Where Sam doesn't play anymore ...Rick's Cafe Americain

My first post was on Blogspot, on Wednesday, October 29, 2003.

The first time I called Karol (then “Kashei") a racist was on November 3, 2003. (I don’t know what happened to Karol’s site).

Sam and Ugarte Joined the Staff on November 21, 2003.

Karol began her name-calling in earnest on December 2, 2003.

We officially moved to our present location at http://www.rickblaine.com on December 7, 2003.

Signor Ferrari left the Blue Parrot for Rick’s on December 11, 2003, and then left to pursue his tireless crusade on behalf of baby seals on April 5, 2004.  He still stops by every once in a while with a treatise, though.

Sam crawled under the floorboards sometime after February 9, 2004.

Truth be told, the Bill Simmons columns during the Sox’ amazing run make me think that Boston fans are going to be classy winners.

So congratulations, Red Sox fans.

But remember: If you tear down Fenway Park, the Curse of the Monster will keep you waiting until 2090 for another title. You read it here first.

Quick note to Sox Blog. As a Pirates fan who counts the 1992 NLCS among my most painful memories, you’re damn right that I dispute the contention that 1986 Series was the toughest loss in sports. There is probably still a hole in the wall of a shitty Blair Street hovel in Ithaca to testify to my anguish. 

“It’s ridiculous what the Kerry campaign is willing to stoop to as the election draws near,” said Bush campaign spokesperson Karl Rove.  “I mean these wild accusations, this laughable innuendo, saying there were no weapons of mass destruction, Saddam wasn’t involved in 9/11, its ridiculous.  The American people know what is really at issue here and that is the safety of America in a post-9/11 world.  And anyone can see that by forcing the terrorists to kill our servicemen and civilian contractors in Iraq, we are preventing them from causing harm to Americans here at home.”

Indeed, if Kerry and his surrogates are to be believed, the Administration would have to live in some sort of alternate universe, such as those about which Philip K. Dick used to write.  Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, certainly has not backed of his initial assessment of the liberation of Iraq.  The Vice President appeared on Diane Sawyer’s ABC program just this week, and told her that, “to a man”, the Iraqis he had met were “grateful” for the invasion.

“Kerry is delusional.  Does he really think there is some conspiracy that reaches to the highest levels of government, the purpose of which is to deceive the American people about Iraq?” asked press secretary Scott McClelland.  “That’s the sort of crackpot stuff you’d expect from Ralph Nader, but the Senator should know better—would know better if he had set foot in the Senate more than twice since he became a Senator.  Seriously, not only would this ‘conspiracy’ have to extend throughout the executive branch, but it would have to involve our civilian contractor—er, contractors— in Iraq, and the Iraqi people themselves!.”

“They love us over there,” he added.  When asked about the many casualties resulting from insurgents fighting American occupiers, McClelland was quick to condemn the media.  “Sure, that’s all you see on TV every day, is the car bombs and the beheading, and the fighting and the killing of innocents.  What you don’t see, is that a significant percentage of the members of the new Iraqi police force still have all four limbs.  And women, who were horribly oppressed under the Baathist regime, are allowed to walk freely in the streets, work, and even vote, if and when it is safe to do those things.”

Recent stories about 380 missing tons of explosives and the failure to kill Abu Musab Zarqawi, a violent terrorist who now has pledged his allegiance to Osama bin Laden, however, have only fueled the Kerry team.  “Not only did George Bush outsource the job when he could have killed Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan,” said Kerry at a campaign speech in Bumbledork, Ohio this morning, “but now we have learned that he also chose not to capture or kill Zarqawi, a madman who has become as powerful and dangerous to the U.S. as bin Laden himself, as a direct result of Bush’s decision to rush to war.  John Edwards and I have a plan for Iraq, and I can tell you it does not include letting dangerous terrorists run free in a candy store of unsecured weaponry.”

The President was quick to respond.  “John Kerry’s record speaks for itself.  He says we rushed to war, but he voted for that war.  He says I didn’t catch Osama, but now he says I didn’t catch Zarqawi.  Which is it, senator?  bin Laden or Zarqawi?  Heh-heh.” The President went on to remind those who had signed the loyalty oath required to attend his campaign speech in Deception, OR, that Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi came to the United States last month to thank the President for his “courage” in going to war against Saddam Hussein.

Allawi spoke at a press conference with the President while he was here, criticizing the media’s coverage of Iraq.  “So, really, the winning, it’s unfortunate, is not being portrayed in the media. This is very unfortunate. I always say that we are welcoming any media who wants to come to Iraq and see for themselves the grounds we are covering and the winning we are doing in Iraq.”

Now, however, Kerry loyalists are trying to use the Prime Minister’s own words against him.  In a weekly address to the Iraqi people yesterday, Allawi reportedly said that “a terrible crime was committed in which a large number of the ING were martyred.  We think this shows, in addition to gross negligence on the side of some of the multinational forces, it shows the kind of insistence to hurt Iraq and its people.” Many in the Kerry camp are calling this an indictment of Coalition Forces.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had this to say: “Oh, come on, this talk of martyrs, martyrs, what is that?  This is war.  War is messy.  Freedom is messy.  Liberation is messy.  Al Qaqaa is messy.  You can’t expect us to keep the Iraqis alive when American troops are dying, can you?  Can you?  Tommy, can you hear me?  Besides, everyone knows Allawi is just a lying puppet.  He can be removed. He will be removed.  We’ll find someone else, someone who can maintain order.  Maybe Saddam.  Yeah, Saddam, that’s the ticket!  What!? Who said that?!?!?” The Secretary of Defense then curled up in to the fetal position and began pulling his own hair out.

Others have sought to clarify what Allawi meant.  “Poppycock,” exclaimed Karl Rove, stroking a long-haired white cat.  “Kerry is just twisting the Prime Minister’s words.  When Allawi refers to the ‘insistence’ of “multinational forces’ to ‘hurt Iraq and its people’, he clearly is talking about al Qaeda and the evil terrorists that we have joined with the liberated Iraqi people to fight.” And, um, when he talks about “gross negligence,” he is referring to the gross negligence of freedom, the sweet, powerful nectar of victory over tyranny that can only be found in the pure, steadfast determination of a president willing to engage the terrorists with every weapon available, including gross negligence.  The American people understand that, even if Senator Kerry doesn’t.”

Mr. Rove then said Senator Kerry should apologize to the President and to the American people for the “reprehensible campaign tactic” of using current events in Iraq to question the President’s judgment and fitness as Commander in Chief.

“Iraqi Citizens for Truth”, a 527 group with ties to Tom DeLay, has aired a video calling Allawi a “compulsive liar” and a “homosexual”.  The ad also features footage of interviews with various people purporting to be Allawi’s psychiatrist, his drug dealer, his prison “bitch”, and his baby mama.

While many Kerry supporters are gleefully perpetrating the current media frenzy, President Bush and Vice President Cheney remain sanguinary [sic] about the election.  “The American people will welcome us as liberators,” said Cheney, speaking from an undisclosed location early this morning.  “On January 20, 2005, they will throw roses at a re-elected President Bush.”

I hesitate to put words in anyone’s mouth, but it appears that Sullivan can be labeled as someone who supports an American foreign policy designed around establishing democracy internationally and, where necessary, through the use of force.  He says in his column:

[Bush] is still right that democratization is the only ultimate security in an age of Jihadist terror.  And when you see women bravely exercising their right to vote in Afghanistan, you are seeing something that would not have happened without our current president. That moral achievement can never be taken away from him.

I still believe that [Bush’s] decision [to invade Iraq] was the right one.

The chance of a third forced regime change somewhere in the world in the next four years is extremely low. We don’t even have the troops. Bush’s comparative advantage - the ability to pull the trigger when others might balk - will be largely irrelevant. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t come in handy.  Without Bush, Saddam would still be in power.

Does Kerry believe in the power of freedom enough to bring Iraq into a democratic future? I don’t know. It’s my major concern with him.

Also, New Republic is generally considered a neoconservative publication. So I doubt I am misrepresenting Mr. Sullivan.

I have long thought that the one silver lining to, as Jon Stewart calls it, Mess’O’Potamia is that it would sound the death knell for the neoconservative viewpoint, even if Iraq eventually becomes a stable democracy, because of the obvious costs and risks associated with regime change and nation building so aptly demonstrated by the events of the last year-and-a-half.  However, Sullivan attacks Bush and his administration for their incompetence in handling the Iraq war and occupation, while still agreeing with the decision to go to war.  In the process, he sets forth the blueprint for the neocon apologist—it is not the ideology that is the problem, just the execution by Bush.  But, I think Sullivan is using the incompetence of this administration as a crutch to avoid seeing the flaws in his ideology.

I agree that Bush has mishandled Iraq.  Frankly, the number of and the degree of errors made have astonished me.  But the most egregious error was the decision to invade in the first place.

The problems with an ideology that advocates regime change and nation building as a foreign policy strategy for the Middle East are legion.  First, there is little evidence that forcibly imposing a democracy upon a nation that has little to no history of democracy and has few of the institutions in place necessary for democracy works.  In most situations, like in Iraq, you are taking a huge risk—maybe we’ll end up with a peaceful and democratic Iraq, or maybe we’ll end up with a radical theocracy.  Joy.  Second, these invasions and occupations can be really expensive and America is not so much of an economic superpower that we can indefinitely compete with one hand tied behind our back.  Third, it makes the rest of the world a little nervous when the clearly most powerful nation on the planet starts to flex its muscle a lot.  That tends to isolate us and that is not good economically or for the war on terror.  Fourth, by acting imperialistic, we are providing the best recruiting tool the terrorists could ask for and makes it all the easier for foreign propagandists to poison their populaces against America.  Five, we all know that the American populace won’t stand for full scale, all out, throw everything we have at it conflicts, so we are necessarily going to be going in handicapped and partially governed by political expediency (which probably has a lot to do with why more troops were not sent to Iraq).

I’ll stop there.  These are the reasons why Iraq is such a disaster.  Bush’s incompetence has exacerbated things, but even without their incompetence, Iraq would almost certainly still be a mess right now (or at least a risk—no one has yet explained to me how we expect Iraqian democracy to sustain itself when we leave).  So yeah, Bush’s bungling is a reason why he should not be President, but Iraq is more than that.  It is exhibit A of why the neocon viewpoint should be rejected.

Finally, I want to make my own ideology clearer.  I am not a pacifist who is against all war and I am fine with preemptive action against real threats—and “preemptive action” usually does not entail full scale invasion and occupation.  I am not even against all war for purely moral reasons—though I do think that in such a situation the morality must be clear, there must be a clear goal to achieve and you ideally should have a broad international coalition (and, yes, I am in favor of going into some of the Africa situations on moral grounds).  Naturally, I also support democracy.  Nevertheless, I also think that Winston Churchill was right, democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried.  Anyone who views democracy as a panacea is living in a dream land.  Finally, we should go after the terrorists with a passion and a focus that Bush has not been exhibiting, yet also understand that the world is more nuanced than good and evil.  Let’s crush Al Qaida, but let’s also step back and achieve a better understanding of why Al Qaida exists and get better at the non-military ways of fighting it. 

No blame to Col. Anderson and his unit.  They had a specific mission to do and it wasn’t to safeguard a site that they knew nothing about.  But it puts the whole “it was gone when we got there” nonsense into clear relief.  Unwilling to admit to even minor tactical mistakes on the battlefield, the Administration is willing to tell bald-faced lies to cover its ass.

It is hard to say whether the Administration is actually at fault for the looting of Al QaQaa. I tend to believe that they are, but a reasonable case can be made that there was too much ground to cover and too many sites to secure and too many things that can go wrong that every mistake can’t be second guessed without the appearance of partisan sniping. Even so, this is hardly the first time insufficient troop strength has led to increased danger for our soldiers and for the mission. It is hardly the first time the Administration has been caught hiding the ball about tactical mistakes. And it is hardly the first time that the Administration has rushed to the press with an easily falsifiable refutation of its argument solely to get an excuse on record before the end of the news cycle.

Once again, reality has caught up with the Administration and it isn’t any less “real” because the New York Times broke the story.

This leads to a separate point that I first made in asphnxma’s comments section. I think more damage has been done to political discourse in this country by the Right’s relentless accusations of bias in the mainstream media than by any single political or legislative act undertaken by Reagan, Bush41 or Bush43. The “liberal media” is the only indepent source of information with a wide enough reach to actually apprise people of the facts. With nothing but overtly partisan sources to fill the vacuum of distrust fomented by mainstream conservatives (and to a lesser extent, but with no less malice intended, far leftists like Pacifica) we end up with silly “who is the source” arguments instead of analysis of the facts.

Which brings us back to Al QaQaa. Short story: The Administration was aware of Al QaQaa’s location and its contents. It did not make any effort to protect the site at the inception of the war. It sent insufficient troops into battle to adequately achieve its own stated war goals, which certainly should have included securing known caches of powerful explosives. It has no fucking idea when the 380 tons of RDX and HMX went missing, but is willing to state - with no evidence whatsoever - that the building was looted before they could do anything about it.  This is not an Administration desrving of our trust on November 2.