sigh

Bush's interview on 60 Minutes:

PELLEY: Do you think you owe the Iraqi people an apology for not doing a better job?

BUSH: That we didn't do a better job or they didn't do a better job?

OK, pause. He just willfully misheard that question. Apparently he actually thinks that there's a question whether the Iraqis should apologize to America for not doing a better job of... what? Not having their homes invaded and getting shot execution style in the street by armed militias? Not being kidnapped on the way to school? Not getting stopped at fake checkpoints, killed, and then dumped some place where their families never find them? Yeah, they really should stop having that happen to them. It's a big annoyance for Americans.

PELLEY: Well, that the United States did not do a better job in providing security after the invasion.

BUSH: Not at all. I am proud of the efforts we did. We liberated that country from a tyrant. I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude, and I believe most Iraqis express that. I mean, the people understand that we've endured great sacrifice to help them. That's the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq.

I... I... I don't think I know enough swear words to respond to that.

Dennett: the war discredits religion

I feel the need to get that Jesus-Boxer picture off of the top of the page, so I guess it's time for a new post.

Over at On Faith, Daniel Dennett answers the question of whether the invasion of Iraq constituted a just war. He spends most of his response giving the obvious answer, and then turns his attention to the role of religion in the move towards invasion:

Inflating these declarations [of good intent] with religious rhetoric about God being on our side is nothing less than obscene, however sincerely these protestations of faith may be uttered.

OK, so far so good. But Dennett continues:

Nothing has done more to discredit religious faith in recent years than the self-righteous overconfidence with which our leaders have “listened to God” instead of listening to the knowledgeable secular advisors who have warned them, repeatedly, of the follies they were embarking on.

Defenders of religion are eager to point out that the motivation for this war was not religious, in spite of President Bush’s blunder in calling it a “crusade,” but they must admit that the administration’s faith in faith over faith in facts has probably been the principle cause of the moral calamity that now confronts us.

I'm not sure where he got the idea that the decision to invade Iraq had anything to do with anyone thinking they'd "listened to God". The only relevant piece of evidence I can think of comes from this report:

According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."

But this piece of testimony is pretty worthless, as was pointed out in Common Dreams (not an outfit known for its loyalty to Dubya):

Before you jump to any conclusions, remember that you are reading a translation of a translation of a translation. Mahmoud Abas does not speak English. Bush does not speak Arabic. If Bush said these words, or something like them, Abas heard them from a translator. Then Abas repeated them, as he remembered them a couple of weeks later, in Arabic. Some unknown person wrote down what he thought he heard Abas say. Then Regular, or someone at Ha'aretz, translated them back into English-or perhaps first into Hebrew and then into English.

Clearly, we don't yet know what Bush said, or why.

There is plenty of room to criticize the decision to go to war without basing criticisms on unsubstantiated hearsay.

Even if Bush did think that God had told him to invade Iraq, I doubt that Cheney or Rumsfeld or the other major figures in the Admin would ever have cared much about Bush's imagined conversations with God. It's true that the invasion was based in a kind of faith, but it was faith in a purely political fantasy (being greeted as liberators, democracy spreading throughout the region, etc.). What that has to do with religion is anyone's guess.

And even if religious claims had played some substantial role in the decision to go to war, it's mysterious how that could serve to "discredit religious faith" in general, as Dennett claims.

A poem

By Pablo Neruda (translated by Nathaniel Tarn):

I'm Explaining a Few Things

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.

I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.

From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings --
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!

Happy Remembrance Day.

(On this day about a decade ago, someone pointed out to me that In Flanders Field, a central symbol of Remembrance Day in Canada, doesn't do a very good job of symbolizing the right sort of remembrance. The first two stanzas are all right, but the third hits the wrong note:

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Remembrance Day originated with Armistice, and thus marks the end of the quarrel with the foe. At least, that particular quarrel with that particular foe.)