Cuba libre

A Nashville blogger (and kick ass funny one at that) may be getting the nod to head to Iraq.

Apparently, he’s read the travel brochures and isn’t keen:

My biggest question is why do we keep invading crap holes?

We’ve got nice tropical paradise with a dictator, just 90 miles south of Key West. I could swim on to the beach with a pistol in one hand and a mojito in the other.

For some reason, I just can’t shake the Daniel Craig as Bond image from my head. I assume that he has both the pistol and the mojito just under the water protected by a zip-lock baggie and an Aladdin thermos respectively.

And the other thought I have – and at the risk of sounding like a paleo-con, invading crap holes instead of tropical locales is just one more area where Bush diverges from the Reagan legacy.

And finally, I hope it ain’t so, but if it is so – Short and Fat – I wish you luck and full requisitions of the appropriate body and vehicle armor.

I dream of Jeanie

Daytime tv. Gotta love it.

Today I saw the pilot episodes of I dream of Jeannie. It had a different intro, but most of the recognisable characters seemed to be there. The Major (as played by Larry Hagman) was a Captain. And given how goofy he was in the opening episodes, I’m not really sure how he got that promotion.

I remember really liking the show when I was young, but I’d never seen the opening episodes. I’m not sure how the series got commissioned, but that Sidney Sheldon must have been a pretty persuasive producer.

In the 2nd episode, Jeannie magics herself and the Major Captain back 2000 years to ancient Baghdad. But everyone’s already Muslim (Islam isn’t yet 2000 years old). It was quite interesting to see the Major being held captive by a barbaric, giant Baghdadi. It all seemed quite dark and prophetic, in a way.

Pick me

Newscoma reports her disappointment that she wasn’t picked for the latest gummint made-up post: War Czar

I am very sad I wasn’t asked to be war czar. I think I would make a fine Czar. Maybe I can be Pilsner Czar. I think I would like that better.

I told the Vol-in-Law yesterday that I would like to be War Czar. He said that he didn’t think I was qualified. That I needed to be male and Republican and have a head filled with empty, disproven ideas from 1970s MBA programs. That I also needed to ignore the reality and stay loyal and not actually improve anything – and he didn’t think I had the ability to do that.

But I said, no – I’ve worked in consulting to and regulating government for a long time. I know how to stay busy but not actually improve much. That wouldn’t be my first preference, that isn’t the way I like to work, but it is a skill I maintain.

for honor

Anglofille has been writing about the death of a young woman in Kurdish Iraq. It’s all pretty horrific. She was killed, savagely beaten to death, for being a gal who cut her own path. Her death and post-mortem kicking were filmed. How ’bout those cell phone cameras.

And while some of us find such a thing shocking – apparently the clip of her death and her bloody corpse being dragged off the streets have inspired more “honor killings”.

-0-

These things don’t just happen in Iraq or Afghanistan or Jordan or Egypt. No, they happen here, too.

While researching this issue of honor killings in Britain, I found a BBC news article from last September. According to their poll, 1 in 10 British Asians believe that honor killings are acceptable. The government estimates that 13 women in the UK die each year as a result of honor killings, but support groups say this number is way too low.

Scandalous.

Saddam is dead

Saddam Hussein, the ex-butcher of Iraq, is dead. I don’t feel any differently about it than I did yesterday, when I anticipated his demise.

I mostly feel sorry for the Kurdish Iraqis who now won’t have the centrepiece for the trial of those who perpetrated the horrible crimes against them.

Update: and here’s an anecdote about those Iraqi Kurds and Saddam Hussein and substitute teacher in a Nashville school.

Beyond our reach, dead or alive

It seems more likely than not that over the couple of days to a week that we’ll find out that Saddam Hussein has died.

I’m not an advocate of the death penalty – I’ll say that up front. But I’m also not a big fan of Saddam Hussein and I certainly won’t shed any tears over that monster’s demise. I have no doubt over his wretched guilt. And I think – in the long run – that the people of Iraq and the soldiers of the coalition will be safer without Saddam around.

But it seems to me that his trial and his imminent execution are kind of missing the point of what such trials ought to be about. Trials for war crimes or crimes against humanity or genocide or any of those acts which threaten to tip over from tragedy to statistics from the sheer weight of them aren’t about punishing the guilty. People who order such atrocities are beyond our reach. Imprison them (to write books or hold out hopes of a re-established reign) or kill them to keep them out of the way, but you can’t really punish them. Punishment requires an internal aspect a reflection on their acts which these people seem to lack. I imagine that Hussein will go to the gallows cursing his bad luck or his incompetent aides rather than his own rotten soul.

These trials aren’t to make those who commit mass crimes to feel guilt. Their trials won’t persuade the next megalomaniac to think twice before torturing and slaughtering their political opponents Their trials won’t even produce a satisfactory explanation of why they did the evil they did. These big show trials for head honchos like those Nuremburg or Milosovic’s trial at the Hague are about providing justice for the victims. A shoot-out (like the one resulting in the death Hussein’s sons) or a suicide (like Hitler’s) ends in the same result as Saddam’s trial- a dead despot. But a trial allows the victims to have their story told. It allows the victims the satisfaction of making their perpetrator listen.

To be fair, trials of truth and hopefully reconiciliation probably need to take place in a world of relative calm and order to be of full value. And that is not the kind of place that Iraq is right now. But killing Saddam now, over a fraction of his crimes, robs his other victims of the chance to tell their tale on a world stage. Killing Saddam now ends the process of justice for the victims of his unspeakable acts.

Do y’all feel fooled yet?

Do y’all feel fooled yet? I mean, when you hear the newly confirmed Secretary of Defense Robert Gates saying “we’re not winning in Iraq” do y’all feel that maybe you’ve been a little misled.

And when I say y’all, I mean all of you Bush loyalists. If you’re managing to cling to “job done” and “we’re winning” even now – I got to hand it to you. But I’m guessing that maybe you might feel just a little bit silly after your vehement denials of civil war, quagmire, incompetence, or the lack of strategy, vision, plan and execution.

I’m not gloating. I don’t think very many people in America really wanted to see us fail to achieve altruistic or even patriotic objectives in Iraq and the region. I think this has damaged America. I don’t think any American really wants that – even though we might disagree about what’s in America’s best interest from time to time. And I do believe that there’s a threat of Islamism rising in the Middle East – and I hoped our actions in Iraq would help – but I think it’s probably obvious now that we’ve only made things worse with Bush’s Iraqscapade.

I’m not gloating. I believed Bush, too. I believed Tony Blair. Even for stuff I wasn’t too sure about (ability to deliver WMD to UK in 30 minutes – I didn’t believe that), I gave them the benefit of the doubt on. I just haven’t believed them in a while. (And just so you know, it wasn’t after the WMD didn’t turn up – ’cause I admit – I believed that Saddam Hussein had them and I still wonder if maybe Saddam believed he had them).

It was easier for me, I admit, to shake off my belief in what Bush and Blair were saying and doing. After all, I vote Democrat in the US and support the Conservatives in the UK – so I didn’t have any party loyalty to blind me in this case. But when I realised it was a passle of lies, incompetence and self-delusion, I felt fooled. I felt pretty angry with myself. Even worse, I felt angry with Bush and Blair for making me look stupid for believing them in the eyes of the Marxists and Islamists and woolly-headed leftists.

So, all you Bush loyalists, you neo-cons and true believers, I’m just wondering. Do y’all feel fooled?