War on Islam

I really used to like John McCain. He definatly had the biggest sack in the Republican party when he came out and against campainging with people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.
"Neither party," Sen. McCain said, "should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance." Really? Because John McCain is now campainging with Rod Parsley. Parsley, between acts of divine healing, has called Islam "false religion" and called upon his attendees of World Harvest Church of Columbus to wage war the faith of a "demon spirit". Here's a snippet from Parsley's book Silent No More:

"It was to defeat Islam, among other dreams, that Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World in 1492…Columbus dreamed of defeating the armies of Islam with the armies of Europe made mighty by the wealth of the New World. It was this dream that, in part, began America."

So according to Rod Parsley, not only did Columbus "discover" a continent that was already inhabited by a complex society. He did so with the intent to destroy a religion, and bring the riches back home to Europe. So why is this not making national news? Rod Parsley has also advocated prosecution for people who commit adultry. He's likened Planned Parenthood to Nazis. Even now as John McCain recalls his "agents of intolerance" comment, he notes that, "when [Hagee] endorses me, it does not mean that I embrace everything that he stands for or believes in."

Rev. Wright Freeing P.O.W.s

The mainstream media keeps showing the same clips of pundits and hosts berating Rev. Wright for meeting with Louis Farrakhan, and even travelling to Libya with him. That would be a little strange for the Reverend. Nobody seems to be able to put into perspective why Farrakhan, Wright, and Jackson were over there. Well I did a little research, and came across a Lt. Robert Goodman who was a US Navy A-6 Intruder navigator shot down by Syrian gunfire; essentially a P.O.W. As a matter of fact, that trip to Libya and later Syria, also included negotiations regarding the release of that same pilot. The US government made numerous attempts to free him, but until Rev. Wright's trip, we had been completely unsuccessful, much to the dismay of Robert Goodman.
So how did this goodwill tour of the Holy Land turn into a private meeting with all the worlds bad guys? How could the noble actions described by even Ronald Reagan as a "mission of mercy" turn into hate mongering? Fox News. Reagan wanted this to be remembered as a trip that has "earned our grattitude and our admiration".

Post-Racial America

Barack Obama's sobering speech on the still festering, yet now stale, wound that is race relations in America addressed things that presidential figures have skipped over for years. It's 2008. The majority of Americans are tolerant, post-racial people who really looked at Barack Obama as a real hope, until the media got ahold of those clips. Yet despite the political pressure mounting for Obama to somehow "disown" 20 years of his history, he stands steadfast, daring to cast the line of biracial understanding to the drowning American public. He can no more disown Rev. Wright than he can disown black America; no more than he can disown anyone who tensions mount over years of percieved racial injustices, but Obama recognizes that to be a uniter he must be a bridge between predominatly two very different realities. Americans should look to this speech as inspiration face their darkest perceptions of others in a new light, one that shows understanding that they'll never understand what it's like to walk in someone else's shows. And with that reality faced we should move on as post-racial Americans.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=P_9al4IQOhk

On Behalf of the United States of America...

You know, this sucks that I'm the one that has to do this. I'm the one who's got to apologize on behalf of my nation for the way we've handled the recent Colombian-FARC crisis. You'd think it'd be a little more evident to the U.S. population that we're kind of shitty neighbors. I mean, it would be clearer if the media represented the U.S. in a light where we are bound by international law. The headlines and stories are handled like: STRONGMAN CHAVEZ AMASSES TROOPS AT BORDER. ...Okay, seriously, can they at least have the decency to not belittle the man for ordering the hauntingly familiar slogan of "protecting the borders". It just seems real obvious to me that national sovereignty includes the right to sling your military around in your borders. If Venezuela has a real threat of American backed Colombians reaching in for a few FARC rebels, then it is totally necessary to then make sure that doesn't f'n happen. Even if Chavez is lying about having contact with the rebels, which a recently captured laptop proves. Are we going to be so critical of supporting unpopular opposition movements after this? I'm sure that Bush and McCain know the very definition of hypocrisy. That's a slam dunk.

So I'm sorry Ecuador. We shouldn't have violated your national sovereignty.

Culture of Violence

As James Myart put it in an interview with Sean Hannity,

"Most police officers are good, honest, hard-working men and women, there is a culture of police officers out there that represent a legalized gang violence."

there exists a living, breathing sub-culture of hate and supremacy within the armed forces. Sean proceeded to assert that Myart's claim was a national disgrace for it's use of racial politics that he inferred were aimed only to better Myart himself, and not the afflicted community. We've got the same problem in the military. There seems to be this clique in almost everyplace you can find guns legal or not, of anti-intellectual, mostly mentally disturbed, people who stain the name of good private and civil organizations. Charles Whitman, Ceasar Laurean, Lee Harvey Oswalt, Daniel Smith, Timothy McVeigh, and these dudes are just to name the more famous military guided sociopaths. It's an inevitable problem. In the same way the rapists are always going to exist as a by-product of a disturbed youth, terrible choices, and our perpetually unequal society, there will always be men and women who want to join the military or police, not to defend, but to kill in cold blood.
One of the most important things our military does is a screening for these type cases, but as always, a few will slip through and find themselves in a foriegn land, bound only by restrictions of a loosley interpreted war, ready to kill. You can see traces of graffitti in Baghdad where the Ayran Nation has marked it's territory. You can hear it at night in some barracks, where whispers like "sand-nigger", and "camel jockey" float from ear to ear. I don't want those people over there representing me. When Iraqi citizens look at our marines, they are looking at the face of our nation, if they see a bully, our occupation is going to be a lot harder.
But the military has to be held responsible for the effects of it's recruitment techniques, let's be honest, we could whiddle this number of failures down by avoiding the over-glorification of the armed forces, as well as the recruitment practices of searching the schools for (among others) smart, usually lone and detached students. Even I managed to get tracked down by a young man sent to JD as a recruiter. I had to tell this guy twice in person that I wasn't interested, and I still got calls and letters from the recruitment office. That's some bullshit.

The October Surprise That Could K.O. McCain

Well, technically it would be an August surprise, but if the recently renewed cease fire with Iranian-backed Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr falls through without update six months from now violence in the south Baghdad could skyrocket. The Jaish al-Mahdi, or "Mahdi Army" has been known to use the oh so infamous IEDs along with other harrassing small arms fire, but the real threat lies in the Shia Islamist traditional rogue death squads which will undoubtedly form as the true meaning of the Qu'ran is forgotten for the sake of political power. The Sunni's will be pissed.
So when you get one religious group whose name itself carries apocalyptic connotations, the Mahdi being a central firgure in Shia eschatology, and another broad group seeking unification behind an equally strong and charismatic leader, and you put them together in a struggle over a country carved out by Europeans, you get a lot of this crap. Oh, and the part of Iraq with all the oil is controlled by seperatists. That's pretty important too. They don't even fly the Iraqi flag, they use the Kurdistan flag on government buildings. It's like the country is falling through the hands of the dangerously centralized government; unstable and shifting with the slightest of wind, just like the golden Iraqi sand. In hindsight we should have seen it coming, but hindsight is always 20/20, right John McCain?

Maybe that cease fire will fall through and all hell will break loose in the country which was supposed to greet us with flowers. Maybe not though, we could always stick with the current situation and limit the nation to just 3 or 4 carbombs a week. If mere occupation is success, our standards have seriously dropped.