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Monday August 15 , 2005
I have always wished my
computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no
longer know how to use my telephone.
Bjarne Stroustrup,
computer science professor, designer of C++
There was a weird storm last night,
lightning snapping down every 30 seconds or so, it rained hard for a short time,
I haven't ever seen anything like it...
I just went outside and was amazed at how
strong the scent of sage is, it was wonderful, I wish I could describe it well
enough so that you could get a sense of what it was like, why they don't make
Sage Perfume I will never know...
I got a short e-mail from Cindy Sheehan in
reply to the one I sent her... It's cool that she could find the time, I'll bet
that the demands on her time are becoming almost unbearable.
Good article on her by William Rivers Pitt:
http://peacejournalism.com/ReadArticle.asp?ArticleID=4825
We will probably accept an offer today from a lady that wants to
raise dogs up here... the only thing that could be a hangup is the possibility
that another couple has shown an interest and I got the distinct impression that
they were going to make an offer yesterday...
Q. Why do
we "knock on wood" for good luck?
A. The Druids, who worshipped trees (and especially
oak trees) wore a piece of oak around their neck to
ward off evil spirits. They would touch the oak
whenever they wanted or needed good luck.
Tuesday August 16 , 2005
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is
organized life.
Immanuel
Kant, philosopher (1724-1804)
Today is going to be a
planning/work day, We have a lot of work to do to get out of here in 30 days.
We are planning to hire our nephew Brett to come over and do a lot of the work.
Brett will be coming over on Friday and spend the next three and a half days
working.
I have to get the tractor
equipment out of the yard, it's mostly junk... I talked to Eric next door who
is cleaning out all the junk his father had collected over the years. He is
getting $20 a ton and has made $2k already, and there is still more... He said
he would take that stuff
So I took it over with the tractor...
Some Patriot took his pick-up
truck and drove through some of the crosses erected down in Crawford. I have
seen those memorial graveyards elsewhere and they are impressive, 1800 some odd
crosses with names and dates, a moving memorial. The AssHat apparently decided
his disagreement with a memorial gave him the right to destroy it... I
hope he doesn't take a dislike for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier... or
Arlington Cemetery
Wednesday August 17 , 2005
"There's this
overwhelming sense being a patient of having no boundaries, no privacy, no
control over anything, and you feel so awful you can't do anything about it."
SANDRA RAMUNDT, on her
stay in a hospital.
We actually got some work done
today, not a lot but all the rooms a are near to ready for drywall
Went to the Dentist and got my
teeth cleaned
Thursday August 18 , 2005
There is a
road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.
G.K.
Chesterton, essayist and novelist (1874-1936)
Met with carpet guy (All he did
is measure, he was instructed not to tell us anything about area or cost, too
bad, the first unsatisfactory experiance I have had with a Home Depot job, he
was a nice kid and contracted by Home Depot and doing what he was told, I will
not complain) , met with Mover guy (Nice fella named Cletis, he wants 6k to move
us... no go, we had a nice chat though), Met with Realtor guy (House Sold,
signed papers, Were are in Escrow), Wished each other Happy 23rd Anniversary ,
Met with Roofing guy from Home Depot, (nice fella too, He wants 6k to do the
roof, a Bush Republican. About as Republican as you can get... or is it 'Anal
Obsessive', I get the two confused)
Met with B at Phoenix House,
It's an emotional trial on both of us, we are supposed to be upbeat and only
talk about positive things, considering the situation that we are moving that
seems a bit cruel. They asked us to select an emotion off a chart... that was
difficult, It seemed like I was feeling every single one of them. Except for me
and two of the Therapists the entire room was Hispanic. Everything said had to
be translated into Spanish.
Friday August 19 , 2005
To love truth
for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and
the seed-plot of all other virtues.
John Locke,
philosopher (1632-1704)
I will pick up Brett today, I
had hoped to have more done... Yesterday was so busy we couldn't start anything
too complicated, today should be better, I have been up since 0500 it is now
0735, I will quit this and start on the dry wall at 0800.We packed up some more
stuff but I didn't get any drywall hung... damn-it. It's incredible how much
stuff we have. I haven't even looked in the shed yet... it's chock full of
superfluous crud... The tools are the only thing I intend to take
I picked up Brett at 2030 and
we got here about 2200, Brett Worked till about 0230... He's working harder on
this place than anyone ever has...
Saturday August 20 , 2005
There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand
high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher.
Henry van
Dyke, poet (1852-1933)
I have been to Home Depot so
many times they are beginning to think I work there. Brett has worked straight
through from about 0830 till after 0200 Sunday morning, He has most of the
drywall hung, one door up, taped and plastered the living room and dining room,
re-attached the shower all this stuff is tedious and exacting, not fun for me at
all but he really seems to enjoy it.
Sunday August 21 , 2005
"A people
that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
President Eisenhower
More trips to Home Depot, we
sort of expect the new owner to stop by... I hope not, the place is a mess Three
more trips to Home Depot, Worked on the roof, looks OK but it should be replaced
soon.
Bret has worked harder and done
more in three days than I have in the past 5 years. I am truly impressed...
I am still apprehensive... I
want the inspections over with and the truck ordered.
Cindy Sheehan -- Peace mom
Will Durst - WorkingForChange.com
08.18.05 - Q. So who exactly is this Peace Mom woman anyway?
A. Cindy Sheehan is a 48 year old from Vacaville, California, who, in
response to losing her son Casey in Iraq, is selfishly attempting to stop any
other women from becoming gold star mothers.
Q. What?
A. She's against the war.
Q. Oh, okay, so why the hell is she hunkered down in a ditch outside the
Texas White House bothering the President during his vacation?
A. Vacation? 35 days is not a vacation. 35 days is a sabbatical. 35 days is a
retreat. It's five weeks. 36 hours short of a tenth of a year. Longer than the
gestation period of most mammals. Where's my 35-day vacation? Where's
your 35-day vacation? Where's the American public's 35 day vacation?
Q. Good point, but that wasn't the question.
A. I'm sorry, got a bit worked up there. What was the question again?
Q. What's she doing there?
A. She's camped outside the President's ranch to meet with him, and she vows
to stay until he tells her exactly what noble cause her son died for. And she
doesn't want to hear "Operation 2 Bucks A Gallon."
Q. Wouldn't you think a President this media savvy would just invite her
inside for some cookies and lemonade and get it over with?
A. My theory is he's spent too much time grilling cheese sandwiches on the
hood of his pickup and might be suffering from heat stroke. Besides, what kind
of a man takes his family to Crawford, Texas for a vacation?
Q. Are you saying West Texas in August is not what you call your garden spot?
A. I'm saying it's real similar to hell, and that's assuming hell has winged
insects the size of footstools.
Q. How has the conservative media responded?
A. You mean the right-wing smear machine?
Q. Whatever.
A. Bill O'Reilly jumped on Ms. Sheehan like an irritable gorilla stomping the
air out of an inflatable life raft in order to squeeze into the back of an
overstuffed Cadillac Escalade.
Q. Any specific accusations?
A. You could say that. You could also say porcupine pelts make substandard
day care pillows. Cindy Sheehan has been accused of everything from unpaid
parking tickets to the ultimate treasonous act: association with Michael Moore.
Won't be long before rumors of a lesbian relationship with Hillary Clinton
emerge.
Q. What about the claims that Ms. Sheehan has become a tool of the left?
A. A tool of the left. That's a laugh. Fox News calling Cindy Sheehan a
political tool. A lot like a rattlesnake calling a scorpion noxious. Or a White
House official complaining about the smearing of Karl Rove. You can't make stuff
up like this.
Q. Any comment on the criticisms that the protest has morphed from a lonely
vigil into pretty much just another gathering of the usual suspects?
A. Last I looked, Jesse Jackson hadn't yet made an appearance.
Q. Any other notables expected to appear?
A. With gas approaching three bucks a gallon, it's only a matter of time
before a parading convoy of SUV owners pitching gravel into each other's
windshields join the protests outside Bush's ranch.
Political comic Will Durst wonders if Crawford, Texas has any decent
barbecue. And if they deliver.
(c) 2005 WorkingForChange. All
Rights Reserved URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=19495
Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent
Falling' Theory
KANSAS CITY, KS-As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public
schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in
this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For
Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity"
is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent
Falling.
"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but
because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said
Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics
from Oral Roberts University.
Burdett added: "Gravity-which is taught to our children as a law-is founded on
great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all
bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force.
Isaac Newton himself said, 'I suspect that my theories may all depend upon a
force for which philosophers have searched all of nature in vain.' Of course, he
is alluding to a higher power."
Founded in 1987, the ECFR is the world's leading institution of evangelical
physics, a branch of physics based on literal interpretation of the Bible.
According to the ECFR paper published simultaneously this week in the
International Journal Of Science and the adolescent magazine God's Word For
Teens!, there are many phenomena that cannot be explained by secular gravity
alone, including such mysteries as how angels fly, how Jesus ascended into
Heaven, and how Satan fell when cast out of Paradise.
The ECFR, in conjunction with the Christian Coalition and other Christian
conservative action groups, is calling for public-school curriculums to give
equal time to the Intelligent Falling theory. They insist they are not asking
that the theory of gravity be banned from schools, but only that students be
offered both sides of the issue "so they can make an informed decision."
"We just want the best possible education for Kansas' kids," Burdett said.
Proponents of Intelligent Falling assert that the different theories used by
secular physicists to explain gravity are not internally consistent.
Even critics of Intelligent Falling admit that Einstein's ideas about gravity
are mathematically irreconcilable with quantum mechanics. This fact, Intelligent
Falling proponents say, proves that gravity is a theory in crisis.
"Let's take a look at the evidence," said ECFR senior fellow Gregory Lunsden."In
Matthew 15:14, Jesus says, 'And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall
into the ditch.' He says nothing about some gravity making them fall-just that
they will fall. Then, in Job 5:7, we read, 'But mankind is born to trouble, as
surely as sparks fly upwards.' If gravity is pulling everything down, why do the
sparks fly upwards with great surety? This clearly indicates that a conscious
intelligence governs all falling."
Critics of Intelligent Falling point out that gravity is a provable law based on
empirical observations of natural phenomena. Evangelical physicists, however,
insist that there is no conflict between Newton's mathematics and Holy
Scripture.
"Closed-minded gravitists cannot find a way to make Einstein's general
relativity match up with the subatomic quantum world," said Dr. Ellen Carson, a
leading Intelligent Falling expert known for her work with the Kansan Youth
Ministry. "They've been trying to do it for the better part of a century now,
and despite all their empirical observation and carefully compiled data, they
still don't know how."
"Traditional scientists admit that they cannot explain how gravitation is
supposed to work," Carson said. "What the gravity-agenda scientists need to
realize is that 'gravity waves' and 'gravitons' are just secular words for 'God
can do whatever He wants.'"
Some evangelical physicists propose that Intelligent Falling provides an elegant
solution to the central problem of modern physics.
"Anti-falling physicists have been theorizing for decades about the
'electromagnetic force,' the 'weak nuclear force,' the 'strong nuclear force,'
and so-called 'force of gravity,'" Burdett said. "And they tilt their findings
toward trying to unite them into one force. But readers of the Bible have
already known for millennia what this one, unified force is: His name is Jesus."
[from the ONION 8/17/05]
From Morons.com
Half-remembered high school science can be the enemy of the evolution debate.
Some people recall hazily the idea of a chart that looks something like this:
Hypothesis ---> Theory ---> Law This was a commonly used chart in science
textbooks for decades -- and may still be -- to simplify the scientific method.
In other words, a theory is more certain than a hypothesis but decidedly less so
than a law.
It's utterly, completely wrong. Why is this a problem? Because it gives rise to
the creationist/"intelligent design" chorus: "it's just a theory!"
Even if the creationist is corrected with a gentle rebuke that the word they're
thinking of is "hypothesis," and that theories require extensive scientific
testing, the creationist can still say: "well, if it's so well proven, why isn't
it a law?"
If it hadn't been for those science textbooks, this probably wouldn't be an
issue. The truth is, the theory of evolution can never be a law.
A-ha! -- say the creationists in the audience -- we told you so. Right?
Wrong. The problem is, a theory can never become a law. They're two completely
different things.
Laws are generally mathematical equations. They describe a relationship between
different variables. There are laws to describe the relationship between the
pressure, volume, and temperature of a gas. There are laws that describe the
relationship between the mass of a body and the acceleration due to gravity
caused by that body. There are laws explaining the likelihood of a person
inheriting a recessive trait from their parents' genetic code.
On the other hand, a theory isn't an equation, and usually can't be expressed
quite as elegantly. Theories are explanations of how things work.
For instance, the theory of gravity explains what forces are acting to create
gravity and keep us on the ground. Even if you tested this extensively, and it
worked every time, it couldn't become a law -- laws describe relationships.
Theories are the extensively tested "hows" and "whys" of those relationships.
The problem is, both theories and laws start as hypotheses. If you're a
scientist and you observe a particular relationship between two variables, you
can either decide, "hey, I'm going to figure out what the relationship is," or
you can say, "I'll figure out how it works." Either way, you need a hypothesis,
and you need to test it -- but you know right then whether the end result, if
it's proven, would be a theory or a law.
Think of it this way. A hypothesis is a seed. It can be an apple seed or an
orange seed. When a hypothesis "grows up," so to speak, after it has been
extensively tested and proven, it will become either an apple tree or an orange
tree -- and neither tree, of course, can transform into the other.
Of course, it's worth remembering that "intelligent design" and creationism are
not theories at all. In fact, they are not even hypotheses.
Hypotheses must be able to be tested, and testing intelligent design is
absolutely impossible -- whatever new discoveries are made, intelligent design
advocates can just say "oh, yeah, the designer did that, too."
The next time someone starts talking about theories and laws, odds are, they
might be confused, too. I've had dramatic success discussing these concepts with
people who are relatively intelligent proponents of intelligent design, or
people who say "I don't buy it, but two theories should both be given time in
the classroom." If you know anyone who fits into these categories, send them
this link. We shouldn't let vocabulary problems bog down scientific thinking.
Big-Government Conservatives
Monday, August 15, 2005; Page A14
THREE TIMES in the past quarter-century, conservative
leaders have promised to restrain wasteful government
spending. President Ronald Reagan tried it and showed he was
at least half-serious by vetoing the pork-laden 1987
transportation bill. House Speaker Newt Gingrich tried it
and risked his party's electoral standing by battling to
restrain the growth in programs such as Medicare. And
President Bush has tried it, declaring on numerous occasions
that he expected spending restraint from Congress. None of
these efforts proved politically sustainable. As The Post's
Jonathan Weisman and Jim VandeHei reported Thursday, Mr.
Bush's attempt at spending discipline has been especially
limp.Back in 1987, when Mr. Reagan applied
his veto to what was generally known at the time as the
highway and mass transit bill, he was offended by the 152
earmarks for pet projects favored by members of Congress.
But on Wednesday Mr. Bush signed a transportation bill
containing no fewer than 6,371 earmarks. Each one of these,
as Mr. Reagan understood but Mr. Bush apparently doesn't,
amounts to a conscious decision to waste taxpayers' dollars.
One point of an earmark is to direct money to a project that
would not receive money as a result of rational judgments
based on cost-benefit analyses.
Mr. Bush, who had threatened to veto wasteful
spending bills, chose instead to cave in. He did so despite
the fact that in addition to a record number of earmarks the
transportation bill came with a price tag that he had once
called unacceptable. The bill has a declared cost of $286
billion over five years plus a concealed cost of a further
$9 billion; Mr. Bush had earlier drawn a line in the sand at
$256 billion, then drawn another line at $284 billion. Asked
to explain the president's capitulation, a White House
spokesman pleaded that at least this law would be less
costly than the 2003 Medicare reform. This is a classic case
of defining deviancy down.
The nation is at war. It faces large expenses for
homeland security. It is about to go through a demographic
transition that will strain important entitlement programs.
How can this president -- an allegedly conservative
president -- believe that the federal government should
spend money on the Red River National Wildlife Refuge
Visitor Center in Louisiana? Or on the Henry Ford Museum in
Michigan? The bill Mr. Bush has signed devotes more than $24
billion to such earmarked projects, continuing a trend in
which the use of earmarks has spread steadily each year.
Remember, Republicans control the Senate and the House as
well as the White House. So somebody remind us: Which is the
party of big government?
The War Against Cindy
by
Butler Shaffer
by Butler Shaffer
Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
~ Mark Twain
I got both into and out
of active politics while in my late twenties, shortly after my graduation
from law school. I was impressed with Barry Goldwater; became executive
secretary of my state’s Republican party organization; and got elected as
part of our state’s delegation to the 1964 Republican national convention.
My initial enthusiasm for political action quickly dissolved in the realism
that politics was nothing more than a vicious racket; that trying to reform
the process was as pointless as trying to clean up the Mafia. 1964 was the
last year in which I devoted any of my energies to such purposes, including
voting.During
my short stay in the political circus, I noticed attributes of both
"liberals" and "conservatives" that carry over in the present. In terms of
how they communicated with the general public, liberals were brighter and
more clever than conservatives. Like snake-oil peddlers or good magicians,
liberals could put on a show to bamboozle people to embrace their programs.
In contrast, conservative policies were presented with the level of
excitement one would get from reading the annual report of a corporation.
With the failure of
its economic and social interventionist policies becoming more evident in
recent decades, liberalism has had a difficult time rationalizing its
existence, and has become as useless to its constituencies as legs on a
snake. Modern conservatism, on the other hand, has become anchored in
maintaining the status quo, a purpose often tied to police, military force,
and other instruments of institutionalized order. With liberalism in a
thoroughly lobotomized state, conservatives find themselves in an open field
with which to pursue their preferences for expanded coercive policies.
There is, however, a
cost to politics that none of the participating parties can afford to
confront: the diminution of respect for the worthiness of the individual.
Politics both degrades and destroys life, nowhere in a more depraved manner
than in the institution of war. For centuries, young men and women – and
their families – have been told fantastic lies to get them to throw
themselves on a grenade in furtherance of some allegedly "noble purpose."
The current war in Iraq is but the latest chapter in this swinish endeavor,
with administration liars and their media megaphones constantly changing the
rationale for the resulting death and destruction.
One woman has chosen
to call all of this into question. Cindy Sheehan – whose son, Casey, was
killed in Iraq last year – has been waiting outside George Bush’s Crawford,
Texas, ranch for him to come out and explain to her "what was the noble
cause Casey died for"? She openly confronts the Bush administration’s claim
that ending the war now would "dishonor" those who have died. She responds
that "by sending honorable people to die, they so dishonor themselves. They
say we must complete our mission . . . but why would I want one more mother
to go through what I have, just because my son is dead?" She wants to tell
Mr. Bush "don’t you dare spill any more blood in Casey’s name."
This is powerful
language, not just because it comes from a mother whose son was killed as a
result of an act of unprovoked aggression by the United States against Iraq;
but because her words are a clear challenge to the collective mindset upon
which every mob depends for its power. Cindy’s stance is reminiscent of that
of Wang Wei-lin, the young man who confronted the row of Chinese tanks in
Tiananmen Square in 1989. When the human spirit stands up to the cold,
faceless, dehumanizing, destructive machinery of the state, there is a
release of emotional energy whose force transcends material calculation.
Cindy’s efforts have
met with the unsophisticated response one has come to expect from modern
conservative voices. The reptilian "see-act" reactions of such people as
Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and John Gibson, only scratch the
surface of the thoughtless rage with which conservatives confront a world
beyond their ken. So, how did the Bush-leaguers propose to deal with Cindy’s
actions? By threatening to have her arrested…, in the name of what has
become the default explanation for state excesses: "national security"! As
Mr. Bush gushes about Americans fighting for "freedom," his administration
threatens Cindy with arrest for exercising hers!
The liberal
establishment – the left wing of the state’s bird of prey – would
have been just as indifferent to Cindy’s plea as are the conservatives.
Liberals would not, however, have been so unbelievably stupid as to attack a
lone, grieving mother, and threaten her with arrest. A liberal president
would have met with this woman to "feel her pain" – with full media
coverage, of course – before proceeding with the conduct of his bloody
warfare.
Because the state
depends, for its existence, upon the enforcement of collectivized thinking,
Cindy Sheehan – along with her message – must be marginalized. Lies must be
metabolized by the body politic; the immune system must remain on the alert
for viruses of truth and understanding that might infect individual minds
and enervate the collective organism. Such responses remind me of the
apocryphal description of lobsters in a pot of water who, upon seeing a
fellow crustacean trying to escape, pull him back with the others.
In an effort to
render Cindy’s thoughts inconsequential, the established order has paraded
onto television families whose sons died in Iraq. One spoke of the "very
noble cause" for which his brother had died, and praised America for the
willingness to "sacrifice our people." When asked about Cindy’s actions –
which it was the network’s purpose to have this man criticize – he responded
that we should "praise the sacrifice," and the fact that the soldiers had
"died for a cause greater than themselves." The mother of another dead
soldier – when asked to contrast her position with Cindy’s – stated "we
support our president," adding that she believed her son had died for a
noble cause.
Other relatives of
Casey Sheehan issued a statement – at whose behest it was not made known –
disagreeing with Cindy’s "political motivations" and "publicity tactics." Of
course, their public statement was free of "political motivations"
and lacking in "publicity tactics," as they concluded that the rest of the
family "supports the troops, our country, and our President."
I have no quarrel
with the families of dead soldiers wanting to believe that their children
died for some important purpose. Even Cindy Sheehan’s question to George
Bush asks for an explanation of the cause for which her son died. It is a
part of human nature to want our lives to have some transcendent purpose,
and when young people die before they have had an opportunity to define and
act upon such a meaning for their lives, it is truly sad. To believe that
there was something "noble" in the death of a young man or woman becomes a
way of surmounting the feeling that their lives were meaningless. Such
emotions are often found following the murders of small children, with
parents engaging in efforts to draft a piece of legislation or create a
foundation, either of which might bear the name of a fallen child.
In Gaelic, the name
"Sheehan" means "peace maker." It is precisely the desire of Cindy and
millions of others to foster peace and prevent additional deaths – whether
of Americans or Iraqis – that underlies the campaign President Bush and
other statists strive to marginalize. This war has been nothing but one
string of ever-changing lies from the beginning. The spinmeisters
continue to exploit the suffering that their lies, forgeries, and deceptions
have created for untold thousands of people. The twisted-ribbon
bumper-stickers that read "support the troops" have a hidden message that
often comes through in the course of further discussion: "support the war
and support President Bush; sacrifice the troops."
As this psychopathic
administration now scans its world atlas for new targets upon which to
direct its forces of "shock and awe," it is time for all of us to understand
that there is nothing "noble" in the systematic slaughter of people. There
is no "honor" in bringing grief and suffering to others; and no transcendent
"purpose" in being part of a collective of fungible human beings to be
exploited for whatever ends suit those with ambitions over the lives of
others. "Life" belongs to living individuals, not to the state, a
message each of us must impart to our children and grandchildren as they
learn to resist the seductions of those who would destroy them. It is also
time for Americans to take a stand with Cindy Sheehan and help this country
rediscover its soul, and return to the sense of decency from which it has so
aimlessly strayed.
We might begin our
transformation with the lesson offered by a friend of Kurt Vonnegut as the
two returned from Europe following their World War II soldiering. Vonnegut
asked this man what he had learned from his wartime experiences, to which
his friend replied: "not to believe my government."
August
15, 2005
Butler Shaffer
[send
him e-mail] teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law.
Copyright ©
2005 LewRockwell.com
Butler Shaffer Archives
August 17, 2005
Biking Toward Nowhere
How could President Bush be cavorting around on a long vacation with
American troops struggling with a spiraling crisis in Iraq?
Wasn't he
worried that his vacation activities might send a frivolous signal at a time
when he had put so many young Americans in harm's way?
"I'm determined that life goes on," Mr. Bush said stubbornly.
That wasn't the son, believe it or not. It was the father - 15 years ago.
I was in Kennebunkport then to cover the first President Bush's frenetic
attempts to relax while reporters were pressing him about how he could be
taking a month to play around when he had started sending American troops to
the Persian Gulf only three days before.
On Saturday, the current President Bush was pressed about how he could be
taking five weeks to ride bikes and nap and fish and clear brush even though
his occupation of Iraq had become a fiasco. "I think it's also important for
me to go on with my life," W. said, "to keep a balanced life."
Pressed about how he could ride his bike while refusing to see a grieving
mom of a dead soldier who's camped outside his ranch, he added: "So I'm
mindful of what goes on around me. On the other hand, I'm also mindful that
I've got a life to live and will do so."
Ah, the insensitivity of reporters who ask the President Bushes how they
can expect to deal with Middle East fighting while they're off fishing.
The first President Bush told us that he kept a telephone in his golf
cart and his cigarette boat so he could easily stay on top of Saddam's
invasion of Kuwait. But at least he seemed worried that he was sending the
wrong signal, as his boating and golfing was juxtaposed on the news with
footage of the frightened families of troops leaving for the Middle East.
"I just don't like taking questions on serious matters on my vacation,"
the usually good-natured Bush senior barked at reporters on the golf course.
"So I hope you'll understand if I, when I'm recreating, will recreate." His
hot-tempered oldest son, who was golfing with his father that day, was even
more irritated. "Hey! Hey!" W. snapped at reporters asking questions on the
first tee. "Can't you wait until we finish hitting, at least?"
Junior always had his priorities straight.
As W.'s neighbors get in scraps with the antiwar forces coalescing around
the ranch; as the Pentagon tries to rustle up updated armor for our
soldiers, who are still sitting ducks in the third year of the war; as the
Iraqi police we train keep getting blown up by terrorists, who come right
back every time U.S. troops beat them up; as Shiites working on the Iraqi
constitution conspire with Iran about turning Iraq into an Islamic state
that represses women; and as Iraq hurtles toward a possible civil war, W.
seems far more oblivious than his father was with his Persian Gulf crisis.
This president is in a truly scary place in Iraq. Americans can't get
out, or they risk turning the country into a terrorist haven that will make
the old Afghanistan look like Cipriani's. Yet his war, which has not
accomplished any of its purposes, swallows ever more American lives and
inflames ever more Muslim hearts as W. reads a book about the history of
salt and looks forward to his biking date with Lance Armstrong on Saturday.
The son wanted to go into Iraq to best his daddy in the history books, by
finishing what Bush senior started. He swept aside the warnings of Brent
Scowcroft and Colin Powell and didn't bother to ask his father's advice. Now
he is caught in the very trap his father said he feared: that America would
get bogged down as "an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land," facing a
possibly "barren" outcome.
It turns out that the people of Iraq have ethnic and religious
identities, not a national identity. Shiites and Kurds want to suppress the
Sunnis who once repressed them and break off into their own states, smashing
the Bush model kitchen of democracy.
At long last, a senior Bush official admits that administration officials
can no longer cling to their own version of reality. "We are in a process of
absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality
that dominated at the beginning,"
the official told The Washington Post.
They had better start absorbing and shedding a lot faster, before many
more American kids die to create a pawn of Iran. And they had better tell
the Boy in the Bubble, who continues to dwell in delusion, hailing the
fights and delays on the Iraqi constitution as "a tribute to democracy."
The president's pedaling as fast as he can, but he's going nowhere.
E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com
Thomas L. Friedman is on vacation.
Left Behind
By THOMAS LYNCH
Moveen, Ireland
LIKE President Bush, I enjoy clearing brush in August. We both like
quittance of the suit and tie, freedom from duty and detail and to breathe
deeply the insouciant air of summer.
He makes for his ranch in Crawford, Tex., a town with no bars and five
churches. I come to my holdings near Carrigaholt, here in County Clare,
where there are six bars and one church and the house my great-grandfather
left more than a century ago for a better life in America.
Of course, we have our differences - the president and I. He flies on Air
Force One with an entourage. I fly steerage with hopes for an aisle seat.
His ranch runs to 1,600 acres. My cottage sits on something less than two.
He fishes for bass stocked in his private lake. I fish for mackerel in the
North Atlantic. He keeps cattle and horses. I have a pair of piebald asses -
Charles and Camilla I call them, after the sweethearts on the neighboring
island.
I suppose we're just trying to reconnect with our roots and home places -
Mr. Bush and I. He identifies as a Texan in the John Wayne sense as I do
with the Irish in the Barry Fitzgerald sense. And we're both in our 50's,
white, male, Christian and American with all the perks. We both went into
our fathers' businesses: he does leadership of the free world; I do mostly
local funerals. Neither of us went to Vietnam, and we both quit drink for
all of the usual reasons. I imagine we both pray for our children to outlive
us and that we have the usual performance anxieties.
The president works out a couple of hours a day. I go for long walks by
the sea. We occupy that fraction of a fraction of the planet's inhabitants
for whom keeping body and soul together - shelter, safety, food and drink -
is not the immediate, everyday concern. We count ourselves among the blessed
and elect who struggle with the troubles of surfeit rather than shortfall.
So why do I sense we are from different planets?
"The same but different" my late and ancient cousin Nora Lynch used to
say, confronted by such mysteries and verities.
Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother's
womb
A fanatic heart.
It was in August 1931 when W. B. Yeats wrote "Remorse for Intemperate
Speech," which includes this remarkable stanza. Yeats had witnessed the
birthing of a new Irish nation through insurgency and civil war. He had
served as a Free State senator, and, after winning the Nobel Prize in
Literature, was the country's public man of letters. An Anglo-Irishman who
had ditched high-church Christianity in favor of swamis and Theosophists and
his wife's dabblings in the occult, he was torn between the right-wing
politics of between-wars Europe and the romantic, mythic past of Ireland.
His poem confesses and laments that reason and breeding, imagination and
good intentions are nonetheless trumped by the contagion of hatred and by
the human propensity toward extreme and unquestioning enthusiasm for a cause
- whatever cause. It is what links enemies, what makes terrorists "martyrs"
and "patriots" among their own - the fanatic heart beating in the breast of
every true believer.
Yeats' remorse was real, and well it should have been. The century he
wrote this poem in became the bloodiest in the history of our species. Wars
and ethnic cleansings, holocausts and atom bombings - each an exercise in
the god-awful formula by which the smaller the world becomes, by
technologies of travel and communications, the more amplified our hatreds
and the more lethal our weaponries become. Great hatred, little room,
indeed.
So far this century proceeds apace: famines and genocides, invasions,
occupations and suicide bombers. Humankind goes on burning the bridges in
front and behind us without apology, our own worst enemies, God help us all.
And maybe this is the part I find most distancing about my president, not
his fanatic heart - the unassailable sense he projects that God is on his
side - we all have that. But that he seems to lack anything like real
remorse, here in the third August of Iraq, in the fourth August of
Afghanistan, in the fifth August of his presidency - for all of the
intemperate speech, for the weapons of mass destruction that were not there,
the "Mission Accomplished" that really wasn't, for the funerals he will not
attend, the mothers of the dead he will not speak to, the bodies of the dead
we are not allowed to see and all of the soldiers and civilians whose lives
have been irretrievably lost or irreparably changed by his (and our) "Bring
it On" bravado in a world made more perilous by such pronouncements.
Surely we must all bear our share of guilt and deep regret, some sadness
at the idea that here we are, another August into our existence, and whether
we arrived by way of evolution or intelligent design or the hand of God
working over the void, no history can record that we've progressed beyond
our hateful, warring and fanatical ways.
We may be irreversibly committed to play out the saga of Iraq. But each
of us, we humans, if we are to look our own kind in the eye, should at least
be willing to say we're sorry, that all over our smaller and more lethal
planet, whatever the causes, we're still killing our own kind - the same but
different - but our own kind nonetheless. Even on vacation we oughtn't hide
from that.
Thomas Lynch, a funeral director, is the
author of "The Undertaking" and "Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans."
The
Answer to Cindy Sheehan’s Question
by
Jacob G. Hornberger
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Cindy Sheehan has asked President Bush an
important question: Exactly what “noble cause” did her son Casey die for in
Iraq? It’s a question that some Ohio parents whose children were recently killed
in Iraq are also asking. It’s a question that every American should be asking.
I couldn’t help but be somewhat mesmerized
reading about the attitudes of the young Ohio Marines who recently died as well
as the diverse reactions of their families to their deaths. The accounts brought
to mind the deep range of thoughts and feelings that I experienced as a student
at the Virginia Military Institute from 1968 to 1972, during the height of the
Vietnam War. I would like to share some of my personal experiences at VMI during
those tumultuous times.
VMI is a four-year military college in
which every student is required to be a member of the corps of cadets. When I
was there, everyone was also required to sign a commitment to serve in the
military forces for at least two years. During my senior year at VMI
(1971–1972), however, given that U.S. forces were withdrawing from Vietnam, the
Army offered graduating seniors a 3-month active-duty, 8-year Reserve commitment
in lieu of the 2-year active-duty commitment; it was an offer that I accepted
without hesitation.
During my freshman year (1968–69), when I
was 18 and 19 years old, I was a “gung-ho” supporter of U.S. intervention in
Vietnam, much as is the case with many young soldiers today in Iraq. I was fully
prepared to travel thousands of miles away to “fight for my country” and for
“freedom” by killing “communists” in the rice paddies of Southeast Asia. I was
innocent and naďve, never once thinking that federal officials would lie to the
citizenry, especially not about something as serious as war.
In my sophomore year (1969–70), the
administration promoted me to corporal within the VMI cadet corps. During my
junior year (1970–71), I was a member of VMI’s elite Ranger military unit, and
the administration promoted me to sergeant. The next step would ordinarily have
been promotion to officer status within the corps of cadets during my senior
year.
Alas, it was not to be, for it was during
my junior year that I – along with lots of other VMI cadets – broke through to
the truth and realized what other college students around the nation were
discovering – that the Vietnam War was based on U.S. government lies,
falsehoods, and deceptions. It was during that year that many of us at VMI began
asking the same question that Cindy Sheehan is asking: What were U.S. soldiers
dying for?
Some of my most memorable experiences
during my four years at VMI occurred periodically during supper in the mess
hall, whenever a cadet officer would make a certain special announcement over
the public address system. I don’t recall the exact words but they were
something along the following lines, and they always caused an immediate hush of
silence to sweep across the 1,000 students in the hall: “Attention to orders,
October 28, 1969, Republic of Vietnam. [Pause, followed by complete silence
across the mess hall.] Lt. John Smith, VMI Class of 1967, killed in action this
day.”
By the time I finished my junior year, I
knew the answer to the question that is now bedeviling Cindy Sheehan, and it’s
not a painless one: Those VMI graduates, along with all the other soldiers who
were dying in Vietnam, were dying for nothing.
As I reflect back on those years and on
recent political events in this country, there is no doubt in my mind that
people such as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz had asked
themselves the same question that Cindy Sheehan is asking today and that they
had come up with the same answer that I and others had, which is precisely why
they did whatever was necessary to avoid service in Vietnam. In retrospect, in
my opinion they were the smart ones. Those who went, such as John McCain, John
Kerry, and Max Cleland, who have suffered the insults, contempt, and scorn from
those who did not go, were in my opinion the chumps.
An Ohio mother, Rosemary Palmer, whose son
was recently killed in Iraq, observed that there are lots of parents who oppose
the war but who “are afraid to speak out, believing their children will be
punished by their commanders.”
Ms. Palmer has no idea how right she is.
Permit me share a couple of examples, again from my experience as a young cadet
at VMI.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that during
the Vietnam War, the VMI administration, which was headed by a no-nonsense
Marine general, strongly aligned itself with the federal government, especially
the Pentagon, and thus supported Lyndon Johnson’s and Richard Nixon’s war in
Vietnam.
One day, a group of VMI cadets requested
the school administration to grant them permission to attend an anti-war rally
at Washington and Lee University, which is situated adjacent to VMI in
Lexington. To everyone’s surprise, the administration granted the request, with
the proviso that no cadet attending the rally could wear his VMI uniform.
(Ordinarily, wearing civilian clothes in town was a violation of VMI regulations
and entailed a severe penalty for breach.) The most probable reason the request
was granted was that the administration, aware of the pressure-cooker
environment that the war was engendering within the student body, figured that
letting the anti-war crowd at VMI attend the rally would help to release some of
that steam.
I didn’t attend the rally, but I can tell
you what happened to the cadets who did. As they were returning to barracks,
there was a VMI tactical officer waiting for them, who recorded each of their
names and then imposed a ludicrous penalty on them for having “long hair.”
As for me, once my attitude toward the war
and the military changed, my military career at VMI was over. Rather than
promote me to officer status my senior year, the administration demoted me to
private. But that actually turned out to be a rather minor thing, especially
since any VMI cadet will tell you that being a private during one’s senior year
at VMI is not such a bad experience. Unfortunately, that wasn’t all they did to
me.
In 1979, almost eight years after
graduation and near the end of my eight-year Army Reserve commitment, I happened
to take a look at my “Army 201” personnel file and discovered that prior to
graduation (1972) a VMI official had stuck a notation in my file stating that I
was “unsuited for military life.” Now, I don’t deny that the official was
justified in reaching that conclusion given the fact that I had lost my
“gung-ho-ness” about the Vietnam War and even the military during my last two
years at VMI. But I still consider what he did to be quite a nasty thing to do
to someone who was just starting out in life and who had just survived four
years at what is arguably the most rigid military college in the country,
especially since he knew that my 201 file would follow me to every duty station
I would be assigned to for the next eight years, including infantry school at
Ft. Benning, Georgia. I still wonder what they inserted into the 201 files of
those cadets who attended that antiwar rally at Washington and Lee.
The unfortunate truth is that that is all
too often a characteristic of the military mindset. It is resentful of people
who think independently – those who don’t toe the official line, don’t believe
the official lies, and don’t fully support whatever one’s government does with
respect to war. That’s why such people identify patriotism with support of the
federal government. That’s why they never questioned the U.S. intervention in
Vietnam – and still don’t! It’s why they question the patriotism of those of us
who have challenged the U.S. intervention in Iraq. They simply cannot understand
how or why someone thinks independently of how federal officials think, at least
when it comes to war.
Ironically, it seems that some things
haven’t changed much since I graduated from VMI more than 30 years ago. About a
year before the torture-and-sex-abuse revelations at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq,
I wrote an article entitled “Obedience
to Orders,” which focused on and opposed torture by U.S. troops at the
Pentagon’s base at Guantanamo Bay. I suggested that it was the duty of an
officer not only to refrain from participating in such misconduct but also to do
whatever was necessary to put an immediate halt to it, regardless of orders from
his superior officers.
Despite the fact that my article praised
VMI for producing higher caliber officers than West Point because of VMI’s
emphasis on educating and training citizen-soldiers, who tend to be
independent-minded, rather than blind-obedience, sycophantic professional
soldiers that the military academies tend to produce, my torture article
generated an unfortunate
nasty email
from the executive vice president of the VMI Alumni Association, one Paul Maini,
to officials at West Point that “apologized” for my article, which, again, was
both anti-torture and pro-VMI.
What many VMI officials such as Maini
don’t understand is that while many in the VMI administration would like nothing
more than to produce the types of officers that the professional academies tend
to produce, by and large VMI fails in that mission. But in that failure lies the
very success of the school and it’s what makes the school different, in a
positive way, from the professional military academies. That is, that while VMI
does produce some of the “Blindly obey orders and please your superiors” types
of military officers that the professional academies tend to produce, that is
normally the exception. The vast majority of VMI graduates are the
independent-thinking types who will refuse to sacrifice personal integrity and
right conduct for the sake of pleasing their superiors or blindly obeying their
orders. My hunch is that that is a prime reason why non-commissioned officers
(NCOs) usually prefer to serve under a VMI officer than a West Point officer.
The interesting “problem, ” however, is
that the VMI administration – that is, the officials charged with setting and
enforcing policy at the school – inevitably seems to attract an overwhelming
abundance of officials with the standard military mindset, including both
graduates of the professional academies and of VMI itself. This sets up an
interesting dynamic, which I believe provides a key as to why the school is so
much more successful than the professional military academies. Permit me to
share with you an example of how things work inside VMI, especially compared to
the professional military academies.
When I was at VMI, every room in barracks
had a fat book called the Blue Book, which contained hundreds of rules and
regulations governing the conduct of VMI cadets. Every cadet was supposed to
read the Blue Book and be fully knowledgeable of its contents. More important,
cadets were expected to fully follow all the rules and regulations whether they
agreed with them or not.
It didn’t take long, however, especially
in conversations with VMI upperclassmen, for VMI cadets to realize that at least
97 percent of the rules and regulations in the Blue Book were ludicrous and,
therefore, deserved to be broken. Thus, the last three years at VMI were
essentially a cat-and-mouse game between the cadet corps and the administration,
with the cadets breaking the ridiculous rules and regulations and the
administration’s officers trying to catch them and, when successful, imposing
harsh penalties on them. I myself returned my junior year with a penalty of
10-2-and-10, which meant 10 demerits, 2 weeks of confinement, and 10 one-hour
penalty tours for getting caught committing the grievous offense of wearing
civilian clothes in barracks during finals weekend the previous spring.
(Fortunately, the VMI official who caught me didn’t see me wearing them when I
walked into barracks because, as previously noted, that would have entailed a
much more severe penalty than the one that was imposed on me for wearing the
clothes inside barracks.) Now, is that ridiculous or what?
(Note: All this applies only to the
administration’s Blue Book and not to VMI’s student-run and student-enforced
Honor Code, which is the most stringent and stringently enforced in the nation.)
Now that’s the difference between VMI and
West Point. The West Point officer would never understand or countenance such
rebelliousness, especially because it violates the cardinal principle of “please
your superiors if you want to get rewarded or promoted.” In most cases, the VMI
officer, because of the spirit of independent-thinking combined with a high
sense of honor engendered at the school, will examine a rule or a policy or an
order and will be willing and able to reach a quick decision on its propriety –
and willing to break it or violate it if it is ludicrous, invalid, or illegal
and willing to suffer the consequences for doing so. That’s why it would not
surprise me to learn that West Point officers riddle the chain of command with
respect to the torture, rape, sex abuse, and murder scandal at Guantanamo Bay
and Abu Ghraib – and the subsequent whitewashes and cover-ups. I could be proven
wrong, but I’d be very surprised if VMI officers are in that chain of command.
Rosemary Palmer is right. Generally
speaking (there are always exceptions), the military mindset does not like or
countenance people who think independently – people who question or criticize
official U.S. government policy, even when it involves illegally and immorally
invading and occupying foreign countries or violating constitutional provisions
(such as the declaration of war requirement) or the Geneva Convention. And those
who spend their lives toeing the official line will oftentimes do bad and nasty
things to people who don’t. Just ask former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson and
his wife, Valerie Plame. Or
Sgt.
Kevin Benderman, who was court-martialed and sentenced to serve 15 months in
jail for following his conscience and refusing to return for a second tour
in Iraq. Or
Sgt.
Carlos Mejia, who they sent to the jail for the same reason. Or even Cindy
Sheehan, who is now the victim of a conservative and neo-conservative
smear campaign.
But criticize and condemn federal
wrongdoing we must when our government is deserving of such criticism and
condemnation. That is the moral and political duty of every citizen. After all,
if we fail to do so because we fear retribution or retaliation from government
officials or even fellow citizens, then how can we consider ourselves different
from people in foreign lands who have failed to speak out against wrongdoing by
their governments?
If people want lies and deception about
the Iraq War, then they should continue listening to the words that are spoken
by federal politicians and bureaucrats, including those in the Pentagon, the
CIA, and the Congress. They have trained themselves to lie, and they are very
good at it.
If people instead want the truth about
U.S. foreign policy, including the Iraq War, then they should read such writers
as
James Glaser (a Marine Vietnam veteran),
Chalmers Johnson,Laurence
M. Vance,Lew
Rockwell,Robert
Higgs,Karen
Kwiatkowski,Ivan
Eland,Congressman Ron
Paul,Anthony
Gregory,Charley
Reese,Pat
Buchanan,Eric
Margolis,Paul
Craig Roberts,Doug
Bandow (also found
here),
Ted Galen
Carpenter,Justin
Raimondo,Sheldon
Richman, and
James Bovard,
and regularly visit such websites as
LewRockwell.com,
The Cato Institute,
The Independent Institute,
Antiwar.com, and
The Future of Freedom Foundation.
The plain truth is that Iraq never
attacked the United States and never even threatened to do so. Neither the Iraqi
people nor their government had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks. Therefore,
the U.S. government had no moral or legal right to invade Iraq and kill and maim
the Iraqi people. That makes the United States the aggressor nation in this
conflict. It is the invader. It is the conqueror. Don’t forget that aggressive
war was punished as a war crime at Nuremberg and that it is barred by the UN
Charter, to which the United States is a signatory. Don’t forget also that Bush
invaded Iraq without the constitutionally required congressional declaration of
war, making the war illegal under our own form of government.
And it was never about democracy, freedom,
or the liberation of the Iraqi people. After all, if democracy was so important,
would U.S. officials be embracing the military dictator of Pakistan as well as
authoritarian dictators all over the Middle East? And if the freedom and
well-being of the Iraqi people were so important, would U.S. officials have
continued maintaining the
sanctions
against Iraq year after brutal year, despite the ever-growing
number of
deaths of Iraqi children?
It just doesn’t add up, does it? And the
reason it doesn’t is that it’s all a lie – just as the supposed North Vietnamese
attack at the Gulf of Tonkin, which President Lyndon Johnson and the U.S.
Congress used as an excuse to expand the Vietnam War, which ended up killing
58,000 American soldiers and wounding countless more,
was a lie.
To answer Cindy Sheehan’s question plainly
and directly: Her son died for nothing. Or if she would prefer a diplomatic,
polite answer, her son died not for a noble cause, as both
President Bush and
Vice-President Cheney have recently stated, but instead for an ignoble cause
– regime change – hard-ball politics at the international level – the ouster and
replacement of a foreign politician, Saddam Hussein, who fell out of grace with
U.S. officials.
With all due respect, regime change, while
important to U.S. politicians and bureaucrats, is nothing worth dying for and,
for that matter, it’s nothing worth killing for.
We can all express our deepest condolences
to Ms. Sheehan and the other families who have lost loved ones in Iraq. But only
the truth, no matter how painful, will ultimately set them and the rest of us
free of the lies and deceptions that underlie U.S. foreign policy. Only the
truth will enable us move our nation away from the grip of empire and militarism
and toward the principles of a limited-government republic that guided our
Founding Fathers.
August 20, 2005
Jacob
Hornberger [send him mail]
is founder and president of The
Future of Freedom Foundation.
Copyright ©
2005 Future of Freedom Foundation
Jacob Hornberger Archives
August 21, 2005
The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan
By FRANK RICH
CINDY SHEEHAN couldn't have picked a more apt date to begin
the vigil that ambushed a president: Aug. 6 was the fourth anniversary of
that fateful 2001 Crawford vacation day when George W. Bush responded to an
intelligence briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the
United States" by going fishing. On this Aug. 6 the president was no less
determined to shrug off bad news. Though 14 marine reservists had been
killed days earlier by a roadside bomb in Haditha, his national radio
address that morning made no mention of Iraq. Once again Mr. Bush was in his
bubble, ensuring that he wouldn't see Ms. Sheehan coming. So it goes with a
president who hasn't foreseen any of the setbacks in the war he fabricated
against an enemy who did not attack inside the United States in 2001.
When these setbacks happen in Iraq itself, the administration
punts. But when they happen at home, there's a game plan. Once Ms. Sheehan
could no longer be ignored, the Swift Boating began. Character assassination
is the Karl Rove tactic of choice, eagerly mimicked by his media surrogates,
whenever the White House is confronted by a critic who challenges it on
matters of war. The Swift Boating is especially vicious if the critic has
more battle scars than a president who connived to serve stateside and a
vice president who had "other priorities" during Vietnam.
The most prominent smear victims have been Bush political
opponents with heroic Vietnam résumés: John McCain, Max Cleland, John Kerry.
But the list of past targets stretches from the former counterterrorism czar
Richard Clarke to Specialist Thomas Wilson, the grunt who publicly
challenged Donald Rumsfeld about inadequately armored vehicles last
December. The assault on the whistle-blower Joseph Wilson - the diplomat
described by the first President Bush as "courageous" and "a true American
hero" for confronting Saddam to save American hostages in 1991 - was so
toxic it may yet send its perpetrators to jail.
True to form, the attack on Cindy Sheehan surfaced early
on Fox News, where she was immediately labeled a "crackpot" by Fred Barnes.
The right-wing blogosphere quickly spread tales of her divorce, her angry
Republican in-laws, her supposed political flip-flops, her incendiary
sloganeering and her association with known ticket-stub-carrying attendees
of "Fahrenheit 9/11." Rush Limbaugh went so far as to declare that Ms.
Sheehan's "story is nothing more than forged documents - there's nothing
about it that's real."
But this time the Swift Boating failed, utterly, and that
failure is yet another revealing historical marker in this summer's collapse
of political support for the Iraq war.
When the Bush mob attacks critics like Ms. Sheehan, its
highest priority is to change the subject. If we talk about Richard Clarke's
character, then we stop talking about the administration's pre-9/11
inattentiveness to terrorism. If Thomas Wilson is trashed as an
insubordinate plant of the "liberal media," we forget the Pentagon's abysmal
failure to give our troops adequate armor (a failure that persists today,
eight months after he spoke up). If we focus on Joseph Wilson's wife, we
lose the big picture of how the administration twisted intelligence to gin
up the threat of Saddam's nonexistent W.M.D.'s.
The hope this time was that we'd change the subject to
Cindy Sheehan's "wacko" rhetoric and the opportunistic left-wing groups that
have attached themselves to her like barnacles. That way we would forget
about her dead son. But if much of the 24/7 media has taken the bait, much
of the public has not.
The backdrops against which Ms. Sheehan stands - both that
of Mr. Bush's what-me-worry vacation and that of Iraq itself - are perfectly
synergistic with her message of unequal sacrifice and fruitless carnage. Her
point would endure even if the messenger were shot by a gun-waving Crawford
hothead or she never returned to Texas from her ailing mother's bedside or
the president folded the media circus by actually meeting with her.
The public knows that what matters this time is Casey
Sheehan's story, not the mother who symbolizes it. Cindy Sheehan's bashers,
you'll notice, almost never tell her son's story. They are afraid to go
there because this young man's life and death encapsulate not just the noble
intentions of those who went to fight this war but also the hubris,
incompetence and recklessness of those who gave the marching orders.
Specialist Sheehan was both literally and figuratively an
Eagle Scout: a church group leader and honor student whose desire to serve
his country drove him to enlist before 9/11, in 2000. He died with six other
soldiers on a rescue mission in Sadr City on April 4, 2004, at the age of
24, the week after four American security workers had been mutilated in
Falluja and two weeks after he arrived in Iraq. This was almost a year after
the president had declared the end of "major combat operations" from the
aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln.
According to the account of the battle by John F. Burns in
The Times, the insurgents who slaughtered
Specialist Sheehan and his cohort were militiamen loyal to Moktada al-Sadr,
the anti-American Shiite cleric. The Americans probably didn't stand a
chance. As Mr. Burns reported, members of "the new Iraqi-trained police and
civil defense force" abandoned their posts at checkpoints and police
stations "almost as soon as the militiamen appeared with their weapons,
leaving the militiamen in unchallenged control."
Yet in the month before Casey Sheehan's death, Mr.
Rumsfeld typically went out of his way to inflate the size and prowess of
these Iraqi security forces, claiming in successive interviews that there
were "over 200,000 Iraqis that have been trained and equipped" and that they
were "out on the front line taking the brunt of the violence." We'll have to
wait for historians to tell us whether this and all the other Rumsfeld
propaganda came about because he was lied to by subordinates or lying to
himself or lying to us or some combination thereof.
As The Times reported last month,
even now, more than a year later, a declassified Pentagon assessment puts
the total count of Iraqi troops and police officers at 171,500, with only "a
small number" able to fight insurgents without American assistance. As for
Moktada al-Sadr, he remains as much a player as ever in the new "democratic"
Iraq. He controls one of the larger blocs in the National Assembly. His
loyalists may have been responsible for last month's apparently vengeful
murder of Steven Vincent, the American freelance journalist
who wrote
in The Times that Mr. Sadr's followers had infiltrated Basra's politics
and police force.
Casey Sheehan's death in Iraq could not be more
representative of the war's mismanagement and failure, but it is hardly
singular. Another mother who has journeyed to Crawford, Celeste Zappala,
wrote last Sunday in New York's Daily News of how her son, Sgt. Sherwood
Baker, was also killed in April 2004 - in Baghdad, where he was providing
security for the Iraq Survey Group, which was charged with looking for
W.M.D.'s "well beyond the admission by David Kay that they didn't exist."
As Ms. Zappala noted with rage, her son's death came only
a few weeks after Mr. Bush regaled the Radio and Television Correspondents'
Association banquet in Washington with a scripted comedy routine featuring
photos of him pretending to look for W.M.D.'s in the Oval Office. "We'd like
to know if he still finds humor in the fabrications that justified the war
that killed my son," Ms. Zappala wrote. (Perhaps so: surely it was a joke
that one of the emissaries Mr. Bush sent to Cindy Sheehan in Crawford was
Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser who took responsibility for
allowing the 16 errant words about doomsday uranium into the president's
prewar State of the Union speech.)
Mr. Bush's stand-up shtick for the Beltway press corps
wasn't some aberration; it was part of the White House's political plan for
keeping the home front cool. America was to yuk it up, party on and spend
its tax cuts heedlessly while the sacrifice of an inadequately manned
all-volunteer army in Iraq was kept out of most Americans' sight and minds.
This is why the Pentagon issued a directive at the start of Operation Iraqi
Freedom forbidding news coverage of "deceased military personnel returning
to or departing from" air bases. It's why Mr. Bush, unlike Ronald Reagan and
Jimmy Carter, has not attended funeral services for the military dead. It's
why January's presidential inauguration, though nominally dedicated to the
troops, was a gilded $40 million jamboree at which the word Iraq was
banished from the Inaugural Address.
THIS summer in Crawford, the White House went to this
playbook once too often. When Mr. Bush's motorcade left a grieving mother in
the dust to speed on to a fund-raiser, that was one fat-cat party too far.
The strategy of fighting a war without shared national sacrifice has at last
backfired, just as the strategy of Swift Boating the war's critics has
reached its Waterloo before Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury in Washington.
The 24/7 cable and Web attack dogs can keep on sliming Cindy Sheehan. The
president can keep trying to ration the photos of flag-draped caskets. But
this White House no longer has any more control over the insurgency at home
than it does over the one in Iraq.
Nicholas D. Kristof and David Brooks are on
vacation.
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