Tell Your Congressperson to Say 'No' to Giving Extortion Money for any Further Iraq Troop Buildup
Folks,
The president is going to request (no, make that demand) more troops tonight. Before he does, and while your congressmen are snug in their offices, please call them--as I did Jim Gerlach yesterday--and tell them to say NO to more troops and more money for Iraq. Tell them you now know how the game is played: the Decider puts more troops in Iraq, then extorts tens of billions in ransom money to keep them safe from harm. Of course, this ransom money doesn't get the hostages--namely, our troops--returned safely. It just gets them armored vehicles and more bullets to protect themselves from their captors. And thus the cycle of violence widens and deepens.
And while you've got your representative on the phone, please consider asking him/her to curb Israel's rumored but as yet undenied maniacical war plans for Iran. Tell him you read in the Sunday Times of London this past Sunday that Israel has drawn up plans to use bunker-bustin' atomic weapons at several suspected nuclear-enrichment sites and, if true, would be the first nation since America to use atomic weapons--THIS TIME FOR NO RATIONAL REASON AND NO JUSTIFIABLE PURPOSE (as if the use of atomic weapons could ever be jusitifed). Also tell your representative that you refuse to let Iraq serve as a smoke screen for Israeli annexation of Palestine and that inhumanity looks and feels the same everywhere it is practised and, in the flagrant cases of Iraq and Palestine, CONDONED. If we can fight for 'democracy' in Iraq, why not fight for it in Palestine, too?
However, if you don't agree with me about Israel, please protest war-escalation plans for Iraq. Tell your representative that you know a euphemism when you see one and that "surge" is a pallid but potable substitute for "escalation." He/she may call you an anti-Semantite, but never an anti-Semite--unless, of course, you join me in begging for mercy for Palestine
Here's Maureen Dowd's column from today's NY TIMES to goad you further toward protest.
Please aim some part of this day toward justice, please.
Love Among the Ruins
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 10, 2007
WASHINGTON
It's a romance turned sour, because it was never sweet.
The American military’s cocky heroes were supposed to sweep in and carry off a poor, grateful Iraq to security and bliss, like Richard Gere did Debra Winger in the finale of “An Officer and a Gentleman.” The strategy was: Love lift us up where we belong/Where the eagles cry/On a mountain high.
Didn’t happen. Yet the search goes on, in this country obsessed with hookups and breakups, for the right relationship metaphor to describe our deadly embrace of Iraq.
My colleague Tom Friedman wrote last week: “Whenever I hear this surge idea, I think of a couple who recently got married but the marriage was never very solid. Then one day they say to each other, ‘Hey, let’s have a baby, that will bring us together.’ It never works. If the underlying union is not there, adding a baby won’t help.”
Juan Williams repeated Tom’s metaphor on Fox News, agreeing that “a bad relationship” cannot afford the “pressure” of a newborn.
One reporter who writes about the war told me he thinks of the American entrenchment in Iraq more like a marriage that’s run out of gas, but you decide to stay together because of the kids.
Bill Maher used a bawdier metaphor of a man who promises his date a glorious romp, doesn’t deliver, and then just refuses to admit it and get out.
Some women say that the Surge will not work because it’s like starting over with an old boyfriend: you think you’ve learned the pitfalls and can resume with more success — you can set benchmarks! — but instead you’re swiftly ensnared by the same old failures. And the most maddening romances, of course, are those in which you think you have the power, you should have the power, but somehow in the end, you don’t have the power.
Many Bush officials and lawmakers now talk about the Iraqis with impatience, as though they are deadbeat relatives who have got to stop putting the pinch on us for a billion a week and try harder, in the immortal words of Rummy, “to pull up their socks.”
They may still speak diplomatically, but in body language, Condoleezza Rice and her chosen new deputy, John Negroponte, radiate irritation with the Iraqis, as though they are the most irksome of cousins or in-laws who have long overstayed their welcome, or children who not only don’t thank you for presents but also leave the playroom a mess.
The favorite analogy of Rummy and others who pushed the war was parent-child. “If you never take the training wheels off a kid’s bicycle,” Paul Wolfowitz would say, “he’ll never learn to ride without them.”
But that is too Norman Rockwell for a scene straight out of Hieronymus Bosch.
At times, the American-Iraqi relationship seems so cursed that the most apt metaphor would be a fairy tale like “The Golden Goose” of the Brothers Grimm, in which a girl sees a bling bird that belongs to a despised boy and tries to pluck a feather for herself, but instead her hand gets stuck fast to the goose. Her sister comes along, thinking she can snatch a feather, but she gets stuck as soon as she touches the first girl. Then there’s a Surge, when the third sister rushes to help but ends up stuck in a daisy chain of disaster.
With the Surge, as with the invasion of Iraq, W. is like the presumptuous date “who reserves a hotel room and then asks you to the prom,” as my friend Dana Calvo put it.
Teddy Kennedy gave a speech at the National Press Club yesterday about his new legislation that would require Congressional approval before troop levels can be increased. Afterward, he was asked if he would try to block the escalation with an amendment to an upcoming Iraq spending request.
“The horse will be out of the barn by the time we get there,” Senator Kennedy replied. “The president makes his speech now. We’re going to get the appropriation request probably the end of January, early February.” He said it could take eight more weeks for Congress to act. “By that time, the troops will already be there,” he said. “And then we’ll be asked, are we going to deny the body armor to the young men and women over there?”
In other words, the president will ask us to the prom once he reserves the hotel room.
The president is going to request (no, make that demand) more troops tonight. Before he does, and while your congressmen are snug in their offices, please call them--as I did Jim Gerlach yesterday--and tell them to say NO to more troops and more money for Iraq. Tell them you now know how the game is played: the Decider puts more troops in Iraq, then extorts tens of billions in ransom money to keep them safe from harm. Of course, this ransom money doesn't get the hostages--namely, our troops--returned safely. It just gets them armored vehicles and more bullets to protect themselves from their captors. And thus the cycle of violence widens and deepens.
And while you've got your representative on the phone, please consider asking him/her to curb Israel's rumored but as yet undenied maniacical war plans for Iran. Tell him you read in the Sunday Times of London this past Sunday that Israel has drawn up plans to use bunker-bustin' atomic weapons at several suspected nuclear-enrichment sites and, if true, would be the first nation since America to use atomic weapons--THIS TIME FOR NO RATIONAL REASON AND NO JUSTIFIABLE PURPOSE (as if the use of atomic weapons could ever be jusitifed). Also tell your representative that you refuse to let Iraq serve as a smoke screen for Israeli annexation of Palestine and that inhumanity looks and feels the same everywhere it is practised and, in the flagrant cases of Iraq and Palestine, CONDONED. If we can fight for 'democracy' in Iraq, why not fight for it in Palestine, too?
However, if you don't agree with me about Israel, please protest war-escalation plans for Iraq. Tell your representative that you know a euphemism when you see one and that "surge" is a pallid but potable substitute for "escalation." He/she may call you an anti-Semantite, but never an anti-Semite--unless, of course, you join me in begging for mercy for Palestine
Here's Maureen Dowd's column from today's NY TIMES to goad you further toward protest.
Please aim some part of this day toward justice, please.
Love Among the Ruins
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 10, 2007
WASHINGTON
It's a romance turned sour, because it was never sweet.
The American military’s cocky heroes were supposed to sweep in and carry off a poor, grateful Iraq to security and bliss, like Richard Gere did Debra Winger in the finale of “An Officer and a Gentleman.” The strategy was: Love lift us up where we belong/Where the eagles cry/On a mountain high.
Didn’t happen. Yet the search goes on, in this country obsessed with hookups and breakups, for the right relationship metaphor to describe our deadly embrace of Iraq.
My colleague Tom Friedman wrote last week: “Whenever I hear this surge idea, I think of a couple who recently got married but the marriage was never very solid. Then one day they say to each other, ‘Hey, let’s have a baby, that will bring us together.’ It never works. If the underlying union is not there, adding a baby won’t help.”
Juan Williams repeated Tom’s metaphor on Fox News, agreeing that “a bad relationship” cannot afford the “pressure” of a newborn.
One reporter who writes about the war told me he thinks of the American entrenchment in Iraq more like a marriage that’s run out of gas, but you decide to stay together because of the kids.
Bill Maher used a bawdier metaphor of a man who promises his date a glorious romp, doesn’t deliver, and then just refuses to admit it and get out.
Some women say that the Surge will not work because it’s like starting over with an old boyfriend: you think you’ve learned the pitfalls and can resume with more success — you can set benchmarks! — but instead you’re swiftly ensnared by the same old failures. And the most maddening romances, of course, are those in which you think you have the power, you should have the power, but somehow in the end, you don’t have the power.
Many Bush officials and lawmakers now talk about the Iraqis with impatience, as though they are deadbeat relatives who have got to stop putting the pinch on us for a billion a week and try harder, in the immortal words of Rummy, “to pull up their socks.”
They may still speak diplomatically, but in body language, Condoleezza Rice and her chosen new deputy, John Negroponte, radiate irritation with the Iraqis, as though they are the most irksome of cousins or in-laws who have long overstayed their welcome, or children who not only don’t thank you for presents but also leave the playroom a mess.
The favorite analogy of Rummy and others who pushed the war was parent-child. “If you never take the training wheels off a kid’s bicycle,” Paul Wolfowitz would say, “he’ll never learn to ride without them.”
But that is too Norman Rockwell for a scene straight out of Hieronymus Bosch.
At times, the American-Iraqi relationship seems so cursed that the most apt metaphor would be a fairy tale like “The Golden Goose” of the Brothers Grimm, in which a girl sees a bling bird that belongs to a despised boy and tries to pluck a feather for herself, but instead her hand gets stuck fast to the goose. Her sister comes along, thinking she can snatch a feather, but she gets stuck as soon as she touches the first girl. Then there’s a Surge, when the third sister rushes to help but ends up stuck in a daisy chain of disaster.
With the Surge, as with the invasion of Iraq, W. is like the presumptuous date “who reserves a hotel room and then asks you to the prom,” as my friend Dana Calvo put it.
Teddy Kennedy gave a speech at the National Press Club yesterday about his new legislation that would require Congressional approval before troop levels can be increased. Afterward, he was asked if he would try to block the escalation with an amendment to an upcoming Iraq spending request.
“The horse will be out of the barn by the time we get there,” Senator Kennedy replied. “The president makes his speech now. We’re going to get the appropriation request probably the end of January, early February.” He said it could take eight more weeks for Congress to act. “By that time, the troops will already be there,” he said. “And then we’ll be asked, are we going to deny the body armor to the young men and women over there?”
In other words, the president will ask us to the prom once he reserves the hotel room.
posted by David Federman @ 6:51 AM
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