"Victory means exit strategy,"
John Nichols
Fri Sep 23,11:20 PM ET
The Nation -- It's anti-war quiz time.
Who made the following statement:
"I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now."
A.) Cindy Sheehan?
B.) Phil Donahue?
C.) Michael Moore?
D.) A prominent politician who was not afraid to dissent in a time of war.
Answer: D.) A prominent politician who was not afraid to dissent in a time of war.
Defenders of the occupation of Iraq will, before the weekend is done, have some choice words for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are marching and rallying for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from that Middle Eastern nation.
They will pull out all the deliberate misreads of intelligence and paranoid fantasies that were employed by George Bush in his relentless campaign to win support for the invasion of Iraq. But, above all, they will peddle the lie that since the beginning of this misguided war has been their favorite: The suggestion that those who oppose the war are somehow harming the troops.
A marketing campaign, launched shortly after the war began and continued to this day, has sought to link support for the men and women serving in this country's military forces with support for even the most foolhardy and dangerous of the president's policies. There are even bumper stickers that declare: "Support President Bush and the Troops."
But this is just political gamesmanship, nothing more.
How do we know?
Because House Majority Leader Tom DeLay tells us so.
Back in 1999, after then-President Bill Clinton had ordered U.S. forces to begin a massive bombing campaign and missile strikes against Yugoslavia, the House of Representatives considered a resolution supporting the mission. The leading opponent of the resolution was DeLay, who dismissed the notion that opposing the war was in any way an affront to the troops. In a visceral floor statement delivered in March of that year, DeLay declared, "Bombing a sovereign nation for ill-defined reasons with vague objectives undermines the American stature in the world. The international respect and trust for America has diminished every time we casually let the bombs fly. We must stop giving the appearance that our foreign policy is formulated by the Unabomber." As the war progressed, DeLay condemned "(President Clinton's) war," and grumbled in April, 1999, that, "There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our overextended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today."
To those who dared suggest that such aggressive language might be dispiriting to the troops who were engaged in the mission, DeLay told USA Today, "It's very simple. The president is not supported by the House, and the military is supported by the House."
DeLay's sentiments were echoed in the Senate by Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, who explained that, "My job as majority leader is be supportive of our troops, try to have input as decisions are made and to look at those decisions after they're made ... not to march in lock step with everything the president decides to do."
DeLay and Lott has allies in the media who were, if anything, even more passionate in their criticism of the war. Anticipating the current comments of Cindy Sheehan and other family members who have lost loved ones in Iraq, they framed their anti-war arguments as a plea to save the lives of U.S. troops who had been put in harm's way as part of a fool's mission. Sean Hannity growled into his Fox New microphone about how supporters of the war should be forced to: "Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life." Hannity was an "out now" man: "No goal, no objective, not until we have those things and a compelling case is made, then I say, back out of it, because innocent people are going to die for nothing. That's why I'm against it," he argued. Hannity's fellow peacenik, conservative commentator Tony Snow, even went so far as to make quagmire comparisons, suggesting on a March 24, 1999, Fox program: "You think Vietnam was bad? Vietnam is nothing next to Kosovo."
The commander-in-chief's critics found an ally in a candidate in the 2000 contest to replace Clinton. Sounding an awfully lot like U.S. Sen Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, who in August suggested that it was time to set a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, Texas Governor George W. Bush told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on June 5, 1999: "I think it's also important for the president to lay out a timetable as to how long (U.S. troops) will be involved and when they will be withdrawn."
What about "stay the course"?
No way, said Bush the candidate. "Victory means exit strategy," he told the Houston Chronicle on April 9, 1999, "and it's important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is."
Critics of this weekend's anti-war marchers will surely dust off the claim that the protesters are merely recycling the slogans of the 1960s. Fair enough. No more: "Make Love, Not War." Instead, why not recycle an anti-war slogan from the 1990s? Something catchy, like: "Victory means exit strategy." And while they're at it, foes of the Iraq occupation might want to recycle some of the better rhetoric of that decade, like the line: "I cannot support a failed foreign policy." Just be sure to credit the prominent politician who was not afraid to dissent in a time of war -- even if it meant criticizing the commander-in-chief: Tom DeLay.
Copyright © 2005 The Nation
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Now Bush & Co. have nothing else to do with the FBI & our tax dollars but to try & erase PORN, GOOD LUCK IDIOTS!
Arianna Huffington: Bush's War on Porn: Perverted Priorities Run Amuck
Arianna Huffington
Thu Sep 22
For those easily offended by sexually explicit language, New York's 92nd Street Y was ground zero on Tuesday night. I was part of a panel put on by the Creative Coalition to discuss The Aristocrats, the First Amendment, and the curious chasm between what Americans find offensive and what they don't.
Also on the panel were Aristocrats director Paul Provenza, the film's masterfully vulgar Bob Saget, South Park co-creator Matt Stone, Motion Picture Association of America head Dan Glickman (gallantly defending the movie rating system), and our moderator, Lawrence O'Donnell.
My contribution to the debate was a head-scratching bewilderment over the fact that more people are upset by blatantly sexual language than by the blatantly fraudulent language we're constantly fed by our leaders. Make a joke about people getting it on and the public finger-waggers come pouring out of the woodwork. But let President Bush say that Brownie is doing "a heck of a job" or Dick Cheney say that the insurgency is in its "last throes" and the morality cops on the right don't raise an eyebrow. Yet that's the real obscenity.
Don't forget, it took less than two weeks after the unveiling of Janet Jackson's right boob at the Super Bowl before the president's congressional cronies were holding hearings on the matter -- but it took 14 months before Bush caved to public pressure and allowed the 9/11 Commission to be formed. Again, you pick the real obscenity.
The latest example of misplaced priorities can be found in the administration's re-energized War on Porn, which includes the formation of an FBI squad exclusively devoted to cracking down on sexually explicit material involving consenting adults.
That's right, with the war on terror in full swing, our Commander-in-Chief is going to have a group of G-men doing nothing but working the porn beat when they could be tracking down -- oh, I don't know -- terrorist sleeper cells. Good to know he's got his eye on the prize.
I don't know about you, but I certainly feel safer knowing the feds are going to be keeping close tabs on Jenna Jameson and Peter North. Let's just hope the next round of al-Qaeda terrorists looking to attack the U.S. all have huge penises, an ample supply of Viagra, and enjoy having sex with silicone-enhanced babes.
This blast from our blue-nosed past has been labeled "one of the top priorities" of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Along with the FBI's anti-porn squad, the AG has also created an Obscenity Prosecution Task Force in the Justice Department that will take prosecutors currently working on organized crime and racketeering, money laundering and computer crime cases, and have them shift their focus to the War on Porn. Real nice use of manpower, Alberto!
Of course, getting obscenity convictions in today's climate -- where Jenna Jameson's How to Make Love Like a Porn Star is a Times best-seller and GM, Rupert Murdoch, Time Warner, and all the big hotel chains are making a mint off sexually explicit movies -- won't be as easy as it was in Ed Meese's day.
The indecency of spending precious resources on making it harder to watch the Paris Hilton sexcapade has not been lost on federal and local law enforcement officials, who have reacted to the anti-porn push with a mixture of scorn and anger. The WaPo quotes an experienced national security analyst who calls the culture war initiative "a running joke for us," while the Daily Business Review cites high-level Justice Department sources saying that prosecutors are being assigned porn cases over their objections.
On the other hand, the president's born-again base is getting turned on by the initiative. For instance, the Family Research Council said it gave them "a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general." Hmm, could this be the political equivalent of a Cialis Rx, giving Gonzales the boost he needs to become Bush's next Supreme Court nominee?
For the moral relativists in the Bush administration, the definition of sin seems to depend on whether the sinner can further their political purposes.
So Justin exposing Janet's boob is a sin, but White House staffers exposing Valerie Plame is a win. Profiting from porn is a sin, but Halliburton's wartime profiteering is a win. Two men getting hitched is a sin, but Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff playing with each other's clubs is a win. And telling students condoms can prevent STDs is a sin, but lying about WMDs is a win.
I'm ready to see The Aristocrats again.
Copyright © 2005 HuffingtonPost.com. All rights reserved.
Arianna Huffington
Thu Sep 22
For those easily offended by sexually explicit language, New York's 92nd Street Y was ground zero on Tuesday night. I was part of a panel put on by the Creative Coalition to discuss The Aristocrats, the First Amendment, and the curious chasm between what Americans find offensive and what they don't.
Also on the panel were Aristocrats director Paul Provenza, the film's masterfully vulgar Bob Saget, South Park co-creator Matt Stone, Motion Picture Association of America head Dan Glickman (gallantly defending the movie rating system), and our moderator, Lawrence O'Donnell.
My contribution to the debate was a head-scratching bewilderment over the fact that more people are upset by blatantly sexual language than by the blatantly fraudulent language we're constantly fed by our leaders. Make a joke about people getting it on and the public finger-waggers come pouring out of the woodwork. But let President Bush say that Brownie is doing "a heck of a job" or Dick Cheney say that the insurgency is in its "last throes" and the morality cops on the right don't raise an eyebrow. Yet that's the real obscenity.
Don't forget, it took less than two weeks after the unveiling of Janet Jackson's right boob at the Super Bowl before the president's congressional cronies were holding hearings on the matter -- but it took 14 months before Bush caved to public pressure and allowed the 9/11 Commission to be formed. Again, you pick the real obscenity.
The latest example of misplaced priorities can be found in the administration's re-energized War on Porn, which includes the formation of an FBI squad exclusively devoted to cracking down on sexually explicit material involving consenting adults.
That's right, with the war on terror in full swing, our Commander-in-Chief is going to have a group of G-men doing nothing but working the porn beat when they could be tracking down -- oh, I don't know -- terrorist sleeper cells. Good to know he's got his eye on the prize.
I don't know about you, but I certainly feel safer knowing the feds are going to be keeping close tabs on Jenna Jameson and Peter North. Let's just hope the next round of al-Qaeda terrorists looking to attack the U.S. all have huge penises, an ample supply of Viagra, and enjoy having sex with silicone-enhanced babes.
This blast from our blue-nosed past has been labeled "one of the top priorities" of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Along with the FBI's anti-porn squad, the AG has also created an Obscenity Prosecution Task Force in the Justice Department that will take prosecutors currently working on organized crime and racketeering, money laundering and computer crime cases, and have them shift their focus to the War on Porn. Real nice use of manpower, Alberto!
Of course, getting obscenity convictions in today's climate -- where Jenna Jameson's How to Make Love Like a Porn Star is a Times best-seller and GM, Rupert Murdoch, Time Warner, and all the big hotel chains are making a mint off sexually explicit movies -- won't be as easy as it was in Ed Meese's day.
The indecency of spending precious resources on making it harder to watch the Paris Hilton sexcapade has not been lost on federal and local law enforcement officials, who have reacted to the anti-porn push with a mixture of scorn and anger. The WaPo quotes an experienced national security analyst who calls the culture war initiative "a running joke for us," while the Daily Business Review cites high-level Justice Department sources saying that prosecutors are being assigned porn cases over their objections.
On the other hand, the president's born-again base is getting turned on by the initiative. For instance, the Family Research Council said it gave them "a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general." Hmm, could this be the political equivalent of a Cialis Rx, giving Gonzales the boost he needs to become Bush's next Supreme Court nominee?
For the moral relativists in the Bush administration, the definition of sin seems to depend on whether the sinner can further their political purposes.
So Justin exposing Janet's boob is a sin, but White House staffers exposing Valerie Plame is a win. Profiting from porn is a sin, but Halliburton's wartime profiteering is a win. Two men getting hitched is a sin, but Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff playing with each other's clubs is a win. And telling students condoms can prevent STDs is a sin, but lying about WMDs is a win.
I'm ready to see The Aristocrats again.
Copyright © 2005 HuffingtonPost.com. All rights reserved.
Bill Clinton Turns To Leading Statesman
Bill Clinton, Beyond the White House
By Tina Brown
The Washington Post
Thursday, September 22, 2005
The big surprise of Bill Clinton's Global Initiative conference at the Sheraton Hotel in New York last week was how strangely calming it was. You would expect to emerge begging for mercy from a three-day talkathon on the world's most intractable problems emceed by history's most garrulous president -- especially if you were a survivor of one of his book tour gigs.
To be sure, Clinton, the big intellectual showoff, had never been less than brilliant on his feet, but he never knew when to stop. And all that promiscuous lateral thinking ended up sucking the air out of the room. We got so tired of his lack of discipline that by 2000 we thought we were ready for a presidency that operated by assertion. Five years later we see what that's brought.
Maybe it's the effect of his brush with death. He's pared himself down to the essentials, symbolized by the slimmed physique and the paternal reading glasses. His style was always inclusive even when he was on the attack. But now you feel he's shed the psychic baggage of the impeachment years and with it the toxic rock and roll of his constantly roiling reputation.
The new, honed Clinton on the rostrum made sure that any earnest hand-wringing grappled with the raw brutality of irreconcilables. He even saw to it that the panels he moderated actually ran on time.
Every session began with a stroll to the podium to announce a big-bucks pledge for some imaginative initiative ($1.25 billion by the conference's close).
"Now here's something else in my hot little hand," the former prez would say, dangling his glasses, with his best "doggone" smile. "My old friend Carlos Slim Helu here has just said he's willing to develop a cell phone network for Gaza and link it to Jordan's network! Why, thanks, Carlos. Come up here and be recognized." A big hand for Carlos, who turns out to be the richest man in Latin America.
This wasn't just the usual FOBs from Park Avenue and Hollywood (though there were plenty of those cruising around). With so many world policy chiefs present -- Tony Blair, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Condi Rice, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, even Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams, for heaven's sake -- the conference was a tour d'horizon of Clinton's life, and head, since the White House. (So that's what he's been doing on all those far-flung speaking gigs -- scarfing down public policy from the global minibar.) No one has figured out before how to leverage a post-presidency like this. Jimmy Carter's version has been about the power of example. Clinton's is about the power of power. He's been everywhere, met everyone (my favorite Clintonian aside: "As someone who went to Nigeria to plead for the life of a woman condemned under sharia law, I thank you for doing this."). Now he's putting that Rolodex to work for something bigger than the next campaign.
Welcome to Planet Clinton, an interconnected world that's a solar system and a wormhole away from Bush country. Here Shimon Peres and Oprah Winfrey are just members of the audience. Barbra Streisand looks like any peppy matron taking an extension course. Brad Pitt's staccato hair and Angelina Jolie's duvet lips (sighted in the audience of Jeffrey Sachs's poverty panel) are reduced to a responsible human scale. Wandering out of a kitchen exit I found myself in a milling informal think tank with the former president expounding to the two guys who founded Google and a sprightly "Planet of the Apes" figure who turned out to be Mick Jagger.
Unlike Davos and other high-octane gabfests, however, Clinton's conference wasn't just about elephant bumping. For every VIP there was some earnest activist or intellectual who has caught his eye.
Clinton seems to have found his role as facilitator-in-chief, urging us to give up our deadly national passivity and start thinking things through for ourselves. Commandeering the role of government through civic action suddenly feels like a very empowering notion -- the alternative being to find oneself stranded in a flood waving a shirt from a rooftop.
It's an indicator of how the mood has changed that it was Al Gore who brought the house down. His Category 5 tirade on the impending calamity of unaddressed climate change electrified the lunch crowd. Who knew this Gore existed?
The answer is he didn't. Like Clinton, Gore has been liberated by cauterized rage at what has happened to the country in the past five years.
The White House doesn't seem to realize it yet, but we are entering a post-spin era in public life. The shift has long been underway in the business world, propelled by the Enron catastrophe and the collapse of the dot-com bubble. Process, not perception, is king in boardrooms today. After so much corporate malfeasance it all got too dire to put up with fake CEOs anymore.
Now after the Iraq debacle, the ballooning deficit and the aftermath of Katrina, Americans are pining for grounded leaders in public office, too -- leaders who have moral conviction, yes, but also the gnarly, dexterous ability to think things through.
The irony is that no one would have believed that Clinton -- the king of spin, who went out under a cloud of indecency five years ago -- could climb back to such credibility. Monica is fading and he's backlit now by his disciplined handling of the economy, the unsought comparisons of how well FEMA used to perform under his watch and the enlightened nature of his global activism.
A weird reputational exchange has taken place between Clinton and President Bush. After so much dishonest reasoning it's the vaunted "CEO president" who begins to look like the callow, fumbling adolescent. And it's the sexually incontinent, burger-guzzling, late-night-gabbing Bubba who is emerging as a great CEO of America.
"We are so arrogant because we are obsessed with the present," he told his guests at the conference's end. "I've reached an age now where it doesn't matter whatever happens to me. I just don't want anybody to die before their time anymore."
On Clinton's face these days is a look of wry, judicious knowingness. It's the look of political wisdom, and it imparted to his conference's departing crowd something like serenity.
2005Tina Brown
By Tina Brown
The Washington Post
Thursday, September 22, 2005
The big surprise of Bill Clinton's Global Initiative conference at the Sheraton Hotel in New York last week was how strangely calming it was. You would expect to emerge begging for mercy from a three-day talkathon on the world's most intractable problems emceed by history's most garrulous president -- especially if you were a survivor of one of his book tour gigs.
To be sure, Clinton, the big intellectual showoff, had never been less than brilliant on his feet, but he never knew when to stop. And all that promiscuous lateral thinking ended up sucking the air out of the room. We got so tired of his lack of discipline that by 2000 we thought we were ready for a presidency that operated by assertion. Five years later we see what that's brought.
Maybe it's the effect of his brush with death. He's pared himself down to the essentials, symbolized by the slimmed physique and the paternal reading glasses. His style was always inclusive even when he was on the attack. But now you feel he's shed the psychic baggage of the impeachment years and with it the toxic rock and roll of his constantly roiling reputation.
The new, honed Clinton on the rostrum made sure that any earnest hand-wringing grappled with the raw brutality of irreconcilables. He even saw to it that the panels he moderated actually ran on time.
Every session began with a stroll to the podium to announce a big-bucks pledge for some imaginative initiative ($1.25 billion by the conference's close).
"Now here's something else in my hot little hand," the former prez would say, dangling his glasses, with his best "doggone" smile. "My old friend Carlos Slim Helu here has just said he's willing to develop a cell phone network for Gaza and link it to Jordan's network! Why, thanks, Carlos. Come up here and be recognized." A big hand for Carlos, who turns out to be the richest man in Latin America.
This wasn't just the usual FOBs from Park Avenue and Hollywood (though there were plenty of those cruising around). With so many world policy chiefs present -- Tony Blair, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Condi Rice, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, even Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams, for heaven's sake -- the conference was a tour d'horizon of Clinton's life, and head, since the White House. (So that's what he's been doing on all those far-flung speaking gigs -- scarfing down public policy from the global minibar.) No one has figured out before how to leverage a post-presidency like this. Jimmy Carter's version has been about the power of example. Clinton's is about the power of power. He's been everywhere, met everyone (my favorite Clintonian aside: "As someone who went to Nigeria to plead for the life of a woman condemned under sharia law, I thank you for doing this."). Now he's putting that Rolodex to work for something bigger than the next campaign.
Welcome to Planet Clinton, an interconnected world that's a solar system and a wormhole away from Bush country. Here Shimon Peres and Oprah Winfrey are just members of the audience. Barbra Streisand looks like any peppy matron taking an extension course. Brad Pitt's staccato hair and Angelina Jolie's duvet lips (sighted in the audience of Jeffrey Sachs's poverty panel) are reduced to a responsible human scale. Wandering out of a kitchen exit I found myself in a milling informal think tank with the former president expounding to the two guys who founded Google and a sprightly "Planet of the Apes" figure who turned out to be Mick Jagger.
Unlike Davos and other high-octane gabfests, however, Clinton's conference wasn't just about elephant bumping. For every VIP there was some earnest activist or intellectual who has caught his eye.
Clinton seems to have found his role as facilitator-in-chief, urging us to give up our deadly national passivity and start thinking things through for ourselves. Commandeering the role of government through civic action suddenly feels like a very empowering notion -- the alternative being to find oneself stranded in a flood waving a shirt from a rooftop.
It's an indicator of how the mood has changed that it was Al Gore who brought the house down. His Category 5 tirade on the impending calamity of unaddressed climate change electrified the lunch crowd. Who knew this Gore existed?
The answer is he didn't. Like Clinton, Gore has been liberated by cauterized rage at what has happened to the country in the past five years.
The White House doesn't seem to realize it yet, but we are entering a post-spin era in public life. The shift has long been underway in the business world, propelled by the Enron catastrophe and the collapse of the dot-com bubble. Process, not perception, is king in boardrooms today. After so much corporate malfeasance it all got too dire to put up with fake CEOs anymore.
Now after the Iraq debacle, the ballooning deficit and the aftermath of Katrina, Americans are pining for grounded leaders in public office, too -- leaders who have moral conviction, yes, but also the gnarly, dexterous ability to think things through.
The irony is that no one would have believed that Clinton -- the king of spin, who went out under a cloud of indecency five years ago -- could climb back to such credibility. Monica is fading and he's backlit now by his disciplined handling of the economy, the unsought comparisons of how well FEMA used to perform under his watch and the enlightened nature of his global activism.
A weird reputational exchange has taken place between Clinton and President Bush. After so much dishonest reasoning it's the vaunted "CEO president" who begins to look like the callow, fumbling adolescent. And it's the sexually incontinent, burger-guzzling, late-night-gabbing Bubba who is emerging as a great CEO of America.
"We are so arrogant because we are obsessed with the present," he told his guests at the conference's end. "I've reached an age now where it doesn't matter whatever happens to me. I just don't want anybody to die before their time anymore."
On Clinton's face these days is a look of wry, judicious knowingness. It's the look of political wisdom, and it imparted to his conference's departing crowd something like serenity.
2005Tina Brown
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
