Support the Troops; Save the Flag

The constant reiteration by Bush supporters about the need to Support the Troops has never made sense. People who want to bring the military home, and spare them being wounded or killed, are accused of not supporting the troops. People who want to keep them there, while never questioning whether their presence is accomplishing anything, are exposing them to lethal danger, but claim they are supporting the troops. This is crazily backward. The ‘supporters’ can’t admit that the original decision to go to Iraq may have been wrong, as that realization would mean that lives were spent in vain. And so rational analysis of Iraq is not acceptable.

So while the mantra is continually used to suppress thought, if you want to see what is behind the claim and just how the Bush administration actually doesn't support the troops, beyond not bothering to provide adequate body or vehicle armor, just read the article in today’s NY Times about how military widows are treated:

For military widows, many of them young, stay-at-home mothers, the shock of losing a husband is often followed by the confounding task of untangling a collection of benefits from assorted bureaucracies. While the process runs smoothly for many widows, for others it is characterized by lost files, long delays, an avalanche of paperwork, misinformation and gaps in the patchwork of laws governing survivor benefits.

Sometimes it is simply the Pentagon's massive bureaucracy that poses the problem. In other cases, laws exclude widows whose husbands died too early in the war or were killed in training rather than in combat. The result is that scores of families — it is impossible to know how many — lose out on money and benefits that they expected to receive or believed they were owed, say widows, advocates and legislators.

Legislators and advocates working with widows say the problems are often systemic, involving payouts by the mammoth Department of Defense accounting office and the Department of Veterans Affairs. A few widows simply fall through the cracks altogether. The consequences are hard felt: they run up credit card bills, move in with relatives to save money, pull their children from private schools, spend money on lawyers or dedicate countless frustrating hours to unraveling the mix-ups.

"We have had more of these cases than I wish to know," said Ann G. Knowles, president of the National Association of County Veterans Service Officers, which helps veterans and widows with their claims.

Meanwhile back in Congress, fully attuned to rectifying problems pressing on the nation, we find they are planning to spend four days debating the need to safeguard our flag from public burnings and desecrations too horrible to contemplate. Dana Milbank in today’s Washington Post skewers this absurd waste of time:

The Citizens Flag Alliance, a group pushing for the Senate this week to pass a flag-burning amendment to the Constitution, just reported an alarming, 33 percent increase in the number of flag-desecration incidents this year.

The number has increased to four, from three.

The naive among us may have trouble appreciating how four flag-burning episodes would constitute a constitutional crisis. But the men and women of the Senate, ever alert to emerging threats, are on the case.

"I think of the flag as a symbol of what veterans fought for," Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said as he opened the debate yesterday, "what they sustained wounds for, what they sustained loss of limbs for and what they sustained loss of life for."

"I think it's important to focus on the basic fact that the text of the First Amendment, the text of the Constitution, the text of the Bill of Rights is not involved," Specter argued. The Judiciary Committee chairman did not explain how he could add 17 words to the Constitution without altering its text.

Fortunately, the Senate will have plenty of time to discuss that matter. The chamber has scheduled up to four days of debate on the flag-burning amendment this week. If that formula -- one day of Senate debate for each incident of flag burning this year -- were to be applied to other matters, the Senate would need to schedule 12 days of debate to contemplate the number of years before Medicare goes broke, 335 days of debate for each service member killed in Iraq this year and 11 million days of debate on the estimated number of illegal immigrants in the country. Unfortunately, the Senate has only 49 days left on its legislative calendar for the year.

And the pro-amendment crowd is armed with powerful constitutional arguments. "Ever since the Boy Scouts first taught me how to care for our flag over 40 years ago, it has always held a special place in my heart," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said in a press release yesterday.

That's not to say the senators were feeling energetic as they took up the amendment. The day's session started at 2 p.m., but by 2:21, there was no senator on the floor to speak, and the chamber went into a quorum call -- its equivalent of a nap -- for the next hour.

Cut and Run

Last week Sen. Bill Frist (R. Tenn.) broke the land-sea record for most uses of the term “cut and run” in describing Democratic attempts to pass non-binding legislation calling for the return of an unspecified number of troops from Iraq. Along with other leading Republicans they accused Democrats of national security weakness, failure to support the troops, and a few other abominations.

This weekend reports surfaced that Gen. George Casey, the US Commander in Iraq, is suggesting the same thing. I will be looking forward to seeing General Casey dragged before the Senate’s Armed Services Committee and castigated by these same Republicans for this weak-kneed policy that will signal to the terrorists that they we are running.

Of course we must remember that this is the same Senator Frist who diagnosed Terry Schiavo by looking at a 30 minute tape prepared by her family and found her not to be in a persistent vegetative state, despite the almost unanimous opposite conclusion by every doctor who actually examined her. It is no wonder he spends his spare time operating on National Zoo animals. Would any human voluntarily subject themselves to his ministrations?

What this troop contretemps does show is how the Republicans intend to proceed in this fall’s elections and the Democrats need to be able to articulate a counter response. Given the events of the past 5 ½ years, it should be easy to craft a message demonstrating how the Republican Presidency and Congress have substantially weakened the National Security of the US and its ability to survive.

We’ve entered into a disastrous war in Iraq for no valid reason at the cost of 2,500 American deaths and thousands of wounded, fighting it with insufficient troops and inadequate armor; we’ve expended billions of dollars in that war and have placed ourselves in debt that will impact the economic well-being of the US for years to come, we continue with excessive tax breaks for the richest part of the population exacerbating the debt problem; Afghanistan is moving toward the same instability as exists in Iraq because instead of staying there with aid and resources we chose to divert them to Iraq; the real threats emanating from Iran and North Korea cannot be responded to from a position of strength because we have squandered our assets in Iraq; the war on terrorism was turned into a war in Iraq, where it didn’t exist – just imagine if we had used some of the resources devoted to Iraq to deal with the root causes that lead people into seeing terrorism and anti-US behavior as the only option in their lives; our response to Katrina and our preparation for this year’s hurricane season imply that we are not much better prepared to handle a terrorist emergency than we were prior to September 11; we still have 45 million people without health insurance; our environmental posture in the face of increasing evidence of global warming is to ignore every warning for fear of alienating business’s desire for profit at any cost; and our standing in the world has been decreased substantially not only in the eyes of our enemies but from our friends as well.

The Democrats need to hammer the Republican, over and over, showing how precarious our national situation is and how it has been caused by the party in power. They need to do this while the Republican Congressional response is to do nothing substantial, other than bring to the floor bills they know in advance have absolutely no chance of being passed. This week we can all look forward to the return of the Flag Burning Amendment. I admit that during my two mile sojourn to the local grocery store, I am overwhelmed by the acrid smell of people burning flags, but I am willing to accept that discomfort if doing so allows Congress to concentrate on the major problems in front of us.

Incompetence or Ignorance?

Take your pick. Iran made an overture through diplomatic channels shortly after US troops arrived in Baghdad in early 2003. Given our completely erroneous reading of the potential for success in Iraq (we’ll be seen as liberators, Iranian oil will pay for our costs, we don’t need additional troops to provide security once Saddam is overthrown, we don’t need armor on our military vehicles, democracy will spread throughout the Middle East, Iraq has WMD, and Iraq is a vital part of the Al Qaeda network), is it a surprise that we could not see the advantage in dealing with a country that is now an implacable opponent and with whom we must deal from a greatly weakened position then the one we would have had in 2003? From Sunday’s Washington Post:

Iran proposed a broad dialogue with the United States, with everything on the table -- including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups. But top Bush administration officials, convinced the Iranian government was on the verge of collapse, belittled the initiative.

Last month, the Bush administration abruptly shifted policy and agreed to join talks previously led by European countries over Iran's nuclear program. But several former administration officials say the United States missed an opportunity in 2003 at a time when American strength seemed at its height -- and Iran did not have a functioning nuclear program or a gusher of oil revenue from soaring energy demand.

The U.S. victory in Iraq frightened the Iranians because U.S. forces had routed in three weeks an army that Iran had failed to defeat during a bloody eight-year war. The document lists a series of Iranian aims for the talks, such as ending sanctions, full access to peaceful nuclear technology and a recognition of its "legitimate security interests." Iran agreed to put a series of U.S. aims on the agenda, including full cooperation on nuclear safeguards, "decisive action" against terrorists, coordination in Iraq, ending "material support" for Palestinian militias and accepting the Saudi initiative for a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The document also laid out an agenda for negotiations, with possible steps to be achieved at a first meeting and the development of negotiating road maps on disarmament, terrorism and economic cooperation.

Trita Parsi, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that based on his conversations with the Iranian officials, he believes the failure of the United States to even respond to the offer had an impact on the government. Parsi, who is writing a book on Iran-Israeli relations, said he believes the Iranians were ready to dramatically soften their stance on Israel, essentially taking the position of other Islamic countries such as Malaysia. Instead, Iranian officials decided that the United States cared not about Iranian policies but about Iranian power.

The incident "strengthened the hands of those in Iran who believe the only way to compel the United States to talk or deal with Iran is not by sending peace offers but by being a nuisance," Parsi said.

Rove Walks

In October 2000, President Bush said: “In my administration we will not ask only what is legal but what is right, not what the lawyers allow but what the public deserves.”

In 2003, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said he consulted Karl Rove and was assured that the senior aide played no role in the leaking of Plame's name to the media. The White House left the clear impression that Rove knew nothing of the leak and certainly did not participate in it. McClellan was asked if Rove "told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA?" Rove, he said, "assured me" he was not involved in the leak of such information.

After news of the leak case broke, Bush said he would "fire anyone" who leaked the name of a covert CIA operative.

The subsequent federal investigation determined that Rove talked with at least two reporters about Plame before her identity was disclosed by columnist Robert D. Novak in July 2003, and that he relayed word of those conversations to other White House officials.

In July 2005, the president revised the threshold for dismissal to cover only those aides who "committed a crime." By then, it was clear Rove was involved in the disclosure of Plame's identity even if his actions did not break the law.

But while today Rove appears out of criminal jeopardy, the question remains as to whether Rove should be held accountable outside the legal system for his part in unmasking CIA officer Valerie Plame and initially telling the nation he was not involved? He confirmed her CIA role to two reporters, according to court filings in the Libby case.

Yesterday at a news conference, Bush said: "Along with others in the White House, I took a sigh of relief" when the news broke this week that Rove would not be charged in the CIA leak investigation, Bush told reporters in a Rose Garden news conference. "I trust Karl Rove." A senior White House official said Bush and his staff are eager to "put this behind us" as quickly as possible.

Adding all this up, we have a combination of outright lies that are treated as if they were never uttered and standards that change to fit whatever is deemed expedient by the Administration. Just another day in the Bush White House.

Bush's Legacy

Bush and the Congressional Republicans are trumpeting the turn in events as a result of Zarqawi’s death and the naming of the final two cabinet ministers in Iraq. Coupled with Rove escaping prosecution and approval polls moving from 31% to 38%; they believe they are now on an upswing that will define the remaining 2 ½ years of the Bush presidency. It looks as if once again, they are doing their best to deceive themselves and as many gullible Americans as they can.

More sobering and more realistic are recent comments by Dexter Filkins, the NY Times reporter in Baghdad, who related on PBS the daily deteriorating situation in the city, where frequent insurgent killings are matched by sectarian deaths as Shiites and Sunnis attack each other.

Even more disturbing is a recent column in the Washington Post by Anthony Shadid, who has covered Iraq continually dating prior to our invasion in 2003 and in addition to his reporting for the Post is the author of the acclaimed book “Night Draws Near” about ordinary Iraqis and their reaction to Saddam’s downfall and the arrival of the United States. This column, with excerpts below, deals directly with Bush’s legacy. It is one of deeply formed hate of the United States by people who are now our enemies. While they were not strong supporters of the US before Iraq, our misguided actions there have served as a catalyst for problems that we will be facing long after Bush is gone.

Abu Haritha still carries traces of the battles he fought in Iraq, 500 miles away.
On his hand is a black ring, a gift from a fellow insurgent after he was wounded in the torso in Fallujah by shrapnel. Every once in a while, he watches videos lauding attacks carried out on his former battlefield and celebrates the exploits of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed last week in Iraq. At times, he regales colleagues with stories of American fear.

But for Abu Haritha, that battle is over. As he sits in this northern city, Lebanon's second-largest, he waits for what he believes will be a more expansive war beyond Iraq, a struggle he casts in the most cataclysmic of terms. In the morning, he jogs; he lifts weights for hours at night. In between, with his cell phone ringing with the Muslim call to prayer, he proselytizes in streets that are growing ever more militant, sprinkled with the black banners that proclaim jihad and occasional slogans celebrating the resistance in Iraq. "It's an open battle, in any place, at any time," he said, his voice calm. "History has to record that there was resistance."

The war in Iraq has generated some of the most startling images in the Middle East today: a dictator's fall, elections in defiance of insurgent threats and carnage on a scale rarely witnessed. Less visibly, though, the war is building a profound legacy across the Arab world: fear and suspicion over Iraq's repercussions, a generation that casts the Bush administration's policy as an unquestioned war on Islam, and a subterranean reserve of men who, like Abu Haritha, declare that the fight against the United States in Iraq is a model for the future.

Abu Haritha's home, Tripoli, is one of the most visible manifestations of the war, a rough-and-tumble city being transformed by growing radicalism and religious fervor that may long outlast the death of Zarqawi and the U.S. presence in Iraq, now in its fourth year. Here, and elsewhere, that militancy may prove to be the inheritance of both the war and the Bush administration's professed aim of bringing democratic reform to the region.
As those currents gather force, Abu Haritha waits with a certain ease, confident of what is to come. "Iraq is a badge of honor for every Arab and Muslim to fight the American vampire," he said. "The Americans may enter Syria, they may enter another country, and we should prepare ourselves for them," Abu Haritha said at a cafe in a crowded alley. "We have to face them so that history won't record they entered our land without confrontation."

At a cafe in the old city of Tripoli last week, Bilal Shaaban, the leader of the Islamic Unity Movement, a Sunni group, reclined on a sofa. Overhead was a television showing al-Jazeera's coverage of Zarqawi's death. Outside the cafe was a city reflecting the very real currents of militancy, generated by the Iraq war, that are reshaping political and social life. Shaaban ticked off what he called the successes of Islamic activists like him in Egypt, the Palestinian territories and now Somalia. "In every place, why does the Islamic current reach its goals?" he asked. "Because it expresses the people's sentiments against the Americans. It's a reaction to American policy. They are planting the seed of hatred that is going to last generations."

Men like Shaaban, of the Islamic Unity Movement, praise the insurgency in Iraq but deny any hand in subversion. At the same time, the growing reach of their groups in the poor neighborhoods of Tripoli -- through newspapers, radio stations, mosques and social welfare, the bread and butter of Islamic groups -- has gone far in transforming a predominantly Sunni city that was traditionally home to a vibrant mix of Arab nationalism and leftist and Islamic politics.

Even longtime residents are struck by the shift in social mores over the past few years: the proliferation of women's veils and men's beards, the flourishing of religion classes and the number of youths joining groups such as Shaaban's. On balconies, interspersed among flags for residents' favorite World Cup soccer teams, are black banners with religious inscriptions usually associated with holy war. In squares of Tripoli, particularly its most religious neighborhoods such as Abu Samra, civic art is often a stark representation of God's name. Along one street, graffiti reads: "Liberation is coming."

"We thank the Americans," said Ibrahim Salih, a founder of the Committee to Support the Iraqi Resistance, which he described as a group that disseminates information.
Near his house, along a cinder-block wall, is more graffiti. "Glory and eternity for the martyrs of Fallujah," it reads. "No one can repress us anymore," said Salih, 52, who was educated in France. "We are a power here in Tripoli."

Grievances against the United States are nothing new in a city like Tripoli. For a generation, activists across the spectrum have bitterly criticized U.S. policy. What has shifted in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the U.S. invasion of Iraq is the perception of that policy. The critique is no longer about perceived double standards -- of excessive support for Israel, of backing Arab dictatorships. Today, it is more generalized, universal and uncompromising. Popular sentiment here and elsewhere holds that U.S. policy amounts to a war on Islam, and in the language of Abu Haritha and others, the conflict is framed as one between the faithful and infidels, justice and injustice.

"The targeting of Iraq can be considered the first step in targeting the entire Middle East to impose a new order in the region," said Fathi Yakan, a founder of the Islamic Association and head of an umbrella group known as the Islamic Action Forces.
In a waiting room decorated with religious banners is a magazine that celebrates the defiance of the Palestinian group Hamas against attempts to isolate it. "We starve, but we don't kneel," says one passage. At the entrance is a poster marking the anniversary of Israel's assassination in 2004 of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, a co-founder of Hamas. "Together we resist," it reads. On a street outside, a poster announces a forum titled, "The global campaign to resist aggression on the Muslim nation."

Fighters like Abu Haritha and activists like Shaaban and Yakan speak in almost mythical tones about what they call the resistance in Iraq. In nearly every conversation, they make the assertion that the United States has, at this point, lost the war. "We already consider it a success. It has already led to the failure of the American project in Iraq," Yakan said with a shrug that suggested the obvious. "I think the Americans realize that, and they are looking for an exit to wash their hands of it."

But these men's reading of the war has grown more complicated, as even the most radical voices try to make sense of the spectacular carnage there, the killing of civilians and the prospect of civil strife. Some supporters of the insurgency say they fear the conflict will unleash a civil war, the country's partition and the spillover of tension between Sunni and Shiite Muslims to the rest of the Arab world. That fear is particularly pronounced in Lebanon, where Shiites make up the single largest community.

"The smoke from the fire in Iraq is drifting over Lebanon," Shaaban said darkly.
Some see an American hand in Iraq's entropy; in their analysis, the United States and Israel are fanning the flames of sectarianism as a way to further divide the Arab world and create a region even more balkanized than today's. Others see a more deep-seated hostility in U.S. actions, a scorched-earth campaign to hasten an apocalyptic battle or, in Salih's words, the "politics of chaos."

Culture Wars Continue

In a major public health breakthrough, the Food and Drug Administration yesterday approved the first vaccine developed to protect women against cervical cancer. The vaccine, which works by building immunity against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, was found to be effective in preventing almost three-quarters of all cervical cancers.

The CDC estimates that about 6.2 million Americans become infected with genital HPV each year and that more than half of all sexually active men and women become infected in their lives. More than 9,700 new cases of cervical cancer and 3,700 deaths are attributed to the virus yearly in the United States.

The prospect of young girls receiving the vaccine has disturbed some social conservatives, who adamantly oppose efforts to make the vaccination mandatory. They say that sexual abstinence is the best way to avoid getting the virus and in their view of the world, if you are not abstinent, you should be made to pay the price of this transgression by having an unwanted baby or getting cancer.

On its Web site, the group Focus on the Family said it "supports widespread (universal) availability of the HPV vaccines but opposes mandatory HPV vaccination for entry to public school. As in all areas of sexual health and education, Focus on the Family upholds parents' right to be the primary decision maker and educator for their children."

Of course conservatives have no problem reversing this argument of no government intervention when it comes to abortion or same-sex marriage. In those cases it’s fine for government to intervene.

Every time you think the Republican Congress cannot top its proclivity to embarrass itself even further, they just rise to the next level. Knowing that there were insufficient votes to pass the Constitutional Amendment that affirms that marriage is solely between a man and a woman, they brought this legislation to the Senate floor for debate. Other than pandering to their base and further polarizing the country what possible reason could they have to waste time on this subject while the US faces major problems – rising government debt, no health insurance for 45 million American citizens, domestic surveillance by an Administration that knows Congress has abdicated its oversight role, and a dependence on oil that strengthens our enemies and leaves us vulnerable.

The tired argument that they are defending marriage is brought out each time they attempt to justify what is really a bigoted position against gays. Not one of these proponents has ever explained to me why my marriage is “threatened” because some same sex couple lives in my neighborhood. And the reason they can’t be convincing is that there is no logical basis for their rationale. What does explain their position is that they cannot accept the idea that someone thinks differently. Their belief in their value system must be so tenuous that if everyone doesn’t agree with them, they are threatened and fearful, deep down, that what they believe is not true. So their approach is to force everyone to follow what they believe in. If conservatives don’t believe in abortion, they should not have one. If they don’t want to marry some one of the same sex, they shouldn’t do it. But then leave the rest of society alone and remember that this country was founded by people seeking freedom from the oppressive conditions they were experiencing in England.

Bush Emphasizes English

President Bush on Wednesday emphasized that illegal immigrants who want to stay here should learn English and demonstrate that they are committed to assimilating into American culture. He said immigrants should know there is a legal way to stay, if they are willing to make the effort:

One is to say you got to pay a fine for being here illegally. You got to learn the English language. In other words, you got to repay a debt to society and learn the skills necessary to assimilate into our society. Show us you've been working hard.

Now if only he could learn to speak English effectively, and an impossible dream, serve as a role model for aspiring citizens by using “have” instead of “got” in sentences, by pronouncing nuclear “nuc-lee-ar” instead of “nuc-u-lar,” and by emulating the best in our society rather than portraying himself as equal to the lowest common denominator.

His continued mispronunciation of nuclear, which is only one of the most important words in today’s geo-political world, either demonstrates a mind unable to learn or a complete capitulation to a Karl Rove tactic to show that he is not the product of a Harvard and Yale education but is just one of those down-home Texas boys. It also seems to be a symptom of an arrogant belief that whatever he believes is right. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks – intelligence analyst, scientist, linguist, or academic expert. Bob Woodward published the following quote from an interview with Bush:

I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel I owe anybody an explanation.

He did manage to say one thing in a news conference Wednesday in a comment he made about Hugo Chavez and Venezuela, without realizing how it actually characterizes his own legacy:

I think it will be okay. But it's going to take awhile. Sometimes leaders show up who do a great disservice to the traditions and people of a country

USPS

This week the US Postal Service returned two birthday cards that were mailed last week stating that $.39 was insufficient postage and that an additional $.13 was required. The explanation was that they could not process the letters and they were consequently requesting, in their terms, a “nonmachinable surcharge.” If anyone wonders why the Post Office is losing money and why people are turning to more expensive alternatives such as Mailboxes, the answer is contained in the Return to Sender message pasted over the address. The instructions on what makes up an unacceptable letter, to USPS, is reproduced below in its entirety.

a. Square letters
b. Height exceeds 6 1/8 inches or length exceeds 11 ½ inches or thickness exceeds ¼ inch.
c. Length (dimension parallel to the address) divided by height is less than 1.3 or more than 2.5.
d. Clasps, strings, buttons, or similar closure devices.
e. Too rigid or contains items that cause uneven thickness.
f. Address is parallel to the shorter dimension.

Speaking of dimensions, USPS exists in a parallel dimension to the one the rest of us live in.