Campanastan

iRack Video and One More

This is funny, but it's also sad, since it is all too true:

www.glumbert.com/media/irack/

Here's an ad that is just plain fun:

Download Permissiontobuy.wmv

Enjoy!

"We know where they [Iraq's WMDs] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat." -- Donald Rumsfeld, ABC This Week, 30 March 2003.

IWEL: Iraq War Enriching Language

Soldiering has spawned some wonderful slang and acronyms, often with a macabre or cynical inclination. Recall some of the more famous ones: "SNAFU" (Situation Normal All F***ed Up),"FUBAR" (F***ed Up Beyond All Recognition), or "HUAW" (memories of Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman - Hurry Up And Wait).

The Iraq War is no different. Here are some examples of "gruntspeak" from an Op-Ed piece by Austin Bay in the Los Angeles Times (www.latimes.com), as reported by Phil Proctor ("Planet Proctor") in the April 2007 Funny Times (www.funnytimes.com). I suspect there are many more, probably unprintable.

Casper: A grunt who always disappears when there is work to be assigned

Christians in Action: The CIA

Fobbits: People who never leave the Forward Operating Base.

Embrace the Suck: Yeah it's bad - deal with it!

Full Battle Rattle: Wearing all your combat gear

Idiot stick: M-16 or similar weapon

Groundhog Day: Every day of your tour in Iraq

Grunt-proof: Idiot-proof

Johnny Jihad: A Muslim or insurgent

Pubic plate: A groin-protecting Kevlar pad, aka "nad pad" or "nut guard"

PUG: Person Under Guard

Semper I: A self-absorbed Marine

Single-digit midget: A grunt down to his/her last days in Iraq

"Skid lid" or "Brain bucket": Helmet

Rummie's Dummies: The military when under Rumsfeld's reign

EAR: Echelons Above Reality - headquarters, where no one has a clue

Speed bumps: Tankers' term for the infantry

On a more lugubrious note, my "Backwards Bush" timer indicates 663 days.

"Should my administration prove to be a very wicked one...or a very foolish one, if you, the people, are true to yourselves and the Constitution, there is little harm I can do, thank God." -- Abraham Lincoln

200 Years Ago Today: Some Thoughts on Africa

On this day, the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade by the British Parliament, I thought I'd reflect a bit on Africa. This will be real stream-of-consciousness stuff.

Amazing Grace and The Amazing Change

The film Amazing Grace (www.amazinggracemovie.com) tells the story of William Wilberforce, the MP who was instrumental in getting Parliament to outlaw the slave trade. The movie has given rise to a campaign The Amazing Change (www.theamazingchange.com), a which seeks to outlaw modern-day slavery (yes, there are still an estimated 27 million people enslaved throughout the world).

The Slave Trade

Yesterday on NPR's Weekend Edition, Scott Simon interviewed Charles Onyango-Obbo, a columnist for Uganda's largest newspaper, The Monitor. You can hear it at:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9121033

Onyango-Obbo made a point I have heard few people make: the African slave trade could not have succeeded without the active participation of Africans themselves, particularly the tribal chiefs and their minions. They went to the interior to bring people to the coastal areas to be loaded onto the slave ships. He said that Africans have not yet examined the role of their ancestors in this heinous practice, but tend to focus on the evils of colonialism.

Talking about African complicity in the slave trade neither diminishes the role of the white slave traders nor absolves them of their guilt - not at all. It just serves as a reminder that others must also share the blame.

Onyango-Obbo also briefly touched on current slavery issues in Africa, and noted that the anniversary of the British Parliament's act is hardly commemorated in Africa.

Robert Mugabe   

What a guy! Yes, he once was a freedom fighter who threw off the yoke of colonial oppression. That was then, this is now. Mugabe is nothing more than a thug who brutalizes his own people and lines the pockets of his cronies. He's brought Zimbabwe down so far people wonder if it'll ever come back. He is the archetypical "Big Man". Finally - some members of his own party, ZANU-PF, are threatening to form a third party if Mugabe insists upon seeking another term next year. The party's central committee meets later this week. [Postscript: the committee met, and will support his bid for another 6-year term.]

What I find especially disturbing (disgusting, actually) is that the African Union and African leaders, especially South African President Mbeki, keep cutting him slack. Let me repeat: that was then, this is now.

The Fate of Africa

Last year I read a fascinating book by Martin Meredith, Nelson Mandela's biographer, The Fate of Africa. It's a chronicle of 50 years of independence. Highly recommended, as is his biography of Mandela. Interesting tidbit: in Africa and Europe, the book's title is The State of Africa. Meredith has also written Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe.

Darfur

What can I say? There is debate over establishing a no-fly zone over Darfur so the Sudanese government cannot bomb the locals or provide supplies to the janjaweed militias and other bad guys. Problem: the government has taken to using planes with the same markings as the relief agencies' planes, so shooting down the bad guys might pose a problem.

Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, riding high on oil money and foreign investment, is now on its way to becoming the place in that part of the world, what with all the construction. The Sudanese do not want to kill the goose that is laying all those golden eggs, and their foreign investor buddies want to tread lightly. We don't want to hassle the Sudanese too much because they are cooperating with us in the The War On Terror. Uh-huh. Translation: it's the SOS - "Same Old Stuff", or perhaps "Same Old Sudan", as far as Darfur is concerned.

Rwanda

Yeah, we thought all that bad stuff had disappeared. Heck, we can even buy coffee from Rwanda now. And besides, it was just black Africans slaughtering other black Africans - BFD! But a new film, Beyond the Gates, brings it all back. It's about a European struggling with the decision to flee Rwanda or stay behind with Tutsi refugees. The Christian Science Monitor's reviewer gave it a grade of A-, and noted its R rating for "strong violence, disturbing images, and language". Really?

I have read a number of books about Rwanda. My recommendations:

We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, by Philip Gourevitch. The title is taken from a letter sent by Tutsi pastors to their church president, a Hutu, asking for help. Gourevitch is an excellent writer and keen observer. It's a disturbing book, but I could not put it down. By the way, the church president declined to help. The pastors and their families were slaughtered.

A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali, by Gil Courtemanche. Pretty innocuous title, right? It's a novel, but there is far too much truth in it. An indictment of the carnage that was the genocide. Riveting - what more can I say?

When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda, by Mahmood Mamdani. An academic tome that delves into the history of the Tutsi-Hutu division. Not always easy to fathom, but essential to understand what happened and why.

Shake Hands With the Devil, by Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the French-Canadian general who served as the force commander of the UN mission in Rwanda. This really is a sad tale, recounting the criminal idiocy of the UN, its recalcitrant bureaucrats, the French, the Belgians, and just about everyone else. I could not read much of this book at one sitting. Dallaire was broken by his experience there. An angry, accusatory book.

And what has the Rwandan genocide taught us? The same thing all genocides have taught us - nothing (see Darfur above).

Nelson Mandela

Read Long Walk to Freedom, his autobiography, and Martin Meredith's biography. After almost 30 years' incarceration, you'd have thought he'd be gunning for revenge. That's what made him a remarkable man.

Last Thoughts on Slavery

The one big blot on the USA's history is the institution of slavery. I am still dumbfounded by our founding fathers, who got most everything else right with a brilliant document called the Constitution, but dropped the ball on slavery.

Which brings me to today's quote, so apropos:

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke

Four Years On: Alfred E. Newman and the Iraq War

It's now been four years since the Iraq war started. We're still being asked to "stay the course" and be "patient", even after four years of mismanagement, arrogance, and stupidity.

Frank Rich, in the 18 March 2007 issue of the New York Times, provides a chronology of the events of the past four years. It's wonderful, yet it is also terribly sad.

As someone who lost my younger sister on 9/11, I do not view the Iraq War as vindication for her murder. Iraq is not the venue for "the war on terror". Saddam Hussein, despicable as he was, did not murder Ann. The man who did is still free.

I was in Kyoto, Japan, at the Third World Water Forum when the invasion started. The gloomiest and the funniest monents occurred almost simultaneously. On the afternoon of 20 March 2003, several of the huge HDTV monitors in the Kyoto convention center were tuned to CNN and the unfolding war in Iraq. We stood silent, transfixed, watching the bombardment in that eerie green light, in real time. Then, after a few minutes, CNN rebroadcast President Bush's address in which he announced the invasion of Iraq. A woman behind me broke the silence, announcing to no one in particular, "My God, he does look like Alfred E. Newman!"

"Fanaticism is redoubling your efforts after you've forgotten your aims." -- George Santayana

Ten Days, Ten Nights in Africa with Nick Kristof

Nicholas D. Kristof (www.myspace.com/kristofontheground) the intrepid, compassionate New York Times reporter who has reported from Darfur, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, and other places where there is great human suffering, recently announced his second annual "Win a Trip" contest (www.nytimes.com/winatrip). Kristof, who believes, as I do, that "American universities do an execrable job preparing students for global citizenship", wants to take a US college student and, for the first time, a middle- or high-school teacher with him on his next foray to Africa. It won't be the usual "eco-tourism". The winners will see first-hand some of the daily horrors that many people in the devloping world face. Last year's winner, Casey Parks, has a blog of her trip at parks.blogs.nytimes.com/.

The deadline is April 6. Good luck, and kudos to Nick Christof.

"Statistics are people with the tears wiped away." -- Anonymous

"Go to the facts" and "Stick to the mandate": a Remarkable Commission

I just finished a remarkable book about an even more remarkable commission. The book is Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission by co-chairs Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton. It is a compelling story of a bipartisan commission with a daunting charge: determining what went wrong and why, and providing recommendations - 41, to be exact.

The commission had 10 members - 5 Republicans and 5 Democrats. It could have easily descended into partisan bickering and finger-pointing. It did not, and I attribute that to the co-chairs, Tom Kean (R), former governor of New Jersey, and Lee H. Hamilton (D), former 17-term congressman from Indiana.  To be sure, there were contentious disagreements, but Kean and Hamilton kept the group on track by promulgating and adhering to two mantras: "Go to the facts" and "Stick to the mandate". Kean set the tone by considering Hamilton to be his co-chair and not the vice chair.

Kean and Hamilton replaced Henry Kissinger and George Mitchell, the original chair and vice-chair, both of whom resigned. What a stoke of luck! Mitchell would have been fine, but Henry Kissinger would have been a disaster as chair.

The commission had remarkable latitude and authority, including the power to issue subpoenas, which they exercised sparingly. Kean and Hamilton did not want the commission to be another Warren Commission, which investigated President Kennedy's assassination. That commission had nowhere the authority of the 9/11 Commission, and as a result, even after 40 years, its results are viewed with skepticism by many. Certain avenues of inquiry were proscribed to the Warren Commission.

The commission's members were unanimous in approving the final report and its recommendations. There were no "minority reports". In terms of the commission's "bonding", Kean and Hamilton cited one watershed event. Jamie Gorelick, a former Clinton Administration Department of Justice political appointee, came under fire for a memo she had written while at DoJ. John Ashcroft, Attorney General at the time, was especially critical. Many called for her resignation, but her fellow commissioners, Democrats and Republicans alike, came vigorously to her defense. That cemented the bonds, and sent an important message to Congress, the Bush Administration, and the entire country. These folks were united, and determined to fulfill the commission's charge to the best of their ability.

I won't provide a book review but let me indicate some points I found particularly troubling.

1) NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) and the FAA came off particularly poorly. Not only were both uncooperative (the Commission had to subpoena the FAA) but their collective performance on 9/11 was incompetent. Fighter planes from Langley AFB were scrambled too late to do any good and chased a "ghost". The planes were also told to fly east, over the Atlantic Ocean. None of the four ill-fated flights was ever in that airspace. None of the fighter pilots was ever given the "shoot down" order (in fairness, there is some confusion over whether it was actually issued). Neither agency had the timelines correct. 

2) The Katrina disaster, four years after 9/11, showed that not much had changed. Poor communications, poor command-and-control, and poor emergency preparedness were hallmarks of that event, just like 9/11. As Commissioner Jim Thompson (former Illinois governor) asked, "Are we crazy? Have we learned nothing?"

3) The government - both executive and legislative branches - does not do retrospectives very well, if at all. We need to look back once in a while.

Finally, Kean and Hamilton eloquently state why democracy, imperfect as it is, is so much better than all other forms of government [page 314]:

"Where else could ten independent citizens probe the inner workings of government, question everybody up to a sitting president of the United States, and engage in a national dialogue on the key question of the day?"

My hat's off to the 9/11 Commission.

"Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve." -- George Bernard Shaw.

Darfur - Some Good News (Sort of)

Some good news about Darfur? Well, sort of. Last week the International Criminal Court charged a former Sudanese government minister and a janjaweed (Arab militia) leader with 51 crimes against humanity in connection with the Darfur genocide.

The janjaweed leader, Ali Kushayb, has denied the charges, saying that he was recruited to protect the villagers from the militias. Give me a break, Ali! And surprise! The Sudanese government has dismissed the charges against the minister, saying they are unfounded.

The Darfur genocide, which has spread to eastern Chad, is approaching Rwandan proportions. About 2,500,000 people have been displaced, and 250,000 have been murdered. 

Since Sudan has oil, I seriously doubt anything substantive will happen, so the goverment of Sudan can afford to be instransigent.

Learn more at www.savedarfur.org.

"The hot-blooded shall be judged differently from the cold-hearted." -- Dante
         

Gene Nichol: Nailed by a Cross?

Gene Nichol, the president of my alma mater, the College of William and Mary (www.wm.edu) in Williamsburg, VA, has come under fire for his recent decision to ban an 18-inch brass cross from permanent display on the altar in the College's Wren Chapel. Alumni have threatened to withhold gifts, including one who is revoking a $10M pledge.

The Wren Chapel is in the Wren Building, supposedly the oldest classroom building in continuous use in the USA. It is named for Sir Christopher Wren, arguably the greatest English architect of his time (1632-1723). The College is the second-oldest (1693) in the USA; only Harvard is older (1636).

Nichol based his decision on the fact that the cross may be offensive to non-Christians and its permanent display may be discomforting to non-Christians using the chapel. The cross can be returned to display for Christian groups using the chapel. It should be noted that the College is a state institution, so there are church-state separation issues at play.

You can read Gene Nichol's op-ed piece in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram at: www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/16826963.htm

I support President Nichol's decision and I urge you to do so, too. You can sign an online petition at www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/688533748.

Let's support reason, clear thinking, and concern for the feelings of all people, not just Christians.

Addendum. Right after I posted this, I learned that a compromise had been reached. President Nichol announced that the cross will be returned to the Wren Chapel, but not to the altar. It will be displayed permanently in a glass case with a plaque explaining its significance.

"Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein

Surgin' USA

If every country had a notion

Just like the USA's

Then everybody'd be sur-gin'

Surgin' USA

My apologies to Chuck Berry...oooops - I mean Brian Wilson and the rest of the Beach Boys - for butchering Surfin' USA.

While we await the surge of American troops in Iraq, Dick Cheney was on Air Force 2 putting the screws to President Musharraf of Pakistan to get tougher on the terrorist "safe havens" in his country and escalate the fight against the resurgent Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Rumors abound of a spring offensive against NATO forces in Afghanistan and the USA wants Musharraf to step it up. In a real role reversal, the Dickster played the "good cop" to the Democratic Congress' "bad cop", telling Musharraf that Congress might cut aid to Pakistan if he doesn't get more aggressive.

I am not a huge fan of Musharraf, but the man does walk a thin line in his country. If he gets too tough on the radical Islamists, he risks the collapse of his government and the nightmare of radical Islamists running a country with nuclear weapons. If he does not get tough enough, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda factions may become even bolder. He would then lose our support, which might cause him problems as well.

The Taliban has become stronger in Afghanistan, and has now regained control of some regions in the south. The Bush Administration's decision to shift the war on terror to Iraq has no doubt been a major factor in this resurgence. And it seems that the Dickster still conflates The War On Terror (aka "TWOT") with the war in Iraq. We "invited" the terrorists into Iraq with our invasion; Al-Qaeda realized it was a great place to recruit fighters, hone its tactics, and kill Americans, too. And while we were busy in Iraq, Afghanistan has become a problem once again.   

In a perceptive article in the 27 February 2007 issue of the Christian Science Monitor (www.csmonitor.com), Peter Grier reports that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates believes there are really four wars in Iraq: 1) Shiite vs. Shiite, in wich rival factions vie for control of Basra and other areas in the oil-rich south; 2) Shiite vs. Sunni sectarian warfare; 3) the native Sunni insurgency vs. the USA; and 4) Al-Qaeda. Too these four we should add a fifth: "plain old" criminal violence. So it's really not as "simple" as a civil war; in fact, it is far more complicated, and our troops are in the middle of this mess.

By the way, if I cite the Christian Science Monitor a lot, it is because it is a great newspaper. The CSM has had consistently superb reporting from Iraq (Jill Carroll was freelancing for the CSM when she was kidnapped) and Afghanistan (Scott Peterson) as well as other articles you do not always find in the "mainstream" papers (unless they reprint the CSM's articles).

"War hath no fury like the non-combatant." -- Charles Montague