2025 Has Started with Terror

 

To wake and find that the promise of a new year is already draped in tragedy is a horrific start--and all my condolences to the friends and families of those lost in the horrific assault in New Orleans and to the survivors and theirs. It is a stark reminder that evil doesn't take a holiday, and that disturbed and radicalized people are among us. Violence is the burden of a society that needs meaning and unity. We are divided and life is stressful, and people dissociate and create demons to justify carrying out the worst of their fantasies. 

We should not become numb to this. We cannot accept it. It is inimical to civilized life. 

I don't know what the hell animated the mind of Shamsud-Din Jabbar to cause a man who once swore an oath to protect and defend this country to so drastically turn against its citizens, but this was an American--not a stranger. We grew this problem here. 

TWGB: He'll Dance to Anything

 

Wow. This is a new low, even for Trump.

“It Was a Setup,” “Could have been the parents” Trump tries to blame Gold Star families for the Arlington incident
pic.twitter.com/7eO9CZ3tag

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) August 31, 2024

Maybe the Gold Star families, who invited him and have signed statements to the effect that they think his being there was cool and totally legal--fucked him over by posting pictures and videos. That's what HE SAID, babies, not me. He tried to suggest the people who were there to back his ass up backed his ass over. So he suggested he didn't know anything about the strategy of his dumb stunt and maybe he was stunted upon. Maybe it was the White House that he was going to claim bailed on a solemn event they totally were clued into.  Kamala Harris called him on it, and now that stunt is supposed to be "he said and she said". 

I'm not here to belittle the Gold Star families because their grief is real and how they feel is real regardless of the facts on the ground. Their loved ones saved people in assisting the evacuation that day and died in a suicide bombing from ISIS-K. Nearly 170 Afghan people also were killed by that blast. The war had been 20 years long. And many servicepeople cycled through that assignment.  They can cast their blame any and everywhere it feels valid. But we all know that serving in the armed services can mean being placed in danger. Their safety was not guaranteed, they guaranteed the safety of others and that was their great sacrifice and why Section 60 is hallowed ground. 

Nothing I can say makes that right. Throughout the war on terror, we have not stopped the tactic of extraordinary violence. The results are appalling and personal. I demur from politicizing it. I have my own ideas about why the withdrawal sucked, but it was a group effort. And yet, for the Abbey Gate tragedy, I still blame ISIS. There was one airport, and there were so many people who were running out of time to be safe.   It was time to leave, and the crowd itself was an exploit. An opportunity for terror. One last kick in the slats before leaving. One demonstration of the ideology that faced the country we tried to rehabilitate into something like a Western image.

The Elephant at the Protest

 

I am completely opposed to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza, I genuinely think the Rafah operation will be a bloodbath and should be reconsidered, and I am highly skeptical that the eradication of Hamas is fully possible without what already are proving to be unacceptable human casualties. I want to believe that in a different political situation, Gazans might want something more like Fatah (which Hamas exterminated in that region) leading them in an autonomous state. I support the free speech rights of the protesters at various colleges, even to the extent that I am dubious of the effect of the protests and don't truly believe they are as well-informed as they need to be.

I do not want a recap of National Guard breaking heads at Berkeley, or Kent State. Reactionaries are looking for the opportunity to have hardhat riots and so on, and some people are openly fantasizing about the Democratic National Convention being another 1968. 

Given my feelings about all of the above, let me be that wet-blanket Gen X asshat who wants to tell the children, ever so delicately--the hell you are doing the same thing my parents' generation did. When pro-Palestinians all say "Genocide Joe", maybe they think they are just echoing their grandparents' asking LBJ how many kids he killed that day. But Joe isn't dropping the bombs, and Israel is getting incoming missiles all the time from Hamas, Hezbollah, and there is a threat of war from Iran.

Which leads me to point out that young man in the picture above with the Hezbollah flag--with a machine gun on it. Almost a gentle hippie, just repping something that is by no means a peace movement, but terrorism. 

When 1968 begat Nixon, he prolonged the Vietnam War. No, really. My dad's generation was drafted. He (Nixon) on the advice of Kissinger, prolonged the war. 

The Signs of the Crocus

 

So, #ISIS posted a graphic body cam video of one of the terrorists. Which looks & sounds bona fide ISIS. Here’s the blurred out version. The original is under the link.

It was ISIS. https://t.co/42q0Fm7uKW#MoscowAttack pic.twitter.com/GScxXL9DS0

— olexander scherba🇺🇦 (@olex_scherba) March 24, 2024

The shocking thing about the kind of society Russia is, is that a horrific terrorist attack can take place in the heart of the country, where the government had been warned such an attack might be immanent by the US, where credit for the attack has been claimed, the sitting dictator fresh from his irrelevant and rigged election can decide to blame it on Ukraine, and such is the propaganda network, absolute chunderfucks will vomit out this unintelligence for actually--free. They don't even need to be paid to be conspicuously wrong about a grave thing. 

The intelligence all says it is ISIS. But what if these guys looked awfully white to be Muslims (I dunno, man--it's not like there's a reverse paper-bag test to get into ISIS)? What if they were headed towards Ukraine? What if your aunt had balls and you were a chimp--would that make her a monkey's uncle? Kremlin Supergenius Putin thinks maybe it could be Ukraine. 

If one wanted it to be enough, couldn't it be? 

Four Women and a SOTU

 

Behind President Biden at the State of the Union Address this evening were Vice-President Kamala Harris and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, two women on a stage that for so long never had us. In the audience were Republican Representatives Margorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, who behaved in a way that made me ashamed for them. They were without dignity; they were partisan hecklers at a solemn event. They were there to be seen and we saw them. 

I am so ashamed for them that we saw them, because I don't know that they know how to be ashamed for themselves. Maybe they could be taught shame, as if they were still toddlers and the experience of being seen by others in public was still new. 

They tried to start a "Build the Wall" chant. It's an affront to sense. FYI: the wall was always stupid. It's a material, not a legal barrier, that can be easily thwarted by such things as "over, under, around, and through. " Anything that might costs millions if not billions to maintain across a thousand miles and can still be overcome by cheap ladders, by pick and shovel, by a flotilla of fucking inner tubes on the water  at the edges, that is made of steel but has feet of clay and gets toppled by a hard rain, is a stupid tribal fetish, not an immigration solution. 

Sticking with it is appalling dopiness. It's just sad. 

Trump Can *So* Get Down A Ramp

Trump wants you to see this video of him "running" down a ramp.pic.twitter.com/ZhzUVZ2xnX https://t.co/om7j89WhFk

— Biden War Room (Text UNITED to 30330) (@BidenWarRoom) June 14, 2020

He does have a little bit of trouble speaking and maybe needs help drinking water. (Perhaps he should consider using straws.) But thanks to "Momentum!" he can easily get down a steep ramp, thankyewverrymuch. Not that he precisely "ran" the last ten feet so much as ambled faster the last three.

Look, I'm in my mid-forties and my knees are already not great. I look like a damn penguin walking. Everyone misspeaks from time to time. I don't know what the water-holding thing is about, but it's possible that his right wrist has a repetitive stress injury from golfing--nothing major to get hyped about. Physical infirmities aren't a deal-breaker, and FDR and JFK both hid their health issues whilst being pretty competent in office.

It's only Trump isn't competent in office, and it's hard to pretend that he "projects strength" when his careless approach to things like, say, foreign policy and national security, are basically supine. He likes using people in uniform as a backdrop, only to say Chamberlin-esque things about "wars in foreign lands".

You know I'm no neocon, but he certainly didn't finish off ISIS, which he claimed he'd easily do, and if anything, North Korea and Iran are a bit more dangerous for having Trump and friends stumble around trying to figure out what to do with them. He also left us much more vulnerable to things like a pandemic or election fuckery. His State Department is hollowed out and he's gone through SecDefs and NSA's like pretzels, while showing an actual contempt for intelligence or expertise. He really hasn't hired "the best people" and his better people are gone and have developed unkind feelings about him. Basically, he's useless for anything but whittling or kindling. Also the economy bottomed out worse here in terms of unemployment than in many other places because he didn't build that.

He should be out of the job because he can't do the job, regardless of his physical fitness. But seeing his response and knowing that the folks around him desperately defend and cover up for his shortcoming in morality and veracity, I can easily understand why some assume the very worst about his health. After all, when something looks bad, is it not possible that it is bad?

Letters Are Written Never Meaning to Send

 

Apparently, in response to the Iraqi parliament's determination that it might just be best if American take our forces and most of our stuff and just, go, really, the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff drafted a letter that they had no intention of sending as-is, but by golly, it got out here, didn't it? To the effect that in deference to the decision of a sovereign nation, we'd just pack up and git when we weren't wanted. Because we weren't.

Which is something to think about. ISIS fighters are still pressed up against the back screen door of Iraq, but they'd rather sort it out--without us.

Anyways, how does this much of a letter go public without being a good draft, at least? Incompetence--or some kind of message?

UPDATE:  Huh.

Scoop: Pentagon initially told Capitol Hill that the Iraq withdrawal letter was "active disinformation." We have the email. https://t.co/jji1zvxdGu

— Stephen Hayes (@stephenfhayes) January 7, 2020

So Much Winning?

When Trump announced that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a military operation, this was supposed to be a win. He announced that there would be news coming Sunday morning the night before on Twitter, and within moments, it seemed, people knew this is what it was likely about. But instead of simply stating the bare facts of the operation and letting someone from the Pentagon field any questions, Trump's ego got the better of him, and he sort of killed the moment with his mouth. 

He compared the death of al-Baghdadi with the operation against Osama bin Laden (of course Trump says he got the bigger terrorist, and if people only listened to him, they would have known about bin Laden before 9/11, which is just absurd). He thanked Russia first, which was odd, because their Defense Ministry definitely seemed cool about what even happened. He also told them about it before notifying any Democratic lawmakers (which certainly wasn't about operational security--it was pettiness).  And, while he tried to make it appear that this operation came about as a result of his decision with respects to pulling back in Syria--that doesn't seem to have helped matters at all, but made them more difficult. 

He went on in morbid detail about crying, whimpering al-Baghdadi (rather more than good taste or sense would have allowed) but it appears that he wouldn't have seen anything from the tunnel in which the terrorist deployed his explosive vest. And he went on about Syria's oil again, which the US doesn't have a right to and wouldn't be that valuable to us, anyway. While the world won't mourn al-Baghdadi, Trump somehow managed to make his death announcement grotesque and pulled the sense of victory out of it. 

At the top of the post, I have the somewhat stagey-looking picture released by the White House of Trump in the Situation Room. That was supposed to be the iconic takeaway image of the day. The actual picture to take away from today is this:

This picture, showing an "Impeach Trump" banner being unfurled at Nationals Park where trump attended Game 5 of the World Series, shows the real story of the day: Trump was booed and met with chants of "Lock him up." Nothing he does will win with the people who have seen enough of his presidency for a lifetime. 

Of course, it's a job well done for Delta Force and the rest of our fighting men and women, and our partners in the region. To them all thanks. But a dose of reality should be Trump's reward.

This Approach to Foreign Policy Looks Inconsistent

BREAKING: Amid Pres. Trump's decision to remove US troops from northern Syria and his vocal criticisms of US military presence in Middle East, Pentagon announces the deployment of more US troops “to assure and enhance the defense of Saudi Arabia.” https://t.co/bPdc9T4D5O

— NBC News (@NBCNews) October 11, 2019

I don't really have a lot to add to this announcement that I haven't already said with respects to Trump and Saudi Arabia. We've got another announcement of manpower deployment for Saudi Arabia, on a Friday, amidst a sea of bad Trump news. Trying to reconcile the move with any sense of strategy--a "Trump Doctrine"--just doesn't make sense, any more than the Syria move makes any sort of strategic sense. There's nothing that should have been unpredictable about what Turkey is doing now, and there's no, to use a phrase "unknown unknowns" about what engagement with Iran to defend Saudi Arabia ('s oil)is likely to mean--it's a likely clusterfuck.

But is it inconsistent? I have a standing joke with respects to Republican conflicts of interest: "If one always acts in one's own self-interest, there's no conflict." Trump is the apotheosis of that maxim. I am not above assuming he would use our folks in uniform for his ends because he is not above doing it. It's not even very well hidden.

UPDATE: Mnuchin says we could shut down Turkey's economy with sanctions if they don't knock off what they are doing. I mean, we aren't doing it right now, but. We could.  From the Pentagon, we're "very disappointed" in Turkey right now.

UPDATE: Some ISIS militants have escaped prison and Turkey has bombed US Special Forces in an apparent error.

TWGB: He Ain't So Tough

The White House impeachment war room is a one-man platoon of the president himself — in the role of playground bully, wielding his shamelessness like a weaponized rubber kickball, ready to pummel into the mud anyone who dares to level a charge against him. https://t.co/hqkU2LCc2N

— Ashley Parker (@AshleyRParker) October 10, 2019

This is one of the things I think people have a hard time understanding: Trump does this schoolyard nickname thing not because he's strong or strategic. He's an ignorant reed blown by the fucking wind. If you look at stuff like "I'm not the puppet, you're the puppet" or "Liddle' Shifty Schiff" and think "shit, where does this guy come up with these retorts?" let's get real. The guy's a seven year old. Everyone is trying to respect his office and act like there's a fully-realized adult in there worth talking to. He's a full-blown reactionary, in the sense that he reacts/responds to stimuli. He doesn't understand all of it, no. He responds to it.

Take the disaster unfolding in Syria. He "went off script" on a phone call with Erdogan and somehow, gave the nod to Turkey to strike against the mostly Kurdish SDF. Trump once described himself as trusting people too much. Did he trust that if he threatened Erdogan's economy and made noises about how we'd sanction him and stuff, that would do anything?

Maybe, maybe not. He's now saying reprehensible shit about people who cleaned up ISIS like, "they didn't help us with Normandy". (They actually were apparently part of Allied forces, generally, however. Unlike Trump's father. If Trump wants to cite Khe Sanh, I might cite that I need to see his long form foot X-ray.) He's saying he doesn't care if ISIS fighters are dispersed because they will be heading to Europe--where he's threatened to dump ISIS fighters previously. Does he understand the kind of stochastic terrorism they might intend to wage on our Western allies? Does he think the world so big that doesn't have ripples here?

The better question might be: does he understand what allies are? He thinks we can form new alliances easily--which strongly suggests he doesn't understand the time, investment and cooperation that goes into any of it. It's all transactional to him. I don't think he even understands that this means his temporary allies of today (Republicans) can throw him over for a better deal (not being associated with him) if his name truly begins to stink. And it will. And it should.

His temporary allies of today in the Republican party also need to understand this is how he feels about you. Some people seem to have abandoned all principle in the fear of a series of mean Tweets, as if the vicious seven year old's taunts were somehow better than the considered opinion of people who have frankly, been around these issues far longer than he has and understand the stakes and stakeholders' concerns far more than he can understand them.

Today we hear, among other things, that there are dozens more claims of sexual assault made against Trump in a new book. Nearly life-long rumors of being a sex-pest don't actually jibe well with "family values", do they? These women aren't saying these things for money or acclaim and understand full well the shit they will catch in their personal lives for saying anything against a wealthy and powerful man. The simplest reason for their doing so is...it's their truth. Ask yourself what kind of man preys on vulnerable women and makes them frightened enough of him to keep that under wraps for years. It isn't a strong man. It's a weak man who deals with people as commodities. Their gratification of his temporary needs was a thing he took. He extracted the regular payment from them of their silence, and they have decided to stop paying it. Because they understand he isn't so tough--if they band together.

This sort of thing is his vulnerability. He tries to call himself "transparent" even if this is laughable. No political figure of the modern era in the US has been so protective of, say, their tax returns. Trump's lawyers have said he won't comply with the impeachment proceeding and it looks like they intend to block any testimony or deny the release of any documents.

There's no "soft-pedal" way to deal with that sort of thing. Subpoena everything, charge of obstruction for things withheld, contempt for people who side with President Tantrum-Haver. If he wants to cry victim, the point is--he is bringing this on himself by making it difficult, and if his phone calls and everything else are so squeaky clean and perfect, he shouldn't have a problem. But he clearly does, because why the ten potential charges of obstruction we already have in the Mueller Report? Why specifically deny the testimony of people like Ambassador Sondland whose statements should have confirmed "no quid pro quo" right? Unless that was a matter of messaging directed by the president, as opposed to the actual policy, which was all kinds of quid pro quo, maybe?

Every press conference it needs to be said: What is this administration hiding? Why does Trump lie? If this looks bad, doesn't it mean--it is bad? Every day. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

So when things come out like how Trump tried to "fix" things for one of Giuliani's clients, an Iranian Turkish gold dealer who violated US sanctions--what are we to believe? Even petty abuses of office out of sheer transactionalism paint a picture of what a corrupt, weak, unethical being this Trump is. He needs to be called to account on every single one. Every charge. Every thing.

Every single one. He isn't tough. He isn't good. He isn't smart. He isn't godly, even if opportunistic theocrats want to paint him as such. He is not king, because the United States has no monarchs, even if his minions want to talk about "regicide".

He is just a little, dumb man who watches a lot of Fox News, has a certain kind of wealth (and debt), and probably never looks at himself in a full-length mirror naked.  He ain't so tough. He's a gangster, and gangsters fall. That's all you need to know. Band together. He can't fuck us all up. This country isn't him. We're bigger than him, and older and better. We are great.

He just isn't.

Wagging, Like a Dog!

It is still a little amazing to me that Saudi Arabia, whose defense spending is pretty enormous, managed to have half their petroleum capacity imperiled by a drone strike (which was temporary damage) from either the Houthis or Iran (or on behalf of the Houthis by Iran, or the Houthis with Iran's help--whatever)--because shouldn't they have more hardened defenses around an obvious target like that, given the length of time they have been engaging on war with Yemen? (Or was reporting on this incident a little magnified?)

I don't know. I have a hard time understanding why Saudi Arabia is waging genocide in Yemen and why the US has continued being complicit with that, I only know that Trump used a veto to keep sending weapons to Saudi Arabia-- and the reaction of Donald Trump, on a day when the talk was all about whether he tried to extort a foreign leader into investigating a potential political rival, was to announce that the US was now going to send US military personnel.

Because the oil was hurt, you guys. Thoughts and prayers for the oil.

I'm just saying that the timing is interesting, is all. I'm not suggesting that this president would try to transform the news cycle from a scandal about some violation of campaign finance and abuse of power and the high crime of bribery (which would not be new, in this presidency, am I right?) by trying on the gravitas of being a "war president", because that isn't what Trump is doing, exactly.  I will suggest that Trump is pulled by his need to appeal to his base, which means appearing strong, even if that means strong and wrong, just as much as it means changing the subject. And then there is his unique take on US military power as a protection racket.  Trump has long seen it a waste of US resources that the American military is world cop--and would prefer to see it be more profitably used as "hired muscle"--by preferred customers willing to pay cash.

I think this Iran/Saudi Arabia thing was in play whether or not the whistleblower story became news or not, but the timing of the deployment isn't lost on me. This also scuttles the possibility of Iran nuclear talks, verifying as certain the knowledge that we'd be better off if Trump just stayed with the damn Obama deal. And Trump has demonstrated he can't help but plunge us deeper into every level of the suck--whether in Afghanistan, or anywhere else.

I don't like it. Trump is a man of few tricks (misdirection and frauds--like birtherism and his voter fraud claims), but the press sometimes gives him belly rubs for them. Like a dog! So weird for a man who uses "Like a dog!" in the way he does.

(No insult intended to actual dogs, who deserve better.)

Should We Talk About the Weather?

NEW, exclusive: NOAA staff warned in Sept. 1 directive against contradicting Trump: https://t.co/SbABVx8pec

— Capital Weather Gang (@capitalweather) September 8, 2019

Should we talk about the government? Because it looks like NOAA top brass had to tell their people, whose job is the weather, not to talk about it, because if they contradicted the Little Bronze God in the Oval Temple, what would he do? Maybe reduce their funding through some leger des main trop petit pour un gross homme, in much the same way he is raiding other programs for money to fund his border wall. You better believe people snap to when Trump makes demands if a Rear Admiral decides his job description is "one who covers Trump's entire orange peel rear." (That's the Coast Guard, and in addition to taking a hit from Trump's utterly stupid shut-down shenanigans from last year into this year over wall funding, they too are getting raided for wall money. Maybe the man threw himself on a reputation grenade for his department. I can't be too judgmental about that.) It kind of implies that Trump is running the government like some kind of mob boss.

There's a lot of other indicators, of course. Is the DOJ using a litmus test to decide what local and state governments get grants? Looks like it. That reflects back on Trumpism. Does it look like the same DOJ is being used as a cudgel against the auto industry for siding with California over Trump regarding air pollution? You tell me. Is politicization at the State Department a problem? Check the number of vacancies in that department. Government jobs might not pay the best, but they usually are great at providing a sense of security and focus and usefulness, and now? Not so much. Because everything Trump does undermines professionalism. Everything is corrupt.

The Trump folks are trying to undermine journalism, too, even if the message sometimes gets lost in their incompetence and mendacity. (Eric Trump probably just verified for us that most reporters don't ever assume he's worth asking for the inside dope because, um, well, they assume he's mostly an outside dope. For reasons.) But the games played with Jim Acosta and Brian Karem's press passes, as well as several other journalists', are intended to let them know--you say nice things about the boss, and it'll be all good. Don't make trouble.

This Photo Op Was A Good Trump Day

On a day when the "fake news" noted that Trump was the first president since 2002 to not make a visit to the troops, Trump snuck into Iraq to take selfies and complain about Democrats. Sure, it might have been in part to offset the looming news that his purported "bone spurs" explanation that kept him out of Viet Nam (as opposed to a "high lottery number") was just a convenient falsehood. Or maybe it was just to keep Trump occupied and not Tweeting while the stock market corrected itself back to the black.

I don't know what the rationale was for Trump making the journey, and I imagine that for those servicemembers that think Trump is a straight-shooter, this was a fine thing. It was a sign that he and the spouse cared enough for them to show their faces, even if Trump was now telling them that the Syria pullout meant that those stationed in Iraq would now be the folks responsible for action in the event that ISIS went on being a thing. But he explained this in his best trying not to be an entire crass orifice way, by suggesting that other countries were getting away with giving so little while we give a fuckton. "We're no longer the suckers" he explained, while negatively characterizing the entirety of their previous mission.

We're a different kind of sucker, I hate to interject, but feel might be necessary. We're certainly different if we're now taking cues from Turkey and Russia and Saudi Arabia, instead of necessarily guarding US interests first.  He spoke out against Democrats and signed hats for military members, which in actuality, makes this thing more or less a campaign rally, rather then a simple holiday message from a CINC. Of course, he had to make a Big Lie about being the president who gave the troops a raise for the first time in a decade, and overstated the raise by rather a bit, because he lies all the time. And then he used a video on his social media to politicize his visit to the troops and wound up inadvertently giving away secret ops data regarding the Navy SEALS.

Eh, but these are just the kinds of things we've accepted Trump is going to fuck up--right? On the whole, a day when Trump is only a total op-sec fail and an apparent click-whore, is just fucking Wednesday. I hope the troops that are Republicans enjoyed and learned from their up-close and personal Commander in Chief visit. I already have an idea how any liberal leaning troops might have felt about it. And I don't envy them. 

My Thoughts are With Al-Arish

The terrible enormity of the attack on the Al-Rawdah mosque by terrorists under an ISIS flag is a stark reminder of the destructive nature of terror--its nihilism and ultimate defiance of meaning. There was no reason, no strategic rationale, no purpose, for these people to die at prayers. They were murdered by people who murder because they have found a group that lets them do so. The absolute grief and horror that the deaths of over three hundred people, dozens of them children, would mean to any community is impossible to contemplate without being stricken oneself with a sense of mingled sorrow, anger, and injustice. 

What has happened here defies the cold answers of political agendas and "thoughts and prayers" blandishments. Rhetoric: the kind of nonsense that parks itself between the political dreams and racial and cultural nightmares, and the call to use ersatz-spirituality in an attempt to justify outrages, lead to this bloody and brutal event, and my words are barely any kind of comfort because I think words themselves can only do so much. 

The viciousness of this act must speak for itself. But what it must say is that this tactic, this lifestyle of terrorism comes to nothing but grief. That is all there could be. People die, people mourn, and nothing is ever changed for the better because this is not how anything better ever happens. 

But I think the West needs to look long and hard, here. The first and last targets ISIS chooses will be, more often than not--Muslims. This is not about Muslim vs West. This is not a clash of civilizations. This is just civilization being violated by people who have lost their civilization. And that is not a problem with Islam, but something else. A problem with civilization, and its discontents. A failure to connect people to a sense of value. A romanticization of the idea of violence and war as life and culture-changing. I don't know what. I only know something so horrible could not ever be simple. 

My Condolences to the Families of the Niger Four

There is an incredible back-and-forth regarding the four deceased service members who were on a mission in Niger and were killed by an ambush attack from as many as 50 ISIS-linked combatants. Somehow, the story has been diverted from the nature of their mission and the purpose and reasons for their sacrifice, and has become a strange debate on the nature of how we recognize the ultimate sacrifice of our military personnel and the appropriate observances that should be made.

These were, by all accounts, excellent people from differing backgrounds, but united in a desire to exercise their skills with a sense of purpose.  What we know of the expected White House response to their unfortunate end was that a good statement was made regarding their service and the importance of their mission (in Niger, both ISIS and Boko Haram have been known to operate, and Niger is also well-known for uranium). This well-crafted statement was never delivered. 

“Melania and I are heartbroken at the news that three U.S. service members were killed in Niger on October 4 while providing guidance and assistance to Nigerien security force counter-terror operations. We offer our deepest condolences to the families and friends of these brave American soldiers and patriots. They will remain in our thoughts and prayers.

"We are also praying for the two U.S. service members who were injured in the incident. We wish them a complete and swift recovery.

"The heroic Americans who lost their lives yesterday did so defending our freedom and fighting violent extremism in Niger. Our administration and our entire nation are deeply grateful for their sacrifice, for their service, and for their patriotism.”

What we had instead was a nearly two-week period of silence from the White House regarding the deaths of these service members, despite news reports, until a reporter questioned President Trump about these men in a Rose Garden press conference on Monday.  That was when Trump, apparently unguardedly, spoke offhand about the event.

QUESTION: Why haven't we heard anything from you so far about the soldiers that were killed in Niger? What do you have to say about (OFF-MIKE)? TRUMP: I've written them personal letters. They've been sent, or they're going out tonight, but they were written during the weekend. I will, at some point during the period of time, call the parents and the families, because I have done that traditionally.

I felt very, very badly about that. I always feel badly. It's the toughest -- the toughest calls I have to make are the calls where this happens. Soldiers are killed. It's a very difficult thing. Now, it gets to a point where, you know, you make four or five of them in one day -- it's a very, very tough day. For me, that's by far the toughest.

So the traditional way -- if you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn't make calls. A lot of them didn't make calls. I like to call when it's appropriate, when I think I am able to do it.

The problem with this statement is that as far as we know, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama did call, or send letters. Often. But it's complicated. Sometimes people could not always be reached, or someone was reached and someone was not, and they felt some way, or whatever other purely human distraction caused a disruption between the intent of the occupant of the White House and the bereaved. Human interactions are often fraught, and those who have suffered losses often do experience a need to understand blame or fault or the reason for the catastrophe that had come into their lives. It isn't always even rational, however necessary that process might be to finding an end to the grieving.

Hobby Lobby Must Give Back Ancient Arts'n'Crafts

There's something a bit curious, to my mind, about the story regarding Hobby Lobby making purchases of over 5,000 Middle Eastern artifacts in some dodgy deals resulting in the company having to pay a $3 million fine and give up the artifacts. It makes a kind of awkward statement about what ethics the business has.

After all, this was the company that made the argument that they could not possibly provide insurance that included birth control to their employees, because some of those employees might turn around and...obtain birth control. I find that argument fascinating in light of this purchase of looted antiquities, because surely, they could not have been unaware that much of this sort of merchandise is not merely plunder--but dealt by terrorist groups to fund, you know, more terrorism.

Ah, Vixen, you might sigh, you're comparing IUD's to IED's.  To which I could only respond, "No duh."

Terror in Manchester Targets Youth and is Immeasurably Disgusting

Islamic State supporters celebrate Manchester attack online, no official claim https://t.co/mY2SzJtMqV pic.twitter.com/djpLb3lEis

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) May 23, 2017

The latest news out of Manchester indicates that explosions at an Ariana Grande concert were deliberate, involved shrapnel bombs, just like the Boston Marathon attack here in the US, and have taken the lives of 19 people and wounded 50 or more others. The people of Manchester have risen admirably to the tragedy as details are still unfolding, which highlights something I have said about the use of terror before, and still think is meaningful--

It's useless. It conveys nothing but the willingness of the perpetrator to kill, and conveys nothing about the hopes, the concerns, the world the perpetrator wants to see. It is a desperate shriek for help spoken in gibberish. It's nihilism, and indifferent from the wreckage wrought by a drunk or a mentally ill person. Whoever had done this attack may have had some ideology in their fevered brains, but what have they accomplished? A terrifying and tragic time for concertgoers and their family and loved ones? But what does it say?

Nothing at all. This stupid wasteful act says nothing, but reminds us all of how precious life is, how much we desperately love those we love, how much we abhor acts of terror and violence. My thoughts are with those affected by this tragedy. This violence is not our humanity, what we do in the face of it is. And I refuse to assign ideology or politics or religion to this senselessness. It remains that: senseless, the self-negating act of people who no longer gave a shit for their humanity, and my agnosticism almost yearns for a hell for them to understand what they have rejected.

I meant to do that!

You know how H. R. McMaster kinda-sorta denied that the WaPo story was true in a way that put his credibility right out there?


Trump eated it.


Update: AAaaaaand McMaster's presser today indicates that Trump did share information but was not aware of the source, so who knows anymore? Except that anyone may still be able to determine source by back-engineering where it could have come from. It still seems like stupid messaging.


Update 2: Israel was the source. So. Well, they had been told.

I Don't Even Know, But I'll Leave this Here

Trump's top agenda item after report he gave classified intel to Russians: Call Jordan's King Abdullah https://t.co/WrXSkU3Wc3

— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) May 16, 2017

It's been a little while since I mentioned the stupidity of how some folks want to relate to the sacrifice of Muslim-majority nations in the Global fight on terror when it happens to be Islamic-based. 

I don't really have anything else to add. If Trump is contacting King Abdullah of Jordan because he inadvertently (we assume, charitably) burned a Jordanian source and means to apologize, I don't even know what I want to say. But...

I am sorry our democracy has produced someone so inadequate as to fail the relationship we should have with our nearest allies in the struggle against the ISIS threat. I recognize, even if our current President does not, that Muslims are so often the main target of ISIS' violence(and even still, the threat of al-Qaeda). And if the Islamic allies that the US still has are soured on the United States' comradeship because of this event, I consider it my challenge to work to place better, wiser, more understanding government officials in place, who understand the sensitive relationship between stable regional governments, and extremist groups that have no capacity to govern. I do not know that my current government has this understanding, but maybe they can listen if approached with a will to inform.

That is all I can do with them.  Hope. And with my little platform, maybe inform--if not my government, then anyone who might listen.

If We Have Forgotten

If there was a thing I thought growing up, it was that the US was great. The great melting pot. The leader of the free world.  A nation of laws, not men. A free country. One nation, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all. And I continued to believe it as an adult, for old time's sake, even when the sins of a nation were uncovered through greater study--mostly good. Aspiring to be great. Freer than most.

Our unique position, historically, has been called "American Exceptionalism". The American cradle story we ought to know is that our country exists on paper--it is not any particular religion or ethnicity that informs our uniqueness,  but the documents that inform our law and our values. We have made sacred texts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution because they represent the formation of the American viewpoint. The expansion of the US meant that over time, our borders changed, and the influx of immigrants over the years meant our ethnic and religious composition also changed, but what was not called into doubt was that we made Americans of our immigrants and they became ours. This happened imperfectly. But it's been going on for years.

Later on, American Exceptionalism meant something about our strength as a nation and our military power--post-WW2 and through the Cold War and beyond. This in part can be viewed as a product of the denouement of WW2--the fall of the Nazis and the liberation of the camps, and the shock and awe of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Divorced from the aspirational view of an arc of history bending towards justice, there was always the more pessimistic view of our collective trajectory--voiced by H.L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis, that fascism could happen here--and I, steeped in liberal altruism, concurred.  It could happen here, wrapped in a flag, carrying a cross. Popular sentiment, that accepted slavery, segregation, know-nothings, bigotry against Catholics and Jews, Jim Crow, lynching, and so on, would betray our American ideals, because we aren't just aspirational about our exceptionalism, but are also always fucking it up.