The Dish

Derb vents:

We are not controlling events in Iraq. Events in Iraq are controlling us. We are the puppet; the street gangs of Baghdad and Basra are the puppet-masters, aided and abetted by an unsavory assortment of confidence men, bazaar traders, scheming clerics, ethnic front men, and Iranian agents. With all our wealth and power and idealism, we have submitted to become the plaything of a rabble, and a Middle Eastern rabble at that. Instead of rubbling, we have ourselves been rabbled. The lazy-minded evangelico-romanticism of George W. Bush, the bureaucratic will to power of Donald Rumsfeld, the avuncular condescension of Dick Cheney, and the reflexive military deference of Colin Powell combined to get us into a situation we never wanted to be in, a situation no self-respecting nation ought to be in, a situation we don’t know how to get out of.

This much is indisputable. Read the piece. I hope to respond to its wisdom as well as what I think are its mistakes in due course.

A Reaganite conservative asks a vital question:

What would the Reagan White House have said had some Russian apparatchik decreed that an innocent victim of torture deserved neither a hearing nor redress? Two decades ago the cold war definitions were clear: the West was a pluralistic coalition of nations big and small. We stood four-square against a cruel superpower willing to torture, kidnap, slaughter and invade in order to install an ideologically driven, once-size-fits-all system claiming historical inevitability.

Today, brandishing ideologies that appeal to domestic political audiences and intimidate everyone else, American and British leaders sound like Leonid Brezhnev. A current Afghan joke asks the difference between Americans and Russians, and the bitter answer is: “The Americans are better paid.”

By the standards of Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, our neoconservatives are not conservative, they are neosoviet. In the process, George Bush and Tony Blair are losing the so-called war on terror. Their policies backfire and play into the hands of Osama Bin Laden.

His analysis of our mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan seems very persuasive to me. This is a long war; and we have to both make compromises on the ground and always maintain our moral standing. We have, alas, been inept at both.

"Don’t you know that you are aiding the enemy when you speak against President Bush? I will bet you that of all the presidents since 1950, with the exception of President Ronald Reagan, President Bush is by far the best. We and hundreds of thousands of Americans stand by the president. Of course, he is not perfect, but he is a man of God. If you are a born-again Christian, you will support him and pray for him every day. We are called, no, commanded, to pray for our president," – an email to WorldNet Daily. Its title? "Born Again? Then Support The President." It would be hard to find a more candid expression of Christianism.

Despite the presence of the Islamist vice-president of the Iranian theocracy, some Iranians at the World Cup in Germany have taken the occasion to express their true feelings. According to this blog, the fans also sang the old Iranian national anthem. Money quote:

While the Islamic Republic’s national hymn was played, many Iranian fans sang the original Iranian national anthemn, named ‘Ey-Iran! Marze por Gohar’. The latter has been officially banned by the Khomeinist regime since 1979.

The same goes for the national flag, that is the Lion & Sun flag, used for thousands of years with small changes in the centuries, but abolished by the Islamist regime since when it took power in 1979. Since then, the regime imposed the current flag, whose symbol represents Islamism.

The photo above is inspiring, is it not? The woman is not only burka-free, she is waving the old flag. In Iran, she may not have been allowed into a stadium. Know hope.

That’s the first anniversary of the hangings of two teens in Iran for being gay. Michael Petrelis, the indefatigable gay activist, is organizing a vigil in San Francisco to mark the event. I’ll be in Provincetown, and once I get there, I’ll try and mark the occasion in some way as well. The Pet Shop Boys are dedicating their new album to the teens. It seems to me that this is an opportunity for the national gay groups and other organizations devoted to highlighting the abuse of human rights to remind people of the remaining evil of Islamist tyranny, and the daily toll it takes on so many, especially women and gay men. We must not forget these victims of theocratic terror. And we must look the evil in the eye.

(Photo: ISNA/Masshad.)

I know we should ignore her. But she’s too successful for that. Here’s one more take – a very smart one from the NYT’s David Carr (his column is becoming indispensable reading, which means they may soon put it behind their firewall). He gets her formula perfectly correct:

But this time, it’s even worse. Somewhere in that equation is the cynical use of the life and work of Jesus Christ.

I’ve often concentrated on some of the horrendous consequences of the Bush administration’s abandonment of the Geneva Conventions in this war. I make no apologies for this; and I’ll keep it up. But perspective also matters. And, as I’ve blogged again and again, the vast majority of the young men and women defending civilization in Iraq are doing great good in extraordinarily difficult circumstances, facing fear that we will never know, displaying courage that we will never be able to imitate. Here’s a piece by one of them, a military physician in Iraq, giving medical care to human beings who have tried to kill innocents and her fellow soldiers. There is an inverse analogue to Abu Ghraib – far, far more common than abuse – that represents the core morality of most soldiers, let down by their civilian leadership. Read this piece. Money quote:

A new patient has arrived, lying with his chest exposed and his vital signs electronically monitored. He is ill, and we are taking care of him, but he is different from most of our patients. He lies in bed with a bandanna covering his eyes, not a bandage. At the foot of the bed are two young American soldiers with weapons in hand.

They look at me as I look at our patient, a ‘bad guy’ for sure, as our Iraqi interpreter calls them. He is an insurgent.

My blood pressure rises a bit. I ask, ‘What did he do?’ The answer: ‘He made IEDs.’

IEDs are improvised explosive devices, bombs that are hidden to explode on the unsuspecting. This man is a terrorist, an evil, mean man who plots to kill our folks, other Iraqis, even innocent young children.

My blood pressure rises even more. Something inside me wants to walk up to this guy, blindfolded or not, and just clobber him. Perhaps I will remove the bandanna, so he can see it coming. People certainly do not see the IEDs coming before they explode, destroying life, injuring arms, legs and bodies.

I look down at this insurgent, an elderly, overweight man. I wonder how we can love our enemies and how we can pray for those who spitefully use us. I have lived a life with no real enemies. Here is a man who would take my life if he could. Hate and anger raged in me for a time.

Other soldiers who see these men without the bandannas tell me that there is often no light in their eyes, no hope, no goodness that you can see. They are filled with a vile fluid that cannot be easily drained. They are cold; given the chance, these men would do us harm.

And yet he heals him, and cares for him, and forgives him. This too is America – and its real heart and soul. And this is now our calling in Iraq. We broke it; we own it. We must now stay for as long as it takes to help heal it; and in so doing, do our part to help heal the world.

Tashkent, Uzbekistan, 3.30 pm.

As you’re aware, I’ve been running more window views from readers on an occasional basis. Why? Well, people keep sending them, and they retain their fascination for me. They are often quite moving in a strange, intimate way, and help make this blog the interaction it should be. It brings our worlds together somehow. That is not to say that I’m inviting them the way I did in the first week. I cannot cope with hundreds on a daily basis. But it seems foolish to end something which you, the readers, don’t want to end. So I’ll keep posting them from time to time, as a visual form of punctuation. When my own schedule calms down a bit, I’m going to figure out a way to bring them all together in one place – probably a coffee-table book. Until then, enjoy the views. And for legal reasons, I just want to reiterate that by sending them to me, you give me permission to use them and to retain all rights over them. And please no photography class exhibits; and no bragging. You’re anonymous anyway. The concept fails unless it really is your window, in a real place and time. It doesn’t have to be Ansel Adams or some stunning vista. In fact, the best ones aren’t. They’re real and human. And of the moment. And you.

A 12-minute film experiment on the WTC massacre. (Link now fixed – apologies).

Another view on the best-selling author, this time from an arch-conservative reader:

I’m about as radical a conservative as they come. I’m pro-life with ZERO exceptions, adamantly opposed to gay marriage, etc. However, I’m also not a fan of Ann Coulter, or at least the way that she and the media characterize her.  She is a comedian, nothing more, nothing less. I find her infinitely amusing, and most of what she says I agree with. However, the media (and Coulter herself) like to portray her as some leader of conservative thought. She’s not. She takes the ideas that are already out there, finds the most amusing, hair-raising position that she can on those ideas, and presents them in a way as to generate laughs. This is a textbook comedian. She is someone that I enjoy reading and watching, but because she‚Äôs funny, not to help me develop or reinforce my ideas.  She is given WAY too much credit, and I really wish that everyone on both the right and left would take her a lot less seriously. She’s funny. That’s it.