Stardate 20040428.1159

(Captain's log): Back when Berke Breathed was still producing Bloom County, one of the better Sunday strips began with Binkley waking after a dream, filled with wisdom, and going around telling various people "the truth". But somehow doing so didn't seem to make any difference. (And in the final frame, Opus told Binkley that "the truth is, you look like a carrot.")

I don't know if I look like a carrot, despite having once been a redhead like Binkley (but with most of my hair now having turned white, which is still better than going bald thenkyouveddymuch). But it seems to me that there are some things I'm seeing now in the news which others are misinterpreting pretty consistently.

For instance, The Truth Is... that "liberals" who suddenly have started talking about reintroducing the draft are not in the slightest concerned with military readiness, and do not believe that filling out the army with draftees is an essential step in winning the war. What's actually going on is that they know that one of the biggest reasons that the people of America ultimately turned against the Viet Nam war was because it was being fought primarily by draftees. And one of the biggest reasons why America's college campuses were particular focal points for anti-war activism was because it was men that age who were being drafted.

Said liberals, usually graying Boomers like me, are amazed at the degree to which college-age Americans support this war. They feel somehow cheated; colleges are supposed to be anti-war, aren't they? Of course, there are many critical differences between Viet Nam and the WOT, but regarding the "Millenials" (previously known as "Gen Y") they view the draft as one of the biggest reasons. If they can somehow reinstitute the draft, then said liberals hope they could ignite massive opposition to the war, and would once again see America's college campuses become centers of anti-war activism.

That's why The Truth Is that Representative Charles Rangel is a fucking liar. He described his reasons for reinstituting the draft thusly:

Rep. Charles Rangel introduced a bill in Congress Tuesday to reinstate the military draft, saying fighting forces should more closely reflect the economic makeup of the nation.

The New York Democrat told reporters his goal is two-fold: to jolt Americans into realizing the import of a possible unilateral strike against Iraq, which he opposes, and "to make it clear that if there were a war, there would be more equitable representation of people making sacrifices."

"I truly believe that those who make the decision and those who support the United States going into war would feel more readily the pain that's involved, the sacrifice that's involved, if they thought that the fighting force would include the affluent and those who historically have avoided this great responsibility," Rangel said.

Actually, he isn't totally lying, but he's disguising the truth so strongly that the overall result is still a lie. It has nothing to do with "equitable representation of people making sacrifices"; it has to do with forcing young American men to make sacrifices unwillingly, because that will motivate many of those men, and the young women who love them, to oppose the war, or so he hopes.

The Truth Is that in the last two years one of the strongest currents in international diplomacy and rhetoric has been Tu Quoque. If you are vulnerable to a certain criticism, preempt that criticism by accusing your enemies of that same failure before they accuse you. One benefit is that you may muddy the waters enough so that the entire accusation is devalued, and even if you don't, when someone accuses you of that same failing it makes them look feeble and reactive.

It doesn't matter if there's any basis for the preemptive criticism, or whether it makes any sense. The point is to defuse the entire issue. One example is the ongoing characterization of Israeli action against the Palestinians as "terrorism" by Arab leaders, so as to try to deflect attention from the fact that the Palestinian "freedom fighters" are the ones truly engaged in terrorist attacks.

And now a monumental example of Tu Quoque is beginning to emerge. There has been a steady drumbeat of accusations by the leftist lunatic fringe that the real reason the Bush administration wanted to invade Afghanistan and Iraq was to advance the business interests of certain oil companies. It's never actually made any sense; if all the Bush administration were really interested in was oil, it would have been far easier to make a deal with Saddam than to invade.

But it's also becoming more and more apparent that an appallingly large amount of the vocal international opposition to Anglo-American plans for invasion of Iraq actually opposed the invasion because they were making out like bandits, as beneficiaries of the "Oil for Food" program. And apparently the two nations which made out the best were UNSC veto powers France and Russia, who by extraordinary coincidence also were the most intransigent opponents in the UNSC of the invasion.

It's the latest demonstration of the corruption, incompetence, and venality of the UN as an or