Can The Democrats Blow It So Soon?

I'm extremely happy that the Democrats now control the House and Senate. I'm ecstatic Bush fired Rumsfeld, and even happier that he idiotically waited until the election was over before doing so. Firing Rummy earlier would have toned down the anger toward the Administration, and saved many seats in both houses of Congress. For the country's sake, Bush should have fired Rumsfeld years ago; for his party's sake, at least two weeks earlier than he did. Guess Karl Rove isn't an evil genius after all (still evil of course).

Now with that said, this is from today's NYT:

Democratic leaders in the Senate vowed on Sunday to use their new Congressional majority to press for troop reductions in Iraq within a matter of months, stepping up pressure on the administration just as President Bush is to be interviewed by a bipartisan panel examining future strategy for the war.

Big mistake by the Dems already! Damn! The Democrats should let Bush drive Iraq policy. Here is my reasoning: there is NO good solution, no solution period. Whether we send more troops in or pull them out, nothing will work. More and more Iraqis will die, perhaps reaching Rwanda levels of genocide. The Dems don't need their fingerprints on any withdrawal plan, because nothing will work, and the inevitable catastrophe will be blamed on the Dems for "cutting and running."

McCain is already positioning against the plan to pull troops out. Very smart of him to do so. God, I hope the Dems don't blow it so soon...

The Rogue State Called Israel

I believe the state of Israel has a right to exist. That is the last positive thing I'm going to say about Israel for the rest of this column. Israel is murdering Lebananese civilians as I write this. Hundreds are dead and thousands are homeless because of Israel's ill-conceived effort to show strength and "resolve."

The last round of bloodshed was started when the Shiite militia (or terrorist group if you prefer) Hezbollah attacked Israeli troops, killing eight and capturing two others. Hezbollah is based in Lebanon, and the Lebanonese Army is too weak to disarm this powerful non-state military force from its borders. All of that is indisputable. What I find interesting is that Israel chooses to attack Lebanonese civilian targets in an effort to ... what exactly? Lebanon is too weak to defeat Hezbollah, and they certainly can't defeat Israel. The Lebanonese population is being ruthlessly attacked by a foreign invader with total air superiority, and the United States talks about Israel's right to self defense. What about Lebanon's? Of course the United States is the last country to lecture Israel on unprovoked invasions.

This is a complicated situation, and I'm not saying there are easy answers to the problem of Hezbollah extremism (and the democratically elected Hamas extremists in the Palestinian state). One thing I am sure of: bombing the shit out of defenseless civilians is not the way to improve the situation. Indiscriminant slaughter of unarmed non-military personnel sends the message that Israel does not value Arab lives, and more broadly that it will not be restrained by international standards of human decency.

I can't believe the stupidity of the Israeli leadership right now. I cannot conceive of a course of action more likely to create new terrorists and more hatred of Israel in the Arab world. Ten years from now when Tel Aviv is a radioactive slagheap, we will recall the old adage that you reap what you sow.

George Will Is A Tool

George Will, the allegedly intellectual conservative, is a pompous ass. No news to anyone who has heard him speak for five minutes, but it needs to be repeated. Will is a smug bastard who tries way too hard to be an erudite commentator. In a pathetic imitation of witty right-leaning pundits William Safire and William Buckley, Will uses odd word choices and awkward phrases in an attempt to sound sophisticated. His words do not enlighten or convince, however, they only obfuscate. Sophisticated thinkers don't work so hard to sound smart. Will's prose is belabored and intentionally, in my opinion, confusing. If a reader can't understand his sentences, it must be because the reader is too stupid to comprehend Will's genius, right? Surely not because the writing is bad.

Here is an example from his 5/25/06 column in The Washington Post: What makes Americans generally welcoming of immigrants, and what makes immigrants generally assimilable, is that this is a creedal nation, one dedicated to certain propositions, not one whose origins and identity are bound up with ethnicity. Note the phrasing: "assimilable" instead of "easily assimilated," "a creedal nation" instead of a "nation based on creed." You have to read the sentence three times to even get the point in the first place. Now is that the fault of the reader or the writer?

The content of that crappy sentence is that the United States welcomes immigrants because our nation is based on certain ideals, not on ethnic identity. This is an obvious point, and it contradicts the thesis of his column, that the English language should be the only allowed language on ballots. If the nation is not bound by ethnic identity as he claims, why should he want the ballot be in only one language? You can have a multi-cultural, multilingual functional democracy. See India, Canada, Switzerland, and Belgium. Canada also welcomes immigrants without being a "creedal nation" as Will so eloquently puts it.

Besides being a pedantic bore, George Will also displays a puerile nitpicking style. For someone who cares so much about the meaning of words, he sure get a lot of mileage out of a misleading definition of "racism." Will wonders why Senator Harry Reid called an English-only bill "racist." Will's dimwitted argument is that Reid can't mean "racist" since Spanish-speakers aren't a race. What a piddling comment. "Racist," in the common definition of everyone I know BUT George Will, applies to ethnic groups too. Obviously, a person who says "I hate Mexicans" would be called a racist. You could also call that person "ethnocentric" but "ethnocentric bastard" isn't as catchy, is it? Weren't Nazis racist? The Jews aren't a race; they're a religious and ethnic identity. According to George Will the Nazis can't be called racists. What, are you stupid?

Whether or not English-only laws are "racist" is another conversation, and not one that Will addresses in his column. Will makes a petty distinction about Reid's word choice, without discussing the validity of Reid's statement. Obviously Will wants to prove how much smarter he is than Reid. Making a rational intelligible argument is of secondary importance.

The Spanish National Anthem: No me gustan gringos.

Recently a British record producer put together a group of famous-ish musicians that release the American national anthem in Spanish. I'm sure this British record producer is passionate about immigrant rights, and was not doing this as a craven publicity stunt. What, do I sound sarcastic? Regardless of his motivations, the Spanish National Anthem sparked a ridiculous controversy. Stupid-White-Guy-In-Chief George W. Bush even chimed in saying that the National Anthem should be in English only.

A few points:

1. "The Star-Spangled Banner" is a crappy song, and there are several better choices for a national anthem of the United States. "America The Beautiful," "This Land Is Your Land," and Whodini's "The Freaks Come Out At Night" would all make a better choice. Our current national anthem is notoriously hard to sing (with a tune based on an old British drinking song to boot).

2. The concept of a "national anthem" is pretty ridiculous to begin with. Do we really need a song? Like the flag, or the bald eagle, or any monument in Washington D.C., the anthem is a symbol, nothing more. The ideas behind the United States (and all other Western democracies) are what count, not a catchy little ditty or a multi-colored piece of cloth. This is the reason that anti-flag-burning crusaders are such a joke to me. Some hippie jerk burning a piece of cloth on the steps of the U.S. Capitol doesn't weaken my country or hurt me personally in any way whatsoever. Illegally tapping my phones sure does though.

3. So I dislike "The Star-Spangled Banner" and the concept of national anthems in general. It probably doesn't surprise you that I don't give a flying fuck if the national anthem is sung in Spanish. Or in Klingon. I cannot comprehend why translating the song into Spanish, in and of itself, is an insult to America. Songs are translated into other languages all the time. Because this one song was declared the national anthem by Congress doesn't mean it is suddenly holy scripture. People like Bush and their ilk are eerily like Muslims who claim the Koran can only be understood in Arabic.

We all know what this is really about. For all I know, the national anthem has already been translated into Spanish, French, Russian, or a hundred other languages. Translating lyrics ain't the issue. What people are pissed off about is the perceived Latinization of the United States. Anti-immigrant activists think this is another example of the steady creep of Latin culture into our supposedly white Anglo culture. Which is preposterous. Please allow me to be the millionth person to make the point that we are a nation of immigrants. EVERYONE in North America descended from immigrants (likewise everyone on Earth descended from immigrants unless you happen to be from eastern Kenya and your family has been there for three million years straight).

American culture is an amalgam of English, Scottish, French, German, Irish, Italian, Spanish, Native Indian, African, Roman, Greek, and Hebrew influences. The dominant Judeo-Christian belief system in the United States certainly wasn't started in America or Western Europe, it was imported, from the Middle East of all places! We already are a multi-ethnic society, and you can't turn the clock back on that. If a Spanish-speaking American (or potential American citizen) wants to sing the national anthem in Spanish and demonstrate his or her patriotism, how on Earth could that be a bad thing? If Latin Americans are good enough to cook our meals, watch our kids, and fight our wars, they can sing the anthem in any language they want.

Don't Blame The Press For Iraq

For all the Republicans' talk about "personal responsibility," they sure don't like to accept responsibility for the Iraq War fiasco. Conservatives have begun to blame the press for being too negative in its coverage of Iraq, as if the media itself was creating the insurgency and strife in Iraq. For example, today it was reported that 30 decapitated bodies were found in the Iraqi village of Tarfiya. Yes, that is a negative thing to mention. Pretty darn unpleasant. If 30 decapitated corpses were found in my hometown, I wager that would be the top story, not the opening of a water treatment plant or an ice cream store.

Does that mean The Washington Post should not be reporting Iraqi mayhem because it weakens America's resolve? Some conservatives seem to think so. They say that the media isn't acknowledging all the positive signs of progress in Iraq. Actually that isn't true. Any regular television news viewer can see positive stories about Iraqi citizens that like America and are striving for a democratic state. However, the daily parade of violent acts drowns out any positive spin one wants to put on the situation. What would these conservative critics want the U.S. media to do? NOT to report the daily car bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations? I'm sure George W. would love that, but the truth of the situation is too grim to be ignored.

The vast majority of Americans think the war was a mistake because of the grinding incessant violence. Don't blame the messenger, blame the president and his administration for invading Iraq in the first place. The United States has made Iraq a worse place to live today than it was under Saddam Hussein (quite an accomplishment).

When the United States was losing literally hundreds of soldiers a week in Vietnam, the press had upbeat stories then too, showing little South Vietnamese kids being innoculated for polio, and American Army engineers building dams for appreciative villagers. Sure, some positive things were done in Vietnam, but not enough to justify the 58,000 American fatalities. Walter Cronkite wasn't to blame for the biggest mistake in American military history, Lyndon Johnson was. Just like in Vietnam, the president has guided us into another quagmire, with the complicity of a spineless Congress. Don't blame the media for this mess. Now if we can only get them to spend less time on missing white women...

Austria's Big Mistake

David Irving, British historian, publicity whore, and all-around asshole, was convicted in Austria of denying the Holocaust and sentenced to three years in prison. Irving is a professional historian, who somewhere along the way threw away his respectable career to promote the fantasy that the Holocaust was a myth. Irving is pro-Hitler, and his denial of one of the greatest atrocities in human history is despicable.

He is an example of what I call the Big Fish In A Small Pond Syndrome, where a respected academic takes an outlandish position to make a name for himself. Most people would never have known of David Irving if he had been a mainstream World War II historian. He reminds me a lot of Michael Behe, the opportunistic biologist who claims to deny evolution (actually Behe admits evolution is probably right, but where's the notoriety in that?). Irving and Behe crave attention - they want to cast themselves as the renegade scholars, fighting the "establishment."

Of course, these d-bags aren't Copernicus and Galileo. They will eventually get the obscurity they deserve IF we ignore them and their attention-grabbing lies. The Austrian court, in a well-meaning but misguided decision, has done the opposite in the case of Herr Irving. The Austrian jury that convicted him has turned him into a martyr of the most odious kind. Neo-Nazis and anti-Semites around the world now have something to rally around - the unjust persecution of a man who dares to deny the Holocaust.

By the way, I mean it when I say Irving's sentence is "unjust." I so strongly believe in freedom of speech that I absolutely believe David Irving has the right to say whatever he wants to about the Holocaust. His deceitful bile sickens me, and I shudder to think some people are stupid enough to believe his bullshit, but we have to allow unpopular opinions to be heard. If I agreed with the Austrian jury, I would be no better than the Islamic radicals that want to burn down their own cities over some cartoons, or the Bush Administration's sanction-happy FCC that terrorized American media in recent years, or Irving himself, who sued a critic for libel for saying he was a Holocaust denier (he lost).

Understandably, Austria is extremely sensitive about the Holocaust and Nazi issues, but there's a terrible irony there. Austria is jailing someone for their beliefs, and Austria's native son Adolf Hitler, a noted opponent of free speech himself, would be proud.

Talking Dirty With Mohammed

Anybody that knows me knows of my deep commitment to freedom of speech and my massive disrespect and/or hatred of organized religion. So, "disgust" is a word that hardly does justice to my feelings on the protests over offensive cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper. People have been killed and property has been destroyed by Muslim extremists who are outraged at the insulting depictions of the holiest man in Islam, the Prophet Mohammed.

Wow, where to begin? Muslims violently protesting these CARTOONS are embarrassing themselves and their religion, giving fodder to those divisive non-Muslim Westerners who already have a pretty low opinion of Islam and its believers. Even an objective observer would have to conclude that a large group of Muslims are stuck in a medieval mindset, where insults are avenged with vigilante justice. There is no tolerance for non-Muslim criticism of Islam, and as the bloodfeud between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq shows, there is no tolerance for debate WITHIN Islam.

Part of this controversy is based on the idiotic Muslim belief (a belief that many Muslims do NOT share) that living creatures cannot be depicted in art, since these would be mere imitations of Allah's creations. This has led to some beautiful formalist art in such places as the Alhambra in Spain. It has also led to ridiculous moments such as when Muslim children are discouraged from drawing animals in kindergarten because it would be idolatrous. I'm not sure how cameras and film can exist in Muslim countries since these too create images of living beings, but religious beliefs are rarely consistent or intelligent.

What to do? Sure, the cartoons in the Danish newspaper are offensive. Muslims have the right to be offended and to peacefully protest the publication of these caricatures. However, it is much more than peaceful protest - Muslim extremists are trying to terrify Westerners into curtailing their criticisms of the Islamic religion. There should be more criticism, not less. The role of women in the Muslim world is beyond reprehensible, and it cannot be talked about too much. I reject that Muslim countries have the "right" to dictate what a woman can or cannot wear, or where she can go to school, or what professions she can hold. I loathe those multicultural idiots who shrug off the horrible sexism in the Muslim world as an internal societal quirk. Some things cannot be tolerated in any human society - the barbaric treatment of Muslim women is one of the most blatant modern examples.

One last point - it is a cliche but also a truth that the autocratic governments of the Arab World encourage Muslim extremism as a way of sublimating anger at the state. Egypt and Saudi Arabia, for example, have no problem with bloody protests against Israel, or bloody protests about cartoons in Danish newspapers, because these topics distract the angry mobs from their main problem, their own brutal dictatorial governments. It is useful to the tyrants of the Middle East to misdirect their peoples' anger toward external "problems."

Sadly, Realpolitik prevents the United States from speaking out against the archaic monarchies and juntas of the Muslim World, because for all our bullshit about spreading democracy, the last thing the United States (and the rest of the Western world) needs is actual democracy in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan. Radical Islamic groups would surely win open fair elections in those countries, and as we Americans learned in 2004, the majority of the body politic is made up of dumbasses.