Noth­ing But Lip Ser­vice. In recent months, Pres­i­dent Bush and the Republican-controlled Con­gress have missed no oppor­tu­nity to heap richly deserved praise on the mil­i­tary. But talk is cheap — and get­ting cheaper by the day, judg­ing from the nickel-and-dime treat­ment the troops are get­ting lately.

Sim­i­larly, the admin­is­tra­tion announced that on Oct. 1 it wants to roll back recent mod­est increases in monthly imminent-danger pay (from $225 to $150) and family-separation allowance (from $250 to $100) for troops get­ting shot at in com­bat zones. (link)

From the Army Times. The next time the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion talks about how it sup­ports the troops, laugh in its face. As the title of this edi­to­r­ial says, Bush only gives that lip ser­vice. [Al-Muhajabah’s Islamic Blogs]

No sur­prise there.

Quiet Birth for Star Wars World. George Lucas’ com­pany and Sony launches one the biggest games of the year today: Star Wars Galax­ies. But don’t be sur­prised if you haven’t heard. Lucas and Sony like it this way. By Suneel Ratan. [Wired News]

I got my copy on the first day (yes­ter­day), but early server prob­lems have thus far kept me from get­ting into the game.

Occu­pa­tion Report. The post­war war claims 10 more casu­al­ties: six British, four Iraqi. [Hit & Run]

It turns out the British sol­diers were try­ing to dis­arm the local mili­tia, and the entire team sent was killed. British sol­diers killed by the mili­tia they were sent to disarm–where have we heard that before?

Lock The Safe, Mar­garet. Every so often, I read an arti­cle that just makes me go absolutely insane with rage. Here’s a snippet:bq. For­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton on Tues­day pointed his fin­ger at the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, say­ing it is eras­ing accom­plish­ments that he worked hard to achieve. [Kim du Toit]

The irony is that Bush has actu­ally accom­plished some sig­nif­i­cant things that Clin­ton tried to achieve but couldn’t–the so-called “Patriot Act” for exam­ple. Per­son­ally, I think this accounts for some of the hos­til­ity that Demo­c­ra­tic par­ti­sans have towards Bush–they’re jeal­ous that he’s got­ten away with doing things they tried to do and failed.

Divine Inspi­ra­tion. Appar­ently, it’s not about oil, WMDs, human rights, Hal­libur­ton, or even the Strauss­ian Grand Plan. Pales­tin­ian PM Mah­moud Abbas quoted Bush as say­ing:
bq. God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Sad­dam, which I did, and now I am deter­mined to solve the prob­lem in the Mid­dle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elec­tions will come and I will have to focus on them.
Now, it’s no sur­prise that Dubs is a reli­gious guy, and more power to him, but the word­ing here is just a touch dis­con­cert­ing. Does the Pres­i­dent lit­er­ally believe that God is giv­ing him per­sonal instruc­tions? Does he hear voices? If so, are we sure it’s not just Paul Wol­fowitz play­ing with a mega­phone? [Hit & Run]

It’s amaz­ing how much Bush sounds like Osama bin Laden.

I Accuse: To Those Who Pave the Way For the New Fas­cism. This is, indeed, a post of accu­sa­tion — an accu­sa­tion directed pri­mar­ily at those lib­er­tar­i­ans and Objec­tivists who appear to have suc­cumbed to the philo­soph­i­cal dis­in­te­gra­tion that marks our time. By their sup­port of the for­eign pol­icy of the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion — and, more par­tic­u­larly, by their sup­port of the spe­cific means being employed by this admin­is­tra­tion, includ­ing extended peri­ods of for­eign occu­pa­tion — they sup­port and help to pave the way for the rise of the New Fascism.

It no longer mat­ters to me that such peo­ple protest that they love lib­erty and free­dom, and say that they value free­dom and indi­vid­ual rights above all. At a cer­tain point, what you claim to sup­port and to love ceases to mat­ter. That point comes when the poli­cies you sup­port in fact, and in real­ity, must nec­es­sar­ily lead to the oppo­site result. In this case, that result would mean the final destruc­tion of free­dom, here in the United States — which, despite all of its prob­lems and all its self-destructive poli­cies, remains the last bea­con of free­dom to the world.

Those lib­er­tar­i­ans, and more hor­ri­fy­ingly to me per­son­ally, those Objec­tivists who sup­port this administration’s cur­rent poli­cies ignore the lessons of his­tory, they ignore the nec­es­sary and log­i­cal con­nec­tions between for­eign and domes­tic pol­icy, and, most sig­nif­i­cantly, they ignore that a pol­icy of aggres­sive for­eign inter­ven­tion is not merely an adjunct to the pro­gram of the New Right, or the New Fas­cists. The truth of the mat­ter, which becomes clearer every day, when at least five or ten addi­tional news sto­ries show the unavoid­able con­se­quences of the reck­less poli­cies upon which we have now embarked, is the fol­low­ing — which I will have to repeat sev­eral times in the course of this essay, to try to break through the mas­sive resis­tance which so many seem to have to this idea, which is blind­ing to me in its clar­ity: a pol­icy of aggres­sive for­eign inter­ven­tion, cou­pled with lengthy peri­ods of for­eign occu­pa­tion, is an inte­gral, nec­es­sary and key part of the pro­gram of the New Fascists.

The appar­ently self-willed blind­ness of cer­tain peo­ple to this crit­i­cal, hugely sig­nif­i­cant fact — peo­ple who have every rea­son to know bet­ter — would not con­cern me so much, except for the fact that they thereby make it that much eas­ier for the New Fas­cists to achieve the real­iza­tion of their destruc­tive pro­gram. That pro­gram, in its full real­ity, would destroy the rem­nants of free­dom in the United States — which means that it would destroy my free­dom, and the free­dom of all those I love and care about. This is why I take these issues so per­son­ally. All of this is very per­sonal to me. When you sup­port my ene­mies, and the ene­mies of free­dom, you declare war on me. In such a case, I have no choice but to respond to the chal­lenge. You may there­fore con­sider this my dec­la­ra­tion of war in return. [The Light of Rea­son]

This excel­lent essay is the first of three parts.

From a post on 1911Forum on the prospect of Arnold Schwartzeneg­ger run­ning for Gov­er­nor if Davis is suc­cess­fully recalled:

bq.
Yeah, I can see the head­lines now…

Davis caught in true lies, ter­mi­nated by vot­ers after total recall. It looks like the end of days for Davis Gov­er­nor­ship. Peo­ple of Cal­i­for­nia feel they got a raw deal with Davis’ re-election, but hope to take an eraser to his legacy in the fall. An unre­pen­tant Davis declares “I’ll be back”, if the recall proves to be suc­cess­ful. Repub­li­cans hope for a great deal of col­lat­eral dam­age to the state’s demo­c­ra­tic party from the polit­i­cal fallout.

Elec­tronic Ado­les­cent. I have devel­oped a the­ory about con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, which is, in essence, that peo­ple don’t pay much atten­tion to the facts. They decide they either like or don’t like some politi­cian and that’s the end of it. Don’t try to con­fuse them with the facts.

I’m quite cer­tain that if it were proven beyond a doubt that Pres­i­dent Bush lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruc­tion, it wouldn’t affect his pop­u­lar­ity any more than Mon­ica Lewin­sky affected Bill Clinton’s. Amer­i­can pol­i­tics today is all per­cep­tion and emo­tion. Maybe, and I empha­size maybe, 5 per­cent of the peo­ple would change a polit­i­cal opin­ion based on the facts. The rest are attached to their favorites like movie fans. They just stare at them with goo-goo eyes and squeal on cue. [Charley Reese]

British troops killed in Iraq. Six British mil­i­tary per­son­nel die and eight are wounded in sep­a­rate inci­dents in south­ern Iraq, the UK prime minister’s office says. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edi­tion]

bq. “In respond­ing to the inci­dent, an RAF Chi­nook heli­copter car­ry­ing a Quick Reac­tion Force came under fire as it landed,” the state­ment said.

“Seven per­son­nel on board the heli­copter were wounded, three of them seriously.

Heli­copters are vul­ner­a­ble to ground fire, and espe­cially so when tak­ing off and land­ing. The US learned this in Viet­nam, and the Rus­sians in Afghanistan.

Charley Reese -

A Sad Story — how Amer­ica, by the sheer stu­pid­ity of neglect­ing to
plan the rebuild­ing part of the mis­sion, is los­ing the peace in
Iraq. [lew] [End the War on Free­dom]

bq. The lot of an occu­pier is not an easy one. First of all, he is a for­eigner who con­quered the coun­try. This will breed some resent­ment even among peo­ple who hated Sad­dam Hus­sein. Sec­ond, he is torn between the need for his own secu­rity and the need to win over the peo­ple. Third, prac­ti­cally every­thing the Iraqis are demand­ing is not in the power of the indi­vid­ual sol­dier to give them. A GI can’t help it if the big shots in the palace head­quar­ters are drag­ging their feet, but it’s the GI, not the big shots, who is exposed to the Iraqi people.

Every time our sol­diers fire into a crowd, every time they kick down a door in the mid­dle of the night and start jerk­ing peo­ple around, they will breed bit­ter resent­ment. Some of our sol­diers recently killed four young Iraqis who were just fir­ing into the air to cel­e­brate a wed­ding. It’s a cus­tom in that part of the world. T.E. Lawrence called them joy-shots. It’s also a cus­tom in that part of the world that every wrong must be avenged. But our sol­diers aren’t given courses in Arab cul­ture, and they are trained to shoot first and ask ques­tions later. Any man who intended to come home in one piece would have to adopt the same practice.

Inci­den­tally, fir­ing into the air to cel­e­brate was an Amer­i­can cus­tom until fairly recently. It’s a sad sign of the slow col­lapse of Amer­ica that an Amer­i­can no longer even rec­og­nizes some­thing that’s part of his own culture.