micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links

Welcome to the musings and notes of a Cadillac, Michigan based writer named Micah Holmquist, who is bothered by his own sarcasm.

Please send him email at micahth@chartermi.net.

Holmquist's full archives are listed here.

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Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)

Aljazeera.Net English
AlterNet (War on Iraq)
Alternative Press Review
Always Low Prices -- Always
Another Irani online
antiwar.com (blog)
Asia Times Online
Axis of Logic
Baghdad Burning (riverbend)
BBC News
blogdex.net ("track this weblog")
bobanddavid.com
BuzzFlash
The Christian Science Monitor (Daily Update)
Common Dreams
Cryptome
Cursor
Daily Rotten
DefenseLINK
Democracy Now
The Drudge Report
Eat the Press (Harry Shearer, The Huffington Post)
Empire Notes (Rahul Mahajan)
frontpagemag.com (HorowitzWatch)
globalsecurity.org
greenandwhite.com
Guardian Unlimited
Haaretz
The Independent
Information Clearing House
Informed Comment (Juan Cole)
Iranians for Peace

Iraq Dispatches (Dahr Jamail)
Iraqi Democrats Against Occupation
Iraq Occupation and Resistance Report (Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice)
MetaFilter
MLive
Mr. Show and Other Comedy
The Narco News Bulletin (blog)
NEWSMAKINGNEWS
The New York Times
Occupation Watch
Political Theory Daily Review
Press Action
Project Syndicate
Raed in the Middle (Raed Jarrar)
random-abstract.com
Reuters
Salon
The Simpsons Archive
Simpsons Collector Sector
Slate
Sploid
Technorati ("search for mth.blogspot.com")
thi3rdeye
United States Central Command
U.S. Embassy Baghdad, Iraq
venezuelanalysis.com
War Report (Project on Defense Alternatives)
The Washington Post
Wildfire (Jo Wilding)
wood s lot
www.mnftiu.cc (David Rees)

Blogs that for one reason or another Holmquist would like to read on at least something of a regular basis (always in development)

Thivai Abhor
As'ad AbuKhalil
Ken Adrian
Christopher Allbritton
Alli
Douglas Anders
Mark W. Anderson
Aziz Ansari
Atomic Archive
Bagatellen
James Benjamin
Elton Beard
Charlie Bertsch
alister black
Blame India Watch
Blixa
Blog Left: Critical Interventions Warblog / war blog
Igor Boog
Martin Butler
Chris Campbell
James M. Capozzola
Avedon Carol
Elaine Cassel
cats blog
Jeff Chang
Margaret Cho
Citizens Of Upright Moral Character
Louis CK
Les Dabney
Dack
Natalie Davis
Scoobie Davis
The Day Job
Jodi Dean
Dominic Duval
Steve Earle
Eli
Daniel Ellsberg
Tom Engelhardt
Lisa English
Faramin
Barbara Flaska
Brian Flemming
Joe Foster
Yoshie Furuhashi
Al Giordano
Glovefox
Rob Goodspeed
Grand Puba
Guardian Unlimited Weblog
Pete Guither
The Hairy Eyeball
Ray Hanania
Mark Hand
harveypekar.com
Hector Rottweiller Jr's Web Log Jim Henley Arvin Hill Hit & Run (Reason) Hugo Clark Humphrey Indri The Iraqi Agora Dru Oja Jay Jeff Lynne d Johnson Dallas Jones Julia Kane Blues Benjamin Kepple Ken Layne Phil Leggiere Brian Linse Adam Magazine Majority Report Radio Marc Maron Josh Marshall Jeralyn Merritt J.R. Mooneyham Michael Scott Moore Bob Morris Bob Mould Mr. Show and Tell Muslims For Nader/Camejo David Neiwert NewPages Weblog Aimee Nezhukumatathil Sean O'Brien Patton Oswalt The Panda's Thumb Randy Paul Rodger A. Payne Ian Penman politx Neal Pollack Greg Proops Pro-War.com Pure Polemics Seyed Razavi Rayne Simon Reynolds richardpryor.com Clay Richards Mike Rogers Yuval Rubinstein
Steven Rubio
Saragon Noah Shachtman Court Schuett The Simpsons Archive Amardeep Singh Sam Smith Soundbitten Jack Sparks Ian Spiers Morgan Spurlock Stand Down: The Left-Right Blog Opposing an Invasion of Iraq Aaron Stark Morgaine Swann Tapped (The American Prospect) tex Matthew Tobey Annie Tomlin Tom Tomorrow The University Without Condition Jesse Walker Warblogger Watch Diane Warth The Watchful Babbler The Weblog we have brains Matt Welch
Alex Whalen
Jon Wiener
Lizz Winstead
James Wolcott
Wooster Collective
Mickey Z

Friday, February 07, 2003
 
A lesson that hawks should learn

Yesterday's final post, "Dominating the world," was my intellectual response to President George W. Bush's wail for war. My response yesterday afternoon when I heard Bush's comments live on the radio was "Shut the fuck up!"

I linked to this post by Jim Henley in "Dominating the world" but I feel the need to emphasize this section:

I have two letters in my in-box that I've been meaning to get to. Both say, in similar words, "But we have to do something. What's your alternative?" But "we have to do something" is precisely what I'm not convinced of.

Because they lie. Routinely and often and deliberately. They said there were 100,000 people in mass graves in Kosovo. That was a lie. They said Iraqi soldiers were tossing babies out of incubators. That was a lie. They said Iraqi troops in 1991 were massing on the Saudi border. That was a lie. They said Saddam's attack on Kuwait was a total surprise. That was a lie. They said US troops had no combat role in Central America in the 1980s. That was a lie.

Right through the Gulf War, I believed that shit. By the time of Kosovo, I knew better. I'm 42 years old, I knew the Middle East existed before September 11, 2001, and if today's bunch sounds a lot like previous bunches that turned out to be full of crap, my conclusion is that this bunch is full of crap too.

I have no doubt that at least some of what the Bush Administration is telling us about Iraq is not true -and I would add the Iraqi plot to assassinate George H.W. Bush to the list of lies- but what strikes me about the situation, and what I argued in "Dominating the world," is that even if everything the Bush Administration says about Iraq is true, that they have not provided us with anything approaching a good reason to escalate the war with Iraq. What they have done successfully, if the poll results such as these are accurate, is play on the public's ignorance about the fact that weapons of mass destruction are already in the hands of a number of countries that the U.S. doesn't get along with and that there are logical reasons why countries would want weapons of mass destruction that do not involved attacking the United States. The entire debate has been focused on to keep Iraq from having weapons of mass destruction. Even liberals, or perhaps especially liberals, have bought into this.

When I hear people assuming that Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction amounts to Iraq using weapons of mass destruction, I recall the moment in the fall of 1988 when an 11-year old Micah Holmquist realized that both the U.S. and the Soviet Union possessed nuclear weapons that could destroy all humans many times over. Believing the propaganda that the Soviet Union was out to kill all Americans, I assumed that it was only a matter of time before the world ended. I told as many people, including adults, about this as I could but nobody agreed with my assessment, although to be honest nobody explained why this wasn't going to happen either. The adults knew it was wrong to assume that all humans would die from nuclear war because they knew nuclear weapons has long existed side by side with humans. (The kids I told thought I was crazy, just as they had before my big announcement.) At the same time, it seems they didn't want to deny the dangerous aspect of nuclear weapons. The implicit message, which admittedly I didn't figure out for quite a number of years, was that the world was a dangerous place but that doesn't mean assuming that the worst possible outcome is a sure thing.

I wonder what the adults I talked to about this think of the plans to escalate the war with Iraq. Some no doubt oppose the drive to a heightened war but probably others have bought into it. Regression can be quite sad.