This Post Has No Title, These Words Have No Clue

Insofar as a common and significant link ‘twixt the intimacy of driving a knife into another person, to the one, and coital penetration, to the other, is testosterone, the act of shooting the place up starts to seem very nearly masturbatory.

The psychoanalysis^α of that proposition is probably as fascinating as it is grim. At some point it seems to denigrate the American shooting crisis while exploiting the very notion of rape culture, and it is easy enough to call any mass-murderer a pathetic wanker. Yet the analogy persists, and it is easy enough to regret, before it is written or uttered, any phrase about shooting his load in public.

Killing is intimate. Killing is also distal.

He can tell her he loves her; she can believe him; it can be true; and the link between this passion he shares and the violence he might commit against another is testosterone.

____________________

^α The temptation to dismiss, out of hand, expected pop-culture strains of evolutionary psychology according to their obvious weakness presuming coital penetration as inherent to the existential justification of sexual differentiation, would be erroneous in at least one context, as the apparent fault becomes at least symbolically relevant; to the other, invoking semiotic values might be an overstatement. But where the pop strains of evopsych would discuss men evolving to penetrate women, Y previously evolved, and, indeed, continues to this day to adapt and select and evolve, not as delivery unto X, but as environmental distribution of gamete for X. Where human males may have specialized for gamete delivery, this is merely specialization of gamete distribution. And while it is true enough that word games are easy, and phagogenesis could, artistically, at least, be argued an intimate precursor to general environmental gamete distribution, the greater danger is the potential for evopsych to finally recognize the argument that masculine raison d’être really is to be a wanker.

Telnaes on Bush on war

I’ve been giving Ann Telnaes’ animated editorial cartoons at WashingtonPost.com a lukewarm reception. That, I suppose, is my problem.

Her June 13 spot, though, cracks me up for some reason. Click and enjoy.

Up in smoke: Afghani drugs, progress in Kandahar

File this under … What?

The Daily Mail reports:

RAF Harrier jump jets have blown up the world’s biggest drug haul in Afghanistan by dropping three 1,000lb bombs on a 237-ton stash of cannabis.

The haul – worth £225million and weighing more than 30 double-decker buses – was unearthed by the Special Boat Service and local commandos.

The drugs were first stuffed into grain sacks and buried in six trenches covering an area the size of two football pitches.

Officials believe the area – near to the Taliban stronghold of Quetta in Pakistan – was turning dried cannabis leaves into heroin.

To be fair, maybe the officials in question were just high. In addition to the massive hash stash, somewhere between 2.5 and 5 tons of opium also went up in the strike.

• • •

Meanwhile, in more sobering news from the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban have apparently struck a notable victory, hitting the Sarposa Prison in Kandahar. As many as 1,200 inmates are estimated to have escaped, including 390 alleged Taliban fighters. Ahmed Wali Karzai, head of the Kandahar provincial council and brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, made the obvious statement: “It is very dangerous for security,” he said. “They are the most experienced killers and they all managed to escape.”

Um, what?

In the wake of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the (in)accuracy of the Bush administration’s pitch for war in Iraq, the media has seized the opportunity to rail against an administration that has bobbed and ducked and weaved its way through a disastrous war that, as many suspected, didn’t have to be. On that note, while the end of Saddam Hussein’s reign is a difficult outcome to argue against—indeed, it may be the only bright spot about the war—it still seems hard to use that fact to justify the war. There are plenty of cruel dictators around the world to knock off pedestals, but we do not pursue them. The Bush administration had to be dragged into the Liberian conflict. Robert Mugabe, as of this date, still holds power in Zimbabwe. And certainly the Burmese junta is a gross detriment to the people of that beleaguered nation. Just to name a few.

But I digress. Sort of. The editorial board of The New York Times sounded off yesterday:

It took just a few months after the United States’ invasion of Iraq for the world to find out that Saddam Hussein had long abandoned his nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs. He was not training terrorists or colluding with Al Qaeda. The only real threat he posed was to his own countrymen ….

Nobody disputes that the late dictator was a nefarious figure, but among our reasons for not going all the way to Baghdad in 1991—aside from Vice-President Cheney’s 1994 eerily-prophetic explanation that it would have been a disaster—was that this was not the United States’ role. Liberating Kuwait was within the traditional purview of our military endeavors, but deposing Saddam Hussein was beyond the pale. The Iraqi Bush Adventure represents a potential paradigm shift, one that many hope is quashed by the next administration.

What is unsettling, though, about the Times editorial is its conclusion, which strains to give the president even the thinnest veneer of innocence and redemption:

We cannot say with certainty whether Mr. Bush lied about Iraq. But when the president withholds vital information from the public — or leads them to believe things that he knows are not true — to justify the invasion of another country, that is bad enough.

Now, perhaps I am simply being naîve and falling back to the lessons of childhood, but the act of withholding information in order to affect a decision, or the act of leading people to believe what one knows is not true … how is this not lying?

Finally! (That, and the time-machine joke, which isn’t funny)

Finally, someone else says it.

Throughout the Iraqi Bush Adventure, there has been a curious argument taking place:

Critic: The intelligence was wrong. They knew it. The whole thing was a setup.
Administration: Yes, but _____ said the same thing we did. How were we to know?

What seems so disingenuous about the administration’s argument is that, for the most part, the various people whose names could fill in the blank were operating according to what the White House told them. It is not so much that other people agreed with the administration’s line, but rather that they believed it.

And for some reason, this point has brought nothing but the sound of the wind and maybe the occasional tumbleweed.

Cynicism

Recalling tales of Rosie the Riveter, and the notion that World War II helped push women’s issues to the forefront in American culture—that during the Long Decade housewives grew impatient, and sometimes despondent at their return to the domestic bliss of subjugation—we should remember in twenty or fifty or a hundred years, when history finally has a chance to objectively assess the Iraqi Bush War—its causes, effects, and justifications—that were it not for George W., Iraqi women may well have languished under the passive-aggressive iron fist of monotheistic tradition.

Sabriyah Hilal Abadi began sleeping with a loaded AK-47 by her bed shortly after the war began.

It was a comforting possession for a woman who had lost her home, her husband and, last weekend, a room in a dilapidated building she shared with 27 squatter families, most headed by women.

The mother of four fought mightily to stay in the sparse, two-story building in the Zayouna neighborhood of Baghdad that once belonged to Hussein’s Baath Party, but soldiers forced her out.

Iraq’s government is intent on proving it can enforce the law. But in its determination to rid the party building of its squatters, the women say, the government has plunged them deeper into homelessness and may have pushed others toward violence.

Thousands of Iraqi women have in recent years embraced new roles as violence has claimed their men. For Abadi, 43, the turning point came when she accepted the powerful assault rifle from friends concerned about her welfare.

“Before the invasion — never,” said Abadi, who oscillated between rage and sadness during three interviews. Speaking about the army, she waggled her finger. Speaking about her son in college, she looked dismal. Speaking about her old house, she began to weep.

Times have changed, she said. “The women now take on the responsibilities of men and women.”

Empowerment, courtesy the New American Century.

California Democrat hurts GOP’s feelings

Wow. Someone actually said it.

Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA):

You don’t have money to fund the war or children. But you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.

Jonathan Weisman briefly covered the GOP response for the Washington Post:

In the wake of the failed veto override, clips of Stark’s comments were posted on YouTube and were being e-mailed around by Republicans. GOP news releases have been furious. The National Republican Congressional Committee called Stark’s statement “an outrageous and delusional tantrum.”

Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) declared that Stark “dishonors not only the commander in chief, but the thousands of courageous men and women of America’s armed forces who believe in their mission and are putting their lives on the line for our freedom and security.” He called on Stark to apologize.

The 18-term congressman, however, responded only by calling those who voted to deny children health care “chicken hawks.”

It is unseemly at least that the GOP, after pushing Bush’s war agenda through several years of accusing dissenters and doubters of treason, should be upset that someone finally made the obvious point.

So I’m sorry if the GOP’s feelings are hurt, but that’s a risk they run. If the truth hurts, perhaps they need to take a few minutes to think about their position.

Happy Birthday … excuse me if I don’t hump your leg

Congratulations and condolences to David Rees, as Get Your War On turned six years old recently.

Really, I feel morbid. But it’s a good show, sir. Thanks much for the reminder that I haven’t gone completely insane.