We Are Back

We may be necessary voices of reason in an increasingly troubled time. We are the terror that flaps in the night, the gum stuck under your left shoe.

STOPPING THE INSANITY

May the Euston Manifesto gain steam on the Left. Good luck, gentelmen.

RE: THINGS WE OUGHT TO CARRY

Well, I had sent an e-mail to the NPR station here in town (widely regarded as one of NPR's finest), pretty much word-for-word what I wrote in the post, but I got no response. To be frank, I'm a little surprised, because Mike Colins, the host, seems like a pretty fair-minded guy on the air.

BzzzzzzPOP!!!

That's the last sound a laptop makes after you spill the tiniest droplets of lemonade on the keyboard.

Ask me how I know.

RE: THE THINGS WE OUGHT TO CARRY

Isn't it revelatory of the psyche of those who manufacture the dominant news that there are protests of the new 9-11 movie "United 93" on the ground that the public is "not ready" for a movie about us taking on that enemy and those closely alingned with the same ones who are actively seeking our destruction on the battlefied on a daily basis? Such a position is being asserted by such concerned citizenry despite the fact that the movie's producers approached every family connected to a victim on the ill fated airliner that went down in the most symbolic struggle of that watershed day and receieve approval of each family.

If those folks' approval of the picture does not demostrate who's ready, I frankly don't know who's opinion is defining? Perhaps it's a dogged anti-war sect that simply hasn't the stomach to deal with a public once again honestly reminded of why we fight.

THIS IS FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS?

This is a story critical of Howard Dean and vindicative of George Bush.

One wonders if Scott Lindlaw is going to keep his job long.

To wit:

OAKLAND, Calif. - Democratic Party chief Howard Dean accused President Bush and the Republican Party on Friday of exploiting the immigration issue for political gain by scapegoating Hispanics.

Dean and Bush agree on the legislation at the heart of the debate. Both support a Senate bill that would expand guest-worker programs for an estimated 400,000 immigrants each year.

However, at a speech in an Oakland union hall, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate sought to tie Bush to a much tougher House bill that would tighten borders and make it a crime to be in the United States illegally or to offer aid to illegal immigrants. Bush does not back the House bill.

"This is a nonsensical proposal put out by far right-wingers in the Republican Party who have been endorsed for re-election by the president of the United States," Dean said. "The president has a moral obligation to rein in the right-wing extremists in his party and stop this divisive rhetoric about immigrants."

Dean devoted much of his short speech here to the immigration debate, which has taken center stage in Washington this election year and touched off mass demonstrations elsewhere. More than 500,000 immigration-rights activists marched in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, largely to protest the House measure.

Bush has spent his political career courting Hispanic voters, the nation's fastest-growing voting bloc, and he has helped double the GOP's share of the Hispanic vote since 2000.

Nevertheless, Dean accused Bush and fellow Republicans of demagoguery in the immigration debate, saying it fit with a long-standing pattern. He cited the president's opposition to the University of Michigan's affirmative-action program and Bush's decision to "pick on" homosexuals - an apparent reference to the gay marriage issue in the 2004 election.

"In 2006 it's immigrants. That's what their strategy is on the Republican side: divide people, scapegoat them, set them aside, point the finger at them," Dean said. "Well, that may be good for the Republican Party, but it's bad for America, and we're not going to do that."

THE THINGS WE OUGHT TO CARRY

I just heard a local NPR host interview Tim O'Brien, author of the campus-favorite Vietnam novel, "The Things They Carried."

Mr. O'Brien is not fond of the current war. He went a little bit off the path of the interview when he said it "disgusts" him that "supporters of war" (it didn't take much to hear "this" stuck in between) don't want people to see images of the consequences of war, hiding behind it being too "disturbing." Mr O'Brien thinks people should be disturbed.

Well, he's right. Going to war should always be a sober decision, and that it's so disturbing is why.

But, as with any coin, this one has another side.

There's no question that critics of the current war, and many of them are in control of the bulk of the media, take the same approach when it comes to coverage of the enemy we fight. While the horrors and consequences of war are well-covered when it comes to innocent suffering and carnage inflicted on our troops, far, far less attention, and almost no graphics, tend to be on display of an enemy who:

Kidnaps civilians and puts them, terrified, on camera, weeping for someone to meet their captors' demand, while those captors as often as not are standing there in masks and guns;

Attacks civilian convoys, murders people, and leaves their charred, burnt bodies hanging from a bridge;

Kidnaps local civilians, and on threat of killing their families, forces them to drive suicide car bombs into busy public squares and marketplaces, sometimes with their arms actually tied to the steering wheels to keep them from backing out;

Actually saws kidnapped victims' heads off their bodies, on camera, with boasts;

Relentlessly targets civilians, attempts to disrupt elections through threats, intimidation, and violence;

Threatens the families of duly elected officials and others, like judges, for intimidation purposes;

And, oh yeah, flies passenger airliners into office buildings on clear late-summer mornings.

To name but a few things specifically applicable to the enemy we fight on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan . . . things which don't get nearly the air time that the "consequences of war" stories tend to get, and often, the reason given is that the images are too "disturbing." Well, if we as a free people need to be disturbed by the consequences of war, so, too, do we need to be disturbed by the very real horrors perpetrated by the enemy. Mr. O'Brien didn't address that, so I don't know what he thinks about it. But it's a point worth making nonetheless.

How much air time was given to the uncovered crimes of the Saddam Hussein regime? The numerous mass graves? The prisons full of the children of dissidents? The torture chambers? Anywhere near the coverage of Abu Ghraib? No.

There's no question whatsoever in my mind that these people need to be fought, and need to be destroyed, where they live, rather than where we live. I am not blind to the cost, nor the consequences or the very real suffering involved. But there are those who would rather I not be too burdened by horrific images which might convince me -- or others -- that I might be right.