Brindle Planet

Tue, 15 Apr 2003 03:30:27 GMT

Westblog

Where is the West?

Some thoughts...

Josh Micah Marshall, a public intellectual who I normally like a lot, has had two short posts recently that I have found interesting, both noting how odd it is that Iraqis belonging to the Ba'ath Party should own "Western" items like Britney Spears posters or receive email from a Yahoo! account. Marshall writes:

I've always been fascinated by the mix of alienness and similarity one finds in the leaders of countries like Iraq -- really across what we used to call the Third World. Some of this is just the story of globalization -- leaders and elites on the hand in death struggles with the global 'center' and on the other very much a part of it, invested in its culture, its modes of communication, its idioms. One sees examples of it in all the stories of raided palaces and homes of Saddam's top lieutenants. (So now we know that Tariq Aziz sometimes barked on TV about how the Iraqis would bury us in the sands of southern Iraq and then went back to his pad and popped Sleepless in Seattle into the VCR.) On the one hand, Uday Hussein was a hideously violent thug, born and bred into Saddam's Ba'athist police state, steeped in a virulent strain of Arab nationalism. On the other hand, he was using a free Yahoo! email account.

I write "Western" in quotes above because I am fascinated by this concept and its seeming fluidity. As someone who studies the interconnectedness of the "First" and "Third" Worlds throughout history, who looks at how each exists not independent of, but in relation to the other, I'm just not that surprised that Tariq Aziz should enjoy Norah Ephron schlock or that Uday Hussein might know how to websurf. I am an academic trained in the interdisciplinary fields of colonial and postcolonial studies, a field of inquiry that followed in the footstepts of anticolonial thinkers like Aime Césaire and Frantz Fanon, who in Wretched of the Earth declared that "Europe is literally the creation of the Third World."

Marshal writes that "Some of this is just the story of globalization," but to students of colonialism this story begins well before the advent of Nike sweat shops and MTV Internacional. An example: we hear much today about liberation and freedom, and, despite the newfound fondness for Freedom Fries in the United States, these are concepts defined politically in the modern era by the French Revolution's cries of Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité. But even this most European of events covered in a typical modern European history survey course was also a profoundly colonial event. The wealth of the maritime bourgeoise that became politically emboldened in the 18th century was not all created, after all, in the metropole. The sugar that sweetened the cakes that Marie Antoinette famously suggested her subjects eat was produced not in Paris, but in the sugarcane fields of France's (and the world's) wealthiest colony, Haiti. Many (though not all) of those demanding liberté in the metropole were shocked, shocked that the slaves in that sugar-producing colony might demand the same for themselves. The Haitian and French Revolutions were not discrete events -- they are both a part of one story, a story of world history that those who insist on speaking of strict barriers between the West and the Rest simply ignore.

These are interesting times for people who study colonialism and the postcolonial world. The field of colonial studies developed in the 1980s and 90s in universities in both "First" and "Third" Worlds. During that same time, as Edward Said notes, a revision of the Age of Empire emerged in the public sphere that sought to redefine the Age of Empire not as an age of dispossession or violence that Fanon criticized but rather as an age of ideals, of the promise of bringing Liberal progress to areas of the world not yet blessed with them. These days that revision seems almost complete, with people like Stanley Kurtz, who in an article in the influential Hoover Institution publication Policy Review, seeks to find salutary lessons from the "Democratic Imperialism" he says was practiced by India in the 19th Century. The fact that the British stayed long and "taught" the Indians Liberal values, Kurtz suggests, is the reason India today is the rare functioning Third World Democracy. (It seemed only recently that another conservative thinker who gets a lot of airtime these days, Fouad Ajami, suggested that perhaps the British hadn't stayed long enough.) At Emphasis Added, blogger Rob Salkowitz seems to see U.S. adventures in the Philippines, which after 1898 led to a bloody insurrection that cost about 200,000 Filipino lives, as a possible good example to follow because the archipelago today is, relative to its neighbors, "prosperous." (I'll say more on this later in the week as I have to prepare a lecture for my class on Thursday about the Philippine insurrection)

Suddenly empire is en vogue again -- whereas the U.S. built an empire in the twentieth century all the while denying that its actions were imperial, now people like Kurtz seek examples from the past to apply today in our world of pre-emptive strikes and Iraqi Liberation. Like the turn of the century U.S., when "Our New Possessions" books talked about the need to learn from other empires (see previous post), today we have people scrambling for past examples of imperialism where the lessons are good, with "good" defined by how well the postcolonial country is doing today.

This sudden re-thinking of empire as not all that bad has a lot to do with how little impact the dialectical interpretation of colonial and metropolitan histories has had on present discussions of the role of the United States in the world. You'll get Kurtz and Ajami, but you're not likely to see the likes of Edward Said on MSNBC.The writings of someone like Bernard Lewis, who insists on a binary opposition between Islam and the "West," are far more appealing than the work of scholars who suggest that a more appropriate way of thinking of these histories is as linked, informing one another. If we see the modern era not as the progress of independent civilizations but rather as interacting with each other, creating each other, than we might not be as surprised to find out that Uday Hussein or, for that matter, Osama bin Laden's followers, might be adept at using the technology of the so-called "West."

The Edward Said piece linked to above is an extended review of Cathryn Hall's new study, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-67, a brilliant study in British history that charts the history of the metropole and its colonies not as independent of one another but as always mutually informing.I wish people like Catherine Hall would serve, alongside Lewis and Kurtz and the rest, as commentators today (in all honesty, I wish the would substitute for the likes of Bernard Lewis, but I'll settle for at least having them be a part of the dialogue). We need to re-think world history if we are to truly understand how an invading force might be seen as both "liberatory" and "colonial" (no colonial power, after all, invaded under the mantle of Oppression -- they all claimed to be doing something good and, since the nineteenth century, something Liberal).

We might do well to re-think the history of the world as divided between the "West" and everything else. It leads to dangerous arguments of absolute cultural differences, differences so essential that they can be resolved not through diplomacy or, for that matter, trade, but only through aggession.

Where, after all, is the West?

I do this exercise with my classes a lot -- I have students write for five minutes, completing a paragraph beginning with the sentence: "The West is..." When they're done writing, I catalog people's responses on the board. Sometimes people list countries, other times concepts such as modernity. Sometimes the list includes technologies or progress, while lefty students might equate the West with oppression. Everyone agrees that the West exists however -- when we list the countries, however, we start running into problems. Is Japan a part of the West, I've asked. "It is now" I've been answered -- it's a G-7 country. Is Argentina a part of the West? "It was before its problems with the IMF," I've been told. Is the Haitian Revolution an event in "Western" history? If not, why not?

For people not from the traditionally defined "West," being "authentic" is not often an existential concern -- Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire were both born in Martinique, an island in the Caribbean that has always been at the crossroads of the project of the West and its modernity. Today Martinique is a highly technological, highly consumerist departement of the French nation-state. I have a feeling that people there might not be as surprised that someone not "Western" might both harbor resentment towards the U.S. (or any other imperial master) while also enjoying the occasional lighthearted Hollywood romantic comedy.

Tue, 08 Apr 2003 04:49:33 GMT

Norm Coleman has no shame.

For many of us living in Minnesota, a state with a great tradition of progressive politics, the last election was a particularly painful one. We lost Paul Wellstone in a tragic plane accident, had the national media scold us for not "properly" mourning him at his memorial (because ONE speaker was out of line), and then the hollow man that is Norm Coleman won his seat. Just months after Wellstone's death, this is what Norm has to say about the big shoes he is filling, from Roll Call (requires subscription):

"To be very blunt and God watch over Paul's soul, I am a 99 percent improvement over Paul Wellstone," Coleman said. "Just about on every issue."

The article is about how, for a freshman senator, Norm Coleman is getting an usual amount of attention from the Republican party. He's being flown around the country to speak to Republican groups, introduced as "The Man Who Beat Mondale." I won't deny the man a few victory laps, but could they at least be tasteful? Does he really need to dance on someone else's grave? These kind of nasty DeLay-esque comment might play well in Nevada and Florida Republican fundraiser, but Norm might want to remember that it's people here in Minnesota who will be keeping him in or voting him out of office. And many Minnesotans, even those who may have disagreed with Wellstone's politics, respected the man and his integrity and will not take kindly to his memory being dishonored so.

Shame on you Norm. You owe Minnesota an apology.

Mon, 07 Apr 2003 19:32:27 GMT

7 April 03

Humor for the Apocalypse

So at least we're getting some good humor out of the Department of Homeland Security's attempts to scare the hell out of us. Just saw this absolutely hilarious spoof of the Ready.gov new warning signs, with alternate interpretations for their meanings. Among my favorites:

Original caption:
"If your eyes are watering, your skin is stinging, you are having trouble breathing or you simply think you may have been exposed to a chemical, immediately strip and wash. Look for a hose, fountain, or any source of water."

theboxset.com's improved rendition:

"Be on the lookout for terrorists with pinkeye and leprosy. Also, they tend to rub their hands together manically."

Sun, 06 Apr 2003 20:52:20 GMT

6 Apr 2002 frust.

"It's the end of the world...

...there are so many manifestations of it."
- Sandra Bernhard

(Wherein the Blogger, new to the craft of analyzing his world for cyber-non-consumption, and overcome with fright about the state of the world and his complete inability to do anything about it, confesses to increasingly less 'occasional' but not terribly successful escapes into the less complicated world of The Learning Channel, Two-Hearted Ale Beer, American Idol, and Eminem.)

Saturday night and I just can't watch any more news or read any more blogs. It doesn't seem right to watch "Trading Spaces" when the end of the world is at hand, but I just had to. Orcinus has been compiling a list of death threats, accusations of treason, etc., leveled at people who dare express anti-war opinions. Then I heard a Canadian television report about how some Canadians crossing into the border into Bellingham, in Washington State, were getting notes on their car that read: "We in America are disappointed in Canadians and your government. You are not welcome in America. Go back where you belong and stay there." Upset at the news that, as Mary J Blige might say, someone's hatin' on the Canadians, I turn to the differently bizarre world of Hildy Santo Tomas.

...But Hildy disappoints this weekend, designing a room that is tasteful, elegant, and doesn't offend my finely-tuned sense of right and wrong. She didn't even include a self-portrait. How am I supposed to channel my despair appropriately? Last night they didn't even have the always-glistening-with-sweat- Doug, bullying homeowners in his inimitable tweaked-out Chelsea Boy manner. And why is he always sweaty anyway? (Well, I think I know why: someone should monitor his trips to the bathroom. Maybe they could put a camera in there?) But, alas, my evening plans of speculating viciously about minor celebrities' drug problems are not meant to be. They have on, instead, Flaming Frank, a man so femmy he makes Steven Cojaguru look butch. I just can't hear Frank talk about his wife again. It's just too disturbing. So we go out to find nourishment instead.

First stop, Two-Hearted Ale Beer. Highly recommended for those fearing the world's end. Could something so delicious exist if the end were near?

Next two stops, Mexican. I drop the partner off at the authentic Mexican place and I'm on my way to the Taco Bell drive-thru for two steak quesadillas. I love authenticity, but I'm mad at that place because the last time I was in there, the owner refused to respond to me in Spanish. My Puerto Rican-speak apparently is not good enough for her. My ethnic sensibilities offended, I decided to punish them by not buying their totally delicious burritos for two weeks. So two steak quesadillas it is. When the partner gets back in the car he informs me the Puerto Rican-hater wasn't there. Sneaky woman.

In the car we listen to "The Eminem Show," track number 5, where his slim shadiness gives a creepily prescient scenario, written well before the Colonization, er, Liberation of Iraq had begun, about how this country could become an authoritarian nightmare with kids going off to war. Before being driven to blog by the approaching end of the world, I used to imagine my first blog would be titled "Why this Faggot Listens to Eminem." Alas, I haven't the energy. The Four Horses Approach.

Perhaps this week will provide better avenues for escape from the World the Neocons Created. There is hope; Tuesday evenings BBCAmerica has new episodes of "Changing Rooms", the much, much better show that "Trading Spaces" is modeled after. Last summer we watched every episode available twice and dreamt of emigrating to this new, cool Brittannia (then came fall and Tony Blair's nostalgia for Benevolent British empire fucked it all up again).

Tuesday, as well, is American Idol. The show had looked to be a promising escape during these days and nights of hate and war. Now they're singing jingo jingles every week. And a couple weeks ago Simon Cowell said something nasty about Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks. Do we really need another Brit teaching Americans how to be patriotic? I though Andrew Sullivan had that job. (Sorry, I just can't provide a link to his site, I just can't. Call me anti-American.) For the record, on AI I'm routing for the two Kimberlys. Or Ruben. Anyone but Clay because gives me the willies (Although I do feel sorry for him now that Simon has turned on him. My theory on this: The Brit's's enthusiasm has waned as Clay has gotten more mike time to speak and sound, well, like he and Frank the Designer should have a chat.)

Enough Blogprocrastination. Must get back to planning my classes, writing (mustn't perish and reach the Day of Reckoning without having published), planning my "teach-in" speech for Wednesday. And maybe later I'll write some noncrazy blogs, but I make no promises.

Oh, and to the person putting fliers on Canadians' windshields in Washington State, would you please stop your hatin? Judgment Day is near.

Thu, 03 Apr 2003 04:57:26 GMT

More on 1898

Don't you just love it when The New Yorker agrees with you? Check out James Surowiecki's "Talk of the Town" piece in the current issue. Here's a bit of it:

In February, 1895, Cuban nationalists seeking independence from Spain took to the hills and started a campaign of guerrilla warfare. When initial efforts to put down the rebellion failed, the Spanish military relocated hundreds of thousands of Cuban farmers into fortified concentration camps, where they soon fell prey to hunger and disease. In the United States, publicity about the camps fanned hostility toward the Spanish and, eventually, inspired calls for U.S. intervention in Cuba (where, not coincidentally, America had important economic and strategic interests). War began in the spring of 1898, and a few months later the Spanish Empire was gone.

The end of the war presented a new dilemma. Cuba had a mountain of foreign debt, and during the peace negotiations Spain insisted that the Cubans were responsible for all of it. The logic was perverse; much of that debt had been run up by the colonial authorities in their effort to crush the Cuban struggle for independence. But international law seemed to be on Spain's side. Debt, the Spanish argued, was attached to a territory, not to a regime. The money had been borrowed by Cuba, and Cuba, or the occupying Americans, had to pay it back. The regime might have changed, but the debt remained.

The U.S. rejected that argument. The Cuban people had had no say in the decision to borrow the money, and it had been spent in ways that damaged them. Therefore, Cuba should owe nothing. In the end, the new republic repudiated its debts and started over with a clean slate.

Before long, the Iraqi people will likely face a similar dilemma. In 1979, when Saddam Hussein took power, Iraq-thanks to the oil boom of the seventies-had a foreign surplus of about thirty-five billion dollars. A decade later, after the war with Iran, it had a foreign debt of some fifty billion dollars. And today, after more war and a dozen years of missed interest payments, the country owes, by many estimates, more than a hundred billion dollars. Its creditors, which include Kuwait, Bulgaria, and the Korean conglomerate Hyundai, are already jockeying for position to be repaid after the war.

(thanks to my friend Tom, who always finishes his New Yorker well before our household does, for the reference)

Wed, 02 Apr 2003 17:46:41 GMT

3/30/03-1898

Is the U.S. now, or has it ever been, an "Empire"?

Food For thought:

For good or ill, the United States has entered upon a colonial policy, a policy of expansion, a policy which forces us into the position of a world-power, deep in the complications of international politics and the Eastern Question. It is now too late to turn back. Once having reached this position, it is unnecessary to argue the importance of obtaining all the adequate knowledge available on the great questions involved. American citizens, with the welfare of their country at heart, are endeavoring to familiarize themselves with the details of conditions in these new dominions and in the countries adjacent to them. Without experience or precedents of our own in a colonial policy, we are forced into the position of creating one, without time for experiment. We must learn while we govern and govern while we learn, and this too in close comparison with our neighbor nations in the Orient which have spent hundreds of years in the government of colonies and the methods of colonization.

- Trumbull White, Our New Possessions...Four Books in One (Binghamton, New York: Empire Publishing Company, 1898).

From a pamphlet that offered tips to salespeople about how to sell the above book, the publishers made the case:

DESTINY HAS SUDDENLY MADE THE UNITED STATES AN EMPIRE. In this war for humanity she has not only been made A NATION AMONG THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH, but there have been added to our ownership rich and tropical islands of both the Atlantic and Pacific. By the terms of peace they are declared ours, yet WE, AS A PEOPLE, KNOW THEM NOT. They are far-off strangers. What we now need is accurate knowledge of their location, size, population, wealth, climate, etc., etc., hence

Daschle is Pathetic

Jake Tapper's new Salon item about Tom Daschle is just sad. You don't fight your own fights and you ask others to help you out? Not that he'd listen even if he did read really, really obscure blogs like this one, but OK, here's some advice:

Start calling your harrassers what they are: "patriotically correct" idiots who can see only their way. I read that phrase in Maureen Ferrell's piece in Buzzflash and it has stuck with me. I think we should say it as often as they call someone anti-American. Put them on the defensive, like I think the whole "chickenhawk" debate did.
Stop backing down when criticized. When you rightly blasted Rush Limbaugh for demonizing you, Howard Kurtz said Limbaugh was a "mainstream" conservative. Go on Kurtz's show (or give someone else an interview) and read some of Limbaugh's on-air statements.
Sharpen your PR fighting skills. As stupid as Tom DeLay is, his "Fermez la bouche" McCarthyism was, in PR terms, very smart. It likened your criticism of the president to the now-hated French. How about shooting back something like, "All I have to say to Mr. Delay is that I don't need to be taught a lesson about supporting our soldiers. I have actually been one." Sure they'll call you mean. But do you think Tom DeLay loses sleep when someone calls him mean?

Just some thoughts...

Mon, 31 Mar 2003 17:11:25 GMT

3/31/03-1898intro

Media and the War: Guess Which One?

In modern wars the relation between the staff correspondents of the newspapers, and the staff officers of the armies engaged, have been understood, by those who have knowledge of the administration of the Press and that of the military establishments, as full of difficulty; and there has been no approximation to a satisfactory solution of the embarrassments found in the course of our recent experiments. One of the vital matters when nations lift the sword against each other is to restrict the circulation of intelligence, and the incessant increase of wires whose business is to convey news over continents and under seas, magnifies the problem of the adjustments of military necessities and the rights of the people represented by the Press.

If you guessed that the above was excerpted from last week's press release from the Secretary of Defense, you would be wrong but forgiven for the error. The above is from the author's preface of the Full Official History of the War With Spain, written by Murat Halstead and published in 1899. As his title suggests, Halstead's project was to give the official version of the Spanish-American War, one specifically requested by the president of the United States.

I'm a historian whose research focuses on the late 19th Century Spanish empire that ended with the War of 1898. Reading and teaching about this war as the present day in Iraq goes forward is sometimes a surreal experience. The echoes are sometimes deafening. Do you think the problems of "embedded" reporting and corporate media are new? Check this out, from the same preface:

The Press of the United States largely took very extraordinary attitudes with respect to the war of our country with Spain. It was the belief of several great journals and journalists that they must be held accountable for the state of hostilities. They assumed airs of authority as to its management, its objects. [...] In no war that ever took place did the Press go so expensively into the enterprise of reporting the current history, through special representatives, employ so many young men of courage and talent as historians on the spot, as in this Spanish-American combat of three and one-half months. The sums of money spent in newspaper enterprise were enormous. The expense account of the Associated Press was unexampled. Several newspaper proprietors employed steamers for their personal convenience and to supply newspaper service such as never before was imagined.

And then this eerie prediction:

If the fashion of last summer is to prevail, the time will come when the war correspondents will be a factor in the physical force of armies in the midst of operations...

Halstead's official history seeks to right the wrongs created, in his view, by instantaneous (for those days) coverage. The tension between official knowledge and public media, as well as the relationship between the control of information and state power that I'd like to explore a bit in coming posts.

If you've read my previous posts here you may have noticed that I am more than a tad obsessed with understanding (and ranting about) the role of media during war. Well, here is a bit of my "scholarly" explanation for this obssession. These are not academic pieces I'll be writing here -- just references, contexts, and ideas I'm thinking about these days.

I. ECHOES OF 1898

or, MR. BURNS: A REPUBLICAN WHO REMEMBERS

(I said these entries wouldn't be academic)

One of my favorite lines ever spoken on "The Simpsons" came from evil Mr. Burns, a man so old he once griped about having lived through five years of McKinleynomics. One of his quirks is his un-reconstructed hatred for all things Spanish, a perhaps odd-sounding bigotry today but which also stems from the era of President McKinley. In an episode where Bart has hijacked an army tank, Mr Burns observes the mayhem outside and says to his assistant:

Burns: Smithers, we're at war.
Smithers: I'll begin profiteering, sir.
Burns: And hoarding. Leave it to the Democrats to let the Spaniards back in the pantry.

I have to love a show that references the jingoism that led to the Spanish-American War as a live memory. The conflict, I think, is rather undertaught in this country, given the importance of its consequences. While the War of 1898 has largely been a "forgotten" history in the U.S., particularly with regards to its impact on the new "possessions", in many ways it marked the entry of the United States onto the global statge as a colonial power in the Age of Empire. We might look back to it these days, when much of the world is wondering whether the U.S. intervention in Iraq is the opening salvo in a brand new Age of Empire.

Others have already seen the relevance of 1898 for today. In The American Prospect, Harold Meyerson has argued that "You have to go back all the way to 1898, and the immediate aftermath of the Spanish-American War, to find a time when the question of an American empire was on the national agenda in such pure and unalloyed fashion. At issue then was what the United States should do with the nations--Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico--it had won from the Spanish in the ludicrous little war just concluded." In Salon, Neal Gabler suggested that it might serve as a better metaphor for Iraq than the hawks' evocations of Hitler and World War II or the doves' calling on the Vietnam-era "quagmire."

So I'm not the only person to comment on the echoes of the Spanish-American War we might hear today, but I might be the only blogger currently teaching a college course entitled "1898: From Spanish to U.S. Empires in the Caribbean and the Pacific" (if I'm wrong about that, I'd love to hear about it). What I would eventually like to explore more than Meyerson or Gabler have is some of the other stories to come out of that war. They focus on the U.S. end of thing; I will do this as well but would also like to add a more global perspective when thinking of the war's legacies. When the U.S. and Spain negotiated a settlement to the short conflict, for example, there were important groups conspiculously not represented at the Treaty table: Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and Filipinos. That absence may be one of the most important aspects of that war we need to think about today. While it has been relatively easy for the U.S. to "forget" 1898, in colonies and former colonies, memories often run much longer. We might think about that as we see protests coming from what is (I think) dismissively called "The Arab Street".

And did I say "short conflict"? Wrong. That's what comes from taking a solely U.S. perspective on history. In the words of one U.S. official it was indeed a "splendid little war" (today Meyerson substitutes 'ludicrous' as the descriptor)--but to many in Cuba and the Philippines, the war had been going on for quite some time before the U.S. stepped in to clean up the mess and declare itself the victor. More on that later. In Cuba the war isn't even called the same thing; it is remembered as "La Guerra Hispano-cubano-americana"--the "Spanish-Cuban-American War." More on this later.

That's it for introducing this little series of entries. Next post on this topic: "The U.S. and the 'Imperialism Canard'"

Sun, 30 Mar 2003 15:29:34 GMT

30 March 2003

THE SMOG OF WAR

    ...Because "Fog" seems too pretty a word, evoking a natural phenomenon. No, there's something very man-made about the horrible way we are getting news from the likes of CNN. These are choices that are being made. Aaron Brown doesn't have to recite Republican Talking Points about Hussein's Republican Guard. (Check out Aaron embarrassing himself while interviewing Daniel ellsberg. Busy, busy, busy has a snippet.) Embedded reporters didn't have to buy the administration's initial rosey scenarios hook-line-and-sinker, only to later express themselves shocked, shocked, that they not might be back in their studios in time for sweeps.

    Initially, the embedded reporters were playing their roles perfectly. Administration officials pronounced themselves pleased. (Does it bother journalists to be treated like a Ministry of Information?) After Rumsfeld's bad press week, now he is less pleased, complaining of the "massive volume of television [~] and it is massive [~] and the breathless reports can seem to be somewhat disorienting."

    It's not that difficult to understand the change of heart. The "embeddeds" were perfect for the seamless, quick war Rumsfeld envisioned. We saw that in the first couple of days. They moved with the troops, recording every advance as if we were watching a football game. You can picture how Rummy thought it would happen. "Shock and awe" topples the wimpy Republican Guard in the first few nights, and a couple days later, during primetime in the U.S., the embeddeds would roll into Baghdad atop tanks, recording Iraqi parades of joy. Dr. Sanjay could take much needed medical supplies to a local hospital.

    Note to the New York Times: the administration's problem is not "fickle" public opinion. The reason there is fluctuation in polls, and general confusion, is that we are only now getting around to having the national conversation we should have had before entering a war. How long will this take? How much will it cost? Is there an exit strategy? (Hello? Mr. Powell? About that Doctrine?)

    The war still may be "quick"--who knows--but that is not the only question. The news about the possibilities of "winning the peace" is not promising. The world, and particularly the Arab world, sees this as an invasion, as do apparently many Iraqis. No amount of pictures of marines handing out water bottles is going to change that.

Sun, 30 Mar 2003 14:12:59 GMT

MY CHICKENHAWK RANT
(everyone else got one)

   Things don't seem to be going well for Donald Rumsfeld these days. He's spent the last couple of days backtracking from the administration's previous chatter that the war in Iraq would be a cakewalk.It seems "terrorist" -journalist Seymour Hersh has given Richard Perle a break and is now lobbing his bombs in Rummy[base ']s direction. It[base ']s just not good news for this chickenhawk administration to have headlines reading "Rumseld Ignored Pentagon Advice on Iraq." An unnamed senior Pentagon official is quoted in an upcoming article in The New Yorker, explaining the current predicament of troops near Iraq with reinforcements weeks away, "This is the mess Rummy put himself in because he didn't want a heavy footprint on the ground."

    There is one thing I would change about that sentence, however: he didn't get himself in the mess. He is safely ensconced in Washington, where "messes" are purely political. He did, however, create quite an unpleasant mess for the soldiers out there. Today's news of a suicide bombing does not bode well, nor does the tone of this statement from Hersh[base ']s source: "The only hope is that they can hold out until reinforcements arrive."

    All this because the Republican Guard did not follow Republican talking points about how this war was supposed to go?

    And dissenters are being made to feel unpatriotic because we dare voice dissent regarding this administration, its war, its ulterior motives, the lies it was founded upon, and, yes, the fact that it is being run by chickenhawks who, despite not having taken the opportunity to serve their country in battle when they could have, seem untroubled about the prospects of sending other people[base ']s children out there.

    And other people[base ']s children they are. I found this article in the New York Times Week in Review both enlightening and depressing. Citing studies of the demographic makeup of the military, the article authors conclude:

        A survey of the American military's endlessly compiled and analyzed demographics paints         a picture of a fighting force that is anything but a cross section of America. With minorities         overrepresented and the wealthy and the underclass essentially absent[[sigma]]

This paragraph reminded me of my two favorite Chickenhawk excuse[base ']s for not going to Vietnam. Dick Cheney once said, "I had other priorities in the 60s than military service."
But even Dick[base ']s "priorities" excuse takes second place to Tom Delay[base ']s. He was asked at the 1988 Republican convention why Dan Quayle and he had not served in Vietnam. His response, according to reporters who were heard him:

        As Mr. DeLay explained to the assembled reporters, so many minority youths had                 volunteered for the high-paying military jobs offered those willing to go to Vietnam that         those wanting to escape poverty and the ghetto took up all the available slots, leaving no
        room for people like him and Mr. Quayle.

My father was one of those minorities volunteering for the Army and keeping good patriots like Delay and Quayle out. He father served two tours of infantry duty in Vietnam, the first with the 101st Airborne Division out of Fort Campbell Kentucky, the "screaming eagles" we have been hearing about so much in recent days.

    I guess, Mr. Cheney, my father just didn[base ']t have his priorities straight in the sixties. Or perhaps instead my parents were more like Lori Luckey, mentioned in the Times article. She is described as "a single mother of three girls [who] said the main reasons she signed up for the Marines were to to get a chance at a career and the opportunity for advancement, to see the world, and to obtain a dental plan and other benefits."

    My Dad made it back alive. I thought of him this morning as I read that NYT story, just as I thought of him Friday night when the Idiot Caller from Springfield Ohio asked Larry King (see my previous posting):

        CALLER: Is napalm a chemical weapon? If it is not a chemical weapon, why are we not
        using it against the Republican Guards on the outskirts of Baghdad, since it was such an
        effective weapon in Vietnam?

Larry[base ']s guests let Springfield Ohio down gently, suggesting it would be a public relations nightmare to douse an Arab country with poisonous chemicals. Coincidentally, however, yesterday's UK Guardian ran a story about Agent Orange and its effect on the population of Vietnam, to this day

    While the authors of that article focus correctly on the Vietnamese, I would also like to suggest to Mr. Springfield that Napalm wasn[base ']t that great on the troops he supports either. You see, I[base ']ve seen my Dad run to a medical textbook every time he has an ailment to see if his symptoms coincide with exposure to Napalm.

    And you know what[base ']s weird? He[base ']s not scared that they[base ']ll diagnose him as exposed, he[base ']s hoping they will. Is my father crazy? No, my father's not crazy, he has just been trying for about a decade to get the VA to grant him disability benefits I know he deserves, to no avail. His plight with the VA is just one in a sea of mistreatments afforded to Veterans. The administration that is demanding so breathlessly that we support our troops, or else, is cutting funding for Veterans benefits.   Lovely.

***

    Maureen Dowd is good today. The opening lines:

        We're shocked that the enemy forces don't observe the rules of war. We're shocked that it's         hard to tell civilians from combatants, and friends from foes. Adversaries use guerrilla         tactics; they are irregulars; they take advantage of the hostile local weather and terrain; they         refuse to stay in uniform. Golly, as our secretary of war likes to say, it's unfair.
        Some of their soldiers are mere children. We know we have overwhelming, superior         power, yet we can't use it all. We're stunned to discover that the local population treats our         well-armed high-tech troops like invaders.
        Why is all this a surprise again? I know our hawks avoided serving in Vietnam, but didn't         they, like, read about it?