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Saturday, March 04, 2006
Dispatches from Iraq... and the homefront
The other day, USA Today's "Dispatches from Iraq" had this:
Sgt. Clifton Sweet remembered the moments leading up to the blast. They had just “dismounted,” or climbed out of their Stryker to patrol the Palestine district on foot. He led the push down the street. Behind him followed Romero, Guerin and platoon commander Lt. T.J. Cerullo. The street was a busy marketplace, with little trinket shops attached to homes. People were beginning to scatter to beat the approaching 8 p.m. curfew. And it was getting dark, but not dark enough to stop him from seeing it all unfold. “I just happened to look,” Sweet said. “I saw a kid chuck something.” He watched the grenade fly through the air and heard the “tink, tink” of it bouncing off the pavement before it momentarily rested on a pile of garbage in the gutter. “When you hear that metal sound, that’s a bad sound.” Heads turned in the direction, and the explosion caught Guerin in mid-sentence. All he was able to get out was “What the…,” he said this afternoon, grinning behind his dark sunglasses. At first, the men didn’t know the extent of their shrapnel wounds, some not even realizing until the adrenaline passed that they had been hit at all. Romero took bits of hot metal in the front of his calves and his upper left thigh. Guerin was hit in both knees and Cerullo in his upper thigh -- a wound that two days later is still seeping blood, leaving a dark brownish stain on his uniform. Sweet was hit from behind, lodging bits in the backs of his legs and left buttock. He felt the moisture running down the back of his leg and touched it, praying it was only sweat. The quickly falling darkness cut his vision and it was only when he brought his palm to his face that he saw it was blood. “It’s so small,” he said of the shrapnel. “But it feels like a sledgehammer when it hits you.” And he remembers with a chuckle –- with Guerin’s help –- what he said as he was being led to the Stryker for evacuation: “My wife’s going to be pissed.”
My mother works with his wife and passes along:He and the others in this story are OK for which we are very thankful. I wish the naysayers would note that they all said they were healing to get back to the job of protecting and calming down Iraq-what they went there to do. Indeed.
posted by gbarto at 9:39 PM
Hillary Clinton has released a statement asserting that while she is perfectly open to trade and cultural exchange with Arabs and Muslims, she cannot help but be appalled by the Bush administration's lack of discretion in giving them access to SUVs.
posted by gbarto at 10:42 AM
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Videotape shows Bush knowingly
waited too long to seize control of
New Orleans from Democrat mayor
Just to summarize the headlines.
posted by gbarto at 4:02 PM
As someone who has drifted libertarian (small-l, thank you) in response to Christian and compassionate conservatisms' desire for government to do more in certain areas, I think Jonah Goldberg is right on target in his criticism of crunchy cons.
If asked, I identify myself as a libertarian conservative. This assures that I will not be mistaken for a conservative, and conservatives will not be mistakenly accused of thinking like me. Ditto for libertarians.
Here's the thing: Just as George W defined himself consciously as not one of "those conservatives" (his father did the same thing with the "kinder, gentler nation" riff), I'm consciously defining myself out of mainstream conservatism. Rod and the crunchy cons are too.
Once you stop being part of a mainstream and join a separate if purportedly associated ideology, you deserve to be subject to intellectual scrutiny: what's the use in having an intellectual movement if no one cares to scrutinize your thoughts? Jonah's scrutiny, in this regard, is invaluable: it takes the crunchy cons seriously enough to notice that the fruits and veggies aren't the only organic stuff in abundance. Get out your kneeboots, because being a crunchy con defines against two groups: it tells the left that you're not one of "those conservatives," but it's real foundation is an effort to assure the right that you haven't become another damn hippie. Otherwise, why align yourself with a movement you malign?
Though I live in California, have been known to eat healthy food - even from Whole Foods! - and for the most part eschew television and radio as wells of poison, I'm not about to become a crunchy con. Being of the conservative bent in the old style, the last thing I want is some otherwise right-thinking chap to come up and tell me why I should be shopping at stores that care. Being of the liberal bent (old style) on economic matters, the last thing I want is some otherwise right-thinking chap to start telling others where to shop. I'd be curious to know what a truly great conservative like Florence King would think of the crunchy cons. I can't imagine her feeling comfortable with their levels of enthusiasm or their desire to share the good news, even on the points with which she agreed with them.
I think that here we're getting to the base of Jonah's argument - though please read it: it's sharper and more historically informed than this scribble - Rod seems so hell-bent on proselytizing for his "better way" that he's turning his old crowd into a vague and displeasing other in order to highlight his shiny new ideas. But in truth, being a crunchy con can only mean one of two things: being a conservative who enjoys the marketplace's ability to provide the stuff of living an individual life crunchily - i.e. a conservative with a unique and personal temperament, i.e. a conservative, end of story - or being something other than a conservative.
If being a crunchy con begins and ends with hoping that the crunchy life comes out on top in a free market of ideas ordered within a democratic society rooted in law, bully for the crunchy cons. If being a crunchy con means hoping for government to push or incentivize crunchyism, that, to me, is about as conservative as being "conservative" because you want the country ruled by judicial fiat from the right instead of from the left.
posted by gbarto at 2:51 PM
Hmm. So Bill Clinton and Bob Dole are pushing the Dubai Ports deal.
I'm beginning to question giving Bush the benefit of the doubt on this one.
Had they hired Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey, I'd feel a lot better about it.
Still, I do think the Bushies pushed this with good, although as yet unexplained reasons.
Which is a damn shame since it's probably going to be killed because of their tone-deafness. Karl Rove, read the blogs. Whatever you think of bloggers, we're probably the most consummate news readers. If there's something you need to be nervous about, we'll find it. Best to be forewarned.
posted by gbarto at 2:18 PM
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Hitchens hits the nail quite squarely on the head in his latest.
But my favorite bit is this:I have my own criticisms both of my one-time Trotskyist comrades and of my temporary neocon allies, but it can be said of the former that they saw Hitlerism and Stalinism coming—and also saw that the two foes would one day fuse together—and so did what they could to sound the alarm. And it can be said of the latter (which, alas, it can't be said of the former) that they looked at Milosevic and Saddam and the Taliban and realized that they would have to be confronted sooner rather than later. [my italics] What has a neocon from the Reagan tradition reading and nodding along with Hitchens? Quite simply this - while we have very different ideas about this civilization of ours, we both agree that it is worth defending and saving. In this particular moment, the great political divide on the issue that matters most is no longer a matter of right and left as traditionally understood, but between those - left and right - who have lost their belief in the West and are preparing for surrender, and those - left and right - who view the West as the a positive force for freedom and law that must and will be preserved.
I think the cartoon wars have been particularly useful for better understanding this divide: While one can disagree about Iraq, about strategy in the War on Terror and more, the cartoon question presents a very stark choice: If you agree that in some way the publication of cartoons in Denmark gives license for the burning of embassies and the massacre of Christians in Nigeria, you have agreed that the West is either incapable of or unworthy of existing except as a peculiar subset of the Islamist sphere - allowed its decadence but within firmly policed limits. The opposing camp, of which I am a member, recognizes that the value of the West lies in its openness to free inquiry in which ideas must win out on their own merits in the end, not on the political strength of their advocates. In this regard, the supreme Enlightenment value was not the squishy modern "tolerance," but a toleration for free inquiry. When Voltaire cried, "Ecrasez l'infâme!" it was not because the Catholic Church was insufficiently Muslim. When Diderot and his compadres undertook the Encyclopédie, it was not because of their displeasure at not being censored by imams but rather by the Pope.
In the end, the West will win out, for its spirit of free inquiry, however much under wraps in officialdom, persists abroad in the land and will give us the tools to stand as surely in the end against the 14th century Islamonutters of today as it did against the fascists and totalitarians of the 20th century.
posted by gbarto at 9:44 AM
Monday, February 27, 2006
Hmm...
If we knock down port deals with the UAE because hijackers flew through their airports, does that mean we can save the extra special security checks for Saudis, Syrians, etc?
Of course Hillary's been careful to be completely xenophobic, not wanting any foreign country associated with our ports.
Bottom line: I trust President Bush in a drug-induced coma more than Hillary and Feinstein when it comes to our nation's security. It's a little too easy to hear Hillary saying, "At heart, I've always been a Muslim" if it suits her needs (remember the Yankee quip).
I think, though, that now's the time to take up Hillary on her offer all the way: the best way to deliver a small nuke would be in a truck, not a boat. So, no more driver's licenses for illegals or foreign nationals from problematic countries, wouldn't ya say? And the last time foreigners attacked us, it was on commercial airlines. So no more foreigners boarding commercial airliners without being extra thoroughly checked out, wouldn't ya say? And if an airplane is coming in from, say, Ireland, Italy, France, Spain - all countries that have had terrorism problems - shouldn't we require them to have an all American flight crew?
Still, it's time to ready to launch the new GOP refrain when they face the Dems in November - or, rather, that portion of the GOP that isn't just as bad:
When Abu Jamal, citizen of the UAE, tried to vote for Hillary Clinton, she protested that it would be intimidation to check his ID. But when he tried to become a dockworker, that's where she drew the line.
posted by gbarto at 6:43 PM
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