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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Tuesday, December 16, 2003
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Re: Gore Vidal is a Kook I took note of the LA Weekly article back on the fifth of December: it took me that long to get around to blogging it. I wondered if anybody would care. Little did I know that it would cause one reader to wax musical: They're coming to take me away, ha, ha! Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/16/03 06:12:37 PM |
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"The Campaign of Hate and Fear" A stunning indictment of Democratic politics in public life and media, by Orson Scott Card at OpinionJournal, today: .... I can think of many, many reasons why the Republicans should not control both houses of Congress and the White House. But right now, if the alternative is the Democratic Party as led in Congress and as exemplified by the current candidates for the Democratic nomination, then I can't be the only Democrat who will, with great reluctance, vote not just for George W. Bush, but also for every other candidate of the only party that seems committed to fighting abroad to destroy the enemies that seek to kill us and our friends at home. And if we elect a government that subverts or weakens or ends our war against terrorism, we can count on this: We will soon face enemies that will make 9/11 look like stubbing our toe, and they will attack us with the confidence and determination that come from knowing that we don't have the will to sustain a war all the way to the end. Read the whole thing. Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/16/03 06:09:46 PM |
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Baghdad Jim McDermott Wonders If Saddam's Capture Was Staged Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode XLVII As reported in The Seattle Times, today: On Seattle radio yesterday, Rep. Jim McDermott questioned the timing of Saddam Hussein's capture, saying, "I'm sure they could have found him a long time ago if they wanted to." His comments came during an interview on "The Dave Ross Show" on KIRO-FM. "I've been surprised they waited, but then I thought, well, politically, it probably doesn't make much sense to find him just yet," he said. "There's too much by happenstance for it to be just a coincidental thing that it happened on this particular day," he continued. Later yesterday, the Seattle Democrat said he did not know whether the Pentagon had manufactured the arrest of the Iraqi leader. "I think the fact is that the administration has been desperate to find something (positive), and this came up. "I don't have any knowledge if they knew about it (Saddam's hideout). I think they (Bush administration) got a Christmas present early." .... P.S. See also Hysteria and the Hysterical Hysterics who Have It Redux. Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/16/03 05:54:53 PM |
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Gore Vidal is a Kook LA Weekly has had a couple of articles in the past 18 months on author Gore Vidal. They are real treats. From an interview, Jul. 15, 2002: .... And people in the countries who are recipients of our bombs get angry. The Afghans had nothing to do with what happened to our country on September 11. But Saudi Arabia did. It seems like Osama is involved, but we don't really know. I mean, when we went into Afghanistan to take over the place and blow it up, our commanding general was asked how long it was going to take to find Osama bin Laden. And the commanding general looked rather surprised and said, well, that's not why we are here. Oh no? So what was all this about? It was about the Taliban being very, very bad people and that they treated women very badly, you see. They're not really into women's rights, and we here are very strong on women's rights; and we should be with Bush on that one because he's taking those burlap sacks off of women's heads. Well, that's not what it was about. What it was really about — and you won't get this anywhere at the moment — is that this is an imperial grab for energy resources. Until now, the Persian Gulf has been our main source for imported oil. We went there, to Afghanistan, not to get Osama and wreak our vengeance. We went to Afghanistan partly because the Taliban — whom we had installed at the time of the Russian occupation — were getting too flaky and because Unocal, the California corporation, had made a deal with the Taliban for a pipeline to get the Caspian-area oil, which is the richest oil reserve on Earth. They wanted to get that oil by pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan to Karachi and from there to ship it off to China, which would be enormously profitable. Whichever big company could cash in would make a fortune. And you'll see that all these companies go back to Bush or Cheney or to Rumsfeld or someone else on the Gas and Oil Junta, which, along with the Pentagon, governs the United States. We had planned to occupy Afghanistan in October, and Osama, or whoever it was who hit us in September, launched a pre-emptory strike. They knew we were coming. And this was a warning to throw us off guard. With that background, it now becomes explicable why the first thing Bush did after we were hit was to get Senator Daschle and beg him not to hold an investigation of the sort any normal country would have done. When Pearl Harbor was struck, within 20 minutes the Senate and the House had a joint committee ready. Roosevelt beat them to it, because he knew why we had been hit, so he set up his own committee. But none of this was to come out, and it hasn't come out.... And from a follow-up interview, Nov. 14: .... [Question:] So if George W. Bush or John Ashcroft had been around in the early days of the republic, they would have been indicted and then hanged by the Founders? [Answer:] No. It would have been better and worse. [Laughs.] Bush and Ashcroft would have been considered so disreputable as to not belong in this country at all. They might be invited to go down to Bolivia or Paraguay and take part in the military administration of some Spanish colony, where they would feel so much more at home. They would not be called Americans — most Americans would not think of them as citizens. Do you not think of Bush and Ashcroft as Americans? I think of them as an alien army. They have managed to take over everything, and quite in the open. We have a deranged president. We have despotism. We have no due process. Yet you saw in the ’60s how the Johnson administration collapsed under the weight of its own hubris. Likewise with Nixon. And now with the discontent over how the war in Iraq is playing out, don’t you get the impression that Bush is headed for the same fate? I actually see something smaller tripping him up: this business over outing the wife of Ambassador Wilson as a CIA agent. It’s often these small things that get you. Something small enough for a court to get its teeth into. Putting this woman at risk because of anger over what her husband has done is bitchy, dangerous to the nation, dangerous to other CIA agents. This resonates more than Iraq. I’m afraid that 90 percent of Americans don’t know where Iraq is and never will know, and they don’t care.... Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/16/03 08:00:37 AM |
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The Moderate Islamist A two-part series by Michael Vlahos at Tech Central Station looks at the dilemmas of the moderate Islamist. From The Six Dilemmas of the Moderate Islamist, Oct. 16: Moderate Islamists could ultimately decide if America wins or loses its "War on Terror." Victory depends on their support, and thus also on our support of them, but in the end as well on the support of Muslims everywhere. Why? Because Islam is in the throes of renewal and the Muslim World is changing. Moreover we cannot genetically modify Muslim societies so they become happy American replicants. The change must be in Islam itself, and the question is will it be a radical purification or a moderate reinterpretation? But what exactly is a "moderate Islamist?" The moderate Islamist should not be confused with the moderate Muslim. The moderate Muslim is the kind of Muslim America likes. Americans are comfortable with moderate religiosity; so like the quiet churchgoer, we would prefer Muslims who are not above, for example, knocking back an occasional beer. But this is not what we should expect. Islam is a demanding religion — and a demanding way of life. Islamic renewal will be full of piety and passion. The moderate Islamist, like the radical Islamist, seeks to renew the Muslim World — not help it relax. The Islamist is dedicated to the Islamic cause, and he is an active proselyte. Thus moderate Islamists like radical Islamists are dedicated to change within and expansion of the Muslim World. But unlike the radicals they reject the path of aggressive struggle, or Jihad. Moderate Islamists would renew their faith and their world instead through Islamic reinterpretation, or Ijtihad. Moderate Islamists are thus self-proclaimed leaders — clerics and scholars — in the renewal of Islam. The moderate Islamist is highly educated, in contrast to many radical Islamists. The moderate Islamist is also receptive to Western ideas — but selectively receptive. Ultimately the moderate Islamist must compete with the radical Islamist for authority among Muslims. It is this competition that will decide how Islam changes. But the moderate Islamist is at a disadvantage. Moderate Islamists face six dilemmas that threaten to undermine their cause.... From The Story of This War, Nov. 6: All wars have stories. Moreover a war's story is not necessarily the same as a war's strategy. The story tells how a war is broadly understood and remembered. It is a form of literary narrative. What about this war? We have many themes for a story: from terrorism to WMD, from fighting evil to building democracy. But after two years of fighting and two countries taken, what is the story? The moderate Islamists (Part I) gave us a story with very different themes: This is not a story the Administration likes. But it represents a coherent alternative narrative made more compelling by recent events. It also suggests that new narratives of the war and its future are emerging, and that the Administration no longer has a competing story to offer. The recent Rumsfeld Memo makes this plain. But there was a story once, a complete narrative of things to come on which the Administration had come to rely. What happened to this story of the future? What new narrative will come to succeed it?... Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/16/03 07:40:23 AM |
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