micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links

The real message of Barack Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize

Obama getting the peace prize infuriates me. It is not that place a high value on the Nobel Peace Prize, so much that as that if continuing the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq is promoting “peace,” what exactly do I deserve for opposing doing so? And when am I going to receive it? Obama won’t even have the decency to sell the medal and spend the proceeds on helping those he has helped maim. I probably wouldn’t either, but then again I’m not responsible for their injuries, except to the extent that I am responsible for failing to stop what has gone on.

But enough about me. There must be some good jokes from all of this…

-Is Obama going to thank all the dead Afghans and Iraqis when he accepts the award? “If not for them and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr,” he might say, “it is unthinkable that a black man would have achieved so much. By the way, the United States has sadly not lived up to its ideals in the past and has done bad things, but those days are over. I guarantee you that every rocket we fire and every bomb we drop from now on is done in the name of peace.”

-Obama will soon be getting awards from organized labor and gay rights organizations. “By ignoring us and our issues, President Obama has done nothing proactively to hurt our cause,” one of the press releases will say.

-Erik Prince deserves a special award for innovative conflict resolution.

But perhaps the most important point of all of this is that it will not change the political culture of the U.S. in any significant way. Of all the people who at least ostensibly want the U.S. to leave Afghanistan and Iraq, very few, if any at all, are going to see this prize as a reason to reassess the situation and realize that maybe they aren’t on the same page as Obama.

Those on the right will criticize the prize going to Obama as a stupid move borne of political correctness. As has often been the case since January, they will be correct even as they miss the point.

Meanwhile, those on what passes for the left will by and large defend the awarding with twisted logic. Over at dailykos.com, the current lead story is titled “Conservatives stand with Taliban against the President” (Jed Lewison).  (This should in no way remind you of earlier attempts by those like Ann Coulter to link Democrats and unsavory elements like al Qaeda (RealClearPolitics, January 5, 2006).)

These two “dueling” sides end up clouding the major issues so that the debate is about matters of little consequence. It is the same situation as existed when Bush was in office. I guess Obama hasn’t been able to change it.

In other news, it looks like the Patriot Act will soon be renewed. Shame on those who say our elected leaders in Washington never get anything done.

Yes, but how much would it cost to bomb all the equipment and say we don’t know what happened to it?

"The removal of about 140,000 U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011," Karen DeYoung writes in today's Washington Post, "will be a 'massive and expensive effort' that is likely to increase rather than lower Iraq-related expenditures during the withdrawal and for several years after its completion, government investigators said in a report released yesterday"

FREE MUNTAZER AL-ZAIDI

It looks like shoes have joined pretzels and the democratic process on the list of things that cannot stop George W. Bush.

Seriously, given all of the violence and misery inflicted upon Iraq as result of the policies of George W. Bush, having a shoe thrown at you is not out of line. It is certainly more merciful than execution.

The U.S. occupation of Iraq will continue until widespread the era of widespread spontaneous human combustion

"The top American commander [Gen. Raymond Odierno] in Iraq said that U.S. forces will remain in dozens of small bases inside Iraq's cities despite language in a recently-signed security pact which appears to require an American withdrawal from Iraqi urban areas by next summer," writes Yochi J. Dreazen of The Wall Street Journal (December 13).

The best you can do

Last night’s 60 Minutes featured a stunning revelation from former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith; during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Bush that it was possible that the U.S. would not find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

OK, to be fair, Feith does not actually say this on camera, but 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft does say, Feith "says even Rumsfeld conceded privately that the U.S. might not find any weapons of mass destruction on the ground. And he told the president so in a memo that outlined all of the things that could possibly go wrong."

It isn't clear if Kroft is getting this from his conversation with Feith and/or Feith's soon to be released book War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism (Harper). I suppose Kroft could be engaging in mischaracterization here, but I can find no evidence that Feith or anyone else has disputed this characterization, which if true is damning. If George and Rummy did not know that they would find WMDs in Iraq then there can be absolutely no doubt that the Bush Administration dishonestly justified the invasion and occupation of Iraq, not that there should be any even before this.

In a world that made sense, a congressional committee or two would immediately subpoena Feith and Rumsfeld and get them to answer questions under oath. Rumsfeld would be asked if had written such a memo or expressed such thoughts and, if so, who would have read the memo or heard him express such thinking. Feith would be asked if such a memo really did exist and who would have seen the memo. Then this committee would gather all named by Rumsfeld and Feith and they would asked if they had seen this memo or heard Rumsfeld say that there was possibility that weapons of mass destruction would not be found in Iraq.

Just as detectives do not wait for months to start conducting an investigation after a crime, these committees should be able to do all of this with great speed. Maybe there would be some legal delays, but that would a cop out if used to justify moving like a Hare at the big Hare vs. Tortoise race. After this is done, I suspect I would start to seriously contemplate whether I should make a onetime only exception to opposition to capital punishment.

But none of this is going to happen. Democrats, who sadly probably make up the vast majority of people who even claim to be opposed to the Bush Administration, do not have much interest in this story. I can find no mention of Feith on the front pages of AlterNet, Daily Kos or Eschaton. There is a post on The Huffington Post on Feith (Lionel Beehner, April 7) but it has nothing about WMDs.

I have a theory that if Bush came out and said, "Yes, I lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and I thought you were all fucking stupid for not picking up on it" that we would be plunged into a national conversation on whether or not it is acceptable for a U.S. President to say "fucking" in public. And if Bush left out that particular profanity, almost no attention would be paid to the statement.

Democrats apparently will take just about anything from Bush, and they will do the same from their own presidential candidates. Over the weekend, Barack Obama campaign spokesperson Jen Psaki said, "John McCain is not a warmonger and should not be described as such" (quoted in AP, April 5). Actually, "warmonger" is an objective description of McCain and people of decency and intelligence would be wary to support the presidential candidacy of anybody who did not agree with this assessment. Suffice to say, the major liberals sites mentioned above are even less interested in this matter than they are in Feith.

Democrats won't stand up to the Bush Administration just as they will not stand up to advocates of Team Bush’s war(s).

I am not sure which is worse.

News related to Iraq

Sources tell me the assault/demolition of Basra and Sadr City is scheduled to begin as soon as U.S. and Iraqi military officials are done consulting with Janet Reno.

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Iraqis are demonstrating against Maliki and calling for him to resign (The Real News, March 28), but to no effect. These people are excessively ambitious for an American style democracy.

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Great Britain’s Ministry of Defense said yesterday that its Real British Heroes tortured nine Iraqis in September 2003 and that one of these Iraqis died (Kim Sengupta, The Independent, March 28). In other words, Gitmo detainees should stop complaining.

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In light of Dick Cheney's infamous "so" comment last week that he explained meant he did not care what people in the U.S. of A. think of U.S. policy towards Iraq and Dana Perino explaining that Bush didn't care either, I found it a bit odd that Bush gave a speech yesterday trying to justify U.S. policy towards Iraq. Is this just an example of a totalitarian's prerogative to give speeches? Or does Bush actually enjoy coming across as an idiot while knowing that no professional journalist will come out and say this?

Better late than never

The U.S. military has a new program to provide Iraqis with public works jobs, such as in sanitation, with the aim of lessening the appeal of anti-occupation forces (Elena Becatoros, The Associated Press, January 2).

So apparently it took Uncle Sam nearly 70 months to think that maybe, just maybe, Iraqis might like paychecks and non-lethal drinking water.

Blackwater shopping

A Center for Constitutional Rights lawsuit against the Blackwater private military company alleges, amongst other things, that as many as one fourth of Blackwater guards in Baghdad "are chemically influenced by steroids or other judgment-altering substances," and that the company knows this (The Center for Constitutional Rights, November 27).

I was thus surprised when I couldn't find any baseball cards for sale at the Blackwater Proshop.

They would make such a great Christmas gift for my children. Each card would feature the glossy picture a different shooter while the back would have the statistics on the unarmed civilians they've done away with. Christmas memories are built on things such as this, I say. (Then again, I'm a romantic. Santa brought me the GI Joe Air Craft Carrier, perhaps the greatest gift I could ever receive, back in second grade.)

Blackwater does actually call its online store the Blackwater Proshop. It is full of such wonderful gifts for Christmas or any time of the year as a black long sleeve shirt with Blackwater written on it no fewer than four times.

Last week, on Wednesday, I was at a one stop shopping center when I saw a man who looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties wearing such a garment. I said something to him along the lines of, "I noticed your shirt. Do you by any chance work for Blackwater?"

He gave me a disgusted look and turned away, which perhaps was for the best. I hadn’t planned a follow up question to an affirmative answer. Maybe I would have discussed my idea for Blackwater run charter schools –where kids are free to one another if they can survive the teachers- but fear might just as likely have caught up with me and I would have decided not to mock him.

Still, his response seemed odd. If you do not want people to think that you might be in some way affiliated with Blackwater or would feel the need to bristle at a question about this matter, it might not be a good idea to wear a Blackwater shirt.

Elsewhere at the Proshop, you can get teddy bears wearing a Blackwater shirt. Anybody who buys one of these should have their picture and address added to a publicly accessible online registry so parents and other concerned citizens can keep an eye on them. Children are our most precious resources and we can ill afford to allow some sick and twisted freak to turn them into roid raging employees of Blackwater.

Dear Keith Olbermann,

Sources inside the White House tell me that your September 4 call for President George W. Bush to resign opened the eyes of the president and even provoked a comment. "I'll consider resigning when I see a guillotine above my eyes," Bush muttered to an aide.

As for your call for congress to deny Bush more war funding, the response from congress was, "yeah right."

What exactly paralyzation would prevent the Iraqi government from doing is unclear

The National Intelligence Council's new National Intelligence Estimate "Prospects for Iraq's Stability: Some Security Progress but Political Reconciliation Elusive" (August 2007) says Iraqi Prime Minster Jawad al-Maliki "will continue to benefit from recognition among Shia leaders that searching for a replacement could paralyze the government."