From: Mighty Favog To:***@***.com Date: Sunday, August 28, 2005 00:03 Subject: It doesn't get worse than this . . . at least short of Armageddon
Y'all,
Amid the horror of contemplating what may be about to happen here are public-policy considerations that are going to wash across the country like a storm surge: What happens if we lose an entire major American city?
-- How do we maintain refugee camps for what could be hundreds of thousands of people for God knows how long?
-- Where do we put them all?
-- What happens to the rest of the country when we lose as much oil and gasoline production as we're about to lose?
-- When those supplies are cut off indefinitely?
-- When there's no fuel-oil shipments because there's no more Port of New Orleans -- the second biggest in the U.S.?
-- When ag, raw-material and manufactured-goods imports and exports on the Mississippi are disrupted for who knows how long?
-- Is the military prepared (and do we have enough of it left?) to go in and immediately double the size of the Port of Baton Rouge?
-- Will we, in a month, be paying $5 a gallon for gas, and will that tank the whole economy?
-- Is the U.S. government prepared to rebuild New Orleans?
-- What happens to the insurance industry if the worst happens here?
From: Mighty Favog To: ***@***.com Date: Saturday, August 27, 2005 11:41 Subject: Re: Uh-oh
Dear ***,
If that thing ends up tracking just a hair -- and I mean just a hair -- westward of the dead-center forecast, and if it comes in as a Category Four, New Orleans will be obliterated. If it comes in dead center of the forecast track, it will be bad enough, but probably not 20-feet-of-water-in-the-city bad.
Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco had better get off the pot. They only have two days -- they need to start getting the poor and the elderly out while there's a chance in hell of doing so. Set them up in shelters in Hammond, Baton Rouge and Lafayette -- all the arena-sized places they can get. The National Guard needs to be starting on that today.
If you keep rolling the dice, figuring "Naw, it CAN'T get THAT bad," sooner or later, you'll crap out. Besides -- and this isn't exactly the Scientific Method, but what the hell -- I think this country has reached a level of depravity and extreme materialism where God is going to keep getting more and more drastic in an effort to get our attention.
Like I said yesterday, you saw the headline here first:
Big Easy's last dance: Katrina and the waves
And I was only half joking about sending Jonah to Bourbon Street.
You know, the company you'd have to keep makes it really hard to come out foursquare for enforcing this country's immigration laws, securing the southern border and generally doing what sane countries do when they're serious about being sane, cohesive countries.
OK, I'M FOURSQUARE for enforcing the United States' immigration laws and securing the southern border. I don't want to see this country overrun by illegal immigration from any country. I want America to be serious about being a sane, cohesive country -- and society.
But you're not going to see me at a protest involving some of the nativist-leaning wingnuts that such demonstrations already attract. And when the National Socialist Movement -- that's the Nazi Party, by the way -- gets involved, the only way you're ever going to see me anywhere near such a protest (for example, Sunday Saturday in midtown Omaha) will be behind the wheel of Elwood Blues' second-hand police special.
“We just got one on our front door. It was pretty anti-immigration, not Nazi propaganda but my friend who is from South Omaha got a Nazi flyer,” said Sam Martin.
Sam is one of a number of Omaha residents who were recently inundated with flyers advertising a neo-Nazi anti-immigration rally to take place at the Mexican Consulate on Sept. 1.
Organized by the National Socialist Movement — the disarming moniker of the official Nazi party of the United States — the rally will also include local members of supremacist group White Revolution and is also certain to attract the Minutemen, who held their own anti-immigration rally at the consulate Aug. 17.
“The United States was founded exclusively by whites, and the founding fathers specifically say they were founding this place for the security and happiness of the themselves and their descendants – not that of Mexico,” said Billy Roper, Chairman of the White Revolution, a national organization that has been “leading America to a whiter future since 2002.”
Jeff Scoop, Commander for the National Socialist Movement (NSM), shared a similar sentiment, “When our forefathers came over here from Europe they were not saying, ‘Ok, everyone else has to learn our language.’ They said they had to assimilate. Now there are unprecedented numbers of illegal immigrants reaping the benefits of life in the United States and instead of being prosecuted for being here illegally, they are being rewarded. They aren’t coming here to make a better life or become good Americans or assimilate, they want us speaking Spanish.”
“This country was founded by immigrants,” said Cooper Moon, housemate and fellow Midtown leafletee of Sam Martin’s. “This country’s entire existence is based on immigrants. Why should it be any different now? The whole illegal issue? You wanna talk about our forefathers, the colonists? They were storm troopers of death coming over and obliterating the Native Americans, destroying an entire ecosystem. The Mexicans coming over, getting jobs and raising families? Not even in the same ballpark.”
(snip)
The neo-Nazi groups in the last year and a half have organized hundreds of events. In Dayton, Ohio members of National Socialist Movement appeared in Nazi uniforms at a pro-immigration march to protest, in their words, “the illegal wetback scum and Shabbat goy mud lovers.” Most recently, NSM organized a march on the capitol building in Columbia, S.C. where, according to NSM commander Scoop, “dozens and dozens” of supporters turned out.
When they cannot organize in person, the supremacist groups plaster communities around the country with crude anti-Hispanic and anti-immigration fliers like the ones left in South Omaha.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, in Bakersfield, Calif., for example, one community was littered with National Vanguard fliers that read, “Civilization: One Job Mexicans Won’t Do.” Residents of Pasadena, Texas, discovered racist fliers that urged people to burn down the homes of people thought to be illegal immigrants.
“We intend to send a message to the U.S. government that is if they don’t do something about this illegal immigration problem we will replace all of them,” said NSM’s Scoop. “They are political whores to the Israelis, or special interest groups, whoever is paying them enough money to buy off their souls. Even Americans who don’t necessarily believe in our methods are coming to us. People are sick of being lied to. With us there is no lying. We are concerned about white interests and the way America used to be. If the founding fathers were with us today they would be behind us.”
The rhetoric is popular and it’s working. Recruitment numbers are up, money is rolling into the organizations and white power is getting multimedia diversified. It’s not just about rallies and cross burnings; the National Socialist Movement develops and distributes its own video games, podcasts and radio shows. They maintain a Web site, operate a record label and have recently started NewSaxon.com, a white only version of the social networking site, Myspace.
Scoop claims that NSM, the largest pro-white group in the country, has nearly 50 percent or more of their membership placed in the armed forces with others in law enforcement.
The National Socialist Movement can even boast its very own Nazi presidential candidate, John Taylor Bowles, whose first campaign promise is to provide “all White families in the USA, (husband, wife and minor children)” with zero interest mortgage loans “to buy homes fitted with all necessary household gadgets like fridge, TV, computers, etc.”
(snip)
There is no disputing that the immigrant community in Nebraska is growing. According to census date, approximately 41.2 percent of the total population increase between 2000 and 2006 in Nebraska is attributable to immigrants. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) – an organization that is very questionably fair or accurate – estimates the illegal alien population in 2005 at 39,000.
A report issued from the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Office of Latino and Latin American Studies earlier this year indicates that, between 1990 and 2000, Nebraska’s foreign-born population grew faster than that of any other Midwestern state. From 2000 to 2005, Nebraska experienced the eighth-largest proportional increase of foreign-born individuals of all U.S. states, accounting for more than 60 percent of overall population growth.
Many point to Nebraska’s abundance of jobs, a lack of labor force to fill those jobs, and a low level of competition for jobs within labor migrant populations as other major factors contributing to the growing foreign-born population in the state.
(snip)
“Some people may argue that the people organizing and attending this rally are extreme,” said Lee, the Omaha leader of the White Revolution. “But given the projections given by the U.S. Census Bureau, that says non-Hispanic whites will be a minority in this Country by 2050. I think this calls for extreme measures if we are to remain a first world nation and secure the existence of our people and future for white children. I, nor any other average American wishes to see our Nation transformed into an extension of Mexico.
“Already we are a minority race in over 50 of America’s largest cities. By the time our children reach adulthood, we will have more Hispanics in the USA than in Mexico itself. What kind of future will that be for our children and grandchildren?”
“Stupid people make Third World countries,” said White Revolution’s Roper. “Third World countries don’t make stupid people. The more the United States allows these people in, the more we become like a Third World country. That is not something we want to hand down to our children. We don’t want the United States to become a Third World cesspool.”
Some pretty negative sentiments. But the swastika-wearing interviewees insist that their anti-immigrant stance isn’t about hate.
“I myself, nor anyone I know, ‘hate’ anyone,” said Lee. “This isn’t about ‘hate’ for me, it is about love of my country and my people. It is about securing a future for our children and our grandchildren.
“It’s about preserving our heritage, our culture and history. This isn’t immigration, as our grandparents knew it – no, this is an invasion. An invasion like the world has never before seen in all of recorded history.”
“Most Nebraskans and Americans want common sense immigration reform that treats people with dignity and provides a path to citizenship for people who are paying their taxes,” said Darcy Tromanhauser, Program Director for Nebraska Appleseed, an organization that promotes the integration and participation of immigrant communities. “I think there is a small but vocal minority who doesn’t want to see any immigration at all. They drive from views that are racist and what most people don’t believe. I think this rally and its sponsors betray the roots of some of the more vehement anti-immigrant voices. Many of those who first take an interest in these groups out of a concern over immigration quickly leave when they discover the ugly core of the perspective. Most Nebraskans don’t think this way and believe that if someone is working hard and paying taxes, they should have a path to citizenship and full participation in society, no matter the color of their skin.”
“We understand that they are entitled to say whatever they want. As long as they don’t do any damage to the building, that’s fine,” said Jose Cuevas, head of Omaha’s Mexican Consulate. “I believe that they are mistaken as to what we do. But the First Amendment gives them all the right in the world to demonstrate and say whatever they like.”
New Orleans is my hometown. And it's dying. Despite billions of dollars in aid, recovery programs with catchy names and an outpouring of volunteer effort, New Orleans is not recovering from Hurricane Katrina.
Beyond the happy mayhem of the French Quarter, entire neighborhoods are in ruins and the business district sags from the shattered economy. Thousands of people are homeless and squatting in vacant and storm-damaged properties, some just a few blocks from City Hall.
More than 160,000 residents never returned. For those who did dare to come back home, little resembles normalcy.
For the people with the power to save it, New Orleans is a forgotten place.
It's a national disgrace. People should pay attention. The next time, it could be your town.
NO, NO, NO, you don't understand. It's far more sinister than that.
The feds, and the American public, are kind of like Michael Vick. They brutalize the dog because they can, because it's in their culture now, because they think they can get away with it.
New Orleans is the dog. The battered, bloodied, chewed-up dog that's not worth much to anybody anymore. Trouble is, it was pretty much that way before Katrina.
What's happening -- or, rather, not happening -- there is just "Michael Vick" putting you downafter the dogfight's done and the accounts settled.And I'm not talking insults.
Douglas Brinkley, the well-known historian and professor, has an op-ed piece in Sunday's Washington Post, and he's wondering whether the federal government's relative inaction in rebuilding New Orleans isn't a deliberate policy action in itself.
The stubborn inaction appears to fall under the paternalistic guise of helping the storm victims. Bush's general attitude -- a Catch-22 recipe if ever there was one -- appears to be that only rank fools would return when the first line of hurricane defense are the levees that this administration so far refuses to fix.
New Orleans appears to be largely abandoned by the Department of Homeland Security, except for its safeguarding of the Port Authority (port traffic is at 90 percent of pre-Katrina numbers) and tourist districts above sea level, such as the French Quarter and Uptown. These areas are kept alive largely by the wild success of Harrah's casino and a steady flow of undaunted conventioneers.
The brutal Galveston Hurricane of 1900 may be a historical guide to the administration's thinking. Most survivors of that deadly Texas storm moved to higher land. Administration policies seem to tacitly encourage those who live below sea level in New Orleans to relocate permanently, to leave the dangerous water's edge for more prosperous inland cities such as Shreveport or Baton Rouge.
After the 1900 hurricane, in fact, Galveston, which had been a large, thriving port, was essentially abandoned for Houston, transforming that then-sleepy backwater into the financial center for the entire Gulf South. Galveston devolved into a smallish port-tourist center, one easy to evacuate when hurricanes rear their ugly heads.
To be fair, Bush's apparent post-Katrina inaction policy makes some cold, pragmatic sense. If the U.S. government is not going to rebuild the levees to survive a Category 5 storm -- to be finished at the earliest in 2015 and at an estimated cost of $40 billion, far eclipsing the extravagant bill for the entire Interstate Highway System -- then options are limited.
But what makes the current inaction plan so infuriating is that it's deceptive, offering up this open-armed spin to storm victims: "Come back to New Orleans." Why can't Bush look his fellow citizens in the eye and tell them what seems to be the ugly truth? That as long as he's commander in chief, there won't be an entirely reconstructed levee system.
Shortly after Katrina hit, former House speaker J. Dennis Hastert declared that a lot of New Orleans could be "bulldozed." He was shot down by an outraged public and media, which deemed such remarks insensitive and callous. Two years have shown that Hastert may have articulated what appears to have become the White House's de facto policy. He may have retreated, but the inaction remains.
IT'S NOT THAT NEW ORLEANS is below sea level, for the most part, that's driving the government's proactive policy of inaction as an American city founders two years after it went under water. If New York City went under the choppy Atlantic, if the Big One sent Los Angeles sinking into the Pacific, if Chicago were overwhelmed by an angry Lake Michigan, the ingenuity and treasure and will of the American nation would be marshaled.Fast.
None of those cities would be allowed to fade into the dog-eared pages of long-unopened history texts.
New Orleans is. Dozens of communities in South Louisiana are . . . in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, now two years past. Brinkley again:
Unfortunately, right now New Orleans is having a hard time lobbying on its own behalf. Minnesota's Twin Cities have about 20 Fortune 500 companies to draw in private-sector money to help rebuild the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis. New Orleans has one, Entergy, which is verging on bankruptcy. So besides U.S. taxpayers and port fees, New Orleans must count on spiked-up tourist dollars to jumpstart the post-Katrina rebuild.
But this is where the bizarre paradox of living in a city of ruins comes into play. Out of one side of its mouth the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce says, "Come on down, folks! We're not underwater!" Yet these same civic boosters -- viscerally aware that the Bush administration is treating the desperate plight of New Orleans in an out-of-sight, out-of-mind fashion -- don't want to bite the hand that feeds them large chunks of reconstruction cash. New Orleans is both bragging about normalcy and poor-mouthing itself, confusing Americans about what the real state of the city is.
Recently Mayor C. Ray Nagin, born with the proverbial foot in his mouth, tried to explain why the homicide rate in New Orleans is so appallingly high. When a TV reporter asked, Nagin merely shrugged: "It's not good for us, but it also keeps the New Orleans brand out there." This absurd comment -- and dozens like it -- hurts New Orleans's recovery almost as much as Bush's policy of inaction.
Everywhere I travel in the United States, people ask, "Why did you guys reelect such a doofus?" There is a feeling that any community that reelected a "first responder" who stayed in a Hyatt Regency suite during Hurricane Katrina, never delivered a speech to the homeless at the Superdome or Convention Center in New Orleans, and played the "chocolate city" race card at a historic moment when black-white healing was needed probably deserves to get stiffed by the federal government.
And Nagin isn't the only bad ambassador New Orleans has. It also has City Council member Oliver Thomas, Sen. David Vitter and Rep. William J. Jefferson -- all currently in deep trouble for potentially breaking the law. Dismayed by such political buffoonery, Americans have simply turned a blind eye to New Orleans's reconstruction plight. There is a scolding sentiment around the country that Louisiana needs to get its own house in order before looking for fresh levee handouts.
TRANSLATION: New Orleans and Louisiana are poor, they're basket cases, they're full of buffoons . . . of what use are they to us? In politics today, as in society today, a vulnerable city or region (like an unborn child, the desperately ill or the profoundly disabled) will be allowed to survive only if we decide there's some percentage in it for us.
We believe there's such a thing as Lebensunwertes Leben . . . life unworthy of life. That is the societal and political milieu in which we live today. I don't like it. Neither should you. But it is what it is, at least for the foreseeable future.
And the American political structure -- and apparently the American people -- have given up on New Orleans . . . on Louisiana.
IN THAT LIGHT, I keep coming back to the persistently sad state of my home state, and I am compelled to ask hard questions of the people there.
Here's the question that came to me as I read Doug Brinkley's piece:
Louisiana, how can you expect America not to give up on you when you've given up on yourselves?
You look at the catastrophic mess that was the New Orleans public school system before Katrina, and you know that that city had given up on its children -- at least the ones whose parents couldn't swing a pricey private education for them -- long before America was being begged for help.
You look at the long tradition, both in New Orleans and in Louisiana as a whole, of corrupt and dysfunctional government. And you know that Louisianians had given up on a functioning civic culture generations ago.
You look at the horrible poverty statistics and the worse educational-attainment statistics, and you know that Louisiana never had any realistic hope for the future. That the state's citizenry never put enough stock in the virtue of hope to commit to the kinds ofactions a hopeful people take.
Hopeful people stay in school, seeking to better themselves. Hopeful people help the poor, and they try to find ways to disrupt the self-fulfilling culture of poverty.
It's the bottom of the ninth, and Louisiana is 0-2 with two out and nobody on.
IN ALL MY COMPLICATED and conflicted thoughts on my home state -- my people -- I also can't help but add my heartbreak at what has become of my old high school, Baton Rouge Magnet High. That school did much for me at a time when I needed much to be done. It was a magical place in a beautiful old building that had been spruced up and modernized for its new role -- this, in 1976 -- as a selective-admission, college-preparatory school for academics and the performing arts.
I understand magic still is made there, but it is made in the confines of a rundown dump, with sagging floors, crumbling masonry work and peeling lead paint.
Obviously, maintenance has been horribly neglected. Obviously, the parish (county) school board has been indifferent to some of its best, brightest and most dedicated students -- the children of their constituents, for God's sake -- spending eight-plus hours a day in facilities they wouldn't inflict upon their pets.
And now it's so bad, no one knows what to do. Renovate the school for $37 million? Tear it down and rebuild for $40 million?
Given all that's been outlined above, would you have any confidence that any brand-new school the school board built wouldn't be just as big a dump and safety hazard in 20 years' time? That the board would ensure any new school were built even half as well as the old one -- which has stood for 82 years (and withstood, sort of, the neglect of its stewards)?
IT ALL GOES BACK to the central premise, doesn't it?
We, unfortunately, live in a utilitarian society. Louisiana can't even give its children schools that the rest of us in America would deem fit for our dogs. Of what use is Louisiana to the rest of us?
Why shouldn't we cut our losses, cut off the money and let the whole dysfunctional lot stew in their own juices until they're as cooked as a crawfish? Why?
Louisianians seemingly don't even love themselves or their children enough to pull themselves out of a cesspool largely of their own making. Why should the rest of America love them any more than they love themselves?
Come on, Louisiana, we're post-Christian and steely-eyed. Give us a reason why.
Please?
* * *
POSTSCRIPT: Douglas Brinkley, author of the WaPo op-ed and a tireless advocate for post-Katrina New Orleans was a history professor at Tulane University. Was. In May, he resigned from Tulane to take a post at Rice University.
Really, does any sane person still think America can "win" this thing?
So, why do we keep throwing good money -- and good young lives -- after . . . I don't have the heart (or, rather, lack of heart) to complete the phrase. WHY ARE WE STILL IN IRAQ? Why are we sacrificing our future and our treasure trying to prop up a failed government in a failed state? Why are we futilely trying to build up an Iraqi military riven by religious hatred, questionably loyal to a basket-case country with no real reason to be?
Our "leaders" say we're there to fight terrorism, to "bring the fight" to "those who attacked us on 9/11." That's odd . . . al Qaida had only a minimal presence in Saddam's Iraq. Al Qaida in Mesopotamia is only there now because we, in effect, created it.
Our presence in Iraq is its best recruiting tool.
So why are we still there? Why are our troops dying for nothing? Why are we breaking the Army and emptying the U.S. Treasury to carry out a fool's errand?
Faced with such a gargantuan puzzlement, it is long past time we did what any good reporter does when delving into gargantuan puzzlements. It's time to follow the money.
Follow the money has left the realm of crackpot, hemp-clad, "mass action" conspiracy theorists. Follow the money may lead us to the only sensible explanation for our Babylonian captivity.
Follow the money. Who's getting rich while our soldiers bleed and the Iraqi people's misery remains unabated? Who's getting rich, and who in government are they in cahoots with?
READ THIS STORY from The Associated Press. Read it now; I'll have no further comment, because after you read this, the only proper response is speechlessness.
One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.
Or worse.
For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.
There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.
He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers — all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.
The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co.
“It was a Wal-Mart for guns,” he says. “It was all illegal and everyone knew it.”
So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn’t know whom to trust in Iraq.
For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.
Also held was colleague Nathan Ertel, who helped Vance gather evidence documenting the sales, according to a federal lawsuit both have filed in Chicago, alleging they were illegally imprisoned and subjected to physical and mental interrogation tactics “reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants.”
Corruption has long plagued Iraq reconstruction. Hundreds of projects may never be finished, including repairs to the country’s oil pipelines and electricity system. Congress gave more than $30 billion to rebuild Iraq, and at least $8.8 billion of it has disappeared, according to a government reconstruction audit.
Despite this staggering mess, there are no noble outcomes for those who have blown the whistle, according to a review of such cases by The Associated Press.
“If you do it, you will be destroyed,” said William Weaver, professor of political science at the University of Texas-El Paso and senior advisor to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.
“Reconstruction is so rife with corruption. Sometimes people ask me, ‘Should I do this?’ And my answer is no. If they’re married, they’ll lose their family. They will lose their jobs. They will lose everything,” Weaver said.
(snip)
Then there is Robert Isakson, who filed a whistleblower suit against contractor Custer Battles in 2004, alleging the company — with which he was briefly associated — bilked the U.S. government out of tens of millions of dollars by filing fake invoices and padding other bills for reconstruction work.
He and his co-plaintiff, William Baldwin, a former employee fired by the firm, doggedly pursued the suit for two years, gathering evidence on their own and flying overseas to obtain more information from witnesses. Eventually, a federal jury agreed with them and awarded a $10 million judgment against the now-defunct firm, which had denied all wrongdoing.
It was the first civil verdict for Iraq reconstruction fraud.
But in 2006, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III overturned the jury award. He said Isakson and Baldwin failed to prove that the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-backed occupier of Iraq for 14 months, was part of the U.S. government.
Not a single Iraq whistleblower suit has gone to trial since.
“It’s a sad, heartbreaking comment on the system,” said Isakson, a former FBI agent who owns an international contracting company based in Alabama. “I tried to help the government, and the government didn’t seem to care.”
(snip)
Julie McBride testified last year that as a “morale, welfare and recreation coordinator” at Camp Fallujah, she saw KBR exaggerate costs by double- and triple-counting the number of soldiers who used recreational facilities.
She also said the company took supplies destined for a Super Bowl party for U.S. troops and instead used them to stage a celebration for themselves.
“After I voiced my concerns about what I believed to be accounting fraud, Halliburton placed me under guard and kept me in seclusion,” she told the committee. “My property was searched, and I was specifically told that I was not allowed to speak to any member of the U.S. military. I remained under guard until I was flown out of the country.”
Halliburton and KBR denied her testimony.
She also has filed a whistleblower suit. The Justice Department has said it would not join the action. But last month, a federal judge refused a motion by KBR to dismiss the lawsuit.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Yet again -- and I'll probably do this every now and again -- we're rerunning this blog's opening post . . . just to make sure a few things that need to be said keep getting said. After all, Revolution 21 IS kind of, well, unique.
Oh, and while we're at it, let me introduce Revolution 21's first sponsor -- a new program debuting on Mid-Life Crisis, the new Boomer channel on XM-Sirius satellite radio. Your Mighty Favog has heard the new punk show, and he likes . . . thus, Mid-Life Crisis is the Big Show's first sponsor.
Check it out. Listen on the player at the top of the page, or listen here.
AND NOW . . . here's that blast from the past about Who We Are:
* * *
Greetings. The Mighty Favog here. Welcome to Revolution 21.
Let's get something straight right now, O huddled masses: Revolution 21 ain't your grandma's radio podcast. It ain't your typical Catholic radio thing, and it ain't your typical corporate, over-researched, same-boring-playlist rock radio thing, either.
But is it really useful to define Revolution 21 by what it's not? So sorry, my plebes! My bad.
Let's just say -- plainly -- what Revolution 21 is. Revolution 21 is radio that aims to reflect life as it is lived by screwed-up, struggling, inspired-yet-bumbling children of God sorely in need of His grace and forgiveness. REVOLUTION 21 REALIZES that Catholics like the Mighty Favog -- your host and the master of dysfunctionality -- live life with one foot in Heaven and the other in the gutter with all the other schmucks called Humanity. We strive for holiness, we occasionally achieve it, and sometimes the best we can muster is Holier Than Thou.
Oh, well. Blame it on Eve and that damned apple.
For his part, the Mighty Favog -- though a great and mighty Favog -- is a Bad Catholic. It is to be hoped, however, that he is capable of decent radio . . . and a stellar podcast.
And he's trying most mightily to become, at the least, a Mediocre Catholic.
So, like us believing schmucks, Revolution 21 is a mixture of the sacred and the secular. The serious and the foolish. Rock . . . and roll. And blues in the night.
But Revolution 21 has a problem with our oversecularized, materialist and ultimately shallow culture. We figure schizo is the only thing you get out of putting faith waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over in one corner of your life and "real life" waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over in another corner so the two never touch (probably out of fear of some Matter-Antimatter cataclysm).
Or something like that.
Well, Revolution 21 LIKES IT when things get blowed up good. We say put that Faith Thing and that Life Thing in a bag, shake it the hell up and see what happens.
I mean, ain't that a lot more fun than alienation, ennui and life in Schizo City? Or, if not always fun, at least always a lot more interesting and, ultimately, rewarding.
But then again, it's not All About Me -- or All About You -- is it, now?
Enough blather, proclaims the Mighty Favog, your potentate of New Media!
Let us now proceed with trashing preconceived notions of radio formatting and stale bourgeois convention. Let us now do radio like we ought to be living -- faith and life together, recognizing only two kinds of music. That would be Good and Bad.
I may well be the last New Deal Democrat in existence in these here United States. Never mind that I was born 15-and-a-half years after World War II ended.
I wish there were still a Works Progress Administration. It would be a lot cheaper and do a lot more good than our deeply stupid war in Iraq.
Heck, I believe that all of the displaced poor from the Gulf Coast and New Orleans -- instead of being shipped off to God-knows-where -- should have been placed in communities built on underused or vacant federal tracts closer to home, like former military bases. There, they could have had access to a full-range of social services, counseling, remedial education and job training.
Then, they could have been put to work rebuilding their destroyed communities. They could have been stakeholders in society, not drains upon it.
Not cheap, trying to reclaim those on the margins. But, once again, a hell of a lot cheaper than Iraq, and at least something -- no matter how humble -- would've been accomplished.
I just wanted you to know where I'm coming from because, frankly, when I read this from The Daily Kos, I'm goin' "What the ****???"
Carville is the Tucker Carlson of the Democratic Party by Justina Wed Aug 22, 2007 at 08:53:47 PM PDT
I just received the a fund raising e-mail from James Carville, who is asking for donations to the re-election campaign of Lousiana’s Democratic Senator, Mary Landrieu. It reads in part:
I'm a Louisianian through-and-through. My hometown, Carville, population 1108, was named for my granddaddy. So when I write to you about our senior Senator from Louisiana, Mary Landrieu, I'm writing from my heart and soul.
What a surprise, I didn't think James Carville had a soul; I know he doesn't have his heart in Democratic politics.
Carville, who modestly claims on his web site to be "The man who has devised the most dramatic political victories of our generation" holds no official position in the Democratic Party but who is continually put forward by the "main stream" media as "a leading Democratic political analyst", has been one of the most destructive voices in the Democratic Party since his vicious attacks on Howard Dean and the Democratic National Committee after their success in the 2006 election.
Carville, a professional campaign consultant who regularly seems to speak for Hillary Clinton, and his firm of political consultants, has been involved in supporting some pretty reactionary anti-democrats in Latin American, including Manuel Rosales, the Bush supported, anti-Chavez candidate in the 2006 Venezuelan presidential campaign.
Fortunately, President Chavez trounced Rosales by an overwhelming 68% majority. One only hopes that both Hillary Clinton and Mary Landrieu will face similar fates in the Louisiana Democratic primary.
If there is a good progressive candidate who is considering taking on Landrieu, please come forward so I can send you a donation. I’ll send a photocopy to Mr. Carville referencing that I have never before contributed to a Louisiana politician, but his fund raising letter for Mary Landrieu inspired me to support any of her progressive Democratic opponent in the primary.
HUGO CHAVEZ'S Bestest Friend Forever went on to excoriate Carville for his choice of spouse, being that Mary Matalin is a "Republican shill."
Frankly, with Justina's fervent support for demagogic dictators like Chavez, I'm a bit surprised why she bothers with the democratic process at all. If she has a beef with the likes of Carville and Landrieu, why doesn't she raise a bien-pensant army of Venezuelans and expatriate American "progressives," come home and clean house? Maybe she can overthrow Bush-Cheney, end the war and establish the New Jerusalem while she's at it.
You know, sometimes you just have to wonder about the Secular Puritan Left. Mainly, I wonder how it is these folks haven't been laughed into oblivion yet. That, or purged themselves into a million perfectly ideologically pure Democratic parties of one.
Or does stupidity make you racist? Chicken, egg . . . who knows?
And why -- when something this glaring comes about, something hard for a blogger to ignore -- is it almost invariably in my home state. Not to mention my hometown.
Two white men were arrested on counts of hate crimes Thursday, accused of firing a shotgun and yelling racial slurs at two black DPW workers, officials said.
The two employees of the city-parish Department of Public Works were cutting grass along Hoo Shoo Too Road in East Baton Rouge Parish Thursday morning when Eric Arnaud, 22, and Christopher Roussell, 17, drove up.
The two swore and yelled racial slurs at the DPW workers, Sheriff’s Office spokesman Fred Raiford says in a statement.
“It was discriminatory,” Raiford said in a phone interview.
The two suspects went to a house at 11212 Amite River Road where they retrieved a 12-gauge shotgun, Raiford said.
They returned to the lawn workers at Hoo Shoo Too and Kendalwood roads, where Arnaud opened fire, Raiford said.
“They were firing directly at them,” Raiford said.
Both lawn workers escaped unscathed, and headed to the Kleinpeter Sheriff’s Substation to report the crime, said Pete Newkirk, director of the Department Public Works.
Deputies arrested Arnaud and Roussell on Thursday, booking Arnaud into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on two counts of attempted second-degree murder and a count of hate crime. Roussell was booked on two counts of principal to attempted second-degree murder and a count of hate crime.
Newkirk said the two workers had been cutting grass around Hoo Shoo Too Road Thursday morning when their tractor got a flat. A supervisor was on the way with a replacement when the shooting started, he said.
Raiford said the suspects had a Confederate flag displayed outside their house on Amite River Road when sheriff’s deputies arrived.
“They can have that (a Confederate flag) in their prison cells for the next 30 years,” Newkirk said.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “It was discriminatory.” Uhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . do 'ya THINK???
Apart from the quote thing, my first reaction is "Why am I not surprised?"
Here's why: Broadmoor Junior High. Eighth or ninth grade. Phys ed. Archery unit.
For some unfathomable reason, the physical-education powers that be at Broadmoor Junior thought it would be a good idea to give junior-high-age boys deadly weapons. Deadly weapons most of us had never used before -- unless you count rubber bands stretched across textbooks, handy for launching sharpened pencils across a classroom.
And for some equally unfathomable reason, Coach set up the targets in front of the school, so that our arrows would be flying toward unsuspecting innocents on Goodwood Boulevard. Especially the arrows of some Future Inmates of America members at Broadmoor Junior.
One day, a public-works crew was working on Goodwood.
“They were firing directly at them. . . .”
". . . and yelling racial slurs. . . ."
SADLY, some things never change. Thank God for crappy bows and insufficient upper-body strength back in the day.
Thank God for crappy aim and the long arm of the law today.
It's storming again tonight in the Big O, but not like Monday night.
Then, Mother Nature opened up a can of Whoop-Ass on Omaha, and parts of town are still cleaning up from it. Now, when you click on the KMTV television video above this post, make sure you watch the whole thing -- a little more than halfway through, you will get a good illustration of why it's not a good idea to stand outside in the middle of a severe thunderstorm with 70 mph wind.
You'd think some people would intuitively know that. But I guess not.
Maybe there's something to the idea that teen-agers are naturally clinically insane. Just watch.
Damn The Avett Brothers for making it difficult to put together this week's edition of the Revolution 21 podcast. I can't put the whole dadgum Emotionalism album on the show, and it's hard to decide what cut to use.
Everything on the CD is that good.
What's wrong with them boys from Greenville, N.C.? Bands just aren't THAT GOOD anymore.
OK, Arcade Fire is, but not many more are.
HERE'S THE THING. . . look at the top 50 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. See the Avett Brothers there? No, of course you don't.
Do you reckon that 80 percent of the stuff on there is crap, with some of it toxic waste, even? Of course. No debate.
No, to The Avett Brothers are found on the indie charts . . . and here, on the Internet. The record companies, of course, want to sue their file-sharing customers into oblivion and bleed Web radio to death.
The crap is easy to find. It's on your local contemporary-hits radio station.
15 What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I concur that the law is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 18 For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh. The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want. 20 Now if (I) do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 21 So, then, I discover the principle that when I want to do right, evil is at hand. 22 For I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self, 23 but I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Miserable one that I am! Who will deliver me from this mortal body? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, I myself, with my mind, serve the law of God but, with my flesh, the law of sin.
After spending her whole life in New Orleans, Tina Coulon is putting her River Ridge home on the market and trading the Big Easy for Music City.
“We went up to Nashville and it was just so clean, had a lot of things really liked about it, when we decided you know what this is really where we need to be,” Coulon said.
A new study commissioned by a Jefferson Parish business group found thousands like her are packing up.
Using change of address forms, researchers found at least 14,000 Jefferson families left Louisiana – a higher percentage than the state average.
“A number of upper and upper middle income people are moving out, those issues are directly related to quality of life because those people have choices,” said researcher Greg Rigamer.
It’s flooded the real estate market this year: 5,000 homes have been put on the market in Jefferson Parish – twice as many as in 2004.
“Since 1989 it hasn’t been this bad, there are so many houses for sale,” said realtor Eileen Traficante.
Researchers say many families aren’t seeing a fast enough turn-around and are growing impatient with old problems.
They said residents are frustrated with public schools to a lack of healthcare to overall cleanliness.
The study has already motivated parish leaders to make improvements, with officers recently cracking down on blight and crime.
“If you don’t see everything fixed yet, but the momentum of where we have been, and from whence we came and where we are today, certainly shows that we’ve created a very solid momentum,” said Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard.
An all night wait in an emergency room is what finally convinced Tina Coulon to go - she’s now looking forward to cheaper insurance and not spending thousands of dollars to put her kids in private schools.
“We’re moving just to have a better quality of life,” Coulon says. “Just kind of have a little bit better future for our kids.”
So, while the Louisiana Democratic Party is busy trying to smear GOP gubernatorial candidate Bobby Jindal by taking his published words on religion several zip codes (at least) out of context -- that is, when not flat-out lying about what the man wrote -- what have Jindal's two biggest Democratic opponents been doing?
Apparently, hoping dirty tricks can accomplish what their lagging campaigns haven't been able to.
The two leading Democratic candidates also refused to denounce the commercial, even as they moved to disassociate themselves from it.
"I have not seen the ad in question. However, if the quotes about various religions attributed to Mr. Jindal are in fact his writings, I firmly believe that he should retract his comments," state Sen. Walter Boasso, D-Arabi, said.
Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell also said he hasn't seen the ads but said he has little sympathy for Jindal if the words used in the ads come from the candidate's own writings.
"If he said that and it's documented, then he's going to have to live with it or sue the Democratic Party and make them stop it," Campbell said.
He accused Jindal of putting out false commercials of his own, citing an ad that premiered this week accusing Boasso and Campbell of being soft on government ethics.
"He's put ads out on me that says I haven't done anything on ethics. I don't think that's fair because I have done something on ethics," Campbell said.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, the problem with Louisiana -- and let's not kid ourselves, here, with America as well -- is that we put up with it when politicians campaign as mountebanks and poltroons but then are horribly shocked and disillusioned when we find out they govern as mountebanks and poltroons, too.
What Boasso and Campbell need to do is cut the crap. They knew some smear ads against Jindal were in the works -- if they didn't, and if they didn't know what the ads would say, they are too flippin' incompetent and stupid to be governor of an American state.
And Lord knows, Louisiana now suffers horribly from just that.
FOR TWO WEEKS, Jindal has known that the state Democrats were about to reach into the bottom of the septic tank for something stinky enough to maybe stop the Republican's electoral juggernaut. For two weeks, the media have known that the state Democrats were reaching into the bottom of the septic tank for campaign ads.
Hell, for two weeks I've known the state Dems were trolling around the bottom of the political septic tank in an effort to smear Jindal and use his Catholic faith as a bogeyman to either scare the bejeezus out of Protestants and secularists or, alternatively, make them crazy mad. And I live 1,100 miles from where the action is.
Not that it really matters what the Dems' standard bearers' deal is, whether they're lying or whether they're just stuck on stupid. Neither scenario seems to me to be an attractive trait in a gubernatorial candidate -- standing back, doing nothing as evil is committed on your behalf or loping gape-mouthed through your campaign promising hard-up Louisianians, in effect, "DUUHHHHHHH!"
"DUUHHHHHHH!"they have plenty of now. Not to mention the sheer evil they've put up with from their crooked-ass political class forever. Or so it would seem.
Is that what Louisiana voters really want? More morally-challenged leaders who'll do anything to get elected, or turn their heads and feign ignorance as others do anything to get them elected?
Do Louisiana voters really think Boasso and Campbell -- given their lack of scruples in the face of a moral and political outrage committed in their names -- represent what's needed to bury a toxic tradition of civic outrages against the citizenry by its "servants"?
Well, looking at the gubernatorial polls, you'd hope they don't think so.
Then again, I was pretty hopeful New Orleanians wouldn't be gobstopperingly stupid enough to re-elect Ray Nagin, either.
Oh, and here are the closing paragraphs of gubernatorial candidate Bobby Jindal's New Oxford Review article that the Louisiana Democratic Party didn't mention in its commercial . . . and likely weren't counting on anyone reading:
I trust I have provided enough evidence to indicate that the Catholic Church deserves a careful examination by non-Catholics. It is not intellectually honest to ignore an institution with such a long and distinguished history and with such an impressively global reach. I am not asking non-Catholics to investigate the claims of my neighborhood minister, but rather am presenting a 2,000-year-old tradition, encompassing giants like Aquinas and Newman, with almost a billion living members, including modern prophets like Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II.
Nonetheless, the Catholic Church must live up to her name by incorporating the many Spirit-led movements found outside her walls. For example, the energy and fervor that animate the Baptist and Pentecostal denominations, the stirring biblical preaching of the Lutherans and Calvinists, and the liturgical solemnity of the Anglicans must find expression within Catholicism.
I am thrilled by the recent ecumenical discussions that have resulted in Catholics and Evangelicals discovering what they have in common, in terms of both theology and morality, and as exemplified by joining to oppose abortion and other fruits of an increasingly secular society, but I do not want our Evangelical friends to overlook those beliefs that make Catholicism unique. The challenge is for all Christians to follow Jesus wherever He leads; one significant part of that challenge is to consider seriously the claims of the Catholic Church.
Just as C.S. Lewis removed any room for comfortable opposition to Jesus by identifying Him as either "Lord, liar, or lunatic," so the Catholic Church leaves little room for complacent opposition to her doctrines. Without inflating the issues that separate Catholics from Protestants, for we do worship the same Trinitarian God who died for our sins, I want to refute the notion that Catholicism is merely another denomination with no more merit than any other.
The Reformers who left the Catholic Church rejected, to varying degrees, five beliefs which continue to be upheld by the Catholic Church. The Church claims that these points are found in Scripture, and they have been consistently and clearly taught throughout the Church's history. I will support the Church's claims here.
(1) SCRIPTURE AND TRADITION: Is sola scriptura (the Bible alone) a sufficient basis for the modern Christian to understand God's will?
The Bible does not contain either the claim that it is comprehensive or a listing of its contents, but does describe how it should be used. Scripture and Tradition, not the Bible alone, transmit God's revelation. Tradition is reflected in the Church's authority to interpret Scripture.
+ The meaning of Scripture is not self-evident. One cannot discern its intended meaning through prayerful reading alone, for Scripture is "hard to understand" and individual misinterpretation can lead "to our own destruction" (2 Pet. 3:15-6; see also Acts 8:30-34). The Holy Spirit's guidance, acting through the Church, "the pillar and foundation of truth" (1 Tim. 3:15), is necessary to avoid error since "there is no prophecy of Scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation" (2 Pet. 1:20; see also Mt. 18:17; 1 Tim. 6:3; Rev. 2:17). It is nearly impossible to derive the orthodox understanding of the Trinity, and other teachings which were disputed in the early Christian community, from Scripture alone without recourse to Church teachings. Sincerely motivated Christians studying the same texts have disagreed on the fundamentals of the faith, thereby dividing not only Protestants from Catholics, but also particular Protestant denominations from each other. Post-Reformation history does not reflect the unity and harmony of the "one flock" instituted by Christ (Jn. 10:16; see also Jn. 17:11, 17:21-23; Acts 4:32; Eph. 4:3-6, 4:13; Rom. 12:5, 16:17-18; 1 Cor. 1:10-11, 3:4, 12:12-13; Phil. 1:27, 2:2), but rather a scandalous series of divisions and new denominations, including some that can hardly be called Christian. Yet Christ would not have demanded unity without providing the necessary leadership to maintain it. The same Catholic Church which infallibly determined the canon of the Bible must be trusted to interpret her handiwork; the alternative is to trust individual Christians, burdened with, as Calvin termed it, their "utterly depraved" minds, to overcome their tendency to rationalize, their selfish desires, and other effects of original sin. The choice is between Catholicism's authoritative Magisterium and subjective interpretation which leads to anarchy and heresy. All churches follow their own traditions, but the Catholic Church claims a continuous link to the oral tradition which preceded and formed the canon of Scripture, the same apostolic (Acts 2:42) Tradition St. Paul commanded us to abide by (2 Thess. 2:15; 2 Tim. 2:2).
WHAT JINDAL WAS DOING was using Reformation figure John Calvin's own arguments (and his own words, i.e. "utterly depraved") to make a case for why there needs to be one authoritative body -- the Catholic Church -- in charge of interpreting sacred scripture and codifying Christian doctrine.
And, by the way, Calvin thought we were all utterly depraved, Catholics and Protestants alike. As a Catholic, I think Calvin overstates the case with the word "utterly," but there is some sliver of truth in his position concerning The Fall -- here's what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say about man's fall from grace and original sin.*
You might not agree with Jindal -- and Christians not agreeing with one another is why we have something like 20,000 or 30,000 different Christian denominations today -- but you can hardly say the man was hurling epithets here.
And shame on Louisiana Democrats for resorting to a level of demagoguery and distortion that's . . . well . . . about par for the course for the state party machinery.
Really, if the state's Democrats are that bereft of electable candidates and that wanting for serious political argumentation -- and there's much fodder for such argumentation if they could demonstrate that Jindal intended to govern as a Bush-Rove Republican -- they just need to quit insulting American democracy, quit wasting their donors' money and go home.
THE DEMOCRATS' REAL PROBLEM isn't that Jindal has bad ideas, it's that they have no ideas. And no candidates for governor who promise to be half as competent and/or corruption-free as Jindal does.
And they have no credibility left. Sigh.
*POSTSCRIPT --Here's the Catechism paragraph that most directly deals with Calvin's idea of the "utter depravity" of man:
Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it; subject to ignorance, suffering, and the dominion of death; and inclined to sin—an inclination to evil that is called "concupiscence." Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back toward God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.
It's a fine mess the Bush-Cheney Wrecking Crew has gotten us into. The Army is officially all but broken. Worn out. Shot. Insufficient for the mission anymore.
If the Joint Chiefs snapped one day and said enough is enough, and the tanks started rolling up Pennsylvania Avenue, would ordinary Americans greet the shock troops of the junta as liberators? The president and vice-president have been big on people seeing American troops as "liberators," don't you know?
Sapped by nearly six years of war, the Army has nearly exhausted its fighting force and its options if the Bush administration decides to extend the Iraq buildup beyond next spring.
The Army's 38 available combat units are deployed, just returning home or already tapped to go to Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere, leaving no fresh troops to replace five extra brigades that President Bush sent to Baghdad this year, according to interviews and military documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
That presents the Pentagon with several painful choices if the U.S. wants to maintain higher troop levels beyond the spring of 2008:
* Using National Guard units on an accelerated schedule.
* Breaking the military's pledge to keep soldiers in Iraq for no longer than 15 months.
* Breaching a commitment to give soldiers a full year at home before sending them back to war.
For a war-fatigued nation and a Congress bent on bringing troops home, none of those is desirable.
In Iraq, there are 18 Army brigades, each with about 3,500 soldiers. At least 13 more brigades are scheduled to rotate in. Two others are in Afghanistan and two additional ones are set to rotate in there. Also, several other brigades either are set for a future deployment or are scattered around the globe.
The few units that are not at war, in transformation or in their 12-months home time already are penciled in for deployments later in 2008 or into 2009. Shifting them would create problems in the long-term schedule.
Most Army brigades have completed two or three tours in Iraq or Afghanistan; some assignments have lasted as long as 15 months. The 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, has done four tours.
Two Marine regiments - each roughly the same size as an Army brigade - also in Iraq,- bringing the total number of brigades in the country to 20.
When asked what units will fill the void in the coming spring if any need to be replaced, officials give a grim shake of the head, shrug of the shoulders or a palms-up, empty-handed gesture.
"The demand for our forces exceeds the sustainable supply," the Army chief of staff, Gen. George Casey, said last week. "Right now we have in place deployment and mobilization policies that allow us to meet the current demands. If the demands don't go down over time, it will become increasingly difficult for us to provide the trained and ready forces" for other missions.
Casey said he would not be comfortable extending troops beyond their 15-month deployments. But other military officials acknowledge privately that option is on the table.
Pentagon leaders hope there is enough progress in Iraq to allow them to scale back at least part of the nearly 30,000-strong buildup when soldiers begin leaving Iraq around March and April.
There are 162,000 U.S. troops in Iraq now, the highest level since the war began in 2003. That figure is expected to hit 171,000 this fall as fresh troops rotate in.
Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq who will deliver a much anticipated progress report to Congress in September, said Wednesday he is considering possible troop cuts and believes the U.S. will have fewer forces in Iraq by next summer.
Other commanders have said the security situation is improving, which would allow U.S. troops to be shifted from combat and lead to an eventual force reduction.
Still, Petraeus and other military leaders have warned against drawing down too quickly. In fact, an upbeat progress report in September may solidify arguments that additional troops should stay longer to ensure that positive changes stick.
"The longer that you keep American forces there, the longer you give this process to solidify and to make sure that it's not going to slide back," said Frederick Kagan, an American Enterprise Institute analyst who recently returned from an eight-day visit to Iraq. "The sooner you take them out, the more you run the risk that enemies will come in and try to disrupt."
Kagan, a leading supporter of the current buildup strategy, said any decision to maintain force levels would have to take into account the effects on the Army. That would include, he said, the strains of sending Guard units back to Iraq more rapidly than Pentagon policy allows or keeping active duty units there longer than 15 months.
"You have the same tradeoff at every moment in this process, which is the institutional well-being of the Army versus what is felt is necessary to win the war," Kagan said.
Y'all,
