Writing for the Sake of Keeping Up?

It's almost the end of July and I am just now writing my first post of the month. Boo me. I can't even hide behind the excuse of having been too busy because that would just be false. Meh...

Some things in the news:

The Oil Spill:
I have mostly stayed away from this because there has been so much commentary in the media that I really don't have anything new to add. It is an incredibly sad event for the families of the lost oil workers and it is an environmental catastrophe - not to mention the damage that it will do to the economy of the Gulf Coast, which was just starting to recover from Hurricane Katrina. BP, for its part, has presented to the American public a parade of excuses, deflections, and criminally low estimates of the damage. The federal government, meanwhile, stands by helplessly while trying to convey the illusion that it has the situation under control. All of this has been said and my additions are nothing new, but there they are.

The Israeli Flotilla Raid:
A bunch of activists (many, though not all, with obvious extremist ties) set sail from Turkey with about six ships filled with aid supplies, knowing that they would be violating this Israeli naval blockade and that they would be putting themselves in great physical danger. I see this kind of like charging a police riot line - you may not agree with those guys with the batons, but that isn't going to make it hurt any less when you find yourself getting clubbed in the temple. Except of course that these were not police that the ships were challenging. They were the military, who is not trained very well in the art of detaining, but who are trained very well in the art of extreme physical violence. Knowing this, the activists on the ships could not have actually thought that their primary goal was to provide aid. If they had wanted to do that, they would have gone through the checkpoints like all the other international aid. But instead the goal was to create an international incident - which is exactly what they did.

I feel that I have to address my feelings about the Israeli position, lest I seem more lenient on them than I actually am. I have seen excerpts from the list of banned items and some of them do seem unreasonable. In addition to that, Israel has long grown tired of fruitless negotiations with Hamas (the faction that controls Gaza) and their reaction has been to forge ahead with policy unilaterally. This provides them with ability to move "forward," but not always in the most productive way. Israel - as with all democracies - is subject to whatever political power has been installed by its finicky electorate and those powers often make rash decisions in order to placate an oft reactionary and ill-informed constituency. I believe Winston Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. Israel seems to be making that point. Israel is, at its core, a country of good people and a country that has every right to exist within secure and recognized borders. I just with it could get there more amicably.

Secret Military Documents Released:
Everyone seems to be getting all panty-bound about money being wasted, secret units that hunt high priority targets, Pakistan's ISI likely training or funding certain Taliban elements, the fact that drones sometimes miss and kill civilians, the revelation of shaky or downright misleading intelligence, or the stunning realization that some elements of the chain of command sometimes question our tactics about winning the war. All of that has been discussed extensively in the public already and, while the documents that have just been released may be classified, the fact their contents are true is not a secret. What should be getting people upset are things like the sudden wealth of after-action reports and that these reports may provide those who wish us ill an ability to find patterns, revealing strategies and tactics which, if discovered, may pose a grave threat to our cause and servicemen downrange.

I guess that's all I have the energy to discuss for now. More later, maybe.

It's fine to criticize the government for not reacting fast enough to the Gulf oil spill. Healthy criticism should always be welcome and I am sure that there were mistakes in the response to this disaster. What I have a problem with is unfounded conspiracy theory masked as expert commentary. This is why I have such a problem with Fox news. They bring on Mike "Heckuva Job" Brown to Cavuto (itself a news commentary show disguised as journalism) in order to give him a platform to rant about the supposed ineptitude of the Obama administration in light of the recent oil spill. As if he has room to talk. Remember that this is the guy who, during Hurricane Katrina, denied that there was a refugee crisis building in the Superdome days after the media had been filling their news with it. This is the guy who said that he was an "assistant to the city manager with emergency services oversight," when he really had no managerial responsibilities. As if that were experience worthy of a directorial position at FEMA anyway.

So of all the subject matter experts that Neil Cavuto could have brought on to his show, he chooses the most discredited laughing stock that he could possibly find. Maybe I am giving My Cavuto too much credit. Maybe he really didn't have a lot of experts to choose from because they know that their mere appearance on his show could damage their reputations as respected experts. I am of course not saying that is the case; I am just supposing. Speaking of which, that's exactly what Michael Brown did on Cavuto's show. He didn't directly accuse the Obama administration of letting the spill go, he just put the possibility out there in no uncertain terms. Fox loves to do this in general, but shows like Cavuto, Glenn Beck and O'Reily are especially guilty in this game.

But let's just take a look at the accusation (which is exactly what it really was, veiled or not). What did Mr. Brown use as evidence? Pure supposition:

"...I think the delay was this: It’s pure politics. This president has never supported big oil. He has never supported offshore drilling. And now he has an excuse to shut it back down.

You’ve already heard Bill Nelson, senator from Florida, talking about offshore drilling is DOA. They played politics with this crisis and left the Coast Guard out there by themselves doing what they’re supposed to do."

There is no hard evidence. Not emails, nor citations of speeches. No witnesses to the conspiracy. Nothing. And yet, half of this country is now going to believe that there is a conspiracy by the radical, environmentalist Obama administration to cause billions of dollars of damage and untold environmental damage to the economies and coasts of the five Gulf Coast states so that they can dismantle the entire off-shore drilling industry and cause further shocks to the American economy and workforce. All of this in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression. It makes perfect sense, right?