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 |
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
War musings New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof recently solicited readers suggestions on what to name the current conflict in Iraq and the results were published on Saturday. The winners: Honorable mention in this contest goes to "Operation Unscramble Eggs," by Russell Schindler of New York; "Desert Storm und Drang," by Robert Proctor of Connecticut; "The 'Raq," by Jeff Schramm of Missouri; "A'bombin'nation," by Kent Moore of North Carolina; "Tigris by the Tail," by Paul Reeves of New Mexico; "War of Mass Deception," by Scott Dacko of New York; and "Iraq: A Hard Place," by Chris Walters of Texas.Above and beyond the lame nature of these submissions, the whole process is pointless. Regardless of how a person feels about Saddam Hussein's connections to al Qaeda or the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001, there can be no doubt that the invasion of Iraq was done as part of the "war on terror" that was launched in response to those attacks. Now having a real, as opposed to metaphorical, war against "terror" or "the terrorists" doesn't make a whole lot of sense -more on that further down in this entry- but it is at least the ostensible situation and so should be at least rhetorically treated as such. (The primary problem with this framework is that it leaves out Uncle Sam's relationship with Iraq prior to September 11, 2001, but that was hardly an issue in popular debates where the idea that a "threat" might not be so dangerous if it hasn't bothered to actually fulfill its supposed primary ambition in life -attacking the U.S.- after well over a decade.) *** In a November 30 New York Times story, David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker write: For two years before the American invasion of Iraq, Mr. Hussein's sons, generals and front companies were engaged in lengthy negotiations with North Korea, according to computer files discovered by international inspectors and the accounts of Bush administration officials.Remind me again, why were we supposed to be so scared of Saddam? Was it because Saddam was trying to get weapons systems he supposedly already had? Was it because this constitutes an attempt "TO GET WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION"? Glenn Reynolds writes, "[w]as this an 'imminent' threat? Or was it a threat we stopped before it became imminent? Who cares?" Indeed! Who could possibly about the possibility of horrible intelligence and/or deception on the part of the Bush Administration? I mean we got our cool little war out of it. Seriously, if Reynolds believed his own rhetoric, he would have to favor action against North Korea to stop the "threat." However, on Saturday Reynolds said military action "seems a bit premature." He'd also have to be worried about Syria and advocate striking that country, which may in fact be his position. *** It is one thing for a hack blogger to not have consistent logic in support of the "war on terror," it is quite another when the administration that is running the war is in the same situation. In Friday's New York Times the previously mentioned David E. Sanger reports that there are such tensions amongst Team Bush: After spending months trying to recast President Bush as a man devoted to building international coalitions rather than the gun-slinging cowboy of European political cartoons, Mr. Bush's foreign policy team was stunned by the Republican National Committee's new advertising campaign. The spot hailed the president as a man who pre-empts first and asks questions later.What? I thought a failure to act preemptively later than Team Bush says we should would mean "September 11" all over again except even worse? *** On October 7, 2002 Bush said: Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. As President Kennedy said in October of 1962, "Neither the United States of America, nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world," he said, "where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nations security to constitute maximum peril."Irony Overload. |