Can I take a small break from the primaries for a few minutes? While I enjoy the passion, there are some things that have been rattling in my head for awhile now and I know with the way my warped mind works, I won't be able to have fun discussing anything else until I get it out of my head and on (virtual) paper.
But don't worry; it is related to politics and it does concern a desire to see more progressive-minded Democrats in local and federal government. Specifically, it involves reconcilling things that the other side has (to date) managed to use to garner a great deal of suppport and votes. But whenever I've looked at it, it seems very contradictory to me.
My first question is this: how can a modern-day Republican rant about how ineffective and useless government is, yet at the same time rave about the virtues of mixing Church and State?
This act of political yoga uses two messages. The first message involves preying on people's mistrust of the government, which has been high since Nixon's day. It's simply: "The government is ineffective and only serves to take away your hard-earned money. You don't need the government to take care of you, let alone decide what special 'programs' should have your money."
What always amazed me about this message is that while it's obvious that you'd probably wouldn't want to vote someone into government who doesn't believe in it (it's like making Janeane Garofalo the Pope) it's exactly this strategy that has made many a Republican an office-holder. Just as crazy is the sense of shock from the voters when their Chosen One confirms his/her own analysis by being as usefull as a turd-flavored lollypop.
But it doesn't stop there. The second message involves the theory that a complete merging of Church and State is what will make America a strong nation. After all, we've had "In God We Trust" on our money (since in the in 1860s). Why shouldn't we have the Ten Commandments in our schools?
From this you get comments like, "Columbine wouldn't have happened if schools were allowed to pray," which was presented to me at work not too long ago. You get depictions of the Statue of Liberty holding a cross. You get right-wing bobbleheads lamenting over the fact that a incoming Congressman dare to have his ceremonial swearing in done with the Koran.
And sadly, you get instances like the last You Tube Debate; where GOP presidential wannabes practically fell over themselves pledging not to the words of the United States Constitution, but the King James Bible.
Now the one argument (Government Sucks) would fit the other (Church + State = Happy Shiny People) if it weren't for the little fact that there are plenty of religious people in Congress as it is. So if having a legislative body of deity-fearing people (minus one) hasn't improved government, how can infusing a narrow intrepretation of Christianity into our daily lives do the trick?
If I had the platform to respond to this sideways logic, I would say, "Government is ineffective because We The People have been voting in shmucks for the last few election cycles. Merging government with any religion will not only make government more ineffective, but more selective in who it works for."
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My second question is: If we are winning the occupation of war in Iraq, then why isn't the media covering every victorious moment?
So we get stories like this:
BAGHDAD (AP) — November was on course to be the least deadly for American troops in Iraq since March 2006, with the U.S. military reporting its 35th death of the month Thursday.
The figures were a sign of respite from years of bloodshed that forced some 2 million Iraqis to flee their homes and prompted the buildup of nearly 30,000 additional U.S. forces.
And it doesn't take long for the right to run with it. Here's a good example:
Such pessimism about the course of the war matches what network reporters have said on TV. Back in March 2006, NBC's Richard Engel argued on the Today show that "most Iraqis I speak to say, actually, most reporters get it wrong. It’s, the situation on the ground is actually worse than the images we project on television."
And just last month, as U.S. and Iraqi casualties were falling dramatically, CBS's Lara Logan (whose frequent coverage of the Iraq war means she fits the group of reporters the researchers sought to contact) opined on NBC's Tonight Show that the war was going "extremely badly, from my point of view." Reality, she asserted, was "much worse than the picture, the image we even have of Iraq."
In a telling sign of how much progress has been made, last week even the New York Times admitted that the U.S. troop surge had improved daily life in the Iraqi capital, featuring a big front-page headline, "Baghdad Starts to Exhale as Security Improves." That same night, November 20, ABC anchor Charles Gibson interviewed President Bush about the good news from Iraq: "You took a lot of doubting and rather skeptical questions about the surge. I'll give you a chance to crow. Do you want to say, I told you so?"
Now let me try and explain what's so wrong about this. First, the link where the author says " New York Times admitted that the U.S. troop surge had improved daily life in the Iraqi capital" doesn't go to the New York Times story. It goes here (another anti-"liberal" media site).
Of course, instead of linking to the article, this writer shows a link to yet another right-wing criticism of the article. You have to tread through that and more blah-blah-blah before you actually get to the orignal story. Which is here.
And what does it say?
BAGHDAD, Nov. 19 — Five months ago, Suhaila al-Aasan lived in an oxygen tank factory with her husband and two sons, convinced that they would never go back to their apartment in Dora, a middle-class neighborhood in southern Baghdad.
Today she is home again, cooking by a sunlit window, sleeping beneath her favorite wedding picture. And yet, she and her family are remarkably alone. The half-dozen other apartments in her building echo with emptiness and, on most days, Iraqi soldiers are the only neighbors she sees.
"I feel happy," she said, standing in her bedroom, between a flowered bedspread and a bullet hole in the wall. "But my happiness is not complete. We need more people to come back. We need more people to feel safe."
Mrs. Aasan, 45, a Shiite librarian with an easy laugh, is living at the far end of Baghdad’s tentative recovery. She is one of many Iraqis who in recent weeks have begun to test where they can go and what they can do when fear no longer controls their every move.
The security improvements in most neighborhoods are real. Days now pass without a car bomb, after a high of 44 in the city in February. The number of bodies appearing on Baghdad’s streets has plummeted to about 5 a day, from as many as 35 eight months ago, and suicide bombings across Iraq fell to 16 in October, half the number of last summer and down sharply from a recent peak of 59 in March, the American military says.
I just copied what's known as the "beginning" or a story/article. Can someone find the part that implies that this improvement should negate months (and years) of pessimism? Unless I'm mistaken, it's Mrs. Aasan who said, "My happiness is not complete." But you know what? If you can go from your town being bombed every day to being bombed bi-weekly, sure, that's improvement.
Second: as the story said, it's only "most" neighborhoods. It's not referencing parts where American forces haven't had much influence. Part of the problem is that Iraq is unofficially splitting into factions based on sects and which occupying nation was running the show. That's why there a separate opinion story in the NYT saying that Iraq is closer to the brink. Despite what some detractors say, the topic isn't American security forces or the effectiveness of the surge, it's the danger that Turkey poses by "threatening to send troops across the border to wipe out Kurdish rebel bases." All the surge improvements won't mean shit if Bush doesn't keep Turkey out.
And third: the purpose of the surge wasn't just to reduce casualties. As Bush himself said
A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.
Here, Bush is obviously equating "improvements in [Iraqi] neighborhoods and communities" with what the Iraqi government is doing, not what the troops are doing.
Here's two questions for the so-called "liberal media" watchers who are looking for good news: (1) Where the hell were you while Nightline was taking a four-month hiatus from doing on-the-ground reporting from Iraq; and (2) wouldn't the Feel Good Story of the Year be "BUSH WELCOMES IRAQI REFUGEES?" Because (just between us, of course) he ain't doing it.
In sports, "winning" is defined by having more points than the other guy/team while the game is winding down. Bench players make moves like franchise players. The opposition is either hanging their heads down, or arguing with each other. The fans are in complete exstacy.
The term implies two things: (1) victory is obvious; and (2) the game is almost over.
So if we were to equate apply "winning" to the situation in Iraq, what exactly are the signs here?
Ah, that feels better. So who wants to talk about the primaries now?