AS WE WATCH THE BREAKDOWN of Rumsfeld’s “effect-based” military strategy, we wonder how that could happen, because it worked so well in war games. Now we learn why: the games were rigged. Garbage in, garbage out. (And it’s The Army Times breaking the story?)
QUICK FOLLOWUP. In case it wasn’t clear, my problem with Hampton Sides is that his behavior–in taking and then backing out of an embedding assignment, and turning his own decision into the topic of reportage–contributes to the dilution of the stream of information that informed citizens need. As I said, I don’t begrudge his decision, because I would not voluntarily go anywhere near Iraq. Hell, the thought of driving 45 miles to Salem gives me the heebie-jeebies. But Hampton Sides’ feelings and fears, though he’s a sensitive guy, are not worth elucidating. His articles might serve in a small way as a prism for the horrors that US troops are being exposed to, but are primarily journalistic narcissism.
LET ME HEAP MULTIMEDIA SCORN. There’s a dude–let’s call him Hampton Sides–who is a journalist. His shtick these days–journalists can’t just report any longer, now they need a shtick–is that he was going to be “embedded” with a group of Marines in Iraq. Wait, saith the blog reader, that’s the shtick of lots of people. But the little nuance that separates Hampton Sides from the rest, o reader, is that Hampton Sides chickened out. He got to the point where they were hearing about precautions they would take in the event of a chemical weapons attack, and decided that “I couldn’t do this.” He just didn’t get on the bus that would have taken him to his assigned Marines.
No problem. I would not want to be in Iraq, I think the war is wrong for a whole host of reasons, I’ve averse to the thought of being killed or maimed, sure. I buy the decision, and wouldn’t criticize him for it. But this dude, this “Hampton Sides,” has turned his rationale cowardice into a hook upon which to hang his journalistic hat. He had a piece in the March 20 New Yorker, narrating (what else) his decision to chicken out. He was even on fucking FRESH AIR, being interviewed for a goddamn HOUR talking about (what else) his decision to chicken out! I don’t like Terri Gross, but even I pitied her, trying to fill an hour of interview time with some dude–let’s call him Hampton Sides, just for kicks–talking about his chickenshit behavior. She even got on a tangent about what he’s doing instead of being embedded with Marines in harm’s way–he’s safely esconced in the Marriott in downtown Kuwait City, describing how the teeming Pakistani “guest workers” are so diligent in their pampering of the foreign journalists who are themselves teeming in the Marriott, waiting for their next spoonfeeding of “news” from Supreme Allied Command, that an aforementioned teeming journalist cannot so much as put a spent banana peel on a plate before it is [whoosh!] whisked away.
Did I mention that I would have made the same choice? Or alternatively, that I never would have volunteered to be “embedded” in the first place? The issue here is that we have human beings in the armed forces who never had the option of choosing not to get on the bus to their “embed” location. These folks–folks with small lives, small-town lives, folks who would never write for the New Yorker or be intereviewed by the liks of Terri Gross–who joined the Army Reserves because it promised money for college for two weeks a year and one weekend a month, and find themselves today in a sandy muddy abyss, with bullets whizzing around and oily smoke clouding their vision, hearing nightmares about a bunch of mechanics who took a wrong turn going through a town and found themselves roughed up on Iraqi TV, paralyzed with terror because they just watched Baathist paramilitaries pop caps in the heads of their platoonmates.
So, that dude? Hampton Sides, let’s call him? Fuck Hampton Sides.
43 USED TO COMPARE HIMSELF TO TEDDY ROOSEVELT. TR said this:
“The President is merely the most important among a large number of
public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree
which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or
inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the
Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should
be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it
is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when
he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and
servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or
that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only
unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American
public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else.
But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant,
about him than about any one else.”
Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918
EXCELLENT LONG ARTICLE HERE by Josh Marshall on the administration’s overarching (and overreaching) war plans. The basic thesis is that the current action in Iraq is the opening move of a design to bring the US into a “world war between the United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism.” While it is sold to the public as an anti-cult-of-personality action against Saddam Hussein and his presumed and purported stocks of chemical and biological weapons, it is specifically calculated to draw us into wider conflict in the Arab world, the thinking being that such conflict is inevitable, so we should dictate the time and terms of the engagement. Quote:
“In short, the administration is trying to roll the table–to use U.S. military force, or the threat of it, to reform or topple virtually every regime in the region, from foes like Syria to friends like Egypt, on the theory that it is the undemocratic nature of these regimes that ultimately breeds terrorism. So events that may seem negative–Hezbollah for the first time targeting American civilians; U.S. soldiers preparing for war with Syria–while unfortunate in themselves, are actually part of the hawks’ broader agenda. Each crisis will draw U.S. forces further into the region and each countermove in turn will create problems that can only be fixed by still further American involvement, until democratic governments–or, failing that, U.S. troops–rule the entire Middle East.”
Marshall’s critique of the neocon plan for the Chapter 11 forced reorganization of the Middle East is valuable, but not as valuable as the exposure of the plan itself. Scary stuff.
CHECK THIS OUT. [Warning — law geekiness ahead — warning]
US Supreme Court Justice Antonin “Nino” Scalia is known for making sure that his preferred arguments are elicited in hearings. This is a textbook example, from his questioning yesterday of the lawyer arguing in favor of the Texas law against homosexual sodomy, in Lawrence v. Texas. (excerpt via the Times, nice exegesis by Dahlia Lithwick in Slate.)
JUSTICE SCALIA Why do you think that the public perception of homosexual acts has not changed? Do you think it hasn’t?
MR. ROSENTHAL The public perception of it?
JUSTICE SCALIA Yes, yes. Do you think there’s public approval of it?
MR. ROSENTHAL Of homosexuals, but not of homosexuality activity.
JUSTICE SCALIA What do you base that on?
MR. ROSENTHAL I beg your pardon?
JUSTICE SCALIA What do you base that on?
MR. ROSENTHAL Well, even ——
JUSTICE SCALIA I mean I think there ought to be some evidence which you can bring forward.
MR. ROSENTHAL Sure.
JUSTICE SCALIA Like perhaps the failure of the federal Congress to add the sexual preference to the list of protected statuses against which private individuals are not permitted to discriminate, that addition has been sought several times and it’s been rejected by the federal Congress, hasn’t it?
MORE BAD NEWS. Ashcroft plans to appeal a district court order that Jose Padilla is entitled to see a lawyer. Priest Holmes had hip surgery. Dennis Hastert demanded the administration immediately file a WTO challenge to the EU’s moratorium on GMO foods. And a bunch of Candians are attempting a coup over at the governing body for international figure skating.
IT’S A COMIX DAY. This Modern World, In Contempt, Get Your War On, Doonesbury. And a whole list.
