politics

Politically, I’m very liberal — about as far left as one can go without sliding into Libertarianism.

To Tim Robbins, re: Bob Roberts

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The following letter was sent to Tim Robbins via his agent. I have no real idea if he will receive it, or whether he will answer. No matter the outcome, I’m preserving the letter here.

Mr. Smith,

I’m not entirely sure if this is the best (or maybe even appropriate) way to go about this, but if would be so kind to forward this letter along to Mr. Robbins, I’d greatly appreciate it.

Mr. Robbins,

Last weekend, in the midst of ranting with a friend about all things political, I found out that she hadn’t seen “Bob Roberts.” Having been a fan of the film since I saw it in the theaters during its initial run, I pulled it out and we sat down and watched it — her first time, and my first time in about a year or so.

We both enjoyed it a lot, but I was astounded at how much more topical it seemed today than it did at the time it came out. Substitute Roberts’ folk background with Bush’s oil family background, and in many ways, they seemed almost frighteningly similar in their ideological attitudes. We spent some time after the movie talking about it, and in the course of the discussion became somewhat curious as to what you might think of the film now, especially in the light of the current administration.

At a time when the separation of church and state is becoming increasingly less distinct, when our personal liberties are becoming more and more curtailed, and when any opinion that does not mesh with that of the ‘powers that be’ is deemed “un-American” and cause for censure (as demonstrated by the unfortunate cancellation of the Bull Durham celebration due to the political views of you and Susan Sarandon), it seems all to much like what was satire in 1991 has become the sad reality of everyday life today.

I found one article on the Internet about an interview you did for ‘The Tech’ at MIT where even at the time that ‘Bob Roberts’ was being released, you were seeing some similarities between Roberts and the then campaigning George W. Bush.

The campaign that Roberts launches shows more than a few similarities to the campaigns of today’s candidates, which is somewhat amazing considering that the script was written six years ago. “Well, there are some strange similarities,” Robbins admits. “Just the other day Bush, at a campaign stop, was asked what voters could do to help him in November, and he said, I think jokingly, ‘Vote often.’ And as you know, Bob Roberts says something similar. It’s strange to see. I guess it’s good for the movie but I don’t know if it’s good for the country.”

Since then, of course, Bush has stepped up his religious rhetoric, creating even more similarities between him and your fictional character.

Should you have the time and inclination to respond to this, I’d love to hear a little bit from you about how you view ‘Bob Roberts’ now, ten years later, in a political and cultural climate that would be very familiar — and probably comfortable — for the satirical character you created. If you were comfortable with my posting any response you might be able to give to my website, that would be wonderful, however, as this is primarily my own personal curiosity at play, I would not post anything publicly without your permission.

In any case, thank you much for your work over the years, for creating ‘Bob Roberts’, and for standing up for your beliefs in a time where doing so is becoming more and more unpopular, and at times fraught with consequences it never should have.

Sincerely,

Michael “Woody” Hanscom

Questions regarding Saddam's statue

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Some questions regarding the widely publicised images of Saddam’s statue getting toppled. This is more information that resides in that netherland of suspicion, rumor, and possible conspiracy theories, so keep that in mind.

From this Agonist post, we go to Kynn Bartlett’s comments on the apparent lack of people involved in the toppling of the statue, and then a comment to Kynn’s post by ‘Citizen Able’ leads us to this DC Indymedia post with another look at the picture in question, along with some other (less credible, IMHO) implications.

As I said, this is definitely veering further into possible paranoid conspiracy theory territory. The thing is, those are just so much fun! Just remember not to disengage your brain.

Could this be true?

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Interesting theory from the Tehran Times:

Suspicions rose on the same day when U.S. troops, that had been stopped at the Euphrates, immediately were able to advance toward the heart of Baghdad without any significant resistance by Iraqi forces. Nobody asked why Tikrit, that was once called the ideological heart of Saddam’s government and the last possible trench of the Iraqi army, was never targeted by U.S. and British bombs and missiles. Or why when the elite Iraqi forces arrived in eastern Iraq from Tikrit, the pace of the invaders advancing toward central Baghdad immediately increased. Also, it has been reported that over the past 24 hours, a plane was authorized to leave Iraq bound for Russia. Who was aboard this plane?

All these ambiguities, the contradictory reports about Saddam’s situation, and the fact that the highest-ranking Iraqi officials were all represented by a single individual — Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed al-Sahhaf — and the easy fall of Baghdad shows that the center of collusion had been Tikrit, where Saddam, his aides, and lieutenants from the Baath Party had been waiting for al-Sahhaf to join them so that they could receive the required guarantees to leave the country in a secret compromise with coalition forces.

This possibility was confirmed by the Al-Jazeera network, which quoted a Russian intelligence official as saying that the Iraqi forces and the invaders had made a deal. The Russian official told Al-Jazeera that the Iraqi leaders had agreed to show no serious resistance against the U.S.-British troops in return for a guarantee that Saddam and his close relatives could leave Iraq unharmed.

Is it possible? Well, of course it’s possible. The question is whether it’s an actual probability, or if it’s just a well thought out conspiracy theory. Either way, we’re not really likely to know unless someone high enough in the heirarchy turns whistleblower (not a very likely option).

I have to admit, though, it is a convincing argument for the possibility. I’m weighing whether my ingrained distrust of conspiracy theories outweighs my rapidly-growing distrust of our current administration, or vice versa. For the moment, I’ll just chalk it up as a very intriguing idea.

(via The Agonist)

The Agonist discussion thread about this is so far leaning to the side of it being a combination of media spin and conspiracy theory, but one of the posts brought up something I’d been wondering about myself, that this theory could make sense of.

Last week, on April 3^rd^, Daily Kos wondered where the Iraqi army was.

Whole units are missing from the battlefield and that has to concern CENTCOM planners. Whole divisions are gone. The arrogant and clueless Richard Perle says they’ve gone home. He’s an idiot. They’ve done no such thing. If they did, you’d see signs. Abandoned equipment, lots of surrenders, the surrender of cities or even the beginnings of civil war as the regulars shot it out with the Baathists.

Instead, they’re nowhere to be found.

My bet, they’re hiding in the close suburbs of Baghdad, maybe 100,000 men. Now, they may not be there. But if Saddam is a student of Stalin and not insane, he’s got a plan for a counterattack when the US is least able to reply. Kaplan isn’t wrong when he says the Republican Guard isn’t all that elite, but they have unit cohesion and discipline. So they didn’t run away.

Saddam has used very small forces to tie down US troops. Only in Basra is there a sign that whole divisions have been used. So, unless Perle is right, and that would be a first, where IS the Iraqi Army?

The assumption then was that Hussein was keeping the majority of his most elite forces close around him in Baghdad, in order to give the advancing U.S. forces “the mother of all battles”. However, as was seen in today’s advances into Baghdad, that never happened. As thrilling as the pictures coming out of Baghdad were today, it still leaves the question of just where all of Iraq’s troops went unanswered. This AP story asks some of the same questions:

CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar — With American troops rolling through Baghdad, U.S. military leaders are asking a disturbing question: Have Iraq’s Republican Guards really melted away, or are they regrouping to fight another day?

Early fears about the battle for Baghdad raised the prospect of house-to-house combat and even chemical warfare. But U.S. forces quickly overran the capital.

Upon entering the city, Marine Cpl. Nate Decavelle wondered out loud with a yawn: \”Where are the Iraqis at?

[…]

One U.S. official involved in both military operations and intelligence said there are thousands of Iraqi troops unaccounted for.

“That’s the scary part. We don’t know where these guys went to. Did they just melt into the population? Are they planning to come back out as paramilitary? Are they laying in wait?” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

So — what now? Is Saddam dead? Exiled? Still in hiding? Is the Republican Guard really gone, or merely waiting for U.S. soldiers to drop their guard?

And lastly — how many of these questions can be answered without more loss of life?

Pax Americana

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This editorial from Ha’aretz, while actually about the Fox News network’s approach to reporting the war in Iraq, could very well apply to the majority of U.S. media these days.

With effective, rapid and decisive rewriting of history, there is an impression that the network has erased past relations between Iraq and America. It is difficult to find any mention of the fact that the U.S. armed Iraq in its war against Iran in the 1980s, or that it turned a blind eye when Saddam Hussein brutally put down a 1991 uprising with chemical weapons after the first Gulf War. The argument about the connection between Saddam’s regime and Al-Qaida and the attack on the Twin Towers has disappeared, and the “axis of evil,” which also included Iran and North Korea, has evaporated. There’s practically no mention of the stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction and how they were hid from the UN inspectors as being the official reason for the war. There’s no reference to the American economic interests in Iraqi oil wells. Every operation to take over the wells and prevent their sabotage was altruistic, for the sake of the Iraqi people and preservation of its assets and resources.

Sometimes I think the only thing really standing in the way of a truly Orwellian society is our ability to find other sources of news and information via the Internet and form our own opinions. If all I got was the official propaganda, I’d probably be fairly satisfied with the world right now. Heh.

Water for the worthy

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I held off on posting about this story on the hope that it was nothing more than urban legend, but it appears that it’s true.

First, the story itself: Apparently Army Chaplain Josh Llano has somehow managed to finagle control of 500 gallons of washing water, but it only allowing soldiers to bathe if they first agree to be baptised by him.

”It’s simple. They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptized,” he said.

And agree they do. Every day, soldiers take the plunge for the Lord and come up clean for the first time in weeks.

”They do appear physically and spiritually cleansed,” Llano said.

First, though, the soldiers have to go to one of Llano’s hour-and-a-half sermons in his dirt-floor tent. Then the baptism takes an hour of quoting from the Bible.

Extortion, clear and simple. Disgusting, offensive, opportunistic extortion.

Thankfully, this story got enough people up in arms as it made its way around the internet, that the Army is now launching an investigation:

A chaplain from Houston assigned to the Army V Corps support unit in Iraq is now the focus of an Army inquiry for his practice of offering soldiers a dip into his 500-gallon pool if they agree to be baptized.

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[Lt. Col. Eric] Wester said, “As I’ve read the article and discussed with other chaplains, the implication of the story is this was a kind of situation of coercion or bribery.”

There’s a part of me that is still holding out hope that this is merely wartime legend blown out of control. However, if it’s not, this guy needs to get busted. Hard.

(via Charles Kuffner, via Atrios)

We're not done yet, folks

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Okay — so everyone on the ‘net is linking to the pictures of Saddam’s statue in the middle of Baghdad getting yanked down by Iraqi citizens, helped by U.S. Marines.

Yes, it’s wonderful. It’s a high point for the campaign. Many Iraqis are thrilled. But this isn’t the end.

This exchange between Doc Searls and Shelley Powers, and this post from Phil capture my feelings on this precisely. What happened today was certainly a momentous and important event — but things won’t be “over” for a long time to come.

Protest music links

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Continuing in the protest music theme I’ve been trying to keep up with lately, today brings us a MetaFilter discussion started by a post opining that, well, to be honest — most modern protest songs suck.

Honestly? While there’s a few gems out there, I can’t say that I entirely disagree. Still, at least people are trying.

The importance of dissent

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There’s an excellent posting from Dru Blood today entitled “The Importance of Dissent“.

Many people are tempted to stop protesting now that the war is in full swing. Many other people debate the effectiveness of the usual protest tactics — what does bocking traffic or holding demonstrations here in U.S. cities do to stop the conflict in Iraq? However, these are important issues, and shouldn’t stop, for two reasons.

Firstly, we must continue to express our discontent with the tactics undertaken by our goverment. To stop now, to shrug our shoulders and go home, is just admitting defeat. We can’t change anything by staying in our homes and ignoring it, and when our government isn’t truly representing us anymore — well, to quote the Declaration of Independence, “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall most likely effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Secondly, if we do nothing, we’re giving up our right to assemble, and in a day and age when more and more of our rights are disappearing, that’s a dangerous thing to do voluntarily. From Dru:

What protestors are doing is very important to the preservation of free speech. It might be annoying, it might be condemnable, it might even piss people off. But, damnit, it’s absolutely crucial that people continue to exercise their right to assemble and agitate peacefully as much as possible. If no one did, how easy would it be to erode that right and/or take it away altogether? In fact, many people say that there has already been a great deal of erosion in the right to assemble, considering protestors are forced to get parade licenses and have to work with the government and the police prior to being “granted” the right to assemble. There’s actually a great deal of red tape involved in exercising your right to assemble peacably, and that, I’m pretty sure, is different from the way it was during the Viet Nam war….which was the last time that protests were as large and as coordinated as they are now.

So… brave freedom fighters ? I guess that’s open to interpretation. However, protestors of any ilk are certainly doing a very important thing for the continuation of democracy. We are exercising muscles that, if left unused, could very possibly atrophy, leaving our democracy damaged and ineffective.