In some ways, it would be liberating to be a chickenhawk. You get to be proven demonstrably wrong all the time and get praised for it, and you get to dress up like George W. Bush and go winging around the Imperium with manly men like Stanley McChrystal, or in a pinch David Petreaus. Best [...]
I am again having trouble believing that the American people as a whole really care about veterans, or perhaps even the people who are actively serving today. They might on an abstract level, but there’s no risk in that. Troops care for troops. Veterans care about veterans, and family members care as best they can [...]
Jack Murtha, the longtime Democratic representative from Pennsylvania, died today, after having lived long enough to see the wars he wanted to end continued indefinitely, but satisfied in knowing history would prove him right. I guess these days if you want to try to stop a war in this country, you should get started when [...]
Sheesh, just when I was complaining about this war business again, with the existing two already lost the righties have picked out a neighbor or two to toss on the pile, and from the looks of it, Pakistan’s already on top. It was an awkward revelation when a dozen Americans were killed (and possibly a [...]
It is getting harder and harder to believe that September, 11, 2001 was, well, almost NINE YEARS AGO. To hear our politicians speak, you’d think it was last week. We’ve grown accustomed to onerous waits and pointless hoop-jumping in airports, endless and expanding wars all over the globe, militarized policing, the mainstreaming of torture, and [...]
The New York Time’s notoriously Fox-addled political reporter, Adam Nagourney, engages in some typical but sadly anachronistic “Democrats are doomed” hand-wringing in Thursday’s paper, faux-fretting that given the (factually inaccurate, but that’s par for the course) supposedly massive wave of Democratic retirements in the Senate, Obama will be hamstrung in carrying out his “agenda.” The [...]
In Jeff Sharlet’s disturbing book, The Family, Family leader Doug Coe describes his group’s philosophy as “Jesus plus nothing,” and he and his followers repeat this nonsensical mantra as though it meant anything. Actually, it means a lot of things, but if Jesus were to find out what they were, he’d be suing for libel. [...]
For whatever reason, and there are many possible ones, political disaffection is measured differently on the left and right. Lefties, as charter members of the reality based community, tend to wait for evidence of malfeasance before they get upset about it, whereas righties can work themselves up into a serious wardrobe malfunction and/or Depends moment [...]
Back in the days when Hitler comparisons were verboten, that is, when we had a far-right President whose social, military, and civil liberties policies looked a lot like Der Fuhrer, I often got a laugh out of them. Hitler, after all, in addition to making the trains run on time, hosted a successful Olympics, built [...]
Each day lately that I look around at the news pouring forth, I see less to write about, since the miasma of unreality that obscures every discussion makes any comment seem both untimely and unnecessary. Great matters of past and future, war and peace, and everything else, are decided from above and merely served up [...]