micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links

Right after the rest of the world, let's destroy America

I'm tired of writing about Team Bush as I don't understand how they remain credible to any section of the population and how even those who don't find them credible are mostly wasting time trying to prop up the Democrats. (I understand doing it if you are a Demahack like David Sirota and your career is based on electing Dems, but not if you have any greater priorities.)

Yes, the history of the presidency is a history of dishonesty and manipulation, but that does not make it right and Bush and friends don't even do a decent job hiding it.

That said, I want to make it perfectly clear that I favor overthrowing the current government in Iraq in order to give them a decent draft constitution that is not pro-big government, sexist and anti-Israeli. This position is the correct position of everyone who, like this humble blogger, favored invading and occupying Iraq in order to liberate the Iraqis. What? You can't seriously claim to care about sovereignty now.

No, we probably won't overthrow the government we installed in Iraq, but that is just because we are weaklings who do not understand the true nature of the violent extremism that attacked us on September 11th and made people care.

The evidence that we don't understand violent extremism, which would lead to us wanting to kill it, is all around us. There's this family of some darkie who got shot in little America because it was said he looked like a violent extremist (Mark Honigsbaum, Guardian, July 28). Some people need to get it through their thick skulls that being killed by the police is just the price you pay for living in a free society!

And people seem to think that there is something wrong with brave CIA officials were apparently beating suspected Iraqi violent extremists with sledgehammer handles (Arthur Kane, Denver Post, July 27). The only thing wrong with this is which side they were using.

Most disturbing, the U.S. Department of Justice recently posted an al Qaeda training manual on its website (Matthew Davis, BBC News, July 27). Is there any doubt that the intention of the sick people who make up America, by which I mean the real America, or, to you pussies out there, "the United States of America," was to help violent extremism all around the world? No, there is not.

This type of pro-violent extremism activity is a direct affront to the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism and cannot be tolerated. If we do tolerate it, the rest of the world will think we are weak and the violent extremists will get bolder because they will no there are no consequences for violent extremism. America must be destroyed!

"Yes, I agree," I hear you saying, "but who will take care of the rest of the evil world without America? Won't this just lead to violent extremism, evil and France?"

Yes, it will, so we must destroy the rest of the world first. God won't like it, because He has this whole End Times thing worked out, but fuck Him. If He really cared enough, the Rapture would have already taken place. Has it? No, so it is time for us to TCB.

I think President Bush is going to give me a really cool hat in Heaven for this idea.

Let's beat "violent extremism" to a bloody pulp

I have long been a critic of the very concept of the "war on terror" because, amongst other reasons, I think have a war against "the terrorists" is a recipe for war without any end till those in charge say it is over because they want it to be over. My complaints may have been loud as I often screamed them when I did not think anyone else could hear them, but they always seemed to go unnoticed by those in positions of influence and power, as well as amongst the general population.

Until now, that is. Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker report in a New York Times story dated July 25 that "the global war on terror" is being relabeled by Team Bush as "a global struggle against violent extremism."

The primary basis for this article is a speech that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Richard "Colombia is a staunch U.S. ally in the war on terrorism" Meyers gave at the National Press Club yesterday. The transcript isn't up on the JCS page for Meyers' transcripts, so here is the account from Schmitt and Shanker

...Myers... told the National Press Club on Monday that he had "objected to the use of the term 'war on terrorism' before, because if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution." He said the threat instead should be defined as violent extremists, with the recognition that "terror is the method they use."

Although the military is heavily engaged in the mission now, he said, future efforts require "all instruments of our national power, all instruments of the international communities' national power." The solution is "more diplomatic, more economic, more political than it is military," he concluded.

Yes! Finally we have a struggle with a clear enemy that can be won! It will be a difficult fight no doubt, but victory without utopia is plausible. My faith in the ability of one person to be correct and get change done in this country, the greatest of even the most greatest countries ever to have existed in the entire universe, is restored, and, if I must say so, and I must, Saturday's "We are beating the terrorists!" entry looks pretty brilliant right now, although less and less so the more I think about it.

For the record, I do indeed believe everything that I have written above in this entry and I certainly do not believe that this change is so small and inconsequential that it almost seems strange that Team Bush would even make it since the change will only draw attention to the idiocy of the concept and the lack of clear definitions, or it would if people bothered to think about it.

While this is wonderful news and makes today truly great day in the history of humanity as well as rocks, water and most land formations, it is true that the name change will make little difference Afghans who are sick of having Afghanistan occupied by the United States or the Iraqi civilians increasingly being killed by Uncle Sam (Richard C. Paddock, Los Angeles Times, July 25), but those people haven't ever mattered so there's no need to start caring now.