The Latest Newspaper Column:
Once again, I’m confused. The source of my confusion is the current mess in the Middle East.
It's not just the current brouhaha in Lebanon. My confusion is much more comprehensive than that, stretching from the shores of Lebanon all the way to Iraq. Here's what's got me bumfuzzled on such a grand scale.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki spoke recently in front of a joint session of the U.S. Congress, where he assured us that "Iraqis are your allies in the war on terror" and asserted that the people who attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, were "the same people" whom we now fight in Iraq.
Yet when it comes to Hezbollah, the terrorist organization which is currently under heavy attack in southern Lebanon by Israel, al-Maliki is not, shall we say, quite so vigorous in his condemnation. In fact, Maliki didn't have much to say at all about Hezbollah's nasty little habits like kidnapping Israeli soldiers and lobbing rockets more or less randomly at Israeli civilians.
All his ire, it seems, is directed against Israel. He said of Iraq: "We call on the world to take quick stands to stop the Israeli aggression against Lebanon, to stop the killing of innocent people and to stop the destruction of infrastructure." He called for an immediate ceasefire, which Washington has been dead set against.
Al-Maliki's refusal to condemn Hezbollah isn't surprising when you consider the ties between Hezbollah and al-Maliki's own Islamic Dawa party. According to an article in Newsday, al-Maliki was "the exiled representative of the Iraqi Dawa Party in Syria and Lebanon in the mid-1980s. The Dawa Party in Lebanon merged with Hezbollah in 1983 or 1984."
A group known as the "Dawa 17" was arrested in Kuwait for bombing the American and French embassies there, killing three Americans. Hezbollah terrorists frequently made the release of the "Dawa 17" one of their demands during the 1980s. "Asked later about Dawa's ties to Hezbollah," Newsday states, "National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said he was unaware there was a relationship." But hey, that's OK. I don't remember a lot of the '80s either. Good times, man. Good times.
Anyway, some Democrats found al-Maliki's call for condemnation of Israel and for a cease-fire reprehensible. Some refused to attend al-Maliki's address to Congress. Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean went even further. Referring to al-Maliki as an "Anti-Semite," Dean told a group of Florida businessmen, "We don't need to spend $200 and $300 and $500 billion bringing democracy to Iraq to turn it over to people who believe that Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself and who refuse to condemn Hezbollah."
Republicans reacted with their usual reflexive outrage.
"It is incredibly troubling," sniffed a press release from the Republican National Committee, "that Howard Dean would seek to score cheap political points by attacking the democratically elected prime minister of Iraq."
The RNC, of course, never ever tries to score cheap political points over stories in the news. Oh, no, not them.
So here's how the administration's policy plays out, as near as I can figure it:
We should support what is Good, and oppose that which is Evil.
Terrorism is Evil.
Hezbollah are terrorists. They are therefore also Evil, and we should oppose them.
Israel is fighting Hezbollah. Therefore, Israel is Good, because they oppose terrorism, which is Evil.
The Iraqi government are our allies in the War on Terror. They are therefore also Good, because, again, terrorism is Evil.
Here's where it gets a little confusing.
Prime Minister al-Maliki, who is Good, thinks Israel, which is also Good, should lay off Hezbollah, who are Evil. Al-Maliki therefore does not support what is Good, and does not oppose what is Evil.
Howard Dean and the Democrats think al-Maliki should lay off Israel, which, let us not forget, is Good. Therefore, Democrats, who support Israel (which is Good), are Evil, while al-Maliki, (who opposes Israel) is Good.
You can see why I'm confused.
Of course, this kind of tangle is inevitable when you start trying to apply black-and-white, bumper-sticker-ready political philosophy to the knotted mess that is the Middle East. "You're either with us or with the terrorists" sounds good as a sound bite, but it only takes you so far.
On the one hand, Lebanon is Israel's Afghanistan, the place where they're going after a terrorist organization that's killing Israeli civilians and that the Lebanese government is unwilling or unable to get rid of.
On the other hand, Israel's got more than its share of innocent blood on its hands. With every civilian killed by Israeli bombs and shells, it creates a dozen new recruits, another generation out for yet another round of bloody vengeance. And even the "democratically elected government of Iraq" knows it.
I'd seriously question whether we should even be picking sides in this mess, but if we do, we need to be honest that the side we pick may not have always worn the white hat, and may not even be doing so now.
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Saturday, August 05, 2006
The Future of Action Films
DIE-CAST FILMS proves you don't need a big budget to make a kick ass "guys fighting killer robots" pic.
Friday, August 04, 2006
Movie Cooties and Marquee Names
Over at his blog, Jason Pinter, aka The Man in Black, asks people whether Mel Gibson's (and Tom Cruise's) recent forays into general fuckwittedness will cause people to avoid their movies.
As I stated in the comments, it really doesn't make any difference to me. The fact that Tom or Mel is in a movie doesn't, in itself, make that movie more or less interesting to me. If the movie interests me, I won't NOT see it because Mel Gibson's in it. If I see a trailer for a movie that, for some reason, grabs my attention, but I see Tom Cruise's name on the credits, I won't go, "Euuuuw! Tom Cruise! He has movie cooties!" On the other hand, their names on the marquees don't make me say "I MUST see this! NOW!"
Which begs the question: who ARE your marquee names? Which actors or actresses WILL draw you to a movie, even if you might be dubious at best about its plot, subject matter, etc.?
Who are the actors who, as the saying goes, you'd pay to see read a phone book?
My own: Robert Duvall. John Cusack. Nicolas Cage. Alan Rickman. Michael Caine. William H. Macy.
Will Ferell's getting there, although after the suck-fest that was Bewitched, I'm still wary. Steve Carell looks promising.
Oddly, there are very few actresses left in this category for me. Frances McDormand and Maria Bello are the only ones who come immediately to mind. Holly Hunter used to be one, but she seems to have dropped off the face of the earth.
The floor is open for your nominations....
As I stated in the comments, it really doesn't make any difference to me. The fact that Tom or Mel is in a movie doesn't, in itself, make that movie more or less interesting to me. If the movie interests me, I won't NOT see it because Mel Gibson's in it. If I see a trailer for a movie that, for some reason, grabs my attention, but I see Tom Cruise's name on the credits, I won't go, "Euuuuw! Tom Cruise! He has movie cooties!" On the other hand, their names on the marquees don't make me say "I MUST see this! NOW!"
Which begs the question: who ARE your marquee names? Which actors or actresses WILL draw you to a movie, even if you might be dubious at best about its plot, subject matter, etc.?
Who are the actors who, as the saying goes, you'd pay to see read a phone book?
My own: Robert Duvall. John Cusack. Nicolas Cage. Alan Rickman. Michael Caine. William H. Macy.
Will Ferell's getting there, although after the suck-fest that was Bewitched, I'm still wary. Steve Carell looks promising.
Oddly, there are very few actresses left in this category for me. Frances McDormand and Maria Bello are the only ones who come immediately to mind. Holly Hunter used to be one, but she seems to have dropped off the face of the earth.
The floor is open for your nominations....
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Songs You Will Never, Ever Hear the Same Way Again
| "Total Eclipse of the Heart" . This gives a whole new meaning to the term Heavy Metal. | |
Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ, Redux
John Podhoretz, according to his Fox News bio, is a "FOX News Channel contributor, a twice-weekly columnist for the New York Post, a weekly columnist for National Review Online, a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard magazine and a consulting editor at ReganBooks.
He was co-founder and deputy editor of the Weekly Standard from 1995-1997 before joining the New York Post as its editorial page editor. Later, he also served as the paper's arts and features editor before becoming a full-time columnist.
Podhoretz has worked at Time, The Washington Times, Insight and U.S. News & World Report."
This guy's Republican/conservative credentials are pretty solid.
He also thinks the problem with the Middle East is that we haven't killed enough civilians .
Ignore the disingenuous use of rhetorical "questions," which are artfully designed to make it seem as if this guy is just a rational seeker after truth, and feast your eyes on these gems:
Could World War II have been won by Britain and the United States if the two countries did not have it in them to firebomb Dresden and nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Didn't the willingness of their leaders to inflict mass casualties on civilians indicate a cold-eyed singleness of purpose that helped break the will and the back of their enemies? Didn't that singleness of purpose extend down to the populations in those countries in those days, who would have and did support almost any action at any time that would lead to the deaths of Germans and Japanese?
What if the tactical mistake we made in Iraq was that we didn't kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything? Wasn't the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?
So much for our goal being to bring peace and democracy to Iraq. What this Republican pundit thinks we really should have done to secure victory is to exterminate an entire generation of Iraqis.
And, of course, by this logic, what the Israelis need to consider is eradicating all the Palestenians, and one supposes, the remaining Lebanese:
Where do these questions lead us?
What if Israel's caution about casualties among its own soldiers and Lebanese civilians has demonstrated to Hezbollah and Hamas that as long as they can duck and cover when the missiles fly and the bombs fall, they can survive and possibly even thrive?
Since we seem to be fond of the rhetorical question, well then allow me to retort in the same manner: If the only way for our civilization to survive is to become as psychotic as the terrorists, what's the point?
He was co-founder and deputy editor of the Weekly Standard from 1995-1997 before joining the New York Post as its editorial page editor. Later, he also served as the paper's arts and features editor before becoming a full-time columnist.
Podhoretz has worked at Time, The Washington Times, Insight and U.S. News & World Report."
This guy's Republican/conservative credentials are pretty solid.
He also thinks the problem with the Middle East is that we haven't killed enough civilians .
Ignore the disingenuous use of rhetorical "questions," which are artfully designed to make it seem as if this guy is just a rational seeker after truth, and feast your eyes on these gems:
Could World War II have been won by Britain and the United States if the two countries did not have it in them to firebomb Dresden and nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Didn't the willingness of their leaders to inflict mass casualties on civilians indicate a cold-eyed singleness of purpose that helped break the will and the back of their enemies? Didn't that singleness of purpose extend down to the populations in those countries in those days, who would have and did support almost any action at any time that would lead to the deaths of Germans and Japanese?
What if the tactical mistake we made in Iraq was that we didn't kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything? Wasn't the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?
So much for our goal being to bring peace and democracy to Iraq. What this Republican pundit thinks we really should have done to secure victory is to exterminate an entire generation of Iraqis.
And, of course, by this logic, what the Israelis need to consider is eradicating all the Palestenians, and one supposes, the remaining Lebanese:
Where do these questions lead us?
What if Israel's caution about casualties among its own soldiers and Lebanese civilians has demonstrated to Hezbollah and Hamas that as long as they can duck and cover when the missiles fly and the bombs fall, they can survive and possibly even thrive?
Since we seem to be fond of the rhetorical question, well then allow me to retort in the same manner: If the only way for our civilization to survive is to become as psychotic as the terrorists, what's the point?
Are You Sure Rebus Done It This Way?
REUTERS: British Police Try Prayer To Help In Catching Crooks
Police in eastern England are looking to God to help them catch vandals and burglars.
The Lincolnshire branch of the Christian Police Association is setting up a "Prayer Watch" scheme to alert Christians to local crimes.
As well as encouraging worshippers to keep an eye out on their churches and each other, the police said the scheme would allow Christians to use prayer to help catch criminals.
"It's largely geared to protecting congregations and church properties which are pretty vulnerable places, but with the added bolt-on aspect of prayer," a Lincolnshire police spokesman told Reuters Wednesday.
Retired London policeman Don Axcell, the national executive director of the Christian Police Association, said God did answer crime-busting prayers.
"I'm a great believer in the power of prayer and all I'd say to the skeptics is that I've seen it work too many times for it to be a coincidence," he told the Lincolnshire Echo newspaper.
Can I get a A-men, children?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)