Recently in War & Peace Category

Mother Jones published a list of songs that have been used to torture/interrogate detainees.

I bet former Rage Against the Machine band members unleashed a stream of unprintables when they heard they were on the list. Also, yet another example of people ignoring the real meaning of "Born in the USA".

And BARNEY? Sick.

Four thousand soldiers now dead in this stupid, evil, did I mention stupid? war. And that doesn't count all the civilians in Iraq.

Feh.

Remember how excited I was that Samantha Power was Obama's foreign policy advisor? No more. She had to resign because she called Hilary Clinton "a monster" during an interview with a reporter.

While my post heading may seem like a dramatic overstatement, bear in mind that the 20th century has seen one genocide after another, with the United States rarely stepping in until it was too late. Sure, we won WWII, but six million Jews were dead by then. The Rwandan genocide happened in a matter of weeks; we did nothing. Darfur? Still happening. And there are others that don't get the same attention, whose locations I'm ashamed to say I can't even recall at the moment.

When Bush got elected, he was briefed on this sad history of inaction. Supposedly he scribbled "Not on my watch" on a piece of paper. But really, it's been the same old, same old. And he's squandered our remaining moral authority and influence, not that we were using them well to begin with.

The selection of Samantha Power sent a signal that Obama was serious about 1) educating himself on foreign policy and 2) really doing something to halt current genocides and prevent future ones. It would be impossible to have such a person in your campaign, or administration, and not do something about these issues. She just wouldn't let you!

And then with one intemperate remark, she blew it all.

I'm sure she's kicking herself really hard today for what happened. But in the meantime, an invaluable opportunity has been lost. What are the chances that whoever wins the race for the White House is going to let her back in? And how many people are going to continue to die for their ethnicity as a result?

Remember, I warned you not to look.

Everybody else in the universe (or at least the country) has already weighed in about my hometown's latest escapade. You know, the one where the Berkeley City Council decided to give Code Pink's anti-Marine-recruiting-station protest a boost by giving them a free parking space in front and passing a resolution calling the recruiters "unwelcome intruders." So I don't need to jump into the fray and talk about how awful the war is, nor do I really need to point out that if a conservative city somewhere took the same approach towards pro-life demonstrators at an abortion clinic and offered them free parking, nobody here would think that was so cool...

but I couldn't help but flag this quote from Country Joe MacDonald, he of the "Fixing-To-Die Rag."

The issue has very little to do with the Marines and a lot to do with political grandstanding and NIMBYism, McDonald said.

"The council said the Marines can't recruit here, they should recruit somewhere else," he said. "And if there's a problem, we still want you to help us. It's astounding. It allows everyone to make fun of Berkeley again."

He said protesters on both sides are driven by "civilian guilt."

"Most people yell and scream about this issue because they're trying to show how patriotic they are," he said. "At this rate, Berkeley's going to be a damn noisy place."

Out of all the stories coming from Iraq... somehow this one really gets me now.

There's a heated argument taking place on my high school reunion mailing list, of all places. I'll leave the other emails to your imagination (I don't think it would be OK to reproduce them here, though they are fascinating.) There was only so much I could take before I wrote this:

As a Jewish woman working at a Jewish organization in the Bay Area, I feel like I can't stay out of this one. These are my opinions only and don't reflect those of my employer.

Israel exists, people live there, they have a right to live there in peace. However, yes, Jews have had a presence there for longer than 59 years... but so have the Palestinians. Currently, they live in a miserable situation.

Arguments about who has more right to live there are, in my opinion, pointless, because taken to extremes, the options are "wipe out Israel" or send the Palestinians packing off to... where, exactly? The clock is never going to be turned back to a time when there was no Jewish state, and the "land without a people" never existed either. Mainstream opinion, even among the most Israel-supportive Jewish organizations (and the one I work at is one of them), says that the status quo is not OK and there needs to be a two-state solution.

There are extremists on both sides; peace would give them a smaller audience.

Last summer, during the war with Hamas, my office received first-person accounts of the terror that families living in northern Israel experienced during the rocket attacks. People were living in underground shelters for over a month! Real people got injured and killed. I can't even begin to imagine how terrifying that must have been. I saw photos of the damage -- at least one town had to be practically rebuilt.

But that doesn't erase the fact that I think about 10 times as many people perished in Lebanon at the same time, and Israel apparently used some weaponry that they really, really shouldn't have used. And the war didn't even accomplish Israel's objectives; Hamas is still alive and kicking. (Incidentally, my understanding is Hamas is popular in part because they did a lot of charitable work in the occupied territories that nobody else was doing. Nothing's ever simple, eh?)

The hardest thing to keep in mind is that one side's truth does not invalidate the other's.