No Joementum here

Joe Lieberman's opening remarks yesterday:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, the behavior by Americans at the prison in Iraq is, as we all acknowledge, immoral, intolerable and un-American. It deserves the apology that you have given today and that have been given by others in high positions in our government and our military.

I cannot help but say, however, that those who were responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001, never apologized. Those who have killed hundreds of Americans in uniform in Iraq working to liberate Iraq and protect our security have never apologized.

And those who murdered and burned and humiliated four Americans in Fallujah a while ago never received an apology from anybody.

So it's part of -- wrongs occurred here, by the people in those pictures and perhaps by people up the chain of command.

But Americans are different. That's why we're outraged by this. That's why the apologies were due.

Wow - so according to Joe Lieberman, we're better than the men who blew up the WTC and burnt those 4 bodies! Thanks for clearing that up Joe.

Lieberman pretty much sums up why there isn't much outrage in America about this torture (oh, I'm sorry "abuse"): Deep down inside, Americans LOVE the fact that we tortured some brown people over there in that Muslim country. They hit us (on 9-11), now we hit them back! That'll teach'em! And we were nice enough just to torture a few of them. They killed 3000 people on 9-11! And they didn't even apologize (I wasn't aware of this until Joe Lieberman pointed it out - thanks Joe!).

I'm sticking to my guns here. The events in Iraq help provide a warm security blanket for our uneasy citizenry. There are plenty of people (most of them live in Tennessee, Georgia, or Alabama) who believe that we should have nuked Afghanistan after 9-11 (I get emails from them sometimes), so our response has been pretty tepid really.
Seriously.

We are a blood thirsty people. When will our thirst be quenched? I'll keep listening to country radio stations to find out...

Graduation

I'm graduating from college next Sunday the 16th.

What's the most important thing I've learned at UVA?

That fraternaties suck.

A don't miss article

Read Jacob Weisberg's (author of Bushisms) article in Slate today on Bush's stupidity.

Speaking of big fat idiots...

Michael Moore is one...

...and this New Republic article tells us all why (if we didn't know already)

New Conservative line on the torture scandal:

It's all in good fun! We did stuff ten times worse than that in in my frat!

Here's Rush Limbaugh yesterday:

"This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?"

Thank you!

Bush apologized today to the Arab world and the families of the victims of the torture. Good for him.

More on that last post

Something that Chris Matthews said on Hardball recently that struck me as profound (he was questioning Donald Rumsfeld). I paraphrase:

Matthews: "Are there any connections between Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime and 9-11?"

Rumsfeld (characteristically takes 3 tries to answer the question honestly, the finally blurts out): "No, not that I know of. No not at all."

Matthews replies: "When you listen to the people in this country, regular people, and you listen to the country music singers, you get the impression that this war was fought as revenge for 9-11. You get the impression that in the minds of the American public, this war was, in effect, America striking back after 'they' hit us. Would you agree?"

Rumsfeld: "That seems pretty accurate."

So there you have it...make what you will of that exchange. I'll try to find the actual transcript and post it up here, but that's pretty accurate. And I think Matthews correctly describes how Americans justified this war in their heads. And it stands to reason that it will take ALOT more chaos and blood in Iraq to convince Americans that this war was incorrect.

I hate to invoke the Vietnam parallel here, but let's do it anyway.

We were being threatened by the Soviet Union. They threatened our very existence (at least in our minds) during the 50s and 60s. We were worried about Nuclear holocaust, world war III, etc. So we go fight this war in Vietnam against some communists. ANY communists. And America accepts it, despite the fact that Vietnam is not even remotely connected with America's national interests. For a while, even with light casualties, people supported the war. Why? Because it made them feel safer to know that somewhere in the world our enemies were dying by the hundreds. I think there's a parallel here.

There you have it. I've discovered the 900th parallel between the Vietnam war and this war.

Why people still support this war

1. Terrorists haven't attacked America since 9-11
and
2. Americans subconsciously attribute their safety to the war being fought in Iraq against "terrorists"

With "terrorists" meaning a number of things, including actual terrorists, Muslims, Arabs, Baathists, Saddam loyalists, Shiite clerics, etc. You know - brown people***.

As long as the news reports contain stories where brown Muslim people have been killed, the American public is assured that our government is taking action against those who attacked us and preventing future attacks. It's kind of like the fly paper theory in action at a subconscious level.

What I'm talking about here is COMFORT. It's comfortable for a mother to know that bad people are being killed in some far away land. These bad people MIGHT even be connected to the bad people who blew up some buildings in 2001. It's like a warm blanket.

I'm even tempted to suggest that the death of a few soldiers could have the same calming effect on the psyche by fanning the flames of patriotism a little bit. After 9-11, there was much sorrow, but there was just as much joy - the kind of joy that's emanated when a country stands up and feels proud about it's history, traditions, and people. When soldiers die, people feel pride in their country and this reinforces the notion that the war in Iraq is worth the cost.

I'm just toying with theories here, but it makes alot of sense. There has to be some reason why public opinion hasn't moved against the war. If you take what the Administration promised:

cheering, flower throwing, excitement, democracy in a year, half of our troops out by the end of the summer of 2003, a 1.6 billion dollar price tag (with the rest paid for by Iraqi oil), the end of major combat operations in April

and compare it to what has come to pass:

rioting, looting, suicide bombings, daily attacks on troops, sectarian violence, a popular shiite uprising, wide support for a fanatical iranian style regime, a baathist general put in charge of a city, american soldiers torturing iraqi prisoners, the deaths of 750+ soldiers, the deaths of thousands of Iraqis, a breakdown of the middle east peace process

...then you have to wonder, why hasn't the public tide turned against this? I'm not talking about turning against the rebuilding process or demanding the immediate removal of our troops. I'm talking about admitting that the war wasn't a good idea in the first place.

*** I just reread my post, and realized that I'm making an assumption without backing it up with any evidence. The assumption: That Americans, by and large, dislike/hate Arabs and Muslims. If you don't agree with that assumption, then make what you will of this post.

Why didn't the President apologize?

I'm sure the President feels that torturous acts are "abhorrent" and outrageous. But why doesn't he apologize? Why was "I'm sorry" purposely omitted from his remarks? Is this red meat for his base? The conspicuously missing apology created a situation where the headline in every Arab newspaper was some variation of "Bush refuses to apologize for atrocities". Didn't he know the Arab world would see this as a slap in the face?

What is this man thinking? What is this administration thinking?