What is the criticism of affirmative action? I often tend to hear that it is from the failure to hire or acceptance into a university or career position based not on their merits and qualifications, but on a particular racial or ethnic status. I do see the logic in that position, believe it or not, even though I also tend to see the logic in our culture's failures to supply a similar or remotely similar playing field across racial lines drawn. Regardless, I kinda became more of a fence sitter on this issue as a result of seeing both sides of the argument and feeling there's a bit of merit to each side.

With that being said, I'd like to ask those who are strictly in the anti-affirmative action camp a question: do you believe that the following appointments to employment in Iraq were justifiable and NOT in any way discriminatory in similar lines to affirmative action?:

quote:

After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon. To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration. O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...6091600193.html

Does this sound like this Administration, a firm anti-affirmative action believer, were guided by such principles as to hire those individuals whom were best qualified on their merits and experience? And can we take it a step further and begin to understand a bit better as to why this war has become such a fucking disaster as a consequence to terribly erroneous judgements such as these? Or perhaps could we also see how politics continually and wholly trumps policy and even rational, critical thinking with this Administration by such decisions as described above.

This is beyond fucking inexcusable. It's beyond incomprehensible. What in God's name was Bush and this Administration thinking here? Could someone from either/or the Bush camp and affirmative action somehow justify such decision-making? Please?

Read the whole article. It's quite the eye-opener.

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Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...