Copyright © 2006 Frank Lynch.
Copyright © 2006 Frank Lynch.
Me: Frank Lynch Home These are my mundane daily ramblings. Email: |
Abu Ghraib "relatively trivial." That's John Hinderaker's take, and apparently it's not a reassessment after hearing how the Haditha scandal is developing:
So for Hindrocket he now has additional opportunity to claim that Abu Ghraib was unimportant in the scheme of things. Oddly, though, since it's hurt our claims of moral superiority so badly and worsened our international image, I don't see how Abu Ghraib was much ado about nothing. If Hinderaker really thinks Abu Ghraib was ever
relatively trivial, it just demonstrates how morally empty he
really is. Abu Ghraib is important, never trivial; some things
are more severe, but that doesn't eclipse the importance of Abu
Ghraib. Perhaps Hinderaker would like to go through what the
victims went through before he starts re-scaling the importance?
Baseball games to hate are few and far between, but high on my list are games like I saw today between the Yankees and the Kansas City Royals. The Royals deserve to play in Yankee Stadium, because they've been christened a major league team, and are therefore entitles to all the rights, privileges, and revenues thereby. But they were sorely overmatched, and the game was determined by the third inning. Were I not with a larger group, I certainly would have left by the sixth: it wound up as a win for the Yanks, who scored over ten runs more than the visitors. Harumph, a pretty "who cares" game. I got very distracted wondering about the .397 BA of some infielder for the Royals, wondering how many AB's he had, and what we would see as the season wore on. For me the high point was the National Anthem. The cool thing was that they played a traditional, good clip band arrangement: it remembered that it was a song of triumph, not a song of seduction. And I have to tell you, I cried during the bridge: tears welled up, and in my head I said to myself, I want my country back. It was cathartic: I hadn't put my love for this nation and sense of loss in such stark terms before, or not in memory, anyway. And as every spectator shot focused in on a visiting service person (it's Fleet Week), I said to myself "Thank you for your service," just as I did when I passed them on the way in. So many of them are so young and they look so innocent. They do us so proud, and the vast majority of them do not slaughter or abuse Iraqis; they do not commit atrocities like those at Mi Lai. They are good people, they are serving us and our country, and they do us proud. I just wish none of them were enlisted in a questionable cause. I want my country back, and it's not just Iraq: it's the way 9/11 was manipulated by the White House and turned into a cultural touchstone which could be pulled off the shelf and used at will, as if it were some old advertisement Americans had fond memories of. And it wasn't just the White House, either: New York Governor George Pataki certainly added to the conflation when he suggested that the toppled statue of Saddam Hussein should be melted into girders to construct the new World Trade Center. That pompous piece of crap: as if we would have wanted that iron, as if Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11. And the momentum Bush felt when he put Bernard Kerik up as the next head of the Department of Homeland Security. I have to stop here, I'm getting upset. I have to stop here, I'm getting upset. I have to stop here, I'm getting upset. But I love my country, and I want it back.
Oh, this is so encouraging. In
Baghdad, two Olympic tennis players and their coach were shot
for wearing shorts. Mr. President, if the greatest nation on
Earth still hasn't found a way to stop this crap, what makes you
so confident that the Iraqis can provide security?
Dead Again. Maybe, anyway. Treasury Secretary John Snow has hinted about leaving. This is big news, "MAN BITES DOG!" writ large, because many of us remember that after Bush was re-elected in 2004, word from unnamed sources in the White House was that he was welcome to stay as long as it wasn't "too long." Do you remember that plank? Since then, many have chuckled that while Snow may be a nice guy, his long twist in the wind has had more to do with White House difficulties in finding a successor. Well, I have it on confidence, just between you and me, don't tell anyone where you heard it (promise?), that Bush is rather impressed with the expertise of someone who has done a "heck of a job" selling World's Finest chocolates for his school. Although, let's be clear, given the way the Bush White House pays attention to diversity, it could be someone who has done a heck of a job selling World's Finest chocolates for her school. Trust me on this one. I have highly reliable sources, just like Matt Drudge.
Information for its own sake.
(Actually, calling it information may be too kind: there's a
supposed, understandable continuum: data -> information ->
knowledge -> wisdom.) Today I was supposed to go to Philadelphia
to visit a client, and we planned on going via Amtrak. But there
was an electrical outage which shut down the trains from
Washington D.C. up to Boston, happened around 8:30 A.M., and as
it was all touch and go, I had to monitor news reports. Not just
on Amtrak's web site and that of New Jersey Transit (their trains
often use the same tracks), but also Google News. And lo and
behold, it seems as if the world loves a story of some kind, any
kind: either that, or everyone's on auto pilot. Once the AP
picked up the story, I saw it not only on the web sites of
newspapers in Kansas, but also the Guardian in the UK. I have
trouble imagining why this bit of news would be of such immediate
value to readers of the Guardian's web site; maybe it's not my
position to second guess, but doesn't something like this mean we
are really, truly, bored? Can't we be bothered with something of
more immediate importance, like how to make those who are around
us happier? Don't get me wrong: I'm not advocating a know-
nothing-stick-my-head-in-the-sand perspective when it comes to
issues such as holding our leaders accountable for prisoner
abuses in Iraq, the relaxing of environmental standards, and so
on... I just don't see how something like a power outage on a
passenger train line merits such immediate worldwide coverage.
Any one want to explain?
Don't go there, Mr. A. G. So yesterday the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, the highest law enforcement official in the entire country, leaned on his understanding of the law to suggest that prosecuting journalist for leaking classified information is in the realm of possibilities. Hello, Mr. A.G., have you and everyone else at BushCo given
careful consideration to how much the feeds to Judith Miller
helped propel us into war in Iraq? All those leaks were a blatant
effort to sway public opinion. Just how are you going to
vigorously prosecute both sides of the issue? Do you
really think you can come off as non-partisan on this one?
|
|