Category Archives: War

Bush Shoed In Baghdad

Bush, Democrats, Iraq, Just War, War

As CNN reports, Bush traveled to Iraq

To celebrate the conclusion of the security pact, called the Strategic Framework Agreement and the Status of Forces Agreement, the White House said.
The pact will replace a U.N. mandate for the U.S. presence in Iraq that expires at the end of this year. The agreement, reached after months of negotiations, sets June 30, 2009, as the deadline for U.S. combat troops to withdraw from all Iraqi cities and towns. The date for all U.S. troops to leave Iraq is December 31, 2011.

During a news conference, “an angry Iraqi man jumped up and threw shoes at Bush… President Bush … ducked … as Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki tries to protect him Sunday. …Throwing shoes at someone, or sitting so that the bottom of a shoe faces another person, is considered an insult among Muslims.”

If only Muslims confined themselves to shoe tossing. It’s far preferable to bomb throwing.

“The man was dragged out screaming after throwing the shoes.”

Of course, Iraqis, of whom millions have been displaced and tens of thousands killed due to Bush’s war, have every reason in the world to throw boots, baklava, or even bombs at Bush.

Bush responded fast and well: He joked about the incident and asserted that protest was the hallmark of a free society, blah, blah.

As I have observed before, “the Bush administration might just have taken the wind out of the war as an issue for Barack Obama. As it is, Obama had grown weaker on that front, his position increasingly converging with McCain’s. But if Bush finalizes the withdrawal, he will have taken the issue and the decision away from Obama. Strategically, it’s a smart move.”

As for the shoeing Iraqi, I’ve said it again and again: impeachment and war-crimes prosecutions is what this administration deserves for launching an unjust war, an obligation the opportunistic Democrats would never fulfill.

How Did The US Become ‘A Proto-Soviet Surveillance State?’

America, Communism, Socialism, The Military, The State, War

Fred Reed demands to know “What Have the Bastards Done to My Country?”:

“This is the country that produced Peggy Lee and Tampa Red and the ‘fitty-sedden Chevy, the country that spits techno-whizz golf carts onto Mars just like it was even possible, that brought the hamburger to gorgeous bejuiced perfection and invented most of the modern world. It’s the home of sand-lot baseball and Little Peggy March and BB guns and Tasty Freeze. It is, in a phrase, one fine place.”

“How did it sink to being a proto-Soviet surveillance state that builds vast awful Visitor Centers in the style of a Hitlerian mauseoleum [sic]? You can’t go to the john without a photo ID anymore. Something ain’t right.”

Reeds’ “Thoughts in an Insurrectionist Vein” are “here.

How Did The US Become 'A Proto-Soviet Surveillance State?'

America, Communism, Socialism, The Military, The State, War

Fred Reed demands to know “What Have the Bastards Done to My Country?”:

“This is the country that produced Peggy Lee and Tampa Red and the ‘fitty-sedden Chevy, the country that spits techno-whizz golf carts onto Mars just like it was even possible, that brought the hamburger to gorgeous bejuiced perfection and invented most of the modern world. It’s the home of sand-lot baseball and Little Peggy March and BB guns and Tasty Freeze. It is, in a phrase, one fine place.”

“How did it sink to being a proto-Soviet surveillance state that builds vast awful Visitor Centers in the style of a Hitlerian mauseoleum [sic]? You can’t go to the john without a photo ID anymore. Something ain’t right.”

Reeds’ “Thoughts in an Insurrectionist Vein” are “here.

Poll Shows Americans Buy Obama Bull

Barack Obama, Iraq, The Zeitgeist, War

“Fifty-five percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday back the president-elect when it comes to reducing the number of American combat troops in Iraq and increasing the number in Afghanistan.

“The reason is simple,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “The war in Iraq is very unpopular, while a majority support the war in Afghanistan.”

This seems to bear out what I conjectured sometime ago in “A War To Call His Own”:

“Electability in fin de siècle America hinges on projecting strength around the world—an American leader has to aspire to protect borders and people not his own. In other words, Obama needs a war he can call his own. In Afghanistan, Obama has found such a war.”