Month: December 2006

It endures despite all the odds; it survives in the face of cruel ostracism; it speaks with a quiet dignity. Welcome to the world of gay evangelicals. Money quote:

"A lot of people are freaked out because their only exposure to evangelicalism was a bad one, and a lot ask, ‘Why would you want to be part of a group that doesn‚Äôt like you very much?’ But it‚Äôs not about membership in groups. It’s about what I believe. Just because some people who believe the same things I do aren’t very loving doesn’t mean I stop believing what I do."

I know few greater testaments to the power of faith in Jesus, or to the blessedness of being gay.

A reader writes:

If you’ve not yet see it, please check out the Christian Embassy’s video, here. As an American, as an Army officer who has sworn to protect the Constitution – this video, its various recorded endorsements, and the self proclaimed ability of its member to directly affect the "scope" of policy decisions at the highest level is, in a word, terrifying. I only pray (yes, I do pray, but in that personal, Constitutionally protected way) that cooler heads at the DoD prevail at some time in the very near future and stand down the Christianist bullies who have established such a very strong foothold in my – in America’s – Army and the other branches of service in the Department of Defense.

I was once befuddled by the American right’s toleration of torture as an instrument of statecraft and the seeming indifference of so many ‘conservatives’ to Bush’s obsession with ends over means. And then I read National Review’s symposium on the death of Pinochet. It really speaks for itself.

This reader may be onto something:

I think everyone, right and left, is making a mistake in taking the ISG Report’s policy recommendations at face value. What the ISG is really up to is "enlarging the problem," as it’s known in some policy circles.  By engaging other countries on the solution for Iraq, we make them part of the problem of Iraq.  Then, when the problem turns out to be unsolvable, we are no longer solely to blame.  The narrative then becomes, "The whole middle east – in the form of the Iraq International Support Group – tried to fix Iraq, to no avail. It’s not working, and we don’t want to participate in this larger process anymore.  So we’re leaving – not so much leaving Iraq, as leaving this useless regional forum.  The forum has failed, not the US, and it’s your problem now."

Remember, the Report also calls for substantial US troop reductions by 2008.  Why 2008?  Well, there’s this presidential election then … and two years is about enough for all that aggressive regional diplomacy to prove itself futile, so we can use it as cover to leave.

The ISG has also built in some solid CYA provisions. The Report’s recommendations have to be enacted in toto, Baker and Hamilton have argued, otherwise none of it will work. They know no commission report in the history of the Republic has been accepted in toto, and that this one won’t be, either.  When Iraq disintegrates, therefore, they can say, "Not our fault.  We told the president the only chance he had was if he adopted the whole report – and he didn’t."

Bottom line:  Taken at face value, the Report’s policy recommendations are useless – practically irrelevant – for quelling Iraqi violence.  But quelling Iraqi violence was never what the ISG set out to do.  Despite the silly "way forward" rhetoric, the real purpose of the ISG was to find us a way out – and a year or two of the guaranteed-to-fail diplomacy it recommends has as good a chance of that as anything.

Dick Cheney wants to side with the Shiites, apparently. But wouldn’t withdrawal allow them to destroy the Sunnis without our actual help? If we are going to enable genocide, best to do so by neglect than complicity, no? Or is Cheney that dumb? Gulp. He’s been dumber.

He attacks her family but says it isn’t personal. Yes, it is, Mr Dobson. Then this:

Traditional marriage is God’s design for the family and is rooted in biblical truth. When that divine plan is implemented, children have the best opportunity to thrive. That’s why public policy as it relates to families must be based not solely on the desires of adults but rather on the needs of children and what is best for society at large.

There you have the essence of Christianism: divine law translated directly into civil law.

Should the U.S. grant asylum to those it has left behind? When will the religious right demand we intervene to protect Iraq’s Christians from being decimated by death squads unleashed by Rumsfeld’s anarchy policy? Or would that mean conceding defeat?

But he has to, doesn’t he?

Bush’s ratings are at an all-time low:

Our great leader will soon anounce the next installment of his "Five Year Plan for Iraq". Comrades Lowry and Hanson, you’d better study hard to adequately convey the inevitability of our victory.