Author: digby

Dehumanization

I know that it is old news now in this whirlwind of information we are living in, but I wanted to make one comment about the Oscars, Michael Moore and Adrian Brody before it all disappears into the ether.

First, if Michael Moore had not said what he said, his career would be over. His audience of strident liberals would have rightly treated him as a pathetic sell-out if he had not made that comment when and where he did it. So, you could almost say that Moore was just being a good careerist and looking out for number one.

But, of course, he wasn’t. His words spoke for a good number of Americans and they have a right to have their furious, righteous anger heard just as much as the furious right wing Dittoheads have a right to have oh…50 to 60 hours per week devoted to non-stop liberal-hating vitriol broadcast all over the country. For more than 10 years they have owned the AM dial, developed their very own news network and run hundreds of newspapers within which anti-Clinton diatribes were delivered with a viciousness and relentlessness that Michael Moore can only dream of emulating (and, if he’s very lucky, get a 250 million dollar contract to disseminate.) The only difference here is that the stakes are higher and many, many lives are at risk. And, that is not Michael Moore’s fault; it is George W. Bush’s fault.

Moore is a left wing polemicist. I’m sorry if his polemics offend people, but I’m pretty damned offended by Rush, Sean, Neal, Peggy, Annie, Charles, Michael, and the rest. Nobody seems to give a damn about ME being offended by a juggernaut of right wing polemicists who are blatantly and obnoxiously disrespectful of everything I believe in. Now, why is that? All I can say is that it seems to have worked pretty well for them.

As for the rest of Hollywood, I think it’s fair to say that there has never been much of a political flavor to the Oscars, even during the height of the antiwar movement during Vietnam when Hollywood was much more politically outspoken. The Academy Awards are almost sacred to movie people and they worry about devaluing their status as a high honor. Nobody liked Satcheen Littlefeather, either.

But, I was still disappointed that so few made any kind of statement, political or otherwise, about the huge elephant in the middle of the room. Adrian Brody was the only one who managed to bring some sorely needed humanity into the event by acknowledging that war…is…well, hell. That is indisputable whether you are for this one or agin’ it, and I would have thought that more artists, purveyors of emotional catharsis, would have felt some necessity to infuse this strange event with some feeling.

But, nobody seems to be able to talk about this war in human terms. Yes, there are the little CNN profiles of the wives and the kids and the send-offs and the features about what the grunts are eating and how they wear a gas mask. But, these stories are modeled on the coverage of the Olympic moments, canned and artificial and completely without any sense of who these people are. When I watched the foreign footage yesterday of the POW’s, unavailable in our clean and tidy media script at the time, I was struck once again by how very young and scared these soldiers are. One of them looks just like my next door neighbor, a carefree motorcycle loving kid who has a slew of girlfriends and passion for Eminem. He’s over there somewhere.

I also forced myself to watch al-Jazeera and some of the photos on their web-site were so disturbing I had to shut down and take some time for reflection. Where our coverage is sanitized for public consumption, theirs is sensationalized. They are looking at rivers of blood in hospitals and crying children and desperate refugees. While we were seeing a war of overwhelming technological force, they were seeing bloodied Arabs bravely beating back the invaders.

After that, watching the battle plan unfold, compulsively following the war news, riffing on my blog and making pithy comments on others just seemed like another form of denial. I’m disassociating from the reality. And, it occurred to me that maybe we are all doing that to some degree — maybe because we are biologically programmed to do so just to keep ourselves from going crazy in times of war. (Perhaps Richard Dawkins could shed some light on that.)

So, when I watched the Oscars last night, something I normally enjoy and go out of my way to see, I was just hoping for someone to say something heartfelt about peace. I was actually hoping that a lot of them would say something about peace — not necessarily in the political sense, but in the universal value sense. Instead, sadly, most of them just pretended that nothing was happening.

But a few — foreigners mostly — did say some words about peace. Almodovar said, “I also want to dedicate this award to all the people that are raising their voices in favor of peace, respect of human rights, democracy and international legality. All of which are essential qualities to live.” (Thanks, Pete. At least the Europeans love us, even if our own timid political brethren want us to tone down the rhetoric and let Rush Limbaugh dominate the discourse.)

But then Adrian Brody, the guy nobody expected to win, came up and let himself be human and emotional — for his win, naturally, but also because of the the nature of the role he was being rewarded for playing. He said:

“My experiences of making this film made me very aware of the sadness and the dehumanization of people at times of war,” he said. “Whatever you believe in, if it’s God or Allah, may he watch over you and let’s pray for a peaceful and swift resolution.”

Dehumanization. That’s what I’m feeling when I see the scared faces of those POW’s and the horrors of decapitated children.

This is why civilization was supposed to be beyond the superficially logical rationalizations of “preventive war” and grand global ambitions of world domination through military force. While tallying up the 20th century’s horrific body count we were supposed to have recognized that war must be a last resort in the face of NO OTHER OPTION. There can be no excuse but immediate self-defense to justify it. If Vietnam didn’t teach us that, then it taught us nothing. Wars of aggression, by definition, cannot be glorious.

This war never met that test. And we have opened up Pandora’s Box.

The historians will sort out the rightness and the wrongness of the policy. But, as I was watching that glamorous telecast being held just a few miles from where I live, I could not help but be struck, once again, by the fact that we Americans are the luckiest people on the planet. I hope that we stay that way. We are good people, decent people, but we are being led astray by a leadership that is perpetrating a wrong. We simply cannot expect to remain safe and prosperous if we create a world in which it is the prerogative of one country, our country, to decide that a potential future threat is enough to justify a war. It is a dehumanizing undertaking that devalues every single one of us. It is not the America I know.

Uh Oh.

He’s into the Viagra and Makers Mark again. How much do you want to bet he’s been listening to that CD of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” too. The fog of war (and bourbon) is making even him believe that 9/11 and Iraq are connected.

And the French should be embarrassed?

Update: Maybe this is what he’s been swilling.

Practical Politics

Mary at the Watch posts some useful advice on how to deal with bullies. Considering that liberals like to deal in actual information it would seem obvious that we consult the experts. What they say is very interesting.

[…]

So what do we do? Orincus advocates shining a light on those that use intimidation to advocate violence. Some others say that if you keep your head down and don’t disturb your neighbors, then you shouldn’t have to worry about bullying. Others advocate noisily rallying against bullies. So what really does work?

One of the world’s experts on bullying in schools can help as we try to find a way to counter the bullies in the White House. Dr. Ken Rigby has been studying bullying for a long time and has come up with a thesis that says the success of stopping bullying is based on the level of commitment that teachers (or adults) bring to that goal. He recommends that people who are serious about trying to counteract bullying begin by understanding how to get a commitment on what approach the group thinks will work. He says a concerted approach is more effective than a more ad-hoc, everyone do their own way approach. And he provides a worksheet that can be used by schools to help decide on tactics to confront bullies. I suggest we study the techniques and find ones that we think will work.

[…]

It would be very interesting to hear what people think is the right way to deal with it.

Secession

Thank you Kevin. Sometimes I think Americans are under the impression that California is a region of France or something.

Bad signs

From Tacitus

ABC News just aired a very troubling report from John Donvan, who was able to travel unescorted today in Safwan and other areas already overrun by Allied forces. He reports general hostility and suspicion among the locals (apparently they wanted to know if the Israelis were coming to take over), demands for immediate aid, and, disturbingly, active Iraqi irregulars still mounting attacks along the Kuwaiti border. (One wonders whether they had anything to do with today’s attack on Camp Pennsylvania.)

Going on Donvan’s anecdotal evidence, it seems that the local hostility stemmed mostly from a fear that self-government would be denied, and that aid would not be forthcoming. Three countermeasures immediately spring to mind:

Whatever reorganization of the civil administration is planned needs to follow as soon as possible behind the advancing Allied armies. If it does not include a strong component of local self-rule, it should. Whatever administration (and American administrator) is set up on high in Baghdad, the people of Safwan and every other hamlet in Iraq ought to feel in reason control of their own governance.

Civil affairs and psyops units have to do a much better job if Shi’as (who ought to welcome us) in Safwan think we’re the leading edge of an Israeli occupation. Granted, they’re probably concentrating on coaxing surrenders from conscript units on the front, but this is a task that cannot be ignored.

CA and psyops won’t be able to do much of a job, though, unless aid — lots of aid — is delivered ASAP. Why we didn’t have container ships loaded with pharmaceuticals ready to offload at Umm Qasr as soon as we took it, I’ll never know. The Iraqis probably aren’t starving, but they have lacked for decent medical care for over a decade. American aid personnel curing childhood ailments, conducting vaccinations, and rendering assistance to those wounded in the crossfire would go a long way toward establishing goodwill.

All in all, a rather discouraging development. This isn’t going to be over this time next week. Not by a long shot.

UPDATE: This NYT piece has a surrendering Iraqi colonel who hates Hussein because — get this — he’s almost certainly a secret American agent.

Building a civil society here is going to take a while.

All I can say is good luck. The Bush administration doesn’t do nice and it doesn’t do smart. It does bully. Look what they do to their fellow Republicans if they don’t get with the program. Does anyone think they are going to futz around with a bunch of villagers?

All of you irrelevant anti-war protesters out there get out your pens and papers right now and writea firm but polite note to your congressman telling him that you want him to make Bush stop cutting taxes for his rich friends and spend some time getting the world stop hating us. Insist that he demand that George W. Bush allow us to be in on the planning for post war Iraq so that it can be done right. Stomp your little feet and threaten to hold your breath and turn blue if he refuses to do it.

Oh, and be sure and tell him you are a Republican. Democrats are best seen and not heard.

slightly edited for clarity.

Minneapolis, Minn

So, where did the signs come from?

What will we tell the children?

Doing Iraq Right

I am reading more earnest advice about how the war protestors should stop their bellyaching and get to work holding the Bush administration’s feet to the fire on its promises to build a democratic paradise in Iraq.

First, this assumes that war protestors even think it’s possible for such a thing to happen under current circumstances. I, for one, don’t think the analogies to post WWII Japan and Germany have ever made any sense. Aside from all the obvious arguments about the different cultural environments, the most salient issue is that the people of Germany and Japan were completely conquered, with no hope of any future allies and living in world that was totally in ruins. Both countries had been engaged in full out, nonstop war for many years.

Despite the public relations value of the term “shock and awe,” even if the United States completely levels Iraq in the next week, it will not have the same effect. Throughout the Middle East are excited and outraged young Muslims animated by the idea of fighting the foreign “occupiers.” Does anyone seriously believe that the al-Jazeera pictures of massive bombardment and American ground invasion are not being seen in the exact same context as Israeli troops in Gaza? And the pictures in the coming days, of American troops rolling through cities– even if many of them are being greeted with smiles – are far more likely to evoke the more recent images of Lebanon rather than scenes of European liberation in WWII. (This should have been one very good reason to have engaged in the Israeli Palestinian crisis before last Friday.)

By invading Iraq, virtually alone and with the disapprobation of the vast majority of the world, we have emboldened these jihadists to step up the fight. It should not be forgotten that al-Qaeda believe they were responsible in large part for destroying the Soviet Union.

From an interview with Dr. Ayman aL Zawaahri:

Here in Afghanistan, the course of history changed, when the Soviet Union, the largest land-based military force in the world, was dashed to pieces on the boulders of the Afghan Jihad. The Afghan nomads, villagers and their young comrades from the Arab and Islamic world, who destroyed the empire of the Soviet tyrant, were, Praise be to Allah, not affected by these opinions. For if they had, then the Soviet forces would today be in the Arabian Peninsula. The defeated Soviet Union fled from Afghanistan, turning their back only to face their own political break-up and intellectual collapse.

Clearly, they have a deluded view of their own potency and this operation, even if militarily successful, is unlikely to change it because of the fact that most of the world remained opposed, particularly the populations of the Arab world. He undoubtedly believes that he is isolating us, and in some ways he is right.

Unless one indulges in wishful thinking and believes that a miraculous democratic domino effect is likely, “doing Iraq right” is simply not possible as a unilateral American endeavor because no matter how many seeds of democracy are planted in Iraq, there is a much stronger and growing backlash against unchecked American power. “Doing Iraq right” really means that we must reverse the course of this administration’s foreign policy and it has to be done very, very quickly and unambiguously.

Under these circumstances, not to mention the obvious political realities in Washington, I simply don’t see how working the system can possibly accomplish much in the short term. The Democratic leadership, particularly the presidential candidates, threw away their ability to have any real effect when, in spite of receiving an unprecedented number of letters and phone calls from constituents begging them to vote no, they opted to give George W. Bush a blank check. (They may be in the process of doing the same with their capitulation on yet more tax cuts, ridiculously pretending that enacting 350 rather than 750 billion more is really a big win for our side.) Since the Democratic Party is too impotent to institutionally challenge the GOP’s radical policy agenda, you can’t blame people for thinking that the only way they can make their voices heard is though large public protests.

This grassroots public opposition to the Bush administration may be the only way that Americans of all stripes, and elected Democrats in particular, can see with their own eyes that Bush’s policies are not universally supported. Combined with the continued protests in the rest of the world, it may be the only way to actually stop Bush’s wider global plans at least until after the election.

Whether we can keep Iraq from disintegrating into chaos or being the ongoing catalyst for more anti-American terrorism is largely a matter of good luck until we can replace the current administration and begin the hard task of rebuilding trust with our allies. Only then will we be able to confront the terrorist threat and the dangers of proliferation with any hope of long term success.

William Saleton is joking here, isn’t he?

Going To The Mattresses

Bill Keller believes that Colin Powell should resign because Bush and his cronies are slightly mad and dangerously ambitious and he is the only sane one of the bunch.

For a time he managed to keep a lid on the new American exuberance. Our relations with Russia and China weathered the early roughhousing over missile defense and other disputes, in large part because Mr. Powell was such a calming figure. Old-fashioned diplomacy helped line up the world’s support for our war in Afghanistan and the broader war on terror. Thanks to Mr. Powell we (belatedly) framed our grievance against Iraq as a United Nations grievance; that 15 to nothing vote on Resolution 1441 was probably the high-water mark of his diplomacy. Mr. Powell also, I am told, helped beat back the idea of fighting the war in Iraq on the cheap — with fewer troops, more high-tech dazzle, a little experiment with American lives. So he has won some big ones.

But that is exactly the problem. His formidable skills have been too much engaged in a kind of guerrilla war for the soul of the president, and it has shown. Critics in the administration and colleagues on this page have unfavorably compared his performance in the buildup to war with James Baker’s whirlwind of global coalition-building before the gulf war in 1991. But Mr. Baker was operating as his president’s right arm; Mr. Powell was busy protecting his right flank

[…]

The most important reason the secretary of state should go is that the president has chosen a course that repudiates much of what Mr. Powell has stood for — notably his deep suspicion of arrogant idealism. I don’t mean that Mr. Bush is bent on a series of pre-emptive wars — surely the president would like to take the country into the election year at peace — but this is about how we throw our weight around in peacetime, too.

Critics of the Bush administration talk about the breach in the Atlantic alliance and the division at the United Nations as “collateral damage,” as if, in the rush to get Iraq, the administration has blundered. That assumes it was an accident. It seems more plausible that this was not an attempt to put spine in the United Nations and NATO, but to discredit them. The global engineers talk with such contempt of these organizations, it is difficult to believe they want to salvage them as anything but appendages of American power.

[…]

Gosh Bill. Are you seriously suggesting that we would be better off if Bush hires another crazyass Cheney crony like the rest of his cuckoo’s nest?

The non-borg war supporters are having quite a difficult time figuring out what to do about all this. They sincerely believed in the concept of freeing the Iraqi people and changing the repressive dynamic in the middle east, but they also have been slapped by the realization that Bush is so outrageously reckless that it is a mistake to hand him the means to unleash hell. This is a big lesson for some people, apparently. Yes, it’s satisfying when somebody defies all the naysayers and growls, “Just Do It.” Unfortunately, these same people are usually hot headed idiots who create far more problems than they solve. Sonny Corleone may be filled with righteous indignation and thoroughly justified in his outrage, but he’s a dumbshit. He gets himself killed and makes everything worse, not better.

But, Keller’s answer to the problem that Bush is out of control is bizarre. He seems to believe that Powell is the only one trying (and yes, mostly failing) to keep these guys from spinning out of control. But, he should resign in favor of someone who the President “trusts” and therefore, will help him to spin out of control.

Taken at face value, that’s either deeply cynical or completely incoherent. But, there is the possibility that this is some kind of shot across the bow by Powell, who would cause a huge problem for Bush if he resigns. The word is that the Bush loyalists are pulling out the long knives and blaming him — which Keller does too but only by saying that he is too good for such cretins, hardly a ringing indictment.

And he gets Powell on the record saying that he disagrees with the administration’s view of America’s role in the world. That’s a big disagreement and he’s gone public with it:

When I put the question of resigning to Mr. Powell yesterday, he was, characteristically, showing no signs of surrender. He has no intention of leaving, he said. He has the president’s full confidence. He has been written off before. And Iraq is just Iraq — not the first in a series of military adventures.

“I think it’s a bit of an overstatement to say that now this one’s pocketed, on to the next place,” Mr. Powell said. The larger question of America’s role in the world, he said, “isn’t answered yet.”

Such a loyal and optimistic man would make some president a great secretary of state. Just not this president.

Who does he have in mind? Tony Blair?

Powell’s not resigning. He’s going to try to repair his tattered reputation (and maybe hold the line, if we’re lucky.) And considering that his replacement would likely be some nut like John Bolton, it’s just as well. An ineffectual Powell is still better than a wild-eyed neocon insisting on going to the mattresses. But, if this is Powell’s way of making that statement, Keller sure did write it in the strangest form possible.

Misdirection

Gorilla-go-go points out that the brass ball House Republicans just slashed veterans benefits to the tune of almost 10 billion. Today. A-Day.

Forgetting the fact that it is being done so that the multi-millionaire Bush administration can cut their own taxes, and setting aside that it is the most blatently unpatriotic act I’ve heard of since 9/11, I have to wonder where these people get the sheer chutzpah to do this on the second day of our very first unilateral preventive invasion? I know they have no problem screwing the military personnel in favor of rich defense contractors, but this seems obtuse even by their standards.

Is it possible that the flaccid Democrats will even try to make these people explain themselves?

Update: Apparently this legislation actually passed on March 13th. Which answers my question. The Democrats are completely impotent.

From citizen k in the comment section:

Here’s the quote [from Tacitus]:

“The crowd’s loud cheers and shouts of applause were typical of the flatterer, excessive and insincere. Men vied with each other in their enthusiasm and prayers for his success, much as though they were sending off the dictator Ceasar or the Emperor Augustus. Their motive was neither fear nor affection, but a sheer passion for servility”

See the Republicans are right. Read the Dead White Males and learn about the Congressional Democrats. Zell, your master is calling. Oh, Congressman Gephart, it’s goveling time.