4-23-2004
Pat Tillman

I'd like to express my gratitude to the family of Pat Tillman, the Army Ranger, free spirit and former NFL star killed in action Thursday in Afghanistan. I'd like to offer his family whatever consolation is possible at a time like this, and I'd like to thank him for his service.

Mr. Tillman, a tackling machine in his playing days, once turned down a lucrative free agent contract to remain loyal to the team which gave him his break, the Arizona Cardinals. After the attacks of 9-11, his brother talked about joining the Army to do something about it -- and Mr. Tillman walked away from his lucrative NFL contract to sign up with his brother. Totally old school, totally honorable, and in a word used too often and too easily nowadays, totally heroic.

I may be wrong, but I do not believe Mr. Tillman ever did an interview after signing up. He wasn't some former star, he was yet another patriot trying to prove he could make the cut and become one of the Ranger elite. He succeeded.

Regular readers will know I'm an unbending critic of the occupation of Iraq, and long-term readers will know that I am a militaristic peacenik. I'm not one of the "war is never the answer" types; I value our military so highly I never want to see their lives wasted. Sometimes war is indeed the answer, and it's left to people like Mr. Tillman to fight them.

A time of condolence and vicariously shared grief is no time for politics, but I must say I am angry at this news. I'm angered that there are 120,000 U.S. soldiers in a dead-end sinkhole called Iraq and only 10,000 U.S. soldiers involved in the hunt for mass murderer Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. I cannot help but wonder if 130,000 soldiers had been sent to kill bin Laden three years ago if Pat Tillman would still be alive today, and his family could be basking in pride inside of grieving a loss.

Mr. Tillman was 27 years old.

Here's to hoping the Arizona Cardinals retire his number and hang his uniform in their stadium.

His Army Ranger's uniform, that is.

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4-21-2004
Wisdom for a kid

A slacker is a loser who only hurts himself.

A loser is a slacker who takes other people down with him.

This definition brought to you by KCI, Knucklehead Cracking International, disciplining other people's kids since 1986.
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4-20-2004
The Rights Stuff

The idea that it's a good thing to make sure a leader has some imposed restraints was established by the Magna Carta 789 years ago -- and today is the day President Bush may get reminded of that fact.

Article 39 of The Great Charter declares "no freeman shall be taken or imprisoned ... except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land." Keep that in mind because we'll get back to it soon.

The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments today on the legality of the "enemy combatants" being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Eight days from now it will hear related cases of two U.S. citizens who have been held without trial or charge because of their "enemy combatant" status.

While the legal issues in these cases are narrow, the sweep is profound. The legal position of the Bush Administration is that federal courts cannot micromanage a war -- that the power of a president, as commander in chief, is unquestioned in the Constitution.

The Bush Administration uses some fuzzy law to back up its claims on the Gitmo detainees, most notably an obscure case involving German saboteurs in WW II. They were convicted by a military tribunal sitting on foreign soil and appealed to U.S. courts for relief. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Johnson v. Eisentrager, ruled federal courts had no jurisdiction over foreign nationals tried on foreign soil.

Not many Americans would disagree with that. Thing is, perhaps now you see why the prisoners are being held in Guantanamo; it's clearly a U.S. base, but the ultimate title to the land is held by Cuba. Detainees from Afghanistan weren't sent there for the climate, folks. It's a legal loophole. Worse still, the detainees haven't even made it before military tribunal. Forget due process; there hasn't been any process for them so far.

The high court has been flooded with friends of the court briefs, including one from a European outfit, that according to media reports, fits with what I've been saying all along -- that the entire concept of an "enemy combatant" is bogus.

Think about it. If you have an enemy, and you have combat, it sounds like war to me. And if somebody is captured in a war, they are a prisoner of war.

So why would the Bush Administration not want to declare the detainees POWs? Because POWs must be released at the end of hostilities. See the problem here? In this new style war, what standard would be used to decide hostilities are over?

Considering most of the detainees were captured in Afghanistan, and the major fighting there has been over for a couple of years, one could make the case it's time for those people to be sent home. As it is, the detainees aren't asking to be released. Merely, they are asking to see a lawyer, asking to see a judge, asking for some sort of just process to decide their fate. President Bush proclaims he has a religious duty to bring democracy and justice to the world, yet apparently sees no contradiction in acting like a despotic king when it comes to the detainees.

Like I said earlier, the specific legal issues are narrow and the court is expected to side with the president; not a big surprise considering Justice Scalia's penchant for giving speeches praising free speech while harassing and impeding the free press in its right to cover those speeches. The Constitution, apparently, isn't what it used to be.

Truthfully, if you cut through all the legal hoops, the matter is incredibly simple. If you are deemed an enemy combatant -- even if you are a U.S. citizen -- the protections of the Constitution no longer apply. Everything the U.S. has preached to other countries about justice and due process is a lie. Everything in the U.S. Constitution will have an asterisk -- we believe in all this *unless you're a terrorist.

Bad enough the treatment of the detainees has hurt America with its allies. Even worse if it hurts the Constitution, too.

A final ruling is not expected before June.

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4-13-2004
The Bush Box

Last night President Bush said failure in Iraq was unthinkable, unacceptable.

The problem with that line of thinking is that the failure is already here. It's been here all along, and Mr. Bush just refused to see it.

If failure is defined as not attaining victory, then victory must be possible in the first place. If victory is never possible, then the failure is not at the end of things, it's at the very beginning.

George Bush, in crying we must stay the course, neglects to mention he created the course; in fact, he uses fuzzy English to describe how the U.S. got on that course in the first place. He created Saddam Hussein as an imminent threat when in fact Hussein was a U.N.-contained nuisance. To use redneck bar terminology, Hussein got Bush's goat, and Bush's mouth wrote a check his butt couldn't cover.

The next time you are lost in a new city, take whatever road you are currently on and just keep driving because you'll reach your target. If you think that sentence makes no sense, apply it to Bush Administration Iraq policy. The Bush doctrine can be summed up in something women know intuitively. Men don't stop and ask directions.

The stated goal of U.S. Iraq policy is to bring democracy to that country. The first vote will be to get the U.S. out. The second vote, if it follows popular will, will be to create an Islamic state because there's no history in that region of a separation of church and state. And the third vote, well, there will be no third vote. It's similar to the history of democracy in newly created African countries -- one man, one vote, one time.

In discussion after discussion, people drill me for saying the only smart thing is to leave immediately. They tell me if we do, Iraq will become the breeding ground of terrorists we're supposed to be wiping out. And once again, my response is that failure is already here.

Iraq is more of a breeding ground for Jihadists than it ever was in the past. The U.S. isn't killing monsters; it's creating monsters. If the war on terror was the goal -- which it wasn't at the time, it was WMD -- Syria or Iran was a better target. If you want to bring peace to the Middle East via nation-building, it makes more sense to start in Palestine. If you want to bring democracy to the Middle East, it would have been cheaper to start with U.S. allies such as Egypt or Saudi Arabia.

Here's why I argue for immediate withdrawal.

Since Vietnam analogies are currently the rage RE Iraq, let me leave you with one thought. It took less than two years to go from peace with honor to the fall of Saigon. What kind of odds would you put right now that Iraq is a peaceful place two years after U.S. forces leave?

It offends me that President Bush says that people who speak the way I do are disloyal to the troops and aiding the enemy. I am so loyal to the troops I want them home alive. It offends me that in a grey world, President Bush sees only black and white, his way or no way. Most of the world saw a third path for Iraq. I sure enough saw it. I just wish Mr. Bush had, too.

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I had a dream. It went like this.

The Canadians, after years of a secret military buildup, come pouring down from the north. With planes and tanks and helicopter gunships, they move on Washington to depose Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy and the rest of the liberal elitist conspiracy that's been promoting gay marriage, prescription drug benefits and socialism in general. The future lies in this enlightened, time-tested form of conservative democracy, and the Canadian public is told the onward Christian soldiers will be greeted as liberators.

So how does conservative America act? Some wave as the troops go by, but many are suspicious of Canuck ulterior motives. Most have a wait-and-see attitude, but one by one, opinions change as bombs drop, as relatives are killed, either directly or as collateral damage.

After a few months, things turn ugly. Where it used to be just liberals fighting, more and more conservative Americans start shooting at the Canadians, too. They're not crazy about Hillary, but they are even less crazy about an occupying army. The liberators, by becoming pacifiers, become targets. A few voices from Vancouver say it's the exact same thing that happened to the U.S. Marines in Beirut, but few Canadian papers care.

Back in occupied America, resistance is particularly stiff in Arkansas, the Soo-eee triangle, where Razorbacks loyal to the former regime demand the Canadians go home. When the The Democrat-Gazette is shuttered by the ruling authorities, widespread fighting breaks out in the streets. The Canucks crack down viciously, killing both insurgents and civilians, to quell the unrest.

And in Toronto they ask "Why don't the Americans like us? We are there to do them a favor." The answer goes something like this -- "if you want someone to like you, don't bomb, strafe and kill them" -- but few Canadians hear such news from the CBC. The news is dominated by support of the troops. Anything else is bad for ratings.

When I awoke from the dream, I felt so relieved. Thank goodness something so nonsensical could ever happen in the real world.

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Jobs Boom: Unemployment rises from 5.6 to 5.7 percent. That nonsensical headline appeared on CNN Friday April 2. I shouldn't pick on CNN because most other media outlets played it straight as well. Well, straight being a relative term -- considering the focus on 300,000 allegedly created jobs has to qualify as more spin than progress IF THE NEW JOBS COULDN'T FORCE A DROP IN THE JOBLESS RATE.

There is no Pulitzer Prize this year for feature writing. Has there ever been an Academy Awards where they didn't give a Best Supporting Actor award? I know I'm a consistent critic of mainstream news nowadays, but somebody's life could have changed forever with that prize. In this field, this award is huge -- and if some anonymous jury decided that no one hit the bar this year, well, it's an odd time to be bringing up standards considering Jayson Blair, Jack Kelley and the outing Juror No. 4.

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For those curious as to the perspective here, Mr. Marshall's presidential votes, including primaries, have included three Republicans (if you count John Anderson), two Democrats, two Libertarians, one no-show, one independent and one Green.