What It Means To Win
We are winning the war in Iraq, aren't we? Of course we are! But what does "winning" mean, exactly? James Carroll gets to the truth of the matter in The Boston Globe:
Why don't we Americans look directly at the war? We avert our gaze, knowing that the situation in Iraq grows more desperate by the day. Vaunted "coalition" efforts to "break the back" of the "insurgency" have only strengthened it.The violence among Iraqis would surely qualify as civil war - except that only one side is fighting. The structures of relief and repair are gone. Whole cities are destroyed, populations displaced. The hope for elections is mortally compromised. Coalition members are dropping out. The mission of American force is to secure the country, but it can't even secure itself. The performance of U.S. intelligence has been consistent: Its strategic failures caused the war, and its tactical ignorance of the enemy is losing the war.
Meanwhile, in America, this, the gravest foreign policy crisis in a generation, source of a crisis of conscience for tens of millions of citizens, is not a subject of political debate. For many months, overt opposition to the war was sublimated in the effort to defeat George W. Bush in the November election. John Kerry's fatal ambivalence about Iraq sealed the war off from the great quadrennial decision, with the result that the voices of those who hated the war were muted, and the uneasiness of those who were troubled by it was never addressed.
Astoundingly, the Democrats cooperated with the Republicans in assuring that the war in Iraq - the one thing that might have defeated Bush - was not an issue. That marginalization of the antiwar impulse continues in the suspended animation of a period after the American election and before the Iraqi election.
The new Bush administration has moved to reconfigure itself in most ways but one. The president's affirmation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in combination with his naming of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, reflects a blind determination to "stay the course" in Iraq, never mind that the course is heading off a cliff.
I have a new anti-SUV campaign now, cards that read:
Because I put my email address on them, I get replies from time to time, from people whose behemoths I've "carded." Here's one of them:
SUV driver:
Since you have such an allegiance to mother's of dead marines, let me ask you a question. Are you one?
My reply:
Aren't we all? I'm actually not a mother of anyone, but your lack of solidarity with people who are dying on behalf of our country is shocking. Then again, considering your narcissistic choice of vehicle, maybe it's simply to be expected. There are others on the planet besides you, selfish bozo.
We covred this yesterday! The NYT and the BG are published by the same people.
Cridland at December 14, 2004 4:41 PM
Amy, I'd love to see more of the responses you've received from the carded SUV pigs. (I apoloize for my use of "SUV pigs"; I shouldn't be redundant.)
Any chance you'll sell your card (with or without your e-mail address)?
By the way, your response, "There are others on the planet besides you, selfish bozo," would work well on another nifty card for the oinkers.
L
Lawaneke at December 14, 2004 5:14 PM
Thinking that marines are dying for SUV drivers sounds good does not make sense. America imports about 55% of its oil, but only one third of that is from Arab states. This means that approx 17% of the oil consumed in America comes from the Arab states, or 1 barrel out of 6. The United States produces about the same amount of oil as Saudi Arabia, and imports more/about the same from Canada than Saudi Arabia. (It is so close it fluctuates) Mexico is also a significant source for US oil, and Mexicans produce about the same amount of oil as Iran. So does Venezuela. (All this data comes from US Department of Energy.)
I agree wholeheartedly that we should encourage auto manufacturers to increase fuel efficiency, as well making sure every home is well insulated, pursue alternative renewable energy sources, and get people to put on a damn sweater instead of cranking up the thermostat.
The reason Marines are dying in Iraq is that they were sent there to kill an enemy that didn’t exist- yet.
eric at December 14, 2004 5:43 PM
PS Lena-
Loving, absolutely LOVING, West With The Night.
eric at December 14, 2004 5:47 PM
> they were sent there to kill an enemy
> that didn’t exist-
Tell it to the people in the mass graves... If you can get their attention.
PS- Have a web site for those DoE numbers? I'd heard 15-21% of the USA's oil came from the M.E.
Either way, we're not fighting this war for precisely our own interests
Cridland at December 14, 2004 5:49 PM
17% is somewhere between 15% and 21%. It fluctuates. The numbers I used were from 2002.
Jump on google and investigate it yourself- I am always suspect when people send me to a pre-chosen website. Whether it is 1 barrel out of 5 or 1 barrel out of 6 is irrelevant to the reason Marines are sent to kill and be killed.
eric at December 14, 2004 6:04 PM
Well, at least it makes you feel better.
Jim Treacher at December 14, 2004 6:47 PM
> I am always suspect when people send me
> to a pre-chosen website.
You're afraid of giving citations?
Cridland at December 14, 2004 8:17 PM
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/usa.html
http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/oil.html
Excerpt from the US Department of Energy document:
The United States averaged total gross oil (crude and products) imports of an estimated 12.2 MMBD during 2003, representing around 62% of total U.S. oil demand. Over two-fifths of this oil came from OPEC nations, with Persian Gulf sources accounting for about one-fifth of total U.S. oil imports. Overall, the top suppliers of oil (crude and refined products) to the United States during 2003 were Canada (2.1 MMBD), Saudi Arabia (1.8 MMBD), Mexico (1.6 MMBD), and Venezuela (1.4 MMBD).
This was written right next to the box with all the pretty colors Crid.
OPEC contains non Arab nations, such as Algeria, Indonesia, Nigeria and Venezuela.
The good news is one fifth of 62% is 12.4%, which is the percentage of our (total) oil that came from Persian Gulf sources in 2003. As I said, it fluctuates from year to year.
I wonder if a president asked Americans to cut their energy usage by 1/8th, and we told all the Arab nations we would not purchase their oil until they instituted profound human rights/political reforms, how long it would take for the non-violent changes to begin...
eric at December 14, 2004 9:54 PM
Hi Eric --
Glad to hear you like West with the Night. Hope everything is well with you too. I'm coming to the end of a work-then-family-visit-East-Coast-tour. I got to help my nephew with his math homework (linear equations -- ooh la la!) the past couple of days, but I still can't wait to get back to Sin City, CA. I miss Amy most of all!
Books are Friends
I read "15 to Life" on the flight from LA to Baltimore last week. It's a real eyeopener about the utter stupidity of the mandatory drug sentencing laws in NY state -- which, it just so happened, were modified TODAY by Gov Pataki. This news will probably show up in tomorrow's NYT. Then check out www.15tolife.com. I want to give Anthony Papa a big friggin' hug for all that he went through.
Tomorrow I'm set to read Running with Scissors on a Newark to LA flight, and I'm totally psyched. Augusten Burroughs reminds me of Lorrie Moore, who once wrote: "Dub the imagination 'pharmacist,' and then we can talk turkey." My kinda gal.
You must be freezing up there in -- where is it? -- North Dakota? I am paralyzed with cold weather right now. And all this east coast food is giving me zits.
brrrrr,
Lena
Wandering Lena at December 15, 2004 5:01 AM
Ah, yes. It's all about the oooooiiiilllll.
Howard Owens at December 15, 2004 7:00 AM
> how long it would take for the non-violent
> changes to begin...
Imagine celestial time, with planets tumbling into their suns not in proud, direct, cometlike paths, but by the essentially undetectable decay of their spiral motions, each with millions of cycles lasting centuries apiece.
Consider geological time, measured by the refinement of a superior biological formation... for example, the human eyeball. Uncounted billions of improvements attempted by infrequent and random biological error in chemistry, most dooming the bearing organism to a life of underfed weakness and failed reproduction. And then, a tiny number of lesser, clumsy alternatives like the hideous compound eyes of Musca Domestica and Drosophila, our familiar irritants. Much later, only at the shimmering pinnacle atop this unremembered mountain of death and incompetence, a color-registering, stereoscopic marvel appears in hominids.
Muse across a whole side of Joni Mitchell played at a college mixer in the late '70s. And then reflect on all the undergraduate dormies who had to listen to it in order to hit on a Delta Phi Epsilon sister in a tight sweater. Imagine sitting through all those parties IN SEQUENCE.
I.e., *FUCKING EONS*, babe. That's how long it would take "for the non-violent changes to begin."
Turns out, nobody wants to wait for that long. Which is cool.
PS- Howard, welcome back to the arena.
Cridland at December 15, 2004 7:37 AM
The blond in the bleachers
she flips her hair for you
above the loudspeakers you start to fall.
She follows you home
but you miss living alone.
You can still here sweet mystery
calling you.
Joni Mitchell
Lena at December 15, 2004 4:07 PM
Amy,
How many times do you fly to Paris every year? Twice, isn't it? How many marines must die to fill up the fuel tanks on an air liner, hmmm?
Or was it okay for Saddam to use his oil money to give $25,000 bounties to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers as long as they were only killing Jews? How many explosive belt packs did your trips pay for?
You're no better or worse than an SUV driver.
nash at December 15, 2004 7:02 PM
Nash, you're so tiresome. I answered this one before. There's no way to get to Paris (I should swim?) save jet travel. While I go because I love it there, my readers benefit through all I learn about relationships, comparatively, and the wiser ways the French operate in that sphere. My suggestion isn't that nobody should drive; it's like those ads that used to be on taxis around NYC:
"If you smoke, please try Carlton."
If you drive, try to drive the thing that endangers the least number of people, pollutes the least, and does the least to promote dependence on foreign oil, until the self-serving assholes running our government as a welfare system for corporations wakes up and smells the brown air.
By the way, I frequently shop while running. I'm not kidding. I do it to save gas. I go to Sephora to buy makeup when I run 7 miles, tuck it in my running pack, and go home. That's one less car on the road -- even if mine is "super-ultra-low" ranked in polluting and gets 66 mpg or more, depending on whether it's freeway travel or surface streets.
Amy Alkon at December 15, 2004 9:22 PM
If the public can choose (or not) the accomodation of a soccer mom's authority to ferry her kids around with tanklike safety in a Ford Expedition, they can certainly make a choice about whether to invest in your harvest of insights from the city of light.
So you'll have to sell them on it. Good luck.
Cridland at December 16, 2004 3:56 PM
i love the anti-suv campaign! i want some cards to pass out! keep it up
susan at December 17, 2004 1:12 AM
Send me a self-addressed stamped envelope and I'll send you some. (Please tell me in an enclosure with the envelope that's why you're sending it -- I get deluged with mail for a living, so I am likely to be puzzled otherwise.)
Amy Alkon at December 17, 2004 1:39 AM