Month: February 2007

Vallejo, California, 2.30 pm.

A new low (if that were possible).

An Inuit traditional poem:

"I think over again my small adventures.
My fears.
Those small ones that seemed so big.
For all the vital things I had to get and to reach.
And yet there is only one great thing, the only thing.
To live to see the great day that dawns
And the light that fills the world."

"Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone? But that’s exactly what our government did," – congressman Henry Waxman, on allegations of amazing recklessness in the Bush administration’s Iraq policy.

A reader puts his finger on an important aspect of the current debate in Iraq. I hope that General Petraeus achieves some kind of miracle in Baghdad. I doubt it, but of course I hope for it – if it means a space for a real, national government to emerge, and not just a way to pacify some Sunni areas before the Shiites really get to work. But if or when it fails, will we be able to face the moral consequences of withdrawal or redeployment? I wonder:

One of the main arguments against an American pullback or pullout is the likelihood of a genocidal and brutal civil war that would "force" the U.S. to come in to stop the slaughter.

I think it is appropriate to assume that there would be massive killing. I’ve heard arguments to the contrary and I’ve heard arguments that Syria/Iran, etc. would not permit it, but assuming that it would not take place is as foolish as assuming that everything will be just fine. So we should assume that there will be incredible slaughter, religious dislocation and depravity – at least in the non-Kurdish areas – if we get out.

Query: Do we have the discipline to stay out and to be presented night after night with scenes of uniminaginable slaughter that we will be accused of being "responsible for"? Because if we don’t have the discipline – or the cold-heartedness, if you will – then that’s a strong argument to continue with Bush’s approach.

Indeed it is. The great drawback of my own position is that it requires the United States to stand back as genocide takes place. The great drawback of the president’s position is that we are already policing and enabling a genocide at a slower pace but comparable scale. History suggests that Americans can leave a place to hell. America was tough enough to watch the Vietnamese boat people. But of course it makes me pause. It should. The choices before us are all dreadful. But sometimes the best decision is the least palatable in the short term. I say we have no side in a Sunni-Shia war; and if we have no side, we should be in no war.

(Photo: Iraqis prepare the body of a relative killed in yesterday’s suicide car bomb explosion as funerals for the dead begin on February 4, 2007 in Baghdad, Iraq. Taken by Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty.)

A classic.

"Honest religion, more familiar than its critics with the distortions and absurdities perpetuated in its name, has an active interest in encouraging a healthy skepticism for its own purposes … There is the possibility for religion and science to forge a real partnership against pseudo-science. Strangely, I think it would soon be engaged also in opposing pseudo-religion," – Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World".

Do the Republicans realize how swiftly they appear to be headed for the exits of serious political debate? A National Journal poll shows that 84 percent of a selected group of influential Congressional Republicans deny that there’s a human component to global warming "beyond a reasonable doubt". The international scientific community puts the likelihod at 90 percent. Whoever these Republicans are, they are not reasonable people, or even vaguely in touch with reality. Then, from the Christianist wing of the party, we are asked to believe that Ted Haggard is now "completely heterosexual." (Yes, I know Haggard’s team of reparative therapists are not Republican officials; but their tight connection with the Rove machine has been integral to previous electoral strategies.) Even the "ex-gay" people don’t buy Haggard’s story. Check out this exchange from AC360 last night.

I have a feeling that we may be about to see not the slow decline of the GOP as it is currently constructed – but a complete implosion. It appears that many Republicans are privately thinking the same thing.

A reader tells me there is an exhibit currently in Washington’s National Portrait Gallery devoted to Whitman. The website is here – and is quite a work of art in its own right. You can even listen to Whitman read "America." Why, I wonder, is Whitman not central to gay studies in American universities? Why are young gay students not being taught about their extraordinary cultural inheritance? Why do straight students not know that one of America’s greatest poets, one of this country’s great patriots, was proudly, openly gay well over a century ago? It would do a great deal to dispel the ignorance, philistinism and stupidity that lies behind the homophobia of so many.

And we must listen. Just not on crosswalks.