The ultimate hostage

Via Ann Althouse, I came across this account of former President Eisenhower's deal with his son as the elder Eisenhower prepared to take the presidency and his son went off to serve in the army in Korea. President elect Eisenhower expressed to his son that he could not be captured alive in combat, because this would allow Eisenhower to be blackmailed over the love of his son and his desire to protect him. Instead, the son appeared to have offered to kill himself if captured:

As the time for my deployment approached, I discussed my intentions with my father. We met at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, just after the Republican convention, and I explained my position. My father, as a professional officer himself, understood and accepted it. However, he had a firm condition: under no circumstances must I ever be captured. He would accept the risk of my being killed or wounded, but if the Chinese Communists or North Koreans ever took me prisoner, and threatened blackmail, he could be forced to resign the presidency. I agreed to that condition wholeheartedly. I would take my life before being captured.

Ponder that for a moment. The president's son, headed off to war, made a deal with his dad that he would kill himself if he was about to be captured. Can you even imagine having that conversation?

We are facing an election in which three of the four individuals on the two tickets are poised to be elected while they have a child on active duty. Only Obama does not have a child serving overseas. Isn't this a concern, the possibility that their children could be captured in Iraq or Afghanistan and used as bargaining chips to manipulate the administration? How would McCain, Palin or Biden react if they were in the No. 1 or No. 2 slot and had to decide whether to let their child die or be tortured in public view, or to capitulate to terrorist or enemy demands? The responsible option would seem to be to place the child(ren) of whoever is elected into a non-combat position to lessen the risk of capture. This is essentially what Eisenhower argues at the end of his op-ed piece.

There is something undeniably honorable both about the child of a high-profile politician who wants to serve his or her country in the field, and about the politician who is willing to live the hopes and fears of the parent of a servicemember in order to achieve a perspective that the rest of us will never know. But it comes with a price. I think we have all been too focused on the honor portion of this equation, and have not thought enough about the consequences. At this point, it's a virtual certainty that either our next President or Vice President will have children on active duty. It's time to start thinking about, and asking about, such things.

4,000

4,000 soldiers dead needlessly. And on one of the holiest days of the year.

Iraq is the travesty of my generation.

Quote of the Day

The US Navy announced that due to bad weather, it will postpone the attempt to shoot down the impaired satellite until tomorrow at the earliest. Our zillion dollar "star wars" technology is clearly capable of stopping incoming missiles so long as: they come one at a time, are the size of a school bus, travel in orbits that have been calculated for months, don't deploy any decoys, and the weather is clear.

--From this post at DailyKos.

Kinda makes you wonder...if we weren't putting eleventy billion dollars a year into the Iraq war, perhaps we could afford to develop and build missile defense technology that actually works?

Quote of the Day, unexpected voice of reason edition

Lincoln Chafee, former Rhode Island senator and thorn in the side of the Republican establishment, has apparently written some interesting memoirs. They include this remarkable quote, which perfectly encapsulates for me why I will absolutely never ever vote for anyone who voted to authorize the Iraq war:

"The top Democrats were at their weakest when trying to show how tough they were," writes Chafee. "They were afraid that Republicans would label them soft in the post-September 11 world, and when they acted in political self-interest, they helped the president send thousands of Americans and uncounted innocent Iraqis to their doom.

[...]

Chafee writes of his surprise at "how quickly key Democrats crumbled." Democratic senators, Chafee writes, "went down to the meetings at the White House and the Pentagon and came back to the chamber ready to salute. With wrinkled brows they gravely intoned that Saddam Hussein must be stopped. Stopped from what? They had no conviction or evidence of their own. They were just parroting the administration's nonsense. They knew it could go terribly wrong; they also knew it could go terribly right. Which did they fear more?"

So sad, but not terribly surprising. As I have said before, even I knew we shouldn't be going into Iraq. But I didn't have to win re-election at a time when the electorate still seemed to be highly motivated to get a military victory and take out our post-9/11 anger on Saddam Hussein even if he didn't have WMD. A lot of people made a calculated political gamble without adequately considering the possibility that it would be one that would prove not only unpopular but deadly to over 3,000 US troops. And for that they have lost my respect and my vote.

I might just be tired and cranky, but

...what exactly is the point of introducing a censure resolution against the President? Look, I can't stand the guy and I think he's done all sorts of terrible and unconstitutional things, but we either have the goods to impeach him in the House and get a conviction in the Senate, or we don't. And if we don't, then what the hell is the point of wasting the time of the Senate by introducing a censure resolution that is going to make the Democrats look like a bunch of whiny Bush-haters who just want to tell him off by passing a resolution that has absolutely no force of meaning whatsoever?

Yes, he's ignoring the clear will of the majority on Iraq. He's ignoring the expressed desires of the Congress (by barebones partisan majorities when actual votes occur, that is when they aren't being thwarted by superior parliamentarian maneuvering by Republicans). He's ignoring what the Iraq study group and a shitload of former generals have told him. He's ignoring what is obvious to your average fifth grader: Iraq is a mess and nothing we've done has made an appreciable dent, and nothing else that we might do in the future is going to fix it either. But being fucking stupid is not an impeachable offense, and ignoring the political climate or the will of the majority aren't either. And is there really any point to censuring him for those things if it won't make a damned bit of difference? Is finding a vehicle to express our displeasure really worth the political blowback we're going to take on this? And why in the world do we think for a second that W is going to give two shits if he gets censured?

In a way, the Democrats are between a rock and a hard place, because the left has flexed its muscles so hard that it is exerting inordinate pressure over the notion that we have to do something about Iraq. But these sorts of stunts are too easily twisted to lose the middle who have no taste for partisan bickering and want to see things get done. We were gonna actually do all this stuff, remember? Important, popular stuff? What ever happened to that?

I want us out of Iraq as badly as anyone can who doesn't have friends or family over there, but I also understand that unfortunately our options are somewhat limited in this regard. There is no declaration of war to be withdrawn. There is no real remedy even if Congress withdraws its authorization for the use of force, for a variety of legal and Constitutional reasons. The only real option is to withhold funding, and even then it would be a politically dangerous move AND wouldn't actually effect our deployments in Iraq for months if not longer.

Sadly, all Bush really has to do here is run out the clock on his presidency and then whoever takes over can start the ugly business of getting us out of there as fast as possible. And if we don't like that scenario, then we need to either get the solid goods on impeachment--and I mean SOLID, it can't just be a stunt--or we need to sack up and withdraw funding and take the political heat for it. Continuing to do useless "appearance" stunts like censure will just piss off everyone on all sides of the issue without actually having any measurable effect. I urge those who are angry and frustrated enough to consider censure to channel their energies into more meaningful and effective tactics.

Of all places

I was searching for a way to memorialize the sacrifices of those who have served and lost their lives in Iraq on this Memorial Day, and stumbled across the most surprising of places to find it. Doonesbury.

Check out yesterday's comic, though it is certainly no laughing matter. As I have said before elsewhere and will continue to say, we need to remember the real people who have been lost, not just numbers that continue to rise. We need to honor them and their service, and keep their friends and family in our hearts and prayers. And we need to be faithful to the country that they died to protect.

In Memoriam.

What's in a name

On this Memorial Day, when my first inclination to honor the service and sacrifice of our soldiers was to link to a list of all those who have given their lives in our current war, I stumbled across an interesting story. (I stumbled across it in article from a gaseous windbag in a paper that I am boycotting linking at present, so I had to go find it elsewhere. Luckily that was not hard to do.)

Prompted by complaints from family members of slain soldiers, there has been a push in several states, some already successful, to outlaw the use of the names of soldiers killed in Iraq for commercial purposes, including the sale of protest paraphernalia such as T-shirts that contain the names of the dead. The legislation has already passed in Oklahoma and Louisiana and is presently pending in Arizona, Texas and Florida.

The problem here is that such legislation is probably unconstitutional. The names of the dead are public record, and the use of such public record for purposes of political speech (even if it involves the sale of protest gear) probably cannot be constitutionally restricted when the names may still be used for other purposes. In addition, the legislation could prohibit the use of such names in connection with any commercial enterprise beyond the sale of goods--such as This Week's weekly broadcast of the names as part of their "In Memoriam," or a website or blog keeping a running tally of the names if that website or blog has advertising on it. I sincerely doubt restricting those sorts of use will pass constitutional muster since all are arguably newsworthy uses.

I sympathize with the feelings of the families of the dead who support the war and don't like the notion of their fallen soldier's name being connected with the opposing view. That would be difficult for anyone to bear, but I don't think anyone--regardless of their political views--intends in any way to sully the reputation of these fallen soldiers. Those of us who support the war and want their names listed as often as possible are seeking to honor them in the best way we know how, which is to never forget that real people with dreams and goals and families gave their lives for the rest of us. We never want to forget or gloss over their ultimate service and sacrifice. And, frankly, outlawing political speech that you disagree with in clear violation of the Constitution does them no great service either.

It is a controversial and emotionally-charged issue, and I am sure that we will see considerable litigation over the constitutionality of such statutes as they are enforced. It is a shame that some will choose to make bad law to silence the other side in what should be a heated public debate. I'd prefer that those who support the war work on legislation designed to make it successful and to positively honor the soldiers rather than worrying about silencing its critics.

Saying it again and again don't make it true

This morning's drive music song is retroactively dedicated to our darling President George W. Bush, who continues to insist that we are making progress against the insurgency and towards establishing democracy in Iraq. He says this even as the insurgents have taken to chlorine gas explosions and as American soliders continue to die by the dozens each week. Apparently he's decided it isn't necessary to pay attention to pesky things like "facts" and "statistics" and "reports from the front"...after all, why start now?

My favorite part of his completely BS speech is this choice quote:

"There will be good days and bad days ahead as the security plan unfolds."

I can't decide which part of this is worse, the part where he's basically saying he plans to ingore the daily signs that things are continuing to spiral out of control and lives will continue to be needlessy lost by shrugging and saying "eh, guess today's a bad day," or the ridiculous notion that we actually have an unfolding security plan. Oh really, now we have a plan? Finally, 4 years after this quagmire began, now we finally have a plan? Well halle-friggin-lujah.

Meanwhile his darling mother reveals her inner Marie Antoinette by saying on Good Morning America that she doesn't want to see news about how bad the war is going because it interferes with her happy place:

“Why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it’s going to happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it’s, it’s not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?”

We used to think you were the sweet white-haired old grandmother, Barb, but now we all know you're just that nasty self-righteous heartless old biddy who sits in the corner whining about how everyone else is ruining your life by failing to cowtow to your every whim. My paternal grandmother was one of you, and I do not intend that as a compliment.

That takes me to this hilarious and yet at the same time depressing picture that I saw via Blog for Democracy. Sums up my feelings precisely. I'm fucking tired of protesting this shit.