in kindergarten!
Just remember: we won't always be at Not-War with, um, you guys We're likely to pull out any day now, just like we left the Philippines, the DMZ and Western Europe!
I was reading the MSN Political Cartoons this week, and went through the cartoons on Rev. Falwell's passing. Most were snide remarks about his politics, about how when he gets to heaven all the people that he didn't like would be there. How he would get shown his in the end.
Bitter remarks from people who never have understood this guy.
And then there was the one from Gary Varvel, of the Indianapolis Star-News. A smiling, pudgy Falwell is at the gates of heaven, holding his Bible. In the background, in the gate, are bunches of smiling representatives of the Bible stories waving at him. St. Peter looks at him and says, "You're going to enjoy this more than the book!"
It's what I think is more likely to have happened when he got there. In the end, Falwell's love of the Bible and strict interpretations of it from a particular theological understanding. Like anyone else who lived for the Bible, he will get a big surprise when he see the Increate. No matter what we think, we think too small. We get it wrong. Some, perhaps, more so than others.
Falwell erred in wanting to be the center of things. I think that his ego often got in his way, as it does for so many leaders. He couldn't let the movement move on, a movement that was never his anyway. He was always more of a lightning rod for the press and the left than the real leader of the movement. Evangelical Christians were already in politics when Viguerie, Wyrich and what's his name decided to form an organization to capture them for the Republican Party, settling on Falwell as their man to lead it. The issues were already there, too: abortion as a result of the atrocious Roe v. Wade decision (what a gross overstepping of the federal limits, and it set back the left since), homosexuality, evolution in schools, teaching standards. It was all about the children and it has remained so wherever it has had power.
All Falwell did was step in front of a movement that was already there and give it a national face. Ronald Reagan, in his famous "You can't endorse me, so I endorse you" speech in Dallas, showed them a way to associate with a national figure. The guys in the background tied economic conservatism to Christians, and did so very successfully.
Falwell in many ways was just along for the ride.
A long time ago, I read John J. Mearsheimer's The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001) and was greatly influenced by it. Strangely, I never noted it: he only appears as a note in my discussions of a book about Ulysses S. Grant.
Mearsheimer is a West Point graduate who currently teaches at the University of Chicago. He expands the realist tradition by adding a testable (read: can use history of foreign affairs to prove) element. His argument is really that states are interested in survival, you can never be sure about other states' intentions, and therefore a state must constantly be accumulating power. You can't become a non-warring state because it doesn't make sense for survival.
There are two interesting interviews with Mearsheimers I've passed through recently:
Put Mearsheimer's ideas with Julian Fairfield's ideas (in a forthcoming book) using holonic theory to explain human conflict and you have a nice reason for Balkanization and why what's-his-name said in his book on Jesus that many of the ruling Jews didn't have a problem with being ruled by Rome: in the end, the external balancer forces opposing sides to play with each other rather than go at each other's throats.
Mearsheimer's sound bite is that in international relations, if someone doesn't do what they said they would do, there isn't any one at the other end of your "911" call.
Interesting is Mearsheimer's discussion of the Realists' opinion of the invasion of Iraq.
I just found out that Hugh C. Thompson, Jr., the Warrant Officer who saved the last surviving villagers of the hamlet of My Lai in the village of Son My from being murdered by other officers and soldiers of the US Army, died earlier this year. Upon seeing Capt. Ernest Medina shooting the Vietnamese whom he and his team had marked for medical aid, Thompson and his crew put their helicopter between the other soldiers and the remaining villagers. He threatened open fire on them if they did not stand down from the massacre.
Would you have done the same? He ended up continuing the dangerous duty, being shot down five times, the last breaking his back. Lt. Calley, the only person involved in the massacre or its command chain to be convicted, was freed after three years of house arrest and now lives in Georgia where he is a jeweler. Capt. Medina was not convicted, although tried.
The articles about My Lai, like those about abuses in any time, often leave you thinking, "How bad can it really have been?" To get the full story, look at the photographs or read what the soldiers told the Army investigators.
Thompson's passing was worth noting.
"I wish I was a big enough man to say I forgive them, but I swear to God, I can't."
Newt Gingrich, the Republican Speaker of the House who brought us the disastrous "Contract With America", and Hillary Clinton, who almost single-handedly destroyed my chances for affordable if slightly lackluster health care, have joined together at least in their political lives.
Oddly, this political marriage does make sense. Gingrich is approaching the twilight years of his life. He evidently wants to be known as a Great Leader, one who joined America rather than the man who destroyed the leadup that the Republicans were enjoying against Bill Clinton. But he's also an incredibly big guy. I caught him once on conservative radio where he kept on telling the host "No, that's wrong" and corrected the course to more nuanced statements about the liberal agenda. While remaining conservative, he acknowledged his opponents' ethics and worth. They were wrong but they weren't traitors. Like a US Senator used to be before the current batch decided to become Congressmen.