Why did only a few of us oppose the Iraq invasion?

This question is misleading.  In 2003, approximately 40% of us opposed the invasion.   But it felt like there were only a handful of us.

I was looking through my 2003 writings to recall my rational for opposing the Iraq invasion.  I don’t see that I wrote anything much about Iraq back then.  I do remember thinking the invasion was a big mistake.  I do remember thinking that Colin Powell was blowing smoke at the U.N. 

Though I didn’t find much in writing from 2003, I found this 2004 email I wrote to a friend who was very much in favor of the war:

I’ve been working a lot of hours lately, but I can’t help but feel deep gnawing need to pry myself away periodically to do my small part to stop this insane movement that goes in the name of “conservatism.”  Squandering the budget is only one part of it for me.  Every day, this lunatic’s rhetoric and actions are causing 100 talented young men from the Middle East to dedicate their entire lives to lighting a nuclear fire so as to melt New York.  I truly believe that the short term temporary good that Bush has accomplished in the Middle East is far outweighed, not only by the blood spilled to accomplish it, but by the horrors we will be facing 10 and 20 years from now.  This country would never have gone to war had Bush and his team not bald-faced lied about the alleged urgent need

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The Media (which media? THE Media!)

This age.  Bizarre.  Part of the bizarreness rests in how much we actually know about it.  We swim in a deepening sea of information.  How to cope?  We compartmentalize.  So, though, do those providing us the information, and therein lies another problem, which is a question of integration. Recently at…

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Post Biblical Morality

There are simple reasons to reject Biblical authority. Very simple. One above all others–the Bible assigns people to roles from which, by virtue of divine mandate, they cannot abandon. It accords thinking beings no grant to be other than what the Bible says they should be.

Now, a lot of people treat this in one of two ways. The benign way is to simply ignore these restrictions until such a point where the deviations cannot be ignored. For instance, in the case of gay marriage. There has been a sliding metric of tolerance leading up to the point past which those professing a christian character simply cannot go. They sort of make these restrictions cases of, well, in an ideal, christian world these laws would hold, but we don’t live in that world, and since we all have to get along, well, we’ll just pretend they aren’t there for the most point. Because, you see, if they took them seriously, there would be a lot of public executions.

Which leads to me to the malign way of dealing with them–extremist posturing. These rules are god’s rules and we ignore them at out peril. Such people condemn people who are different, rail against the establishment, and actually work toward putting these rules into practice, either through mainstream legal institutions or by joining cults who leave mainstream society and set up little compounds here and there. The leaders of such groups become right vicious little tyrants and a peak inside their precincts …

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Mary Cheney Pregnant

According to the AP Conservative leaders voiced dismay Wednesday at news that Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Dick Cheney, is pregnant, while a gay-rights group said the vice president faces "a lifetime of sleepless nights" for serving in an administration that has opposed recognition of same-sex couples. How bad is…

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How to acquiesce in a national catastrophe: a case study featuring the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Take a look at the front page of today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 

PD headline - smaller.JPG

You can see the photo of an Iraqi man grieving over the body of his three-year-old daughter outside of the Baghdad hospital.  According to the paper, “the girl was killed and three other family members injured when they were caught in crossfire as clashes erupted between gunmen and US forces.”

The lead story starts with this assertion:

The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating.  The current approach is not working, and the ability of the United States to influence events is diminishing.

This story line and this photograph clearly impugn the integrity of the United States.  Publishing such information is unpatriotic.  Or, at least, those are the sorts of things we’ve been told, until recently. 

It was always OK to publish pictures of our proud soldiers and our high-tech missiles taking off, of course.   It was up to Al Jazeera and the Europeans to publish pictures of what happened when those missiles exploded on the ground, however.  And when those non-American media sources published those photos of Iraqi civilian carnage, it infuriated “America.”  It’s not that American soldiers weren’t also credible witnesses to the civilian killings on the ground.   The evidence was there to be published, if anyone cared to know. 

For most of the past 3 1/2 years, the Post-Dispatch (along with most mainstream newspapers across the United States) did not publish pictures like this, certainly not in prominent places.  It simply wasn’t deemed news …

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