Category Archive

Suicides in GITMO

I hear things on the radio, newsy things that I wish I could write down the references so i could find them and substantiate.  Specifically I wanted to clarify something, that if true, would be hilariously hypocritical and very telling.  It was a Saudi clerics response to the three stunt suicides at GITMO.  He said, according to the report, that he didn’t believe these deaths could possibly be suicide because suicide is forbidden by the Koran.  Seriously?  Really?  Does that then mean that all clerics will then come out strongly against all idiots who strap a belt of explosives to their guts and march into a downtown Jerusalem Safeway and blow themselves up next to that Jewish grandma buying rutabegas?  OH, wait, there’s a difference between blowing up yourself AND the grandma and just blowing up your little onesie. 

Iraq and the Left

Upon the death of the unlamented Zarqawi, the left predictably called for pulling out of Iraq.  They keep saying that Iraq is this generations Vietnam.  No, and frankly, neither was Vietnam.  Just a quick review of the Vietnam pull out reads like a death toll for a horrific disaster, mostly because it was.  We could leave now, but that would be crazy and would lead to the same sorts of anarchy/terror that followed the 1975 pullout.  Boat people, re-education camps, political prisoners, you could even argue, with good reason, that the destruction of Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge and the slaughter that followed was a direct result of that messy pull out.  Iraq is different in a million ways from Vietnam.  Even with Zarqawi dead we can’t just leave.  It would revert, go back to what was there before and the fledgling democratically elected government will fail.  Remember what was there before: prisons with blood soaked torture cells, mass graves full of women and children with a single bullet to the back of the head, millions just missing, no justice only bribery and slavish fawning.  Did you know there was a prison just for children there?  Just for children.  it’s not easy there, no one ever thought it would be, we are fighting for freedom, theirs and ours.   (How cowardly to shoot women and children in the back of the head.  They didn’t even give them the dignity of facing thier accuser and executioner.  What freakin’ cowards.)

John Bolton

Love him.  Again.

A teacher in Colorado has been suspended for comments made in class. He is a geography teacher, in geography class, and he harangued his class on the evils of the current administration, calling George W. Bush Hitler. I’m not sure what that has to do with geography, but I’m glad he’s not a history teacher.

It happens constantly, especially lately, someone calls Bush Hitler, says someone else is a Nazi, likens something to a concentration camp, calls the people killed in the Twin Towers “Little Eichmans”. All these descriptions are incorrect, all of them used for the shock value alone, all of it horrid propaganda to try to guilt people in to agreeing with a view that is questionable in it’s logic and so must resort to name calling and labeling to get a misguided point across. And they get away with it. How is that? It’s because people have a myopic view of themselves and a twisted view of history. How else can it be? If you think you are put upon, censored, and discriminated against, it follows that you would make that analogy. But are those feelings valid? Are you just being required to face the natural debate of a free society? (I have a censorship soapbox speech for another day.)

Hitler and the Nazi’s were a singular evil, they are not “like” much of anyone else. They used German industry, know how and 400 years of building anti-semitism to produce a war machine that systematically slaughtered millions. Nazis were voted into power and then took over in a coup. They outlawed being a Jew, a gypsy, a homosexual, senile, insane; retarded and deformed people were also outcast. The Nazis deliberately and with great precision rounded up all the “undesirables” and shipped them off to work camps, and if they couldn’t work, to death camps. The goal of the Third Reich was to dominate the entire world and make everyone else a slave to the Aryan race.

That isn’t George Bush or the Republicans. You may not agree with the policies of this administration, you may not like what they do or say, but you can not begin to honestly compare the two. To do so is to so greatly inflate your feelings about an issue so as to have committed a war crime yourself. By comparing the two and calling them the same you have cheapened the truth of the holocaust as to render it a little thing. It was not a little thing. 12 million people were ripped from their homes, divested of all they owned and murdered. That number is only the dead, remember that it does not include the millions upon millions who survived the death camps, the marches, the slave labor, or the ones who hid, living as fugitives, in the hopes of surviving hell on earth.

There are no medical experiments, no vivisections, no tortures for the joy of torturing a Jew, homosexual or Christian caught hiding Jews. None of that is going on.

To play the Nazi card you have to know what the Nazis did, actually did, even then, you had better be careful. Robert Mugabe is such a one. Look him up. Just because you feel something strongly doesn’t make it so. Calling a person a Nazi is an insult that is nearly unforgivable. Don’t do it.

Often, too often really, I run into someone who thinks that they understand something, an issue, subject, era in history merely by virtue of reading a book or seeing a movie. And by book I don’t mean a history written by a responsible historian with appropriate citations of source material, no I mean fiction.

I have watched a movie and become fascinated by some aspect of the movie, after I try to find out more about whatever it was that sparked my curiosity. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be true of many people. I can not tell you how often I have listened in confusion to someone outraged over some issue or another, trying to figure out what the heck they are referring to only to discover during the conversation that it was something they saw in a movie or read in a book.

Nonsense abounds in movies, like the junk about Che Guevara in “Motorcycle Diaries”, dude was not a revolutionary liberating the masses, he was a brutal executioner working for Castro to subjugate the Cuban masses. Fashion is even worse, everytime I see a t-shirt with Che on it I want to scream and then educate the idiot wearing the shirt as quickly as I can. I say “idiot” because most of the people wearing the shirt would have been quickly put to death by Che. It’s akin to wearing the image of the Granddragon of the KKK, or Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler or Amin.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
Winston Churchill

Considering that the Palestinian people have duly elected terrorists to head their government, and that the elected head of Iran is another in the mold of Hitler, Democracy may not be the best solution. Except that it is. There just isn’t a better way of ensuring that people get the government they deserve, in the best and worst ways.

Hammas will have to learn to take the blame for a poorly run government, blame that was fairly laid at Fatah’s feet before. The former Fatah government was thoroughly corrupt, as was Arafat’s government before. Now Hammas will have to fend for itself, no Fatah to blame, no Arafat, no Sharon, just themselves. Of course, now they will have to make the choice between Western aide and militant activity against Israel. There again, democracy is in action. You can choose your government, we can choose not to send money. Simple stuff, really.

The Iraqi Election
Yesterday was an amazing day in Iraq, they held a third election this year, the first for the provisional government who would write their new constitution, the second to ratify that constitution, written in an amazingly short 7 months, and yesterday they elected their permanent parliament. How cool is all of that? Way. Considering that we didn’t have a constitution in place until September 17, 1787, eleven years after we declared independence, and the government wasn’t in place until March 4, 1789, I think the Iraqis have done an amazing and Herculean work to get a ratified constitution and an elected parliament all within the span of a year. Now, I do understand that communication and transcription technology is quite updated from the days of our own Revolution, but the wrangling over policy and law is unchanged from that time, people must discuss and discuss and talk and talk and talk until an agreement is made. That just takes a lot of time.

Below is a poll taken in Iraq in the days before the election. Very, very interesting.

Iraqi Poll

The War - Here, There and Everywhere
Just a few thoughts on the American response to the war and the results of the war itself.

There & Everywhere
Afghanistan - Is anyone else astounded that there is barely any news coming out of Afghanistan? Does anyone else understand how cool this is? If there were an increasing number of terrorist attacks, you can bet your sweet bippy that someone who hates the US would pounce on it and run with it. Actually, Afghanistan is doing quite well, women are able to vote, get an education, dance, own a business and all just four short years after a most repressive and brutal regime of Islamo-thugs tried to squish them flat and breathless.

Iraq - See above.

Egypt - Did anyone notice that Egypt held an election as well, that women also voted in this and that it was an actual election? Rather cool.

Libya - Remember that Qaddafi suddenly gave up his WMD’s without a fight. Yeah, I remember that too.

Lebanon - The Cedar Revolution was crazy wonderful. Syria is out of Lebanon. Hurrah!

Here
One of the reasons I think Americans don’t support the war and don’t really understand it is that it hasn’t cost us enough. NOT in lives, that’s not what I’m saying. But in time, convenience, effort, even pocket change, we aren’t investing in the War on Terror. We are Monday morning quarterbacking it. Now, do I think we could have vetted the intelligence more? Yes. But considering that for the last 10 years EVERYONE has said that Saddam had WMD’s, and that small amounts of WMD’s WERE found in Iraq after the war and that there is good reason to believe that the missing WMD’s are in Syria, I still think it was the right thing to do. Both Iraq and Afghanistan are better off, as is the world. We don’t see the cost in money because we already pay taxes, no one is selling war bonds. We aren’t growing victory gardens, we aren’t rationed for oil, we aren’t sending our stay at home moms off to the Boeing factories. We don’t have to, we are so much more fantastically wealthy than we were in 1941. In fact we Americans are amoung the 5% most wealthy people on the planet. All of us, except the poorest and they are amoung the top 9%. We are no longer used to sacrificing for anything, and so when it isn’t immediately and easily granted to us, we not only lose interest, but we want to take our toys and go home.

Since my nephew just got back with nary a scratch from Iraq, I can’t say that my family has sacrificed. My nephew in law got back a few years back from Afghanistan, also without injury. Are we more fantastically blessed than we deserve? Yes. I am forever grateful to have them home safe. I am also incredibly and deeply grateful for ALL the men and women who serve us in far-flung places, and I grieve deeply for the losses. All of them. But it’s worth it. Freedom, liberty, justice, all three are worth fighting for. Don’t forget that we have found thousands of mass graves in Iraq, many filled with just women and children, skulls with a bullet wound in the back of the head, that families in Kurdistan are just now getting word that their hopes for the return of The Disappeared are forever hopeless. Saddam himself was a WMD, he caused immesasurable suffering to his own people. It’s okay to me that the Iraqi’s want us to leave, that’s great motivation to get up to speed all the faster, but what on earth do we have all this power for if it is not to remove murderous tyrants like this?

Hopefully we will go after that nut in Pyongyang and the monster in Africa soon.

The Economy
I’ll come back to this. Suffice it to say, I think we are doing well. Overall, people, not everyone is doing well, but most people are.

The Ambassador
Read this for an update on John Bolton’s work in the UN. YAY for Mr. Bolton. So far, my favorite diplomat.

The article is yet another reason I refuse to limit my reading of the news to one source. The MSM in this country would be one conglomerate source in my eyes.

Former FBI guy, Mark Felt, revealed this week that he was “the man” who leaked all that information to Woodward and Bernstein at the Washington Post (henceforth WaPo.) Mr. Deep Throat came out of the closet. Great. Expessly for money. Even better.

Mark Felt was J. Edgar’s poodle at the FBI, groomed to take over when Hoover died. When that happened, Nixon passed him over for the top spot and soon after Mr. Felt was breaking every oath he had ever sworn to out him. Funny, to me it doesn’t look like heroism, just a big case of poopy pants. There were other, and legal, options. Today it’s easy to say it just would have been too hard to take that evidence to the Grand Jury, or to say that if he had, the information still would have been suppressed. The problem is that Mr. Felt didn’t even try to do things the right way and through proper channels. He had taken an oath not to reveal classified information. He broke that oath.

Bob Bradlee, editor of the WaPo, has some interesting ties to JFK, cover-ups and such, that in light of the evisceration of Nixon on his watch are rather hypocritical in nature. He too is looked as a hero, as are Woodward and Bernstein. Whatever.

The left has often pointed at Nixon as proof of the corruption on the right, and in a gesture of fairness, I’ll give them that Nixon was unprincipled and uncouth, actually, not even a nice guy. But now in that same gesture of fairness I’d like to point out that nearly every democratic president from FDR on has acted the criminal. FDR stacked the Supreme Court, Truman overlooked and condoned Soviet spies in our midst, even to the highest levels of government, JKF, a drug addict, used his fathers methods and brother RFK to get things done that shouldn’t have gotten done including murder, LBJ, well, ick, there’s just too much. Carter’s missteps have come from bullheadedness and a petulance not seen often this side of the woobie, but as far as I know he hasn’t been charged with anything. Okay, except a case of stunning and stellar blindness, like when he said that Venezuela’s recent election is more democratic than our own. (What planet is he on anyway?) WJC, well, it starts with sexual harassment, misappropriating FBI files, the rape of Juanita Broaderick and we can just keep going from there. Remember that he was disbarred, you know, lost his lawyers license because he broke the law and lied under oath. On the Republican side you have Ike, one of the most honest politicians ever to inhabit the White House, Reagan, say what you will of Iran-Contra, he ended the cold war, and 41, he got us into GW1, and got us out again, but he made that “read my lips” mistake. Say what you will of W, his tenure is unfinished, and we still have to see what the WMD thing was all about.

One thing has always baffled me, the left’s hatred of the Vietnam conflict. All the protests, all the anger, all the “hawks and doves” junk, and it always looked to me that the left forgot who started, promulgated and LOST that “police action”. It was the left, that was their baby, if you look closely at Somalia you will see Vietnam on a smaller and shorter scale. That same fight-but-don’t-fight thing. We were in Vietnam because of the policy of “containment”, a leftist idea and a poor idea at that. It took Reagan’s vision to stop that silliness and bring an end to the coldwar. I just never understood all the anger from the left at the right over Vietnam when it was the left’s doing. Why didn’t those radical kids all go Republican?

Okay, so, back to Mark Felt. Is he a hero? No. And just to clarify, I’m not saying that Nixon didn’t commit crimes and wasn’t a mediocre president. What I am saying is that selling out your boss because you didn’t get a promotion and then outing your self as the mole for profit doesn’t fit the definition of a hero. Like I said, poopy pants. If Mr. Felt was still on the playground he would have been roundly pounded.

A hero looks like the firefighters who run into burning buildings when every one else is running out. And like Abdul Amir, who gave his life to protect his fellow Iraqi citizens so that they might vote. And like Amy Carmichael, who bought children being sold into prostitution and raised them as her own. And like the Ten Boom family, who built a secret room in their home so they could hide Jews from the Nazi’s and get them to safety. And like the men and women in uniform fighting a world away to give a people not their own a chance at peace. All these people are just ordinary folks who act admirably and bravely to aid others at great personal and physical peril. That is the definition of a hero.

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8254
http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/kessler200506010934.asp

I remember exactly what I was doing the day that tragedy struck at Bhopal, working in a pesticide filled greenhouse. When I got home that evening and saw the horror in India, I cried at all the death and destruction. Then I heard the name of the chemical and recognized it as one that we used regularly at the greenhouse, Sevin, found in Round-up. When we showed up for work the next day nearly all of us refused to enter the greenhouse, it smelled like chemicals and the dead faces from India were clear in our minds. Management told us it was okay. Nope, not going in there. We were screamed at, but none of us budged, the ones who hadn’t seen the news crept back out and, after hearing about the 2000 dead, refused as well.

Now, after 20 years, that incident still is a landmark for me. In human cost, thousands dead and thousands sick. It is overwhelming. The grossness of the company’s failure to compensate the survivors is overwhelming as well. From their website it is pretty clear they feel no need to care for those injured by the second most serious industrial accident of all time. (The first being a burst dam in China, at least according to the Learning Channel.)

I appreciate American companies going overseas to find cheap labor, cheap land, all that fun capitalist stuff. What I find detestable is that there isn’t a mind to make working conditions in these overseas plants better. Americans enjoy such an amazing quality of life that when we go overseas to make money we should be bringing that quality of life with us. Granted it won’t be up to US standards, but at least the basics should be covered. Stuff like plant safety, worker safety and proper chemical storage should all be a given.

While I am a conservative and think that regulations on private companies can become so burdensome as to make them unable to make a profit, I do think that some regulation is appropriate and needed. This kind of regulation would have to impose fines on American companies operating overseas when their operation costs lives, as in the case of Union Carbide’s Bhopal plant. Now, of course, it would have to be carefully and specifically defined. Since that is where government tends to bloat, I don’t see this as ever becoming a reality.

The best solution would be that these companies would hold themselves to a high standard, both in operation and compensation. I am sure some do. I don’t know anything about them, which makes sense. We never hear the good news, it’s the bad news that always gets the best press.