Andy’s whereIstand Blog

Rally ’round the family with a pocket full of shells?

President Bush said Friday that embattled Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has his "full support and deepest appreciation."

"Earlier today I spoke with Don Rumsfeld about ongoing military operations in the Global War on Terror," Bush said in a written statement released by the White House. "I reiterated my strong support for his leadership during this historic and challenging time for our Nation."

"Upon assuming office, I asked Don to transform the largest department in our government," the president’s statement continued.

"That kind of change is hard, but our Nation must have a military that is fully prepared to confront the dangerous threats of the 21st Century. Don and our military commanders have also been tasked to take the fight to the enemy abroad on multiple fronts."

I mean, the guy is "Don," to the president. And not that Don doesn’t do his dirty job exceedingly, methodically well - basically a bully and a steely PR rep, but this is a president retardedly steeped in cronyism, and six retired generals have come out against Rummy’s leadership capabilities. At least not all of the military industrial complex tows the right’s party line.

This has been Andy D.

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This is priceless: the way this Administration gets around public and judicial oversight of its expansion and abuse of executive powers is astounding:

After four years of secrecy, the Pentagon handed over documents Friday that contain the names of detainees held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay. The release resulted from a victory by The Associated Press in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

The Bush administration had hidden the identities, home countries and other information about the men, who were accused of having links to the Taliban or al Qaeda. But a federal judge rejected administration arguments that releasing the identities would violate the detainees’ privacy and could endanger them and their families.

So the reasoning for why we must continue to violate the detainees’ would-be Due Process rights is so that we don’t violate their privacy rights? Quite the Catch-22 we got here.

Of course it makes sense, but an evil sort of sense. And of course these people aren’t being detained in Cuba for their own protection in the first place.

This has been Andy D.

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I love how Blair the Brit tries to take a tact from Bush about getting guidance from God, and the Evangelical spirit just doesn’t exist in England - like everyone has heard all the hiding behind Jesus before:

Tony Blair has proclaimed that God will judge whether he was right to send British troops to Iraq, echoing statements from his ally George Bush.

Contradicting warnings from advisers not to mix politics and religion, the Prime Minister said that his interest in politics sprang from his Christianity and its "values and philosophy" had guided him in public life.

Explaining how he managed to live with the decision to go to war in Iraq, Mr Blair replied: "If you have faith about these things then you realise that judgement is made by other people. If you believe in God,it’s made by God as well." His remarks, made in an interview to be shown on ITV’s Parkinson show tonight, invite comparison with President Bush, a born-again Christian, who has made a virtue of bringing religion into politics.

Then it just doesn’t take with his constituency:

It is also exactly the sort of comment he has been repeatedly urged not to make for domestic purposes, because of the risk that a sceptical British public will react badly to politicians who appear to be "preaching". Mr Blair was instructed by his former director of communications, Alastair Campbell: "We don’t do God."

Rose Gentle, whose son Gordon was killed in Basra in 2004, said she was "quite disgusted" at the comments made by the Prime Minister. The Military Families Against the War campaigner said: "How can he say he is a Christian? A Christian would never put people out there to be killed.

"A good Christian wouldn’t be for this war. I’m actually quite disgusted by the comments. It’s a joke."

Well, okay, I guess Cindy Sheehan would do the same - see she’s not alone in the politically active parents of dead kids racket. I wish the employment of God in the same way were viewed as skeptically here.

This has been Andy D.

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• Has the invasion of Iraq been successful?

Okay, driving the national deficit to the stratosphere fighting a horribly unjust war in the Middle East is one thing, but putting one of our entire species’ enemies on the payroll is going too far:

The Pentagon is reportedly funding research into neural implants with the ultimate hope of turning sharks into "stealth spies" capable of gliding undetected through the ocean.

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Even though the subject got the cold shoulder from the Dem side of the room during the SOTU, garnering no applause, the GOP-dominated vocal majority roared enough for both sides that night and even louder with their votes the next day:

Congress sent President Bush a second five-week extension of the Patriot Act as Senate negotiators worked to close a deal with the White House on renewing the antiterrorism law with some new civil liberties protections.

"We need the Patriot Act," said Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter. "I’m prepared to work on it further to improve it."

Sixteen provisions of the 2001 law were to have expired last December 31, but Congress extended them until Friday after Democrats and a handful of Senate Republicans insisted on an avenue of appeals when the FBI makes demands for people’s financial and other private records.

The Senate voted 95-1 Thursday night to extend the current law unchanged through March 10 and give negotiators more time to reach a deal. Sen. Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat and a longtime opponent of the Patriot Act, cast the sole vote against the extension.

The House passed it Wednesday.

 

 

 

 

So even if they were tight-lipped during the SOTU, the Dems didn’t put their votes where their hands and mouths weren’t.

This has been Andy D.

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Donovan didn’t have this in his last invective about judging the military:

Army officials are investigating allegations that members of the celebrated 82nd Airborne Division appear on a gay pornography Web site, a spokeswoman said Friday.

Authorities at Fort Bragg have begun an inquiry into whether the paratroopers’ actions violated the military conduct code.

Division spokeswoman Maj. Amy Hannah declined to say how many paratroopers are involved or identify their unit within the division. A defense official speaking on condition of anonymity said up to seven soldiers are involved.

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I take every opportunity to understand what foreign political parties are all about, and Palestine and Venezuela is giving me this opportunity, based on exit polls:

The militant Islamic group Hamas is projected to snare about 40 percent of the parliamentary posts and to block Fatah from gaining a majority in the 132-seat Palestinian Legislative Council.

Fatah was formed in 1965 by longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who died in November 2004. For decades, it dominated Palestinian politics.

Hamas is a militant Islamic group that has called for the destruction of Israel and is considered a terrorist organization by Israel and the U.S. State Department — raising questions about the future of peace talks.

Hamas is thought to have capitalized on perceived corruption within the Palestinian Authority and Fatah, as well as what is seen as the authority’s inability to manage the affairs of the Palestinians.

Many see this as a vote against Fatah rather than a vote for Hamas:

"Fatah hasn’t done anything for us, for our children," said one Hamas voter at a polling site in Gaza.

Another said, "Fatah only helps itself. We want to see what Hamas can do for us."

So in this case it’s about how much the parties really do not want to co-exist with Israel. In Venezuela, we don’t see parties so much as pan-Latin American activists:

Activists at the World Social Forum called for decisive actions against poverty, an immediate end to the war in Iraq and a radical shift away from free trade.

Those attending included more than 800 participants from Cuba, Venezuela President Hugo Chavez’s close ally.

Cuban Parliament Speaker Ricardo Alarcon called for a campaign across Latin America to rid the region of U.S. troops, including from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.

He said young Americans "don’t want to go to unjust wars," mentioning Vietnam and now Iraq.

So in this case it’s which Spanish-speaking country hates US foreign policy. I’d like to research foreign political parties to see which parties hate what most.

This has been Andy D.

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I still maintain that democracy by its definition cannot be exported by force nor artificially put in place in a sovereign nation and mean anything good. Democratic ideals flow from the people thereby ruled, not from those who wish to see a foreign government conducive to dealing with economically. I know Nepal has probably dealt with some imperialistic powers in the west as well as in it’s neighbors, but I think they have the right idea:

More than 200 activists and opposition party members were arrested across Nepal on Saturday as they organized pro-democracy rallies, the parties said.

Three hundred other activists were arrested Friday, and another 100 on Thursday, according to opposition party members. There were some injuries, but it was not known how many were hurt.

The rallies were in protest of King Gyanendra’s taking absolute control of the country in February, suspending Parliament and sacking the government. The king cited a threat from the Maoist insurgency as justification for his actions.

The king has promised to restore multi-party democracy and basic civil and human rights, but he is under international pressure to move quickly.

 

 

 

Iraq will not work because the rallies and protests I hear about there are not about democracy. Even when Saddam was in power it wasn’t about democracy being the saving force, it was about not having Saddam around. Ultimately, if democracy is not wanted it will not last, and we are throwing our troops and funds into the fire of fomenting foreign malcontent.

This has been Andy D.

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Okay, right after 9-11 happened, as I watched New York suffer a horrible fate from my sub-14th-street apartment that to reach I had to show a valid ID to prove I lived within the quarantine zone.

I knew that my city and my country would go through some gross anger over his, and the war on terror is exactly that - the demonization of folk pissed off at us for reasons the average person doesn’t get, so they think somehow that these people just hate Americans for their freedom. Like it’s jealousy or some religious vendetta. And Bush and American politicians let us all believe that and use the War on Terror as a shield for their other agendas.

But the politicos also kind of believe their rhetoric. I of course didn’t, and don’t. The first thing I thought was - oh shit, we’ve done it now. That’s right - we. America had just had its ass checked for running an irresponsible foreign policy all over the planet. It was the same stuff that made Vietnam so nasty. We found our places to protect the interests of our corporations, which were trying to become multinational no doubt, for tax reasons. And some of the people we were trampling, and whom we trained were fighting back, with sticks and stones and plastic forks.

At some level, I still believe that we are culpable for 9-11. Because although one bottom line is that if some extremists hadn’t hijacked a few planes and ran them into important buildings and killed people in the name of both fighting oppressive alien forces and a religious jihad, then those tragedies would never have happened. But the other bottom line is what makes them truly tragic - America was the one with the tragic flaw - hubris - we cannot have a higher standard of living built on the backs of oppressed foreign bodies without dire consequences. People don’t like slavery or violent occupation or external economic pressures that mess with their way of life. I guarantee you, if the roles were reversed and America were influenced more by the globalization of a larger, more powerful nation, some of us would so quickly become the terrorists/freedom fighters of tomorrow. Perhaps even more so due to our revolutionary history. This other bottom line is that our masses have been willfully blind to our foreign policy that has made us fatter from the civil strife of other nations we trained to fight so that we had trading partners with oil and coffee and textiles and everything else good for our own economic bottom line. It’s been this way for the greater par tof the last century, and it still is. And as long as prices were low, and we kept living, we didn’t care. Well some of us have stopped living, and prices are high, stakes are high, and we should start caring now. We should decide that our government is not the best it could be for ourselves and the rest of the world. We should make like Vatican II and WWI to some neo-isolationist principles, meddle less in the world at large, facilitate diplomacy and stop trying to export our way of life.

So then Osama Bin Ladin, the guy we all love to hate, and hate to look for, comes at us with a new message and a truce:

A CIA official believes an audiotaped message threatening the United States is from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who warns that plans for terror attacks are under way — and also offers a "long-term truce."

"The war against America and its allies will not be confined to Iraq," the voice on the tape said, adding that "Iraq has become a magnet for attracting and training talented fighters."

"It’s only a matter of time," the voice said, referring to attacks. "They are in the planning stages, and you will see them in the heart of your land as soon as the planning is complete."

 

 

He has a point, but he is still a big meanie. The point is that these people who have no representation in sovereign government should not be called terrorists, nor should they be called "freedom fighters," because they are really somewhere between terror and freedom. The thing is that in countries where our (economic imperialistic) influence has caused civil strife (Guatemala, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Most of Africa, etc.), some groups of people who are being oppressed have no recourse to their own (puppet) government do what everyone forged in the fire of "give me liberty or give me death" mentality would do - they fight back to those they see as the enemy. And they aren’t far wrong.

Hemingway had a good theme in The Sun Also Rises - wars are the outcome of the richest/most powerful .01% being unable to solve their problems without sending the poorest plurality to fight and die and solve them instead.

If all the events of 9-11 are evil, then War as it is simply diabolical.

This has been Andy D.

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Millions of protestors and bloggers have been saying this for the past few years, but now that Cronkite demands an Exodus, all will be right:

Former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, whose 1968 conclusion that the Vietnam War was unwinnable keenly influenced public opinion then, said Sunday he’d say the same thing today about Iraq.

"It’s my belief that we should get out now," Cronkite said in a meeting with reporters.

Now 89, the television journalist once known as "the most trusted man in America" has been off the "CBS Evening News" for nearly a quarter- century. He’s still a CBS News employee, although he does little for them.

Cronkite said one of his proudest moments came at the end of a 1968 documentary he made following a visit to Vietnam during the Tet offensive. Urged by his boss to briefly set aside his objectivity to give his view of the situation, Cronkite said the war was unwinnable and that the U.S. should exit.

Then-President Lyndon Johnson reportedly told a White House aide after that, "If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America."

The best time to have made a similar statement about Iraq came after Hurricane Katrina, he said.

"We had an opportunity to say to the world and Iraqis after the hurricane disaster that Mother Nature has not treated us well and we find ourselves missing the amount of money it takes to help these poor people out of their homeless situation and rebuild some of our most important cities in the United States," he said. "Therefore, we are going to have to bring our troops home."

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