WHY ARE WE OVER (AND MAYBE SOON TO BE IN) LIBYA?

Liberals like Jon Stewart think Obama’s Libyan intervention makes no sense at all: if its purpose is humanitarian, then why not Yemen? or Bahrain? or for that matter, Darfur?

Radicals and socialists and environmentalists and pacifists are against it because it’s yet another instance of US “capitalist-imperialist warmongering,” because it will probably leave the Libyan sands rich with depleted uranium, and because it means breaking things and killing people.

Neocons are critical because it wasn’t laid on soon enough. Many folks think Obama got pussy-whipped by three bitches named Hillary, Susan and Samantha, or that America did, because the nation assumed the position successively for the rebels, the Arab League, the UN and the French. Constitutionally-minded conservatives (and many on the left as well) insist that Obama should have asked Congress for a war declaration–or at least laid his case before the full Senate and House. The military follow orders, but surely hate it because it strains the already strained US armed forces, and seems to have no clear objective, least of all anything that could be called "victory." Many civilians, right and left, have apprehensions about the open-endedness and likely expense of a third war on top of two already in progress.

Some–also from both right and left–have pointed out that we have no idea who the rebels in Libya even are: as Qaddafi himself warned, it could turn out that America very stupidly has gotten itself into an alliance with Al-Qaida!!

Yet early polls seemed to show Obama getting a bounce from this misbegotten affair, same as LBJ every time he escalated, and Bush when we first went into Iraq, but you can bet it won't last.

Why in the name of heaven did anybody think this was a good idea?

KING FOR A DAY (OR ANYWAY UNTIL 2012)

Rep. Peter King (R NY)--the same Peter King who once lauded the terrorist IRA as "freedom fighters"--is set to turn his powerful Congressional investigative lens on radical Islam and its threat to God's country. Here is what will likely happen, after the King investigations have run their course.

Congress will pass a “Defense of American Law” against Sharia that will probably have about the same effect the “Defense of Marriage Act” had on the spread of gay marriage and civil unions. Then Muslims will go back to enforcing Sharia law on themselves, as they are doing even now where it doesn’t too blatantly violate ours. Some will push for toleration of more and more extreme Sharia practices, others will shrug and go on with their lives as they are doing now. Here and there, some understanding of Sharia may prevail in the state and Federal courts, e.g., that Muslim women cannot be forced to expose their faces but may submit fingerprints, DNA or iris scans for identification purposes.

There will be no public beheadings or stonings, and the White House will not sprout minarets. The Republicans will continue to raise a Muslim Scare, the Democrats will scurry along after them. Some terrorist plots will be broken up, some innocent Muslims may be victimized, until the government overreaches or people simply lose interest and move on to the next thing.

In all these ways, our current Islamophobia is not much different from the alarms over French-inspired Jacobinism in the 1790s, over “popery” in the mid-19th century, and over communism during the Cold War. In all these instances, there was a combination of an external threat with internal subversion, which though real enough, was exaggerated by some for mostly political reasons and made the occasion for a debauch of investigation, denunciation and ritual expurgation. In each case, the alarms and excursions peaked after the real threat was past.

We can take heart, though! One of the things that makes America great is that sooner or later, we get over it. A century hence, Americans will celebrate Muslim holidays in the same superficial, commercialized way they presently celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and Cinco de Mayo–minus the alcohol, one hopes.

POWER TO THE PAPAL!

In the 19th century, and into the 20th, many Americans believed that the Roman Catholic Church was a vast international conspiracy whose chief object was to subvert the American Republic.

Roman Catholics owed allegiance to a foreign potentate believed to be infallible; hence they could never become loyal Americans.

Unspeakable crimes were committed in convents, where the bones of babies fathered by priests and borne by nuns lay buried in shallow graves.

Whenever a baby was baptized in a Catholic Church, the faithful would take up a collection to buy a rifle and 50 rounds of ammo in preparation for the day when they would all rise up and slaughter their Protestant neighbors.

Catholic schools taught nothing but hatred and superstition.

Catholics were bound by canon law, which took precedence over common law, and intended that ultimately it should be binding upon the whole nation.

Catholic churches were built with foreign funds and deliberately intended to tower over Protestant ones, and Catholic processions on saints’ days were a deliberate provocation to nonbelievers.

A Catholic who lied, even under oath, about any of these things was committing no sin, but rather a glorious deed which would count toward his heavenly reward.

Of course it was the hugest of crocks.

But it reminds me of the irrational Islamophobia so prevalent in the US today, which I’m quite sure our descendants will find a shameful blot on the American past.