ugh.

The thing that most boggles my mind about this most recent incarnation of the ongoing Iraq debate is the way that it is still being described in the media as some sort of partisan squabble. Its all "Bush says this," "Democrats do this in response". Meanwhile, the substantive issues (which one hopes are driving the political squabble, altough its hard to say these days) are being ignored as if they do not matter in the least, when in fact they have never been higher.

What has yet to be said publicly, at least to my knowledge, is that this debate over the Presidents "troop surge strategy" is not just another dems v repubs power play. It reflects important questions being raised over our Iraq strategy.

What can the U.S. hope to accomplish in Iraq? At this point, is there any way to avoid a civil war (which, like it or not, we bear some responsibility for starting no matter what the politicians like to say)? How do we know when are troops are still risking their lives for a concrete purpose and at what point are they in harms way only to defend one man's rep as the "liberator of Iraq"?

But most importantly, the question that NEEDS to be voiced right now (by someone in an actual position of authority), is how a surge of only 20,000 is supposed to do anything other than provide more cannon fodder for a war that we were never going to win. Had the president not already decimated our military, had he listened to his commanders and called for a surge of 300,000 or so back when we actually had that many troops to deploy, I think there would be much less democratic opposition. With 300,000, there is a strong possibility of accomplishing something.

I care about the men and women in the armed forces. I also care about the people in Iraq, who are probably about to be caught in a bloody civil war. If there was anything we could do to help them, I would be behind our president 110%. However, 20,000 troops (as far as I can tell, I am no military expert. just a follower of common sense and logic) will probably not help either. And so I see no point in endangering further troops, or the regions where they will probably have to be taken from (I have heard Afghanistan, ect.)

Why can't the democrats articulate this properly? And what ever happened to "news analysis"? Spin isn't everything guys. Sometimes people want to know what is really going on.

willing to march into hell, for a heavenly cause

watched American Dreamz tonight, only because Frank told me to and he has impeccable taste. I was amazed at how brilliantly funny it was. Even if Dennis Quaid did go a little over the top with the whole Bush bit. Really, its too bad that it was marketed so poorly. It looked so dumb I almost never saw it, which is weird because it is actually tremendously witty.

*sigh* thats advertisers for ya, I guess. what can ya do?

todays forcast: boredom with occasional outbursts of outrage

Right, so I should totally be writing my final paper right now for my cinema studies class. But I just had to take a second and get out how amazingly pissed off I am at this very moment. After reading yet another article saying stars these days are too thin, the image of perfection being put forth in our culture is unhealthy... ect. ect.

Its not that these statements are in any way untrue. The upsetting part is that they blame girls like nicole richie, kiera knightly, ect. who clearly have eating disorders themselves, and then proceed to show a picture of knightly, looking gorgeous and twig-like, over a caption saying that she is 100 lbs. But no, its not the media glamorizing unhealthy weight loss. Ad execs aren't using skinnier and skinnier models to sell us things. And the anorexic starlets of the minute surely aren't suffering from a society steeped in impossible expectations the same as the rest of us.

its just too simple, and I can't stand it. Blaming Kate Moss just gives the casting directors, agencies, ect. who hire her and promote her as the standard of beauty free licence to continue to do so.

FYI

Something to ponder:

Preventable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB kill 50,000 people around the world every day.

the keyword here being preventable.

C'mon people, lets get our act together already.

check out http://www.millenniumcampaign.org to find out more about what you can do to help us drop that number like a bad habit.

This is so not a good idea..

So I read some political commentator or someone quoted somewhere or other as saying that nowadays, any idiot with a blog can publish his opinions for the whole world to see. Clearly, the idea intrigued me. So, here I am.

Turns out, this whole blog thing looks suspiciously like a livejournal. I guess we never outgrow our middle school years. Hopefully, this one is a little more profound.

I'm just going to jump right into this. I'm sure there will be lots of self-righteous, political entries to come, but for now we will start with my other passion: the arts.

I saw Oliver Stone's Salvador today in my cinema studies class, and it was amazing. I've been reading Robert Capa's autobiographical account of WWII, Slightly Out of Focus and Susan Sontag's On Photography (both of which are completely brilliant) and the issues raised in both just freaking came together before my eyes in Salvador.

There is one moment in the film where two photojournalists are climbing a hill covered with bodies (campesinos killed by the U.S. backed government) and one of them is talking about Capa- how he captured not just how people died but why they died- and says he hopes to one day take his own Capa picture. This moment seems to me a very profound metaphor for the photojournalist/ war photographer. Climbing up the mountains of dead, but with the best of intentions. searching for that perfect shot, for fame but also for the impact it might have. Their cameras are their weapons, impotent in the short term but they might (and do) eventually help those they photograph in a certain way.

I'm still wrestling with the ethics of all this, the exploitative nature of photography and even documentary film. It is at once aggressive and impotent, selfless and exploitative. Maybe it comes with the territory, I don't know for sure yet. This is all still theoretical bullshit anyway.. I won't really know unless I wind up doing this for real, but I'm willing to bet the same problems would still exist while out in the field. Thinking... but it might still be worth it in the end. I could stomach a little self-loathing if it meant really making a difference. I think.