Having started two wars and failed miserably at winning both, what do you do? Apparently you start a third one. If you haven't heard already, US forces have stormed an Iranian consulate in Iraq, arresting five people in the process. Correct me if I'm wrong, but invading a foreign nation's consulate would constitute an act of war. And starting a third war when you don't even have enough troops for the two wars you're already engaged in is, suffice to say, tremendously stupid.
But the warmongers are happy, I'm sure. There is apparently no problem on this earth that can't be solved by throwing bombs at it. The rationale is the same rehashed moronic arguments we heard in the build-up to the Iraq war.
Ahmadinejad is insane! But if the rationale for going to war is nut job leaders, why didn't we go to war with the Soviet Union? Granted that there were a few close calls, such as the Cuban missile crisis, but most people realized it would be a moronic idea. There couldn't possibly be a good outcome. And why are we supporting Islom Karimov of Uzbekistan and treating Uzbekistan as an ally in the war on terror, if that is an actual concern?
Iran has WMDs! But most experts say they are a decade away from having nukes. How about exhausting all other options instead of skipping straight ahead to the very last and possibly disastrous resort?
The Iranian people are oppressed and needs to be liberated! They'll greet us as liberators! The leadership in Iran are tyrannical madmen who oppress their own people, that is not in dispute. What is in dispute, however, is the theory that you can turn a brutal dictatorship into a liberal democracy simply through the use of war. We don't go around invading all such countries, because as the evidence clearly shows, it's a tremendous undertaking that is simply not feasible and has the potential to have disastrous consequences. The brutal civil war we're currently witnessing in Iraq is a testament to that. Absolutely nothing new, and absolutely nothing of substance.
War is not, and never should be, something to seek out. War is inevitably death and destruction. It is tremendous suffering. It is homes destroyed. It is people fleeing. It is people dying of thirst and starvation. It is people caught in crossfires. It is people losing limbs. It is people losing sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers.
War IS hell. That's why war must always be the very last resort. War is an act of desperation, not of glory. When the US entered World War II, it was because there simply was no other option. And it took considerable sacrifices to win, during the war as well as after it.
The Bush administration starting yet another war that is destined to fail as spectacularly as the last two is truly the height of stupidity.
Have the Bush doctrine in any way helped to win the war on terror? The answer is an unequivocal no. In Athens, Greece, a US Embassy was hit in a rocket attack just last night.
It's 5 years since 9/11, and what does Bush have to show for his efforts? Afghanistan is mostly out of coalition control and in the hands of the same warlords who've always controlled the country, the Taliban have set up shop in neighboring Waziristan and are still active in eastern Afghanistan, Bin Ladin remains at large, Iraq is descending into a bloody civil war that threatens to destabilize an already unstable region, 3,800 Americans and other coalition forces have died between the two wars, several terrorist attacks have occurred in Spain and the UK with casualties in the hundreds. In other words, the Bush doctrine has been utterly ineffective and nothing short of disastrous.
Yet he wants another war. God help us all.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Royal Bravitude
Although the French Presidential campaigns don't formally start until April, they're already in full swing. For reasons beyond my understanding, my favourite of the bunch, Parti Socialiste candidate Ségolène Royal, is campaigning in a region you normally wouldn't consider part of the French electorate: China. During her stay in China she managed to invent a new word, much to the amusement of newspaper Le Monde. Speaking of the Great Wall of China, she stated:Comme le disent les Chinois, qui n'est pas venu sur la Grande muraille n'est pas un brave. Qui va sur la Grande muraille conquiert la bravitude.Which roughly translates into "As the Chinese say, [he] who did't come on the Great Wall is not a brave [man]. [He] who walks on the great wall conquers bravitude." The new word in question, if you haven't guessed already, is "bravitude," which would make both George W. Bush and Stephen Colbert proud. Royal might actually have meant bravoure, "bravery." Though, Ségo's campaign staff is now claiming she actually intended to invent a new word, with the supposed definition "fullness of bravery." Sheesh.
It's bad enough she's canoodling with the Chinese Communist party, now she's re-inventing the French language?! I'm not an expert in French by any means, but I'm rather sure there's some sort of body that regulates the French language...oh yeah, L'Académie française.
Well, linguistic issues aside, she remains my fave, as she does have a rather redeeming quality: she's not Nicolas Sarkozy.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
The Video Game Presidency
With Playstations, Wiis and whatnots out on the market, you'd think US President George W. Bush would have plenty of entertainment readily available (granted that he probably received mostly lumps of coal this past Christmas). Instead, he has decided to go for another round in the ultra-realistic video game known as the Iraq war. The video game is in fact so realistic that it does not end when you kill the maniacal tyrant of an end boss. Instead, the game goes into a very special "caught in civil war crossfire" mode that has the potential of lasting hundreds of times longer than the few weeks you spent on the first few levels. With 3300 coalition troops and countless Iraqi lives lost, how many extra lives does Bush think he has?
The answer to that question appears to be somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000, which is the increase in the number of troops Bush is expected to propose as part of a "surge" to, once and for all, secure Baghdad and end the Iraqi civil war. The problem is that those 30,000 troops won't magically appear out of thin air, and recruitment levels are, not suprisingly, rather low. Instead, the increase has to be accomplished primarily by extending the tours of some of the troops already in Iraq, and to start the tours earlier for others in America.
Quite understandably, most Americans and non-Americans alike are not happy with the Iraq war, and those of us who thought the war was a stupid idea to begin with are even less happy with the war than one imagined possible when it first began.
I think it's high time to recognise reality. This is not some computer game where you can type in a cheat code or just restart the level. This is war, and no matter how noble and necessary one may find it, it was always going to be an incredibly difficult, if not impossible, undertaking. Bush's handling of the war, which, if one was being unreasonably kind, could be summed up as being not particularly good, hasn't exactly made that undertaking any easier. This proposed surge isn't going to end the civil war, how could it? Almost four years have gone by with little progress made since the fall of Baghdad, and the US military is becoming more and more strained every day. How is a surge going to counter that? There are only two options: standing in the middle of a civil war, or getting the hell out. It's a horrible, horrible conclusion to have to reach, but it is reality. A liberal democratic Iraq, free of tyranny and opression, a shining beacon of liberty in the Middle East, would certainly have been a sight to see. But it's not going to happen, at least not by military means and not for a very long while.
The recently installed 110th Congress, which seem to be at least slightly saner than the 109th, had better rein in the President and unplug the console.
Game over.
The answer to that question appears to be somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000, which is the increase in the number of troops Bush is expected to propose as part of a "surge" to, once and for all, secure Baghdad and end the Iraqi civil war. The problem is that those 30,000 troops won't magically appear out of thin air, and recruitment levels are, not suprisingly, rather low. Instead, the increase has to be accomplished primarily by extending the tours of some of the troops already in Iraq, and to start the tours earlier for others in America.
Quite understandably, most Americans and non-Americans alike are not happy with the Iraq war, and those of us who thought the war was a stupid idea to begin with are even less happy with the war than one imagined possible when it first began.
I think it's high time to recognise reality. This is not some computer game where you can type in a cheat code or just restart the level. This is war, and no matter how noble and necessary one may find it, it was always going to be an incredibly difficult, if not impossible, undertaking. Bush's handling of the war, which, if one was being unreasonably kind, could be summed up as being not particularly good, hasn't exactly made that undertaking any easier. This proposed surge isn't going to end the civil war, how could it? Almost four years have gone by with little progress made since the fall of Baghdad, and the US military is becoming more and more strained every day. How is a surge going to counter that? There are only two options: standing in the middle of a civil war, or getting the hell out. It's a horrible, horrible conclusion to have to reach, but it is reality. A liberal democratic Iraq, free of tyranny and opression, a shining beacon of liberty in the Middle East, would certainly have been a sight to see. But it's not going to happen, at least not by military means and not for a very long while.
The recently installed 110th Congress, which seem to be at least slightly saner than the 109th, had better rein in the President and unplug the console.
Game over.
Monday, January 08, 2007
The House That Money Bildt
The hits just keep on coming for the new Swedish government. Two ministers have already been forced to resign, and a third one might join the fray soon. Former Prime Minister and current Foreign Minister Carl Bildt (of the Swedish right-wing Moderate Party) has gotten himself into quite a bit of trouble. After leaving the Prime Minister's office in 1994, Bildt was rather active in foreign policy, particularly in the Balkans, where he served as a conflict mediator and as co-chairman of the Dayton Peace conference. In addition to that, he also did quite a bit of work in the private sector, serving on several company boards. It's one of those boards that's causing Bildt a world of hurt.
Bildt was on the board of directors for a Swedish investment company called Vostok Nafta, primarily focused on investments in oil and gas in the former Soviet Union. About 90% of those investments are in the Russian gas giant Gazprom. Upon resigning from the board last October to become foreign minister, Bildt cashed in some 500,000 euros in stock options he received in salary as a board member. Chump change in the grand scheme of things, but it causes several problems for Bildt. First of all, he wasn't entitled to keeping the stock options at all upon his (voluntary) resignation, but had to request a special decision from the board to allow him to keep them. If you're a member of the "new workers party," as the Moderates campaigned on last year, that won't fly (nevermind that he would truly be deserving that much cash for attending a grand total of four board meetings!). Secondly, there's a potential conflict of interest as Gazprom wants to build a gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, which at some point has to be contemplated by the Swedish government. 500,000 euros cashed in by the Foreign Minister of said government are thus looking rather suspicious in that light.
In predictable upper class twit form, Bildt himself has reacted as if he's being the victim of left-wing media witch hunt, claiming to be entitled to that money and that anyone suggesting otherwise is guilty of "partisan politics." Not only that, but he seems to be under the impression that by accepting the (rather well paid) position of Foreign Minister, he has made an enormous sacrifice almost messianic in proportions. It's certainly understandable that being a Minister in a government requires a certain arrogance and belief in one's ability to do the job, but Bildt really takes the cake.
Prosecutors are looking into the legality of Bildt's actions. Maybe they're perfectly legal, maybe they're not. Politics is all about perception, though, and the perceptionon on the western shores of the Baltic Sea is that Bildt is yet another corrupt minister in a government that campaigned on being exactly the opposite. I used to have a lot respect for Bildt, if not for his domestic policy, at least for his work in foreign policy. After this latest scandal, however, it's hard not to look at his foreign policy achievements and wonder how much of his actions were influenced by his private sector commitments.
Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt took quite a gamble when he decided to appoint Carl Bildt to the position of Foreign Minister. Looks like Reinfeldt rolled snake eyes. Regardless of the legality of the actions of the Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt ought to resign.
Bildt was on the board of directors for a Swedish investment company called Vostok Nafta, primarily focused on investments in oil and gas in the former Soviet Union. About 90% of those investments are in the Russian gas giant Gazprom. Upon resigning from the board last October to become foreign minister, Bildt cashed in some 500,000 euros in stock options he received in salary as a board member. Chump change in the grand scheme of things, but it causes several problems for Bildt. First of all, he wasn't entitled to keeping the stock options at all upon his (voluntary) resignation, but had to request a special decision from the board to allow him to keep them. If you're a member of the "new workers party," as the Moderates campaigned on last year, that won't fly (nevermind that he would truly be deserving that much cash for attending a grand total of four board meetings!). Secondly, there's a potential conflict of interest as Gazprom wants to build a gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, which at some point has to be contemplated by the Swedish government. 500,000 euros cashed in by the Foreign Minister of said government are thus looking rather suspicious in that light.
In predictable upper class twit form, Bildt himself has reacted as if he's being the victim of left-wing media witch hunt, claiming to be entitled to that money and that anyone suggesting otherwise is guilty of "partisan politics." Not only that, but he seems to be under the impression that by accepting the (rather well paid) position of Foreign Minister, he has made an enormous sacrifice almost messianic in proportions. It's certainly understandable that being a Minister in a government requires a certain arrogance and belief in one's ability to do the job, but Bildt really takes the cake.
Prosecutors are looking into the legality of Bildt's actions. Maybe they're perfectly legal, maybe they're not. Politics is all about perception, though, and the perceptionon on the western shores of the Baltic Sea is that Bildt is yet another corrupt minister in a government that campaigned on being exactly the opposite. I used to have a lot respect for Bildt, if not for his domestic policy, at least for his work in foreign policy. After this latest scandal, however, it's hard not to look at his foreign policy achievements and wonder how much of his actions were influenced by his private sector commitments.
Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt took quite a gamble when he decided to appoint Carl Bildt to the position of Foreign Minister. Looks like Reinfeldt rolled snake eyes. Regardless of the legality of the actions of the Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt ought to resign.
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