It’s one of those days when there’s so much stupidity floating around that I don’t know what I should be outraged at first.
There is, for example, the news that House Republicans are continuing their long tradition of double-standardism by changing their party rules so Tom DeLay can retain his post as majority leader even if he’s indicted on charges of political corruption. I’m going to guess most people don’t know about the rule that would have required him to step down following an indictment. It was created by these very same Republicans a decade ago as a bludgeon to use against Democrats. (Newt Gingrinch and his buddies cooked up the rule so they could claim that the GOP was ethically superior to the Dems, who if I remember correctly, had no such rule of their own at the time.) Now, however, when one of their own seems to have developed problems determining right from wrong — DeLay was instrumental in gerrymandering Texas Congressional districts, and there are questions about his contributions to the campaigns of fellow Republicans — now suddenly this ten-year-old rule has become a tool for “partisan political attacks” and it’s time to get rid of it. Sure. And I’m a member of Skull and Bones.
The hypocrisy of this move should be obvious to all, Democrat and Republican alike. What’s good for the goose is apparently not good for the gander as far as these guys in the House are concerned, and that annoys the hell out of me. It should be obvious by now that a lot of the sanctimonious crap we heard from the House Republicans during the ’90s was nothing more than empty game-playing, and this ethical rule that has been so easily discarded once it became inconvenient is just one more example. I sincerely hope that the handful of surviving Democratic Representatives will remind their counterparts of this hypocrisy the next time any of them dare open their mouths about “ethically-challenged” liberals.
If that little tidbit isn’t worth getting riled up over, how about this photo from the LA Times:
Looks harmless enough, right? Just some of our brave boys taking a breather from the fighting in Fallujah. Well, sure, to Western eyes. No big deal. Nice carpet, actually. But a Muslim looks at this picture and sees a bunch of American Imperialists desecrating holy ground by wearing their combat boots inside a mosque. For a devout Muslim, that’s an offense akin to someone taking a big, healthy crap in a Catholic sanctuary or a Mormon baptismal. Remember when that statue of Saddam came down and the people were beating it with their shoes? That was symbolic. This incident here is symbolic, too, if you understand the symbolism. Wearing shoes inside the mosque — hell, being inside a mosque at all if you’re non-Muslim — is profoundly disrespectful and a perfect example of why we’re having such a difficult time stabilizing Iraq.
Personally, I don’t think we should be in Iraq at all. I don’t think that’s any revelation to my readers. But we are there, and men and women on both sides are dying. That means that we’ve got to find some way of making this turn out right. And we’re not going to do that until we stop acting like swaggering bullies and start paying attention to little niceties like respecting other people’s religions. I know that’s not something that occurs to the hardcore evangelicals that are advising President Bush, the ones who think everyone who’s not like them doesn’t count and that Muslims are especially far down the totem pole. But it’s something that absolutely must get drilled into the heads of our troops, and soon, or we will never win that stupid fight over there. You don’t win a war merely by killing or blowing up everything in sight; you don’t do it by behaving like an occupying imperial force (while saying emphatically that you’re not). You do it by convincing the average folks on the ground that supporting you is a better idea than supporting the insurgents. You do it by minimizing resentment among the civilian population so they don’t want to join the insurgents. You do it by having a shred of frickin’ decency in your dealings with the people who never asked us to come “liberate” them. We’re not winning right now, no matter how disproportionate the body counts, and we’re not going to win if we continue to shit on their holy ground.
(For the record, I don’t blame the troops for this appalling insensitivity. I have no doubt that the vast majority of them are good people who never intended or wanted to be so far from home. I blame the commanders who have failed to brief them adequately on the local culture, and on the politicians back here in Washington who encourage — or at least fail to discourage — the sort of casual bigotry that leads to everything from boots-in-mosque incidents to Abu Ghraib. Yes, I am still upset over that fiasco, which I believe should’ve ended with Don Rumsfeld’s resignation. But that’s another rant. Oh, and if someone out there is planning to tell me that the troops must enter mosques because the insurgents are hiding out there, I would say that there’s a big difference between the necessities of combat and the simple boneheaded blundering seen above. What that picture shows is bad PR and bad manners, and like I said when Abu Ghraib was in the papers, we’re supposed to be better than this. We have to be, if we’re going to succeed in any genuine way over there.)
Let’s look now at another image that’s provoking a lot of talk, again courtesy of the photographers of the LA Times:
It’s a striking photo that is rapidly (and quite properly, I think) assuming iconic status. But apparently some people think the photo, which appeared on the front page of a lot of newspapers, is inappropriate. Why? Because that young man has a cigarette between his lips.
Lileks had a link this morning to an Ohio paper that received a deluge of typical letters. Some examples include the following gems:
“Why the front-page photo of a soldier with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth?” asked John H. Ramey of Akron. “One would hope that the editors had more sense than to show willfully negligent behavior on the part of a service person on the front page.”
Dan McClusky of Akron agreed: “I want you to pass congratulations to the person who chose that front-page picture. You just convinced 10,000 young people that it’s OK to smoke.
“I have one simple objection, and it’s not about the Marine. You could have picked another photo that didn’t show smoking as looking so good.”
To which I say, grow the hell up people! This kid doesn’t look especially glamorous or “cool” to me. Judging from the thousand-yard stare and the grime on his face, he’s just been through some shit that would leave even the world’s straightest arrow itching for a shot of whiskey and an unfiltered Lucky. I say let him have his smoke in peace. It might not be good for him, it might not be the “correct” image, but in the place he’s in, I imagine you find comfort where you can. It has always been so on the battlefield.
I’m not saying I approve of smoking. I myself do not smoke. None of my friends smoke, aside from a couple of guys who enjoy the occasional cigar. I understand the health risks and unpleasant aesthetics associated with the habit. But there is some rebellious part of me that is sick to death of the constant harping on the anti-smoking theme as well as the persecution — yes, persecution! — of smokers. Smokers and fat people are the last acceptable targets of prejudice in America today (well, there’s Muslims, too, but for the most part that particular prejudice is still pretty underground), and silly old soft-hearted me, I always feel protective of the underdogs. There is an initiative here in Salt Lake to ban smoking in all public places, including sidewalks, parks, bars and private clubs. I think that’s just going way too far. There are non-smoking clubs already for those who want them, and all restaurants, shopping facilities, workplaces, and government buildings are no-smoking. As for smoking outdoors, well, I’m more concerned about breathing in the annual winter smog layer than the occasional whiff of second-hand.
As for the constant anti-smoking TV ads… Arg! I’m sick of seeing the wad of fat being squeezed from an aorta, the blood clot inside a stroke victim’s brain, the stupid loudmouth shouting about “the nicotine in your brain talking,” the lame-ass “Truth” stunts, and, of course, the long-ago-stopped-being-funny character of Frank the Lab Rat. I can’t even escape from the crusade in the Galaxy Far, Far Away, as Uncle George thought fit to slip an anti-smoking gag into Attack of the Clones. (“You don’t want to sell me death-sticks… you want to go home and rethink your life.”) Again, arg.
I resent the busybodies who would tell us all how to live, what we should eat, inhale, drink, do and think. I wish they’d all just give us the credit to be frickin’ grown-ups. (Yes, I realize that Democrats and liberals in general are the primary promoters of the “nanny state” idea; I never said I agreed with everything my party stands for, only that I’ve got more in common with them than the other side. And anyway, Republicans have their own busybody crusades, specifically the desire to regulate everything that occurs in the bedroom and punish those who don’t conform to their strict morality. Busybodies on both sides of the spectrum ought to look to their own houses and leave everyone else alone, as far as I’m concerned.)
Finally, just in case you think all I think about these days is political, I’m also frustrated over the news that a Frank Lloyd Wright home has been demolished. The W.S. Carr house was bulldozed earlier this week to make room for a four-bedroom home with a two-car garage. No doubt this will be a lovely place that’s identical to a million other lovely places. I guess I’m a hardcore preservationist when it comes to these things; it always pains me to see the old and distinctive fall for the new and bland.
To be fair, the Carr house was apparently a minor, unrepresentative example of Wright’s work and in very poor condition to boot. Nevertheless, there are only some 350 Wright homes remaining, and when you’re dealing with a finite number of examples, it strikes me as incredibly shortsighted to throw one away.
It also just rubs me wrong on an emotional level. No one seems to care about saving old stuff anymore…
Wow. You did have a lot on your mind yesterday. I agree with you on everything. Stupid mistakes and people getting their knickers twisted for the wrong reasons.
Eh, it was one of those days, I guess. Blame it on the fog… 🙂
I can understand how you feel about the picture of the Marines in the mosque. However, I would like to point out that the mosque was defiled long before our troops ever entered it. It was defiled when the decision was made by terrorist (a.k.a. insurgents) to fire upon troops from a holy site. It would be chicken for a Muslim to complain that the U.S. was defiling the mosque with their boots when the building had just been used to take human life.
While working on a task force with the FBI I had the opportunity and assignment to meet with several Iraqis that had received asylum and were currently living in Utah. They were interviewed prior and post war. All of the people that I talked to loved and embraced the idea that Iraq was being liberated. And LIBERATED was the word that almost all of them used during the time that I spoke to them. In fact, several of them asked me why the U.S. didnt do it the first time when Bush senior was pres. Ive learned thru experience that most journalism is in fact, entertainment. I read and view a lot of the paper as I do the comic section (some truth mixed with bias). But, thats another conversation.
You’ll get no arguments from me on the state of modern jounrnalism. In a word, it sucks. The desire for sensationalism and a misguided effort to give all sides of an argument equal weight have turned the whole field into cream-of-wheat.
For contrast, I’ve recently been reading some work by a World War II journalist named Ernie Pyle, who was operating under a much more restrictive environment than we supposedly have now in terms of military censorship and such, and yet his work is a thousand times more informative — and better written in a purely aesthetic sense — then anything we get these days. (He was a fabulous writer, as good at painting a picture as any novelist.) One of these days I intend to do one of these Web rants on the whole journalism subject…
As for the mosque situation, I understand that the insurgents do use them for cover, a chickenshit deal if there ever was one. Our guys are damned whichever way they go when it comes to that scenario, as you rightfully point out. But like I said, there’s a big difference between what you MUST do while under fire — i.e., returning fire or entering the place to rout out the bad guys — and using the place as a rest stop after the fighting stops. The officer in charge should have cleared his men out of there as soon as they had secured the building. (And possibly he did after the photo was taken — hard to tell since no one ever does follow-up stories on this sort of thing.)
The thing is, though, images DO have power, especially in that part of the world, where people are especially sensitive about who’s got power and who doesn’t. Take Abu Ghraib, for instance. Everyone here has pretty much chalked that up to a couple of dumbass cracker kids who thought they’d get their kicks. But I can guarantee you those photos will be circulating the Middle East for years to come, and a lot of people over there will believe that sort of shit is SOP for America. These sorts of things create a cumulative image of what Americans are like, and a negative image will impede our goals in the area.
And while I’m sure there are lots of people over there who are happy to be rid of Saddam, they’re not necessarily so happy to have American troops squatting in their mosques. (Again, to be clear, I’m not blaming the soldiers. They probably just saw a nice cool place to pull up some floor and sit for a spell. But someone along the chain of command should’ve known that it wouldn’t look too good.)
I guess I’m just frustrated because I think that the war has been mishandled from the beginning — I’m not debating at this point whether it should’ve happened or not, only that it’s not being conducted very well — and I don’t see any indications that things are changing in that regard.