Omg... are you faux real?

Ta ta, Cindy

By ANGELA K. BROWN, Associated Press Writer

FORT WORTH, Texas - Cindy Sheehan, the soldier's mother who galvanized an anti-war movement with her monthlong protest outside President Bush's ranch, says she's done being the public face of the movement.

"I've been wondering why I'm killing myself and wondering why the Democrats caved in to George Bush," Sheehan told The Associated Press by phone Tuesday while driving from her property in Crawford to the airport, where she planned to return to her native California."Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives," she wrote. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most."

Isn't she right? Our country does care more about who won American Idol than what happened in the world. What a sad commentary on the state of our attention spans, our self-centeredness, and on what it means to be an American today.

(P.S. I love American Idol but I can also tell you what's going on in the world. Nothing wrong with liking superficial and trivial things as long as you realize that's what they are!)

Hmmmm...

I've been thinking more about the war in Iraq, of course... and been thinking about it from a broader perspective. Foreign policy has always been the purview of the President and although Congress technically declares "war," that declaration doesn't apply like it used to apply. We don't fight states or countries any longer; we fight ideology and smaller pockets of people. Some of it is state-sponsored, sure... but we don't fight the same groups of people that we did in the past. This is the start of an argument about why diplomacy is even more important than in the past-- but that's not my point now although I'll be talking about that sometime this weekend.

My point is... the President has the power to lead our military and to make decisions that affect military situations. As much as I dislike the stubbornness of this administration and their absolutely criminal mismanagement of this particular war, I still have to appreciate the President's insistence to retain this crucial power of the Presidency. Do we really want 535 voices screaming at each other in every military situation? Shouldn't we let the leader lead? Yes, we suffer the consequences under this system if the leader is poor but I think the consequences of allowing Congress to "manage" a war is worse. The Congress can always control the funding for the war (though it's political suicide to revoke funding for a war that's in-progress) but I guess that's how I think it should be.

Discussion and debate are fantastic byproducts of living in the Republic that we do; in times of military urgency, however, debate should be replaced with action. Granted, I hope and pray that our next President has the foresight to plan this action both in the short-term and in the long-term but I still think it should be his (or her) decision. Getting Congress involved only makes a messy situation messier. Let's just hope the President can find the courage to do the right thing and get us out of this quagmire that has only made us as Americans less safe and less secure.

P.S. God Bless Rosie. Keep fighting. If you can look past her brash confrontational style, I really do think she made some excellent points on The View. Hopefully voices of opposition won't be quashed in the way hers was.

I got nothin.

30 Rock is F*CKING FUNNY.

That is all.

War ramblings

I've been sitting here thinking about how I'm watching The Simpsons and there is some 27-year-old in Iraq, knowing that at any time he/she could be blown up, kidnapped and beheaded, or shot. There is just so much hypocrisy in the Bush adminsitration and its allies. The rationale used to justify a pointless, disorganized, criminally mismanaged war isn't allowed to be used in any other situation without being "terrorism" or "insurgencies." They don't have the right to defend their homeland? They don't have the right to do all they can to limit terrorist attacks [by getting the American invaders the hell out of their country]? An argument could be made that we're just as much "punks" as anyone else. We invaded a country with little or no plan to sustain peace; we murdered thousands upon thousands of Iraqi citizens with little or no reason; and we have absolutely no coherent strategy for dipomatic efforts to encourage all divergent sides to agree to a long-term peace deal.

The President has criminally mismanaged this war and has thrust our country into cheap thuggery that isn't all that different from what the terrorists themselves do. For the first time, I feel embarrassed to be an American. I know that war is sometimes needed and is sometimes the only option. I'm not a complete pacifist. I will say, however, that this war, at this time, in this region is so unnecessary and causes so much more harm than good. I am embarrassed by our ignorant, stubborn "leader" and the abhorrent loss of life and credibility we have endured over the last several years.

People just refuse to look at it that way because "America is always right." Well guess what? We're not on this one. We've made a gigantic error in judgment; we have acted hypocritically, embracing ideals like freedom and "democracy all the while limiting the freedom of Iraqis; and we sit idly by as our exceptionally brave brethren sit like bullseyes for a war without a end strategy that our bumbling idiot of a President can't explain in any detail. Yes, I mean "we." All of us as Americans have been made less safe because of this pathetic mockery of true leadership. All of us as Americans allow innocent Americans and innocent Iraqis to die in vain. All of us as Americans have allowed the goodwill and energy of our country after 9-11 to be squandered away instead of allowing it to bring the world together. All of us have become numb to the reality that our country may not be perfect. For shame, President Bush, and for shame to all the people who are too blind-sided by patriotism to see what damage our country has done to the world.

Listen to one of the Framers of our Constitution and one of the greatest Presidents in American history: "Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war." --John Adams