Me: Frank Lynch

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For something less spontaneous, I maintain The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page (over 1,800 Johnson quotes).

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Why don't our troops support the troops? Think Progress highlights a new poll from the military showing decreasing support for the war in Iraq. I swear, the lamest excuse the President ever gave for staying in Iraq was in order to honor the sacrifices (deaths) of all those who had already fallen. Sounded like a pretty Satanic deal: don't break the chain letter, or you know, fewer people will die.
Link | | | 8:26 AM | Home
 

Yes, what IS in a pronoun? And is the "royal we" better when it comes to usages like, "From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs." Or "This nation fights reluctantly, because we know the cost and we dread the days of mourning that always come." Hmm. I think a little disassociation might help here or there.
Link | | | 8:25 AM | Home

Digby has caught Mallard Fillmore in a case of self-congratulatory pandering, over a claim that The Republican-led Congress was not partisan. To his brief observation I'd like to remind that Denny Hastert, Speaker of the House while Republican-led, did not see it as his role to speak for the House, nor even its majority. Rather, he redefined his role as speaking for the majority in his party, whether or not a sufficient minority of those in his party had aligned with the Democrats in creating an opposing majority on an issue.

And of course, the hokum which occurred over Terri Schiavo, as political a maneuver as possible; or refusals to investigate what the White House did with its intelligence on Iraq; or threatening to "nuclear" if the Democrats in the Senate didn't abandon accepted parliamentary practices and let Bush's judicial appointments roll right through. Naaah, the Republicans don't play partisan politics. Right, Grover?
Link | | | 7:52 AM | Home
 

An odd ambiguity from our recently late President Ford. You've probably read by now that Bob Woodward conducted an interview with Ford, contents to be embargoed until Ford's death, in which Ford disagreed with Bush's decision to go to war against Iraq. Naturally there's been a lot of focus on that disagreement in order to present it as a slap against Bush. But there's a funny way in which it's put: while one gets the clear feeling that Ford would have preferred tightening sanctions over shock and awe,

"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said. "And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."

Again, it's pretty clear that Ford would have preferred sanctions over invasion, but are we to understand that once a decision to war was made, Bush should have found a different argument for it? And what kind of argument? The humanitarian justification didn't wash with either the Catholic Church or Human Rights Watch. What argument would Ford have found reasonable?
Link | | | 10:00 PM | Home

Questions are embarrassing, and answering them is hard work. That must be why Bush wouldn't take any questions today after his photo-op with Cheney, Rice, Pace, and Gates: all he really wanted to do was act concerned. Really funny how he acts like he wants to build a concensus understanding about Iraq now, when the Administration stiff armed the Senate before the 2002 authorization to use force.
Link | | | 9:45 PM | Home
 

A few things about Gerald Ford. First and foremost, rest in peace; my heart goes out to everyone of his family members who surely feel his loss. He must have had a very large heart to pardon Nixon, and he must have hade a helluva moral rudder to never regret having done so. It's not easy to make a choice like he made, and basically lose your election as a result (Josh Marshall wrote today about the precipitous hit his popularity ratings took in the wake of that decision, so close to the election... A smaller man might have waited until after the election to make a move like that.)

That having been said, I can't help but wonder if the Republicans who went after Clinton were oblivious to the agonies which an impeachment can wreak, as a result of Ford's pardon of Nixon. Yes, I know, Nixon wasn't impeached, and skedaddled beforehand, but Ford's earnest effort to accelerate the healing meant that the nation didn't really confront what it might have been like to put a President on trial. Without that memory, did the ignorance of what a real nightmare is like somehow compel Republicans to go more willingly into that incredible boondoggle? Of course it's astonishing that any individual or group could have been so vindictive about not hearing the details of a private liaison between two adults straight from Clinton's mouth... You have to wonder. For my money, if in that parallel universe there's no Nixon pardon, Republicans tread more carefully.

I already wrote here about how George Allen's "macaca moment" has eclipsed Ford's hiccup over Eastern Europe, so I won't go into that again, but I do remember this wonderful editorial cartoon during the Ford years, when he faced a Democratically-controlled Congress which seemed unable to overcome any of his vetos. Mimicking the "Jaws" movie posters of the day, it showed Ford swimming away from a toothless shark, with the movie name changed to "Gums."

UPDATE and CORRECTION: I misread Marshall and misremembered history. Ford pardoned Nixon shortly after taking office, not shortly before the 1976 election.
Link | | | 9:45 PM | Home
 

The culture wars over Christmas have taken another bad turn, as the New York Times highlighted a few days ago. It seems as if some people resent the ease with which their neighbors can turn on an air pump and quickly have an inflated Santa on their front lawn. There are all sorts of dynamics going on: some claim to be offended by the tackiness of the inflated figures, others find it a cheap route to celebrating the holidays. You can imagine all the possible ways to criticize everyone involved in the story; but if Jesus is the Light of the World, are strings of icicle lights any closer to capturing the wonderful miracle which is supposed to be represented in his birth, the only son of a God who so loved the world, and all that?

I know people who put a lot of time and energy into their Christmas displays (we do it, too, although because we live in a co-op our displays are limited to the internals of our apartment). I just hope the feelings which the Times' article has captured aren't very deep-seated... If there is anything close to genuine intolerance or offense over anything so silly, then I'm completely confident that we can all meet in the town square and discuss the big questions.

(On a side note, if you've never read Stephen Nissenbaum's The Battle For Christmas, you should. It's a great history of our cultural "traditions" here in the U.S. and how they came about.)
Link | | | 5:31 PM | Home

Main and Central. Not sure if you noticed it when I added it to the daily reading list in the links, but you should really visit Main and Central and add it to your bookmarks, and its feed to your browser/bloglines subscriptions. Lurch has been doing some great stuff on the escalation, far better than I've had time for of late. Highly recommended.
Link | | | 9:26 AM | Home
 

It's still astonishing Bush was re- elected. In writing the last post, I did a quick read-through of the transcript of the first Bush-Kerry debate. If you haven't read it recently, you should. Given the importance of the Iraq war in our national debate, you really wish more of the American public could have recognized empty platitudes when it heard them.

Here are some Bush highlights, in case you've forgotten (and remember, this was September of 2004):

• "We pursued Al Qaida wherever Al Qaida tries to hide." (Still no OBL, of course...)
   
• "the Taliban are no longer in power..." (Doing their comeback tour in parts of Afghanistan now, of course)
   
• "I believe I'm going to win, because the American people know I know how to lead. I've shown the American people I know how to lead." (Of course, the American people now know better...)
   
• "Saddam Hussein had no intention of disarming. Why should he?" (Uh, well, how do you disarm what you ain't got?)
   
• "The biggest disaster that could happen is that we not succeed in Iraq. We will succeed. We've got a plan to do so." (According to intelligence estimates, it looks like the biggest disaster started when we went in, giving terrorists a great platform to use for recruitment. If there's no easy exit, fine, no one thinks there is, but you have to recognize how the fine china got broken in the first place. Take full credit, Mr. President.)

Geez, I'm not even a fifth of the way into the transcript. Find your own favorites!
Link | | | 9:59 AM | Home

Merry Christmas to five more American families. Actually, that's not quite right, as I don't know if all five of these recently fallen troops come from families that observe or celebrate Christmas; but whatever, it's not as if there's ever a good time of the year to lose a loved one in an effort which has all the signs of amounting to being senseless carnage.

Even for the Iraqis, many of whom don't celebrate Christmas, their losses must be numbing. So many nights our "faces of the fallen" show Americans, understandably, but every Iraqi who dies has a similar story. Father, mother, this many sons and daughters, trying to find work, food, make ends meet: imagine how different our world would be if we truly had an international focus and our newscasters put human faces on all those who die in a truck bombing in a market square. It's not like all those who die are guilty, and even those among them who might be guilty deserve a different justice process.

Seeing as how President Bush so proudly touted the losses felt by our "coalition partner" Iraq, it's important to consider their portion of the human toll, and how our President's poor decision and continuing indecision prolongs the bloodshed. The spur to decide the next steps should never come from an election, but that's apparently what happened. Rumsfeld could and should have been sent packing months ago, for instance. This whole idea that Bush seemingly has to start from scratch, and the timing, is repulsive. It's reprehensible.

Not for a moment am I suggesting that there wouldn't have been deaths this week if Bush had acted sooner, but it would be clear to anyone that the timeline of the deaths in the future would br contracted.

Merry Christmas, Mr. President.
Link | | | 9:34 AM | Home
 

Isn't she lovely? You've heard about Judith Regan by now: the aborted O.J. project and the firing over anti-Semitic remarks. You may even remember stories that when she was based in New York she was carrying on an affair with married Bernie Kerik (at the same time Kerik was seeing another girlfriend...). Well, the current news is that she had a prior manifestation of anti-Semitism, worth a corporate reprimand, for allegedly replacing the scrolls in her neighbor's mezuzas with "torn pieces from dollar bills." Fine behavior... Can stuff like this be made up?
Link | | | 8:19 AM | Home
 

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