My tax dollar at work

There is really nothing to say about this. Well, yes there is. It's stupid. What a colossal waste of time. One of my own Senators, Herb Kohl, voted Yea on this dog, instead of walking out, laughing, as he should have.

I guess I can expect to see John Cornyn pushing legislation condemning ads that impugned the character of Vietnam Vets John Kerry and Max Cleland coming right around the corner, right? Not something I would bet on.

While the blatant hypocrisy of the Republican party is as aggravating as ever, it comes as no surprise. Intellectual and moral consistency is not a conservative hallmark. What I don't understand is why the Democrats let this come to a vote at all. The "outrage" over this ad and the way it dared to "impugn" the mighty colossus Petraeus is a sideshow. Letting it happen at all validates this nonsense. Actually voting for it gives the Republicans political cover. Do they think they're going to get some kind of political capital out of this crap? The only thing I can think of is that they were actually worried that people would see Petraeus' shiny medals and be hypnotized into supporting the war. If so, that was a grave miscalculation. Americans still hate the war. They still want to leave. Shiny generals and rants about advertisements haven't changed any of that. Even though they are the majority party and are on the right AND popular side of the issue, they still lead frightened.

These attempts at some kind of short-term political gain always come at the expense of long-term victory, which is one of the reasons why I think the Republicans can always bully Democrats into nonsense storylines. When you're trying to do something good but difficult, sometimes you have to take some early hits. Trying to defuse the usual Republican you're-all-traitors-lefties-hippies-weaklings-pussies-blah-blah-blah by voting on useless crap won't work, because they'll do it anyway and when you really need to do something useful later, you'll have no credibility and thus, no influence. The Democrats are still trying to play by Republican rules. That's a losing proposition every time.

Blogging again

Well, looking at my blog entries it seems I have not blogged since July 21. A long time, that. I have to assume that my 3 readers have long since left and I am in essence starting from scratch. Almost 2 months have passed since I have bothered to write my usual pablum, and thus I feel disengaged from current events. It's taking some time to catch up.

The war plods predictably on. Since I started poking around news outlets and blogs again, it seems that a drawdown of troops is in the offing, which the MSM claims is a change of course by the Bushies. Unfortunately, the drawdown was inevitable-it had to happen because there are no more new troops to bring in once the current surge troops are done with their tours. So, not really a concession. No change of course. There never will be, as long as he is President. Keeping troops in Iraq, and hopefully expanding the war to Iran, Syria, wherever, establishing permanent bases, kicking the can, make the war someone else's problem, in 45 years people will say we were right you'll see, blah blah blah...in the two months that I shifted focus to my personal life and travelled abroad, there has been lots of heat and noise, but no essential change in the situation in even the smallest way.

To address the so-called "Anbar Miracle"...I'll start by saying that initially I thought some progress of some kind was being made, hence this post. I was wrong. I was wrong in the sense that it would clamp down on the violence in a meaningful way-the dip in violence is questionable, and even if it is kind of occurring, it isn't really MEANINGFUL-but I was also wrong in a more essential sense. I hadn't really given thought to the fact that the very Sunni militia members we were arming to fight AQI were the same insurgents that we were fighting ourselves not so very long ago. I hadn't given thought to the fact that by doing this, we were arming Sunni insurgents who would fight Shiite insurgents once we were out of the way. I hadn't given thought to the fact that this switch of convenience could and probably would be switched back if AQI were controlled. I hadn't really considered how this might play out with the Maliki government, arming Sunni insurgents in this manner-and of course, they would be a direct threat to the government Bush touted so highly before. In short, I didn't really think...I grabbed at any piece of news that might have seemed good or positive. And, worse yet, I realize now I did it so I wouldn't be a constant naysayer about Iraq. I was worried that the escalation might work and that I would be caught on the wrong side of it. I wrote stupid, thoughtless crap (as I often do) and didn't really bother to get a broader picture. And worst of all, I did this even though I have been against the war from the beginning. I had made it a point to disbelieve everything the Andover Cowboy and his crew of criminals have ever claimed since 2000 and never been disappointed, but as soon as I started writing it down someplace I cowered. Over time my mistake became clear to me, but I now see how easy it is to get sucked into intellectually-challenged mush, out of ego or fear or lack of original thinking. Without the existence of blogs, political websites, online news and reliable news outlets like McClatchy, I don't know if I would be any more reality -based than the average fundy I am so dismissive of. It's not a good feeling. I'll have to be more careful in the future to check myself.

My wife and I just returned from our honeymoon in Ireland, a country uninvolved in our war. For the first time since 2001, no constant barrage of the Republican cudgel known as 9/11, no surge, no Petraeus, no war. No one even asked us about it. Their newspapers front pages were often devoid of Iraq coverage, which was what I was hoping for on my honeymoon. This disconnection from the day-to-day news, spin, counterspin, posturing, etc. gave me a new perspective when I came home. I knew the war was a tragedy and a travesty, of course, but from a distance in seems blindingly absurd. At the time I arrived home, the talk amongst pundits and politicians was, essentially, that the deteriorating situation was the fault of Maliki. Christ Almighty, what? The plan was to depose and replace him. Details aside, what are we talking about here? We destroyed their country, it's businesses, infrastructure, it's basic services for living, it's army. We let the country slide into chaos. We were in charge. This mess is ours, no one else's. Furthermore, this governemnt is one Iraqis elected, for better or for worse. We mandated this happen, it did, this is what they chose. Whatever weaknesses it has, we helped to create, and in any case, it is ostensibly their country. Iraq is not the 51st state, or an errant colonial territory. Deposing their leadership when it displeases us or it's politically convenient is the hallmark of an imperial country kicking a puppet government in a satellite country, akin to the actions of the USSR-a country I was brought up to despise for exactly that. Coming back home to that, and the dog and pony show that was the Petraeus report, was like some kind of dark metaphor that escapes me right now. Whatever. I'm ranting in unsubstantiated fashion. I should really, really stop for now, and get some sleep.