Jane Stillwater

Taking in the current furor over the tiny-church-of-Koran-bonfires story, The Washington Post front page today strangely suggested "Debate may drown out quite 9/11 reflections," with "post-attack unity lost." Does anyone remember any 9/11 anniversaries after the first one that were all about "unity" and were free of partisanship?

The blog Daily Kos was lobbing bombs at "right-wing white guys" Wednesday. In her praise of the new book-length rant "American Taliban" by top Kosmonaut Markos Moutlisas, "Hippie grandmother" Jane Stillwater pleaded, "Right-Wing white guys, it's time for you to stop acting like General Custer."

You have no idea how lucky we are that this tactic of "bringing the war home" has not happened in America except only once so far. We have been just plain LUCKY so far -- that Middle Easterners, Latin Americans, Africans and Asians haven't dragged any more of Eisenhower's or Johnson's or Nixon's or Reagan's or Bush's or Obama's wars out of the streets of cities like Saigon, Mogadishu, Gaza, San Salvador, East Timor, Santiago, Shanghai, Baghdad, Tehran, Brazzaville, Port-au-Prince and Kabul and into the streets of our American cities.

We have been very lucky that, so far, we have only suffered just one 9-11 -- when you consider the many past decades of America's habitual and continual shabby treatment of "Others" all over the world.

The Oakland Tribune reports the story of a hipster granny from Berkeley that has decided to sue the U.S. military over a reporter embed she arranged in Iraq that was abruptly canceled by the government. While the Oakland Trib and the hippie granny try their hardest to make the U.S. military the villain, it's a bit hard to feel too sorry for her when the facts are considered. On top of that, the Trib absurdly calls her situation an "ordeal" which, when comparing her situation to what the soldiers have to go through, seems a bit over-the-top and silly, really.

Jane Stillwater of Berkeley, CA, had arranged an embed in Iraq and was told on January 19 that she was accepted. She immediately bought her plane ticket and arranged for the trip. Later that same day, however, she was contacted again and told her embed was canceled. Regardless of the cancellation, Stillwater flew to Kuwait anyway hoping the military would change its mind. They didn't and now she is suing in small claims court for the plane ride and other expenses.