U.S. "Succeeding Brilliantly" in Iraq, sez Cheney

In other news:



Rob
(Yes, he really said that.)

Since 2003

Thank God we were greeted as liberators. Otherwise we'd still be Iraq.

Rob

Secret of the "Surge"

This is awful, if true. Salon reports that we’re sending injured soldiers back to Iraq.

Rob

The Fightin' Keyboarders

Don't miss this post on the conservative blogosphere by Jesus's General. It's called "This Week in Heroism." The message is elegant in its simplicity.

Rob

Absence

I haven’t written anything for a little while. Some of it’s been the standard too-busy-to-blog excuse, but most is that I learned something this weekend that I really wanted to process before writing about, and I didn’t want to write about anything else until I did.

My brother-in-law, Brian, has been recalled to the National Guard. He’s been promoted to captain and is leaving for training in a few weeks, and then plans call from him to go out to California for more training for about six months. After that, he’ll be sent overseas.

The news knocked me flat. I can only imagine what he’s going through. What my sister Sally will be going through, and what their sons will be going through once they find out.

Brian left the National Guard eight or nine years ago. He'd never formally resigned his commission because he enjoyed his service, and planned to return to it when he was in his fifties, once the kids were grown. I had heard that a lot of Guard units were going to Iraq, and knew that some people who had left were being recalled. I asked him about this a while ago, and he said something like, “I’ve been out for like eight years. They’d have to be really desperate to call me.”

Aside from the fact that he’s my sister’s husband and my nephews’ father, the Guard couldn’t have made a better choice. Brian’s a sharp guy who can understand and solve problems quickly. He’s a natural leader, and I know he’ll have the people in his unit performing at their absolute best. But I’m having a hard time getting over the fact that he’s my sister’s husband and my nephews’ father and should be home with them.

I have to reevaluate my thinking about the war, and about the soldiers’ job in it. I know in my bones that we were deceived into this war, and that if the President had been honest with us about the expected costs up front, we wouldn’t be there. I have a lot of issues with the President, but the war encapsulates all of them. I think it was a wrongheaded decision, handled incompetently at the top levels. (Like Katrina, like the plan to destroy Social Security, like so many other things.)

That’s not what I’m thinking of now. I’m thinking of the soldiers on the ground, doing their level best to keep everyone safe. Of maintaining security while schools are built and votes are counted. And of presenting, one-on-one, the decent face of America. I know Brian will excel, and I hope the presence of him and others like him will foster goodwill there. We need more than we have now.

I can’t help worrying. I’ve seen the headlines, and I know the chilling landmark we passed yesterday. And I know that the future is uncertain for us all, no matter where we are when we think we’re safe, or healthy, or secure. Anything can happen anywhere. In that light, Iraq is no different from where I grew up, or where I work now. There are no guarantees.

But if I had only one guarantee to give out, I’d give it to him. To keep him safe, and return him home the same man that I’ve always been so glad to have as my brother.

Rob

Hopes for the new term

I’d written a piece longhand on what I think this election says about America, but looking it over, it’s pretty depressing. It may go up on the blog later, but for now, I want to talk about my hopes for the new term.

In his concession speech, John Kerry enjoined all Americans to work together for a common cause. That’s an excellent thing to hope for, but it’s not very realistic. It’s like hoping that one day I’ll hear the news that John Ashcroft was found dead from choking on the semen of a male prostitute. It’s just not that likely.

So here are some things I’m hoping for in the next four years.

I hope Bush makes some genuine, rather than merely cosmetic, headway against terrorists, instead of creating an environment that breeds more.

I hope the news media is not cowed by the White House the way it was during the first term. I hope it shines a bright light on its activities, and that people pay attention when it does.

I hope that the more moderate Republicans in the House and Senate will take stands against some of the administration's truly repellent ideas. I doubt that Arlen Specter will be seeking reelection when he’s 80 in six years – it would be nice if he’d take point on this. (He can’t be happy with the Republican establishment for his treatment during the primaries.)

I hope that Democrats will find a way to appeal to Southern and Midwestern voters in congressional and senate races.

I hope Fox News will try to restrain itself from cheering whenever we kill innocent people in other countries.

I hope Bush appoints no more than two Supreme Court justices, and I hope his appointments are either very old or have angered the Mob.

I hope everyone has the good sense to keep their grubby mitts off the Constitution.

I hope Karl Rove gets gang-raped by hillbillies. Or orangutans. Or sharks.

I’m sure I’m hoping for other things too. I’ll let you know when I figure out what they are.

Rob

Everytime I think I've posted my last post about 'em...

... they pull me back in. Here's Jim's Big Ego's newest tune, WTFMFWTFAYT, in an easily downloadable mp3 form.. with their blessings, o'course.

For everyone who's as frustrated as I am about the dabacle-in-chief, who'll have 79 days to pack. 83 if he starts now.

UPDATE: Don't have kids around when you listen. No, really.

Rob

More on Abu Ghraib

Phillip Carter has written an excellent article for the Washington Monthly on how the abuses at Abu Ghraib were a result of the Bush administrations policies, including the suspension of the Geneva convention. He also explains the ways that simple, seemingly innocuous methods (like "sleep deprivation") turn into nightmares, and details how our actions there will come back to haunt us in the future.

You can, and should, read it here.

Rob

Family Matters

My brother Tom and I have been emailing each other about my last post (the letter to Mom), and I've posted the letters to that post's comments section. If you don't normally read the comments, you might want to take a look. It's a pretty good discussing, and I'm not sure where it will take us next.

Rob

Letter to Mom

This is a letter I wrote to my mom the other day. I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. Since I think it’s my best writing I’ve done about the election, I asked her if I could post it here. (She said yes.)

Mom,

Yesterday, you asked me why I didn’t think the President had “moral strength.” I had a hard time putting it into words – I find him outrageous on so many levels that I often don’t know where to begin.

But I’ve found it. Looking back, it’s the moment when it crystallized for me that GWB was not simply a bad president, but a disastrous one, one who, despite his easygoing manner, is actually undermining everything that makes America great.

That moment was Abu Ghraib.

Mom, seeing those pictures turned my stomach. I couldn’t believe that Americans were doing these things. When I was younger, I didn’t have a very high opinion of soldiers, but that’s changed in the last few years. I’m sure there are plenty of soldiers I wouldn’t like personally (although probably just as many that, like Mark G., I would like a whole lot), but I’ve grown to respect what they do and the peace they keep a great deal. They’re often called on to dirty their hands in a way that I don’t think I could ever do. They do it to keep me safe, and you safe, and people in other countries safe. Often, it’s in high-stress environments, keeping an already bad situation from becoming incalculably worse.

These men and women deserve our respect. And in most cases, they earn it.

But then there was Abu Ghraib. There were pictures of naked prisoners, prisoners threatened with dogs. Prisoners forced to stand motionless for 12 hours at a stretch. People, men and women, were raped and sexually humiliated. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything more horrifying to me – because I knew that my own people did this. Not the Germans, not the Japanese, not Osama bin Laden. My people. People who grew up in towns like ours.

It turned my stomach for days. The photos kept coming, and all I could think about was how wrong it was. We’re Americans, I thought. We don’t torture. We’re Americans.

To my mind, there are two people ultimately responsible for this (aside from George Bush himself). One is Donald Rumsfeld, who is in charge of the military, and who let this happen. The Red Cross estimates that 70 to 90 percent of the Iraqis detained were held in error, on his watch. The other is John Ashcroft, whose Justice Department wrote a memo that blurred the line between torture and acceptable interrogation techniques.

Looking at the situation, I have to ask: What would a moral person do, if this happened on his watch? Ask yourself what Dad would have done if he were President when it happened. What would you have done? What do you think Rev. Ev would do, or me, or Tommy, or anyone else who you can think of as moral?

Here’s my answer, for every one of these people: They would get to the bottom of why it happened, and they would make sure it never happened again. In doing this, they would hold the right people accountable – not just the people who got their hands dirty, but the people who encouraged or allowed it to happen. They would replace these people and move forward. And they would take personal responsibility for their own oversight, and assure America and the world that it would never happen again.

That didn’t happen. The administration scrambled to put a lid on the photos, trying to crack down on the people who took and shared the pictures, rather than the torturers themselves. Soon after the story broke, the President stood by Rumsfeld and called him one of the best Secretaries of Defense the country’s ever had. Instead of focusing on the problem, he focused on political damage control, hoping the story would blow over.

And amazingly and sadly, it did.

But whenever the President has been asked about any mistakes he’s made, he never mentions Abu Ghraib. It’s understandable that he doesn’t want to dwell on it during an election. But neither he nor any of his staff have ever taken any sort of responsibility for the horrible treatment prisoners received there. That’s neither moral nor strong.

And that’s why I can’t vote for him.

I know you’re planning to vote for Bush, Mom. I can only ask, please consider his actions, rather than what he says about himself. Does he measure up to your standards of what a good man should be?

I can tell you he doesn’t meet mine. Not by a long shot.

I love you, whatever you decide.

Rob

Who can protect you?

In the end, domestic policies aside, this election all comes down to terrorism. We’ll vote for who we think can keep us safe. And in the end, that’s the main reason I’m voting for John Kerry.

I work in New York City. Terrorism isn’t some abstract concept to me. It’s not something that will happen to someone else. I work two blocks from the Empire State Building. I take the train to and from Penn Station (right under Madison Square Garden) every day. These are targets. The next time a terrorist attacks, I could die. This is real to me. This is what I think when I get off the train in the morning. Not every morning, but enough.

When I walk past the Empire State Building, I keep an eye out for people with walkie talkies. I called 911 once about a suitcase left near a trash can.

I’m not kidding.

President Bush’s response to the terrorism threat has been ineffectual, and in many ways counterproductive. He sends Tom Ridge out to raise the terror alert any time he needs a bump in the polls (studies show the boost lasts about two weeks, but is shrinking – expect one next weekend, another little scare for Halloween). And Bush has let the Republican Congress dole out the antiterrorism money to all sorts of porky pet projects, rather than spending it sensibly, focusing on high-threat areas like NYC, DC, and LA. And he hasn’t taken proper steps to keep our ports, nuclear reactors, and chemical plants safe. These places tend to be privately owned, and Bush steadfastly refuses to regulate businesses, even when imposing new laws limiting individual freedom. The gap in our security is as big as his blind spot.

Meanwhile, Attorney General John Ashcroft hasn’t yet made a single conviction for terrorism – this, after detaining over 5,000 people. Not one conviction. Zero for 5000 isn’t exactly a stellar batting average, particularly with using the big red fat bat of the Patriot Act. Now he wants to expand the act. Hey John – show us you can do something with what you got, first. Besides disrupting thousands of lives, that is.

And Iraq? More and more, it just seems to paint a target on us here at home. Not only hasn’t it helped us in the fight against terrorism (if that were a really our priority, we would have taken out Abu Musab Zarqawi on one of the several chances we had before the war, rather than keep him around as a pretext to go to war), but it presents us as weak. We’re losing ground there and terrorists are getting bombs into the supposedly safe “Green Zone”, all because our president didn’t think the overwhelming force we normally present was necessary.

But an even bigger sign of weakness is the target he chose. Instead of focusing our efforts on the one who attacked us, we soon turned our attention to the one he thought we could beat. We’re flailing our arms wildly, hoping to hit something – anything – to show we’re tough. In middle school, we had a word for that: spaz. And no one respects a spaz.

On the other hand, Kerry perceives the War in Iraq and our antiterrorism efforts as two different things. They’re linked, but they are not one and the same. I’ve no doubt he will use force when necessary, but not without judgement. He’s an intelligent man, one who isn’t afraid of reading. Someone who would read a Presidential Daily Briefing entitled “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.” and actually do something about it, rather than continuing his vacation.

Yes, I blame Bush for not preventing September 11. I blame him for not taking the threat to American lives seriously. I blame him for his deer-in-the-headlights inaction when the attacks took place. I blame him for going after Saddam Hussein when we had Bin Laden in our sights. And I blame him for putting on a dog-and-pony show of terror alerts, airport security, and bogus detentions to make me think I’m safer, without actually making me safer at all.

This is the worst president we’ve ever had. None of us are safe while he’s in office.

Rob

Anyone Feel a Draft?

Josh Marshall raises an excellent point, and gives details about the Bush Campaign's latest attempt at supressing free speech.

In a nutshell: Rock the Vote has been using the possibility of a draft to motivate young people to register to vote. Considering how many troops we have in Iraq, and how long they could be there for, it's certainly a possibility, however distateful it might be. And the people who would be most concerned are the very people that RTV is trying to reach. (Of course, their parents and toehr loved ones should be very concerned too. And if your kid isn't draft age now, just remember that they're growing every day.)

The Bush administration, all the way up to the President himself, have said that there would be no draft, that our all-volunteer army is doing just fine. (This, despite the fact that a substantial chunk of the National Guard isn't, y'know, guarding the nation. At least not our nation. They're in Iraq, because we can't spare more troops from the regular army.)

And so, the chairman of the Republican National Committee has sent them a cease-and-desist letter (.pdf link) to shut them up, threatening to revoke their IRS advantages that come with being labveled a "non-partisan" group -- because the idea of a draft is purportedly so preposterous that they're obviously just doing this to cause trouble.

And his proof of this? A few soundbites from Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. Essentially: "Because we said so."

That's not good enough. Not from anyone, but especially not from these guys. This is thuggery, pure and simple.

Rob

Who would Osama vote for?

That question is posed to me whenever I see a little sticker at one of the parking meter machines on my way to work. It always makes me think.

I’m not sure who Osama would vote for. For one thing, I have only the barest idea of who he is and how he thinks. Is he an evil madman, or an evil mastermind? Can he be both? Evil is certainly in the equation, at least by any decent set of values. He probably sees himself as some kind of revolutionary, but he’s a cowardly thug who hits and runs. He’s evil, sure, but I doubt he’d agree. (Or maybe he might. Maybe he knows he’s doing evil, and is intentionally sacrificing his own soul to achieve what he thinks is a greater good. It’s a creepy idea, to be sure, and probably doesn’t describe his mindset – but my point is, we don’t know.)

And also, he doesn’t seem like much of a small-d democrat to me. Charlie don’t surf, and Osama don’t vote.

But who would he want to win?

See, this gets me to wondering what the intention is of the person who posted the sticker? That mindset, I might be able to get into – if I could just figure out what it was. Does he think Osama would vote for Kerry (expecting him to pull out of Iraq), so we should vote for Bush? Or does he think Osama would vote for Bush (expecting him to stay in Iraq), so we should vote for Kerry?

Because wherever Osama is, it probably ain’t Iraq. By keeping our forces there, Bush a) diverting needed resources to find OBL, and b) fostering the feeling of a holy war between Christianity & Judaism and Islam, which will just feed the anger in the Middle East and grow Al Quaeda’s ranks. I think by going to Iraq in the first place – even though yes, it’s a good thing for Iraqis to have Saddam out of power – Bush played right into OBL’s hands. I’ve heard reports that Al Quaeda is back up to full strength since the initial (and deserved) war in Afghanistan, and I fear it will only get stronger, the more we persist with our current Middle East strategy.

I don’t know how to get out. But I know I don’t trust the guy who got us into this mess to do it.

Rob