War – Page 21 – Feministe

Ugh…

Well this is fantastic.

And thanks, Georgie, for “fighting terrorism.” The war in Iraq has clearly improved things for all of us. I would invite him to accompany me on the very crowded subway to and from school tomorrow. Because the world is a safer place thanks to this war, right?

After the Love is Gone

I can totally relate.

D.C. Protest Pics

Courtesy of my sister, who lives in D.C.

protest1
This man, who was there to protest the protest, spent a good deal of his time yelling at my sister, “Hey, baby-killer! How many babies did you kill today?”

Ah, how closely she has followed in my footsteps. We do, after all, have a proud family tradition of being called baby-killers.

protest2
Hot boys in skirts and pink wigs. Ain’t nothin’ better.

protest3
This requires no caption.

Dolphins Gone Wild

I know this is dangerous but I can’t take it seriously.

Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Experts who have studied the US navy’s cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying ‘toxic dart’ guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet’s smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

Take a moment with me to imagine the conversations people are having about the dolphins:
“Have we secured the dolphins?”
“We’re working on it, sir.”
“What has happened so far?”
“What happened? Gunfights, explosions, sharks, the usual.”

The Holocaust: Really, It Was About Jesus

By now, everyone has probably heard the sad news that Nazi hunter Simon Weisenthal died earlier this week. I have a lot I’d like to say about him, but can’t find words that are appropriately laudatory — he was an amazing figure, and his death is a huge loss for the entire world.

But hey, why pay him the respect he deserves and honor the memory of all the Jews and other minority groups killed in the Holocaust when we can make this about Jesus, “King of the Jews”? Surely that’s not offensive. Ain’t nothin wrong with taking the genocide of millions of innocent people and making it about me and my god.

I can understand that Jews find no comfort in the thought that the Nazis held them responsible for the coming of Christ, that the victims of Auschwitz were, therefore, unwitting martyrs for His sake. For centuries, they had been pursued as Christ-killers. Suddenly, they were attacked as Christ-bearers. Here is an antithesis, an irony a Jew cannot but find hard to take. It may even be offensive to him to think of his kinsmen tortured by the Nazis as forced witnesses to Jesus.

Ya think?

UPDATE: Dawn’s still going. Now it’s “The Jews’ and the Christians’ Holocaust Suffering: A Covenant in Blood.”

I’m not here to argue that Nazis were Christians, or that no Christians were harmed in the Holocaust. But taking the purposeful slaughter of Jews, gypsies, Africans, gays and other minority groups — a slaughter that killed more than 5 million Jews alone– and saying, no, really, it was about Christianity and Jesus the whole time! is unbelievably offensive and disgustingly self-centered. Yes, the Holocaust is inarguably a tragedy for everyone, Christians like myself included. But it is also a uniquely Jewish tradegy (and not because they were “martyrs for Christ”). My European relatives were affected, and in learning about what happened I was affected, but no one was trying to wipe my people off the face of the earth. That’s a pretty big difference, and one that I’m certainly not disrespectful enough to try and co-opt as my own. I’ll leave that to Dawn (who yes, I know is of Jewish heritage) and her self-involved minions.

Must-Read Dialogue

Between Bill O’Reilly and Phil Donahue.

Shoot the Looters

It’s an idea that the right-wing loves. And hey, maybe I’ll give it a chance. Let’s start in Texas.

via DED Space.

To the 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists:

Please, just go home.

Michelle Malkin’s War Memorial

…because 9/11 was a war. Could have fooled me.

I am not an architect, but here is my 9/11 architectural philosophy: War memorials should memorialize war. If you want peace and understanding and healing and good will toward all, go build Kabbalah centers.

No soldiers. No declaration of war. Sept. 11 was an attack by non-military combatants on a civilian population — and it makes about as much sense to create a 9/11 war memorial as it does to create an Oklahoma City war memorial.

When the designers of the Flight 93 memorial actually had the audacity to try and include aspects like “healing” and “contemplation” — you know, things which suggest that some people might be sad that these people died unnecessarily — boy did Michelle get heated:

This is no way to fight a war. Or to remember those who have died fighting it.

A proper war memorial stirs to anger and action.

I cry whenever I go to the Vietnam Veteran’s memorial in DC. I don’t feel “stirred to action,” although admittedly I walk away feeling angry at our government over involving us in another unnecessary war. I don’t feel like picking up a gun after visiting the WWII memorial, or the Holocaust museum, or the Korean War memorial. If I remember them correctly, all those memorials manage to focus on bravery and courage, while still allowing space for grief, contemplation and hope for peace.

And they were actually war memorials. Do I need to say it again? The innocent passengers on Flight 93 didn’t die fighting in a war. This is not a war memorial. I agree that it’s important to immortalize the heroics of the people on that flight. But it’s completely innappropriate to turn a memorial into a politicized “let’s kick some ass, yay war!” campaign. And for the record, I think that the chosen design is quite beautiful.

Muslims are Nazis, kind of. Let’s declare war on them.

Total lack of historical knowledge, anyone?

Radical Islam, sometimes accurately called Islamo-fascism, has all the “advantages” the Nazis had in Germany in the 1930s. The Islamo-fascists find a Muslim population adrift, confused and humiliated by the dominance of foreign nations and cultures. They find a large, youthful population increasingly disdainful of their parents’ passive habits.

Just as the Nazis reached back to German mythology and the supposed Aryan origins of the German people, the radical Islamists reach back to the founding ideas and myths of their religious culture. And just like the Nazis, they claim to speak for authentic traditions while actually advancing expedient and radical innovations.

Now, wait a minute — weren’t the Nazis appealing to a sense of supposed tradition and rightful ownership of Germany, that Jewish and other non-Aryans couldn’t possibly have had? As far as I know, Nazis weren’t an immigrant group, they were quite the opposite. So… wouldn’t it follow that an immigrant group couldn’t really pull that card outside of their own country?

Well, we’ll just ignore that little problem and move right along, because, Nazis or not, these Muslims are really becoming an issue. Luckily, Tony Blankley has a solution : That’s right, it’s another WWII!

World War II was good, despite the millions of deaths, the limitations on daily lives, the encroachment on peacetime liberties and the arduousness of wartime life. The war was good because the sacrifice was for a noble cause, for the perpetuation of America and the American way of life.

The struggle against Islamist terrorism is an equally good war — and for the same reasons. We have just as great a responsibility to win our struggle against insurgent Islamist aggression as our parents and grandparents had to win World War II.