Monday, July 28, 2008

political bits

1. After Obama's FISA vote I'm finally starting to wish that McKinney had a chance of winning this election. Obama's still my choice but his vote took some of the shine off. Before this I basically viewed him as someone whose ideals I strongly agreed with, but who occasionally had to make some difficult pragmatic compromises with current political reality in order to get elected. Now I'm slightly less certain of where his real convictions lie.

2. This mantra that "the surge worked" seems really silly to me. From the perspective of anyone who opposed the Iraq War on philosophical or ideological grounds (e.g. because they are pacifists, because the conflict didn't satisfy their particular conditions for a just war, because they don't believe the US should be an empire, etc.) the surge's "success" just demonstrates our own technical proficiency in doing the wrong thing. It's like complimenting the DC sniper for his marksmanship.

1 comment:

sondjata said...

I like that comparison with the DC sniper. I think I'll borrow that for future use.