You Really Should Read James Carroll 's Columns

Today I want to promote the columns of James Carroll, columnist for the Boston Globe. He almost always seems to hit the nail spot on its head and get to the heart of matters. For example, consider his most recent column on Turkey and the war in Iraq:

HERE IN TURKEY, Condoleezza Rice offered sage advice to Turkish leaders ahead of the Washington meeting between President Bush and Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan. "Effective action means action that can deal with the threat," she said Friday, but won't "make the situation worse." The Turkish military, with a deployed force of up to 100,000 soldiers, is poised to attack positions of militant Kurdish separatist fighters in the Kandil Mountains of northern Iraq. Their cross-border forays into Turkey over the last five weeks have killed dozens of Turks, both soldiers and civilians. Iraqi Kurds tacitly support their fellow Kurds, and Americans have done nothing to dissuade either group. Erdogan is under enormous pressure to respond to such attacks, but Rice highlighted "the need to look for an effective strategy, not just one that's going to strike out, somehow, and not deal with the problem."

As viewed from Turkey, American responses throughout this crisis range from duplicity to double standards. The cautionary message that Rice conveyed to her foreign ministry counterparts here, and that Bush is expected to echo, defines the exact opposite of policies pursued to this day by the Bush administration itself. The conditions that created the terrible prospect facing Turkey - an immediate war with rebel Kurds based in Iraq -- have been wholly manufactured in Washington, which displays an unending capacity to "make the situation worse." Turkey, a staunch US ally, urged restraint four-and-a-half years ago when Bush rolled his dice in Iraq. But when the gamble was lost, it was nations in the Middle East - not America - that paid. Turkey's turn to pony up has come.

The mood here is somber because when war begins, it will be real. Turks understand that the United States, thousands of miles away, is only virtually at war. US soldiers are killing and being killed, to be sure. Yet the main result of their presence as an occupation force has been to ignite and sustain a set of civil wars - now including Turkey's - that have nothing to do with America. Indeed, despite the neo-con rhetoric of "fight them there instead of here," the US occupation of Iraq defends against no direct threat to America. As Saddam's weapons of mass destruction were a paranoid myth, so is the much-hyped dread of "Islamofascism," a phenomenon that, if it did exist, would threaten Islamic peoples and values far more than anything in the West. The problem, of course, is that militant Islamic extremists, however defined, are empowered by the US occupation, not disarmed. Iraq has become a West Point for suicide bombers. Even then, the threat remains local. And although all the belligerents target the American occupiers, and will do so as long as the occupation continues, America has no authentic enemy among Iraq's sectarian belligerents. Turkey does.

In the United States, meanwhile, confusion reigns. After effectively voting against the Iraq occupation last November; after denouncing it in successive polls; after seeing the Bush administration reject its own review panel's call for a shift to diplomacy; after the touted "surge" led to more of the same; after the shock of current oil prices made the real Bush agenda in Iraq plainer ever; and after Dick Cheney and George Bush made the mad prospect of attack on Iran seem possible - the American public has sunk into a dispirited, and perhaps guilt-induced, detachment from the entire mess. (Again last week, Congressional Democrats, debating appropriations, dared look the Pentagon in the eye - and promptly blinked.) No such detachment is possible here in Turkey.

Before Bush's war changed everything in this region, Turkish hopes were high. An expansive European Union beckoned. Turks were poised to play a historic role as the bridge between Islam and the West. But then they found that, in the "us against them" war on terror, no such bridge was wanted. Europe got nervous about Turks already in its cities, and lately European countries have taken actions Turkey regards as friendly to the Kurdish rebels it is fighting. Now come warnings that, if Turkey responds to its made-in-Washington terror threat exactly as Washington does - "to strike out, somehow" - then Turkey can kiss EU admission goodbye.
The question is sharper here than at home: How much higher can the rubble pile of Bush's wreckage mount before Americans emerge from the stupor of shame to stop him?

That is a helluva a good question: when will the US emerge from our stupor of shame?

How Can We Continue to Support Pakistan?

I feel like I am hallucinating. Musharraf has suspended Pakistan's consitution and essentially declared martial law. This would seem to run counter to the expressed goal of the administration of George W. Bush, that being the further spread of democracy throughout the world. Yet, there is no unilateral condemnation of this attack of democracy from the Bush administration. And it would appear that the US will continue to funnel loads of money to Pakistan as a "partner" in the war on terror.

How fucking crazy is that? Pakistan is imprisoning opposition leaders. Pakistani police beat and arrested lawyers protesting Musharraf's terroristic power-grab. And the US contributes to it by continuing to send funds for the Pakistani military?

Truly, any sentient human being at this point should be able to condemn the Bush administration as muddled and having no clear focus. Anyone still supporting Bush at this point must be a petrified turd lacking a brainstem... but I guess there are more of those laying about than I would imagine, huh?

Another Stupid Bush Tactic

Have you been following the Mukasey nomination hearings? Earlier this week, Bush's nominee for Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, refused to answer Senator's questions about whether he considers waterboarding torture. IMHO this is a perfectly legitimate question and any Attorney General nominee should be asked the question... and expected to answer it.

What was Bush's response? He said, and I quote, "If the Senate Judiciary Committee were to block Judge Mukasey on these grounds, they would set a new standard for confirmation that could not be met by any responsible nominee for attorney general," Bush said in a speech at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

"That would guarantee that America would have no attorney general during this time of war," the president said.

It is obvious that this president does not like America. He does not like the checks and balances of a three branch government where each branch is equal. He does not like our Constitution. He is an enemy of freedom. And if he doesn't get his way, well, then he is taking his ball and going home.

January 2009 cannot come soon enough!

Yosemite McCain

When talking about Osama Bin Laden, John McCain has previously stated, in one of the many debates, "He is going to pay and he will die" . . . "We will bring him to justice" . . . "I will follow him to the gates of hell."

Then last Tuesday (October 23, 2007), during a speach at Thompson Center Arms, a subsidiary of Smith & Wesson, McCain elabtorated saying: "I will follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell and I will shoot him with your products."

This is not the type of thing I want a presidential candidate, let alone a president of the USA, to say. OK, so Bush has lowered the level of discourse and eloquence that we expect in a president with his continual, almost daily mangling of the English language and absurd comments. But I want Bush to be an aberration, not the first in a line of idiots.

And then, to make matters worse, the two-faced idiot (that would be McCain) later told reporters he was joking. He must think it is one helluva funny joke if he keeps telling versions of it over and over.

What's next? I guess if he speaks in Detroit he'll say something like: "I will drive down to the gates of hell and run Osama Bin Laden over with your SUVs."

Or if he speaks a Bob Jones University he can say "I will follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell and lynch him just like youse guys like."

What do you think? Let's all help Yosemite McCain write his upcoming speeches... do you have any ideas on how he can tweak this compelling message for other audiences?

Recently Uncovered Nostradamus Quatrain

Under the sands was the darkened liquid
So dear to the westerners
That the eagle arose to shatter Babylon
All because of that bastard Bush

President Colbert?

By now you may have already heard about Stephen Colbert's announcement that he is going to run for president, as both a Republican and a Democrat, but only in his home state of South Carolina.

I find Colbert and his nightly program, The Colbert Report, hilarious - and it is high time that another fake campaign for president (such as those run by Pogo and Pat Paulsen) was conducted. We need all the humor we can get given the group we have running this time around, don't we?

But Colbert may have actual momentum! Computerworld reports that Colbert has already accumulated more than 1 million supporters on his Facebook site. They contrast this with Barack Obama's One Million Strong For Barack group which has accumulated just over 380,000 members over the past nine months.

And Colbert's campaign has caused others to speculate what might happen if federal election officials take his campaign seriously. How could anyone take it seriously when he has stated that Larry Craig might be his running mate!?!?

I guess it just goes to show that Americans love celebrity...

Rudy Giuliani: One Scary Bastard

Of all the presidential candidates with a chance to actually win, Rudolph Giuliani is the one that scares me the most. Oh, none of the Republicans excite me, but Giuliani could actually continue the ways of the worst administration ever (that would be GW Bush's).

Why do I say this? Well, consider this piece from the New York Times. Among the many nuggets in this article is this paragraph that should send shivers down the spine of any sentient being:

Mr. Giuliani’s team includes Norman Podhoretz, a prominent neoconservative who advocates bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible”; Daniel Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum, who has called for profiling Muslims at airports and scrutinizing American Muslims in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps; and Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has written in favor of revoking the United States’ ban on assassination.

I guess I'd prefer Fred Thompson (even if he is a lazy, looney bird) to that!

Halle Nose Better Than to Try to Be Funny

Did everyone hear about the stupid Halle Berry comment that is now making the rounds as the latest "offensive" joke? Evidently she was on The Tonight Show (anyone with a mind would have been watching either Stewart or Letterman) and made a crack about Jews having long noses. Of course, she has since apologized.

Is the Jewish shnozz off limits now?