Some subset of missions accomplished, anyway

I will admit I never really expected to see this headline, let alone in Obama's first term. After ten years, it almost feels more like an anticlimax than a victory. (At least to me; the surreal crowds in D.C. and NYC apparently think otherwise.) Ok, then, let's bring home all those troops wasting time in Afghanistan and Iraq, 'kay?

(It's also worth noting that this was a victory for old-fashioned intelligence and human ops, none of this data-sifting and drones. Imagine!)

Link dump: the rant-inducing subset

With minimal comment, given how long a stretch these have been collected over...

• The Cost of the Castle Doctrine -- PA wants to be among the states who shoot neighborhood kids
  
  
• U.S. College Degrees by County (a map) -- another reflection of the cultural and economic divide
  
  
• Republican fiscal hawks avoid Appropriations Committee like the plague -- it's easier to criticize than to do
  
  
• Antibiotic impasse: Resistant to progress -- if you're not scared about this, you're in denial
  
  
• A few TSA-related bits:
  
  
  
  1. Molecular biologist on the dangers of pornoscanners -- the TSA isn't worried about your health
     
     
  2. TSA has no regular testing system for its pornoscanners -- but they want you to trust them
     
     
  3. You Are No Longer Free To Move About the Country -- airport security is just the first step
     
     
  4. How our "security" obsession costs us -- our national life, not just our safety
  
  
• Paul Begala For DNC Chairman

  You can be on the side of angels without having to be cautious, indecisive, and paranoid all the time. The angels actually want you to be scrappy and assertive.

• Our Meth House -- a couple's dream home turns out to be uninhabitable
  
  
• In a Sign of Foreclosure Flaws, Suits Claim Break-Ins by Banks -- the amount of outright theft seems to be increasing
  
  
• Poll: 92% of Young Afghan Men Don’t Know about 9/11 Attacks -- what can we possibly achieve over there?!
  
  
• Memo to the media: They’re called “obstructionists” -- the watchdogs are asleep...
  
  
• Media Pay Insufficient Attention To Unemployment While Obsessing Over Deficits, Taxes
  
  
• Top Democrat Identifies Another Threat To Social Security In Obama Tax Plan -- oh well....
  
  
• We Wouldn’t -- want to think about the atrocities now commonly committed in our names, that is
  
  
• White House order would normalize under Obama "indefinite detention" introduced under Bush -- why are Democrats frustrated with Obama, again?
  
  
• The Myth of Pink and Blue Brains

  In the past 15 years, claims about hardwired differences between boys and girls have propagated virally, with no genuine neuroscientific justification. In reality, culture, attitudes, and practices influence boy-girl academic gaps far more than prenatal testosterone does. The sooner teachers open their eyes to such influences, the sooner we can bring out the best in every child.

• The Different Costs of Motherhood -- it's a bigger blow at the top of the economic spectrum

A hard way to come by perspective

Sometimes I am frustrated by the State of Affairs in our country, but when I see things like a nation that likes its girls/women better dead than literate, it's hard not to breathe a sigh of gratitude for being elsewhere. I certainly didn't choose where I was born, and clearly those girls didn't have much say either...

(via Sybil at Bitch, PhD)

Two birds with one . . .

Get Your War On has another great recent strip, pulling together the high points of our recent foreign and domestic policies.
Sigh.

Update: a little older, but still funny (both topically and for injections of randomness) here.

Keeping the mushrooms in the dark...

The domestic and international versions of Newsweek have entirely different cover stories -- the latter looks at things falling apart in Afghanistan, while at home that story gets demoted to an interior location, displaced by a profile of a celebrity photographer. Because you wouldn't want an informed populace pressuring its leaders to take responsibility for how our world galavants are faring...

Update: see the covers here. (via Medley)

What *else* don't we know?

The BBC is reporting research that shows shocking levels of uranium contamination among civilians in parts of Afghanistan. Not only does that indicate a health crisis on the horizon there, but it raises questions about whether spent-uranium weapons and/or "bunker-busting" nukes were used there by coalition forces. As in us, the, um, "good guys"...

(via Follow Me Here)

Not nearly as bad as those other guys

A new national slogan?
I'd sure hope not, but I've lost the ability to clock how fast the bar is falling...

(headline stolen from A Prarie Home Companion's old ad,
"Guys' Shoes: at least as good as those other shoes...")

Shifting the bounds of ludicrosity

Apparently these many years in Afghanistan and Iraq have filled the brains of our national leaders with sand, because they apparently think that the Next Big Source of Terror will be the Sahara desert. No, really. Talk about manufacturing new enemies where nobody lives there was no reason for any...

And we wonder why our Coalition of the Clueless is ever-shrinking! The star of "The Emperor's New Clothes" is looking like an enlightened fellow these days.

A sobering history

Juan Cole takes a historical look at American cultivation of Islamic militants in the last 25 years in a way that lays the shape and effectiveness of the current terrorist threat uncomfortably close to our own feet. It starts with Reagan's enthusiastic arming of Afghani rebels to fight the Soviets, includes our helping them find private sources of funding (including the bin Laden family), and traces lots of wrangling of ever-better armaments for various factions throughout the Mideast. The kind of dot-connecting that's mighty hard to ignore...

By giving the Muj weaponry like the stinger shoulderheld missile, which could destroy advanced Soviet arms like their helicopter gunships, Reagan demonstrated to the radical Muslims that they could defeat a super power.
. . .
[forward to 2005] The American Right, having created the Mujahideen and having mightily contributed to the creation of al-Qaeda, abruptly announced that there was something deeply wrong with Islam, that it kept producing terrorists.

Sigh. Seems long, but there are lots of pictures, so check it out.

(via a furling at Medley)

Whom will we hold responsible?

Jeanne at Body and Soul has an excellent post about the deaths of detainees in Afghanistan. Not gruesome, but unforgiving in its insistance that we look at the facts. I find the way that our country increasingly sanctions inhumanity leaves me feeling like an open wound, or I might write about this more often. But we can't just sigh and move on; there is no evidence that our policies have changed, and we need to continue to protest what is done in our name.

Yes, sunny days are right around the corner...

Afghanistan is almost a western democracy, right? Women walk the streets proudly, blah blah blah? Well, tell that to this woman who was nearly beaten to death by her family for wanting to choose what to do with her life.

Inequality is so deeply embedded in this society that there are no easy solutions. In a new opinion poll in Afghanistan, 87 percent of those surveyed said women needed to ask their husbands' permission to vote. There was little difference in the answers of men and women.

mmm, great. Those initial stories of women and girls throwing off their burkas were short-lived. Most quickly decided that it was better to play it safe and stay indoors than risk retributive rape or imprisonment by those angered by their attempts at freedom. Women are registering to vote, but it's under death threats from the Taliban, so who knows whether any will turn out.

Of course, when Safire looks over there, he sees an Afghan miracle. Perhaps his binoculars come with built-in sunshine . . .