adam.oliner.net

The response rate on that last post is further evidence that people don’t want to read about me, they want to read my rants. This is reasonable, since my life consists primarily of sitting at a computer and avoiding lactose. I’m glad For the Birds garnered a reaction like that, because these issues should be discussed at length. A co-worker recently said that he didn’t watch the DNC because he already knew who he would be voting for (Kerry). I criticized him, arguing that the ability to intelligently defend your choice is an important part of making one. In that spirit, I’ll try to keep these threads coming, and you all keep commenting/IMing/emailing from places like Pennsylvania, Missouri, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, California, Washington, New Jersey, and Taiwan.

The color-coded Terror Alert System is all about politics, says Howard Dean. He’s right, of course. They are a tool by which the administration can say, retrospectively, “Yes, we failed to stop the attack. But, look, we had raised the alert level, so it’s not like we didn’t know.” It is a shield from future criticism of the kind that followed 9/11. I defend Tom Ridge’s decision to announce the specific threats against various financial targets. I agree that an alert public can help “thwart terror.” But saying “something’s coming” in a frightened voice just makes people uneasy. And when you do it with the kind of frequency we’re used to, people just ignore it (media excluded). I’ve never heard anyone say, “Time to go to school kids. No, get out of that Camry; it’s YELLOW today. Everybody in the tank!” Or, “Well, I’m off to work. What’s that? We’re at RED!? Screw work, I’ll be in the basement cleaning my guns!” Can anyone suggest a reason for it aside from politics?

I affirm James Hart’s right to run for office, and, as they say, defend to the death his right to say what he says. He claims not to be a racist, even though he talks about the “favored races” from Europe and Asia and the “less-favored” ones from Africa. Maybe he has a different dictionary than me, I don’t know. The thing about the article that really bothered me was this quote: “Despite his radical views, Hart may end up winning the Republican nomination because he is the only GOP candidate on the ballot in Thursday’s primary.” I’m pausing at my keyboard, now, in an attempt to grasp the magnitude of that statement. Let’s rephrase: The Republicans would be willing to put a gun-toting racist on the ballot, and, worse than that, they had trouble finding anyone better. Again: The citizens of Tennessee are so desperate for a Republican representative that they’d elect anyone the GOP puts on the ballot, including someone whose views conjure images of Nazi Germany. My friend Carl, from Nashville, has (correctly) rebuked me in the past for making crude generalisations about his home state. In my defense, articles like this one are the source of my bias.

So don’t stop giving me your feedback. Meanwhile, our President will “never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people.” Finally, some honesty. Even if by accident.

Oh, and don’t forget your duct tape: some of us are at ORANGE!!!1!11one

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

In retrospect, the solution to the violence in the middle east seems obvious. The Israelis are tired of sharing their land with the Palestinians, and the Palestinians (and the rest of the Arab world) don’t want Israelis in Israel. Of course, there’s something they both want even less, and this is the key to creating unity and cooperation in the region. Neither group wants us there. And that’s how the United States gets Israelis and Palestinians to work together: we invade and occupy Israel.

It has worked before. Our brilliant President, George W. Bush, has succeeded in uniting two ethnic groups that have been warring with each other for centuries. By invading Iraq, he managed to get Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims to put aside their differences and the generations of violence that make up their history. Instead, they have joined forces and picked up arms against us. With a common enemy in the American invaders, an internal civil war seems silly. Bush always said he was a uniter, not a divider.

So let’s gather up all of our worst soldiers, our petty criminals, anyone who can carry a gun and who is expendable. The soldiers who abused Iraqi prisoners, for example. We’ll train them all in some half-hearted way, give them guns, and drop them in Gaza. They might die, but better them than a young boy from Michigan, or a civilian from Philadelphia. Still, their deaths will increase the jingoism, or patriotism if you prefer, in this country.

President Bush would probably approve of my plan. After all, it seems to coincide exactly with his current foreign policy.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The United States has used that logic before: with Stalin against the Nazis, with Vietnamese rebel Ho Chi Min against the Japanese, and even with Saddam Hussein. Indeed, this country has even funded Osama bin Laden, both in a previous decade and in the recent past. You’d think, by now, we’d have learned that this reasoning has its flaws, and that perhaps there are certain lines you shouldn’t cross, even if it serves your immediate goals. Because if the enemy of your enemy is also your enemy, helping him will certainly come and bite you in the ass. I like the word used here: “blowback.”

If you look carefully, you can see us making the same mistake in Iraq. At this very moment, we are funding and training a new Iraqi military, an important step toward “rebuilding” the country. We are giving this support to the Iraqi people because they were the enemy of Saddam, who was our enemy. If you’ve been watching the news, you may have noticed that these people, these civilians, are killing American soldiers with zeal. Iraqi news stations are filled with propaganda about our troops. True or not, this is what these people are hearing.

If you were a child in Iraq, right now, your life would be something like this:

Everything is in a state of relative peace, when suddenly, the US attacks your country, unprovoked. Your father is killed, or perhaps your friend’s father. Your mother cries. The Americans drive through your streets in their tanks, and the TV says that they are blowing up your mosques and surrounding your schools. Explosions shake your bed at night. You grow up, and you join the military. They give you a gun and they train you. And one day, someone approaches you, and says that the Americans must be stopped. And you remember.

To quote one of the articles above:

… a decision was made to provide America’s potential enemies with the arms, money - and most importantly - the knowledge of how to run a war of attrition violent and well-organized enough to humble a superpower.

When the pre-9/11 memo was released, I was amazed to find how accurate it was. It was titled “Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S.” and had recent intelligence that indicated “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings.” This was given to Bush a month before the attacks on NYC.

Now, Bush is claiming that there was no “actionable intelligence” in this memo. Let’s examine this claim, in the context of what Bush has done since the attacks. Before the attacks, Bush was told al Qaeda was likely going to hijack a plane. He did nothing. Now, after the attacks, he has no intelligence indicating an impending hijacking, yet he has ramped up security at airports across the country. In other words, he has even less specific information now, yet seems to find it perfectly ‘actionable.’

But putting the obvious flaw and hypocrisy in his reasoning aside, his claim remains comical. As my aunt asked rhetorically on Friday, before Bush’s ‘actionable intelligence’ defense, “What did he want? A map?” Well, as it turns out, no. Bush wanted both a location and a time. To quote, “There was not a time and place of an attack… What I wanted to know was, is there anything specifically going to take place in America that we needed to react to.” That is, he seems to think that the only intelligence worth acting on is intelligence so absurdly specific that it exists only in fantasy. Terrorists are not so stupid that they draw up plans months in advance with times and flight numbers; they set up multiple cells across the country, each prepared to act, and then last-minute calls are made to activate specific cells with recently-decided details. It would be impossible to know the time and location in advance, and the fact that Bush requires that kind of specificity to act is inexcusable.

His people are trying to spin this every way they can, but the fact is that Bush ignored the warnings. Instead of apologizing and accepting responsibility, he defends himself and tries to push the blame to the intelligence community. The FBI and CIA gave Bush as many details as any reasonable person could expect. I just hope that next time the terrorists will send Bush a little memo saying, “Hey Bushie-boy: We’re going to hijack flight XXX next Tuesday and crash it into your house. I’ll be the guy wearing the bright orange t-shirt that says, ‘Terrorist.’ If you have any questions, feel free to call my cell at…”

Forget the “misery index,” we need a “stupidity index” that increases with every incompetent act Bush commits. I’ll leave you with the wise words of our (please, God) next president, John Kerry:

You tell me if this is strong enough. George Bush and the Republicans in Washington today have run the most arrogant, inept, reckless and ideological foreign policy in the modern history of this country… I notice President Bush is taking some days off down at Crawford, Texas, and I’m told that when he takes days off, you know, he totally relaxes. He doesn’t watch television, he doesn’t read the newspapers, he doesn’t make long-term plans, doesn’t worry about the economy. I thought about that for a moment. I said, ‘Sounds to me like it’s just like life in Washington, doesn’t it?’

I’m going to put on my Nostradamus hat for a minute and makes some predictions about the year to come. I base my predictions on two factors: (1) Bush is a politician first and (2) martyrs are easy to make and impossible to kill. Bush kicked off his official campaign last week. It was no coincidence, I’m sure, that Bush’s speech coincided with the anti-war protests in NYC. While the streets of our largest metropolis were filled with thousands of people outraged with this administration’s actions in Iraq, Bush was in Florida, telling everyone that the economy is strong and that he has a “positive vision” for stopping terror. It’s called running interference.

For most of Bush’s presidency, his approval rating has declined. There were, however, a few times where his rating has increased: when we bombed Iraq, when we killed Saddam’s sons, and when we captured Saddam. Good to know the public’s got its priorities straight. The point is, there’s an election in November, and Bush knows how to jack up his approval ratings. My prophecy reads as follows:

Before election day, Bush will have Osama bin Laden killed. OBL will become a martyr, and Bush’s approval rating will hit all-time highs. Thus, while Al Qaeda will be stronger than ever, Bush will have people convinced he is fighting terror.

Don’t go out and buy your duct tape just yet. Besides not being a certified prophet, I mean this to be largely symbolic. The point is that I think Bush has something up his sleeve. He’ll do anything to win this election, even if it fucks up this country in the long run. Just look at his despicable environmental record. Or his asinine foreign policy. With any luck, my prophecy will prove meaningless and be lost to time. George W. will be a one-term president, and the stain he has left on our country’s history will be washed away by Senator Kerry.