Barackface

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Iraq: Dumb War

"We are spending $8 billion a month in Iraq. That's $2 billion each week, $267 million each day, or $11 million each hour. For what we spend in three weeks, we could make needed improvements in order to properly secure our public transportation systems. For what we spend in five days, we could put radiation detectors in all of our ports. And for two days in Iraq, we could screen all air cargo."
-- Howard Dean

Middle East: The Final Map
Nation Building, Israeli Style?
Lamont Victory
Lamont: The Iraq War Ferment In The Democratic Party
Right Wingers In Power In Israel And America
Lieberman, Lamont
The Israeli Offensive
Barack The Glass Walls, Ceilings, Smash 'Em
The First Major Revolution Of The 21st Century Happened In Nepal
The Unthinkable: Nuclear Weapons Are Not Made To Be Used
2008 Countdown: Hillary-Obama
Critiquing A Critique Of The Iraq War Critiques
Obama Votes Nay
Can't Take Back Congress Without Strong On Defense
Long War
Obama, Ethics Reform, And White Dems
Iraq Intel: The Spy Who Failed Me
blac

You are waging a war at the cost of $100,000 a minute. Over $320 billion gone. Poof.
You have cost 2500 American lives.
You have cost more than 100,000 Iraqi lives.
You went in saying Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. When it was proven beyond doubt that that was not the case, you invented a few new missions. You fabricated intelligence before the mission, you fabricated the mission statement after the early one went awry on you.
Terrorist organizations are stronger not weaker today. They have continued to strike with an eery regularity, in different parts of the world, including India.
You started on the wrong foot. War is not a weapon of first resort.
You threatened to use nuclear weapons against Iran. That thought should not even cross the mind.
There was miscalculation after miscalculation after miscalculation.
Saddam was accused of costing 100,000 Iraqi lives. Bush did the same thing.
Big Defense is making money. Poor kids are losing lives.
You destroy the infrastructure. That attack costs you big money. The destroyed infrastructure is big money. And then you profess to rebuild some of it through no-bid contracts to your cronie companies that get paid way more than the local market price. Money sense? Harvard MBA?
Now there is talk of civil war. You destroy a state structure in its entirety. And create a vacuum. And the replacement is not to be seen. No wonder.
Do the Iraqis see freedom? Or do they feel occupation?
Why is the Arab street so opposed to the offensive in Lebanon, to the war in Iraq? Are hundreds of millions of Arabs dumb, and primitive and wrong? Or is it just Bush who is so?
The war has made worse the anti-Arab racism in America. Is that meant as a fodder to the right wing?

Spread democracy the progressive way.
The First Major Revolution Of The 21st Century Happened In Nepal

In The News

Sen. Barack Obama Says Iraq Is "A Dumb War" All Headline News sharp criticism of the Bush administration and Congress ..... Iraq is, "A dumb war. We haven't thought it through." .... enemies in Iran and North Korea, along with terrorist groups bent on doing the United States harm, are getting stronger while the U.S. is bogged down in Iraq. ..... chastised Democrats who are always opposed to war, even when force is necessary. In cases like World War II and, more recently, removing the Taliban government of Afghanistan, war can be the only option, with Obama saying, "There are real enemies out there and we have to face them." ..... expressed opposition of eliminating the tax on estates altogether. .... "After $7 million, the family farm is going to be OK. That's my sense," Obama said..... the single most important factor in job creation is education. ..... "A high school education doesn't cut it anymore."
The war in Iraq is a “dumb war,” Think Progress, DC
THE BUZZ THE BUZZ Kansas City Star, MO
A Hidden Problem WNY Media Network, NY
Know Who Your Friends Are American Thinker, AZ

Why did Lieberman lose? Easton Courier, CT
Lieberman's war of independence Lowell Sun, MA

On The Web

Cost of War
CNN: War in Iraq
Iraq Coalition Casualties
Iraq Coalition Casualties
2003 invasion of Iraq - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Iraq War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
University of Michigan - Iraq War Debate: 2002/2005
Iraq Body Count
Iraq War
Veterans Against the Iraq War
News from Iraq: War, politics, economy
Iraq Body Count
Alternet: War on Iraq
Uncovered: The War on Iraq
Today in Iraq
Americans Against World Empire, Americans Against Bombing
Iraq Veterans Against the War
Casualties in Iraq - 2006
Iraq War - Photos, Multimedia & News - International News - New ...
Blair planned Iraq war from start - Sunday Times - Times Online
Iraq war and Information Security
Iraq War Coalition Fatalities
BBC NEWS | In Depth | Conflict with Iraq
Progress in Iraq: Facts and Analysis
washingtonpost.com: War in Iraq
War Report - Iraq War and Afghan Aftermath
FP Iraq War, a Project at the Brookings Institution
The Sydney Morning Herald: national, world, business ...
Faces of the Fallen | washingtonpost.com
PBS Online NewsHour: The New Iraq
BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Iraq war illegal, says Annan
Summary of Findings: A Year After Iraq War
Antiwar.com
CNN.com - Special Reports
Iraq
United for Peace
Iran-Iraq War
International Law Aspects of the Iraq War and Occupation ...
Iraq Body Count | DATABASE | Latest Updates
Iraq Full Coverage on Yahoo! News
The 2003- Iraq War and Archaeology
United States and the Iran-Iraq War
idleworm: games - gulf war 2
Iraq War Veterans Organization
FAIR - Iraq
+ WAR + Iraq Poster Exhibition +
[PDF] 1 THE ECONOMIC COSTS OF THE IRAQ WAR: AN APPRAISAL THREE YEARS ...
War in Iraq -- Online Lesson Plans -- Teachers, Students ...
MY WAR
Click the photo to help support IWT's adopted Hero! Milblogging ...
Iraq - Global Policy Forum
NPR : Lieberman's Loss Sparks Iraq War Debate
Iraq War Casualties Map
CBS News: Iraq - After Saddam
Iraq War Blogs and Diaries in the Yahoo! Directory
Rising unease in Congress over Iraq war | csmonitor.com
Media Matters - In claiming Iraq war isn't unpopular, Coulter ...
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The War in Iraq // National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
State Department experts warned CENTCOM before Iraq war about lack ...
Cost of War - National Priorities Project
Internet Archive: Iraq War
Congressman John Murtha - Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional ...
JURIST - Paper Chase: US soldier disputing Iraq war legality turns ...
President Addresses Nation, Discusses Iraq, War on Terror
The Iraq War Clinician Guide, 2nd Edition // National Center for ...
Uncovered: The Whole Truth About The Iraq War
SignOnSanDiego.com > In Iraq
Independent Online Edition > Americas
The Seattle Times: Politics: Iraq war is costing $100000 per minute
Iran-Iraq War. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-05
US senator who supported Iraq war defeated in tight race ...
Stop the War Coalition
Electronic Iraq
Muslims, Islam, and Iraq
Conflict in Iraq - MSNBC.com
Pew Internet: The Internet and the Iraq war
OurFinest.org - Help wounded American soldiers
Iraq War Images Uncensored | AfterDowningStreet.org
USATODAY.com - 8000 desert during Iraq war
Scotsman.com News - War in Iraq
Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Blair-Bush deal ...
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Iraq war could cost US over ...
Iraq News - Media Monitoring Service by EIN News
Iraq Daily
large collection of articles on the war on iraq
Revision Thing (Harpers.org)
USATODAY.com - Rising unease in Congress over Iraq war
Iraqwar.info :: News and comments about the pending Middle East ...
The Iraq Quagmire: The Mounting Costs of War and the Case for ...
56 Percent in Survey Say Iraq War Was a Mistake (washingtonpost.com)
Amazon.com: The Iraq War: Books: John Keegan
AlterNet: Ten Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq
TIME.com: The Iraq War Comes Home -- Page 1
Civil war in Iraq possible, generals say - Politics - MSNBC.com
Revisited - The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War in Iraq: A ...
CorpWatch : Search
Bush's Deep Reasons for War on Iraq: Oil, Petrodollars, and the ...
Human Rights Watch World Report 2004: War in Iraq: Not a ...
Bush gives new reason for Iraq war - The Boston Globe President Bush answered growing antiwar protests yesterday with a fresh reason for US troops to continue fighting in Iraq: protection of the country's vast oil fields, which he said would otherwise fall under the control of terrorist extremists. ...... Bush compared his resolve to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's in the 1940s and said America's mission in Iraq is to turn it into a democratic ally just as the United States did with Japan after its 1945 surrender........ The speech was Bush's third in just over a week defending his Iraq policies, as the White House scrambles to counter growing public concern about the war. But the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast drew attention away ....... the slightly larger protests that Bush now encounters everywhere he goes ..... ''If Zarqawi and [Osama] bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks," Bush said. ''They'd seize oil fields to fund their ambitions. They could recruit more terrorists by claiming a historic victory over the United States and our coalition."

Iraq War Blogs and Diaries in the Yahoo! Directory
Kevin Sites Blog
Blogs of War
API CyberJournalist - Great Iraq Conflict Coverage
USATODAY.com
Iraq War Blog - Iraqi Freedom
Michael Yon : Online Magazine
Iraq WarBlog - CyberJournalist.net - Iraq WarBlog:
Back to Iraq 3.0
OregonLive.com: The Oregonian's Iraq Blog
blogger
AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish
THE WAR IN CONTEXT:: Iraq, the War on Terrorism, and the Middle ...
Blog Left: Critical Interventions Warblog (war blog, Iraq ...
Blog Philosopher - Inside Iraq: Highlights of Iraqi War Blogs
The Truth Laid Bear
Informed Comment

Famine In South Dakota

I showed up yesterday. They asked for my ID at the gate. Don't I look old enough? I am past 30 for sure. I don't eat much. It is a lazy bone thing.

The downstairs was crowded. The event was upstairs. They would not let me in. I was a few minutes early. They had not started to check people in yet.

I had this lingering feeling I had not been to a DFNYC event in a long time. This was not strictly a DFNYC event. But the organization was one of the sponsors.

Heather Woodfield passed by as I was seeping beer. "It's upstairs." She looked dead serious. Then Leila Noor. And she looked dead serious. "We were to get both floors, but they messed up." And because Leila talked to me, the "guard" let me in before time. Some people have friends in high places. I had a friend upstairs, it appeared.

A familiar faced lady was checking people in, a DFNYC person. "What's your name?" "Bhagat. You mean last name?" "No, first name." "Paramendra." "There you are." "You owe 20."

I had paid 15 online.

I went in. The crowd was thin. I decided to walk to a few tables. There were these two young ladies. Natasha, and Shawna. Never seen them before. The conversation did not pick. I headed to the next one. There was this Indian looking woman - "I have been to India twice" - and a blonde who looked like a starlet. She was. Heather Tom. She was the featured person for the evening. I did not put two and two together until much later. I had visited her website but did not recognize. She looks much more beautiful in person. I don't know what she is a star of, but she must be someone famous.

At that table also the conversation did not take off. So I moved to the next. "Ravi." "Oh, so you are Indian?" "That is my mother." White lady. "Did you adopt him?" "I'd have if he were not born to me!" "Julie." "Daughter in law."

Jewish New Yorker married to an Indian diplomat.

"You should go talk to the women," she suggested.

"I tried twice. It did not work. What do you say?"

"You say, Hi, how is it going?"

"Tried. Didn't work."

"Then say, Don't I know you from somewhere!"

I got up. I spotted Farez Qureshi. So it is the same guy, I thought. We touched base. It appears he knows Dana Northcraft. There was a little of how do you know her, how do you know her. And this ACLU lawyer lady he was talking to. She was feeling a little self conscious. "I might be the oldest person here." "That is a non issue. And besides, that is not true."

And then it happened, the gelling. Farez moved out of the circle. And first one, then two, then one more woman came along. And the conversation really took off. These four women and me. One was an organizer for the event. Adrian. The whole thing just gelled. And it was a wonderful conversation. "I grew up in a part of the world where women have it real tough. So I feel the need to make up for it. That is why I am here." "Actually I am here because I am a staunch supporter of Hillary 2008." "I almost did not come. Then I came." "The person who sold me the ticket, I cost her so much time, I felt guilty, and I came." "Oh, so you are from Nepal? Do you miss family?" "No. We talk all the time, online for free." "But Hillary will not win. They say Rudy might run." "I hope Rudy runs. Hillary can beat the crap out of him." "So that is your friend Amy you were talking about?" "You from Connecticut? Rhode Island? I been to Rhode Island." "All these right wing young white boys in DC. All of them are so short, and wear funny shirts, cut by the arm. It is like they got rejected at their high school proms and they never got over it." "I am one of the organizers." "This crowd is too small. Not enough money got raised." "You think there are a hundred people? That is more than 5,000 dollars." "Not enough." "What did she say? What did she say?"

Reminded me of my first year at college. A fresh off the boat foreigner. The college newspaper deputy editor said, "Do you notice how when the girls are talking to Paramendra they are really really happy!" All that was before the Kentucky Rednecks in various age groups, various shapes and sizes descended upon me after I poked into the religious hornet nest as a freshman elected student body president. "We should stop calling Berea a Christian college." In a speech to the entire faculty.

And then flash. Somebody just took a picture. It was Tracey Denton. She snapped her guy and the guy's male friend. I had this eery feeling I might have ended up in a corner of the picture. Going by the in your face flash. Me and my group were right behind the posing duo.

There is this chill phase between me and the DFNYC. Funny. A lot of water has gone down the Hudson. That was the first group I sought out after I moved to the city, before I sought out any of the Nepali groups.

I could just go down the list of people. Specific words, specific actions.

Like Dan Jacoby. The guy is a total asshole. He has made a racist comment every single time we have interacted. Like I am making small talk at this DFNYC Mixer - one where T snapped my picture with a black dude from Boston - with a young woman Austrain Green Party sympathizer journalist and Jacoby walks past, and I introduce him to her, and the guy makes this ugly hip gesture, and says something to the effect I should seek opportunities in the porn industry if the idea is to make money. The weird part is he feels somewhere along the way we bonded and became friends. Loser. Like he found me at this Laughing Liberally event as the April Revolution was raging in Nepal. "We did not have to send in the troops, did we!" I had to restrain myself. Noone knows you in Washington DC, bugger, don't flatter yourself. Who the fuck is we!

Josh Skaller and Heather Woodfield organized for me a date with an "Asian" a few weeks after it went public I had expressed "interest" in Denton. The highlight was his "long nails" comment to her. The story must have spread. Because I have had hints from a few others how it is all okay. Friends go out to eat. We do that at our university among students. I went for lunch with Wesley Clark. As in it is a political thing. Can't take offense.

It is an iceberg thing. The white male's cobra strike. It is like during an early month, Heather and I are at this bar on our way from the East Village LinkUp to the After LinkUp, just the two of us - she needed to drop off some campaign posters to the bar owner - and there is this white asshole male from Texas at the bar. The guy just can't stand it that I am with a white woman, the facts be damned. He hit on her.

Like I am at this party in Lexington, KY, my sophomore year, with a Scandinavian girl, a drive away from the college, and this white asshole male proceeds to hit on her for the sole reason that she is with me. She looks puzzled and gives me this look.

Or this redneck at the college food service. I am with a friend - girl - sitting at a table, whiling away. And the asshole pushes his chair between our chairs. His mother never taught him table manners. Mofo.

This is not romance. This is politics. The romance department goes like this. I am a Buddhist. The concept of soul does not exist. So it is not a soulmate thing. A relationship is a decision. That two people take. Cobra strikes only work when two people have not, or do not intend, or are not interested in taking the decision. But they are always always always relevant politically.

So when the cobra strike is a pattern, you are not dealing with humanity. It is more like physics.
Like Josh Skaller at this DFNYC debate in Brooklyn. I ask a gender question. "What will it take to get more women in Congress?" He speaks his first sentence to me in months. He comes next to me and requests if I will please ask an enviroment question. That is what white men are like. Gender talk is taboo. And that right there is the opening counter strike to the cobra strikes. I am in. I am up for the challenge. I am angling for the fight. The April Revolution did something to me. It is like I got my voice back. I can talk again like during my freshman year.

Or poor old Abhishek Mistry. The token Indian at DFNYC. There was a time when people talked to me "through" him. There is mild racism. And there is mild internalized racism. Internalizing racism feels like too much work. I don't know how to do it. I am lazy like that.

Lewis Cohen. He has been getting my cold shoulder. Last two events where he found me. DL21C events. He makes small talk with Tom Daschle, Daschle obviously recognizes him, and Cohen makes the point, and then turns around and looks at me. As in, don't you know who I am! (Tom Daschle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) I don't give a fuck. Some of my fanciest comrades from the April Revolution are cab drivers in the city. If you want to impress me politically, show traction. Don't pull your white male stunts and expect me to get impressed. I lose respect. Like Larry Ellison said, I believe in random acts of kindness towards complete strangers, but that don't apply to my enemies. (Larry Ellison - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Cohen Sirs me. Now that's my kind of white male. There is this brief thaw. But only brief. If I see him again, I will explain the cold to him. If it is worth his time, or this is a big city.

If you are white, and you make a racist comment, I figure you are white, and you need to stay out of my face. But if you claim to be political, and you claim to be progressive, and I don't care what color you are, if you make a racist comment, I know you are not in the game. You are a novice, you must be some hobbyist. How can you be so blind to the political contours!

DFNYC stands out as an organization. I have tried them all. And Tracey Denton is a big part of it. She is amazing with face time. I have witnessed this many times. She is at some DFNYC gathering. And she leaves. And half the room leaves behind her. Reminds me of when they drive the jeeps on the mud roads near my homevillage. The dust follows. Half the time I can tell what she is doing, the mechanics, but I will have to work hard to get there myself, and I might not be able to. My specialty is screen time, with the face time in the works. She is so good at reading faces there have been times I have felt like saying, when you do all the talking, you feel like you had a conversation.

Like the last time she talked at me. Howard Dean had showed. It was a Mixer. She walked out with Dean. The dust followed the jeep, but some of us stayed back. (Dean, DFNYC, Daily Kos, Justin, Brooklyn, Nepal) I was talking to Maya. Denton apparently came back. And she was in her own corner. There were few people around. Maya left. Then I got up. And I walked over to the corner where T was running her show, holding court.

And she showed me the rainbow coalition looking straight at me. First it is, I am not engaged. Then it is, I have told my boyfriend we are not both going to be back at 6 PM. Then it is, my parents said if ____ and I were to break up, they are going with him. Then it is. Then. And then, something about like in the movies. Then something about professionalism. A leg movement. Then how her boyfriend speaks a few languages, and it is easier for someone like that to learn yet another language. She tried Dutch, I guess.

And she looks down. And I feel uneasy. And I move away to where Cohen is holding court: that guy barely talks. She gets up. She announces she has a newsletter to write before the end of the day. "Can I go now?" Cohen gets asked. The guy feels a surge of power.

"Did he screw you at his blog!" (Tracey Denton Of DFNYC) The slimey piece of shit actually began the evening with pleasant talk. And then she leaves, looking a little puzzled herself.

That particular blog entry has been a stickler. I never understood why. But I would rather have my blog than DFNYC events, by a wide margin.

Murderball. Bumped into Denton here a few days later.

When the spectrum goes from "I am not engaged" to you make me feel uneasy, the safe thing to do is to realize you have grown out of the organization. Especially when you are getting busy: Community Center Idea: A Few Options.

Too bad we are in the chill part. She feels uneasy.

I have a failed marriage in the past. I have a really complicated relationship with my brother in law who lives in the city, and it is bordering towards a non relationship. I have not seen my parents in a decade. I feel like a relative of mine who as a kid went to the train station in town and asked himself the question, I wonder where these train tracks go. He ended up in Assam.

I guess I don't have too many bragging rights on the personal front. Like Larry Ellison said once, I obviously failed as a Dad.

But then there is the safety issue, and there is the race issue. Like this girl at college, she took me through a college judicial hearing because I asked her out, and later told my now ex, then girlfriend that maybe I did not like her because her breasts are too small. Maybe she did not like the asking out happened over email. My enemies in the college administration used her to get even with me. I had challenged their power. I have not even started.

Email, phone, face time: they are a continuum. But if guys are instrumental, and women are more relational, I can see how email can feel instrumental.

Somewhere along the way, I became a public figure. Your reality changes a little when that happens. Parts of it get surreal. There are two basic furnaces in the mind. One is to do with curiosity, another to do with sex. If the crowd is an organism, it churns both ways. Inviduals the crowd identifies with become vocabulary to express the crowd's churns.

But the public figure part is so easy to walk away from in a big city. It is so easy to walk two blocks and become a nobody.

Mostly it is just fascination. Political reality, all political reality, is fascinating.

Cohen broke ice. Barely. Denton walked by a few times. She looked dead serious. If she had met eyes, I would have said hello, for ole' times' sake.

At the Tom Daschle event, Leila is like "you and Tracey should talk."

"Talk about what?" That was not supposed to be a smartaleck question. It was a plain question.

"She is a great person."

"She is a great political talent ..... During the April Revolution, there was this one village in the middle of nowhere. All the women in that village came out into the streets banging their pots and pans, chanting No More Cooking, No More Cooking ..... noone planned that, it just happened, it was spontaneous."

Then there was speech making. Dana Northcraft. And Heather Tom.

Then I bumped into this guy. He works at the same firm as Leila he told me. A Law School friend of his came along. That is when Cohen Sirs me. And these two guys look at me. They are impressed. They feel like they are in the company of greatness. I got taken by surprise. I did not show up to say hello to Cohen. But I did.

It is a decent thing to do. The active ingredients of DFNYC deserve to have their leg room. I got my own. I inhabit an alternate reality. We are talking voting rights among the Nepalis in New York City.

But what really floats my boat is the IC idea. It is not even Hillary 2008. I am going entrepreneurial. I am a netizen. Rupert Murdoch says he has always been an outsider, for a reason. You don't join clubs. It is called out of the box thinking. Politeness makes you numb.

By the way, I thought a theme for Hillary 2008: This Is A New Century. Like Bill Clinton had "It is the economy, stupid!"

And as for race, it is just work. You are in the business of selling ideas. It is not like you meet your kind, and there is amazing bonding. You have no idea about the ethnic stuff I deal with.

There are people who can't vote. You are still getting them to do things that will earn them the right to vote. And there are those with votes, but lack the power. You are trying to earn their votes. It is a market share thing.

There is the personal, and there is the political. The personal is one person at a time. The political comes in floods.

Community Center Idea: A Few Options
Internalized Racism Among Nepalis In NYC

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