Month: April 2004

Some background: the vice president booked a speaking engagement at the same college where Winston Churchill gave his “Iron Curtain” speech, ostensibly to make what his campaign staff called “a major foreign policy statement.” Turns out to have been a stump speech, attacking the Democrats’ presumptive nominee such that the president of the college, a retired brigadier general and decorated veteran of Korea and Vietnam, felt compelled to apologize to the faculty and students for the speech’s content.

TheState.com: Your guide to news, sports, jobs, homes, cars:

[Westminster College President Fletcher] Lamkin said he was not expecting a speech minus any mention of presidential politics during an election year, but that the second half “was all about politics and a political stump speech and in that respect it was disappointing.”

In the e-mail, Lamkin said that “in the interest of balance and fairness and integrity, we will strongly encourage Senator Kerry to take advantage of this venue to make his views known as well.”

Kerry spokesman Bill Burton said the campaign had received Lamkin’s e-mail and would consider a visit to Westminster, which is located in the center of a presidential battleground state.

So instead of cloaking themselves in Churchill’s statesmanlike mantle, they open themselves for a widely-publicized rebuttal in a key state. If stupidity was painful, these clowns would be incapacitated.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: April 25, 2004 – May 01, 2004 Archives:

George W. Bush has faced three opponents (McCain, Gore and Kerry) since he came onto the national political stage — each served in Vietnam, though each under very different circumstances. He’s had his lieutenants attack the service of each one.

So here we have the same pattern again — no different. The president wants to challenge John Kerry’s military service. So he gets Karen to do it for him. You can get tripped in the chutzpah of this because this not only throws light on an earlier period when the president couldn’t fight his own fights, it repeats the pattern.

It seems risky to attack a soldier for their service, especially one with multiple decorations or one whose sacrifices are obvious (John Kerry, Robert Kerrey, Max Cleland): it’s not like a Purple Heart is a winning Lotto ticket. And it seems even less sensible when the attacker has managed to avoid putting themselves in a harm’s way.

On the other hand, attacking those who initiated a war and made the decision to send young men and women to their deaths is not just sensible but should be required if we are to consider ourselves a free people.

I think it’s wise for the Kerry campaign to let the documents do their talking on this, but I hope to see this issue come up in a debate, when it’s just the candidates, no handlers, no family retainers.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: April 25, 2004 – May 01, 2004 Archives

Interesting discussion about why so many people — voters — still believe in the myths of a Saddam Hussein/Osama bin Laden connection, the stores of terror weapons in Iraq, etc.

Juan Cole takes the academic approach and looks at this as epistemology in action. I don’t think that’s necessarily relevant.

It seemed to me I had encountered this before, as cognitive dissonance:

According to cognitive dissonance theory, there is a tendency for individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions (i.e., beliefs, opinions). When there is an inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors (dissonance), something must change to eliminate the dissonance. In the case of a discrepancy between attitudes and behavior, it is most likely that the attitude will change to accommodate the behavior.

If you give up on something as essential as Iraq war, what other beliefs will have to be examined? As these things go, wars are not terribly subtle: if someone can get that wrong, what more refined elements of statecraft might have been fumbled?

I sympathize with anyone who is still clinging to the increasingly threadbare justification for the war, the patriot act, and the other assorted affronts to the founders’ legacy. I just hope they let go and get hold of the truth before their beliefs unravel completely.

The New York Times > New York Region > About New York: Home From Iraq, and Without a Home:

Two months ago, she returned to Bronx circumstances that were no less difficult than when she had left them three years earlier; no yellow ribbons greeted her. Now, every day, she soldiers on to find a residence where the rent is not covered by in-kind payments of late-night bus rides to shelters and early-morning rousting. All the while, she keeps in mind the acronym she learned in the Army: Leadership. L is for loyalty; D for duty; R for respect; S for selfless service; H for honor; P for personal courage. “And I is my favorite,” she says. “It’s integrity.”
[ . . . ]
A relationship with another soldier ended after she became pregnant, and in early 2003 she flew to the California home of some friends from the military – the Bronx was not an option, she says – to give birth in March of that year. A few weeks later, she did the hardest thing she has ever had to do: she left Shylah with her California friends and returned to Germany to complete her service.
[ . . . ]
A war veteran wearing a backpack, pushing a stroller and carrying a baby stayed in another strange hotel room last night, mostly because the city of her birth does not know what to do with her. Welcome home.

As bad as it is, the single young mother in this piece seems to be doing the best she can. I wish the same could be said of her family (who turns their own daughter and granddaughter out in the street?) and the father of the child (he evidently didn’t get the same training in Loyalty, Honor, and Integrity).

The story notes that many veterans have problems re-integrating into society: for young men, it’s bad enough, but I have a harder time with young women and children on the streets. Shame that veterans are hard to come by in the current political regime: perhaps there would more assistance, even leadership, forthcoming.

TeledyN: The Right Heroes

Gary points out that not all the images of American dead arriving at Dover AFB are of Iraqi war victims: some of the images date back to the Columbia accident. (I don’t differentiate between them too much: if I had to, those from Iraq who went off to do their nation’s bidding, knowing they were going into harm’s way, would edge out the astronauts: the shuttle crew would be more confident of their return, barring accidents).

Does it make any sense that, until the surreptiously taken photo that appeared in the weekend papers, the only images we had been shown were of the “contractors'” disfigured corpses being paraded around?

While I agree with the notion I read earlier today — that the Normandy invasion might not have been as well-supported, had images of American GIs floating off the beaches been distributed — I think it’s important to acknowledge the sacrifice and honor those who literally gave all they had. Only then can we decide if their sacrifice is worth it.

Somehow, this seems to tie into my suspicion that the armchair generals in charge of this misadventure think this is no more serious than a game of Risk.