Cronkite and Murrow for an ironic millennium

From Maureen Dowd’s interview with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert in the current issue of Rolling Stone.

Rolling StoneStewart: “The cornerstone of politics these days is grievance. It’s really hard to keep that going when you’re in power. I’ve admired their ability to hold on to that idea of being aggrieved while maintaining almost absolute control of all functions of government. I love it.”

Colbert: “I think the way you said it the other day on your show was “Bush is not dumb. He speaks to us like we’re dumb.”

Stewart: “It was sort of like his trip to Baghdad. He went for four hours into the Green Zone and comes back and says Iraq is making great progress. It would be like if we went to the Olive Garden and started going, “I understand Italy.”

Stewart: “I still don’t consider myself political. People confuse political interest with interest in current events. The political industry is devoted to the electing and un-electing of officials, and that can be corrosive. If the Republicans don’t lose either house, people will talk about Karl Rove’s genius. There’s no genius. It will be the triumph of machine and money and strategy over reality. I don’t think that’s anything to honor or enjoy.

Edit note: My original post earlier today included the first Q and A as placeholder until I could purchase and read the full Rolling Stone article.

The Secret Letter from Iraq

Written last month, this straightforward account of life in Iraq by a Marine officer was initially sent just to a small group of family and friends. His honest but wry narration and unusually frank dissection of the mission contrasts sharply with the story presented by both sides of the Iraq war debate, the Pentagon spin masters and fierce critics.

Biggest Outrage — Practically anything said by talking heads on TV about the war in Iraq, not that I get to watch much TV. Their thoughts are consistently both grossly simplistic and politically slanted. Biggest Offender: Bill O’Reilly.

Best Chuck Norris Moment — 13 May. Bad Guys arrived at the government center in a small town to kidnap the mayor, since they have a problem with any form of government that does not include regular beheadings and women wearing burqahs. There were seven of them. As they brought the mayor out to put him in a pick-up truck to take him off to be beheaded (on video, as usual), one of the Bad Guys put down his machinegun so that he could tie the mayor’s hands. The mayor took the opportunity to pick up the machine gun and drill five of the Bad Guys. The other two ran away. One of the dead Bad Guys was on our top twenty wanted list. Like they say, you can’t fight City Hall.

Take a couple of minutes to read the entire letter.

War on Terrorism

John Seery (at The Huffington Post) thinks George Bush has lost the war on terrorism:

“Let’s face it: Osama bin Laden, holed up in his cave somewhere, must be laughing at us. He’s calling the shots, and he really doesn’t have to lift a finger. Why? George Bush is doing his bidding. His administration has suspended many civil liberties and deftly defied the U.S. Constitution. Junked the Geneva Convention. Tortured prisoners. Oversaw criminal acts at Abu Ghraib. Ignored due process at Guantanamo. Engaged in domestic spying without court supervision. Flushed billions down the toilet in Iraq. Weakened our military readiness. Set much of the world against us. The Middle East is now ablaze in terrorism. At home, we live constantly in “elevated fear” levels (whether color coded or not). Our internal politics have become poisonously divided, not united. Osama bin Laden is playing George Bush like a cheap fiddle.”

For some reason, Seery’s post reminded me of George Orwell’s 1984 (Amazon notes):

“Oceania is eternally at war with one of two other vast entities, Eurasia and Eastasia. At any moment, depending upon current alignments, all existing records show either that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia, or that it has always been at war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia. Winston Smith knows this, because his work at the Ministry of Truth involves the constant “correction” of such records. “‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'”

Update: Ashcroft Finds Private-Sector Niche – “Former U.S. attorney general John D. Ashcroft, whose tenure saw the creation of a burgeoning homeland security industry, has emerged as the highest-ranking former Bush administration official to lobby for and invest in companies in that field.” [MSNBC]

Good war?

Wow. Leave it to Dilbert’s dad to make a reasonable case for attacking Iraq. Assume for a moment that it was something along these lines that put us in Iraq… would it have made sense to make such an argument to the American people? Maybe even let us vote on it? And, for the record, I no longer consider the bought-and-paid-for suits in DC as representing my interests. I’m suggesting a vote of the people. Or, perhaps, everyone but me understood from the beginning that this is what the war was about.

Reverend Phelps says god hates queers

The Missouri Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony last night on a bill that would ban demonstrations at funerals from an hour before to an hour after the service. The bill was introduced after Topeka, Kansas minister Fred Phelps and his followers demonstrated at the funeral of a St. Joseph soldier killed in Iraq. Phelps claims the death of American soldiers in Iraq is God’s vengeance on this nation because it tolerates homosexuals. Some emotional testimony (about 10 minutes into the audio) by the wife of a soldiar who was killed in Iraq. The good reverend and his posse were committed enough to demonstrate at some funerals but didn’t have the balls to show up at the hearing. [via Missourinet.com]

Dear Red States

Dear Red States:

We’ve decided we’re leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us.

In case you aren’t aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon,Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay.

We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood.
We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.
We get Harvard. You get Ole’ Miss.
We get 85 percent of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama.
We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we’re going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they’re apparently willing to send to their deaths for no
purpose, and they don’t care if you don’t show pictures of their children’s caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we’re not willing to spend our resources in Bush’s Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country’s fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation’s fresh fruit, 95 percent of America’s quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most
of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale,Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we’re discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy b*****ds believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

By the way, we’re taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.

Peace out,
Blue States

“Dear Red States: A Letter from the Blue”

American Democracy: We were lucky

In an interview with CBS’ Mike Wallace, Russian President Vladimir Putin said “Democracy cannot be exported to some other place. This must be a product of internal domestic development in a society.” Putin went on to say that leaving Iraq without “establishing the grounds for a united country” would (also) be a mistake.

While there’s no reason to take tips on democracy from a former KGB agent, I think Putin is right. My gut tells me that even if we could find and capture every insurgent, and put them on a plane and fly them to say, Mississippi… the good people of Iraq could not or would not cobble together anything you and I would consider Democracy. Never gonna happen.

But in all fairness, I don’t think we could do it again either. Seriously, if we had to start from scratch today, do you think the American people could write a constitution and all the rest? Shiiit. I know I wouldn’t want to live under a government that we’d be capable of forming today. So I thank my lucky stars for our Founding Fathers and hope the government they crafted is strong enough to survive us, their descendants. Like they say, timing is everything.

“Blind hatred instilled by militant Islam”

“The killers always allege particular gripes — Australian troops in Iraq, Christian proselytizing, Hindu intolerance, occupation of the West Bank, theft of Arab petroleum, the Jews, attacks on the Taliban, the 15th-century reconquest of Spain, and, of course, the Crusades. But in most cases — from Mohamed Atta, who crashed into the World Trade Center, to Ahmed Sheik, the former London School of Economics student who planned the beheading of Daniel Pearl, to Magdy Mahmoud Mustafa el-Nashar, the suspected American-educated bomb-maker in London — the common bond is not poverty, a lack of education or legitimate grievance. Instead it is blind hatred instilled by militant Islam.”

— Historian Victor Davis Hanson, writing in the Washington Times

To die for

“Three decades after the U.S. defeat in what Vietnamese call the American War, and just three years since the two nations signed a bilateral trade agreement, U.S.-branded hotels such as Sheraton have opened. U.S.-based tour operators are venturing in. And today, a United Airlines jet touches down in Ho Chi Minh City (still called Saigon by many), marking the first commercial American air link to Vietnam since the war.” — USA TODAY

I think I read some where that the US now does $5 Billion in trade with Vietnam. Flash back to the bloodiest days of “the American War,” and imagine you’re a U.S. soldier being ordered to risk your life to save the South Vietnamese from a life under Communism (I think that’s why we were there). If you could have looked into the future and seen that we would one day be trading partners with Communist Vietnam, would you still have been willing to lay down your life because politicians back in Washington decided it was vital to U.S. foreign policy?

So now our young men and women (and Iraqi men, women and children) are dying for a different foreign policy (I think it’s the War On Terror). Just for fun, let’s pretend it’s 2035 and the U.S. has just signed a new trade agreement with Osama bin Laden. Seems ridiculous. Obscene. But no more impossible than the USA TODAY story above would have seemed in 1970.

Should a young man or woman be asked to lay down their life fighting an enemy that will one day be a trading partner? If we use WWII as an example, I guess the answer is “yes.” We were on the right side in that war and we do lots of business with Germany and Japan (and Italy).

But, somehow, that just doesn’t feel right to me. If I’m going to risk my life to kill the other guys, I don’t want to kiss and make up down the road. Never. Ever. That’s why I would have made a poor soldiar and an even worse Secretary of State.

Three Days of the Condor – Final Scene

I think the best answer can be found at the end of Sydney Pollack’s 1975 spy flick, Three Days of the Condor. Robert Redford’s character (Joe Turner) is talking to CIA agent Higgins (played by Cliff Robertson) about the no-longer-secret plan to invade the Middle East for oil.

Higgins: The fact is, it wasn’t a bad plan. It could’ve worked.

Turner: Jesus — What is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same as telling the truth.

Higgins: It’s simple economics, Turner… There’s no argument. Oil now, 10 or 15 years it’ll be food, or plutonium. Maybe sooner than that. What do you think the people will want us to do then?

Turner: Ask them!

Higgins: Now? (shakes head) Huh-uh. Ask them when they’re running out. When it’s cold at home and the engines stop and people who aren’t used to hunger… go hungry! They won’t want us to ask… (quiet savagery:) They’ll want us to GET it for them.