I find myself with little to write about.
Iran has officially gotten froggy.
With Romania.
Wow. It takes real balls to start a scuffling match with a country that has no navy worth mentioning. I'm sure the 12th Imam would be proud.
Wake me up when someone gets killed over this lawsuit-with-machine-guns.
There's a huge flaming argument over progress in Baghdad. Are we making progress? Is violence up? Is it down? Is Iraq in a civil war?
What's the threshold for a civil war, anyway? Was Bloody Kansas a precursor to the Civil War, or the first campaign, or what? Does it take 10 people, 100 people, 1,000 people, 10,000 people, 100,000 people killed?
Does it matter which label we use if your mother is one of the 10?
Does it matter whether we label it 'sectarian violence' or 'civil war'? Maybe to Democrats looking to ditch Iraq. It certaintly sounds scarier. "Civil War" is used, it seems, as a code word for "enough violence to make America withdraw". Civil War is, I presume, supposed to conjure up images of Sherman burning Atlanta, and the movie Gettysburg. I doubt your average voter knows much more about our Civil War. But the sorry state of the public education system is a different rant.
Sadly, in Middle Eastern Culture there is not the same sort of huge gaping divide between absolute peace in 1850 and total war with hundreds of thousands of casualties, complete mobilization of the economy, a draft in both halves of the country, etc etc etc in 1862. A certain level of systemic violence is inherently a part of the fabric of daily life in Arabic culture. It's normal. And it doesn't happen that someone bombards Ft. Sumpter and suddenly everything ramps up to this massive scale. No, it slowly escalates and then dies down in a cyclical manner on a constant basis, responding to conditions too subtle to be noticed from the roof of a hotel in the Green Zone.
Wasn't it these same assinine Democrats who were hopping up and down for the United States to get involved in civil wars in Bosnia and Serbia? What's the difference? Is it that the Democrats believe that once little brown people start killing each other in a "civil war" the problem is insoluble, but that if the combatants are white Europeans, it is a moral duty for the United States to intervene?
Or is that a properly "progressive" Mr. Clinton intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo, while it is "Chimp-Hitler" Mr. Bush wishes to keep fighting in Iraq?
Or is that in Bosnia and Kosovo we were killing Christians on behalf of radical Islamic fundamentalists (in alliance with Iran and Syria) while in Iraq we would be killing radical Islamic fundamentalists?
Funny, last time I checked we are at war with radical Islamic fundamentalism. George Bush can't say so because he thinks it would cost him his friendship with the Saudi royal family (the root cause of radical Islamic fundamentalism in the world today), but I have no such constraints. I actually want to sterilize the entire Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a first step towards restoring sanity in the Middle East. I'm an asshole.
Whatever. The utter irrelevance of it all, the absolute absurdity of everything is weighing rather heavily on me today. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
Right now, the only thing that seem completely real to me is the phone conversation I had with my wife about half an hour ago.
With Romania.
Wow. It takes real balls to start a scuffling match with a country that has no navy worth mentioning. I'm sure the 12th Imam would be proud.
Wake me up when someone gets killed over this lawsuit-with-machine-guns.
There's a huge flaming argument over progress in Baghdad. Are we making progress? Is violence up? Is it down? Is Iraq in a civil war?
What's the threshold for a civil war, anyway? Was Bloody Kansas a precursor to the Civil War, or the first campaign, or what? Does it take 10 people, 100 people, 1,000 people, 10,000 people, 100,000 people killed?
Does it matter which label we use if your mother is one of the 10?
Does it matter whether we label it 'sectarian violence' or 'civil war'? Maybe to Democrats looking to ditch Iraq. It certaintly sounds scarier. "Civil War" is used, it seems, as a code word for "enough violence to make America withdraw". Civil War is, I presume, supposed to conjure up images of Sherman burning Atlanta, and the movie Gettysburg. I doubt your average voter knows much more about our Civil War. But the sorry state of the public education system is a different rant.
Sadly, in Middle Eastern Culture there is not the same sort of huge gaping divide between absolute peace in 1850 and total war with hundreds of thousands of casualties, complete mobilization of the economy, a draft in both halves of the country, etc etc etc in 1862. A certain level of systemic violence is inherently a part of the fabric of daily life in Arabic culture. It's normal. And it doesn't happen that someone bombards Ft. Sumpter and suddenly everything ramps up to this massive scale. No, it slowly escalates and then dies down in a cyclical manner on a constant basis, responding to conditions too subtle to be noticed from the roof of a hotel in the Green Zone.
Wasn't it these same assinine Democrats who were hopping up and down for the United States to get involved in civil wars in Bosnia and Serbia? What's the difference? Is it that the Democrats believe that once little brown people start killing each other in a "civil war" the problem is insoluble, but that if the combatants are white Europeans, it is a moral duty for the United States to intervene?
Or is that a properly "progressive" Mr. Clinton intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo, while it is "Chimp-Hitler" Mr. Bush wishes to keep fighting in Iraq?
Or is that in Bosnia and Kosovo we were killing Christians on behalf of radical Islamic fundamentalists (in alliance with Iran and Syria) while in Iraq we would be killing radical Islamic fundamentalists?
Funny, last time I checked we are at war with radical Islamic fundamentalism. George Bush can't say so because he thinks it would cost him his friendship with the Saudi royal family (the root cause of radical Islamic fundamentalism in the world today), but I have no such constraints. I actually want to sterilize the entire Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a first step towards restoring sanity in the Middle East. I'm an asshole.
Whatever. The utter irrelevance of it all, the absolute absurdity of everything is weighing rather heavily on me today. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
Right now, the only thing that seem completely real to me is the phone conversation I had with my wife about half an hour ago.
posted by Just A Decurion at 8/24/2006 03:27:00 PM
4 Comments:
...Or is that in Bosnia and Kosovo we were killing Christians on behalf of radical Islamic fundamentalists...
The term "Christian" being a loosely constructed use thereof, I hope?
Ah,depends on who you're talking about.
Milosevic and the paramilitaries? Yeah, I could put the word 'notional' in there.
The little old Serb ladies who require escort by armed troops so that Albanians don't rape and murder them on their way to the store? I don't know.
The KLA and the Bosnians are all, I'm sure, good Muslims.
You and Ghost of a Flea are on fire today.
Anonymous- Yeah, 'cause you know, the Muslims that went in and shot up Christian churches and bombled schools are such wonderful Muslims.
But hey, it's okay to kill Christians since they're the root of all evil in the world today, right?
Fuck off.
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