Sherry Chandler

6 Comments

• 1. Helen Losse replies at 24th October 2007, 10:35 am :

  Great post, Sherry. While I have friends whose homes are in danger in California, I think of the still-homeless in New Orleans. Most of the people in California have insurance to re-build. Not that dead isn’t dead no matter who or where you are. Money talks. This is surely not the anti-Katrina.

• 2. Poppysmatus replies at 24th October 2007, 12:12 pm :

  Guess all those flag-draped patridiots like Glenn Beck can clap their clean little hands with glee at the thought that so many Murka-haters have been burnt out & so will be unable to read Juan Cole’s post today. Juan muses on why there may have been a dramatic decrease in the number of dead American soldiers these past two months: ground forces have gotten very, very cautious and started calling in air missions, which have quadrupled this year; several cities such as Falluja and Mosul are under curfews and traffic bans. Juan also notes that it is a violation of international law to bomb civilian areas if they are under your occupation and that the UN has cited us’ens for that, but that does not seem to have deterred Brisk George & his minions. So, why are many of those state National Guard helicopters not present in California to help fight their fires, again?

• 3. thepoetryman replies at 25th October 2007, 9:30 am :

  California’s Lt. Governor, John Garamendi sees it differently…Differently than Bush. He, more or less, called Bush an incompetent arsehole!

• 4. sherry replies at 25th October 2007, 11:26 am :

  Thanks, Helen — as things kind of wind down in Southern California, I hope your friends are okay. At this point, it looks like the damage is mostly to property, which can be devastating enough. Still I think the whole country is breathing a sigh of relief that the human toll seems low.

  And, as another indication that money talks, I ran across this remark in an Andy-Kondrat blog post at Huffington Post:

  And, in case you were worried, when it all started, the news coverage focused more on the multi-million dollar homes catching fire than the (then) more deadly fires closest to the Mexican border. How odd.

  …But because (more) fancy mansions might burn down and white dudes might lose their houses, states of emergency are declared, and the president is stopping in on Thursday to tell us that everyone’s doing a heck of a job.

  I think we have become very cynical as a country.

• 5. sherry replies at 26th October 2007, 7:02 am :

  Ah, Poetry Man, some one in California speaks the truth anyway. The NYTimes is all full of how Arnie & Geordie are buddy-buddy again But there’s something about the accompanying photo from Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse-Getty Images that belies that.

  

  Wee Geordi has the look here of a clueless victim unaware that the monster is ready to leap.

  Meanwhile he has to get in one more dig at poor Kathleen Blanco:

  The president pointedly praised Mr. Schwarzenegger’s handling of the country’s biggest disaster since Hurricane Katrina two years ago, making veiled comparisons to local relief efforts at that time in Louisiana.

  “It makes a big difference when you have someone in the statehouse willing to take the lead,” Mr. Bush said at a news conference, in an apparent dig at the Louisiana governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, a Democrat. He also assured California residents, “We’re not going to forget you in Washington, D.C.”

• 6. sherry replies at 26th October 2007, 10:39 am :

  Ah, Poppysmatus, I find bombing horrifying. My poem “Charity’s Philippic” at The Pedestal is a reflection of how I feel about dropping bombs.

  Fred Kaplan at Slate has more on this strategy of using bombs to hold down U.S. casualties in Iraq:

  So, what accounts for the decline in American deaths since the summer? It’s hard to say for sure, but one little-reported cause is almost certainly a relative shift in U.S. tactics from fighting on the ground to bombing from the air.

  On Sunday, U.S. soldiers were searching for a leader of a kidnapping ring in Baghdad’s Sadr City. The soldiers came under fire from a building. Rather than engage in dangerous door-to-door conflict, they called in air support. Army helicopters flew overhead and simply destroyed the building, killing several of the fighters but also at least six innocent civilians.* (The bad guy got away.)

  In other words, though the shift means greater safety for our ground troops, it also generates more local hostility. Striking urban targets from the air inevitably means killing more innocent bystanders. This makes some of the bystanders’ relatives yearn for vengeance. And it makes many Iraqis—relatives, neighbors, and others watching the news of the attack on television—less trusting of the American troops who are supposedly protecting them.

  In a conventional war, these consequences might be deemed unavoidable side-effects. But in a counterinsurgency campaign, where the point is to sway the hearts and minds of the population, wreaking such damage is self-defeating.

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