Happy Mothers Day




9.5.04 20:32


Broken narrative


Oh no! The Bushies are losing Andrew!
"The narrative of liberation was critical to the success of the mission - politically and militarily. This was never going to be easy, but it was worth trying. It was vital to reverse the Islamist narrative that pitted American values against Muslim dignity. The reason Abu Ghraib is such a catastrophe is that it has destroyed this narrative. It has turned the image of this war into the war that the America-hating left always said it was: a brutal, imperialist, racist occupation, designed to humiliate another culture. Abu Ghraib is Noam Chomsky's narrative turned into images more stunning, more damaging, more powerful than a million polemics from Ted Rall or Susan Sontag. It is Osama's dream propaganda coup. It is Chirac's fantasy of vindication. It is Tony Blair's nightmare. And, whether they are directly responsible or not, the people who ran this war are answerable to America, to America's allies, to Iraq, for the astonishing setback we have now encountered on their watch. "
10.5.04 15:10


Vote carefully

Here's an email that's going the rounds, author unknown. Pass it on:

Whether Republicans like it or not, if George Bush is elected in the fall, the entire world will view the election as American approval of the torture and sexual humiliation of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. It might not be fair, it might not be reasonable, but it is nevertheless reality. Apologies, prosecutions, firings and courts martial will not be enough to expunge the stain this scandal has placed on the honor of the United States. The pictures are simply too graphic. The abuses are simply too horrible. If George Bush is elected President, the entire world will view the election, at a minimum, as tacit approval of these events.

This election will thus no longer merely determine the Presidency. This election is now much larger than the office. The United State?s place in the family of nations is now on the ballot. This election will determine whether the United States will ever again have any standing or moral authority in the rest of the world. The United States cannot simultaneously stand against depraved sexual torture and the wanton abuse of human rights, while electing the commander in chief upon whose watch these events occurred. The seven hundred thousand or so viewers of Fox News may be able to rationalize such cognitive dissonance; the six billion people who make up the remainder of the world will not.

The stakes are thus immeasurable. For better or for worse, a strong, just and moral United States is not simply a luxury. Instead, it has become a precondition for human progress. For better or for worse, the United States has become the indispensable nation. Our economic, technological, and military position in the world insures that we will remain as such for the foreseeable future. The only question that remains, therefore, is whether the United States will have a moral authority on par with our economic and military dominance. That question will be answered in the fall. The election will determine whether America can ever again be seen as a shining city on a hill, a beacon of hope and freedom the illuminates the entire globe. Sadly, the election of George Bush will mean that the United States will instead be viewed as a rat hole prison in Iraq, where nude prisoners were bound together, tortured with hot chemicals, and beaten to death.

Vote carefully, my fellow Americans.
10.5.04 20:09


The wrong enemy


A reader of Andrewsullivan.com left this comment. I hope Mr. Bush will read it.

Yeah, right.

"I have been a regular reader of your blog for the last six months. Before I proceed, it's best to give a brief ID. I'm Bangladeshi and Muslim, educated in the Uni of London O- and A-level system back home, have a graduate degree from the US and now studying for another degree at Oxford Uni. I've been an ardent Anglophile for as long as I can remember and grew up on Dickens, Tennyson, Owen, Maugham, Greene. It's a stunning thing to think sometimes that I am in the uni where my favorite writers studied - Greene, TE Lawrence, Penelope Lively. I'm as Westernized a Muslim as you'll find from my neck of the woods, and a deeply concerned citizen of the Muslim world.

But I was against the Iraq war from the start. Let me tell you something, Andrew. Iraq was never the problem. I don't know why the right bought into the Bush logic for a war against IRAQ. The problem with the Muslim world lies in one place above all others - the Saud dynasty in Saudi Arabia and its worldwide network of radical theocratic scholars. Why the right pushed for an irrelevant war against an irrelevant dictator is beyond me. If you guys had pushed for a democracy and freedom in the heart of the Middle East, you could NOT have made a better case for that than the two staunchest, most undemocratic of American friends - Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
I am from Bangladesh, and I have as much first-hand experience as anybody else of what these people are doing to us. The Bengalis have always been a highly tolerant nation - Bengali Muslims share many cultural traditions with our fellow Bengalis who are Hindu in religion but the same ethnicity and who speak the same language. Two of my dearest friends are a Hindu girl and a Christian guy. Many many of us have this same broadly tolerant mindset.

"But over the last 20 years, the Saudis have established a galaxy of madrassas all over the Muslim world, and also in Bangladesh. In 20 years, the whole political discourse has changed from one of tolerance, and a debate between the market vs the state, into something far more insidious. The tone is now one of who can claim Islam more loudly. The would-be theocrats are trained, taught and financed by the Saudis, by the Egyptians, by the Yemenis. Their pockets are deep enough to survive even minimal electoral support. But because of the zealotry and organization of this vocal minority, their influence on national politics has been deeply corrupting. But even so, the VAST majority of Bengalis have no time for their bullshit. No one wants to live in an Iran or a Saudi, NO ONE.

"Andrew, if you and your right-wing co-religionists had spent a fraction of your energy in campaigning against the Sauds and Mubarak, you'd have done all of the world an immense favour. I don't know why Bush pushed for Iraq. Maybe it was revenge for his dad. Maybe it was the neocons' greed for oil security. Maybe it was their desire to safeguard Israel for future generations. I don't know. Maybe it was a combination of all three. But I honestly cannot bring myself to believe that, as their PRINCIPAL motive, they wanted to set up an exemplary democracy in the heart of the Middle East. That may have been an incidental by-product. But it never was, could never be the major issue at hand. If democracy and freedom was the primary factor, there were candidates closer to home to work on.

"The Iraq war and its sordid mismanagement has messed up the prospects for real change in the Middle East for God knows how long. I know that as a developed country, the US is addicted to Saudi oil and wants to avoid upsetting those sick scumbags. But nonetheless I am urging you, begging you, those of you who have influence in the policy circles of Washington to shift attention to the real destabilizers among us. The Sauds, the Mubaraks.
For once, forget about stability. Even a popular Islamist government in Saudi or Iraq or Egypt will have to barter with the West, will have to sell its natural resources for its own coffers. So please push for real democracy, not for more client states. And please please make sure that your clients don't become so repressive, so devoid of political expression that all the suppressed voices export their terror to far-flung places, Bangladesh or Indonesia or Pakistan or Philippines. These people are destroying us.

"Naipaul wrote about the Saudi influence in Pakistan, in Indonesia as long ago as 1979. All that shit is now coming to pass. Please stop the Saudis. Please free Egypt."
11.5.04 15:10


It's axiomatic


Oh no! The Bushies are losing George Will!

"The first axiom is: When there is no penalty for failure, failures proliferate. Leave aside the question of who or what failed before Sept. 11, 2001. But who lost his or her job because the president's 2003 State of the Union address gave currency to a fraud -- the story of Iraq's attempting to buy uranium in Niger? Or because the primary and only sufficient reason for waging preemptive war -- weapons of mass destruction -- was largely spurious? Or because postwar planning, from failure to anticipate the initial looting to today's insufficient force levels, has been botched? Failures are multiplying because of choices for which no one seems accountable."
12.5.04 04:31


Fab Five linked to al Qaeda




So how do the Bushies and their religious acolytes respond to the Abu Ghraib fiasco? By closing the prison? Or making leaders accountable? If that's what you expect, then you've misunderestimated these guys. Instead, the GOP and their leather-winged minions are going on the offensive, essentially blaming the critics for talking about the photos. Meanwhile, cultural warriors are blaming the homos:
"We were told homosexuality is harmless and normal, and the military should live with a "don't ask, don't tell" policy that allows homosexuals to stay in the barracks. We were told that men "marrying" men and women "marrying" women is inevitable – not only for America, but for the world. Imagine how those images of men kissing men outside San Francisco City Hall after being "married" play in the Muslim world. We couldn't offer the mullahs a more perfect picture of American decadence. This puts Americans at risk all over the world, especially Christian missionaries who are trying to bring the Gospel to people trapped in darkness for millennia. This is a Perfect Storm of our own making, and it is up to normal Americans to unmake it."
Apparently, photos of naked, abused prisoners serve as a Roschach ink blot for Americans. Some people, me included, see the residue of a failed policy, and an attendant arrongance from the President on down. But others see still another season of Will and Grace.

The cultural warriors have it all wrong. Sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners has nothing to do with gay people. How could it? Just look at the photos. First of all, the prisoners were wearing green hoods. Tacky. Green looks terrible in the prison's flourescent lights. Gay guards would have used leather hoods, and black dog collars with chrome studs. And that photo of the Arab dude with the woman's panties on his head? All wrong. Silk, rainbow-hued boxer shorts are much more appropos.

And don't forget to moisturize! Prison air is so dry.
13.5.04 15:17


Thanks, Al




I came across this correction, posted on Air America's website:
"On yesterday's show, we said that an anodized coating is the same as a Teflon coating. In fact, they are categorically dissimilar. Teflon is a material in and of itself. Anodization, by contrast, is a chemical process. To anodize an aluminum object, put the object in a bath of dilute sulfuric acid and charge it electrically. (The word "anodized" comes from the word "anode," meaning electrode.) A piece of aluminum that undergoes anodization is sealed in aluminum oxide, rendering it harder, more resistant to corrosion, and less porous than regular aluminum."

Now here we have the difference between right wing radio and left wing radio. Al Franken sets the record straight. That's because liberals love facts, no matter how mind-numbingly boring they are. Facts are important. But can you imagine the rant that would have ensued if a caller tried to correct Rush for the above mistake? Limbaugh would label the caller as a liberal loony who's obviously too busy sniffing anodized paint thinner to fully comprehend Limbaugh's point, which is that liberals hate freedom and they're probably not crazy about Teflon either because it's not "environmentally safe" or some such nonsense and didn't liberals sneer that Reagan was a Teflon President, well there you have it, proof my friends that Clinton's only knowledge of Teflon came from whatever anodized lubricant he was slathering on those cigars of his blah blah blah......
14.5.04 20:14


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