micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links |
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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 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 |
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
Anger, hope and a bit of joy Contrary to what Lewis Black says on the generally excellent Rules of Enragement (Comedy Central Records, 2003), U.S. President George W. Bush and friends did give plenty of reasons for invading Iraq. Although I may not have got them all, by my count their reasons included freedom, self-defense, democracy, human rights, somebody and country, ensuring that taxidermy remains legal in Dover and helping Burger King maintain revenues despite any explosion in popularity that may ever be experienced by Soul Veg -a great chain of restaurants even if the group behind them isn't my cup of tea. And those were just the stated reasons. Many suspected there were others such as a desire to obtain Iraq’s electric car research and/or something that Jonah Goldberg of nationalreview.com pointed out on Monday in a piece entitled "The Case for War": Matthew Yglesias has written a brief critique of Goldberg's argument -which isn't new for him- over at Tapped but unfortunately misses the larger issues of how Goldberg's position is probably every bit as much about making people like him feel good about themselves because of Uncle Sam's wars as it is about scaring others and that Goldberg deserves credit for stating his position. Sure there's a distasteful quality to it but I suspect that attitude he displays influenced the decision to wage war against Iraq for over a decade far more than anybody in an official position is likely to admit and it is only when an idea is made public that it can be fairly discussed. Otherwise apologists can respond with some variation of "He didn't say that word and I'm not going to fall into the trap of defining terms or engaging in addition." Of course, by "discussed," I mean ridiculed since it is hard to have a debate with somebody who thinks actions that will kill innocent civilians are acceptable to reinforce and get others to bow down to you. Proponents of this effort to show that the U.S. is a Shaft who doesn't have to watch his mouth are effectively the non-identical twins of most despicable of "the terrorists." Then there is the issue of being a "peaceful" country. Somehow you lose that quality when start wars because there isn't a reason not to. I wish I found this type of thing amusing but the idea that somebody gets paid to stuff like this, which isn't even fun to read, is about as pleasant as watching William Bennett do his impression of Marlon Brando playing Al Gore at the first debate with Bush in 2000, although I guess somebody likes to watch that. Writing predicated on the notion that the Antichrist would never call an audible on the assumption that there isn’t anything to lose entertains me. This doesn’t. That said, there is still hope for the future. Writing about his son, Douglas Anders writes: Just before dinner tonight, Gabe was playing with a little musical piano that plays "Pop Goes the Weasel." It stoped mid-tune when the batteries gave out.Meanwhile I just realized that four of my all-time favorite episodes -"The Two Mrs. Nahasapeemapetilons,"Lisa the Skeptic," "All Singing, All Dancing" and "This Little Wiggy"- were from season nine. |