Felafel man interviews Howard Stern


I've never been a big Howard Stern fan, but it sure is fun seeing him tell Bill O'Reilly to shut up in this video clip from the wizards at Crooks and Liars. At one point, O'Reilly is pressing Stern to describe his act, and starts to disapprove when Stern mentions sex talk, but then quickly catches himself. I don't know why Stern didn't jump all over that one. Now that would have been funny.
8.12.05 16:05


Sullivan on torture


Once again, Andrew Sullivan shames the pro-torture crowd:
Let me state for the record that I am second to none in decrying, loathing, and desiring to defeat those who wish to replace freedom with religious tyranny of the most brutal kind--and who have murdered countless innocent civilians in cold blood. Their acts are monstrous and barbaric. But I differ from Krauthammer by believing that monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder--just as animals are not deemed morally responsible for killing. Insisting on the humanity of terrorists is, in fact, critical to maintaining their profound responsibility for the evil they commit.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is criss-crossing Europe, making excuses for America's pro-torture policy, and draining the last ounce of goodwill left among our European allies. I can't believe we have to endure three-more years of these idiots.
8.12.05 16:23


Time to get incensed about anti-semitism


If I was the guy at MoveOn.org responsible for mass emailings, I'd send out an angry missive about the nutjob Iranian president who says the holocaust never happened:
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said: "Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces ... Although we don't accept this claim, if we suppose it is true ... Let's give some land to the Zionists in Europe or in Germany or Austria.

"They faced injustice in Europe, so why do the repercussions fall on the Palestinians?"
Don't believe for a moment that the Iranian leadership cares a whit about the Palestinians. The Iranian mullahs are intolerant religious fanatics. They hang gay teenagers, whip people for drinking alcohol, and use stormtrooper tactics to repress political speech. They don't care about the Palestinians. The mullahs only care about one thing: staying in power.

If the Democrats have any hope of regaining foreign policy cred with the American public, then groups like MoveOn need to get excited about Iran. On the tree of great political causes, the Mullahs are the lowest hanging fruit.
9.12.05 02:36


Vietraq


Glenn Greenwald has a great post up about administration happy talk during the Vietnam War, and how eerily similar it is to what we are hearing these days:
Much of the American population is too young to remember how it was that the combat phase of the Vietnam War dragged on from 1965 until 1975, with virtually no progress, culminating in clear American defeat.

But a review of what Americans were being told about the war as it was being waged ? the falsely optimistic reports from the Executive Branch and military leaders, the endless promises of imminent improvement which never arrived, the equating of anti-war sentiment with surrender and cowardice, and even the misleading Governmental accounts of the Gulf of Tonkin incident which manipulated a compliant Congress into initially giving Johnson war authority ? reveals striking similarities in both rhetoric and substance with respect to the Government?s claims about Vietnam and Iraq.
True, the two wars are different in important ways, too. Vietnam wasn't about regime change, or settling old scores, or WMD. It was about standing up to communism, and sending a clear message to both China and Russia that the US would stand in the way of any expansionist plans by communist countries. It sounds so quaint, now, but at the time, Russia and China were both nuclear powers with rabidly anti-American leadership.
We are here to emphasize that the United States will maintain its interest and its presence in your country. There is no question whatsoever of our abandoning that interest. We'll stay for as long as it takes. We shall provide whatever help is required to win the battle against the Communist insurgents.

Robert McNamara, US Secretary of State, 1964
The US never invaded Vietnam. The build up occurred over ten years or so, starting out with a handful of advisors and blossoming to 500,000 boots on the ground by 1970. Most college campuses remained largely oblivious until 1967 - the first major, nationwide protest was a war moratorium day in October of that year. My friends and I wore black arm bands to our 8th grade classes, until the principal made us take them off. By 1970, some campuses were ablaze, and the Ohio National Guard shot actually opened fire on students at Kent State University in Ohio. In Wisconsin, somebody blew up the Army Math Center at UW-Madison, killing a grad student.
The enemy is no longer close to victory. Time is no longer on his side. There is no cause to doubt the American commitment. Our decision to stand firm has been matched by our desire for peace.

And we will continue to help the people of South Vietnam care for those that are ravaged by battle, create progress in the villages, and carry forward the healing hopes of peace as best they can amidst the uncertain terrors of war.
And let me be absolutely clear: The days may become months, and the months may become years, but we will stay as long as aggression commands us to battle.

President Lyndon Johnson's 1966 State of the Union Address
Protests stopped as soon as Richard Nixon cancelled the draft, which was my senior year in high school. The drawdown of troops began, under the guise of Vietnamization. As Vietnamese soldiers stood up, American troops stood down. North Vietnam returned our POWs. More troops came home.

And then America's war ended.

It took 20 years for America to shake its Vietnam Syndrome, which is how Ronald Reagan and other described the American's public's distaste for pointless military adventures. The smart President Bush crowed "American is over its Vietnam Syndrome" at the conclusion of Desert Storm. Presumably, the world was safe once again for American military adventures. Clinton used the military sparingly in the 90s, attacking Milosovich to stop genocide in the Balkans, and attempting to apprehend a bloody warlord in Somalia. Then came the 2000 election, and 9/11.
"We are already engulfed in another spate of warnings that all is hopeless in Vietnam because of the attack on the U.S. Embassy and the other V.C. efforts in Saigon and other cities. In reality, however, this flurry of V.C. activities in urban centers will almost certainly prove to have just the opposite meaning in the end. The nearest parallel is probably the fruitless Japanese use of Kamikaze pilots in the Second World War's final phase."

Columnist and war hawk Joseph Alsop, 1968
One of these days, our leaders will figure out there's a right way and a wrong way to fight wars. When that happens, we'll all be spared the happy talk. And while there will still be wars, as least we won't be lied to about them anymore.
9.12.05 04:14


Staying the course


It's a sad day when a a Jordanian high school dropout and petty criminal understands what the American President still doesn't get:
Zarqawi was eager to drive a wedge between the Sunnis and the Shiites. Otherwise, he feared that the Iraqi insurgency might develop into a national resistance, with both sects finding common cause. These fears were confirmed in the spring of 2004, when al Sadr?'s revolt attracted admiration among Sunni insurgents. Pictures of the preacher were plastered on the walls of neighborhoods where Sunnis lived. In his correspondence with bin Laden, Zarqawi relentlessly stressed the need to prevent Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis from uniting around a genuine nationalism. If this were to happen, he concluded, the jihadists would be cut out because they were foreigners and the insurgency would become a national undertaking.
Shia and Sunnis united? Over the desire to see the American military leave their country? Thank God for Zarqawi, otherwise peace might break out and we'd have to leave.

There has never been much support in Iraq for foreigners, American or Arab. Of all of Bush's lies, and there are too many to count, number one with a bullet is that the people we are fighting in Iraq come from the same dark corner of Islam as the people who attacked us on 9/11. If that was true, then why is Zarqawi so frantic to instigate civil war between Sunni and Shia? In a culture where "The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend" is practically stitched into the flag, why would Zarqawi need to alienate 25 million potential allies?
9.12.05 18:28


Blogging Santorum


Senator Rick Santorum, (R-Man on Dog), has his own blog! Show the brother love, and leave a comment.


A fake Democracy needs a fake press

Fafblog on the furor over phony news stories in the Iraqi press:
As always, their concerns are wildly misplaced. First, shouldn't a pretend democracy have a pretend free press? Second, most of these pieces weren't factually inaccurate, but mere "spin" - such as the article that spun an Iraqi general's death under torture as death under not-torture. Third, propaganda is merely a weapon. America's leaders would be foolhardy indeed to refuse a weapon in their arsenal, especially against an adverary as deadly as the truth.
So many blunders, so little time.
11.12.05 22:36


Tookie


I can't get too outraged over the planned execution of Tookie Wilson. set for approximately seven hours from now in California. Overall, I think the US would be better off if it joined Western Europe and other modern, democracies and abolished the death penalty altogether. There is no evidence that capital punishment deters murder, and it doesn't save money on incarceration, since it takes on average eleven years and $1 million to carry out a death sentence.

Still, there is something very human about wanting to make the very worst criminals pay the ultimate price for their deeds. Tookie Wilson was as bad as they come: first, he shot a convenience store clerk twice in the back during a robbery. Some time later, he murdered a family of three. He has denied guilt for 16 years, and thus avoided showing the remorse that judges, prosecutors, and governors need to hear.

Tookie Wilson claims he is reformed. He has written books that warn children against the gang lifestyle, and cultivated a few celebrity friendships along the way. That alone is reason to at least keep him locked up - the world doesn't need another celebrity gangster, especially one who piously tells children not to lead the life Tookie chose for himself, while reaping the celebrity whirlwind.

Logically speaking, the death penalty has no place in a culture that celebrates the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It cheapens the legal system, and infects all who come in contact with the execution process - the prison guards, the attorneys on both sides, and the health care worker who finds the vein that takes the needle. Some day soon, America will outgrow this tawdry vision of justice. But not tonight. Tookie Wilson is not the right man, and this is not the right moment.
12.12.05 23:15


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