BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
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See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
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Tuesday, February 03, 2004
Cutting and running. James
Carroll today moves way to the left of ... Dennis Kucinich.
Here
is what Carroll writes in the Boston Globe:
If our getting into the
unnecessary war was wrong, our carrying it on is wrong. The US
military presence in Iraq, no matter how intended, has itself
become the affront around which opposition fighters are organizing
themselves. GIs in their Humvees, US convoys bristling with
rifles, well-armed coalition check-points, heavily fortified
compounds flying the American flag - all of this fuels resentment
among an ever broader population, including Saddam's enemies. It
justifies the growing number of jihadis whose readiness to kill
through suicide has become the real proliferation problem.
The occupation is its source and
must end. "The day I take office as president of the United
States," a true American leader would declare, "I will order the
immediate withdrawal of the entire American combat force in
Iraq."
And here
is what Kucinich said at last Thursday's Democratic debate, in
response to a mischaracterization of his position by moderator Tom
Brokaw:
BROKAW: General Clark,
your friend, Congressman Kucinich, would pull the United States
troops out of Iraq right away and go to the UN and say, "You go in
and take over the peacekeeping there."
Would you tell him about what
happened when we had UN peacekeepers in Bosnia?
KUCINICH: Tom, you've
mischaracterized my position.
BROKAW: Well, tell me what you
would do.
KUCINICH: My position is that we
go to the United Nations with a whole new direction, where the
United States gives up control of the oil, control of the
contracts, control of ambitions to privatize Iraq, gives up to the
United Nations all that on an interim basis to be handled on
behalf of the Iraqi people until the Iraqi people are
self-governing.
Furthermore, we would ask that
the UN handle the elections and the construction of a constitution
for the Iraqi people.
When the UN agrees with that, at
that point, we ask UN peacekeepers to come in and rotate our
troops out.
We help to fund it, we would
help pay to rebuild Iraq, and we would give reparations to those
innocent civilian noncombatants who lost their lives - to their
families.
Kucinich's position is a model of
responsibility, and would actually address the very real problems
that Carroll identifies. Carroll's diagnosis is accurate. But his
prescription would so obviously lead to chaos that it's hard to know
what he was thinking, or if he was.
Speaking of not thinking ...
The Globe's Brian McGrory offers this
today in the course of blasting the knuckleheads (and worse) who went
berserk after the Patriots' Super Bowl win:
The same college kids who
sat in their dorms when America launched a dubious if not spurious
war in Iraq, whose idea of a grave social injustice is a 2 a.m.
bar closing, took to the streets en masse Sunday night, turning
over cars, igniting fires, and harassing anyone who got in their
way.
Now for a refresher course. Here is
the lead of a piece
that ran in the Globe on November 4, 2002:
An estimated 15,000
protesters converged on Boston Common yesterday for a three-hour
rally to demonstrate against a possible US war with Iraq. The
turnout, estimated by police, rivaled any Boston peace rally since
the Gulf War, organizers said.
Here is an AP
story on the massive
antiwar demonstrations that took place across the nation on March 29,
2003. An excerpt:
About 60 miles north at
Boston Common, a police-estimated crowd of 25,000 protested the
war. Nuns, veterans and students listened to speakers and musical
acts before marching to Boylston Street for a "die in," during
which they collapsed on the streets to dramatize war
deaths.
And here
is David Valdes Greenwood's Boston Phoenix piece on the same
demonstration.
Did the particular kids who
actually poured out into the streets, flipped cars, and battled with
police on Sunday night take part in antiwar demonstrations? Probably
not. But their more-mature peers certainly did, and in huge numbers.
McGrory's shot was not only cheap, but ill-informed.
Nuts and sluts. Media Log
has nothing much to say about Janet Jackson's boob shot, except that
it was a football game, for crying out loud, not some
late-night cable thing, and no, she and Justin Timberlake shouldn't
have done it. (I'm assuming it was deliberate.) But an FCC
investigation? Ridiculous. A firing or two should suffice.
Two less-than-earth-shattering
observations. First, a number of critics seem very concerned that sex
was injected into the Super Bowl. By all means read this
nutty rant on the
right-wing NewsMax.com site. But I think we ought to be more
concerned about the message it sent to girls about what they need to
do to get ahead. This wasn't about sex; it was about
subjugation.
Second, I agree with Alessandra
Stanley of the New York Times: the erectile-dysfunction
ads were a hell of a lot
more disconcerting than anything that took place during the halftime
show.
posted at 10:55 AM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
