Rowhouse Logic - Breathtaking Inanity

Via The Liberal Avenger, this first hand account of the fighting in Fallujah is really quite stunning, both for its first hand observations of the conflict, and its analysis of guerilla war, as well as the complexities of ‘winning’ that type of war. It’s written by soldier who participated in the last two days of the main asault on that city. Here is a little bit but go read the whole thing:

These are ugly times for the US military in Iraq. It seems everywhere you turn, more and more troops are being killed and maimed in vicious encounters with determined rebel fighters. The insurgency is mounting incredibly in such places as Baghdad, Mosul, and Baquba; using more advanced techniques and weaponry associated with a well-organized guerilla campaign. Even in the massively destroyed city of Falluja rebel forces are starting to reappear with a callous determination to win or die trying. Many critics and political pundits are starting to realize that this war is, in many aspects, un-winnable.

…
What our military and government needs to realize is that every mistake we make is an advantage to the Iraqi insurrection. Every time an innocent man, woman or child is murdered in a military act, deliberate or not, the insurgent grows stronger. Even if an innocent civilian is slain at the hands of his/her own freedom fighter, that fighter is still viewed as a warrior of the people, while the occupying force will ultimately be blamed as the responsible perpetrator. Everything about this war is political…every ambush, every bombing, every death. When a coalition worker or soldier is abducted and executed, this only adds encouragement and justice to the dissident fervor of the Iraq public, while angering and demoralizing the occupier. Our own media will prove to be our downfall as well. Every time an atrocity is revealed through our news outlets, our grasp on this once secular nation slips away. As America grows increasingly disturbed by the images of carnage and violent death of her own sons in arms, its government loses the justification to continue the bloody debacle. Since all these traits are the conventional power’s unavoidable mistakes, the guerrilla campaign will surely succeed. In Iraq’s case, complete destruction of the United States military is impossible, but through perseverance the insurgency will drive us out. This will prove to be the inevitable outcome of the war.

It couldn’t be, could it? When the Senate Majority Leader spoke these words about Richard Clark “Mr. Clarke has told two entirely different stories under oath” he couldn’t have been lying. Right?

Um…Much to what, I’m sure, is everybody’s shock, horror, and astonishment; the answer is, sadly, yes. Joe Conason has the story here.

Will Bunch has a very good story in the Philadelphia Daily News about the effect of stop loss orders on local reservists. Go ahead and read it.

I was going to quote a bit of it until I saw the byline. I’d feel guilty pilfering from Mr. Bunch who has been very nice to this little site of mine. Anyway, Will also resumed blogging yesterday (Thanks to reader Ruth for the tip), easing the angst of any number of his most devoted fans. You can read his blog here.

P.S. Ruth, you are a much better writer than me - if you ever want a user name and password to post here, it’s all yours.

Jim has a splendid idea about what Florida can do with its orange juice and how you can help. Frankly, since the election, I’ve given up all non-alcoholic breakfast drinks, so I’m already on board. Tomato juice is a great alternative to the hard stuff though. Your liver will thank you.

Nuts come in all sorts of exciting flavors, and yes, they can grow in northern climates. The school board of Dover Pennsylvania has just adopted a biology curriculum which teaches something called “Intelligent Design” in companion with evolution. Yes. It is what you think. Now this small community will empty its coffers, defending itself in court for years to come, which will, I’m sure, do wonders for the quality of their schools in general.

The Inquirer:

In Dover Area High School biology classes, the Creator will get equal billing with Charles Darwin.

“I don’t know anybody who has been quite bold enough to go this far,” Witold Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union, said last week. “We view intelligent design as the latest attempt to teach religion instead of science.”

[Update] You can read more about intellegent design here. Thanks Dan.

Meanwhile, my fine Commonwealth’s government can’t seem to find a way to take its head out of its ass and properly fund mass transit. Hey guys, I know the prospect of finding the funds is daunting and mass transit doesn’t fly real well with rural voters, but if you shut down the largest economy in your state, you may find it hard to fund much of anything.

Thank god for NTodd. It’s a tiny post but it cuts straight to the bone. Go read it.

This is a pretty stupid idea, even for me. Oh well, what the hell. I thought of doing this because I chipped a tooth on a bottle of this very fine beer last night. It was one of those remarkably stupid moments, that you would very much like back just as soon as it occurs. You see, I had just cracked open a bottle of Samuel Smith’s Winter Welcome Ale, when it began to bubble over onto the kitchen counter.

What to do? What to do?

Use a finger to plug it up? Don’t worry about it, it’s just a little bit of a pretty big beer?

No, no, no. Of course not. Shove the bottle into your mouth as fast as you can in order to stop the spillage. Ouch! Pain! Oh no! Cracked tooth! Ug.

Anyway, Samuel (I call him Sammy) Smith’s Winter Welcome Ale is truly, a very fine beer. At 6.50 a bottle, the price is a total outrage. It’s not even all that strong in terms of alcohol content but, oh my, is it ever tasty. If you are a fan of English holiday ales, be sure to pick up a bottle. Only one though - they really are ripping you off.

Since it is the season, or getting to be, I’ll do another holiday beer next week.

By the way, for all of you suburban, subdivision dwellers with back yards and garages and pools and lawns and hedges and whatever else, that big, nasty, metal apparatus you see out my kitchen window is a fire escape. A damn handy device from time to time

…And yes, those roses are dead. I’ll work on that. I promise.

“As hostilities continue in Fallujah and elsewhere, every day seems to bring news of yet another act of utter contempt for the most basic tenet of humanity,”

-Pierre Kraehenbuhl, director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

I dare say no.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — Baghdad exploded in violence Saturday, as insurgents attacked a U.S. patrol and a police station, assassinated four government employees and detonated several bombs. One American soldier was killed and nine were wounded during clashes that also left three Iraqi troops and a police officer dead.

Some of the heaviest violence came in Azamiyah, a largely Sunni Arab district of Baghdad where a day earlier U.S. troops raided the capital’s main Sunni mosque. Shops were in flames, and a U.S. Humvee burned, with the body of what appeared to be its driver inside.

Wasn’t there some talk in the press about how the assault on Fallujah had broken the back of the insurgency?

Anger.

Liberal anger.

Why is this liberal so angry? Why am I so angry about the actions of my own country and my own country’s military? Why do I, and so many others, raise hell about the destruction wrought by the American military in Iraq, when the tactics of some of the Iraqi insurgents are so inhuman – so repulsive? Aren’t I disgusted by the kidnappings and beheadings, and the atrocities videotaped for the six o’clock news? Fuck yeah. Holy fucking shit yeah. I’m beyond disgusted, beyond enraged, beyond emotions I even knew I had.

Here’s the thing though. They are not my people. They are not acting in my name. My government does not directly arm them. I do not provide them, by my citizenship, with legitimacy. Their actions do not represent me in any way, shape or form. Over them, I have no power. I cannot vote for or against them. I cannot hold them personally accountable in any way. Their actions are not the actions of my government. Their war crimes are not my own.

The constitution of my country states, quite clearly, that the people provide the power and the legitimacy. By providing legitimacy and power, the people are responsible and accountable for the actions of their elected government, whether they agree or disagree with those actions. I am one of those people. I provide the legitimacy. The blood is on my hands too, and I’m pissed. Those Marines in Fallujah are fighting and dying and being mutilated and being scarred for life in my name. I’m pissed.

The Liberal Avenger had an amazing post about Fallujah the other day. He, quite powerfully, asks us to imagine that Fallujah is Boston, though any mid-sized American city would do. He asks us to imagine that our city has been destroyed, that our neighbors are lying dead and mutilated beyond recognition in the streets – their bodies eaten by stray dogs.

In a parallel, though less emotional way, Juan Cole asked us to imagine something quite similar, back in September, about the entire country of Iraq. He describes America as though it was Iraq, and explains what we would see.

Both posts are well worth a read.

Finally, there are over 21 million living veterans in this country. Some 300,000 of them are homeless. That’s a huge percentage. Clearly, something has gone very wrong. A whole new generation of veterans is coming home from Iraq. They joined the military for a multitude of reasons: love for their country, their desire to serve, to pay for college, to escape poverty, September 11th, to improve themselves, to house and cloth their families, and on and on.

They are coming home from a brutal war, having witnessed and taken part in countless days of destruction and horror. They are coming home from a war whose justification is in question (unquestionably wrong if you ask me). That can only make the horror of war all the more dreadful.

They went because we sent them, and they did what they were trained to do. How will they be treated? Will their physical and psychological wounds be treated properly and paid for in full, or will they be forgotten – dismissed as too inconvenient and expensive? Can we make this a real issue and actually do right by these men and women we sent to fight and die in our unjust war? Can we get it right? Just this once? Please?

- And yeah – I know a lot more are going.

Like I said before, I hope Kerry spends the next few years making a lot of noise, regardless of whether or not he plans to run again. Opinion amongst liberals and Democrats appears to be split on this. A great number of people, still aching from the bitter taste of a bitter defeat, just want this guy to go the fuck away. They want to leave him in the trashcan and throw rocks at the TV while their country goes down the shiter. Not me. I disagree. I want Kerry front and center, raising a massive, flaming shitstorm.

I want the guy who just won 56 million votes to stand up and say ‘fuck you’ when his supporters are mocked as immoral freaks, crack whores, elitist white wine sippers, America haters, or whatever the fuck else. I want him to force the Washington press corps to get up off its lazy ass, by holding entirely too frequent press conferences, and report on some Loyal Opposition. I want him to say to them ‘Hey, if you want to see an immoral, freakish whore who hates America, why not spend a little time with Tom Delay? Go follow that motherfucker around for few days, listen to the bile that flows from his mouth, record every word, and then go tell the American people about the hateful, paranoid freak show who runs their congress.’

I want a giant, flaming shitstorm.

Al Gore did one of the most patriotic things any national leader has done in decades, when he pulled himself off the national stage. His head was full of loving thoughts for America. He hoped that his absence would prevent his country from being torn to shreds over a disputed election. In retrospect, that was a horrible, but very noble, mistake. I imagine he feared pitchforks and firebombs if operated as a shadow President. Unfortunately, the pitchforks are out. They are pointed squarely at us.

What we need now, is somebody to do what Al Gore didn’t do and probably, in good conscience, couldn’t. We need somebody with a huge national profile to speak up. Somebody, who by virtue of their status, the press is forced to cover. Somebody who can raise hell over every single disgusting thing that Bush does. Every single thing.

Like it or not - the person to raise the shitstorm is John Kerry.

–On Delay. Somebody needs to follow this fucker around with a video camera. Every vile word he utters needs to be presented for public consumption. Every little nugget of hatred for his fellow Americans needs to be documented and distributed, by whatever means available.

Well this is a bit of what I was hoping for. Regardless of whether or not he plans to run again, I hope that he continues to make noise, and a lot of it.

Dear Supporter,

Let’s roll up our sleeves and get back to work for our country.

I think Hunter S. Thompson programmed the robots that are haunting my site. They are completely obsessed with offshore gambling, cheap speed, and low-grade porn. Fucking robots! Anyway, I’ve made some tweaks to keep the robots at bay. I know there are not any lines forming to leave comments here, but if you have any trouble, shoot me an email.

Herbert says:

Competence has never been highly regarded by the fantasists of the George W. Bush administration. In the Bush circle, no less than in your average youth gang, loyalty is everything. The big difference, of course, is that the administration is far more dangerous than any gang. History will show that the Bush crowd of incompetents brought tremendous amounts of suffering to enormous numbers of people. The amount of blood being shed is sickening, and there is no end to the grief in sight.
…
Some of the world’s most important decisions - often, decisions of life and death - have been left to those who are less competent and less experienced, to men and women who are deficient in such qualities as risk perception and comprehension of future consequences, who are reckless and dangerously susceptible to magical thinking and the ideological pressure of their peers.

I look at the catastrophe in Iraq, the fiscal debacle here at home, the extent to which loyalty trumps competence at the highest levels of government, the absence of a coherent vision of the future for the U.S. and the world, and I wonder, with a sense of deep sadness, where the adults have gone

Today, a thirteen year old told me that when you think it’s too late, it is time to begin.

Here’s a topic I haven’t thought much about. Apparently the annual World Toilet Summit is taking place in Beijing. Decent sanitary conditions should be considered a basic human right. With so many other pressing issues - so much blood being spilled - I doubt this issue will be seen as anything other than unimportant for quite some time. We have a long way to go.

According to the organisers, the toilet topic is one of the world’s last great taboos - on a par with sex, which gave rise to the sexual revolution in the 1960s, women’s rights, which led to women’s liberation in the 70s and reappraisals of stigmatised diseases such as leprosy and Aids in the 80s and 90s.

“People are saying ‘We want good toilets!’ because toilets are a basic human right and that basic human right has been neglected,” said Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organisation, a co-sponsor of the summit. “The world deserves better toilets.”

Most of the bars I frequent could use better toilets. Perhaps I just need a new bar.

Bumped - They still need signatures. Go sign

I would like to urge everybody, particularly Philadelphia residents, to click here and sign the petition calling on Philadelphia City Council to improve conditions at the Philadelphia Animal Care and Control Association.

The petition reads:

Understanding there are serious problems of staffing, funding and abuse of animals and people at the Philadelphia Animal Care and Control Association, we call for whatever remedy is required to guarantee the shelter is clean, animals are fed and treated with the humane dignity they deserve. We call on City Council to follow the Nov. 15th hearing with swift action.

You will need to email your request to be added. The address is questions@phillynews.com and the subject should be petition. You can read more about what this is all about here.

This is what happens when the President can’t control his wet dreams over missile defense. Great job George!

Susan is so right. They are weak and pathetic. Go read.

This is very late. I wasn’t sure how to mark Veteran’s Day on this blog and I’m sure I’ll get it wrong. I spent last evening speaking with a Korean War veteran at the laundromat. He was, and is, and will always be a Marine. Such is the nature of Marines. He spent 18 months, as a very young man, pinned down on the Korean peninsula, experiencing horrors most of us could never even begin to imagine. I’ll say no more. His memories are his.

In the extended entries I’ve put a portion of the introduction from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. For those of you who don’t know, Vonnegut was an American scout in World War II who was captured by the Germans and held as a POW in Dresden. Because he was held captive in a concrete slaughterhouse, he was one of the few people to survive the American and British firebombing of Dresden.

His 40 year old observations are still very relevant to our current circumstances, though we do need to replace John Wayne and Frank Sinatra with Fox News and Sinclair. Additionally, it’s no longer just babies who are fighting and dying. In our modern professional army, there are fathers and grandfathers who are doing just the same.
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