Kerry’s got the loot, Lieberman’s spending too much, Edwards is bleeding support (I’m not sure if losing Shrum is a negative), and, even among nine candidates, Florida Senator Bob Graham has come up with a novel position on the Middle East: He’s against the war in Iraq, for a war in Syria. And we’ve got eighteen months to go, folks.
Tag: War in Iraq
Goodnight Euphrates.
Despite significant warnings from historians and anthropologists, the Pentagon does little to stop Baghdad’s National Museum of Antiquities, a priceless archive on some of the world’s oldest civilizations, from being systematically looted and pillaged. Our response to this tragic event is too little too late – what are we going to do? Have a couple of INTERPOL guys watch for suspicious items on Ebay? I doubt many of the most priceless artifacts travel that well anyway. It just wouldn’t have been that hard to station troops around the museum, particularly given (a) that the Pentagon was briefed beforehand, and (b) US troops were already protecting the (ahem) Oil Ministry. This isn’t the burning of Alexandria’s library, but it might just end up being close. For shame.
Here We Go Again.
Second verse, same as the first. With the war in Iraq coming to a close, Dubya’s hawks start turning up the heat on Syria. “I think that we believe there are chemical weapons in Syria,” Bush said yesterday. Boy, that rationale never gets old, does it? Even with India now latching onto Dubya’s “preemption” to justify possibly bombing Pakistan back into the Stone Age, the Bushies don’t even make an attempt to forge a casus belli more in tune with international diplomatic precedent. Let’s just hope China also doesn’t decide to “preempt” terrorism in Taiwan anytime soon. (Second link via Follow Me Here.) Update: Bush and Blair try to kill the Syria war hype, for now.
Cluster Bombs and Cakewalks.
Also via LinkMachineGo, Get your War On reports in on the fall of Baghdad. “So, what do you suppose Dick Cheney is thinking right now? ‘Thank God, my decades-long dream of liberating the Iraqi children has been realized! Now, to cure AIDS!’“
Ends and Means.
Well, I must admit, the fall of Saddam’s regime occurred much more quickly than I had ever expected. (Ten bucks says the Iraqi cabal card decks are all over Ebay in six months.) But, as Michael Kinsley notes, our victory doesn’t answer the tough questions about why we got involved in the first place. And while the images of liberation coming out of Baghdad right now are undeniably stirring, my doubts about this conflict – and the amateurish diplomacy that preceded it – remain…and particularly if Gulf War II spills over into Syria or Iran.
Lake Effects-Based Ops.
Lake Effect returns from a two-month hiatus with some interesting reflections on the Iraq war. Well-worth reading, as always.
The Republican Pastime.
I knew there was a good reason I didn’t like baseball. Apparently the Hall of Fame has cancelled a Bull Durham retrospective because (gasp!) Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon are against the war. (The Hall of Fame only allows in all-American racists, drunks, and wifebeaters, not peaceniks.) Tim Robbins wrote a nice reply: “Your subservience to your friends in the administration is embarrassing to baseball and by engaging in this enterprise you show that you belong with other cowards and ideologues in a hall of infamy and shame…Long live democracy, free speech and the ’69 Mets; all improbable, glorious miracles that I have always believed in.” You go, Tim. As Spike Lee pointed out in the first five minutes of He Got Game, basketball is the true American pastime nowadays anyway.
By George, he’s right.
“During his presidential campaign Bush cried, ‘I’m a uniter, not a divider.’ As one critic put it, ‘He’s got that right. He’s united the entire world against him.'” George McGovern goes house on Dubya, and it’s definitely worth a gander. (Via Looka.) And, if Dubya approaches his religion with anything more than born-again zeal, perhaps he’ll take a moment’s reflection on this: “We will, of course, win the war with Iraq. But what of the question raised in the Bible that both George Bush and I read: ‘What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul,’ or the soul of his nation?“
Mmmm, bacon.
Yum. Both the Dubya administration and the Senate bloat up the war bill with pork barrel spending. As John McCain put it, “I didn’t realize that Al Qaeda had reached all the way to the South Pole.” Speaking of wartime handouts, Dems Henry Waxman and John Dingell want further scrutiny into contracts given to Halliburton subsidiaries by the GAO. All I know is, if the Clinton administration were involved in this type of quid pro quo, Dan Burton would have had an investigation up and running weeks ago.
No Representation with Taxation.
While still desperately in denial about the nation’s exploding debt, the GOP has, as expected, gone to war against its own moderate wing and threatened to sink the budget, in the hopes of preserving Dubya’s $726 billion tax giveaway. This is despite the fact that the Daschle Dems have in essence already capitulated again, agreeing to pass an equally wrong-headed compromise plan half that size. Sigh…the Dems really have to get it together. At any rate, hopefully moderate Republicans will take DeLay’s budget blackmail for the desperate, dangerous gamble it is and call him on it. Nothing screams GOP these days quite like a government shutdown.