Tag Archives: Syria

Political Rants

Onward christian soldiers.

The president is seeking Congressional authorization for his current campaign in Syria and Iraq. Looks like he’s going to get it, though begrudgingly on the part of knee-jerk hawks like McCain, Graham, and their various appendages. Not open-ended enough. The generals are complaining! we’re told. They’re unhappy with limitations and micromanagement by the President of the United States, the pundits say. Okay … first thing: sorry you’re unhappy with your jobs, generals. Maybe you should consider stepping down. You take your orders from civilian leadership … that’s how it works in the American military. Don’t like it? Resign.

This turned out well.That said, our President is on the brink of another useless military adventure. As this is debated, will anyone in Congress ask, “When has this ever gone well?” Kosovo? Don’t say Kosovo. We made the killing worse, predictably. Afghanistan? Just as ungovernable as ever, only now with more dead people. Iraq? Please! Libya? Now divided between two hostile governments; a failed state shedding refugees by the thousand. Now the conversation is centered not so much on whether we should fight in Iraq / Syria, but rather how heavily we should get involved. I hear a lot of T.V. talkers advocating for a ground war. They should consider whether they would want their kids to fight it. Or if maybe they’d want to fight it themselves. Anything short of that is just talk.

Obama got in some trouble at the “National Prayer Breakfast” for bringing up the unfortunate history of Christianity, as a counterpoint to his condemnation of extremist Islam. Of course, he needn’t have gone back so far. There’s another extremist religion he might have talked about – one far more deadly than ISIS or any other crazed sham-Muslim group. It’s called American First-ism, and it’s killed hundreds of thousands over the past decade. Can ISIS match that? Can they even come close?

There’s only one way to stop groups like ISIS: stop creating them. ISIS would be nothing without the large disenfranchised Sunni community in Iraq – a community at war with its own government, for whom the arrival of Iraqi security forces means a death sentence. They support ISIS as a counterbalance to Baghdad. Until they have a stake in Iraq’s future, there will always be another ISIS.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Week that wasn’t.

Just a few short takes on a variety of subjects. A lot to focus on, so I’ll try not to focus too much on anything.

Burning people alive, American styleISIS Killing. The so-called “Islamic State” burned a Jordanian captive alive this week. In retaliation, the Jordanian King executed some prisoners. Meanwhile, we dropped some bombs on some nameless people, some of which, quite possibly, were burned alive (though not in front of a camera). Your pick as to who is the biggest asshole here. On points of style, it’s a toss up. On volume, we win hands down.

Ukraine. The reporting on this crisis has been abysmal, though not surprising. Mainstream media, including left-leaning outlets like MSNBC, have been toeing the administration line by and large. When we hear from them about casualties on the Kiev side, it’s in graphic detail. Deaths on the separatist side are somehow authorless, with the persistent question of whether they might be the result of bad aim by the separatists. This is a tremendously dangerous conflict, resulting from nearly three decades of bad policy on the part of the U.S. and Europe. Instead of making promises in Kiev, Kerry should be in Moscow talking to the Russians about how to dial this mess back before it gets any hotter.

Vaccinations. Some substantial smoke-blowing over the question of whether or not parents should have the right to refuse vaccinations for their children. Governor Christie and Senator Paul both weighed in, then weighed out … somewhat … when they heard the reaction. Meanwhile, 100 kids in California have come down with measles, another smaller group in Illinois. These kids are, in part, victims of misinformation about the science behind (a) MMR vaccines and (b) the nature of disorders like autism. Misinformation fuels skepticism, particularly in an age when childhood diseases like measles and mumps have been brought under control and no one remembers the bad old days when 500 kids would die each year from measles.

I don’t have kids, so I can’t give advice. I just know that science and public health are on the side of vaccinating your kids. Seems like the right choice, folks.

Nuff said.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Fear itself (again).

These grim days remind me a bit of the far worse days of late 2001, when our nation was reeling from the 9/11 terror attacks and the world seemed to be falling in on itself. (It happened that my family life was imploding at the same time, but that’s another story.) I guess what reminds me most of that time is the visceral fear evident not only in mass media culture but in everyday life. People are scared, very scared about some relatively minor threats, while at the same time seemingly unconcerned about the real dangers facing us.

Year 2 of the Romney foreign policyThis is a cultivated disconnect, certainly no accident. Every day, the news media hammer away at the threat of Ebola, of ISIS, of Russia, and to a lesser extent North Korea and Iran. In the case of the former, we’re reaching a near hysteria about a virus that has affected only a handful of Americans, and only three cases in the U.S. The public has been worked up into such a lather that politicians are falling over themselves to try to benefit from it, take advantage of it, channel it in some way that is useful to them. One only wishes we could evoke this sort of reaction on actual threats, like our disastrous automotive transportation system that kills over 30,000 of us a year.

I only raise that particular example because it’s the 24th anniversary of my brother’s death behind the wheel of a crappy, very common unsafe-at-any-speed vehicle. There are far greater threats, though – those of climate change and of nuclear war, for instance. The former we cannot bring ourselves to seriously address; the latter we have discounted and essentially forgotten, unless our attention is turned to an official enemy, like Iran or North Korea. If our news media were reporting on these issues the way they report on a hemorrhagic African virus that’s not half as contagious as the flu, we might ultimately feel motivated to do something about them. So far, no potato.

We are probably the most fearful people ever to run an empire. It’s something we need to overcome, so that we can arrive at the kind of clarity we need to see what actually confronts us.

luv u,

jp