Otter
Nothing to see here
This is great.
MARK HOLMBERG
POINT OF VIEW
Sunday, May 16, 2004
Here's my soapbox, and I'm on it.
First off, let me say I was against us going into Iraq. No, I wasn't concerned about the lack of a blessing from the United Nations, which couldn't hit a bull in the rump with a banjo.
Nor did I care about evidence proving the presence of WMDs. Saddam was a weapon of mass destruction, a weapon designed by international meddlers such as ourselves.
My fear was, and is, that this country doesn't have the guts and historical awareness to prevail in a region where numerous civilizations, some of them utterly ruthless, have lost their shirts.
When President Bush declared an end to major combat operations a year ago and most of those embedded journalists came trotting home, some of my colleagues heard me hollering that the war was just starting. Even a history-impaired moron such as myself could figure out that all those enemy soldiers and insurgents had just gone underground to gear up for guerrilla warfare.
And any idiot could've predicted the way we'd react when the real body count mounted, as it did in earnest two months ago. News agencies tripped over themselves to present the photos of our war dead, while greater numbers of people were being murdered on the streets of our own fine nation.
And look how we barfed over the images of the prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib, while we seem perfectly at peace with the common phenomenon of prisoners raping each other in our own country.
Friends, if any of you believe that the mistreatment in Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere, was performed by a handful of ill-trained reservists who just happened to luck onto the things that strike absolute terror in the hearts of our enemies, you need to step away from the whiskey bottle. Maybe they were clumsy and targeting the wrong people, but someone had to tell them of the power of their twisted "Queer Eye For the Iraqi" actions.
It just so happens that those who hate us in the Middle East aren't as liberated as we are when it comes to homosexuality and being controlled by women. They'd rather be dead than be seen naked with other men or stripped, leashed and mocked by a woman.
Former Abu Ghraib prisoner Dhia al-Shweiri said he preferred the electric shocks and beatings he suffered in the prison when it was under Saddam's control to the humiliation he suffered when the American guards made him strip (once) - and lean against a wall (for 15 minutes).
"They were trying to humiliate us, break our pride. . . . They wanted us to feel as though we are women, the way women feel." (So that's the way they treat women?)
There it is. It's better to be shocked, beaten and shot between the eyes than to feel like a woman.
Yes, we're horrified at the idea that we're putting women's panties on the heads of our prisoners, when there are those among our Middle Eastern enemies who will calmly hack off our heads, or blow up their own fellow citizens, including innocent children, for their cause. (By the way, the knife-wielding butcher who decapitated Nick Berg clearly has had plenty of experience removing human heads. It took him 38 seconds flat.)
It could be argued that we'd be fools not to mine the homophobic and misogynistic beliefs of maniacal Muslim terrorists to "soften" them in order to extract crucial military intelligence from them.
But we're not ruthless enough, not by a long shot. We want to think surgically precise warfare (that doesn't cost too many American lives) and the beautifully benevolent building of hospitals, schools and roads will win over radicals who detest us with every fiber of their being.
Do you know why we're really sickened by our behavior in that prison?
Because it makes us look sleazy . . . kinky.
Guess what? We are kinky. Just look at our TV shows, movies, e-mail solicitations, the size of our porn industry and even the behavior of some of our prominent political and spiritual leaders.
And not just kinky. We've become arrogant, greedy, rich, self-serving, soft and superficial, following in the historically fatal footsteps of other once-mighty civilizations.
It's what our enemies hate about us. It's why they're maddened by the way our culture creeps over the globe. It's why they flew those jumbo jets into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.
When our troops were dying in increasing numbers recently, there were those among us who felt real sorrow over the expiration of the representatively mindless and self-indulgent TV show "Friends."
When we were brought to our knees on 9/11, we responded by demanding more powerful cars that slurp the fuel that bankrolls some of our worst enemies.
We've been consumed by the gay-marriage issue, Janet Jackson's breast, "reality" TV, "American Idol" and whether we're too fat. Some of our professional athletes and actors - those who entertain us - continue to make one hundred times as much money as the leader of the free world.
When Bush urged us to return to "normalcy" after 9/11, I hoped we wouldn't, and said so in a column two years ago.
The if-it-feels-good-do-it mentality of the "me" generation should've died when the towers fell. But it didn't. We're still acting like spoiled brats.
We've got a frothy, debt-driven, service-oriented, Hispanic-immigrant-dependent economy that could collapse like a house of cards with a few well-placed bombs or acts of cyberterrorism striking at our banking systems.
Boom . . . it's 1929 again, or worse.
To recycle an inane quote from the elder George Bush, we're in deep doo-doo. And we don't seem to know how deep it is.
We're in the midst of a titanic cultural and religious war with a borderless enemy, and we're unarmed on both counts.
They're all too willing to die, to be absolutely ruthless, for their side.
Not only is our culture soft, it is deeply divided. Name your issue, half of us are all for it, the other half are dead-set against it. The last presidential election was a coin toss that landed on its edge. Yes, differences of opinion are what makes this country great, but never have we been so culturally riven and adrift.
We no longer have the default operating system - Judeo-Christianity - that backstopped this nation from its inception. It's no longer acceptable to even call the United States a Christian nation.
We're not sure what we are anymore. And if you don't live for something, you'll die for nothing, to use a hard-rock aphorism.
Right now we're flailing around midstream in a raging river of a war with completely different rules for engagement. It's a war that could, and likely will, change the face of the Earth.
Half of us want to get to the other side, and the other half want to turn back.
Our enemies, waiting on either side, are counting on this classic formula for a drowning.
If we're going to prevail, we're going to have to take a hard look at ourselves, find some common, solid ground and start pushing like our lives depend on it.
Contact Mark at (804) 649-6822 or mholmberg@timesdispatch.com
This story can be found at: http://www.timesdispatch.com/servle...5480823&path=!news!columnists&s=1045855935174
MARK HOLMBERG
POINT OF VIEW
Sunday, May 16, 2004
Here's my soapbox, and I'm on it.
First off, let me say I was against us going into Iraq. No, I wasn't concerned about the lack of a blessing from the United Nations, which couldn't hit a bull in the rump with a banjo.
Nor did I care about evidence proving the presence of WMDs. Saddam was a weapon of mass destruction, a weapon designed by international meddlers such as ourselves.
My fear was, and is, that this country doesn't have the guts and historical awareness to prevail in a region where numerous civilizations, some of them utterly ruthless, have lost their shirts.
When President Bush declared an end to major combat operations a year ago and most of those embedded journalists came trotting home, some of my colleagues heard me hollering that the war was just starting. Even a history-impaired moron such as myself could figure out that all those enemy soldiers and insurgents had just gone underground to gear up for guerrilla warfare.
And any idiot could've predicted the way we'd react when the real body count mounted, as it did in earnest two months ago. News agencies tripped over themselves to present the photos of our war dead, while greater numbers of people were being murdered on the streets of our own fine nation.
And look how we barfed over the images of the prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib, while we seem perfectly at peace with the common phenomenon of prisoners raping each other in our own country.
Friends, if any of you believe that the mistreatment in Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere, was performed by a handful of ill-trained reservists who just happened to luck onto the things that strike absolute terror in the hearts of our enemies, you need to step away from the whiskey bottle. Maybe they were clumsy and targeting the wrong people, but someone had to tell them of the power of their twisted "Queer Eye For the Iraqi" actions.
It just so happens that those who hate us in the Middle East aren't as liberated as we are when it comes to homosexuality and being controlled by women. They'd rather be dead than be seen naked with other men or stripped, leashed and mocked by a woman.
Former Abu Ghraib prisoner Dhia al-Shweiri said he preferred the electric shocks and beatings he suffered in the prison when it was under Saddam's control to the humiliation he suffered when the American guards made him strip (once) - and lean against a wall (for 15 minutes).
"They were trying to humiliate us, break our pride. . . . They wanted us to feel as though we are women, the way women feel." (So that's the way they treat women?)
There it is. It's better to be shocked, beaten and shot between the eyes than to feel like a woman.
Yes, we're horrified at the idea that we're putting women's panties on the heads of our prisoners, when there are those among our Middle Eastern enemies who will calmly hack off our heads, or blow up their own fellow citizens, including innocent children, for their cause. (By the way, the knife-wielding butcher who decapitated Nick Berg clearly has had plenty of experience removing human heads. It took him 38 seconds flat.)
It could be argued that we'd be fools not to mine the homophobic and misogynistic beliefs of maniacal Muslim terrorists to "soften" them in order to extract crucial military intelligence from them.
But we're not ruthless enough, not by a long shot. We want to think surgically precise warfare (that doesn't cost too many American lives) and the beautifully benevolent building of hospitals, schools and roads will win over radicals who detest us with every fiber of their being.
Do you know why we're really sickened by our behavior in that prison?
Because it makes us look sleazy . . . kinky.
Guess what? We are kinky. Just look at our TV shows, movies, e-mail solicitations, the size of our porn industry and even the behavior of some of our prominent political and spiritual leaders.
And not just kinky. We've become arrogant, greedy, rich, self-serving, soft and superficial, following in the historically fatal footsteps of other once-mighty civilizations.
It's what our enemies hate about us. It's why they're maddened by the way our culture creeps over the globe. It's why they flew those jumbo jets into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.
When our troops were dying in increasing numbers recently, there were those among us who felt real sorrow over the expiration of the representatively mindless and self-indulgent TV show "Friends."
When we were brought to our knees on 9/11, we responded by demanding more powerful cars that slurp the fuel that bankrolls some of our worst enemies.
We've been consumed by the gay-marriage issue, Janet Jackson's breast, "reality" TV, "American Idol" and whether we're too fat. Some of our professional athletes and actors - those who entertain us - continue to make one hundred times as much money as the leader of the free world.
When Bush urged us to return to "normalcy" after 9/11, I hoped we wouldn't, and said so in a column two years ago.
The if-it-feels-good-do-it mentality of the "me" generation should've died when the towers fell. But it didn't. We're still acting like spoiled brats.
We've got a frothy, debt-driven, service-oriented, Hispanic-immigrant-dependent economy that could collapse like a house of cards with a few well-placed bombs or acts of cyberterrorism striking at our banking systems.
Boom . . . it's 1929 again, or worse.
To recycle an inane quote from the elder George Bush, we're in deep doo-doo. And we don't seem to know how deep it is.
We're in the midst of a titanic cultural and religious war with a borderless enemy, and we're unarmed on both counts.
They're all too willing to die, to be absolutely ruthless, for their side.
Not only is our culture soft, it is deeply divided. Name your issue, half of us are all for it, the other half are dead-set against it. The last presidential election was a coin toss that landed on its edge. Yes, differences of opinion are what makes this country great, but never have we been so culturally riven and adrift.
We no longer have the default operating system - Judeo-Christianity - that backstopped this nation from its inception. It's no longer acceptable to even call the United States a Christian nation.
We're not sure what we are anymore. And if you don't live for something, you'll die for nothing, to use a hard-rock aphorism.
Right now we're flailing around midstream in a raging river of a war with completely different rules for engagement. It's a war that could, and likely will, change the face of the Earth.
Half of us want to get to the other side, and the other half want to turn back.
Our enemies, waiting on either side, are counting on this classic formula for a drowning.
If we're going to prevail, we're going to have to take a hard look at ourselves, find some common, solid ground and start pushing like our lives depend on it.
Contact Mark at (804) 649-6822 or mholmberg@timesdispatch.com
This story can be found at: http://www.timesdispatch.com/servle...5480823&path=!news!columnists&s=1045855935174
