Stardate 20020614.1749

(On Screen): On days when I can't find anything else to write about, I can always rely on The Guardian to come up with something about which I can rant. (I try to resist. I truly do. Is there a branch of Guardian Anonymous in San Diego?)

Today's announcement is particularly egregious. A brave group of Americans, fearful of being rounded up and sent to the gulag for their beliefs, felt the need to go offshore to publish their statement about the US. No American press outlet would apparently touch their statement; but the brave and principled Guardian came through for them, and for us.

Guess what? The war is really America's fault. It can be ended quite simply, by convincing the American government to stop prosecuting it. Then all will again be peaceful and we'll live in a world of harmony and brotherhood.

Betcha didn't know that, did you? Fortunately for us, Edward Said and Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky and an assortment of unimportant celebrities from show business are here to tell us.

They're horrified by the attack last September; they say so.

We too watched with shock the horrific events of September 11. We too mourned the thousands of innocent dead and shook our heads at the terrible scenes of carnage - even as we recalled similar scenes in Baghdad, Panama City and, a generation ago, Vietnam. We too joined the anguished questioning of millions of Americans who asked why such a thing could happen.

"Similar scenes"? Refresh my memory here: when, exactly, did American terrorists fly jet liners into buildings in Baghdad, Panama City and Viet Nam? (All together now: MORAL EQUIVALENCE!!!I)

In our name, the Bush administration, with near unanimity from Congress, not only attacked Afghanistan but arrogated to itself and its allies the right to rain down military force anywhere and anytime. The brutal repercussions have been felt from the Philippines to Palestine. The government now openly prepares to wage all-out war on Iraq - a country which has no connection to the horror of September 11. What kind of world will this become if the US government has a blank cheque to drop commandos, assassins, and bombs wherever it wants?

Probably a much better one, actually; a world where women in Kabul are not beaten for showing their faces, and a world where the children of Iraq will no longer starve because their corrupt government needs them dying for political reasons. A world where Arab women will actually be permitted such simple pleasures as walking the streets without male relatives, and having careers, and being able to wear whatever they want.

It's called "war", by the way, and we didn't start it. You can't live-and-let-live with someone who means to kill you, and that's the problem here: like every other similar screed, this one is loaded with statements about what these people don't want to have happen, but completely absent of any indication of an alternative.

What, exactly, do they want us to do about the threat we face now? What do we do about a culture which is deeply diseased and which hates us? Folks, let me introduce Basmallah:

Basmallah is a girl living in Saudi Arabia. She was interviewed on a television program there and asked what she thinks of Jews, and why. Read what she said, and what was said to her and about her, and ponder deeply the pathology of this culture. What kind of society produced someone who would dress up his girl in a toy suicide belt complete with toy dynamite?

Why does Gloria Steinem (one of the signatories) support this? Why isn't she working to change it? Why does she curse the war in Afghanistan, which freed the Afghan women from the worst conditions for human females to be found anywhere on earth? Who's side is she on?

The reason that these people aren't getting a lot of press in the US isn't that they're being suppressed, it's that they're being ignored because they don't have anything convincing to contribute. Their argument is intellectually and morally empty, full of hollow rhetoric and demonstrating a complete disconnect with reality.