Why I enjoy Zogby polls

Not reading them, though I like that, too ... but not as much as those Pew polls... no, I enjoy participating. You can sign up to be one of those people who gets polled (by web, not phone calls). Anyway, I'm currently staring at this one:

In a recent survey Zogby International conducted about what Americans see as important in our next president, there was a 30-point difference between those who said a "good, moral personal life" vs. those who said "someone with good Christian values." Which of the following do you think best describes the difference between someone with a good moral personal life and someone with good Chrisitian values?

People with Christian values are more moral
People with Christian values are not necessarily more moral
Religious affiliation is not a factor in one's values and morals
Not sure

Now tell me that isn't fun.

Iraq again?

I remember my editor at Auburn saying "Bosnia again?" when I wrote the second or third Bosnia opinion column in three or four weeks. It wasn't really on the front pages yet; we hadn't sent troops or bombed yet. I certainly hadn't had the experience of trying to make the world better (as opposed to just killing the bad guys/commies etc) and making an utter disaster of it yet.

I thought that we could use our strength to make a better world. I think we did in Bosnia. Somalia should have been a warning.

Anyway, I want to talk about Iraq again. Sorry, Seth, wherever you are.

What I want to say is, we / the left (can I count myself among "we"? I guess that's another topic...) are on the chariot... we are riding high politically on anger at Iraq. But I don't know that we know what we want. Or, I think we have a coalition of people with different values who are having a party of convenience but don't realize how potentially deep their disagreements are.

Or maybe I'm just hoping for company in my internal conflicts.

I've always been embarrassed by how much I supported the aims of the war. I mean, not just that I hoped it worked - given the lives at stake I certainly hope everyone wanted it to work. But for some reason (Bosnia?) I thought it could. I missed the same things that the administration did. Yeah I was skeptical of the rosy scenarios. Of course I have excuses: I'm not an expert, the media was fed a line, etc. But at the end of the day, I thought Iraq would be better off. I thought we would be despised, but I thought Iraq would be better. No death squads. No sanctions starving babies.

I was wrong.

And so I question myself now when I look at my fears for what comes next.

The surge is not working. The country wants its troops home. Liberals/the left want an end to a foreign policy premised on launching preemptive wars, and a debacle in Iraq suits that well. I do not mean to suggest that the left hopes the war goes still worse; I fully believe they think the war is lost, and negative signs are just taken as a hopeful sign that others will see this and stop the madness.

But.

And this is where my conflict is.

What happens next? The hopeful scenario is that, with the Americans going, both sides size each other up properly, make the appropriate political compromises to reflect that power (im)balance (fairness be damned) and the fighting actually goes down. In this view, our presence acts as a fuel to the fire, an itch that is scratched with suicide bombings. Maybe. We certainly embolden the Shiite majority to not make deals, as they know we won't stand by and let their government fall. Maybe they'll cut a deal without us.

But I doubt it. I fear that is the same "hope over experience" thinking that got us and the Iraqis into this. More likely I think, the Shiites know our time is limited; they are using our presence to consolidate as much power as possible so that on our exit they are well positioned to "finish the job" and wage a more full-on civil war with the Sunnis. I believe the police and military are branches of the Shiite militia, and will be used as such the moment we leave. I also think the only leverage we have is offering to leave or stay based on the behavior of the Shiite government, but the Republican good cop ('we will stand down when they stand up') and the Democratic bad cop ('we will stand down, then maybe they will stand up') leave no allowance for different actions on our part. Let me say that more clearly. I think the Iraqis figure we are gonna do what we are gonna do (whether leave or stay), so they are best served by maxing their power while we are there and then starting the real war when we leave.

Here is my moral dilemma. For all the political energy on the left about ending the war, I don't think it ends when we leave. I pray it does, but I doubt it. I think we just change the channel now our kids are home, we say any loss of life is the Iraqis' fault (we gave them a chance), and while we are pressing the Sudanese to stop the genocide there, and threatening to send troops, a genocide may happen in Iraq with no credible threat of outside intervention. I think Iran and Saudi Arabia may play out a war in Iraq, and the loss of life will be terrible.

Let's say I'm right (while hoping otherwise).

#1 Maybe we should get out anyway. If the endgame is a political settlement, and too much has happened to get a settlement until a real fight balances the anger with sorrow, then maybe we have to get out of the way and let the sorrow begin. Maybe. But that is nothing to celebrate or be proud of. It's a cold, cold calculation.

#2 Or maybe, we face a question of whether, having broken Iraq, we have a moral duty to police it, and to spend our blood to try to protect all the innocents there who will otherwise die. That assumes our presence, say with another 50k troops and a commitment of 5-10 years, can allow peace to be reached without genocide. I don't know, but it's possible. If so, how do we weigh the moral obligations of our nation to defend life we've put at risk by our policies, with what we owe to our soldiers?

I guess where I am right now is, I think the public says, in effect, screw Iraq if they can't take care of themselves, and we have a bunch of folks on the left who don't like war, and want to see a black mark against the preemptive war policy, and that creates a marriage of convenience. But when we start pulling out because in Republicans are afraid of voters in 2008, if - if - we see blood really flowing in the streets, I wonder...

I wonder if the military guys who see the situation on the ground, who see that with more troops we can maintain a low-grade civil war, and that the alternative is worse from a humanitarian situation ... I wonder if they have it easy. They just have to do the job we give them. We have to ask whether it is worth sacrificing American lives to save Iraqi ones. I think we will choose not to, and I think that will be a winning political decision. Maybe it's morally necessary - who am I to ask someone to die for another, to die for mistakes those soldiers did not make? But if I see the left celebrating a pullout while a civil war we facilitated spins out of control, I will feel a sickness in my stomach.

Let me be clear: I think we probably have to leave, as I am not sure our sacrifices are lessening the chance of an eventual massacre. And if we are viewed as an occupying force, it makes the world - especially the middle east - a more dangerous place (regardless of our good intentions). But the moral core of what makes me a liberal is ashamed and saddened by this failure of power to make things better. It doesn't believe it is possible the "end" the war any more than it is possible to "win" it. It sees a 2009 with Americans being as obnoxious about the Iraqis as they were about the French, while Iraqi kids are blown up. And it expects to be ashamed at the pride with which the left holds itself for having achieved this tragic and morally dubious "end."

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Okay, confessions first.

I've never owned a Nintendo.

My first computer was a Sears Telegames, which was the Sunshine cookie to Atari's Oreo 2600. Having said that, I loved that system like crazy. I remember the dump-dump-dump of Asteroids. It was like kissing a girl. Of course, maybe a lot of things are like that when you are a kid, and maybe that's why kids smile so much.

I also had a Coleco Adam with a tape drive, which was just as fun. But my friend Mark had a Commodore 64, and that was even cooler. I always seemed to have not quite to coolest thing going, but thankfully didn't care too much. (Thanks Mom & Dad for good values.)

I went several years with nothing until the Sony Playstation came out. I had about 5 games for that, 3 of them football. Jumping Flash was most fun; the Japanese make wonderfully ridiculous games. I got a PS2 about 5 years later because it had a US-Region DVD player and I didn't. Also had about 5 games for that. I got rid of it about six months ago; I just didn't play it, didn't find it that much fun. Took more of my time and life than I wanted to spend on games.

Then last weekend A and I got a Wii.

Oh man.

How do I love Wii? Let me count the ways.

1) Not $600, or even $400. $300 with 2 controllers and 2 sets of games. Not that I couldn't afford more, but you spend that much and you feel bad if you aren't orgasming over the graphics and playing games constantly. And what games do you really want to play?

2) Games I really want to play. I know that it's beautiful how the bullets reflect in the sunlight off the translucent blood in the PS3Box version of Tom Clancy's Oblivion War Hero Resurrection 2K7 XTreme Street Hockey Beatdown. But really now. Games are supposed to be fun, right? Like, something you do and it makes you laugh and relax? The Wii I got came with very simple Baseball, Bowling, Golf, Tennis and Boxing games. The extra controller came with several others, like a little tank hunt, stampeding cows in a cornfield, 9-ball, cartoon fishing. They make me laugh. XBox and PS3 games are basically shooting, racing and sports. Nintendo games are *games* (though they are making a lot of the sports for Wii).

3) Speaking of boxing. A and I were both sore in every muscle in our body after about 3 hours of Wii. We were changing into lighter clothes. My fan came out of the closet yesterday once I started facing boxers who could lean and avoid my punches. Some of this stuff is practically aerobics, yet crazy fun. Exercise from games? Imagine that.

4) The music. Maybe kids would hate it. But dang, it's soothing. I have the Wii Start page right now, and it sounds like an instrumental interlude from something off Sarah McLachlan's Surfacing. Just peaceful.

5) The controller kicks ass. In all kinds of ways. You probably already knew that, but it really does. Your characters end up mirroring your movement, for example. And yes, you really really need that wrist strap.

6) Internet setup. I click on Wireless Search. It finds my router. I put in the access code. It's connected. Never was a setup more easy. And once online...

7) (not "The") Weather channel. Here's where nobody else will agree, but this is my favorite part of Wii. I can see my weather. It's beautifully done. I can click around (this is all done via the remote, no cords) and see 5 day forecasts. Yeah, yeah so what. Well. Then I click on Globe, and I can grab and spin a NASA globe, zoom in/out, click on foreign cities... their weather comes up. I mean, if it is raining in London, I hear rain. And this lovely soothing music. This is the kind of thing they sell in those Sharper Image catalogs for $699. I love it. I love it.

8) News channel. I can read very good news articles, dozens, with the globe spinning to the right location. Better articles that most newspapers except Times/Post. I can click Slideshow and it will slideshow the headline, and I click the remote to view the article. I spent about 90 minutes reading the news on Wii last night. Seriously, after this and the Weather thing, I was reconsidering whether I still wanted cable.

9) Mii. You can make little copies of you and your friends. The detail is great; moles, hair selection, face, skin color, clothing color, glasses, height, probably 200-300 individual bits to choose from. You name them. They are saved. When you play a game, you can choose from your Miis. When I played baseball as Me/ii, A was my catcher. In her brown top and shades.

10) You can download Donkey Kong, Galaga etc (for a fee) direct to your Wii and play them. Those old games that you could just pick up, play, then put down.

I've left out the story of how A and I got the Wii, which is kind of funny. But suffice it to say that if we hadn't thought we had to quickly buy it or it was gone, we might not have. What a mistake. It's not just hype. This is a great, fun system.

The abortion one

B from Tiny Cat Pants suggested I post this here as well. Here ya go.

============

This topic has come up repeatedly here (as other places) so I imagine some people are impatient having to explain what they feel is a basic right. Imagine having to explain to people over and over again why you should be able to have whatever religious beliefs you wanted, when others constantly said “but if we let you believe that you’ll go to hell!”… what I mean is that the position you are advocating is something that is very well understood by many of those (here at least) who disagree with it. Some are patient about it, others just very frustrated, especially given the current trend in abortion politics.

Having said all that, if you are sincerely interested in understanding the line of thinking (which I believe you are based on what you said), I’ll do my best to paraphrase it.

I guess the logic runs like this:

1) The analysis will make more sense if you start with and hold firm the following concern: throughout history women have been viewed as property; of their fathers, their husbands. Women were traded for family alliances. Women couldn’t vote. Women could be raped with impunity by their husbands. Even today is some cultures, besides the whole genital mutilation thing, if a woman is sexually active, even in some cases where she is raped, she may be killed by her “tribe” for bringing disgrace. Not the man (even the rapist). The woman. Who belongs, especially her body/sexuality, to the community.

You may be saying “yes yes I know, but what in the world does this have to do with the life of the baby?” But if you neglect this past you’ll never grasp the context in which abortion rights are seen. Simply put, it’s this: When it comes to women, especially women’s sexual and reproductive rights, men have throughout history and across cultures presumed that they needed to control it, in part because they were wiser protectors better qualified than the women themselves to make decisions. And thus, a woman’s body never belongs to herself as fully as a man’s belongs to himself. And not feeling secure in your own body makes you respond to even well-intentioned concern with a “make all the suggestions you want but keep your hands off my body.”

Okay, now to your points, because they are valid, they just need context to address:

2) Life. Yes, a fetus/undelivered baby is alive. But lots of things are - butterflies, sunflowers. I expect you’d ask, “well sure but they aren’t alive AND human” … that’s more to the point. The question is a fetus/undelivered baby alive AND human. This is what some of the responses above were addressing. There are two answers, each of which are consistent with a pro-choice position, but get there different ways.

A) The fetus/unborn is alive, and human, but not fully so. Either it’s not fully alive (not viable, etc) or not fully human (a small clump of cells, not implanted, shrimplike, etc). The line of this thinking is that, to the extent that the fetus/unborn is less than a full born human baby, any conflict of rights between it and the woman carrying it will benefit the woman. I imagine you can fill in the blanks in this line of argument. I’d only point out the strength and the weakness of this position. The strength is that if at the moment of conception a fetus/unborn is fully alive and human (with all rights etc) then it raises tricky issues - for example, fertilized eggs for IVF that are not implanted can be viewed as murder (full human life stopped), etc. So the strength is that, for most people, there is some qualitative difference between an eggs 2 seconds after fertilization and a toddler. The weakness though is that a fetus/unborn baby 2 seconds before birth seems for all intents and purposes to be just as alive and human as it is 4 seconds later. So there seems very little qualitative difference between fetus/unborn and toddler as pregnancy approaches 9 months.

I think for most people, strengths of the “it’s a mass of cells” and the “it’s a baby” arguments lead to the compromise we have in law: that at first it’s almost all the woman, and by the end it’s almost 50/50 woman and baby, and so as the pregnancy progresses, the fetus/unborn gets more rights relative to the woman.

B) The second argument (which I find persuasive) avoids the whole cells/full human argument, and brings in the history of women as property. It goes like this: Even if for argument you assume a fetus is 100% alive full human with all rights from the moment of conception, the question remains whether that human has the *legal* right to take from a woman’s body. As in, if the child had already been born, and needed a bone marrow transplant to survive, could the government compel the mother (or father) to undergo a bone marrow donation to save the child’s life? I may not be able to express the point I want here, but it is something like this: we say “it’s a child’s life”, and even if in many circumstances that is debatable (as described above), there is a huge step from saying that a woman saves a child’s life by carrying a pregnancy to delivery, and saying that the government can compel a woman against her will to give her body to save someone else, at risk to her own health (which pregnancy always is).

Here’s where the history recap at the top comes in: a woman is perfectly capable of making a moral decision about life and death, and women tend to be just about as anti-abortion as men are. They are stereotyped as having a greater emotional connection to the baby; they carry it inside them. She would seem to be well positioned to understand what is at stake. But if a woman decides she wants her body to be free of the demands of another life (whether fully human, fully alive, or not), do men allow her to have that freedom that men always have, or do they say that the woman’s body belongs to the fetus/unborn, or to the husband, or society, etc? Or does the woman’s body belong to herself, and thus the moral question about whether to risk her health to keep the fetus/unborn alive rests with her?

I think there is a sense that as some feel that the government needs to step in to make the decision (as the last Supreme Court ruling effectively said ‘to save women from making mistakes they might later regret’), that again men are assuming that women are not capable of being responsible with their bodies, and thus someone else needs to step in and take ownership of their bodies and choices. This may also explain the “hey you’re a man, butt out” responses you will often get; it can be interpreted rather like a man who looks over the shoulder of a woman doing household repairs - implying she isn’t capable of taking care of these things without your help.

And this discussion about miscarriages is a case of that; women just trying to live their lives, but finding that men/society are saying that women owe them an accounting of how their bodies are working: the women do not own their bodies, but are allowed to have them by society, on the condition they report back on their use.

Some of that is of course hyperbole, but if you are really interested in understanding where people are coming from, I think that is where people are coming from. Of course most parents would give bone marrow to save their children, and most expectant mothers and fathers think of their unborn babies as babies, and would not want to lose that life. It’s more often the men who run off and leave single mothers. Given how disproportionately the burden of children falls on women, I understand why many feel that they don’t owe anyone else an explanation or obedience for how they use their bodies, and why if they feel they cannot or do not want to carry a pregnancy to delivery, other people should trust them with that difficult decision.

This is where bridgett’s point comes in, and I think it is a key one: that people (and men especially) who feel that they wish women would make different decisions, could best put that energy to use making the burdens of children less. For example, making it easier for women to have children and keep their jobs, better health care (especially prenatal care), etc etc. Point being, that if it is about valuing life and not bossing women around, then trust women, ask them what they need to carry life, and try to give it to them.

That’s what I believe, and I think many (not all) people here believe. Wanted to give you a real chance to understand. And thanks for asking and reading.

Corey's Coming

no more sad stories

Ian McEwan

on Charlie Rose.... I love Charlie Rose, and Ian McEwan is on discussing art, writing, and Iraq.

I want to live in a world full of people like them. Not because he is full of fire, but because of the wonderful heart and equanimity.

This is a bigger, later post.

But it's stuff like this that gives me more hope than almost anything.