I Think My Imperialist Has Been Showing

Let us all bask in the glory of Mr. Samuel Clemens while pondering the wisdom and justice of America's glorious and ongoing adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Somalia and Yemen and Colombia and the Philippines (among others).

Taken from "The War Prayer" by Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain):

.........

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister....

With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside – which the startled minister did – and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

"I come from the Throne – bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention.

.........

"You have heard your servant's prayer – the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it – that part which the pastor – and also you in your hearts – fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory – must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them! With them – in spirit – we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it – for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(After a pause.) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!"

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

It's definitely worth it to go read the entire thing.

Into the Darkness You Go

[update - 07/22/2012: Yeah, no, fuck this.  What the hell was I thinking?]

*Much more important update* This post over at "You Are Not So Smart" is probably relevant and, indirectly, offers a counterpoint of sorts to what I've said above. It deals with the 'sunk cost fallacy'.

I have a lot of respect for Christopher Hitchens*. I found his opinions on the Iraq War (mostly in favor of it) to be very compelling. His conviction that the invasion of Iraq was justified is rooted in the fact the Saddam Hussein deserved to be executed for crimes against humanity. Saddam had used WMDs in the past, had promised to use them in the future, had committed acts of genocide, forced disappearances etc.

What he neglects to mention is that the Bush Administration obviously gave even less of a fuck about the wellbeing of the Iraqis than Saddam did (the fact that the administration was also significantly less directly malicious towards them is irrelevant to this post). I now think that Hitchens is misguided in his defense of the Iraq War. We went to war based off of blatant lies and then did nothing to help the Iraqi people rebuild after we destroyed their nation. Regardless of whether Saddam should have been removed from power, what we have done in Iraq is monstrous. False pretenses aside, once we were committed to military action we had the chance to do something great for the Iraqi people. Instead of even attempting to help them rebuild we ignored all of the problems and Iraqi protests until the nation disintegrated into sectarian violence and civil war (re: exactly like Afghanistan).

Watching Rachel Maddow's discussions with Richard Engel (two people who I also have a great deal of respect for) I noticed something about Engel's reactions to her questions. When Maddow asked why the we aren't stepping in militarily to protect civilians in other nations Engel immediately started talking about how much more atrocious the Gaddafi regime is. Engel also, as part of his 'reporting', seemed to be pleading for more direct military support for the rebels, specifically close air support**.

Even though there are many obvious differences between the situations, Engel's response reminds me a lot of Hitchen's support of the Iraq war.

Maybe it's sentimental on both their part and mine, but I think they have the right idea. Regardless of whether we should have intervened in Libya, something I feel very conflicted about, we once again have an opportunity to attempt something that will truly help the Libyan people in the long run.

Success certainly isn't guaranteed; but let's at least try this time.

*update*: Just to make it explicit that I'm a deranged left-wing liberal (or so my conservative relatives claim) -

• Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are de facto traitors because of their roles in privatizing our military.
• The military-industrial complex is as close to Pure Fucking Evil as our species can get.
• I'm extremely distressed (and disgusted) that Obama hasn't managed to get Guantanamo closed, hasn't stopped drone-strikes in Yemen, Somalia, etc.
• et cetera.
• et cetera.

Consider those bullet points to be part of my growing list of "Things I intend to write a post about. Maybe."

*link is to a semi-official youtube channel

** link to wikipedia article on the subject

National Guard Vs. Public Employees?

WTF? Keep in mind that this is on the heels of him killing the high-speed rail project between Madison and Milwaukee. His excuse was that he wanted to use that federal money to update our roads and highways. The problem was that the money was only allowed to be used for that rail line AND NOTHING ELSE.

Side note: I want this coffee maker.

Update: I wasn't trying to imply that Walker is going deploy the National Guard to put down protests; just that it might be used to negate potential strikes.

Oh. Shit.

I was checking out random things on the Harris Poll website's 'Vault' and I found this breakdown of what Americans believe. According to their 2009 polling 32% of americans believe in UFOs, 26% believe in astrology, and 23% believe in witches. Meanwhile only a measly 45% think that evolution is a real phenomenon.

Think about it. We have the most powerful conventional military in the world. We also have a metric shit-ton of WMDs. And a quarter of our population still believes in witches.

I wonder if this has anything to do with that. With the elections coming up I'm already hearing the conservatives hollering about needing to cut school funding and fire teachers. Every few years in the town where I grew up they try to get their hands on millions of dollars to build a field-house for the sports teams; meanwhile the liberal arts have been slowly butchered so they can pay for maintaining the football field.

Fuck. It's not like I have anything I can say on this subject that hasn't been repeated elsewhere a million times before. For the record though; I just want to say that my instincts tell my that a well educated nation is a nation better prepared to wage war.... so it blows my fucking mind that so many of the people I know who are extremely vocal in their contempt for public education are also the same people who have "Nuke their ass/Take their gas!" bumper-stickers. There is no zero-sum game going on between supporting the military and educating our population.

But that's another rant to be ranted another time. Thanks for reading, and feel free to let me know what you think. Unless you happen to actually believe in any of that pseudoscience crap. Then you can go google "James Randi" instead.