…I Am A Tree

Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

I don’t envy Obama. The man came into the Presidency with a plate of issues facing him that would make many people just throw up their arms in disgust and walk away. The economy. Healthcare reform. Iraq. Counter-terrorism.

Afghanistan.

Quietly, this last one is becoming the make-or-break item of his administration. Saddled with a messed up foreign policy thanks to the hubris and idiocy of the prior administration, Obama now has to try and make a go of it in The War That Bush Forgot. While the previous administration played smoke-and-mirrors and used propaganda to make people forget that the Sept. 11th attacks were planned in Afghanistan, as well as diverting critical resources to the meaningless fight in Iraq, the situation became altered in the Afghan countryside. The Taliban was returning.

Now, faced with the fact that Afghanistan is tumbling toward a date with with the Taliban, Obama has to decide if he should stick to his guns and up our presence there, or if he should bow to public opinion that now shows 51% of Americans are opposed to the war — up from 6% in 2002 — and cut our losses and fight in different ways.

Currently, I’m of the mindset that we need to stay there and up our presence, and here’s why: Al Qaeda still exists and is supported by the Taliban. Give them back the country and we may once again face the horrors of that September day back in 2001.

I’m also for a more aggressive anti-terror campaign targetting Al Qaeda in Pakistan. Look, it’s simple folks — if Al Qaeda gets its hands on some Pakistani nukes, the world will forever change with the first detonation. My guess is it would be against India, simply because of the distance involved, but one never knows.

The flip side of all of this is that if we stay, we likely become involved in a quagmire not unlike Vietnam. We have to admit that we just may not be able to save Afghanistan from the forces of extremism. It’s on the other side of the world and it’s a very unpopular idea among many people.

Many people felt Obama coming into office would be a new Camelot. Kim’s said it’s more like LBJ– picking up the pieces in Vietnam and having the best of intentions, but having it spiral out of control and I think she’s right. I hear Obama is very aware of this and I’m sure that weighs on his decision making.

So yeah, it’s fubar, any way you look at it.

Just be responsible and put some thought into it before pulling levers blindly. Is it asking too much of people for them to be a little informed?

Here’s to history, one way or another.

He’s just like George Bush, except older and with a worse temper.

NSFW due to language. It’s very well done.

I’ve hardly said much this campaign season about how I feel about things. Part of it is the burn-out I went through with the 2004 elections, part of it the fact that the campaigns started so early this year, and part of it is simply apathy. I’ve just not been involved overly much in the campaigns.

Until the day after the Democratic Convention that is, when the Sarah Palin bombshell was dropped.

You don’t need me to regurgitate the countless ways she’s eminently unqualified to hold the office of Vice President — there are far more interesting sites with writers far more willing to write on at great lengths about her than I have the inclination to do. So where does that leave me, if I’m clearly not in the McCain camp?

How about some discussion on Obama? I haven’t really talked about him at all, especially since he wrapped up the nomination in June. Frankly, I’m beyond disappointed in him. His claim to be a force of Change (capital C) was only so much hot air, given his rapid tack toward the Center ever since. His voting for FISA only pissed me off more, and his selection of Joe Biden over Hillary left me nonplussed, especially given the inclusion of Sarah Palin on the GOP ticket.

Is it asking too much of a candidate to stick by his or her beliefs and principles?

So where does that leave me? Neither Party really seems to represent me, even though I am a registered Democrat. I think that my actual affiliation these days is Not Republican. That doesn’t necessarily mean Democrat, and it most certainly doesn’t mean Ralph Nader. It just means I will not vote Republican.

I’ve come to the realization that our political system is completely broken. Yesterday’s collapse of an agreement surrounding the financial crisis only highlights this — Congressional Democrats had a deal with the Secretary of the Treasury, only to have Congressional Republicans torpedo it. The administration’s own Party put the kibosh on things. Surprising to me, based on the soundbites I’ve heard, I actually agree with those Republicans, too, for the most part.

Scary times.

Still doesn’t mean I’d vote for Those People.

So if I’m Not Republican, who do I actually vote for come Election Day? Kim’s hit upon the answer, which will require more research from me before I head to the polls. We’re not going to vote that night until about 8:30 PM (polls in New York close at 9 PM). We’re going to be watching closely, to see how well McCain is doing in New York. It’s unlikely he’ll do well, but given the long odds that he does put New York into play, I will vote for Obama.

Otherwise, I will be researching third party candidates who did get onto the New York ballot. I plan on having a candidate in hand who matches my beliefs closer than Obama does, which hopefully won’t be that difficult.

So there you have it, my current political stance for the world to read.

..here, last night, in Saturday Night Live’s opening skit with Tina Fey playing Palin and Amy Poehler playing Hillary.

I haven’t talked about this at all, but plan on doing so very soon. Sad to say, my political blogging may be returning a smidge.

I thought Obama stood for Change? So he picks Biden? Really?

If he really was about Change he would have picked Hillary (woman) or Richardson (latino) or someone else.

But Biden? He’s a fucking tool.

This makes me give pause yet again about voting for Obama. No, no, I’m not voting for McCain — get that out of your head. I’m Not Republican these days in my political beliefs. Which means I’m not necessarily Democrat.

I am seriously disappointed here.

I haven’t been blogging much at all about the election since, frankly, it’s too long this year. But this was sent to me by my friend, Ken, and it cracked me up.

In which The Tree says things that could piss people off, but asks that readers bear with him.

I’ve railed against the Iraq war since the year before we invaded; it’s all over there to the left in the archives. When I started all of this, I got into political blogging rather unexpectedly — it was over the Pledge of Allegiance controversy that sprang up when that father didn’t want his daughter to speak it in class. PromoGuy (I wonder what happened with him…haven’t thought of him in years — aha, his blog still sort of exists, apparently) started a group blog called… One Nation? Under God?…something like that that I joined (and I think that’s where I met blogger Brian Peace). I was on the “drop the God” side of the issue, as it wasn’t part of the original version of the Pledge.

I actually lost a blog friend over that — Todd, who lived in Tampa with his wife, Robin. We’d gotten on famously before then, but he couldn’t see the point I was trying to make and it all went to hell in a blogging bucket rather quickly. A pity, that. As time progressed, I stopped blogging on the group blog but picked up my own side of things when this site was The Gamer’s Nook. Initially, I wrote extensively in my own words, but as 2004 progressed, I became a virtual copy-and-paste factory which wasn’t doing anyone any favors — least of all, me — so I stopped. Hell, I practically stopped blogging, period, due to the burnout of that election.

Anyway, that’s a long segue into today’s topic: the war is now over five years old and we’ve lost 4,000 troops in a fight that was never about what ShrubCo claimed it was, but rather, a poorly planned neocon wet-dream that I don’t see us getting our arms around any time soon.

So why am I blogging about this again? I have hundreds of posts in the archives going over it all in fine detail. Well, there’s a story to tale here, a personal one I’m still mulling over and I’m not sure I like the ramifications of it.

There’s a new ReMax ad on television where they show a soldier — presumably in the Middle East — communicating with his wife over the net while they plan the home purchase they’re going to make when he comes home. It ends with the phrase, “Welcome home.”

When we saw it the other night, I had a knee-jerk, instant dislike for it. I couldn’t quite put it into words to Kim, who didn’t see why I should have such a strong reaction to it. To her, it’s showing a positive sign — troops are coming home.

To me, it felt… I don’t know how it felt, but it was wrong. I know I’m being stupid about it, but it just feels like propaganda to me for some reason. The troops aren’t coming home and won’t be, any time soon. But look at the soldier in the ad — he’s planning on buying a home, and look! There he is with his wife, so it’s all good!

Cynical, I know.

But then Kim said something that I’ve been mulling over ever since. She feels I may no longer support our troops, despite the fact that the mission in Iraq is not of their own doing. What might have happened is somewhere around the time of Abu Ghraib, I started losing respect for our soldiers. How could anyone do such horrible things to their fellow man — and not only do it, but photograph it, document it?

I guess it’s there, in a subtle pattern in my discussions with her and in my thought processes.

In going over all of this, I’ve come to the understanding that no, I haven’t stopped supporting our troops on the macro level. They’re not all responsible for the atrocities. I have stopped supporting commanding officers who turn blind eyes to such things, who allow such activities to continue on their watch with nary a reprimand. Our armed forces — the Army, in particular — have been chewed up and have lost their edge, their battleworthiness due to this misguided adventure.

Due to bad management, both civilian and military. We should have never gone in there in the first place.

That doesn’t excuse the vileness we’ve perpetrated on the Iraqi people, though — and much of that was done by the grunts, even if they were just doing their job. So yeah, maybe I don’t support the troops as much as I once did. In some instances, I’ve been outraged, unable to conceive of these things being done in my name.

So now, 4,000 dead, untold tens of thousand newly disabled US vest, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead or wounded. When does it end? When Hillary or Obama enter office? Unfortunately, no, it doesn’t, despite rhetoric to the contrary. It can’t, or a shitty situation will just become worse.

I need to work on my feelings regarding our troops. I know people over there, or who have been there, not once, not twice, but three times. I know children of friends of ours who are enlisting in the Army, knowing full-well what could happen. I wish there was a way I could roll back time on a world-wide political level and change things, make it all better. But until such a time as a time-ship a la Kang the Conqueror’s* ends up in my possession, I need to face the facts that my own feelings about the troops have changed and that I need to work on it, because really, I do want to support them.

All of this, because of a stupid realtor ad.

* If you don’t know who Kang is, just follow this link. I was going through wikipedia at lunch and came across Kang and it all came flooding back to me, the Celestial Madonna storyline from the mid-70s…

Is there any other way to describe the self-destruction of Eliot Spitzer? This man was a crusader for goodness, or so I thought. And now? Now’s he just another corrupt politician. I mean, this guy prosecuted prostitution rings!

I had such high hopes for his stewardship of New York, too.