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

Sunday, March 14, 2004
 
'forgetting' 'September 11'

The idea that "the terrorists" exist may remain the most idiotic popular idea of the George W. Bush era, but it is getting strong competition from the suggestion that people are forgetting the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

"Many of you are beginning to forget [September 11]," guest host and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Silwa told the listeners of the Sean Hannity Show on Friday.

Also on Friday macallan of tacitus writes, "Apparently the Darryl Worley song's thematic question has been answered. We have forgotten."

"The American people as a whole have virtually forgotten 9-11," Matt Margolis writes in blog entry posted yesterday.

Save for those with major medical problems and the very young, nobody in the United States is "beginning to forget," has "forgotten" or has "virtually forgotten" the events of September 11, 2001 because doing so is FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE! Every other car has some patriotic symbol and I can guarantee that most people who see American flag bumper stickers are not reminded of the American Revolution. The very fact that we can use terms like "September 11" and everyone knows what you mean is indicative of this. It isn't as if there are a whole of people who hear "September 11" and think, "I don't know what that is about" or "I know they are talking about September 11, 2001 but I just don't remember what happened that day."

I doubt that these three really believe people have forgotten so much as they can not understand how people could be knowledgeable about "September 11" and not support George W. Bush in everything he does related to the "war on terror." Maybe they could say, "Americans have forgotten how to be obedient to President Bush."

At least person seems to be forgetting about the supposed reasons the U.S. had to invade Iraq. As you may remember, one reason -arguably the most stressed reason- was "weapons of mass destruction." Uncle Sam had "no choice" but to attack Iraq because of them.

And yet, over at Blogs for Bush, Mark Noonan says:

We didn't have to do it - we could have either turned coward and stayed home, or we could have unleashed our power without limit and simply killed them all; the greatness of America shines in the fact that we neither turned coward, nor just went in to kill - we went in to liberate, succor and build.
No weapons of mass destruction have been found and the current line is that it was an intelligence failure or that they could still turn up. In either of those cases, Team Bush sincerely believed that had to invade Iraq to protect the U.S. and within the past week Bush's campaign has called the invasion a defensive act of "defending America." Noonan apparently thinks his candidate would have been willingly to allow many in the U.S. of A. to die a horrible death or is highly dishonest.

As far as genocide against Iraqis, yes the United States could have taken that course but the backlash would have been unbelievable. Politically it would make no sense and it could have opened the land of the free up for significant retaliation. It wasn't really a possibility.

Killing all those Iraqis also wouldn't have given Bush much room to create a democracy in Iraq, which, according to another reason for the invasion put forward by Bush, would lead to democracy spreading throughout the Middle East. Apparently though Team Bush has (at least officially) given up on that idea, so scratch that from the list. (If you need more proof check out Andrew Buncombe's report in Saturday's Independent about how Uncle Sam has funded groups that were responsible for the brief coup of a democratically elected government in Venezuela two years ago.) Human rights and terrorism have also been used to justify the invasion, but the latter has yet to be demonstrated while the former was ridiculous for all the usual reasons.

After all of this, what reasons are we left with for invading Iraq? If there are any, and I suspect there are, they haven't been stated publicly.

But, hey it made us feel good about ourselves and that counts for something.

***

The tacitus piece linked to above also says, "I am discomfited that we still argue about nuance and policy and engagement and understanding amongst ourselves, while the enemy wastes no time on such activity. They don't particularly worry if we understand them, or sympathize with them, or care for them. They are too busy killing us. All of us."

Well "the terrorists" will have to step up the killing, but I see no reason not to follow their model.

***

WMDs the home of the brave does not want to be in Iraq?

***

Christian Parenti reports in The Nation on "freedom of the press" in Iraq.

***

Rosa Prince and Gary Jones of The Mirror and David Rose of The Observer have stories on allegations of abuse at the place I like to call Gittygo Way.

***

Stephen Grey reports in the New Statesman that there is plenty of reason to think that the Iraqi Governing Council is assassinating political opponents.

***

AFP reports that March 13 story that:

MORE than a thousand people held a protest in Madrid today to blame this week's bombs in the capital on the government's unpopular decision to support the US war on Iraq.

Shouting "The bombs on Iraq have exploded in Madrid" and "Resign", the crowd gathered in front of the ruling Popular Party's headquarters but were held back by police in riot gear.

While I suspect there position has less to do with logic than opposition to anything that does not support the glorious "war on terror" that protects, inspires and generally gives us all a reason to live, a number of good obedient blogger patriots have, and it does pain men to say this, correctly ridiculed these protesters. al Qaeda not liking something is not a good argument for not doing something. At the same time, if you try to rule the world, or aid those who do, you should expect a response and not treat it as if it were beyond the pale. And, it should go without saying but probably doesn't, al Qaeda opposing something is not a good argument for doing something, even when it is something you enjoy as much as waging wars that you are not directly involved in.

Writing on this topic, Tony Rosen utters words that are beyond funny:

Yeah, well, if those bombs were solely for supporting the war in Iraq, how come we've not had anything like that over on our shores? Heck, we WERE the war in Iraq.
***

Adrian Croft of Reuters writes:

Spain's opposition Socialists have swept to power in a sensational election upset sparked by popular anger over the government's handling of a suspected al Qaeda attack on commuter trains that killed 200 people.

Voters ousted the center-right Popular Party (PP), which until Thursday's coordinated attacks had looked certain to win a third consecutive term in power in Sunday's poll.

Spain's next prime minister will be 43-year-old Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who has criticized outgoing premier Jose Maria Aznar for his unswerving support for the United States and has threatened to pull out 1,300 Spanish troops from Iraq.

Knowing virtually nothing about the contemporary politics of Spain, I won't comment but I did notice that Chris of Blogs for Bush says, "Terrorists succeed in Spain."