Short Stories, Long Odds

Sorry, sorry. My bad. School started and I got a van. In the course of doing that, I missed some important things. Let me pontificate, in brief:

Bush’s Inauguration Speech
Freedom: Used something like 29 times. Liberty: Used about half as often and almost always qualified, as in “your liberty”, “their liberty”, etc. I had planned to write a long essay about this brand of codification and what it means, but it is obvious I didn’t get to it. The point of it was this: presidential speechwriters don’t get to be presidential speechwriters by not knowing the meanings of the words they use.

Freedom is more often a broad, generalized idea, while liberty has specific implications as to government and how it interacts with the body politic. Liberty, specifically, is often cited as meaning “freedom from unjust governmental restriction, oppression, or control.” It almost always has “freedom” as a descriptor or qualifier, freedom being far more broadly interpreted. This is something to consider, especially with another four years of misbegotten foreign policy stretching out in front of us.

From a taste perspective, I question the usage of MC Ashcroft’s “Let The Eagle Soar” as a featured inauguration ditty.

Also, when Bush put the rest of the world’s leader’s on notice and pledged that our mission is to end tyranny world-wide, he meant it. Which brings me to my next point, about everyone’s favorite angry militant Islamic state:

Iran
The European Press is shucking a lot more news and analysis about Iran than American media outlets. For instance, observe the differences between a CNN search and a BBCNews search for the term “Iran”. If you look at the BBC search, you will see that many people are concerned about Iran for a myriad of reasons, but Americans remain largely unaware of how tense the situation is becoming because of everything else we talk about instead.

I have brought up Iran several times and people sometimes even say “Wow, you talk about Iran a bunch.” I do, and there’s good reason - not to whip an old turn of phrase, but Iran is a powder keg, and it is a powder keg INSIDE the powder keg that is the Middle East, and also, Iran is lit.

Iran the powder keg is lit, that is, rather than implying the whole country is drunk.

They aren’t.

So, consider this story I saw just today on the wire - Israel is so totally ready to bomb Iran it is totally not funny. I mentioned this before (”Israel prepares to drop bombs, album” 10/22/04), and if you’re wondering why I always refer to the foreign policy precept of the pre-emptive strike as the most terrible thing since mung, here’s why: Israel is saying it will pre-emptively strike Iran, and Iran is saying it will pre-emptively strike everyone. The British Parliament demanded a straight, unqualified pledge out of Tony Blair today that the UK wouldn’t get involved with any military action against Iran, and his answer? “I don’t think the US is planning on attacking them.”

Sigh.

Many times when I discuss this with young people, I hear their reply of “Yeah, but we could totally kick Iran’s ass!” I remind them that

• this is what they said about Iraq
• there is absolutely no guarantee we could kick Iran’s ass because we’re not sure how much military strumph they have built up and secreted away, and
• they wouldn’t need much to put the hurt on us if we open a second front against Iran while we’re still in Iraq

Bush is now saying that he will not rule out military action against Iran. Blair said the same thing before he left #10 Downing today, presumably on his way to tea or a rollicking good game of ‘footie’. Iran and Israel are saying, without mincing words, that they are going to attack each other.

Its going to happen, and the recent upswing in activity as well as the new unforgiving, hard-line diplomatic language makes me feel like it will be a lot sooner than later. Iran isn’t just saying they’re going to attack Israel or American forces, they are emphatically stating they can repel any US attack.

Besides, mission accomplished after the elections on Sunday, right? We’ll need something else to do!

SHOULDER MOUNTED ROCKET SCARE
Oh, apparently we have to root out terrorists with bazookas standing on rooftops shooting down passenger planes!

The very fact that this was news for two days represents a fundamental problem with Joe American’s perception of terrorism - he has no idea what terrorism actually is or how it works. By its very nature, terrorism is a long-term engagement for the terrorist or terrorist organization. These guys aren’t camped out in the woods waiting for a plane to fly over so they can run out, climb a tree, and shoot it down - operationally, terrorist organizations plan for YEARS before they do anything and all variables are considered. A terrorist organization that makes snap judgment and rash operational decisions is one that doesn’t last long.

One of the reasons we’re having such a hard time fighting the insurgency in Iraq is because of this very misconception - the insurgents are guerilla fighters and now their ranks have been swelled by the resultant influx of terrorist recruits. We began by attempting to fight them as a traditional force, with the philosophy that once we kill them all, they’re gone. Remember “Smoke ‘em out of their holes”?

The absolute and catastrophic short-sightedness of the DOD and the Pentagon in this respect is astonishing - people have actually been surprised that we’re having a hard time in Iraq, or that insurgent numbers are increasing. Just yesterday Bush was grandstanding about the Iraq War, saying “I’ve always considered it to be a part of the War on Terror”.

Well, now it is, genius, but it certainly wasn’t before we got there.

So anyways, I highly doubt that al-Qaeda will put people in place in the United States to shoot down airliners. It doesn’t fit with the M.O. that any amount of study about terrorist organizations will reveal al-Qaeda to have.

Iraqi Elections
You think its hard getting to YOUR polling place? I bet you don’t have to duck mortar fire on your way to vote.

The Iraqi Elections are going to be a disaster, plain and simple. Most of the Sunni population feel as if the election is a joke, or a sham, or a fraud. Most of them aren’t going to vote, so the parliamentary representation will be disproportionate. Many Americans are still blissfully unaware of the concept of election illegitimacy, even after 2000. If they pay attention at all, they are about to be introduced to it on a grand scale.

Also, you can bet that people are going to have problems voting because, rather than seeking to disenfranchise them like what happens here in America, in Iraq people are trying to kill you.

Finally, it won’t help that, when people finally survive the fucking Gauntlet Terminator of Democracy and get in the booth, the ballot is hideously complicated.

Note that I’m not bring the intelligence of the average Iraqi into question. I think all people have tiny strokes when they go into voting booths, which makes the ballot at least five times as difficult to understand than it actually is. You’ve all seen the kind of problems we have here, and we weren’t voting directly on several hundred candidates.