Strike Three

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.

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.

Execution Fever

A few last words for the year.

Is it just me, or has the news media become increasingly morbid in recent years? Yesterday there were barely any news articles or reports not dedicated to the execution of Saddam Hussein. Don't get me wrong, his demise is certainly news, and I'm quite sure he will spend eternity in hell with his new room mate, Augusto Pinochet. Assuming there is a hell, of course.

But do we really need to see the same few seconds of video from his execution and that picture of his corpse over and over again? I've been studying French for a while, so I decided to tune in to the new France 24 news network. What I saw was practically the execution video in a loop for the duration of the newscast. Suffice to say, I didn't pick up much French from that newscast.

Is there really such a desire among the public to see people die? Fine, Saddam was an evil, evil man, but what do I get out of watching the noose tighten around his neck 4,000 times over that I wouldn't be getting from the news anchor simply reporting that Saddam had been executed? Not only that, but was the execution truly such a news event as to be to the exclusion of other news that might have been of interest? Honestly, who didn't know the moment the trial started a few years ago that the only possible verdict would be death?

At this rate, it's only a matter of time before executions are regularly televised. And then you can enjoy the hangings in public town squares of years past in the comfort of your own home.

Happy new year!

A Solution to the Israel-Lebanon Crisis

A lot has been said about the recent conflict (or should I say, the recent flare-up in a longstanding conflict). My take is rather simple: All people, regardless of nationality, religion or ethnicity have the right to live in peace and prosper. Anyone seeing that happening anytime soon? Yeah, me neither.

The French have been desperately seeking a solution to the crisis, but I think it's time for them to bring out the big guns. They have a secret weapon so immensely powerful it could very well end terrorism as we know it and bring about everlasting peace.

You all know what I'm talking about, right? Yep, you guessed it: Zinedine Zidane. Here's my proposal: We send Zidane to Lebanon, where he proceeds to seek out Hezbollah leader Nasrallah and headbutt him straight in the chest. Hezbollah will be powerless against the ZCD™ (Zisou Chrome Dome™). Crisis solved! Then it's on to Afghanistan to seek out Bin Ladin.

To spare the civilians, my other proposal is that the UN flies in vast amounts of bicycles, and whatever the hell Floyd Landis injected up his ass. There is no rocket or bullet the civilians won't be able to outcycle.

Now, no need to thank me, but this December I better be the recipient of a prestigious award in Oslo, Norway.

Newt Gingrich: Jackass

Is there a bigger jackass in politics today than Newt Gingrich? I mean, apart from every other politician.
He rose to fame as the brains behind the Republican take-over of the US congress in 1994. He was subsequently elected Speaker of the House and made Time Magazine's Man of the Year. It's all downhill from there. After a government shutdown, ethics charges and leading the charge to impeach Clinton, all the while having an affair himself, he resigned from the house altogether in 1998.

Okay, this is all well and good (and lord knows I left out some of the nastier stuff about his personal life, which can be found elsewhere), although it's nothing new. However, these recent comments (via Political Wire) about the conflicts in the Middle East are new:

Gingrich said in the coming days he plans to speak out publicly, and to the administration, about the need to recognize that America is in World War III.
...
"This is World War III," Gingrich said. And once that's accepted, he said calls for restraint would fall away...
...
There is a public relations value, too. Gingrich said that public opinion can change "the minute you use the language" of World War III. The message then, he said, is "'OK, if we're in the third world war, which side do you think should win?"

My God. People are dying left and right, and this guy's worrying about the PR value? How brazenly cynical a human being must one be to think of death and destruction in those terms? Can such a person even qualify as a human being? I'm by no means a naïve person and I'm well aware that politics is a dirty business, but this really takes the cake.
So, thought of the day: Newt Gingrich is a jackass.