insomnomaniac

Suicide is painful

What a week. Where do I start? First of all, why haven't I posted much here, given all that's been going on? Well, I've been wasting enough breath to fill several hot-air balloons over on my local mommy board in the politics/current events forum. I've gone head-to-head with some of this nation's most articulate, but wrong-headed women, and I'm exhausted and probably defeated. There's only so much time and energy I can give to banging my head against a brick wall. Not only that, the more I read of their illogical-but-passionate arguments ("We're hated because of Bush and Iraq...Why do we support Israel anyway?...People only criticize Hillary because she's a 'strong woman'...The judge who nixed warrantless wiretapping saved us from losing our precious freedom of speech...Blah blah blah..."), the more I'm convinced we're in for a world of hurt before anything can get better. I can only pray that my family and I don't have to suffer the effects of their stupidity ourselves.

The other reason I haven't been posting much is that I'm so frustrated and angry about the so-called "cease fire" agreement.

In a twisted way, I'm "impressed" with the way Iran has played us like a fiddle. Nothing that has happened has been accidental or incidental.
1) First, they used Hezbollah to attack Israel right at the start of the G-8, effectively taking them and their nuclear ambitions off the top of the agenda.

2) Next, they used the latent anti-semitism and anti-zionism in Iraq to fuel anti-American/anti-Western sentiment and cut us off from alliances in Iraq, turning that already crappy situation into a PR nightmare for the Bush adminstration.

3) Then they manipulated our press--already worked into a frenzy over having another war to cover 24/7, and already predisposed to blame all the troubles of the world on Bush, America and Israel--and fed them doctored photos of bogus massacres, never pausing for a second to ask the really tough questions or get the real story. You never saw questions like "How is it that the same organization that can show up seemingly unimpeded by torn up roads or bombed out bridges, moments after an Israeli attack and accompanied by a full camera crew, can't manage to evacuate a building full of children despite two days of explicit warnings from the Israelis? How is it that there were only "civilians" in Southern Lebanon, no visible signs of Hezbollah, but today, Hezbollah is everywhere? How can anyone hope to disarm a group of people who have simply melted back into Lebanese society, guns other weapons carefully tucked away already?"

4) They hid behind the Lebanese population to such an extent that the Israelis had no choice but to destroy half the country, alienating a people who weren't exactly predisposed to be friends in the first place. This drew the entire Lebanese population to their side, making it that much easier for them to stage the coup they will likely stage some time in the next year.

5) They forced the international community to send in "peace keeping troops" who will now become the mother of all human shields for Hezbollah. When (not if) they resume rocket attacks on Israel, what is Israel going to do? Fire back and risk killing peace keepers? Again, on a massive scale?

So there it is. Israel had no choice but to sign off on this piece of crap. Their economy couldn't sustain a long war, and the longer Hezbollah kept fighting, the bigger the victory they could claim when the fighting finally stopped. Unless Israel could have killed every last Hezbollah fighter, Hezbollah was predestined to "win" this fight. I can't believe I didn't see it myself (stupid Deb, stupid!).

Meanwhile, how does the rest of the civilized world react? Well, what would you expect? Oh, you'd expect us to verbally attack the terrorists who hide behind women and babies? Sorry, as long as those terrorists are targeting JEWS, it's not gonna happen. Fill Israel with anyone else, maybe, but as long as it's a Jewish state, the rest of the world will find some way, any way, to explain or even condone the actions of the terrorists. Just ask Jimmah Castro, er, I mean Carter. He'll be the first one to tell you that Israel had "no right" to "attack" Lebanon, and when asked whether or not Israel was attacked first, he'll be happy to ignore the question and tell you all about Hezbollah's legitimate gripes regarding prisoners held in Israeli jails. If you can stand to listen some more, he'll tell you all about how Christian fundamentalists are the root of all evil in the world and the most dangerous enemy we face. No, you read right. He said "Christian fundamentalists."

Yeah, as Dennis Miller would say, he's got a "stranglehold on reality."

Then of course you have the way the so-called civilized world, the ostensibly inherently noble moral compass known as the "international community" has reacted to the Holocaust Cartoons recently put on display in Teheran, allegedly in response to the Muhammed cartoons printed in a Danish paper.

Oddly, no one is asking (again) the really important question: What did Israel, or the Jews, or the Holocaust have to do with some Danish cartoons? Why isn't the exhibit of cartoons making fun of Danish people, or Europeans in general? Why Jews? Why Israelis? No one's going to ask because no one really cares. Might as well ask "Why NOT the Jews?"

And most importantly, what's not happening--except from Jewish circles--is protest. Newspapers that are reprinting the cartoons aren't being threatened. Embassies aren't being stormed by angry Jews. Editors aren't being fired. Nothing. Is. Happening. Nothing that is except hatred getting some more free air time.

Then--although probably unrelated to the Iranians or Hezbollah--a bunch of terrorists get the go-ahead to launch a huge airplane attack on the US via Britain, and the attack is foiled only because the British have surveillance as good as their immigration policy is BAD. And how do we respond here in this country? By rejoicing in the decision of a Carter-annointed judge who strikes down NSA "warrantless wiretrapping" as "unconstitutional," at the same time that we're submitting to longer lines and an inability to bring so much as a bottle of water on an airplace (and all by Homeland Security "decree", not legislative action mind you).

Clearly, Daniel Henninger sees what I'm seeing:

Our Bitter Politics
May Drop the Gift
Of a Foiled Plot
August 18, 2006; Page A14

New York City on Wednesday released more audiotapes from September 11, the day whose realities won't go away no matter how corrosive and divided our national politics become.

Congress has before it two chances to begin the task of shaping a legal system appropriate to the threat: the Specter bill to revise the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and its responsibility after the Supreme Court's Hamdan decision to write rules and procedures for military commissions. Given the political climate, it's far from certain that Congress will get this right.

Over the past year the Democrats have built a political case that President Bush's conduct of the war on terror is trampling civil liberties and the rule of law. There is a list for the Bush assault on "our values": the NSA's warrantless wiretaps, Guantanamo, phone-call datamining and of course his Supreme Court nominations.

Whatever the merits of all this, Congress's Democrats are publicly committed to making this version of the Bush civil-liberties record a voting issue for their party in November and beyond. So presumably they will remain deaf to Secretary Chertoff's plea for a legal system tailored to fight Islamic terror, at least until after 2008.

Even allowing for election needs, why is it not possible for the congressional Democratic Party and its Amen corner in the punditocracy and blogosphere to overcome their George Bush phobia here? They should allow the creation of a civil-liberties regime that will genuinely (not hopefully) reduce our exposure to the risks now being rolled up by the surveillance and arrests in London.

The foiling of the plot in Britain was a kind of public-policy miracle, a rare chance to rethink. The U.S. could have spent the past week with 4,000 funerals. We would have had calls for measures so stringent and draconian they would make the Bush program look like pattycake. We have none of that. But unless our politics changes, we will.

We're killing ourselves people. Slowly. Surely. And very very painfully.

My only hope is that it won't take another attack on OUR soil to wake us up. As horrific as it sounds, I hope the next major attack is elsewhere and affects fewer Americans, but there will be another attack. With the wiretaps gone, most likely sooner rather than later. And when it does, if it's here, the blood of those killed will be on the hands of the the activist Judge, the ex-President who appointed her, and the average American housewife who--in a misguided attempt to "defend" our freedoms, ensures they will continue to be threatened.

And now for some much-needed rest. Pray for us sinners Lord. We know not what we do (apparently).

Posted by insomnomaniac at August 18, 2006 10:43 PM | TrackBack