Revisiting Definitions of War and Insurgency: To Those Who Can’t Afford to Define Themselves

As I write this, the U.S. military is in its fifth day of hearings concerning the Haditha Massacre. Several marines are charged with “unpremeditated murder” of civilians there. The courtroom squabbles concern who in the chain of command was responsible for reporting the allegations of murder, as well as whether soldiers can be charged with killing civilians in combat at all. The larger issues, of course, concern the punishment of the marines who (it is clear by now) slaughtered 24 Iraqis and tried to cover it up. It is that dynamic between the Iraqis, the U.S. marines who killed them, and the U.S. government who get to punish the killers, that has again sparked me thinking about the power to define legitimate and illegitimate enemies as well as fair and unfair violence. It's really a question of who gets to define identities. From Falluja to Haditha to the communities in America giving up their families for a war we did not choose, identity is sold to the highest bidder.

Since 2003, I have wrestled with myself and others over the issue of who enjoys “ownership” of the street struggles in Iraq. My position has always been that neither U.S. and coalition forces, nor “insurgents” or “terrorists,” ever received the opportunity to define themselves and define each other through the establishment of communicative understanding. They lost this ability by virtue of their material servitude to others—to the American and global ruling class that sanctioned this war, to practitioners of backward ideological wars from both the East and West, to a power structure that considers the life of workers (in or out of uniform) expendable. Since the initial invasion and occupation, through periodic revelations of particularly brutal behavior by various factions there (including “ours”), I have posited an admittedly unreasonable, utopian counterfactual: A world where the effort to discern the understanding and perspectives of those affected by a decision (eg, invading a country to remove a dictator) precedes the decision itself, and a world where the powerful would have to justify, really justify, their decisions to the powerless.

The late Robert Anton Wilson wrote “the power to define is the power to destroy” into his play Wilhelm Reich in Hell[1]—and I’ve spotted the occasional use of that phrase, without attribution to Wilson, throughout the blogosphere…including, ironically, on both a Canadian First Nations site and a “Vanguard” White Power site. Wilson writes the phrase coming from Dr. Reich himself, meaning that this discursive power is tied to a network of material and psychic power, in the pursuit of manufacturing more power, in the form of authority, predictability, and the deployment of “primal might” in the form of face-to-face killing.

To some degree, the management of that primal might, the ability to keep it from getting “out of control” and crossing unacceptable lines, is the razors’ edge of managing an occupation. The recent Mental Health Advisory Team report that created a ripple of concern for a few days a couple of weeks ago, confirms the suspicion that we are dealing with extremely an extremely raw human condition.

The study exposes the deteriorating behavioral health status of US troops—including depression, anxiety, alcoholism, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), marital problems and suicide. These mental health and personal problems are shown to directly influence the attitudes US soldiers hold toward the Iraqi population—resulting in increasing levels of terror and brutality meted out to civilians.
Asked whether “all non-combatants should be treated with dignity and respect,” less than half of soldiers agreed. Close to a third of all soldiers reported they had insulted or cursed at non-combatants in their presence. Twelve percent of marines and 9 percent of army soldiers said they had unnecessarily damaged or destroyed Iraqi property; 7 percent of marines and 9 percent of soldiers said they had physically hit or kicked civilians.[2]

Although the United States may be failing strategically in Iraq,(there are not enough coalition soldiers, nor would it be possible to send enough, to gain a strategic advantage), U.S. forces are holding their own tactically, insofar as face-to-face violence is a tactic, where the primacy of the enemy-other eludes definition. The indefinite nature of the occupation further exacerbates this looseness of identity. “We at home,” (the artificial "affected public"[3]), who know nothing about Iraq or Iraqis, know more about the ideologically-assigned identities of Iraqis than those of us who are there.

The moral superiority we draw from lawful punishment of our own soldiers for their brutalities serves to further strengthen our claim to superior brutality. Demarcations of violence exist, which intersect with the rhetorical demarcations of law (itself backed up with the promise of still more violence). We create a spectacle that would have been the envy of all the Caesars: A few of our soldiers slaughter civilians, which is wickedly, impressively brutal, but our legal apparatus is more impressively brutal still, and even has the power to kill our own slaughterers—an act we’re willing to commit in the name of a higher justice than violence, even as we are the masters of violence. Life becomes doubly expendable: those who are initially slaughtered get to have their deaths justified on multiple grounds: It was war, and look, we found out who did it and we’ll punish them; those who did the slaughtering can be trotted out, imprisoned, even executed, to provide closure to the moral questions posed by these relatively un-nuanced displays of violence.

One of the legal-rhetorical demarcations that intersect with the real levels of violence in Iraq is “the power to define.” It’s a question of words, but it has real consequences in the effort to manage perceptions of brutality. In 2004 Paul Craig Roberts wrote that

the US has largely destroyed Fallujah, once a city of 300,000. Hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians have been killed by the indiscriminate use of high explosives. To cover up the extensive civilian deaths, US authorities count all Iraqi dead as insurgents, delivering a high body count as claim of success for a bloody-minded operation.[4]

Now, think for a moment about the demarcations that erase each and every one of the noncombatants killed indiscriminately in the battles of Fallujah. The ethical differences (that is, the way we negotiate the meaning of each other, the treatment we stand to receive from each other, the struggle for identity in each others’ eyes) between those unfortunate civilians in Fallujah and those in Haditha is virtually nonexistent. Once we cross the line and decide that innocent, non-involved living beings are expendable in the service of geostrategic objectives, then all that’s left are legal demarcations, the occasional sacrifice of a few particularly brutal sacrificers, and inevitable cover-ups in a never-ending information management war that follows the real war around like Mother Courage.[5]

Of course, if U.S. forces leave Iraq, atrocities against innocents will continue. There may be other reasons for the U.S. and coalition forces to leave, but the overall level of brutality will remain constant, because the “causes” of that brutality are not found in the national identity of the perpetrators. Instead, brutality is the inevitable outcome of a system that entitles the commission of certain acceptable violence against certain acceptable others—all of those, and all of us, who lack the agency to define our status and identity.

The cry of the dispossessed, whatever their relative level of disposession, in contemporary society is a whispered: We can't afford to be. And yes, the low-level brutalizers now sitting in an air-conditioned American military court are crying it too.



[1] Robert Anton Wilson, Wilhelm Reich in Hell, see http://www.wilhelmreichinhell.com/.
[2] Kate Randall, “Pentagon survey exposes deep demoralization of US occupation troops,” http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/pent-m09.shtml.
[3] See Dana Cloud, “Therapy, Silence, and War: Consolation and the End of Deliberation in the 'Affected' Public,” Poroi Online, http://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/poroi/papers/cloud030816.html.
[4] Paul Craig Roberts, “There is no one left to stop them,” Counterpunch 19 November 2004, http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts11192004.html.
[5] Bertold Brecht, Mother Courage and Her Children, see http://prp.contentdirections.com/mr/cupress.jsp/doi=10.2277/0521597749.

the haters among us

Anyone who might ever be tempted to minimize the extent and severity of racism in contemporary America should feel free to answer me the following:



Why has Barack Obama's candidacy spurred so many racist emails, many with threats of physical violence, murder, etc., that servers and news networks are disabling reader and viewer comments about Obama?


Why have there been so many death threats that Obama uniquely merits Secret Service protection?


Why does Rush Limbaugh keep his job after saying things about Obama on par with the worst Imus said about anyone?


I won't vote for Obama, since I don't vote for Democrats or Republicans...and yeah, I try not to "overdetermine" "identity politics" and all that jazz, but I have seen enough garbage on message boards and in political chat rooms, enough openly racist shit about any and every political subject, that I am long past the illusion that there aren't, in our midst, straight-up white supremacist nazis. Potential stormtroopers (along with a whole lot of people willing to look the other way) for use by demagogues as politics in America continues to run its course. And not just a few of them. People who hate other races, plain and simple, and lots of 'em. He is in danger. What should we do about that?


(Sheez, I have a hard enough time figuring out why anyone from Wyoming, one of the northernmost states, would have a confederate flag on their truck...)


It's not enough just to say "well, I'm not a racist," anymore than, upon seeing a person getting assaulted next to you on the street, it would be enough to say "well, I'm not assaulting anybody."



What is to be done about those among us who tactictly or actively encourage, justify, excuse or execute violence against racial minorities? What are you personally going to do? What would you suggest others do?

Exclusive: Joe Carver's Mea Culpa

This is for the sake of posterity. Everyone needs to know that on April 19, 2007, Joe Carver, that musical snob and marginal excuse for a friend (I keeeeed!), admitted he had been wrong about the Dixie Chicks' Taking the Long Way, and I was right. Right, right, right. Nya nya nya nya boo boo!

carrolltondebate [11:39 A.M.]: a belated mea culpa
carrolltondebate [11:39 A.M.]: that Dixie chicks record was awesome
carrolltondebate [11:39 A.M.]: you could not have been more correct

Tragedy, Responsibility, Hypocrisy

The tragic shootings at Virginia Tech have inspired posturing all over the physical and electronic marketplace of ideas. Gary Lavergne, director of admissions research at the University of Texas at Austin and author of A Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders, wrote a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education in which he makes a provocative, sentimentally appealing, but ultimately problematic declaration about Cho Seung-hui:

In 'Sniper in the Tower' I concluded...that "[Whitman's] actions speak for themselves"....Charles Whitman was a murderer; he killed innocent people. We should not forget that. In Virginia we appear to have a Whitman-like character. It is vitally important for all to remember that there is only one person responsible for what happened in Blacksburg, and that is the man who pulled the trigger....Before we identify and learn the lessons of Blacksburg, we must begin with the obvious: More than four dozen innocent people were gunned down by a murderer who is completely responsible for what happened. No one died for lack of text messages or an alarm system. They died of gunshot wounds. While we painfully learn our lessons, we must not treat each other as if we are responsible for the deaths that occurred. We must come together and be respectful and kind. This is not a time for us to torture ourselves or to seek comfort by finding someone to blame. Maybe as a result of the tragedy we will figure out how to more effectively use e-mail and text messages as emergency tools for warning large populations. We may come up with a plan that successfully clears a large area, with a population density of a midsize city, in less than two hours. Maybe universities will find a way to install surveillance cameras and convince students and faculty members that they are being monitored for their own safety and not for gathering domestic intelligence. All of those steps might be helpful in avoiding and reducing the carnage of any future incidents. But as long as we value living in a free society, we will be vulnerable to those who do harm -- because they want to and know how to do it.

While there is a certain emotional appeal to the idea that we should isolate the blame, and not "blame each other" (not the same, he ignores, as identifying institutional faults that exacerbated the tragedy), his argument simply isn't true. There is not, there is never, only "one person responsible." There may be one person responsible if we file down and systemically demarcate and limit the meaning of responsibility, but such a finding only occurs after we do the philosophical work (consciously or unconsciously) to so limit. The problem is not merely that more systemic and "radical" interpretations of responsibility exist (although I find those explanations much more compelling than a lot of other people do because they help me understand and forgive individual transgressions). The problem is also that even within the very same code-system of bourgeois legalism and individualism this author assumes, we routinely make judgments opposed to the "one person responsible" thesis. We do so every time the state brings charges against a tavern for a drunk driving death, charges against a doctor or hospital for misdiagnosing a patient who then goes on to kill others, charges against a Nazi hate group for a series of racist murders committed by someone who read the group's literature. We routinely hold that there are several, often complex, varying levels and degrees of responsibility. And that's a good thing. This author has no moral or legal basis to declare the shooter to be the ONLY one responsible for what happened. And for him to go further and declare that it is "vitally important" for us to remember this...well, that seems to betray an agenda that makes his argument fair game.

Meanwhile, President Bush did his presidential duty and spoke at the memorial service for those killed at Virginia Tech. Best summary of the implications of that visit comes from David Walsh's article yesterday:

As governor of Texas, Bush presided over the executions of 152 human beings; as president, he has the blood of thousands of Americans, tens of thousands of Afghans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis on his hands. His administration has made unrelenting violence the foundation of its global policies, justifying assassination, secret imprisonment and torture. Speaking of the Blacksburg killings, Bush commented: “Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they’re gone—and they leave behind grieving families, and grieving classmates, and a grieving nation.” If he and his cronies were not entirely immune to the consequences of their own policies, it might strike them that they could be speaking about the masses of the dead in Iraq, who have also done “nothing to deserve their fate.” The president, in his perfunctory remarks, appeared anxious, above all, to put the events behind him. Bush’s comment that “It’s impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering” comes as no surprise. He recognizes instinctively, or his speechwriters do, that considering the “violence and suffering” in a serious manner would raise troubling questions, and even more troubling answers.

Anthem For Doomed Youth (1917)

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of their guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid fire
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

(Poem written by Wilfred Owen, 1917)

more on why the left must reject oppressive religious movements

No, not religion in general.

The recent news that anti-globalization movements have directly reached out to, and worked with various Islamic groups, including sexist, homophobic, and anti-democratic groups, should disturb us deeply.

There are plenty of progressive, democratic religious groups, including Islamic groups, to work with. They may not attract attention because they don't kill babies or assassinate people with whom they disagree, but they're there, and they're far better candidates for progressive causes.

Last year, Fred Halliday put it very well:

...while it is true that Islamism in its diverse political and violent guises is indeed opposed to the US, to remain there omits a deeper, crucial point: that, long before the Muslim Brotherhood, the jihadis and other Islamic militants were attacking "imperialism", they were attacking and killing the left - and acting across Asia and Africa as the accomplices of the west. [...] The reactionary (the word is used advisedly) nature of much of their programme on women, free speech, the rights of gays and other minorities is evident.There is also a mindset of anti-Jewish prejudice that is riven with racism and religious obscurantism. Only a few in the west noted what many in the Islamic world will have at once understood, that one of the most destructive missiles fired by Hizbollah into Israel bore the name "Khaibar" - not a benign reference to the pass between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the name of a victorious battle fought against the Jews by the Prophet Mohammad in the 7th century. Here it is worth recalling the saying of the German socialist leader Bebel, that anti-semitism is "the socialism of fools". How many on the left are tolerant if not actively complicit in this foolery today is a painful question to ask.

(More about the status of women in conservative Islam here...straight from the proverbial horse's mouth, in a clumsy attempt to disco around the issue...)

I think it's time to start a drive to get a broad coalition of progressives, socialists, and left democrats to publicly denounce, and renounce affiliation with, all religious extremism, and all religious movements that advocate the persecution of (or any degree of violence against) labor movements, religious minorities or members of other religions, sexual minorities, women, etc. This is not about being unduly "purist" or fragmentory. This is about foolishly --fatally foolishly-- assuming that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Halliday concludes that the left

does not need slogans to understand that the Islamist programme, ideology and record are diametrically opposed to the left – that is, the left that has existed on the principles founded on and descended from classical socialism, the Enlightenment, the values of the revolutions of 1798 and 1848, and generations of experience. The modern embodiments of this left have no need of the “false consciousness” that drives so many so-called leftists into the arms of jihadis.

Maryland Passes Living Wage Law

Yay! This is from James Parks at the AFL-CIO Weblog on April 9:

Maryland today became the first state to require contractors to pay workers a living wage, the fruit of a months-long coalition campaign that included union members, religious leaders and civil rights advocates. On its last day in session, the Maryland Senate voted, 31-16, to approve the measure, which was passed by the state House last week. Gov. Martin O'Malley(D), who campaigned for the legislation, has promised to sign the bill.
The new law will require service contractors doing business with the state to pay employees $11.30 an hour in urban areas and $8.50 an hour in rural areas. The state's minimum wage is $6.15 an hour.
The final vote is another step toward lifting thousands of Maryland workers out of poverty, says Fred Mason, president of the Maryland State and D.C. AFL-CIO.

Happy Easter?

Yesterday's AP article on Easter throughout the Islamic world was somewhat enlightening. Publicly celebrating Easter is extremely illegal in Saudi Arabia. In this context, the strict interpretation of Wahhabi Islam is not only ridiculous but also fundamentally backward and cruel. Incidentally, it should not be ignored that Saudi Arabia is the one Islamic nation that the U.S. ruling class is most likely to ass-kiss on any given day. That Easter is openly celebrated in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, and even Iraq, is evidence that not all interpretations of Islam are as intolerant as Wahhabi Islam is.

In case the hinted argument isn't getting through, gentle reader, I'll be more blunt: Religious pluralism is more progressive, more advanced, more morally and politically defensible, than the lack of religious pluralism. Progressives should not feel the need to defend repressive versions of Islam any more than they would feel the need to defend repressive versions of Christianity, Judaism, or (if a repressive version of it existed) Zoroastrianism. We need not take sides in the pointless and destructive battles between reactionary right wingers of the Christian and Islamic variety.

And if you get a chance, read Mansoor Hekmat's "Rise and Fall of Political Islam."

University Politics

I teach at a university, but I've never been comfortable in academia. It pays the bills and I enjoy the teaching part of it. I don't feel at all politically compatable with "colleagues" even when I find them nice people personally, and, yes, even when they call themselves liberals, leftists, or radicals. And situations like the one I am about to describe remind me why I feel this way, but also why I feel like I need to stay around...

Harvard Law School's "gadfly" (and recently converted torture advocate) Alan M. Dershowitz has made it his personal cause to convince DePaul Law School to deny tenure to Norman G. Finkelstein. In addition to writing a book taking Dershowitz and others to task for exploiting the Holocaust, Finkelstein also accuses Dershowitz of plagiarism, saying some of the things Dershowitz wrote in his 2003 book The Case for Israel were not quite original.

How does a professor at one university communicate his desire that a professor at another university shouldn't receive tenure? As documented by the April 5 Chronicle of Higher Education, well, ruthlessly:

Last fall, with Mr. Finkelstein up for tenure, Mr. Dershowitz sent the DePaul law school faculty and members of the political-science department what he described, in a letter dated October 3, as a "dossier of Norman Finkelstein's most egregious academic sins, and especially his outright lies, misquotations, and distortions." "I hope that this will serve as an introduction and primer to the so- called scholarship that Finkelstein will present this term as he is considered for tenure," Mr. Dershowitz wrote. Mr. Finkelstein said in an interview on Monday that Mr. Dershowitz had embarked on "this frenetic and relentless campaign to deny me tenure." "He sent to every member of the law school ... a dossier which came, I think, to about 50 pages, leveling or, I should say, recycling all of the allegations he's been putting forth for the past couple of years. And he sent a copy of that dossier to every member of my department."The packet included what Mr. Dershowitz's letter called "some of the lies I am absolutely confident that Finkelstein told" on such points as
Israeli torture and whether or not Mr. Dershowitz writes his own books. In a telephone interview on Wednesday with The Chronicle, Mr. Dershowitz confirmed
that he had sent the information to "everybody who would read it." He said he had compiled the material at the request of some two dozen DePaul students, alumni, and faculty members who were alarmed at the prospect of Mr. Finkelstein's receiving tenure.

Now a lot of people say that academic politics are "small." Small-minded, perhaps, but in some cases, hardly small in magnitude...and, to be fair, most bourgeois politics fit that description: petty in conception but not in impact. And as much as I thought Dershowitz's book on the O.J. Simpson trial, Reasonable Doubts, was enjoyable, well-argued, and enlightening, I must say I have found most of Dershowitz's attitudes and positions to be not only reactionary, but the kind of reactionary one would expect from someone of great material and institutional privilege.

But more importantly: If Dershowitz did indeed plagiarize sections of his 2003 book, there is no doubt in my mind he won't lose his job, and it's doubtful that Dershowitz's immature nastiness will ruin the academic career of Finkelstein--all of which is more than one can say about Ward Churchill, whose head will end up on a platter for alleged sins just-short-of-routinely committed by other scholars. Not only were the findings in the Churchill case dubious, but the process itself violated the very rules of procedure and due process laid out in the Colorado University rules.

(In a phenomenon that is equally demonstrative of academic politics as microcosm, Churchill's situation has been exacerbated by his own long-term tendency to threaten, verbally brutalize, and dismiss others on the left who might otherwise have come to his defense more frequently and enthusiastically.)

The Churchill case, the battle between Dershowitz and Finkelstein, and countless other academic battles demonstrate that academic politics are not merely localized and irrelevant, but alternate as either microcosms or instantiations of larger political battles. This is a lesson which (although I won't get into the details just yet) I am learning myself as I attempt to make my own little section of the Communication Studies discipline more critical and educational. People get pissed off at you, and not merely for reasons of petty academic territoriality. Ideologies and empires are at stake--and given the fact that millions of working class youth (as well as nontraditional students) go through state universities, and that the line between private school privilege and public university access is at times thinner than we might think, the stakes may be very high indeed.

Introducing Noah Thomas Stannard

... born at 8:09 PM, March 28, here in Laramie.

"...modern psychology confirms common experience in teaching that to horrify a young child with stories of brimstone bells, and make it believe that it is a little devil who can only escape from that hell by maintaining a sinless virtue to which no saint or heroine has ever pretended, is to injure it for life more cruelly than by any act of bodily violence that even the most brutal taskmaster would dare to prescribe or justify."
--Bernard Shaw

Feinstein, Class and Death Merchants

From the Silicon Valley Metro, via Alternet, we find that Dianne Feinstein has resigned from the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee:

SEN. Dianne Feinstein has resigned from the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee. As previously and extensively reviewed in these pages, Feinstein was chairperson and ranking member of MILCON for six years, during which time she had a conflict of interest due to her husband Richard C. Blum's ownership of two major defense contractors, who were awarded billions of dollars for military construction projects approved by Feinstein.

Why she was on the subcommittee in the first place should certainly raise eyebrows. But let's just be clear for the sake of thick-headed Democrats who bask in the illusion that their party leaders do no wrong, that the Dems are somehow a bastion of virtue and a genuine alternative to those dirty corrupt Republicans:

1. She approved contracts -- multi-billion dollar contracts-- awarded to her husband. That's no different from what Duke Cunningham did, and in fact is arguably dirtier by virtue of the fact that at least ol' Duke wasn't married to the people he was fellating (or who were fellating him).

2. Let's get something straight: Richard Blum is an arms contractor. He's a merchant of death. So much for the weak arguments made in defense of Clinton, et al, that "at least Democratic corruption doesn't kill people." Feinstein and Blum are part of the death machine. She may be a little (or medium-sized) Eichmann (although Joshua Frank legitimately calls her a war profiteer), but he's a big Eichmann.

3. It's class, stupid. A Democratic millionaire is not the lesser of two evils, any more than a Black millionaire or a female millionaire or a gay millionaire is. If you somehow think Obama or H. Clinton wouldn't do these things if given the opportunity, well, you'll get the President you deserve, I guess. Unfortunately, I will get the one I don't deserve, and so will my family. My children will be drafted to fight in corporate wars because my hippie, semi-radical friends thought that they should vote for Hillary 'cuz she's got a vagina--and since most of my semi-radical hippie friends are above having kids of their own, they will find excuses to defend wars that Democrats start.

And even if they don't start the wars, they don't have any real incentive to stop them: as one commentator said recently on a different blog:

As long as hypocrits like Feinstein profit, the war will go on. Which democrat raking in millions from the slaughter of Iraqi families and GIs is going to act to stop the war?

Let's see how long it takes bourgeois feminists to start defending her...

Dueling ignorances: Bigoted Army Recruiter vs Self-Righteous Gay Black Man

Frankly, it's hard for me to decide who is more ignorant or offensive in this exchange...the recruiter will certainly lose her job, though.

Monday, March 26, 2007

Here's some of the email exchange between Corey Andrew of Jersey City and Sgt. Marcia Ramode on Feb. 27 and March 1 as provided to The Jersey Journal by Andrew. Misspellings, capital letters and grammatical errors are as they appear in the emails:

Sgt. Ramode: My name is Marcia Ramode, and I am United States Army recruiter. I saw your resume on career builder and we have lots of vacant positions in Logistics, Administration...If interested please give me a call at my toll free number.

Andrew: Awesome! Sounds great! The US Military has so many vacant positions and opportunities. I had no idea. I'm seriously considering contacting you. One thing, I'm not up on current politics but since its 2007, I would imagine also that I am now able to serve in the US military as an openly gay man, right?

Ramode: WELL IF YOU ARE GAY WE DON'T TAKE YOU. YOU ARE CONSIDERED UNQUALIFIED.

Andrew: Wow! Unqualified to serve my country just because I'm gay? It's because they think I might all of a sudden desire one last kiss from my fellow male solider if ever facing death at the hands of the enemy in a fox hole, isn't?... Funny, the US Government doesn't mind taking my "gay" dollars every tax season or out of my paycheck every two weeks. I'm stunned that the US ARMY could afford to be so choosey when I see sergeants on my school campus and in the local shopping Mall...begging teenagers to enlist.

Ramode: YOU ARE DEFINITELY UNQUALIFIED, NOW TAKE YOU GAY SELF SOMEPLACE ELSE WE DO NOT TOLERATE GAY PEOPLE LIKE YOU IN ANY PART OF THE MILITARY. AND IF IT BOTHERS YOU PAYING TAXES THEN MIGRATE TO ANOTHER COUNTRY.... AND IF IT BOTHERS YOU ABOUT THE US MILITARY RECRUITING THEN YOU GO TELL THE BOARD OF EDUCATION .... AND IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE RECRUITERS RECRUITING IN FRONT YOU HIGH SCHOOL THEN COMPLAIN TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OR BETTER YET TRY COMPLAINING TO MAYOR BLOOMBERG AND SEE WHAT HE HAS TO SAY... YOU SHOULD SAY THANK YOU MILITARY PEOPLE FOR WHAT YOU DO SO THAT YOU CAN LIVE A FREE LIFE IN THIS COUNTRY. FREEDOM IS NOT FREE.

Andrew: Before you go on waving your flag all over the place let me first inform you, that as an African American who's ancestry is most likely MORE deeply rooted in American history than yours ever will be...I respect the millions of soldiers fighting to protect my rights every day but just so you know, those rights include me being gay... I applaud servicemen and women everyday for their role in our country's protection. However, for you and the government to deem homosexuals "unqualified" to risk their own lives and defend their own freedom as well as their country's freedom, is moronic.

Ramode: OH I FORGOT TO LET YOU KNOW THAT YES YOU MIGHT TO TRY TO KISS A SOLDIER IN THE FOXHOLE SO THAT IS A NO NO.

Andrew: You are living proof that "Don't Ask Don't tell" is a fallacy. You initially rejected me without any consideration whatsoever of my integrity, or abilities. This behavior is at the very core of the discrimination that has plagued the USA for decades. You should know that I never had any intention of joining the military; I simply wanted to have this discussion to prove a point. With over 2,500 cases of anti-gay harassment acts against gay soldiers, including bashings and murders, for you to say the US Military only takes "straights" is delusional.

Ramode: YOU HEAD OFF TO THE GAY LAND OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE NO MORALS AND GET RID OF YOURSELF. PERSONALLY I THINK BEING GAY IS DISGUSTING AND IMMORAL.... AS AN AFRICAN HAVE NO PLACE TO SAY YOUR ROOTS ARE DEEPLY ROOTED HERE. MY ROOTS ARE MUCH TRONGER THAN YOURS. YOU WERE BROUGHT HERE BEING YOUR WILL POWER WHEREAS MY ROOTS RUN FROM THE NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN. I HAVE MORE RIGHTS HERE THAN YOU AND MY ROOTS HAVE BEEN HERE EVER INCE BEFORE THE AMERICAS WERE DISCOVERED...YOU TAKE YOUR GAY A- OFF SOMEPLACE AND GO TO SOME OTHER COUNTRY AND BADMOUTH THE MILITARY...TAKE YOUR A-- BACK WHERE YOU BELONG NOT HERE.

Andrew: Clearly with your limited vocabulary and poor spelling, the Army mayhave been the only option YOU had in life. Granted, there are highly intellectual people in the military. You're just not one of them. ...Native American history you are so proud of and research their position on homosexuality. They are very tolerant and accepting of homosexuals believing that the inner spirit is true to itself in its nature. They are less tolerant of fools than they are of homosexuals. So take that to your next rain dance.

Ramode: YOU GO BACK TO AFRICA AND DO YOUR GAY VOODOO LIMBO TANGO AND WANGO DANCE AND JUMP AROUND AND PRANCE AND RUN ALL OVER THE PLACE HALF NAKED THERE AND PRACTICE YOUR GAY ORALS OVER THERE THAT'S WHERE YOU BELONG....I AM REPORTING YOU AS SPAM AND ADDING YOU TO MY BLOCK SENDER LIST SO I DO NOT HAVE TO HEAR FROM YOU AGAIN....

More about the army we got

My friend Zack added this:

you know, my cousin left for Iraq this week with a knee not suited for a 65 year old person(as he was told by an army doctor). His duties in Iraq will include carrying an automatic weapon that is more weight then I have seen him be able to bear while helping set up his wedding reception. He is counting days until they no longer own his soul...I have nothing but respect for men and women in uniform, I think it is despicable how the Pentagon shits on them constantly.

Going to war with the army you have...

The U.S. Army is ordering injured troops to go to Iraq. Enough said.

Woman

So somebody apparently referred to John Edwards as, hypothetically, "the first woman president."

My take:

Identity politics=stupid and counterproductive. Condoleeza Rice would do horrible, awful things if she were President. Hillary Clinton may very well be President, and will undoubtedly do horrible things behind liberal face paint.

Affirming diversity of identities among human beings in the material world=good, provided that such distinctions do not cause disproportionate social harm. We need to understand that groups are singled out, divided and conquered, colonized with cheap ideology for the sake of maintaining material power relations. We need to appreciate --and, moreso, enjoy-- cultural differences.

But the main point of this post is about me. Being a burly, teddy bearish, but sensitive and reasonably intelligent male=priceless.

Movies that make me cry every time I watch them include "A League of their Own" (the scene where the player receives the letter saying her husband has been killed in the war), and "Last Temptation of Christ" (the entire last third of the movie where Jesus believes he has been freed from the cross, starts a family, realizes things are messed up, etc...).