The Worst Day

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At first, I couldn’t decide who had the worst day yesterday.

Was it London’s “first responders” having to contend with the less lethal, but still terrifying and possibly more troubling replay of London’s 7/7 bombings?

Was it anyone in London who is a member of the Islamic faith?

Was it Tony Blair (who not only has to worry about losing control of the terror situation — but must, by now, be seriously questioning why he didn’t get off the Bush bandwagon back when the main point was basically al Qaeda and Afghanistan)?

Was it our client– oops, I mean ally, Pervez Musharraf, who had the misfortune to be on T.V. dancing on the tightrope the same morning as another London attack? (What? Those bad boys are all London’s fault?)

Or, was it Alan Greenspan’s wife, Andrea (Mitchell), who was part of the Condi’s entourage that got roughed up by Sudanese officials who obviously lack the proper regard for reporters, State Department staff and political decorum . (Or maybe it was Condi, who went to Sudan to cavort with these gangsters, slap a few wrists, get on the record that she’s against genocide, and then get her picture taken with about 5,000 adoring African faces in a refugee camp.)

We may be a little distracted right now by somebody’s open-ended and so-called “terror war,” the Supreme Court nomination of a guy with two first names, and Karl, Scooter and Dick’s game of Plame blame. But it’s the Iraq situation that merits more attention than just the routine ferris wheel-like rising and falling of the story in and out of the news cycle. Especially now — several weeks after that shameful non-accounting Bush made at Fort Bragg, and with the situation dissolving into total hell.

After two years of this slow-motion cataclysm, I never saw a week like this last one. With the growing Iraqi rapprochement with the Iranians, and the murder of the Sunni delegates to the commission working on the new constitution, and the dismal new Pentagon report about the profoundly insufficient capabilities and prospects for Iraq’s defense forces, and the constitution draft that sends woman’s rights back to the stone age, and the killing of the Egyptian ambassador, and two horrific large-scale suicide attacks, it’s hard to imagine a worse picture.

So, of all the bad days yesterday, nothing compares to what happened to Jalil Shaalan and his family in the Amarayah district of Baghdad. Jalil, a security guard, was gunned down in front of his wife and children by unknown assailants just outside of the school he was employed to protect.

I mean, what the hell are we doing?

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(image 1; REUTERS/Russell Boyce. London. July 21, 2005. In YahooNews. image 2: AP Photo/Lefteris PitarakisLondon, Thursday July 21, 2005. Yahoo News. image 3: REUTERS/Stephen Hird. July 21, 2005. London. From: today.reuters.co.uk. image 4: REUTERS/Faisal Mahmood. Islamabad July 21, 2005. In YahooNews. image 5: AP Photo/Network Pool via APTN. Thursday, July 21, 2005, in Khartoum, Sudan. From: YahooNews. image 6, 7 & 8: AP Photo/Hadi Mizban. July 21, 2005. Amarayah district of Baghdad, Iraq. In YahooNews.)

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Civility — Or Else!

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jonst

Well, sadly, we now have a clue who had the worst day. As to your question/lament….I have no idea what the hell we are doing except I have a hunch we are going to pay for it in the future. Whether we deserve to or not.
I have one complaint with your selections. Mitchell does not belong there. Watch…she will come back the big hero. A book deal/speaking tour, at 25K a pop, and if she is lucky…perhaps a ‘docu-drama’ on the Discovery Channel or something. And here I thought there was not a single thing in the world I shared in common with the govt of the Sudan. But the desire to give that woman the bums rush was, in fact, one of them.
I don’t know what the hell we are doing anywhere…never mind Iraq.
mugatea

Republican power/domination is based on intimidating the crap out of Joe Six-pack. Fear, fear, fear. Bully, bully. Grunt.
Shrub has over and over again told us he is a “leader.” He has never said where he is leading us to. I know it’s cliche – but our country is behaving like a pack of lemmings.
http://1thirteen3.blogspot.com Roy E Pearson

We the American People have lost our Character. It began long time ago sometime after WWII. In our self-congratulation over being a democracy, like it was something we did in this century, we forgot that the rest of the world wasn’t. Oh we had plenty of brave men who gave their lives to stop the tyranny of Fascism, and through vision of men like George Marshall we helped the part of the world get back on it’s feet, but then in the disillusionment over having to conspire with tyranny to defeat tyranny we turned inward.
Unlike now, unlike with this band of thugs that call themselves an administration, then – after WWII – we had a chance despite the Tyrant running Russia – to really rebuild the world. We instead chose to build our wealth. From the subjugating Central America to a slave plantation for American Produce, to countries all over the world where we imposed and supported tyrants that were content to be our tyrants as long as they got to suppress and torment their own people. All this was done in the name of fighting some other grotesque Tyranny.
This tragedy acted out on the world stage ended the first act on the battlefields of Viet Nam. A country that looked to the U.S. to support its fight for freedom from French Colonialism was brushed aside and later returned to expose our Achilles’ Heel.
We should have learned then, but we responded by trying to restore our illusion of superiority through Military Might. Morning in America was proclaimed as we labored in the late afternoon sun to overcome a perceived enemy that was as weary of trying to support a fantasy of World Domination as were we. We knew the right way – concern for human rights – but we were again too obsessed with our own desire for wealth.
Payment for our years of denying a group of people equal rights was now coming home to roost at the same time our willingness to take other people resources to satify our perception of entitlement and priviledge began to be challenged.
God after all was on our side. So in a fit to obtain our rightly position as masters of God’s dominion the Religious Right and Corporate America combined in a conflicted Holy Alliance to bring us this current Administration. This administration, which was filled with the same illusions of entitlement and priviledge, sought again to rebuild that Dream that we as a people felt was our Destiny, manifested by God.
So on September 11, 2001, this Administration used that horror of the attack of our country to grease the wheels of their plan to build a New American Empire. And we The People, cowered in fear, let them begin to take away our rights and the lives of over 1700 of our best young men.
Fear of what? Fear that war, that tool that we had for two centuries used for political gain might actually be brought onto our soil by a new boogie man.
We the People need to reach down inside ourselves and find that backbone of courage that led our predecessors across a hostile wilderness to created a great nation. Those of us who have known all along that the War in Iraq was wrong and those that had grave doubts in the fall of 2002 need to regain a sense of destiny of our own. A destiny to bring to the world the Dream we so arrogantly called American as if we did not state in our notice to the world – the Declaration of Independence – that ALL men are created equal. All men yearn to breathe the fresh air of freedom and opportunity. We need to stop listening to the lies of this administration and get on with building a force to turn them and their Neo-Fascist tactics out of office.
There has been a lot of talk in the last few days about “Liberals” – whoever they are – and their inability to win because they don’t have the stomach to use the same tactics as the Bush Administration.
Let us get one thing clear; we are Americans, not conservatives and liberals. These thugs that call themselves conservative are little more than a pale image of conservatism. Conservative and Liberals alike respect the struggle to find a Democracy that balances freedom and equality in the quest for a just society. We have allowed ourselves too long to be divided and believe that there are true American and other Americans.
It makes me sick to hear read that Washington is “Karl Rove’s Town”. I am sorry, Washington belongs to me and the rest of the people who are citizens of this great Democratic Experiment. Any elite that has lost touch with that reality needs to be turned out whether it be governmental or media. Notice needs to be served, Washington belongs to all The People.
We must stop believing the weak excuse that since “we are there (Iraq) we need to finish it.” Folks, it is finished. I have rarely known a error that was fixed by repeating the error. Bring our troops home now. How much more can our National Prestige be damaged than it is each day we do not acknowledge our failure?
We need to commit ourselves to rebuilding an America that lives up to the Dream of opportunity and freedom for all people.
It will be hard. Laws are already in place to deny us our rights, and empty prisons built to hold those who dare to confront these people who believe that God has placed the destiny of the World in their few hands. They believe that the world is coming to an end, and it may be for them, but for the rest of us the world will go on.
It will not be easy, the rest of the world will no longer allow us to monopolize the world’s resources so we will have to find new ways to support what we really need of our way of life.
So that is what is going on. We have been lulled asleep by reality TV and in our slumber many of the people that represent us have served us poorly to put at its best.
Time to get up off the couch and get about taking our country back from the Religious Bigots and Corporate Interests that see America as singularly theirs.
We need a leader, but I believe that if we get up and get out and start, we will find in one of us a leader. I am willing to take that chance, how about you?
Anon E. Mouse

Thank you Roy E. Pearson. I’m moved by what you wrote. Living in Toronto, I’m watching in horror at what is going on … One thing I do believe, though, is that we don’t, anymore, so much need a leader, as we need to listen to the voice within each and everyone of us. People know the difference between right and wrong. They’ve been lulled too long by their “leaders” into believing up is down and wrong is right.
bg

Thank you for asking the question. I am really too overwhelmed to reply. Roy is correct. There is no excuse not to respond to his call to action. At the same time, this gang in Washington has so dis-spirited and demoralized me that I have fallen under the weight of the deception. The latest blow was our interference in the Iraqi election. It should be enough to encounter the faces of those mourners in Iraq yesterday. I will do my best to rise up again on their behalf. They deserve better from me.
http://www.xnerg.blogspot.com/ jillian

We need to see more photos like the second set.
The “War” is too sanitized for Americans to realize what horror it truly is. To us we think it horror when a wealthy woman posing as a reporter is shuffled out of a room.
Asta

Roy Pearson’s post really got to me. Reading his impassioned words has given me a sense of hope I haven’t felt in quite some time.
Thank you, Mr. Pearson.
Greg

It’s quite simple. The Neocons decided to invade Iraq knowing that it will destabilize the region for years, driving the price of oil up through the roof. Mission accomplished — the profits of the oil industry have never been higher. All of this is about oil men making more money for other oil men. It sickens me.
MonsieurGonzo

Hadi Mizban is a genius. the triptych you posted… Michael, it has been so long since i’ve seen / felt …i am dumbfounded; too wrought to write. my ears are filled with screams. my skin is scorched; my nostrils flared by some acrid stench that will nail this moment to my memory. oh, god! i feel compelled to flee ~ and doubt that i will ever be able to compose myself, return here and analyze Mizban’s images dispassionately.
patricia kovara

what the hell are we doing????
bloggers…please join us…
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/
Sept. 24-26: End the War on Iraq! Massive Mobilization in Washington, D.C.
thanks for your time
Quentin

This is the horror, this is the grief, the true horror and the true grief, day after day after day after day, month after month, year after year. The BAG shows pictures of sickening incidents which scream out to be seen. But nearly all the thousands and thousands of other such incidents are hidden behind the genteel dissembling of people who praise themselves for their civility, wisdom and faith. May they soon be directly confronted with the rows of flag draped coffins coming back daily from Iraq to the U.S. Not until then will the U.S. people as a whole have the courage to realize what has already happened in their name. It cannot be said that such inability to sympathize and to emphathize is to their credit.
pjr

Michael, Roy and Jillian; the obvious distress that this illegal and immoral conflict has created, not only among the hapless Iraqi’s, but among progressive, thoughtful and patriotic Americans such as yourselves, reassures those of us who are not Americans, that such morality still exists in your nation, DESPITE the incredible assaults and attacks that are being foisted upon you by the despicable cabal of Neo-Cons ‘led’ by President Bush and his horror show of a cabinet. I also live in Toronto, and cannot imagine what it is like to watch the most respected and decent elements of your society destroyed on the alter of higher profit margins, and let’s be frank, overt racism. Is there anyone who believes that the Middle East would be the disastrous Hell-hole it currently is, without a century of meddling by the West? As long as the voices of reason and sanity can still be heard above the din of fear mongering and corporate greed, there is still hope for a better future for all peoples on the earth; at least I damn well hope so.
pjr

As to Andrea Mitchell; who the fuck cares?
Mad

Why was this Iraqi man killed? How were these conditions created?
What is the future for the wife and children? Where will they live? Will they be safe?
How can the wife support the family when there is so much unemployment, in a broken economy, in a broken society.
How will they feed themselves?
How will the children be educated? By whom?
How many families have suffered this? Tens of thousands?
What is their future? What is our future?
http://www.wonkspot.com/wire Hubris Sonic

i havent had time right now, but this is a great post!
http://www.wonkspot.com/wire Hubris Sonic

Roy’s piece was especially poignant. sorry for my poorly worded post above, the earthquake in tokyo stopped the trains for hours and didnt get home until 1am. was very tired. I didnt mean it was a “great” post, more… it was strong and heartfelt. and Roy’s one was invoked by the bags use of those images. i think this is were the bag lives. somewhere between analysis, and comments from the photog’s and using the images. how powerful.
cj

This is the new world order we have (all) created–the anarchy of fear, pain, and confusion. (All of) Our leaders have so little control over events and innocent people have become the daily cannon fodder of cynical ideologies. I agree with Michael, “What the hell are we doing?” Jalil Shaalan’s death could be atttributed to al qaeda, extremists or insurgents, etc., but how many others have died because they happened to live in Fallujah, Bagdad, NYC, or London (or any of the hundreds of places around the world), because they happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, because they happened to “look” suspicious. You know, sometimes I think we (all) just have the wrong leaders…….
Tom

“I mean, what the hell are we doing?”
“We”? Oh, are you one of the “insurgents” who killed this man in front of his family? Or is this a general “we” in the sense that you either are an “insurgent” or are a fellow-traveller with their beliefs? Either way, what you did was despicable, but it’s good to see that you Jihadists or Ba’athists (you didn’t specify which group you belong to/identify with) are at last feeling some remorse for your actions. With any luck the US and UK forces will capture those responsible for this senseless murder.
Tom

“sometimes I think we (all) just have the wrong leaders…….”
Long live the democratic process. If your views are shared by the majority of your country, you can remove your president. Let’s all support the Iraqi democracy so they too can one day change their government if they are unsatisfied with its performance.
pjr

Tom; what is leading you to believe Iraqis ARE satisfied with the performance of their leadership? Don’t tell me it’s all the new street signs erected by Coalition forces? For that matter, what makes you believe Americans are satisfied with their leadership?