Category Archives: Iraq War

Mob Rule on a Featherbed

Iraq War, Osama Bin Laden

In a speech yesterday before the annual convention of the American Legion, President Bush launched yet another premptive strike against anyone who dares to question the strategic logic and moral worth of his failed policies in the Middle East. Near the end of his self-congratulatory talk, patriotic fervor was appealed to with a reference to Thomas Jefferson: “In the early years of our republic, Thomas Jefferson said that we cannot expect to move ‘from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.’ That’s been true in every time and place.” Jefferson was a prolific author, and there are a number of other quotes that Bush’s speech writer chose judiciously not to cite. For example, “Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” The problem with the President’s speech is that it confuses the tyranny of his self-righteous refusal to admit mistakes with the diversity of opinions liberty necessitates. Continue reading Mob Rule on a Featherbed →

In God We Strut

Humor and Satire, Iraq War

One of the major casualties of war is the opportunistic rise of God-talk. Before the American Civil War preachers north and south saw their political differences along religious lines. Slaveholding advocates below the Mason-Dixon line viewed blacks as the cursed children of Ham, forever branded to be servants to the Japhethetic spiritual (and plantation-owning) heirs of Noah and Abraham. Liberal abolitionists up north proposed the novel idea that Uncle Tom was the kind of man Jesus died for and who a nation should go to war over. World War I America road the crest of a revivalist movement leading to the current evangelical wing of conservative Protestantism and “death to Darwinism” bannerism. After World War II the pulpit not only was bullied to save wayward sinners but warned of the immanent takeover of America by godless Commies. Now we have the debacle in Iraq in which President Bush entered the fray on the apparent advice from a heavenly father (certainly not the logical assessment of Pentagon planners). Look out God, here come the self-righteous mantra bearers once again. Continue reading In God We Strut →

Naked and with Shame

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Iraq War, Israel, Palestine

The front page of today’s New York Times has a tabloid flavor: a group of charging Palestinian men stripped down to their underwear and running shoes. The event on Tuesday was an Israeli raid on a Palestinian prison in Jericho. This time the walls came tumbling down due to tanks and bulldozers and the power was outside rather than inside the walls. At stake were six Palestinians previously held in Israel, remanded to the Palestinian authority under a shared incarceration process and now reclaimed by Israel. It seems the British and American monitors decided to leave in fear for their own safety and immediately (perhaps in as little as 10 minutes) the Israeli authorities moved in. As hard as it may be to believe, there are even deeper levels of trust in the volatile Arab-Israeli crisis. Fearing that Hamas might break the agreement, Israel decided to do a preemptive breaking of the agreement themselves.
Continue reading Naked and with Shame →

Addicted to Oil: President Tells it Like it Is

Humor and Satire, Iraq War, Taliban

President Bush delivered a highly scripted and hyperbolically enriched “State of the Union” address last night. The time has long since passed when Presidents actually had the writing skills to prepare their own speeches so in a sense the speech is no more copywritable to George W. Bush than the White House is his White castle. The reaction flooding the airwaves and bloggy-eyed net this morning is, if I may go out on a limb here, partisan as usual. Historians of American history might wince at the opening salvo that “Yet the state of our Union has never been stronger,” but this line probably netted a few amens from executives of Exxon, whose 32 billion dollar profit last year was the most in history. Continue reading Addicted to Oil: President Tells it Like it Is →

Headlines, Heads Turn, Heads Roll

Iraq War, Journalism and Media

Today is the first day of the term at my university. My first class this morning offered the newness of a beginning relationship with twenty students and their first glimpse of an unknown (but dangerous) quantity, their professor. This is the first term in awhile that I am not in some way teaching about Islam or the Middle East (I intelligently designed a brief respite with a seminar on the influence of Charles Darwin). But picking up the New York Times this morning I realized that events in the Middle East are not about to take any time off. The picture top and center shows a well-dressed Saddam, right hand raised in defiance and left hand cradling a Quran. To the left the first news column is all about the Bush administration’s misreading of Palestinian support for Hamas, adjacent to an article by Michael Slackman on President Ahmadinejad of Iran. Skipping over the national news item of Alito’s confirmation process, the final column on the right details the severe injuries to ABC News Anchor Bob Woodruff and his cameraman in Iraq. Readers that go all the way down the page will find tidbits on Enron, Delay’s successor, Oprah Winfrey, Alan Greenspan, Hugo Chavez and Cindy Sheehan and the blockbuster trade of Mike Piazza from the Mets to the Padres. Continue reading Headlines, Heads Turn, Heads Roll →

Daily Death

Iraq War, Terrorism Issue, United Arab Emirates

People die everyday. It is hard to imagine a greater “life and death” issue than death, not only on the one who dies but for those who mourn. Today’s news, so new it did not make today’s edition of the New York Times, is full of death. The front page of the New York Times titles a headline “12 Miners Are Found Alive, Family Members Say,” but the hazard of deadlines prevented the newer news this morning that in fact 12 were found dead and only one found barely alive. On today’s Al-Jazeera it is announced that the ruler of Dubai died. On NPR this morning there was a report of a suicide bomber blowing himself up during an outdoor funeral in Muqdadiya, north of Baghdad, taking more than 30 mourners with him. And imagine all those people, thousands to be sure, who died in the last 24 hours but did not make the news.

The deaths in Dubai and Muqdadiya, Iraq could hardly be different to those left alive to think about them. Continue reading Daily Death →

As the Year Ends

Iraq War, Islamic Rituals

In a matter of hours the year 2005 will be fodder for the historians. It was a typical year in many respects, full of violence, murder, poverty, hatred and natural disasters. There were also glimmers of hope or at least rumors of hope, but these were overshadowed by the continued human tragedies and political stalemating. What else is new? For those who follow events in the Middle East and regarding the world’s one billion plus Muslim population, there is little to be thankful for apart from hope-tinged rumors. The impacts of tsunami, earthquakes, suicide bombs, airplane strikes, political rhetoric and cultural insensitivity seem to have had free reign last year. Does anyone really expect much of a change this coming year? Continue reading As the Year Ends →

Patriots Act while Politicians Talk

Iraq War, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue

The current politicized fracas over the renewal of the Patriot Act has reached the boiling point. A filibuster in the senate seeks to draw attention to provisions in the current bill that many Americans see as a stealth attack on civil liberties. The President and his surrogates insist that they have a right to act outside the law in order to respond to new threats of terrorism. Meanwhile the spin doctors in all media outlets are doing their job at dizzying speed. The seasonal message of “Peace on Earth,” routine as we come to expect it, has been drowned out in the past few days by finger pointing and alibi giving. Beyond the posturing on both sides of the congressional aisle and in the White House over the merits of the Patriot Act, we need someone to read the Riot Act to government officials who are more interested in justifying the Iraq War than saving the lives that mount up daily. Continue reading Patriots Act while Politicians Talk →