Sherry Chandler

On this anniversary eve of our invasion of Iraq, Kevin Drum draws together two articles that indicate how the current administration is militarizing our “War on Terror” (the very terminology makes me shudder).

First is a report by Josh Meyer in the LATimes indicating just how much our military effort overshadows our diplomacy:

The overall cost of the U.S. war on terrorism has ballooned to at least $502 billion since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, with the administration now requesting that Congress fund another $93 billion this year for the Pentagon’s counter-terrorism programs alone, and $142 billion for 2008.

Conditions are much different at the State Department, which is charged with coordinating the U.S. government’s international role in the war on terrorism. Its task includes overseeing aid to foreign governments and making sure the overall campaign balances military power, diplomacy, economic development, law enforcement and intelligence gathering.

The State Department requested $157.5 million for its major counter-terrorism programs this year but received $20 million less than that from Congress.

Why? Well because, apparently, the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist:

The U.S. approach to counter-terrorism is that “enemies simply need to be killed or imprisoned so that global terrorism or the Iraqi insurgency will end,” Bruce Hoffman, a senior fellow at the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy, told a House Armed Services subcommittee last month.

Throwing everybody in jail worked so well in the War on Drugs. (Yuck! Another horrible term.)

Second is an item from William Arkin at the Washington Post that points out just how many civilians in our counterterrorism and intelligence systems are being replaced by military men:

[General Dell] Dailey at the State Department, Admiral Mike McConnell as the Director for National Intelligence, General Michael Hayden in charge of the CIA, General James R. Clapper Jr. as Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Lt. Gen. William J. (Jerry) Boykin as Deputy Under Secretary for Intelligence, Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Michael Ennis as Deputy Director for Human Intelligence at the CIA: All of these men have replaced civilians or sit is normally civilian billets.

Are there no civilians in America who are capable or competent enough to fill these critical political appointments to oversee our military and intelligence establishment? Are there no professional policy specialists, no academics, no consultants, no ambassadors? When it comes to Gen. Dailey’s assignment, are there no civilian Foreign Service officers who can represent our oldest department in the execution of American foreign policy?

So — Bush may say he’s seeking diplomatic solutions — when did we ever believe that? — but as Kevin says:

…money talks, and judging by the money it spends the Bush administration … is all military all the time. It’s the fastest way imaginable to lose the war on terror and mortgage our country’s future to the Bank of China at the same time. Quite a legacy, no?

Apologia pro Poemate Meo

I, too, saw God through mud --
    The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
    War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
    And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

Merry it was to laugh there --
    Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.
    For power was on us as we slashed bones bare
    Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.

I, too, have dropped off fear --
    Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,
    And sailed my spirit surging, light and clear
    Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn;

And witnessed exultation --
    Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl,
    Shine and lift up with passion of oblation,
    Seraphic for an hour; though they were foul.

I have made fellowships --
    Untold of happy lovers in old song.
    For love is not the binding of fair lips
    With the soft silk of eyes that look and long,

By Joy, whose ribbon slips, --
    But wound with war's hard wire whose stakes are strong;
    Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips;
    Knit in the welding of the rifle-thong.

I have perceived much beauty
    In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;
    Heard music in the silentness of duty;
    Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.

Nevertheless, except you share
    With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,
    Whose world is but the trembling of a flare,
    And heaven but as the highway for a shell,

You shall not hear their mirth:
    You shall not come to think them well content
    By any jest of mine.  These men are worth
    Your tears:  You are not worth their merriment.

November 1917.

Text from Project Gutenberg

Though I don’t link to them here because this blog is ostensibly about poetry and culture in Kentucky, I read a handful of liberal political blogs almost every day. That fact, I think, sort of makes me a wonk. I know more about a lot of political issues than probably 99% of the public, though what I know has a definite liberal slant. Sometimes getting my news slanted that way can blind-side me a little — I really thought John Kerry was winning the 2004 election — but not often.

The one blog I read every day is Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo. Although Josh is more of a DLC Democrat than I am, more hawkish, I go there for actual reporting, what Marshall calls “opinion journalism.” Other liberal bloggers are more interested in politics and political maneuvering. Marshall aptly compares them to pamphleteers. Marshall is interested in issues, in news analysis. And he operates by a sort of grass-roots open-source reporting, by tapping into the expertise and local knowledge of his thousands of readers across the country. I find that very attractive.

He describes himself as “disciplined” and that is attractive too. We have discussed here how many bloggers have what one might call diarrhea of the keyboard.

He has been very successful and has turned a simple blog, Talking Points Memo, into a multi-facted “blog empire,” as described in this article in the Los Angeles Times.

I draw your attention to this article, however, not to hype Marshall (I don’t think he needs my hype) but because of this passage I found in it on the nature of blogging:

BLOGGING has famously unleashed the opinions of multitudes. There are, by very rough count, 60 million bloggers around the world today. Some projections have that number nearly doubling again this year. Depending on which side of a vitriolic divide you fall — that is, whether you think this is good or bad — this represents either the end of civilization or the rise of true democracy.

There are blogs for baseball teams, for fast food, for God and for Satan; there are lots of blogs on politics and Hollywood and at least one that deals exclusively with pharmaceutical industry research. There are hundreds of blogs on Iraq and more than you would imagine in Mongolia.

Though the numbers and breadth of blogging are indeed astonishing, it’s not at all clear what the numbers mean, if they mean anything at all. Much of what constitutes the phenomenon of blogging is apt to be inconsequential for the simple but powerful fact that nobody reads most of them. That is, aside from their authors, literally nobody.

Most of these blogs are the creations of individuals who have a passion to write, usually about a single subject, that subject often being themselves. Some of them are truly horrible and, thankfully, short-lived. The passion burns out.

Others, though, are remarkably good.

The article, written by Terry McDermott, whom I take to be male, goes on to talk about the really good sports blogs he knows about.

All in all, however, McDermott can’t help but sneer just a little at blogs that aren’t about important subjects like politics or sports. It is probably true that most people don’t have the talent or the interest to blog for any length of time, though I see no reason to belittle blogs that talk about the blogger’s life. Ordinary people are — well, there are no ordinary people. Everybody’s got a story to tell and everybody tells the story in his/her own way. Sometimes telling your story helps you understand it. People have long had an urge to record their lives in journal and diaries, to leave artifacts.

The personal blogs I read teach me a lot about what it means to be human. They are “about” a lot of things, though mostly sort of arty, I guess. Their approaches to the art of blogging are as unique as they are. I hope their writers blog or journal on for years.

I invite you to explore my blog roll. You’ll meet some fun people there.

Related article in the NYTimes: Look at Me World!: Self-Portraits Morph Into Internet Movies.