THIS MODERN WORLD

In order to help the debate over Cindy Sheehan to move forward, I’ve agreed to moderate a debate between right-wing hack Michelle Malkin and conservative apologist Michelle Malkin. (most links via John Cole)

Michelle, we’ll start with you. What do you think of the protest by Cindy Sheehan outside of the President’s Crawford ranch? She says that she wants to know the “noble cause” for which her son died :

I can’t imagine that Casey Sheehan would approve of such behavior, conduct, and rhetoric.

Uh-oh. Michelle, you’re shaking your head over there and flipping back to your notes from last year’s Presidential debates. Would you like to respond to what Michelle said?

John Kerry stooped to the lowest of the low with the shameless, invasive line that will be played over and over again on the news in the next 24 hours. . .Um, has John Kerry talked to Dick Cheney’s daughter? Has John Edwards? Has Mary Beth Cahill, who called Mary Cheney “fair game” on Fox News Channel after tonight’s debate? If they haven’t talked to her, they should shut up.

Ouch. Tough words from Ms. Malkin.

Now going back to you, Michelle. You recently had some harsh words in response to the rumors that the New York Times was looking into the adoption records of Supreme Court Nominee John Roberts. So you think someone’s personal life is off-limits?

I think it’s the journalistic equivalent of dumpster-diving, Steve. And I think there’s no excuse for it. There’s no defense for it and the New York Times should apologize for it.

The name’s Greg, but I see your point. On the same subject, I’m going to pass this one to you Michelle. Michelle has taken a pretty firm stand against digging into personal records, but you recently printed Cindy Sheehan’s divorce records on your own site. Where do you stand on that?

Like it or not, the dispute between Cindy Sheehan and some of her family members is news.

Interesting point she’s got there. Do you have anything to add, Michelle?

What could possibly be gleamed from the adoption records of four and five year old children of a Supreme Court nominee whose professional and personal lives have been beyond reproach? This is what the New York Times has sunk to? Investigative opposition research of pre-schoolers? It’s pathetic.

Okay, so you both seem to disagree on whether digging into someone’s personal life is fair game, but to take this back to the Cindy Sheehan case, where do you think what do you think about the attacks she’s received by people on the right?

Well, I do want to emphasize what you said, Bill, which is that losing a child in any situation, whether it’s in a war, from an accident or disease, is one of the most painful of human experiences. And Mrs. Sheehan deserves compassion and sympathy.

And apparently, according to the accounts from last year when President Bush met with her, that’s exactly what she got. I don’t think that anybody should demonize her.

Well put, Michelle, even if you did get my name wrong again. Do you have anything to add to that Ms. Malkin?

Mrs. Sheehan, as they say, seems to “have issues.”

Now Michelle, you recently printed a reference to Sheehan’s supporters as “grief pimps”. Michelle, would you like to add anything to Michelle’s contention that there’s something exploitational about these activists joining grieving family members?

One of the pro-abortion Left’s favorite attacks on people of faith is that we only care about children before they’re born and not afterwards.

Perhaps this is why the mainstream media has ignored the amazing stories of pro-life activists who have been keeping vigil outside Terri Schiavo’s hospice — people like Steve and Tony Sakac, the Withey family, and the Anderson sisters who won’t ever appear on the front page of the New York Times or Washington Post.
. . .
For millions of Americans of faith of all ages, standing up for the sanctity of life is not just an empty slogan — but a deeply-held principle put into action daily. The MSM had ample opportunity to tell the stories of some of the inspiring people who have stood vigil outside Terri Schiavo’s hospice. Instead, as they have done throughout this ordeal, they looked the other way.

And we’ll have to end it there ladies. I want to thank you both for joining us and though you didn’t seem to agree on much, I hope this debate has helped inform our readership by presenting both sides of what’s happening down there in Crawford.

Washington Post:

The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

“What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground,” said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. “We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we’re in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning.”

Related comments from Kos:

So Casey and 2,047 US and allies have died to establish an anti-women, anti-Israel, terrorist-harboring Islamic regime that is actually less free than Saddam’s Iraq. How the hell they managed that is beyond belief, incompetence of breathtaking proportions. And nearly four Americans are dying every day to help establish Iran’s new client state.

In 28 months of war and occupation here, Iraq has always contained two parallel worlds: the world of the Green Zone and the constitution and the rule of law; and the anarchical, unpredictable world outside.

Never have the two worlds seemed so far apart.

From the beginning, the hope here has been that the Iraq outside the Green Zone would grow to resemble the safe and tidy world inside it; that the success of democracy would begin to drain away the anger that pushes the insurgency forward. This may have been what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was referring to when, in an interview published in Time magazine this month, she said that the insurgency was “losing steam” and that “rather quiet political progress” was transforming the country.

But in this third summer of war, the American project in Iraq has never seemed so wilted and sapped of life. It’s not just the guerrillas, who are churning away at their relentless pace, attacking American forces about 65 times a day. It is most everything else, too.

Baghdad seems a city transported from the Middle Ages: a scattering of high-walled fortresses, each protected by a group of armed men. The area between the forts is a lawless no man’s land, menaced by bandits and brigands. With the daytime temperatures here hovering at around 115 degrees, the electricity in much of the city flows for only about four hours a day.

* * *

Americans, here and in the United States, wait for the day when the Iraqi police and army will shoulder the burden and let them go home.

One night last month, according to the locals, the Iraqi police and army surrounded the Sunni neighborhood of Sababkar in north Baghdad, and pulled 11 young men from their beds.

Their bodies were found the next day with bullet holes in their temples. The cheeks of some of the men had been punctured by electric drills. One man had been burned by acid. The police denied that they had been involved.

* * *

For much of last year, the soldiers of the First Cavalry Division oversaw a project to restore the river-front park on the east bank of the Tigris River. Under American eyes, the Iraqis planted sod, installed a sprinkler system and put up swing sets for the Iraqi children. It cost $1.5 million. The Tigris River Park was part of a vision of the unit’s commander, Maj. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, to win the war by putting Iraqis to work.

General Chiarelli left Iraq this year, and the American unit that took over had other priorities. The sod is mostly dead now, and the sidewalks are covered in broken glass. The sprinkler heads have been stolen. The northern half of the park is sealed off by barbed wire and blast walls; Iraqis are told stay back, lest they be shot by American snipers on the roof of a nearby hotel.

More.

Last month, I drove up to Providence to see a friend’s band. I stayed at the same hotel as the band, the Providence Biltmore. Though the band made the arrangements, I was paying for my own stay. The band was there two nights; my own reservation was for a single night.

Long story short: the Providence Biltmore is convinced that I showed up at the same time as the band, and they’re charging me for two nights, and the guest services guy I talked to refused to believe that I was only there a single night. We had one of those infuriating circular conversations, where I kept telling him his computer was wrong and he kept telling me what his computer said.

Anyway, this is a longshot, but does anybody out there know somebody who can set this one right? (The Biltmore appears to be part of the Grand Heritage hotel group.) In the meantime, note of caution: be very careful with this hotel if you happen to be passing through Providence — they appear to be easily confused and you may end up paying for it.

Update: It just gets better and better. I just called the hotel back, after realizing I had proof that I was nowhere near Providence at the time the hotel claims I was (I rented a car in a different state the morning after they claim I checked in) — but no dice. I may have thought I was at home in bed on the night in question, but according to them, I was actually in Providence, and that’s their story and they’re sticking to it. At around this point, with admitted frustration, I mentioned that I was blogging the whole thing, and that refusing to rectify such an obvious mistake probably wasn’t going to reflect very well on the company — at which point, the not-very-p.r.-savvy guest services guy suggested that the hotel might sue me. Which at least gave me my first really good laugh of the day…

(Note to any well-intentioned Biltmore or Grand Heritage people: I was travelling under my real name, Dan Perkins, not my nom-de-cartoon, Tom Tomorrow. And I promise you, I stayed at your hotel for a single night, for less than twelve hours — and since I have the location-specific receipts to prove it, there’s no question I can challenge this successfully through my credit card company. But that takes time, and it would certainly be preferrable not to have to go through all that trouble to correct your mistake.)

Digby is wondering what it is about Cindy Sheehan that gets under the right wingers’ skin. My own quick two cents: she makes them realize they’re losing control of the narrative. For four years, conservatives have answered any criticism by invoking the flag, the troops, and of course 9/11 itself. But “the troops” are not an ethereal concept or a moment frozen in history — they are individuals, each with their own stories, not all of whom are going to happily hew to the party line. (I hear tell that some of them may even be — gasp — Democrats.) Cindy Sheehan drives this home. As the mother of a young man sacrificed on the altar of George Bush’s hubris, she has the moral authority to challenge the precarious worldview they’ve constructed, and deep down, they know it.