At The Root Of The Republican Party War Against Women-- Primitive Southern Baptists

Yesterday, inspired by George Will's latest kvetching about the anti-women record of his boy Cory Gardner (R-CO), we took another look at the Republican Party War on Women. Ken sent me a fascinating article by Thomas Powers in the New York Review of Books, Texas: The Southern Baptists in Power and rather than update yesterday's post, let me share a couple of paragraphs that pertain to American women's Southern Baptist problem. We'll start with the 1980 evangelical conference in Dallas when Reagan won their hearts by declaring, "I know you can’t endorse me, but I want you to know that I endorse you."

Reagan and his advisers sensed that Texas Baptists were at the heart of a major change brewing in America. Talk about red states and the Tea Party suggests something new in the world but Reagan was joining the Baptists to reject pretty much everything "modern" to emerge in American culture and society over the last two centuries. The three that most disturbed the Bible Belt South were the end of slavery, the "theory" of evolution that cast doubt on the literal truth of the Bible, and the emancipation of women.

The goal of "the Christian Right" as it waded into American politics was not vanilla concern with good government, but something gem-hard and Bible-based. The word "inerrant" is unfamiliar to most Americans, who take a softer view of religion than Southern Baptists. Dressing up for church, helping the poor, praying for peace, the sweet hope of marriage vows, the solace of ashes to ashes and dust to dust at the graveside-- that seems to cover it for most Americans. Southern Baptists have an iron spine forged in a hotter fire: they believe salvation is what the universe is all about; the way to be saved is spelled out in the Bible; you can trust the Bible because everything in it is true, and that includes the story of Eden-- woman’s role in man’s fall.

At the SBC’s annual meeting in Kansas City in 1984 the fundamentalists pushed through a resolution barring the ordination of women "because the man was first in creation and the woman was first in the Edenic fall." With this measure the fundamentalists closed a perfect loop. Women were not allowed to be "over" men, which means they cannot teach men where religion is concerned, which means they cannot be ordained and serve as pastors, which means they cannot challenge the interpretation of the biblical verses that confine them to a secondary status. Driving the resolution was a fear held in common with their fundamentalist brothers in the Muslim and Jewish worlds-- fear of the loss of control of women.

The war over women, heating up through the 1970s as the Equal Rights Amendment moved state-by-state toward ratification, brought conservative Baptists into national politics, something they had traditionally avoided. [Author Robert] Wuthnow cites a crucial moment in November 1977 when two contending groups of politically active women met in Houston to battle for and against the ERA. The conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly had been accusing liberals of "trying to cram the Equal Rights Amendment down our throats with federal money." She called it "a grab for power" and vowed to defeat the ERA-- something that appeared almost impossible in 1977, when ratification by only a few additional states was needed to add the amendment to the Constitution.

In Houston the liberals were full of confidence and open to everything, not just the ERA. At the Pro-Life Rally in Houston where Schlafly was a keynote speaker she felt an instant change in public mood: the left went too far, she argued, and "sealed its own doom by deliberately hanging around its neck the albatross of abortion, lesbianism, pornography and federal control." Schlafly proved right; the percentage of American women backing the ERA fell from 67 in 1976 to 48 two years later, when Paige Patterson and Paul Pressler were organizing their coup in the Southern Baptist Convention. Citing polls as he goes, Wuthnow charts the rise of the Republican right in Texas, eroding and then erasing support for the rights of women and minorities on a host of issues. Sometimes the right stumbled, as Clayton Williams did with a throwaway remark about rape during his campaign for governor against Ann Richards in 1990-- "As long as it is inevitable you might as well lie back and enjoy it." Williams lost but noted later that his campaign had a lasting effect-- "I made it OK for Bubba to vote Republican."

Running on a Southern Baptist platform, George W. Bush, with the support of Bubba, beat Richards in 1994 and helped turn Texas as red as a Communist flag. Powers reminds us that, more than almost any other state in the Union, "Texas is a state of dramatic inequalities-- between white and black, between Anglo and Latino, between rich and poor, between men and women. White male non-Hispanics with money run the show and have a history of vigorous action to retain control... Texans fought a civil war to keep their slaves, then excluded African-Americans from the vote with physical violence, poll taxes, intimidating literacy tests, and a legally sanctioned, whites-only Democratic primary. Voter ID laws enacted in recent years have the same transparent purpose-- to intimidate and exclude. Votes for women were resisted for decades and efforts by the state to discourage, limit, or ban abortion have been unrelenting and appear close to success."

Powers wraps it up that Wuthnow, in his book, Rough Country: How Texas Became America’s Most Powerful Bible-Belt State, is quite clear about what's roiling Texas in particular and the Bible Belt-- or Old Confederacy-- in general: "questions of political and social control. In the South, he finds, the new Republican Party wants exactly what the old Democratic Party wanted for a hundred years-- power to control people of color, Latinos, women, tax policy, who judges the law, who issues the regulations, who maps voting districts, and, oh yes, whether it’s okay to put a Nativity scene on the State House lawn."




UPDATE: A Few Words From Ken On Primitive Religions

One of the thoughts that has been percolating in my head from Tom Powers's piece is:

You take your Southern Baptists and your Catholics and your Mormons-- three gangs that through history were united only in their consuming hatred for one another-- and they now form a sort of United Front for Primitivism. Whether their religions are being used for justification or pretext, they have merged religion and politics in the interest of upholding the Ancient Verities of sexism, racism, and any other kind of social "other"-ism.

Can either of the presidential candidates get us out of Iraq? And as long as we're asking, will either presidential candidate KEEP us out of IRAN?

"Of all the unintended consequences of the US invasion of Iraq, surely the most paradoxical is the way it has boosted Iran's position in the region. . . .

"With America's Iraqi allies urging the United States to negotiate with Iran, and with the Iranians themselves eager for such contacts, the Bush administration's resistance seems puzzling. Indeed, Washington's refusal to engage in vigorous regional diplomacy may be its most serious political blunder of all. If the United States is ever to withdraw from Iraq, reaching some accommodation with Iran would seem essential."

-- Michael Massing, in "Embedded in Iraq," in the
July 17 New York Review of Books

"It is a strange fact that the locus of opposition to attack on Iran is not in Congress but in the Pentagon."

-- Thomas Powers, in "Iran: The Threat," in the same NYRB

Much to absorb in the new New York Review of Books, starting with -- yes! -- a new book review by Russell Baker, which is where I went first, and which I want to talk about later. The next most grabbing piece for me is the one I've quoted from above, and to appreciate why, you need to know that Michael Massing has been one of the most relentless and uncompromising journalistic opponents of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And now here he is, embedded in Iraq?

His daylong embed took him to the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, a once "solidly middle-class district full of ex-Baathists," which was "taken over by al-Qaeda in Iraq," imposing "an Islamic reign of terror," against which Shiite militiamen "waged their own bloody war on the population, with mutilated bodies regularly turning up on the street. More than two hundred US soldiers had died there in the first half of 2007 alone." The neighborhood has been brought back, however, thanks to "the Sunni backlash against al-Qaeda and the parallel adoption of counterinsurgency tactics by the US military," and is now "a showcase for visiting journalists and pundits."

It's a fascinating experience, the embed proper, but for that you'll have to read Massing's own account. Back in safe quarters, here's how he sums up the experience:

As I'd expected, my embed had provided little opportunity to hear the Iraqi point of view. Rather, it offered a look at the war through the eyes of the US military, and in that respect it had been very revealing. On the one hand, it had left me with little doubt about the very real gains the surge had brought about, and about the effectiveness of the Petraeus-led counterinsurgency strategy. The situation in Dora had obviously improved, and the combination of aggressive raids, large-scale detentions, and mixing with the community (together with the Sunni Awakening) had had a big hand in achieving that.

At the same time, I'd gotten a look at the crushing effect the war is having on the troops. The breakdown in the Army has advanced so far that in a mere thirteen hours, I could see the rising dissatisfaction, anger, and rebellion within it. The message from the soldiers themselves was that keeping so large a force in the field over the long term seemed unsustainable.

With virtually no opportunity to get genuine Iraqi perspectives, Massing sought out "Iraq specialists at American and British universities and think tanks who, traveling into and out of the country, are less beholden to government dogma."

He learned, for example, about a heavily funded but little-publicized major U.S. initiative, a "political surge" -- "a huge state-building campaign, spearheaded by a sharp expansion in the US advisory effort."

The campaign got under way last summer. Specialists from Treasury and Justice, Commerce and Agriculture were assigned to government ministries to help draw up budgets and weed out sectarian elements. The Agency for International Development and the Army Corps of Engineers set up projects to boost nutrition and reinforce dams. Provincial Reconstruction Teams were stationed in Baghdad and elsewhere to help repair infrastructure, improve water and electrical systems, and stimulate the economy. One main goal was to use some of Iraq's new oil wealth ($41 billion in 2007 alone) to create jobs that would help occupy the legions of aimless young men who might otherwise join the country's many militias.

About a year has passed since the campaign began. And from talks with several Green Zone visitors who are familiar with it, I learned that, by and large, it has been an utter failure. "Dysfunctional" is how one visiting adviser described it, citing bitter interagency battles, micromanagement from Washington, and an acute mismatch between the skills of the advisers and the needs of the Iraqi government. "What we have," he said, "are cattle calls -- a bunch of random people sent over with widely varying skills who can't speak the language, who've never worked in this type of environment, and whom the Iraqis didn't even ask for."

But more than anything, Massing learned that the influence of Iran, which he went to Iraq thinking was exaggerated by U.S. officials, is wildly understated.

He meets with CNN's man in Baghdad, Michael Ware:

[A]ll he wanted to talk about was Iran. "Iran's agents of influence go to the top of the Iraqi government," he said. "Twenty-three members of the Iraqi Parliament are permanent members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard." Hezbollah operatives, he said, were training JAM members in guerrilla warfare, while a senior member of al-Qaeda was being sheltered in Iran. Even the Kurds were in deep with the Iranians, he said. Under Saddam, for instance, Jalal Talabani, the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan who is now president of Iraq, ran weapons and communications lines through Iran. Finally, there was Ahmad Chalabi, the influential former exile who had urged the Americans to invade and then fallen out with them, allegedly over his ties to Tehran. "All the time, he was working for Iran!" Ware told me.

This leads Massing to the observation I quoted at the outset:

"Of all the unintended consequences of the US invasion of Iraq, surely the most paradoxical is the way it has boosted Iran's position in the region."

Of course the Bush regime has not only declared itself unwilling to negotaiate with Iran, but has aggressively primed the primitive nativist element of American "thought" with the idea that negotiation is evil -- or, worse, wimpy.

With America's Iraqi allies urging the United States to negotiate with Iran, and with the Iranians themselves eager for such contacts, the Bush administration's resistance seems puzzling. Indeed, Washington's refusal to engage in vigorous regional diplomacy may be its most serious political blunder of all. If the United States is ever to withdraw from Iraq, reaching some accommodation with Iran would seem essential.

Trying to make sense of this, I recalled something [British Iraq specialist] Toby Dodge had told me: "When the Americans go home, the Iranians will inherit the earth." Iranian hegemony over Iraq: that is the Bush administration's worst nightmare. The Iraq invasion was designed to project American power in the region at Iran's expense; instead, it has done the exact opposite. And so it dawned on me: no matter what happens in Iraq, the Bush administration doesn't want to leave, since if it does, Iran, in one way or another, will take over. That helps explain recent reports that Washington, in negotiating a long-term status of forces agreement with Iraq, is determined to maintain nearly sixty bases there indefinitely -- a position the government of Prime Minister al-Maliki is strongly resisting.

At this point, a short paragraph (dealing with the Obama and McCranky positions as stated so far) from the end, Massing inserts a footnote:

In his new book War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq (Simon and Schuster, 2008), NBC correspondent Richard Engel relates a fascinating hour-and-a-half interview he had with George Bush in 2007 in which he urged the President to undertake a major diplomatic initiative in the Middle East—the only way, Engel argued, some degree of stability could be achieved in Iraq. Bush dismissed the idea, telling Engel that the war in Iraq "is going to take forty years." Engel also writes that Bush "seemed genuinely surprised" at the suggestion that US actions in Iraq are helping Iran.

Now is that our Chimpy all over, or what? He's the one who'd go to war with Iran in a heartbeat, the one who tells us that everything that happens in Iraq is Iran's fault, and he's "genuinely surprised" that anyone might think that Iran has been empowered beyond imagining, and at virtually no cost, by Chimpy's excellent adventure in Iraq.

There is, by the way, a separate piece in this issue of NYRB by Thomas Powers, whom we last encountered deep in gloom over the prospects of our extracting ourselves from Iraq anytime in the near (or not-so-near) future. The new piece is called "Iran: The Threat," or at least I assume this is the title Powers intended for the piece. This is how it appears on the contents page and on the piece itself. The cover line has it differently, though: "The Threat to Iran." And indeed, after carefully weighing the threat from Iraq, he pursues the question of why -- if not for offensive might -- Iran might want nuclear weapons.

The seriousness of American threats is confirmed by the fact that no significant national leader in the United States has ever disowned or objected to them in clear, vigorous, principled language. It is as if the whole country listens to the administration's threats with breath held, wondering if Bush and Cheney really mean to do as they say, and in effect leaving the decision entirely to them. Americans may count on the President to think twice, but why would leaders in Tehran, responsible for the lives of 70 million citizens, want to depend on President Bush's restraint for their survival and safety? Bush has a history. On his own authority, without the sanction of any international body, he attacked Iraq five years ago and precipitated a bloody chain of events that shows no sign of ending. It would be natural, indeed inevitable, for any government in Tehran, seeing what has happened next door, to ask what could save Iran from a similar fate. An answer is not far to seek: nuclear weapons with a reliable delivery system could do that.

As Powers pointed out in the earlier piece mentioned above, by going military with Iraq, the brain-dead American neocons created a hellish situation that can't be ended except with a military solution, of which there is none available. And yet it's clear that both Chimpy the Prez and his puppetmaster, "Big Dick" Cheney, really want to add a war in Iran to the ones in Afghanistan and Iraq, an idea that Powers demonstrates nicely is just about insane any way you look at it.

And yet, as Powers points out, "It is a strange fact that the locus of opposition to attack on Iran is not in Congress but in the Pentagon."

#

If you want to believe that Karzai is the reason (not "a" reason, but THE reason) why we're not going to be able to leave Afghanistan, OK, believe

Afghanistan's President Karzai -- so he's the problem?

"We are committed in Afghanistan. We are not ready to leave Iraq. In both countries our friends are in trouble. The pride of American arms is at stake. The world is watching. To me the logic of events seems inescapable. To me the logic of events seems inescapable. Unless something quite unexpected happens, four years from now the presidential candidates will be arguing about two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, one going into its ninth year, the other into its eleventh. The choice will be the one Americans hate most -- get out or fight on."

--Thomas Powers, in the May 29 New York Review of Books

So there I was, perusing the NYT home page, and there it was. The kind of story you expect to see on a news-dump Saturday. The editors get credit for running it ("See, see," they will be able to say, "we didn't let the ball drop"), nobody will pay much attention ("But how could we have known?" we'll all say), and everyone is happy. Happy that it's Saturday, anyway.

No, not "Job Losses and Surge in Oil Spread Gloom on Economy." We could all have seen that one coming, right? No, what caught my eye, to the sound of the Dragnet theme (DUM da-DUM dum), was:

As Ills Persist, Afghan Leader Is Losing Luster
By HELENE COOPER
Concern is growing that Hamid Karzai, long a darling of the U.S., is not up to addressing his country’s troubles.

It was just a matter of time, right? So let's take a peek:

June 7, 2008

As Ills Persist, Afghan Leader Is Losing Luster
By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON -- After six years in which Hamid Karzai has been the darling of the United States and its allies, his luster may be fading.

Next week, Mr. Karzai, the Afghan president, is to arrive in Paris for a donors conference with attendees from 80 countries and organizations. He will ask for $50 billion to finance a five-year development plan intended to revive Afghanistan's decrepit farming sector, promote economic development and diversify the economy away from its heavy reliance on opium.

But there is a growing concern in Europe, the United Nations and even the Bush administration that Mr. Karzai, while well-spoken, colorful and often larger than life, is not up to addressing Afghanistan's many troubles.

A senior State Department official questioned whether Mr. Karzai had the "trust and the backbone" for the job.

"Of course he's a good guy, and therefore as long as he's president we'll support him," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue. "But there's a lot of talk inside the administration saying maybe there's a need for some tough love to push him to do the right thing."

By all means, read on. Me, I'll come to back to it later. Maybe. After all, it's Saturday.

Back on Memorial Day -- another news-dump day if there ever was one -- I dumped some alarming quotes by Thomas Powers, from the New York Review of Books piece referenced at the top, into a post I'm afraid may have been sidestepped as another piece of Bush-bashing. So I've dusted off Powers' gloomy conclusion up top.

Now, if you're reading DWT, chances are you're well aware -- unlike, say, Chimpy the Prez -- that the situation in Afghanistan has been deteriorating rapidly since the Bush regime foreign-policy geniuses began diverting their attention, and our resources, to the war they were really itching to fight, in Iraq. That one's gone pretty well too, right?

The thing is, most of us learned as children this fundamental lesson:

It is way easier to make a mess than to clean one up.

Alas, this is one of the infinite number of basic human lessons that Tiny George Bush somehow never managed to learn. Nor, apparently, did the fake-intellectual geniuses who fester in the neocon think tanks.

Because Thomas Powers is familiar with history -- unlike the big neocon babies, to whom there is no past and virtually no present, just a cockamamie distopic future that exists only in their demented adolescent brains -- he is especially disdainful of the blundering in Afghanistan. Oh, there's plenty of history in Iraq too, history that anybody with a working brain would have taken account of before laying waste to the place without an inkling of an idea how to fix it or how to get the hell out of it. But Afghanistan?

As Powers points out, every outside power that has cockily blundered into Afghanistan, taken over Kabul, and thought, "Y'know, that wasn't so difficult," has learned soon enough that in fact it's quite difficult. The British managed to learn the lesson twice, and how long ago was it that the Soviets learned it even more spectacularly?

In making his gloomy forecast that four years from now we're likely to be still trying to figure out how to extract ourselves from our Middle East entanglements, Powers wrote a paragraph that still haunts me. He's talking here specifically about Iraq, and how a situation that seems still somehow manageable can go wrong:

At first, perhaps, all runs smoothly. Then things begin to happen. The situation on the first day has altered by the tenth. Some faction of Iraqis joins or drops out of the fight. A troublesome law is passed, or left standing. A helicopter goes down with casualties in two digits. The Green Zone is hit by a new wave of rockets or mortars from Sadr City in Baghdad. The US Army protests that the rockets or mortars were provided by Iran. The new president warns Iran to stay out of the fight. The government in Tehran dismisses the warning. This is already a long-established pattern. Why should we expect it to change? So it goes. At an unmarked moment between the third and the sixth month a sea change occurs: Bush's war becomes the new president's war, and getting out means failure, means defeat, means rising opposition at home, means no second term. It's not hard to see where this is going.

And with that ringing in my ears, I read stuff like this in the paper (yes, I admit, I did read Ms. Cooper's piece to the end):

A senior United States military officer in Afghanistan said that the disillusionment with Mr. Karzai was palpable among the wide swath of people he dealt with, including allied military and civilian officials. "Their message is consistent," the officer said in an e-mail message, speaking on condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivity. "He's a weak leader."

Frustration over corruption and ineffectiveness in Mr. Karzai's government has grown within Afghanistan as well in recent years. In 2006, for instance, members of the Afghan Parliament signed a measure of protest over the government's poor performance and the low quality of some of Mr. Karzai's appointments.

Western diplomats said that Afghan drug lords and warlords had bought the freedom they exercise throughout the country by bribing members of Mr. Karzai's government.

Gen. James L. Jones, a former NATO commander in Afghanistan who now works as one of Mr. Bush's Middle East envoys, said that while the NATO forces military had been making some strides against insurgents, no amount of additional troops would counter the Afghan government's inability to rein in corruption and the country's exploding opium cultivation.

"The Karzai government, which is benefiting so much from the sacrifice, in both treasure and lives, by so many countries, needs to show more willingness to meet the expectations of the international community," General Jones said in an interview. "This is particularly true with regard to reversing the nation's economic dependency on narcotics, battling corruption within the government and championing judicial reform as a matter of national security."

Oh, I don't doubt that Karzai is a problem, but is he the problem in Afghanistan?

DUM da-DUM dum.

#

Memorial Day might be a good time for the Chickenhawk-in-Chief who's done so much to dishonor U.S. veterans to keep his trap shut

The Chickenhawk-in-Chief dishonors veterans at Arlington Cemetery.

"To me the logic of events seems inescapable. Unless something quite unexpected happens, four years from now the presidential candidates will be arguing about two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, one going into its ninth year, the other into its eleventh. The choice will be the one Americans hate most -- get out or fight on."

--Thomas Powers, in the May 29 New York Review of Books

"It is positively nauseating to have George W. Bush ever talk to us about "America's highest ideals" when his administration has started a bloody war for no reason, imprisoned those suspected of being "terrorists" without trial or benefit of legal counsel, tortured prisoners in America's name and done everything but grab the original U.S. Constitution from the National Archives and run it through a paper shredder."

--Bob Geiger, in his Memorial Day HuffPost post,
"Dead Troops Remembered By President Who Had Them Killed"

I feel bad about thinking about Memorial Day as nothing more than a holiday from work, even if it's a very badly needed holiday from work. There's an excuse of sorts in that we've lived now for nearly seven and a half years under a regime that dishonors memory. Or you could argue that that only underscores the importance of honoring memory.

At the moment, Americans could be forgiven forgetting that we actually have a war going on -- or two wars, if you're a stickler about these things. Our "war president" and his coterie of die-hard warmongers don't much like us to think about that, except when it suits them to trot out the "war on terror" they've cherished so dearly.

I just caught up with a piece by Thomas Powers, a voice I take seriously in national-security matters, in the last (May 29) New York Review of Books, asking the alarming question "Iraq: Will We Ever Get Out?" And he's not optimistic.

After reviewing some of the serious literature on the realities of Iraq and Afghanistan, and then reviewing the numerous disasters that have befallen the Bush regime and found it totally unprepared, he notes that many of those disasters were "at least new in some sense, harder to see in prospect than in retrospect," this doesn't apply to the messes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A better-read, more reflective man might have seen what was coming. Regretting adventures in the Middle East is one of the constants of history. The Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the French, the British, and the Russians all sent armies and were forced in the end to bring them home again.

Invading the Middle East is the kind of imperial overreach that breaks the spine of great powers. Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to warn Bush against the magnitude of the undertaking with reference to the homespun "Pottery Barn rule"—if you break it, you own it. Did anyone go further and attempt to explain that Iraq was a seething cockpit of warring religions, political movements, social classes, and ethnic groups, many influenced by Iran? Did the President worry about the difficulty of occupying and rebuilding a country of nearly 30 million people with ancient scores to settle?

It appears that he did not. Going to war in Afghanistan and then Iraq was what the President wanted to do and he let nothing stand in his way.

Powers argues that we're stuck now with an even more catastrophic consequence of the Bush regime's "error" in transforming political conflicts into military ones. "A political conflict transformed into a military one," he argues, "requires a military resolution, and those, famously, come in two forms -- victory or defeat. Getting out means admitting defeat."

Is it possible that the new president will have that kind of resolution? I think not; to my ear Clinton and Obama don't sound drained of hope or bright ideas, determined to cut losses and end the agony. Why should they? They're coming in fresh from the sidelines. Getting out, giving up, admitting defeat are not what we expect from the psychology of newly elected presidents who have just overcome all odds and battled through to personal victory. They've managed the impossible once; why not again? Planning for withdrawals might begin on Day One, but the plans will be hostage to events.

At first, perhaps, all runs smoothly. Then things begin to happen. The situation on the first day has altered by the tenth. Some faction of Iraqis joins or drops out of the fight. A troublesome law is passed, or left standing. A helicopter goes down with casualties in two digits. The Green Zone is hit by a new wave of rockets or mortars from Sadr City in Baghdad. The US Army protests that the rockets or mortars were provided by Iran. The new president warns Iran to stay out of the fight. The government in Tehran dismisses the warning. This is already a long-established pattern. Why should we expect it to change? So it goes. At an unmarked moment somewhere between the third and the sixth month a sea change occurs: Bush's war becomes the new president's war, and getting out means failure, means defeat, means rising opposition at home, means no second term. It's not hard to see where this is going.

And Powers concludes with the gloomy prognosis:

We are committed in Afghanistan. We are not ready to leave Iraq. In both countries our friends are in trouble. The pride of American arms is at stake. The world is watching. To me the logic of events seems inescapable. Unless something quite unexpected happens, four years from now the presidential candidates will be arguing about two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, one going into its ninth year, the other into its eleventh. The choice will be the one Americans hate most -- get out or fight on.

I wrote earlier today, in connection with HBO's docufiction film Recount, about "the orgy of evil that was unleashed by the 2000 election's outcome." I hate to "rank" the catastrophes notched by this regime. They're too numerous, too deep-running, too intractable -- and we will continue paying too dearly for them. But it's hard to nudge the Afghanistan and Iraq wars out of the top spot.

As it happens, one of my favorite writers -- one I think of as both the most reasonable and the most carefully reasoning of writers -- has also been thinking about the wars in connection with Memorial Day. It's fair to say that our friend Bob Geiger is raging over at HuffPost:

Dead Troops Remembered By President Who Had Them Killed

Yes, that's a harsh headline for this piece.

But I'll ask you to forgive me because, as a Veteran, there isn't a day on the calendar that causes my hatred -- and I do indeed mean hatred -- of George W. Bush to bubble over the top more than Memorial Day.

"On Memorial Day, we honor the heroes who have laid down their lives in the cause of freedom, resolve that they will forever be remembered by a grateful Nation, and pray that our country may always prove worthy of the sacrifices they have made," reads Bush's official Memorial Day proclamation, issued by the White House on Thursday.

The Chickenhawk-in-Chief says a lot of things that make this Vet's blood boil but stuff like saying that he prays "...that our country may always prove worthy of the sacrifices they have made" is almost vomit inducing.

This statement comes from the same man who himself began dishonoring the sacrifices of all Veterans in such huge ways in March of 2003, when he invaded Iraq behind a veil of lies and deceit and started spilling barrels of military and civilian blood to start a war with a country that posed no threat whatsoever to our national security. These stirring words of remembrance come from an administration that began with a stolen election in 2000, which goes entirely against what I was taught way back when I was in the U.S. Navy, which was that part of the "way of life" we were protecting was symbolized by the ability of all of our citizens to have their votes counted.

"These courageous and selfless warriors have stepped forward to protect the Nation they love, fight for America's highest ideals, and show millions that a future of liberty is possible," continues Bush's proclamation. "Americans are grateful to all those who have put on our Nation's uniform and to their families, and we will always remember their service and sacrifice for our freedoms."

The words Bush puts forth are true -- it's him being the one to say them that I find so sickening and personally offensive.

It is positively nauseating to have George W. Bush ever talk to us about "America's highest ideals" when his administration has started a bloody war for no reason, imprisoned those suspected of being "terrorists" without trial or benefit of legal counsel, tortured prisoners in America's name and done everything but grab the original U.S. Constitution from the National Archives and run it through a paper shredder.

I also don't believe for one minute that the majority of the planet now holds our country in such extreme contempt because we're right and they don't understand our "highest ideals." This Veteran will go to his grave believing that the years 2000 through 2008 were a dark time in our history when much of what I believed when I served in uniform was made invalid and debased.

According to the Defense Department, we have now lost 4,082 men and women in Bush's war of choice in Iraq and we should not allow the man who sent them needlessly to their deaths to lead our nation today in mourning their loss. Make no mistake about it, George W. Bush is as responsible for the deaths of those men and women as if he himself had fired the bullet or set the IED that ended their lives.

And before the right-wing hate mail starts flowing in my direct I'll admit that, yes, you are probably right that if Bush said nothing today I might notice that as well. But here's the thing with so many of us Vets: Memorial Day is not an abstraction to us. Too many of us knew personally and can remember the faces of a few whose untimely deaths we mark today. Some of us actually even saw them killed in battle.

So, we do indeed take Memorial Day very personally and I for one would rather that Bush say nothing at all than to issue hypocritical pronouncements and give an insincere, flowery speech in honor of our war dead when he is personally responsible for the most recent we mourn today.

Even a garden-variety murderer would be unlikely to make an appearance when the victim's family is observing the anniversary of a loved one's death.

The least Bush can do is stay in the White House today, keep his lying mouth shut and understand deep in his craven soul that the next day the Congress should declare a national holiday is January 20, 2009, the day he leaves office and his days of dishonoring our war dead are forever done.

I suppose the things that Tom Powers and Bob Geiger are remembering are things we might rather forget, or at least not think about. But we can't do that, especially on Memorial Day, can we?

#