Op-Ed
AUSTIN, Texas -- It occasionally occurs to me that if I could understand the Bush administration's foreign policy, I might like it. After months of threatening Iran with everything up to and including nuclear war, we are now full of Sweet Reason and offering to have diplomatic talks with the very people we have been denouncing as Beyond Vile.
I never mind a good about-face in foreign policy myself. Always reminds me of the times when that great duo Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger decided it would be a good thing to convince the world they were both quite perfectly mad. They succeeded. (Bonus point: What did Richard Nixon say upon first seeing the Great Wall of China? He said, "This is, indeed, a great wall." Almost as good as the time George H.W. Bush barfed on the prime minister of Japan.)
I never mind a good about-face in foreign policy myself. Always reminds me of the times when that great duo Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger decided it would be a good thing to convince the world they were both quite perfectly mad. They succeeded. (Bonus point: What did Richard Nixon say upon first seeing the Great Wall of China? He said, "This is, indeed, a great wall." Almost as good as the time George H.W. Bush barfed on the prime minister of Japan.)
AUSTIN, Texas -- Thank goodness the Republicans are around to tell me what to worry about. The flag-burning crisis -- here in Austin, there's that pall of smoke rising from the West every morning (it's from an area called Tarrytown, where they burn hundreds of flags daily).
You didn't know hundreds of flags were being burned daily? Actually, you can count on your hand the number of incidents reported over the last five years. For instance, there was one flag burned in 2005 by a drunken teenager and one by a protester in California in 2002. This appalling record of ravishment must be stopped. You're clearly not worried about what matters.
Gay marriage, now there's a crisis. Well, OK, so there isn't much gay marriage going on here in Texas. None, in fact. First, we made it illegal. Then, we made it unconstitutional. But President Bush is all concerned about it, so I guess we have to alter the U.S. Constitution.
Gus and Captain Call (of "Lonesome Dove" fame) will be an item -- with who knows who waiting in line right after them.
You didn't know hundreds of flags were being burned daily? Actually, you can count on your hand the number of incidents reported over the last five years. For instance, there was one flag burned in 2005 by a drunken teenager and one by a protester in California in 2002. This appalling record of ravishment must be stopped. You're clearly not worried about what matters.
Gay marriage, now there's a crisis. Well, OK, so there isn't much gay marriage going on here in Texas. None, in fact. First, we made it illegal. Then, we made it unconstitutional. But President Bush is all concerned about it, so I guess we have to alter the U.S. Constitution.
Gus and Captain Call (of "Lonesome Dove" fame) will be an item -- with who knows who waiting in line right after them.
President Bush in Washington Monday told a room full of revved up anti-gay Christian conservatives that, rather than focus attention on the pressing issues of the day--Iraq, Iranian nukes, the economy, gas prices--one of the biggest priorities facing the country today is making sure homosexuals cannot legally marry. If you believe Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is critical to the moral survival of the country. No matter that recent polls show that Americans view the gay marriage issue as #7 on the priority list. We're in an election year here, folks, and these Repugs desperately need their wedge issue to rile up the base.
"Our policies should aim to strengthen families, not undermine them," Bush said in his speech. "And changing the definition of marriage would undermine the family structure." Honestly, has there ever been a more non-issue than this?
"Our policies should aim to strengthen families, not undermine them," Bush said in his speech. "And changing the definition of marriage would undermine the family structure." Honestly, has there ever been a more non-issue than this?
He's getting quite creative, this coy former vice president of ours. When asked if he's running for president in 2008, Al Gore devises every possible answer to throw his questioners off the trail: "I have no intention of running." "I have no plans to be a candidate for president again." "I don't expect to run." "I can't imagine any circumstances in which I would become a candidate again." "Politics is behind me." Every answer, that is, except the one that has any meaning: "If nominated I will not run; if elected I will not serve." That was the unequivocal answer famously given by Civil War-era general William Tecumseh Sherman when asked about his presidential aspirations upon retiring from the Army in 1884. Sherman, unlike Gore, left no doubt of his "intention."
"I haven't made a so-called Sherman statement, because it just seems unnecessary, kind of odd to do that....but that's not an effort to hold the door open. It's more the internal shifting of gears," said Gore in an interview broadcast Sunday on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."
"I haven't made a so-called Sherman statement, because it just seems unnecessary, kind of odd to do that....but that's not an effort to hold the door open. It's more the internal shifting of gears," said Gore in an interview broadcast Sunday on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."
I just read an excellent book from http://www.endthewartour.org called "10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military." Personally I was never attracted to the military because I could never stand having anyone tell me what to do – well, and because I had parents who helped me find other options in life.
The military glorifies the giving and obeying of orders as somehow something good for its own sake, something called "discipline" or "character." I can't judge whether I have either of those things, but I do know the last place I would ever have thought to turn for a career was an institution in which I would have had to do what a bunch of mean bastards said to do simply because they said to do it. That wouldn’t have worked. I'd have ended up a conscientious objector even in peace time.
The military glorifies the giving and obeying of orders as somehow something good for its own sake, something called "discipline" or "character." I can't judge whether I have either of those things, but I do know the last place I would ever have thought to turn for a career was an institution in which I would have had to do what a bunch of mean bastards said to do simply because they said to do it. That wouldn’t have worked. I'd have ended up a conscientious objector even in peace time.
Have you ever heard someone try to argue that the Iraq War was a mistake but that now the proper course is to continue the mistake a bit longer or to carefully end it in a long and complicated way that could take months or years? Have you ever wondered how such a position, if examined in detail, could possibly make any sense?
Wonder no more. Such a position, in various forms, actually makes no sense. In fact, such a position requires a stunning degree of illogic.
There's an important book at http://www.endthewartour.org called "Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal" by Anthony Arnove. The book has a Foreword and an Afterword by Howard Zinn, who in 1967 published "Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal." Arnove's book is important because it refutes all the major claims against immediate withdrawal.
Arnove begins with some historical background, and then lays out an overwhelming case for the following points. I'll list them here, but you'll need to read the book (it's only 100 pages) for the arguments:
Wonder no more. Such a position, in various forms, actually makes no sense. In fact, such a position requires a stunning degree of illogic.
There's an important book at http://www.endthewartour.org called "Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal" by Anthony Arnove. The book has a Foreword and an Afterword by Howard Zinn, who in 1967 published "Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal." Arnove's book is important because it refutes all the major claims against immediate withdrawal.
Arnove begins with some historical background, and then lays out an overwhelming case for the following points. I'll list them here, but you'll need to read the book (it's only 100 pages) for the arguments:
I’ve been thinking about Tariq Aziz a lot since the New York Times
printed a front-page story on the former Iraqi deputy prime minister in
late May. A color photograph showed him decked out in what the article
described as “an open-necked hospital gown, with a patient’s plastic
identification tag on his wrist.” He looked gaunt.
The last time I saw Aziz, at a Baghdad meeting two months before the U.S.-led invasion began, he was still portly in one of his well-tailored business suits. If Aziz was worried, he didn’t show it.
Now, he’s playing a part that U.S. media seem to relish. The Times headline said “Hussein’s Former Envoy Gushes With Adulation on Witness Stand,” but to sum up the coverage it might have just as aptly declared: “How the Mighty Have Fallen.”
The last time I saw Aziz, at a Baghdad meeting two months before the U.S.-led invasion began, he was still portly in one of his well-tailored business suits. If Aziz was worried, he didn’t show it.
Now, he’s playing a part that U.S. media seem to relish. The Times headline said “Hussein’s Former Envoy Gushes With Adulation on Witness Stand,” but to sum up the coverage it might have just as aptly declared: “How the Mighty Have Fallen.”
AUSTIN, Texas -- Thank goodness the Republicans are around to tell me what to worry about. The flag-burning crisis -- here in Austin, there's that pall of smoke rising from the West every morning (it's from an area called Tarrytown, where they burn hundreds of flags daily).
You didn't know hundreds of flags were being burned daily? Actually, you can count on your hand the number of incidents reported over the last five years. For instance, there was one flag burned in 2005 by a drunken teenager and one by a protester in California in 2002. This appalling record of ravishment must be stopped. You're clearly not worried about what matters.
Gay marriage, now there's a crisis. Well, OK, so there isn't much gay marriage going on here in Texas. None, in fact. First, we made it illegal. Then, we made it unconstitutional. But President Bush is all concerned about it, so I guess we have to alter the U.S. Constitution.
Gus and Captain Call (of "Lonesome Dove" fame) will be an item -- with who knows who waiting in line right after them.
You didn't know hundreds of flags were being burned daily? Actually, you can count on your hand the number of incidents reported over the last five years. For instance, there was one flag burned in 2005 by a drunken teenager and one by a protester in California in 2002. This appalling record of ravishment must be stopped. You're clearly not worried about what matters.
Gay marriage, now there's a crisis. Well, OK, so there isn't much gay marriage going on here in Texas. None, in fact. First, we made it illegal. Then, we made it unconstitutional. But President Bush is all concerned about it, so I guess we have to alter the U.S. Constitution.
Gus and Captain Call (of "Lonesome Dove" fame) will be an item -- with who knows who waiting in line right after them.
That "perfectly safe" mushroom cloud that was supposed to rise 10,000 feet over the Nevada Test Site this month will have to remain a mere gleam in Donald Rumsfeld's eye for the time being.
The security state, which had planned to jump-start its WMD program with a supposedly conventional explosion large enough to mimic the effects of a small nuclear weapon, has run smack into the ghosts of its own fraudulent past. The citizens downwind of the test site, the furious sons and daughters of the victims of earlier testing and earlier lies, have forced the government to regroup.
A serious legal challenge in U.S. District Court and general outrage among the locals - the largely conservative residents of Nevada, Utah, Idaho - have complicated the plans of the Departments of Energy and Defense to set off a major above-ground explosion at the site, the first since 1962, without public input or even a legitimate environmental impact statement. The big bang known as Divine Strake, a 700-ton concoction of ammonium nitrate, fuel oil and God knows what else, is on indefinite hold.
The security state, which had planned to jump-start its WMD program with a supposedly conventional explosion large enough to mimic the effects of a small nuclear weapon, has run smack into the ghosts of its own fraudulent past. The citizens downwind of the test site, the furious sons and daughters of the victims of earlier testing and earlier lies, have forced the government to regroup.
A serious legal challenge in U.S. District Court and general outrage among the locals - the largely conservative residents of Nevada, Utah, Idaho - have complicated the plans of the Departments of Energy and Defense to set off a major above-ground explosion at the site, the first since 1962, without public input or even a legitimate environmental impact statement. The big bang known as Divine Strake, a 700-ton concoction of ammonium nitrate, fuel oil and God knows what else, is on indefinite hold.
Editor's Note: Founding editor of the Free Press, Steve Conliff died today, June 1, of cancer. His alternative and underground writings pre-date the founding of the Free Press in 1970. Conliff had just compiled the first seven volumes of the Free Press for an anthology book project for CICJ Books. We will get his work in print as soon as possible. Our condolences go out to his wife Suzie Bird-Conliff and his family, particularly his son Byron who has worked closely with the Free Press this year. The following article is re-run to highlight one of the reasons Conliff is a legend in this town. Yippie, what a great life!
Steve Conliff's website
Read Steve's last remarks to the Free Press Awards Dinner
On pies and Rhodes
May 1, 2001
Steve Conliff's website
Read Steve's last remarks to the Free Press Awards Dinner
On pies and Rhodes
May 1, 2001