UN Security Council Votes for Cease-Fire

I have to admit, that I was pleasantly surprised at the high rate of voting in the recent Iraq elections. Even a cynic such as myself watched as a high number of Iraqi citizens lined up under threat of death and cast their vote for the future of the country. This was historic. History will decide whether is was worth the cost of over 100’000 Iraqi lives. While I do not delude myself that this event will deter violence, it does give Iraqis a stake in their country. It does another thing as well; it shifts the focus of insurgent…

There’s a petition on-line to get Rumsfeld to resign. Sign it because I think a partial victory is better than a total loss. However, I don’t think Rumsfeld should resign. He should be fired. Joho comes to a similar conclusion. My take has more to do with the honor of America. The President should defend it and his administration should live it. Rumsfeld was given the chance to resign and to help keep America’s honor; he chose not to. He’s said that America, the American ideal, is unimportant; raping and torturing people of color is what is important. If he…

Two articles worth reading: Haroon Siddiqui has a fair and well-balanced article in the Ideas section of the Sunday, 20 August Toronto Star entitled The Muslim Malaise George Soros’ article in the Wall Street Journal entitled A Self-Defeating War is also worthwhile and is published at the TPM Cafe. Here are some excerpts: “The war on terror is a false metaphor that has led to counterproductive and self-defeating policies…Unfortunately, the “war on terror” metaphor was uncritically accepted by the American public as the obvious response to 9/11. It is now widely admitted that the invasion of Iraq was a blunder.…