Saturday, May 29, 2004

Former Arizona Cardinals football player Pat Tillman, shown in a June 2003 photo at top left and an October 2002 photo at top right, joined the Army Rangers after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States and was killed by gunfire in Afghanistan in April. Shortly after Tillman's death, controversial cartoonist and writer Ted Rall published a controversial cartoon (above) questioning the knee-jerk lionization of Tillman that most likely will persist, even though an Afghan military official states that Tillman was killed in "friendly" fire -- when the enemy wasn't even around. (We good patriotic Amuricans don't ever let such things as facts -- such as the fact that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- get in our way.)    Tillman probably killed by 'friendly' fire; still a 'hero,' military officials insist Here's an odd twist: Pat Tillman, the former Arizona Cardinals football player who joined the Army Rangers after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States and who was killed in what was reported as a firefight in Afghanistan in April, most likely died from "friendly" fire, The Associated Press reports today (especially salient portions of the news story I have put in bold and comments of mine appear in [brackets]): FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- The shots that killed Pat Tillman, the football player who became a patriotic icon by giving up a $3.6 million contract to become an Army Ranger, probably came from his fellow soldiers, military officials said [today]. According to an Army investigation, Tillman was shot to death on April 22 after a U.S. soldier mistakenly fired on a friendly Afghan soldier in Tillman's unit, and other U.S. soldiers then fired in the same direction. Initial reports by the Army had suggested that Tillman was killed by enemy gunfire when he led his team to help another group of ambushed soldiers. "While there was no one specific finding of fault, the investigation results indicate that Cpl. Tillman probably died as a result of friendly fire while his unit was engaged in combat with enemy forces," Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr. said in a brief statement to reporters at the Army Special Operations Command. Kensinger said the firefight took place in "very severe and constricted terrain with impaired light" with 10 to 12 enemy combatants firing on U.S. forces. But an Afghan military official told The Associated Press [today] that Tillman died because of a "misunderstanding" when two mixed groups of American and Afghan soldiers began firing wildly in the confusion following a land mine explosion. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the Afghan official said, "(There) were no enemy forces" present when Tillman died. Kensinger, who heads Army Special Forces, took no questions [this] morning after reading the Army statement. An Afghan Defense Ministry official declined to comment on whether enemy forces were present, while U.S. military officials in Afghanistan referred all queries to Fort Bragg. In Washington, Pentagon officials refused to comment on the Afghan report.  [Translation: That' s our story, and we're sticking to it.]  According to the Army's investigation, Tillman's team had split from a second unit when a Ranger whom the Army did not identify fired on a friendly Afghan soldier, mistaking him for the enemy. Seeing that gunfire and not realizing its origin, other U.S. soldiers fired in the same direction, killing Tillman and an Afghan soldier. Two other Rangers were wounded in the gunfight. "The results of this investigation in no way diminished the bravery and sacrifice displayed by Cpl. Tillman," Kensinger said. [Who said that the results of the investigation diminish the bravery and sacrifice displayed by Cpl. Tillman? Reminds me of when "President" Dumbfuck said, "There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white -- can self-govern." Who in the hell ever said that people whose skin is not white cannot govern themselves? The Washington Post notes that after Bush uttered that incredibly inane (even for him) statement in late April, "White House press secretary Scott McClellan was peppered later with questions about what Bush meant. Bush never says who the people are who think that, and McClellan did not, either." If I say that something that someone said isn't true -- but no one ever fucking said it in the first place -- doesn't that indicate, since I pulled it out of my ass, that that's what I actually believe? I think that's true in the case of the remark on racism that Bush pulled out of his ass, although Kensinger's remark might have been meant as a preemptive strike. (Preemptive strikes are all the rage these days.)]   Tillman, 27, left his position as a starting safety for the Arizona Cardinals to join the Army following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He was posthumously promoted from specialist to corporal and awarded a Purple Heart and Silver Star, one of the military's highest honors, awarded for gallantry on the battlefield.... A woman who answered the phone [today] at the home of Tillman's uncle, Hank Tillman, said the family would have no comment on the findings in the Army's investigation. At Fort Bragg, an officer with the 30th Engineer Battalion said the circumstances of Tillman's death do not change his heroism. "A lot of us sacrifice something, but no one sacrificed as much as he did to join," Sgt. Matt Harbursky said as he prepared to play a round of golf at the base course. "And it doesn't really matter how he was killed, it's sad." Prior to [today], the Army's most complete account of Tillman's death came in his Silver Star citation, which said he was killed after his platoon split into two sections for what officials called a ground assault convoy. Tillman was in charge of the lead group. When the trailing group came under mortar and small arms fire, the Army said Tillman ordered his team to return. "Through the firing, Tillman's voice was heard issuing fire commands to take the fight to the enemy on the dominating high ground," the citation said. "Only after his team engaged the well-armed enemy did it appear their fires diminished." The Afghan official gave the AP a differing account, based on his conversation with an Afghan fighter from the group that was separated from Tillman's. The Afghan soldier said the two groups drifted apart during the operation in the remote Spera district of Khost province, close to the Pakistani border. "Suddenly the sound of a mine explosion was heard somewhere between the two groups and the Americans in one group started firing," the official said. "Nobody knew what it was -- a mine, a remote-controlled bomb -- or what was going on, or if enemy forces were firing. The situation was very confusing," the official said. "As the result of this firing, that American was killed and three Afghan soldiers were injured. It was a misunderstanding and afterwards they realized that it was a mine that had exploded and there were no enemy forces." Tillman's platoon was in the area as part of an effort called Operation Mountain Storm, in which they were charged with rooting out Taliban and al-Qaida fighters. Tillman became the first NFL player to die in combat since the Vietnam War. He was one of about 100 U.S. soldiers to have been killed in Afghanistan since the United States invaded in 2001. Why do I tend to believe the Afghan military official's account that the "friendly" fire occurred when the enemy wasn't even around? Why do I suspect that U.S. military officials are trying to cover up the truth of the circumstances surrounding Tillman's death? Oh, yeah: That's because at least where the Bush regime's "war on terror" is concerned, Americans have absolutely no fucking credibility whatsoever. (Two words: Jessica Lynch. Not enough? OK, two more words: Abu Ghraib. And one abbreviation: WMD.) Why are U.S. military officials so damned eager to emphasize that Tillman was a hero? As I said, who the hell said he wasn't? (OK, besides Ted Rall?) I'm not saying that Tillman was or was not a hero. I don't have enough information to make such a judgment -- I would have to know what was in his head, what his beliefs, thoughts and motivations were, in order to make such a judgment. But the whole "hero" construct seems dangerous to me for at least two reasons: One, chillingly, many, if not most, Americans seem to relish the fact that naive young men and women are willing to possibly die for their "freedom," which those same Americans probably would define, if you asked them to define it, as their freedom to do such noble things as shop at gargantuan shopping malls, watch hours and hours of "reality" television, drive SUVs and other gas-guzzlers and gorge themselves on super-sized drive-through fast food. Secondly, it seems to me that U.S. military officials are just trying to perpetuate the "hero" construct in order to ensure that a steady stream of misguided young men and women continue to sign up to possibly die for what ultimately turns out to be stupid rich white men's personal fortunes (three words: Dick Cheney's Halliburton) in the name of "freedom" and "liberty" and "democracy," God Bless America, blah blah blah, United We Stand, blah blah blah. Acknowledging that "hero" Tillman might have been killed by "friendly" fire when the enemy wasn't even around doesn't make for the best military recruitment ad, does it? "Join the United States Army, where you, too, could be killed by your fellow soldiers when the enemy is nowhere around -- just like all-American football hero Pat Tillman was!" Nah, it just doesn't work. Even a posthumous promotion, such as Tillman received, isn't exactly a big selling point, is it?  Anyway, it will be interesting to see how right-wingers, who immediately had elevated Tillman to a Red-White-and-Blue-Blooded True American Hero and sent Rall lots of hate e-mail for putting out a political cartoon suggesting that Tillman wasn't such a hero, will handle this news. Right-wing attack dog and nutcase Ann Coulter wrote in a column that Vietnam veteran and former Democratic Georgia Sen. Max Cleland isn't such a hero because he wasn't injured by the enemy during combat, but lost three limbs when a grenade exploded in a non-combat situation. Will right-wingers apply what I'll call "Coulter 'Logic'" to the Tillman case? Um, probably not. 3:04:37 PM    Comments []

Democratic Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, left, and Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain, right, in an undated Associated Press photo. A recent CBS News poll shows a hypothetical Kerry-McCain ticket beating the BushCheneyCorp ticket by 14 percentage points. But the same poll also shows a ticket consisting of Kerry and Democratic North Carolina Sen. John Edwards beating the BushCheneyCorp ticket by 10 points. A Kerry-Edwards ticket would ensure that the presidency remains in the hands of a Democrat should anything happen to President Kerry, whereas a Kerry-McCain ticket would create the possibility of a Republican becoming president should the Democratic president no longer be able to serve. Kerry-McCain 2004? (revisited) The talk of a John Kerry-John McCain ticket persists, even though Republican McCain has sworn that he's supporting "President" Bush's "re"-election all the way to Nov. 2 . The Kerry-McCain buzz got new life after CBS News reported that a poll of more than 1,100 Americans nationwide conducted May 20-23 has a hypothetical Kerry-McCain ticket thrashing the BushCheneyCorp ticket, 53 percent to 39 percent. ("The Kerry-McCain ticket draws 15 percent of Republican voters while keeping the same level of support among Democrats -- 80 percent -- that Kerry enjoys alone," CBS News reports. "However, the addition of McCain brings many more veterans to the Democratic camp: Tested one-on-one against Bush, Kerry loses to Bush among veterans, 54 percent to 41 percent. With Kerry and McCain together, the two tickets split the veteran vote. Independent voters, too, move to the Kerry-McCain ticket: Fifty-one percent of them support Kerry over Bush, while 57 percent would back a Kerry-McCain ticket.") My biggest problem with a Kerry-McCain ticket -- as I said -- is that should President Kerry for some reason no longer be able to continue to serve as president, such as because of a debilitating illness or medical condition or death (although one might argue that a dead president could do better job than our current "president"), we'd have a Republican president -- again. In his weblog, Ted Rall writes that independent candidate Ralph Nader would be "a brilliant choice" of running mate for Kerry. Rall writes: Among the more outlandish options floated recently for the veep spot on the Democratic ticket are John McCain and Ralph Nader. The McCain thing, I think it's safe to guess, ain't gonna happen. There hasn't been a party crossover ticket in more than fifteen decades, and a year when the electorate is polarized won't see the second. Choosing a conservative, pro-life Republican as vice president would alienate the liberal base, driving many to stay away from the polls or vote for Nader. I myself would retract my longstanding pledge to vote for the Democratic nominee since a McCain veep could become a Republican president. The Democratic Party...needs to get back to its roots, not trash them entirely. I don't think much will come out of the Nader talk, but I think he'd be a brilliant choice -- one that might lock up the election once and for all. A Nader VP would energize the liberal base like nothing else, neutralize a spoiler threat and infuse vibrant new ideas into the ossified Democratic Party political machine. Nader could become Kerry's Cheney -- the power behind the throne, the guy's who's always thinking new stuff up. My money's still on John Edwards or Bob Graham, though -- and either of them would be just dandy. At least strategically, Nader would be an awful choice. Nader, for whom I voted for president in 2000, garnered less than 3 percent of the popular vote in 2000, which hardly makes him a nationally beloved figure. (And I haven't heard anyone, except for Rall, talk about Nader as a possible running mate for Kerry.) I surmise that on Nov. 2 far more voters would be turned off by the possibility of Vice President Nader becoming president should something happen to President Kerry than would be turned off by the possibility of Vice President McCain becoming president. Anyway, while CBS News' poll numbers for a Kerry-McCain-vs.-BushCheneyCorp race are a tempting cool glass of Kool-Aid, the same poll shows a Kerry-Edwards ticket beating the BushCheneyCorp ticket, 50 percent to 40 percent. That's still a healthy 10-percent lead, and the 14-percent lead of a Kerry-McCain ticket doesn't trump the possibility that Republican Vice President McCain could become president should Democratic President Kerry become incapacitated. So, all things considered, I'd go for Edwards over McCain, but even if Kerry chooses neither Edwards nor McCain, Kerry (without a hypothetical running mate named) still significantly beats the BushCheneyCorp ticket in CBS News' latest poll, 49 percent to 41 percent. Finally, since Rall threw out his dream Kerry running mate (Nader), I'll throw out mine: Democratic Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, whom I'd pick over Nader, as I can't see the curmudgeonly Nader being able to work with anyone in Washington. Kucinich has long been my ideological favorite (at least where the Democrats are concerned), but I'm realistic. Strategically speaking, I think that I'd much rather see even a Kerry-McCain ticket than a Kerry-Kucinich ticket.     Update (Friday, June 18, 2004): Ted Rall's latest column is on the whole Kerry-McCain thing. It's titled "The Failed Seduction of John McCain: How Democrats Are Their Own Worst Enemy." I agree with most of it. (Rall engages in Rallian hyperbole, but that's what makes Rall Rall.) Here is an abridgment of Rall's column (read the full column here), with my comments in [brackets]:  NEW YORK -- Now we know what John Kerry has been up to this spring. Other politicians, having wrapped up their party's nomination early in March, might have devoted those extra months to honing their stump speech, shaking down contributors and strategizing for the long slog to November. Not Kerry. Kerry, it seems, spent the last three months begging Republican John McCain to run as his vice president. [Um, Kerry has done lots of things other than communicating with McCain during these past three months. That's an unfair remark, even though it's supposed to be snarky.] He didn't ask officially (whatever that means) but he asked seven times. "I don't want to formally ask because I don't want to be formally rejected, but having said that, would you do it?" an aide who ran messages between the two senators quoted Kerry's approach to The New York Times. Each time, each of seven times, McCain's answer was the same: an unequivocal no....  Seven times. Has John Kerry lost his mind? [I share Rall's bafflement over the difference between asking officially/formally and asking unofficially/informally, and why it was necessary to ask McCain repeatedly. My rule of thumb, I guess, would be three strikes, not seven, and you're out.]   The last time Americans elected a cross-party ticket was 1796, and with good reason. President Adams, a Federalist, feuded over matters personal and political with Vice President Jefferson of the Democratic-Republican Party. The resulting spectacle was so appalling that Congress amended the Constitution to minimize the chances of such a fiasco reoccurring. Not since 1932 has it been so important for Democrats to win the presidency. George Bush, a dangerous, deranged demagogue, has got to go. Anybody But Bush: I coined the phrase, and I still mean it. But it would be the height of folly to brush off the implications of the Kerry-McCain dalliance. The Democratic nominee-apparent's judgment, and that of his advisors, has been grievously compromised. [If Kerry and his advisors seriously wanted -- or, God forbid, still seriously want -- McCain, I agree that their judgment is appalling and I'd like my campaign contributions back, please. As I wrote, the small boost that adding McCain to the ticket would give the Kerry campaign is not worth the liabilities, the largest of which I can sum up in two words: President McCain.   However, Rall apparently overlooks the perhaps improbable but not impossible scenario in which Kerry never seriously intended to name McCain as his running mate, but intended only to reap the political benefits of bandying about the popular McCain's name as a potential running mate. No one is calling Kerry "another Massachusetts liberal" or "another Michael Dukakis" now, are they? (Well, widely, I mean.)] Liberals believe that McCain is a soft-spoken moderate Republican. The shabby treatment he received in 2000 at the hands of Bush and Karl Rove, whose operatives falsely claimed that he had fathered an illegitimate daughter with an African-American hooker, earns him sympathy from the left. So does the maverick style he employed to push for campaign finance reform. But McCain isn't what people think he is. "At the end of the day," said the chatty aide, "he's a Republican." His campaign finance reform banned soft money contributions, a much bigger source of funds for Democrats than Republicans. Later in 2000 he played Bush's bitch, campaigning for the man whose staffers had smeared him. By all accounts his understated tone quickly rises to accommodate a sharp temper. Most of all, McCain's Arizona constituents vote for him because his conservative politics match theirs. [I vouch for Rall; I lived in Arizona the first 30 years of my life before I moved from Phoenix to Sacramento in 1998. McCain is quite conservative, not someone a liberal would want as president. McCain repackaged himself as a moderate "maverick" for his 2000 presidential bid; it was news to us Arizonans who'd known the conservative McCain for years that he was a moderate. (My hunch is that George W. Bush had already taken the right-wing gig, so McCain adopted a moderate gig, much as it's my hunch that Howard Dean, seeing that the centrist Democratic gig had already been taken, repackaged himself as a far-left candidate, a claim that his more centrist record as governor of Vermont did not support, which is why I could not support his candidacy.)] "I am pro-life," McCain wrote on his 2000 campaign website. "I oppose abortion except in the case of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is in danger. I support the constitutional amendment to prohibit the physical desecration of the American flag. (I will) curb the gratuitous violence in the media that is desensitizing our culture to violence. Bearing arms is a constitutionally protected right." How could liberal voters support Kerry-McCain knowing that a pro-life, flag-burning-obsessed, pro-censorship gun nut was a heartbeat away from the big leather chair? Why should anyone trust a candidate or a party so uncertain about their principles that they're willing to sell them out for a short-term jump in the polls? Kerry should thank McCain for turning him down; in doing so a Republican may just have rescued the Democratic Party from suicidal oblivion. [Again, I'm not sure that Kerry hasn't been playing a political game with the McCain thing. (If he has been, it's pretty fucking shrewd, I think.) If Kerry was (or still is) serious about McCain as his running mate, then I agree with Rall that that might amount to being "willing to sell...out for a short-term jump in the polls" and that "Kerry should thank McCain for turning him down." It had crossed my mind also that, if it was a serious offer, McCain was doing Kerry a favor by turning him down.]     Both parties, and Democrats in particular, are in trouble. The last few decades have witnessed a rise in ideological blurring. Aping the Republicans has made the Democratic Party less appealing to increasingly apathetic liberals. This has occurred during a period of unprecedented polarization, when swing voters have all but vanished. As I prescribe in my book Wake Up, You're Liberal!: How We Can Take American Back From the Right, the key to Democratic success this fall is motivating the long-neglected left-wing base. That means stronger, not weaker, party identification. Democratic Congressmen who vote along with the Republicans should be thrown out of the party. Democrats must act like Democrats. And you don't do that by nominating, or running with, Republicans. I can't disagree with Rall. It was the Democratic Party's rightward drift that induced me to vote for Ralph Nader in 2000. And, tragically, rather than try to give Nader voters a reason to come back to the Democratic Party, since Al Gore's "loss" to George W. Bush in late 2000, too many Democrats have publicly berated the 2000 Nader voters, an incredibly stupid thing to do because it only cements those voters' alienation from the Democratic Party. Democrats do not seem to appreciate or even realize that many, if not most, of us who voted for Nader in 2000 and who support Kerry now consider ourselves on loan from the Green Party to the Kerry campaign for the 2004 presidential election. We see ourselves as on loan, and the Democratic Party hacks stupidly and incorrectly see us as having come back to our senses and come back to the Democratic Party. Although I'm Green at heart, I'm doing what I can do to see a President Kerry come January, but we can't stop there. I'm hoping and praying that Kerry is doing what I'll call a "Reverse Bush." Recall that George W. Bush campaigned as a centrist, with his "compassionate conservative," "uniter-not-a-divider" bullshit. Once he got into office, he enacted the most radically right-wing White House agenda of at least my lifetime -- and this wasn't as unforeseeable as so many would like to claim. (I saw it clearly when, in January 2001, I participated in a "Not My President's Day" rally, to protest the installation rather than the election of George W. Bush as president of the United States, at the California State Capitol here in Sacramento. Why more people weren't there, when our democracy had just been shit and pissed on like I'd never seen before, baffled and concerned me.) Anyway, Kerry's "Reverse Bush" would be, like Bush did, to campaign as a centrist -- because, whether we like it or not, it seems that only a candidate who is perceived as centrist can win the White House these days -- but to enact a more liberal agenda once in office and to continue to move the nation to the left, not to stop when we reach what I'll call the "Clinton Point." I credit Clinton for the relative peace and prosperity that we had during his eight years at the helm. The proof is in the pudding, and we Americans got fat and lazy on the Clinton pudding. But to adopt Clinton's centrism -- the "Clinton Point" -- as the zenith of the Democratic Party would be the party's death knell. Clinton's centrism was made necessary because the Republicans, who never got over the fact that Clinton beat King Bush I in the presidential election of 1992, did everything in their power to prevent Clinton from succeeding in enacting his policies. (Remember the national healthcare overhaul that Clinton had promised before he took office? No? But you remember Monica Lewinsky, don't you?) Clinton did a great job, given what he was up against. But if we liberals/progressives allow the conservatives/regressives to radically alter the political spectrum so that the center becomes the left -- a process at which the conservatives/regressives appear to be succeeding -- then we liberals/progressives are fucked. So if Kerry wins on Nov. 2, as I suspect that he will, the Democrats need to humbly take it as a reprieve from the party's death sentence -- and not get fat and lazy again, like they did during the Clinton years, but restore the party to where it once was, which was to the left of the "Clinton Point." And thus to give the Naders and the Green Parties of the United States no reason to exist. 12:44:24 AM    Comments []