A Place to Talk About War

I would like to hear from soldiers who have been in combat situations, from their families, or from others interested in this conversation. I am a graduate student interested in war rhetoric. I have no preset agenda: I simply want to listen, to learn, and to be supportive.

Name:
Location: Texas, United States

Married, two kids. Worked in the defense industry for 20 years before taking a different path. I'll be starting my dissertation on the rhetoric of war in a few months. This semester I am teaching Freshman Composition. I DON'T CARE ABOUT BLOGGERS' SPELLING, PUNCTUATION, OR ANY OTHER GRAMMAR MATTERS--I JUST WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU.

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

John Quincy Adams quotes

My child is currently researching John Quincy Adams (president 1825-1829) for a school project, and in helping with research I came across the following quotes. Enjoy.

  • Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.
  • America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.
  • All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse.

Saturday, February 25, 2006

For all of you concerned about media bias

I know that many people mistrust the media, thinking they're either right-wing hacks, left-wing commies, America-haters . . . pick your pejorative term. And I know that the media's actions during wartime is an especially hot topic.

So you might find this link interesting: http://www.onthemedia.org/. One of the journalists featured on today's program is Farnaz Fassihi, senior Middle East correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. Asked about the perception that journalists print only bad news from Iraq, purposely squelching good news, she replied that "If five car bombs went off in New York today, and 50 car bombings took place, I'm sure the metro reports would be talking about that, and not that a school got painted."

There's also a good discussion about journalists' safety, a report from CBS about times they have sat on a story at the military's recommendation, and talk about the English language version of Al-Jazeera that's coming in May. Check it out.

This note will end all of my posts for a while: Please scroll down to my post asking for text suggestions.

I'd like your suggestions

Blog friends, I will be teaching a course in war rhetoric this fall. On the premise that two (or three or four) heads are better than one, I'd like your input into texts I should use. (Text in this context means fiction and non-fiction books, movies, music, paintings, etc.--no textbooks.)

I am particularly interested in popular music pertaining to war, because that's the area in which I have the least knowledge. I've heard that Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson have current anti-war songs out, and I know there are pro-military songs on the pop playlists, but I don't know anything about them. "God Bless the U.S.A." comes to mind, as well as a country song recorded shortly after 9-11 with the memorable line, "We'll put a boot in your ass." As you can see, I need help.

So, dear readers, let's hear from you: music, movies, memoirs--whatever you recommend.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

A Terrible Love of War . . .

. . . is the name of the book I just finished reading (James Hillman, Penguin Press, 2004). It includes this quote from Hermann Göring at his trial in Nuremberg:

"The people can always be brought to do the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."

Okay, now I feel much better about port security

I admit I was feeling somewhat anxious over the President's decision to allow a company in Muslim Dubai to run many of our major ports. Call me crazy, but I really wanted some information to assuage my fears that this might make us just a teensy bit less safe than when a British company had the same duties.

Silly me. As the President just said, "I can understand why some in Congress have raised questions about whether or not our country will be less secure as a result of this transaction. But they need to know that our government has looked at this issue and looked at it carefully." I always thought that Congress was part of "our government," but I guess not. So the same people who brought us Michael Brown and conclusive evidence of WMDs in Iraq now assure us that they have looked carefully at our port security. Obviously that's all I need to know. I feel so much better now.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Drum roll, please!

The votes are in!
The winning caption, by a nose, was number five, "'Skull caps are the new ski mask in 2006', says Hamas style consultant Adimi Soltan."
Also receiving multiple votes was number nine, "WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. KFC IS FINGER LICKIN' GOOD."
Congratulations, as well, to seven, eight, and thirteen, who each garnered a vote.

Personally, I loved them all! Thanks to everyone who played for enlivening several of my days.

Monday, February 20, 2006

Deny the Holocaust, get three years

David Irving's defense tried to paint it as a free speech issue; as Irving so charmingly put it, "Of course it's a question of freedom of speech. The law is an ass."
But the Austrian court saw it differently, accepting his guilty plea of breaking the 1992 law which applies to "whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity in a print publication, in broadcast or other media."
In other words, Irving admits (how could he not?) that he wrongly asserted that the Holocaust never involved a concerted effort to kill Jews, and that Auschwitz had no gas chambers, and that Hitler knew nothing about the Holocaust.
Irving's track record is court is poor. He sued American Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt for libel in Britain in 2000, and lost. And in 1992 he was fined $6,000 "for publicly insisting the Nazi gas chambers at Auschwitz were a hoax."
Now he's planning to mirror his book Hitler's War with his own story, Irving's War. Such a pairing speaks all I need to know.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Time to Vote!

I'm having a hard time choosing a favorite caption because I'm such a wuss about hurting people's feelings. So, while I'm pondering how to handle this, I'm asking you, dear readers, to vote for your favorite caption for the Hamas/KFC picture posted below. Even if yours is the most hysterical caption ever, in the spirit of fair play please vote for someone's besides your own.

Post your vote by number.

1. "The Hamas,hommus,zinger burger will really fire you up"!!

2. In a display of solidarity, Jimmy "Mohammed" Smith (pictured left) stood with his Palestinian brothers while suffering effects from chemicals ingested earlier at the KFC (pictured far right). To Smith's right is Masood "Mumbles" Ahmed, a Harvard law graduate and inventor of the "Bic Pen Bomb" that recently caused major distress at airports across the country. These brothers-in-arms celebrated their prospects of a role in a legitimate military force by firing their weapons in the air while chanting "Freebird".

3. "Thanks for the help, Allah, but we've got the government and the Colonel now, so you've become a liability. Say hello to my little friend."

4. "KFC pays Hamas $20,000,000 and assorted firearms - Hamas replaces green flag with red."

5. "Skull caps are the new ski mask in 2006, says Hamas style consultant Adimi Soltan."

6. Branding rights gone astray. The all new Hamas-KFC resistance?

7. Colonel Sanders, American Icon, watches over Hamas, as they celebrate the "Death to America" grand opening of their first Kentucky Fried Chicken.

8. In their zeal to embrace other extremist regimes, Hamas has adopted the winner of the 1972 Lenin Lookalike contest winner as their icon. "We're finger-lickin' excited," Hamas spokesperson Bashir "Bubba" Muhammad (center) was quoted as saying. "We're ready to resist with all eleven herbs and spices of religious extremism now!"Joe Piscopo (pictured, left) had no comment.

9. WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
KFC IS FINGER LICKIN' GOOD

10. In keeping with the whole Danish brouhaha: "Hamas upset over Mohamed's likeness being used to sell infadel chicken"--I mean, no one has ever seen Mohamed and Col. Saunders together, have they?

11. "Magnificent! Compared to war all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God help me, I do love it so!"- General George Patton

12. A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week. George S. Patton

13. Global Supply-Chain Monthly"Hamas militants hired to shoot fowl from sky to reduce raw materials acquisition cost."

14. Is that what they mean by free range chicken?

Entered too late for the contest, but here for your amusement anyway:
15. Mohammed al Absurd loudly boasts "I am going to march straight into Kentucky and personally shoot that chicken frying son-of-a-bitch."

16. "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." BertrandRussell

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Last Chance to Name That Picture

Many of you submitted entries to the Hamas/KFC picture-naming contest that I posted below (Wednesday, February 01).

I think it's time to wrap this contest up. Entries will officially close at midnight on Wednesday, February 15. So if you have any more clever ideas rattling around in your head, now is the time to post them!

Monday, February 13, 2006

Two Muslim views of the "cartoon wars"

It would be worth your while to click on the links below and read two Muslim opinions on the cartoon issue. Read them both to get the balance.

This one, headlined Muslims should act wisely to punish media bias, is by Ray Hanania, an "award-winning Palestianian-American journalist."

This one, headlined Boycott? Why? Cartoons are the least of our problems, is by Mona Eltahawy, "Egyptian commentator based in New York." Her column was initially published in English and Arabic in Lebanese and Egyptian newspapers.

Friday, February 10, 2006

They've got to be carefully taught . . .


. . . to hate, that is. I've posted about these people before--the ones who protest at the funerals of dead American soldiers. But since a picture is worth a thousand words, you can see for yourself.

Why waste time hating Cindy Sheehan when Margie Phelps makes herself so available? I don't know anyone on either side of the political spectrum who would defend this.

Update/Clarification: I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted on this group. To get the full story, click here for my post entitled "Utterly Despicable." The very short version: they hate America because it "allows" homosexuality; therefore they hate soldiers who fight for America; therefore, God hates those soldiers, too. Homophobic hatred at its finest.

Sometimes you just need to be quiet

This blog is about war, not politics, but because I am interested in rhetoric in all forms (such as the visual rhetoric of the picture below, for which you created captions), sometimes a particular phrase just leaps out at me from the news and I feel compelled to say something about it.

Such is the case with this post. I give you the following excerpt from an article about Jack Abramoff and how many times he has or has not met President Bush:
Abramoff raised more than $100,000 for Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, a feat that won him an invitation to Bush's ranch in August 2003, the National Journal reported at the time.
"I was invited during the 2004 campaign," Abramoff told Eisler.
Abramoff said he did not make the trip because as an Orthodox Jew he cannot travel on Saturdays.
(Reuters)

I don't care whether he knows Bush or not. The man pleaded guilty to charges of fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials. But he's so religiously devout that he won't travel on the Sabbath? Maybe he should spend part of the Saturdays when he's not traveling by thumbing back through the Book and refreshing his memory on the rest of the 10 Commandments.

At the very least, he could respect his professed religion enough to keep his mouth shut about it while discussing his own criminal actions.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

A few words about our government

In 1947, U.S. Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall prayed the following:

"We want to do right, and to be right; so start us in the right way, for Thou knowest that we are very hard to turn."

Appropriate words still.

Source: William D. Blake. ALMANAC OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1987.Additional information supplied by the author. Contact via E-mail: William D. Blake. (pilgrimwb@aol.com)

A small question . . .

You know how Pat Robertson occasionally claims that a disaster is actually God's wrath poured out on us for some reason? And Allah is frequently given praise for smiting the infidels in one way or the other?

Do you suppose that if Allah really wanted to smack down the Danes, he could do so without getting his own people killed in the process?

Update: go over to http://www.bookfraud.blogspot.com/ and check out his postings on the cartoon flap. His "ÜBER-OFFENSIVE BONUS BLOG!" is well worth your time, as is his discussion of Salman Rushdie and power.

Monday, February 06, 2006

Danes, Demonstrations, and Democracy

You've all seen the backlash in the Middle East against the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad: people dead, businesses destroyed, general mayhem. (If you're not up to speed on what's happening, you can get a quick overview from the link below.)

Supposedly, once we threw the Taliban out of Afghanistan and Hussein out of Iraq, Western-style democracy was going to bloom like a desert flower. Can we understand yet that 2006 Middle East is not 1776 America? This is not an anti-war or anti-democracy post; I'm simply saying that if we expect Iraq and Afghanistan culture to mirror ours any time in the next 100 (or 1,000?) years, we'd better think again.

A final thought: "democracy" in and of itself is not necessarily a good thing for all. The ancient Greeks were democratic, which was great if you were one of the free Athenian men who qualified to be a citizen. If you were female or a slave, it wasn't so hot. The last draft I knew of of an Iraqi constitution was not a step forward for women in that country. Given the situation for women in Iran (see post below), it's worth considering exactly who a given democracy will benefit.

http://my.earthlink.net/article/int?guid=20060206/43e6d7d0_3ca6_1552620060206-215848763

Friday, February 03, 2006

Details from Iran

Click on the link below and read Anne Applebaum's article about two Iranian sisters, Ladan and Roya Boroumand, who are building a database of victims of Iran's Islamic regime. Their father was murdered by Iranian agents in Paris in 1991; they now live in Washington D.C. and believe their own lives are in danger.

Here's one victim's story:
"A young girl in Tehran in 1981 was arrested for swimming in her home pool in a bathing suit, [having been] found guilty of causing 'a state of sexual arousal' in a neighbor. She was sentenced to 60 lashes, but died after the 30th lash."

From 1994: "A woman was found guilty of adultery. She was buried up to her breasts in Tehran and stoned to death slowly."

The article is not simply a recitation of victims' stories--it's about the sisters' efforts to "embarrass those members of the Iranian regime who still try to hide the true nature of their revolution from the outside world."
The sisters hope to "start a real public debate about the regime's crimes in Iran--and ultimately about accountability, due process and democracy."

Check it out. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/19/AR2006011902494.html

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Contest: Name That Picture


I'm running a contest that is open to all readers of this blog. Take a good look at the picture above, copied from the Greenville News. Your job is to come up with an appropriate caption and post it in the comments. Let your creative juices flow. Humor is welcomed; multiple submissions will be accepted.

My spouse and I will pick the winning caption, which will be announced at a future date. If we get enough interesting submissions, we may allow a "Readers' Choice," as well.

Have fun!