Archive for the ‘Iraq and WoT Stuff’ Category
No Pain Ray Weapon for Iraq
Thursday, August 30th, 2007Tortured Debate
Monday, August 27th, 2007Alberto Gonzales has resigned from his post as U.S. Attorney General, as Charles Krauthammer and I thought he should’ve a long time ago.
This makes me think about something:
I was on a thread somewhere and I got into a bit of a dust-up with some rabid left-wingers on the torture thing. I was pointing out something no different from what I had pointed out in other places, before: I’m not completely sold on the idea that this is “wrong,” and I find it deceptive to lump “humiliation” together with the stuff that comes to mind when you use the T-word. Namely, bodily mutilations, fire and steel. I don’t see these as the same thing and I don’t think there are very many people, at all, who see them as the same thing. To pretend these are on the same footing, in any way, is fundamentally dishonest.
And in my assessment of the argument, the “Torture Is Wrong” doctrine depends completely on those two things being the same. Once you acknowledge they’re different, you realize something: This really is all about de-fanging the United States. It’s about making sure we can’t do anything to win the war, besides getting shot at. Just because a lot of “Torture Is Wrong” people aren’t after that, doesn’t mean there’s some other motive behind it. There isn’t. It’s about emboldening one side of this war, by putting the other side — us — on a short leash, and letting them do whatever they want.
Now, this argument doesn’t have much currency. In the dust-up in which I lowered myself to participating, the left-wingers expressed their horror at my different ideas so all the other left-wingers could see them doing it, and that was the end of it…in short, they argued from personal incredulity…
…but my argument doesn’t have currency outside of left-winger-land, either. People, to their credit, are generally very keen on the idea that governments are corrupt and it’s up to the people represented by those governments, to straighten them out and keep them straightened out. This is a noble goal. Of course, the immature mind is selective about this; he is more receptive to this when the party opposed to his, is the one in power. In other words, the dullard falls prey to the “My guy is okay, the other guy is messed up” mindset.
That’s where our left-wingers are coming from right now. The other guy is in power…so now, the government can do bad things. Alert Mode On. Once a “good guy” is in the White House, we can get back to worrying about confiscating guns, images of Moses in courthouses, price-gouging in the kids’ cereal market, not enough blacks on cable TV sitcoms, and are the taxpayers paying enough that Grandma can buy medicine and dog food for her dinner. And naturally, if any of these problems go unsolved — and trust me, all of them will remain essentially unchanged, no matter how much time is spent solving them — it won’t reflect poorly on that “good guy” in charge. He’ll be “trying.” It’ll be like the nineties all over again.
But for those of us who want the United States to win the war, one issue remains. I’m not sure what you can do to get information out of a “detainee,” if 1) Torture is wrong, and 2) Torture includes everything less-than-comfortable. What then? You’d have to just sit around waiting for him to feel talkative, wouldn’t you? I mean, what else is there?
Well, it turns out this was prophetic. Now that a successor will have to be nominated for Gonzo, we’re about to be dragged through the torture debate. The newspapers and the cable television and the alphabet-soup-network commentators have their own ideas — make that “idea” — about the angle on this story. As usual, the bloggers have a more interesting, enlightening, and multi-point perspective on the issue. Simply put, we have a few more questions about it.
I wish to contribute my own questions to the discussion. The question I thought of since the dust-up was:
What if we were to abolish torture, and not tell anybody?
You see, over the years I’ve noticed something about people. When they say “you shouldn’t do X” and the only answer they can provide as to why, is “because X is wrong” — they typically don’t give a rat’s ass whether or not X continues to be done or not. What they really want, is to be seen intoning to someone that X ought not be done because X is wrong. They’re performing. Style over substance. So my question is…what if we were to do exactly what they want, but only on the layer that deals with substance?
What if the world were to continue to believe we were torturing people, and meanwhile, behind the scenes, we didn’t do it? What if someone were to be completely deserving of the credit of making us stop torturing people…but not get any of the credit for stopping us? That would be like going to the golf course alone and getting a hole-in-one with nobody around to see. But if it’s about right-and-wrong, that’d be okay wouldn’t it?
Granted, this would violate the Living With Morgan Rule #1, in which, deploring false accusations, once I’m accused of something I want to be guilty of doing it. But leaving that aside. Suppose the world community is left to conclude we’re waterboarding these guys and subjecting them to the batteries-in-a-pillowcase debriefing sessions. But meanwhile, behind the scenes all we do is wait hand and foot on Ahmed and Muammar like waiters in some five-star restaurant…all day long, and then the next day we do it again. If they want to talk, we listen. If not, we serve up another banana-nut muffin and make sure there’s a good selection between grape jelly and orange marmalade.
Now, would that be okay? I mean, we wouldn’t be doing anything “wrong”; just, a lot of folks would be laboring under the misconception that we are.
I would have to expect, realistically, my plan wouldn’t get a lot of takers. It would, however, have a unifying effect on those who place more importance on reality itself, than the popular perception of that reality. Those on the “right wing” would rightfully conclude I’d be throwing in the towel on the prospect of getting any information out of these guys. They’d say, as a direct result of this, people will die. I don’t have any information that would contradict this; I don’t think anyone else does either. And those on the “left wing” who ought to be celebrating at our government somehow becoming “ethical,” would doubtless find something else that isn’t up to snuff, and start complaining about that.
Of course, for those who are concerned about image, by design the situtation would remain unchanged. I expect they’d go on and on about polls, and disapproval, and international-community this and we are seen that.
I would expect something else, though.
A lot of substance-over-image left-wingers, would hop the turnstyle. They’d start to worry more about image of what’s going on, than about what’s actually going on. I mean, that’s the part of it that would still suck…so they’d simply change what they find important.
At this point, let’s end the mental exercise. It has achieved what it was tossed out to accomplish. The torture debate has nothing to do with what is actually happening; it has to do with the public image of what is happening. It’s all about perceptions. Let me repeat: The debate is ALL about perceptions. It has butkus to do with reality.
When people say “we should not torture because it is wrong,” what they really mean is “we should not torture because it can be presented as being wrong” or “we should not torture because I can get lots of people agitated over the idea that it is wrong.”
Torture really being wrong, has nothing to do with it. That’s why nobody’s going to stick their neck out and sign on to the idea that “if we stop torturing people we will become noble.” Nobody’s saying that, and nobody will say that.
But they’ll sure as hell say the opposite. They’ll say “people despise us because we torture,” even though they’ll never say “people will start liking us if we don’t torture.”
So their argument is lacking in substance, because it isn’t about substance. It isn’t supposed to be. This is why my “solution” wouldn’t be any solution at all. It fixes the substance while leaving the image unchanged…in what is essentially a public-relations issue.
But the P.R. guys don’t have a solution either. Before we started arguing all over the world about torture, we were arguing all over the world about the invasion of Iraq. How many people do you know who have negative feelings toward the United States over this torture issue, who didn’t have negative feelings against the United States about going into Iraq before we started arguing about the torture issue? I mean, count everybody — people you know, public figures, celebrities…can you think of anyone? I can’t think of a single person.
It’s not exactly a hot news item when liberals and democrats rally around an issue that is phony. This one has captured the mainstream, what you might call the “heartland.” It’s easy to understand why, because who wants to be strapped to a waterboard? It doesn’t seem very appealing. But when you dissect this issue, it turns out, surprisingly, to be more phony than most others. The substance-angle is nonexistent, and the style-angle is ineffectual and goes nowhere. It’s just a talking point in circulation among America’s enemies — those who fight us overtly, and those who insist they’re “patriotic” but never seem to have a kind word to say about the country.
Of course it is an effective talking-point, and it is around, posing problems for us, because of our actions. But since bringing a stop to those actions — in style, as well as in substance — wouldn’t make anything any better, I’d like our senators to do a good job explaining to us why they’ll be debating it, before they do so debate it. I’d like to see them do an excellent job justifying this. I have strong doubts they’ll even perform an adequate one.
Coy Mistress
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007If I were tasked to make a time capsule the size of an Altoids breath strips tin, with only one tiny hunk of paper sealed inside that is to capture the spirit of 2007 for the benefit of those unsealing it in 50 or 100 years, I think this piece is a great candidate. It is as unremarkable as it is representative. Captures everything we’ve heard since the day after Saddam Hussein was captured.
I THOUGHT of Andrew Marvell and his four-century-old verse when I read that General David Petraeus had said: “I can think of few commanders in history who wouldn’t have wanted more troops, more time, or more unity among their partners. However, if I could only have one, at this point in Iraq it would be more time.”
But Petraeus’s “coy mistress,” the broken Iraqi state, is not about to give in. The stated goal of the Bush administration’s escalation of the Iraq war is to buy time so that the warring and hostile factions in Iraq can work out acceptable compromises and power sharing. But the Iraqi factions don’t want acceptable compromises and power sharing. They want power for themselves.
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Yes, it might be possible to pacify Iraq with a million-man American army of occupation over a period of 10 to 20 years. But not even that is a given. The military reality, as Colin Powell warned, is that the United States doesn’t have a big enough Army to pacify even the city of Baghdad. One neighborhood can be brought to heel for a while, but as soon as the American troops move on security, falls to pieces again.The political reality is that Americans are fed up with George W. Bush’s bold attempt to reorder the Middle East and impose democracy by military force. What has now been so thoroughly revealed as a recklessness born of ignorance and a stubborn unwillingness to know has brought only disaster that cannot be repaired by a few more months or years of undermanned surges.
The entire article reads like this. Winning a war is one thing, but we don’t “have a big enough Army to pacify even the city of Baghdad.” And “reality is that Americans are fed up with George W. Bush’s bold attempt to…impose democracy by military force.”
Toss in a quote from a seventeenth-century poet, and the concoction is ready. Yet another intellectual titan is waggling his finger at that swaggering southern simpleton George W. Bush…I guess for starting “his” war. But there’s plenty more concoction where that came from, so fire up the conveyor belt. This is just one ingot, representative of tons of hot melted liquid anger. And contemptuousness.
But he’s right, isn’t he? Isn’t he just, oh, so incredibly right?
Well he’s certainly given that impression. That is how he earns his paycheck…by “looking” right. And contemptuous people do that naturally, since the surest path to contempt is a sincere belief that you’ve thought things out and someone else hasn’t. But it’s widely understood this is a complex affair, and it’s a small component to a War on Terror that is an even more complex affair. So it seems wise to take a couple steps back and see how this “rightness” works on the broader equation.
Nutcases from the middle east are trying to kill us. What do we DO? Act…or not? And I have to ask this because if we’re to smack our foreheads and glean any cherished bits of wisdom from this holy epiphany from the Boston Globe and apply them to the situation at hand, why, every lesson I can think of falls into the “Not Act” column.
And this is the item our editorialist seems to have missed. If the issue is that “Americans are fed up,” well, I think it can reasonably be stated that Americans are fed up with doing nothing while nutcases from the middle east try to kill us. If someone wants to challenge that, fine, maybe we should go ahead and duke it out. We got an election coming up. If populism is to decide national security issues, maybe the election should be about that: Are we just tin cans, beer bottles and metal ducks? Or are we a thinking people who engage the enemy when there is one?
As popular and plentiful as this kind of editorial tone is at the moment, I expect it will come as quite a shock to people living in 2107. It will have been a fact recorded by history that President Clinton signed an act of Congress, incorporating regime change in Iraq into U.S. policy. And, it will have been a fact that President Bush acted on this, and assembled a coalition to enforce previous resolutions by the United Nations. Clinton and the U.N. said; Bush did. We can conveniently ignore half that sequence because it’s politically popular with the print media to make this look like “Bush’s war,” but future generations will have to explore the legal framework of what happened here just to begin inspecting the times in which we live. And by then, all who stand to benefit from the misrepresentation that George Bush just woke up one morning and decided to ravage and rape Baghdad, a Xanadu-like utopia in which birds sang and children flew kites yadda yadda yadda…will be dead. Or frozen. Such deceiptful opportunists will, by then, much more closely resemble the “coy mistress” in her ultimate fate: Her lifeless body crumbling away in a tomb somewhere, worms deflowering her of the very virginity she coyly shielded from her erudite suitor.
Meanwhile, scholars and schoolkids studying the invasion of Iraq, will study not just that, but what came before. Would that we were diligent enough to do the same in our own time — but we are blinded by the bright lights of political exigencies.
What do we DO? What is our DECISION? Not just with the current situation in Baghdad, but with the overall issue of global terrorism? Such petulant inquiries simply summarize the thinking state of a mature and responsible adult; with apologies to Donald Rumsfeld, we make our decisions with the situations we have. To simply ask the questions, all but silences impertinent editorial pieces just like this one, which by now surely number in the tens of thousands. And it also reminds us that this, after all, is not George Bush’s war. It belongs to all of us, and we are on defense not on offense.
If we can be made to forget that for fifteen more months, we’ll see a Democrat in the White House. If not, then we won’t.
Jefferson Quotes on the Executive Branch
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007Earlier, I had made a passing reference to this gaffe of Senator Clinton’s, in which she as much as promised everybody around the world that the United States would be pulling out of Iraq someday soon. Against reason and common sense, we are now being instructed to believe there is nothing wrong with what Sen. Clinton said, and there is everything wrong with anyone who might have the temerity to point out possible negative consequences to her remarks.
Someone who’s been drinking way too much of the Kool-Aid made the comment that when Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman criticized her in writing for her remarks, it was the latest example of the administration behaving in a way that was “not very Jeffersonian.” I questioned what Thomas Jefferson would have had to say about it, and got back the usual nonsense: I was a dimwit for thinking Jefferson would have said anything besides what I was told he would have said, and furthermore, I was a dimwit for thinking “Jeffersonian” has something to do with what Jefferson would have said.
I guess, all-around, it’s something of a sin to do any thinking for yourself. You’re just supposed to do as you’re told and think what you’re told to think — unless you hate George W. Bush, then you can go ahead and tell others what they’re supposed to be thinking.
Well…maybe I really am just a big dummy when all’s said and done. I just can’t get it through my thick skull that members of Congress should be allowed to say whatever they want, and it’s all good. This is a bit much for me to grasp. And you know what keeps getting in my way? Ironically it’s that rhetoric that’s been flowing non-stop from the Bush-haters themselves; you know, all that “America is despised around the world” stuff. It usually takes on a flavor of: We’re oafish, unaware of people in other countries and the effect our ill-considered actions has on their situations. I mean, if that’s all true there must be some consequences to our duly-elected lawmakers saying some things. Right? These are the people who decide what America is going to be doing next.
So if there’s suspicion about my country around the world, and the suspicion exists for the reasons I’ve been told…there’s gotta be some limit to what our lawmakers say before their mutterings have a deleterious effect on international relations.
You can’t have it both ways.
But what would Thomas Jefferson have said about the Clinton/Edelman flap? I had my doubts that he would side with Sen. Clinton, since doing so would involve a notion that congressmen can say whatever they want about the executive, but the executive and his subordinates can’t say butkus about congressmen. After finding a page of Jefferson quotes about the executive branch, I have even more doubts. There’s a recurring theme of concern over the executive’s ability to operate freely, to marshal a sense of judgment that only an individual can. To make decisions outside of committee.
Of course, it should be pointed out that Jefferson functioned as an executive for eight years. As far as I know, service in the Continental Congress, aside, his resume is a little skimpy in taking on the burdens of, and enjoying the authority of, a congressman. That is, discounting his role as President of the Senate in John Adams’ administration. None of that compares to the tempestuous power struggles that occurred between his administration and the other two branches of government.
But the point stands. Bush haters, in Congress and elsewhere, want the President to be gelded. Many among them have been aroused to this desire by a sense that the Florida election of 2000 was way too close. Jefferson fretted mightily about the executive being gelded. And he was in no position whatsoever, to endorse the idea that the President’s authority should be compromised just because his election fell short of a landslide.
Best Sentence XIV
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007Tony Blankley, who used to serve as press secretary to House Speaker Newt Gingrich, delivers a huge payoff after a paragraph of teasing. It’s priceless. And his message is one for our times, and couldn’t possibly be more important.
The Senate is emitting an embarrassing level of emotional policy twitching on the topic of Iraq. Sen. Harry Reid can’t take the war anymore. He “knows” it is lost. Sen. Olympia Snowe has just about had it with the Iraqi government. If they don’t meet her benchmarks — that’s it. Sen. Mitch McConnell thinks “that the handwriting is on the wall that we are going in a different direction in the fall, and I expect the president to lead it.” Who authored that wall graffiti, he doesn’t say. After talking with grieving family members of one of our fallen warriors, Sen. Pete Domenici “wants a new strategy for Iraq.”
I haven’t seen such uncritical thinking since I hid under my bedsheets to get away from the monsters back when I was 3 years old. [emphasis mine]
Nailed it shut, Mr. Blankley. If I traveled back in time to the era of World War II, I’m really not sure how I would explain this. I think emotionally the families who lost good men, would be able to understand it just fine: Coffins came home, and now people want to end the war. They’d understand the wanting just great. The thinking, the values, the noodling-it-out…they wouldn’t be able to get it, I don’t think. They’d be horrified.
I’d have to explain it this way: “In 2007, people don’t think the military exists to defend the nation. They think it’s there to provide free educational benefits. Coffins coming home…far fewer than you people have seen in your time…represent an unmistakable sign that the military has been misused.”
Oh and I’d have to throw in this gem too: Any adult males like me, who haven’t served, but nevertheless want to express our respect toward those who have and those who do…are called “chickenhawks.” All we have to do to earn this, is note that someone else has done something more important than the things we’ve done. That’s all. It’s a derogatory term designed to get us to shut up, while people who hold nothing but contempt for the armed forces are able to express themselves freely.
This would knock them flat, I’m pretty sure.
But would I be summarizing the situation unfairly?
Thank a Liberal
Sunday, July 15th, 2007As I’ve said before, I disapprove of the practice that has come to be known as “fisking.” I think it gives the appearance of fostering a positive atmosphere for productive deliberation and debate, while in actuality accomplishing exactly the opposite. And it’s time-consuming to read, with a modest payoff, to say nothing of the time-expense involved in putting it together.
Some things are just built to be fisked, though. Like this…which out on FARK, even the liberals are referencing in less-than-flattering ways.
If you have ever breathed clean air or drank clean water, thank a liberal.
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If you’ve ever driven on an interstate highway, thank a liberal.
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If your workplace is safe and you are paid a living wage, including overtime; if you enjoy a 40-hour week and you are allowed to join a union to protect your rights without being lynched, thank a liberal.
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If your children go to school instead of working in coal mines, thank a liberal.
If someone else wants to take a crack at fisking it, I wouldn’t mind poring through that for a chuckle or two. I think the fisking would practically write itself.
I will take on this one myself though, because it made me do a double-take:
If you are glad that the Nazis don’t control half the world (conservatives opposed joining World War 2 until it was forced on them) thank a liberal.
I’m not in a good position to chastise someone else for having an obsessive-compulsive list-making complex, but Good Lord. If ever there was an example of this habit getting someone into some real intellectual trouble. Granting the utterly simplistic notion that liberals were in favor of joining the War in Europe and conservatives were opposed until Pearl Harbor — just skip over the logical step where we argue that, and give it to ’em — stop and think what this means.
Liberals insist in 1939 we have got to do something to stop that madman. We should have listened to them. We also should have listened to them in late 2002 and early 2003, when they were asserting precisely the opposite. And so throughout the generations madmen will pop up, and our liberals will tell us to go after some and not others. Sometimes they’re isolationists, sometimes they’re not, but through it all they have the answer that will be “correct.”
In 2007, the “wrong” answer has something to do with servicemen dying. Our liberals have pontificated at length about what exactly is wrong with the war in Iraq, and it seems a primary singularity has emerged from all the answers given, something to do with troop deaths. From 1941 to 1945, we had troop deaths, did we not? Alright, so what makes something wrong in the 21st century, fails to make something wrong in the 20th.
The correct answer changes. What makes it correct, likewise, changes. The position of the liberal changes. Only the marriage between liberals, and correctness, endures. Are our liberals magical oracles into what is correct, or is correctness redefined according to expediency?
The reader may form his or her own opinion about the answer to that. I’ve formed mine.
Gore Lied, People Died
Wednesday, June 13th, 2007I’ve long ago given up trying to figure out how they get away with it.
I’m talking about politicians changing their minds about things — on a philosophical level. Now granted, I got some things I do differently than the way I did’em fifteen years ago. But I got other things I do the same way. And I’m not a loudmouth politician giving an entire country migraines until it does things the way I want them done.
Contrasted with that, we have all these so-called “leaders” who are supposed to be leaders because they’ve got vision and integrity, not because they’ve got gift-of-gab. And the leaders change their minds. Rather shamelessly, in my view. Everybody, with the capacity to win an intellect-based competition against a rotten turnip, understands these faux-leaders change their positions because of political exigencies, not because of new information, new life-lessons, or because a given course of action was lately found to contradict with some enshrined and revered principle.
Everybody gets this…I think.
But our politicians get called out on it only when they have something besides the letter “D” after their names. For example, President Bush and his comment about “nation-building.” With Iraq ‘n everything, you might see how there’s been a problem with that.
And President Bush has been criticized for it. In response to which, he and his defenders point to September 11, 2001, which “changed everything.”
It’s a stale argument. But it’s a legitimate one.
Contrasted with which…recent events have provided necessities contradictory to Mr. Gore’s change-of-tack. His rather embarrassing about-face, which I discovered on YouTube via blogger buddy JohnJ at RightLinx, is…well…I’m pretty sure that, aside from “right-wing” blogs, you’re not going to find out about this.
Would you be prepared to write a thousand-word essay arguing that this is somehow irrelevant? I hope so. Because a lot of television and newspaper editors are ready to hand down a decision saying exactly that. And I honestly don’t know why.
Crisis in Omaha
Friday, June 8th, 2007Via fellow Webloggin member Bookworm, via Community of Blogging Excellence Webloggin, we find out about this very well-put-together clip about how D-Day would have been reported today.
Love the flags. With one little “swish” the point is made: Things that are obligatory in news reporting in 2007, would have gotten you shot in 1944 and rightly so.
On the same subject, into the “Required Reading” file goes Victor Davis Hanson’s article about Lessons from D-Day. The lessons as I see them: There’s nothing admirable about getting discouraged and giving up. And a well-organized political campaign, designed to coerce others to get discouraged and give up, is no less deplorable.
If it’s worth doing something, it’s worth beginning with the end in mind. I really do wish our left-wingers showed one-twentieth as much courage and conviction and vision for victory fighting crazy Islamic psychopaths, as they show when fighting Republicans. Both “wars” have to do with public relations. How about directing that energy a little more evenly?
A Not-Illegal Bad Guy
Tuesday, June 5th, 2007
Rest well, America. The judicial oversight is on the job, to stop jurisdictional abuses in their tracks.
The Bush administration’s plans to bring detainees at Guantánamo Bay to trial were thrown into chaos yesterday when military judges threw out all charges against a detainee held there since he was 15 and dismissed charges against another detainee who chauffeured Osama bin Laden.
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In back-to-back arraignments for the Canadian Omar Khadr and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni national, the US military’s cases against the alleged al-Qaida figures were dismissed because, the judges said, the government had failed to establish jurisdiction.
That’s right, the government didn’t establish jurisdiction. It’s like my liberals keep telling me…the Constitution is stronger, for the benefit of us all, when it is used to safeguard the rights of the least among us.
I guess.
So who is this guy anyway?
Khadr’s father moved his family to Afghanistan, where they lived in Osama bin Laden’s compound, and played with bin Laden’s children. Khadr’s father has been described as one of bin Laden’s senior lieutenants.
Omar’s older brother Abdurahman Khadr described being sent to military training camps shortly after his arrival, when he was just eleven years old. All of the Khadr boys are believed to have military training while they were children.
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On July 27, 2002, 15-year-old Khadr was in a compound near Khost that was surrounded by US special forces.
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Most press accounts of the skirmish say that Khadr killed a “medic”, implying that he had attacked a noncombatant after giving his surrender, but although Sgt. Christopher Speer had been trained as a medic, he was actually leading the squad combing the compound after they believed all occupants had been killed.Khadr leapt from hiding and threw a grenade, which injured Sgt. Speer and led to his death, and injured three other members of the squad. Omar was shot three times, and left nearly blind in one eye. He was subsequently treated and his life was saved by U.S. medics.
Oh…kay…so why are we throwing the case out again?
At issue, according to [Judge Peter] Brownback, was a 2004 finding by a so-called Combatant Status Review Tribunal that declared Khadr an “enemy combatant.”
The process was designed by the Pentagon to substitute a military review panel for civilian courts after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Rasul vs. Bush in 2004 that Guantánamo detainees have the right to contest their detention.
Congress then stepped in to create the 2006 Military Commissions Act after a U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled an early military commissions format unconstitutional.
But the so-called MCA, signed into law by President Bush, said only ”unlawful enemy combatants” could be brought before the special war court.
The distinction and technical language has evolved across the five years the United States has been detaining and classifying war-on-terror captives — and shuttling them here via an 8,000-mile air bridge from Afghanistan.
In short, an ”unlawful enemy combatant” has no right to be on the battlefield while a ”lawful enemy combatant” may have the power to engage in warfare.
All right, I think I’m seeing the picture. Let’s narrate it in the most cool-headed, centrist, objective way we can.
We got here, in the parlance of old, a “bad guy.” Remember those, right? A guy the good guys are fighting. No argument there…he’s playing with bin Laden’s kids, getting military training with al Qaeda, throwing grenades at our guys and killing ’em dead. So he’s this bad guy. He mortally wounds Sgt. Christopher Speer, and Speer’s comrades shoot him up, then treat him for his wounds. He’d a-killed them…but once they had him in custody, they treated his wounds. Seems pretty clear who’s wearing the white hat and who’s wearing the black hat here. So with apologies to Sen. Kerry and all my “nuanced” liberal friends…we got good guys here, and we got bad guys here. Or one bad guy.
Bad guy gets captured.
Lawyers say…hey. Bad guys in Guantanamo can contest their detention. Bush administration says, fair enough. We’ll go by the precedent that was created by President Roosevelt during WWII. Enemy combatants. Legalistic term for bad guy. He fits, right? He killed one of ours. He’s a combatant…he’s an enemy. We’ll try the bad guy in a military tribunal.
Supreme Court declares the early military commissions unconstitutional, and so in response Congress passes the Military Commissions Act. This addresses the earlier unconstitutionalities, somehow, using the term unlawful enemy combatant. So I guess, not only is he a bad guy but he’s an illegal bad guy.
Yeah. Not only is he killing our good guys, but he’s breaking the law doing it.
Except — he was never classified that way. So the court, here, is saying the MCA doesn’t apply to him, because he’s an enemy combatant — not an unlawful enemy combatant.
Court’s not saying he’s lawful, mind you. It’s a procedural issue. A clerical boo-boo. The peg was put in a square hole instead of a round one, so we have to throw everything out and start again.
See what’s happening here?
Let’s put it all in historical context. Look up Marbury vs. Madison, and read top to bottom. Everyone who follows stuff dealing with the word “unconstitutional,” should do exactly that.
This is the decision in which the Supreme Court invested itself with the authority to declare things unconstitutional. Except — it didn’t do that. Read the decision. Up until six-tenths of the way through, the decision argues forcefully that the plaintiff is owed a remedy. Only after that point, are the constitutional implications considered. And in considering those, Chief Justice John Marshall finds his Court to have derived such authority for remedy, from a law that is utterly, irreconcilably incompatible with the Constitution.
And interestingly, he doesn’t cite anything in the Constitution that says “you can’t do this”; he simply cites an absence of any constitutional passage that says you can. But that’s an argument for another day.
Now fast forward to June of 2007. This is different from what was done in 1803.
This is “Gotcha!” jurisprudence. It is a practice of scanning the case, top to bottom, and looking for an excuse to fold. Finding some flimsy justification somewhere for yelling “Yabba dabba doo!” and packing it in and going home. Rationalizing. With precedent, or without it…find a reason why we must stop, turn ’round and go back. Invent new rules, if that’s what it takes.
Of course, highly observant legal minds could point out the same was true of the Marbury decision. It was a political maneuver, after all. Some might even say a cynical ploy in the feuding between Marshall’s Federalists and President Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans. And this would be a good point. But the decisions are still substantially different.
Marshall had to spend a few paragraphs showing why it was that awarding the Writ of Mandamus was absolutely, intolerably, incompatible with the Constitution. How, even under the best of circumstances, awarding the remedy he had determined to be proper, would violate even the most forgiving interpretation of the charter he had sworn to uphold. In fact, if you read the text, he shows himself to be beholden to two laws that directly contradict each other — placing himself in the position of being forced to break one or the other. He then illustrates the absurdity of violating the greater law, for the purpose of observing his fidelity to the lesser one.
In other words…it’s plain, old-fashioned logic.
That isn’t what’s happening now. This latest decision is an exercise of looking for excuses. What logic is involved? Bad guy…legal bad guy…illegal bad guy. The commission only has authority to try bad guys, who don’t have the right to be bad guys, and this guy does have the right to be a bad guy, so we bring everything to a stop?
I’m glad Luke Skywalker didn’t have to worry about this legal jockeying when he was blowing up the Death Star. In fact, I would have to say with this decision, the whole notion of law and order has been completely demolished. Imagine. Someone’s a bad guy…but before we can do anything we have to cogitate on whether he has the right to be a bad guy, or not. We got processes for dealing with legal bad guys, and other processes for dealing with illegal bad guys. Don’t go getting in the wrong line, now.
The issue is consequences. We have a system of justice, because we’re worried about consequences — if you can do bad things and get away with it, you’ll probably keep doing the bad things and others will learn from your example. With our system of justice in place, we have oversight because we’re worried about more consequences. You arrest people without cause, hold them without a trial, refuse to recognize their constitutional protections, what’s to stop you from doing the same to everybody else?
Consequences. Our entire legal system is based on worries about consequences. The enforcement, the legislation, the judicial oversight. It’s all about the consequences.
What are the consequences of dealing with people who want to kill us, as if each of them represented some strange, pain-in-the-ass red-tape exercise at the DMV? Take a number, and…well, no two of our bureaucrat desk clerks can agree on what line you’re supposed to get in. Maybe you have to renew this registration by mail. We’re not sure. Did you know you can make an appointment online? But how to get this thing done-done…well, nobody’s sure. We all just work here. Take a number. Have a seat.
What’re the consequences of THAT?
I think everyone would agree, our country has “enemies” in the sense that there are people we’re trying to neutralize, before they neutralize us. I think everyone would have to agree with that — and if not, then some pictures from 9/11/01 should help them see the error of their ways. Well, I don’t think those other guys are confused about what line to put us in.
And here we are obsessed with legal bad guys versus illegal bad guys.
Our system understands procedures; it’s a little foggy on the concept of threats. Time for an overhaul.
A Hero Sleeps II
Saturday, April 28th, 2007Millions upon millions upon millions of my fellow citizens want this war to be over. Like…yesterday.
Could it be they just don’t like the body bags pouring in? They have so much respect for human life they want it to stop, whatever the price may be?
Or…do they not like to be reminded of the distance between the true potential of human courage, and what they themselves show on a daily basis?
I leave it to the reader to decide.
Rest easy and God Bless, noble warrior. This is your world, the rest of us just live in it.
L-O-S-E-R
Wednesday, April 25th, 2007Well done, Michelle. The raw cheerleading talent…well, it could use some work. But you’ve captured what’s going on. Precisely.
Just take three steps back and look at the BIG picture. Socialism and eugenics…our liberals are in favor of taking control of matters that deal with those two. Nothing else. That is what stays consistent across issue after issue. Take charge of what the little people are allowed to make, take charge of what the little people are allowed to be. That’s it.
On all other issues the name of the left-wing game is to be passive. Passive, passive, passive…and there’s no limit to how evil you are if you want someone to take control of something. Someone breaks into your house. Someone steals your car. Someone runs around killing little kids. Radical Islamic whacko people want to kill us. Just toss around bromides and platitudes, sit back and let things happen.
Neutralizing bad guys? FUHGEDDABOWDIT. Whether it’s a terrorist blowing up a plane or a compulsive child-murderer who belongs on death row, there’s something about putting a bad guy down that makes liberals cringe. Nothing’s worth defending; nothing is worth it. The consistency is just amazing.
And they say the Republicans have absolutely nothing going for them in ’08. If that’s true under present circumstances, some Republican campaign advisors need to find another line of work. Defeat the left wing? Just force it to admit what it is. It’s the “Nothing Worth Defending” wing.
Credit TheSaloon.Net for the picture.
Update: It’s necessary to save this link from Monday and you’ll see why when you peek. To bottom-line it, Harry Reid does have a defense for his comment about the war being lost. He says his statement is fair because…hope you’re sitting down…he’s “stick[ing] with General Petreaus.” The war “cannot be won militarily,” Reid knows this because Petreaus said it. Yeah. Gen. Petreaus and Harry Reid are on one side of this thing, and President Bush is on the other side…all alone, I guess.
Just goes to show. When a donk tells you someone said something, the last thing the donk wants you to do is check things out. I notice that’s been pretty consistent, too.
Funny that Reid would call Bush a liar, when Reid himself is mischaracterizing Gen. Petraeus’ comments about military victory in Iraq so egregiously that it rises to the level of a despicable lie. Here’s a statement from General Petraeus that more accurately characterizes his position on Iraq (given during a US Armed Services Committee hearing on 1/23/2007):
It is, however, exceedingly difficult for the Iraqi government to come to grips with the toughest issues it must resolve while survival is the primary concern of so many in Iraq’s capital. For this reason, military action to improve security, while not wholly sufficient to solve Iraq’s problems, is certainly necessary. And that is why additional U.S. and Iraqi forces are moving to Baghdad.
And then there’s this exchange between Gen. Petraeus and Senator McCain during the same hearing:
SEN. MCCAIN: “Suppose we send you over to your new job, General, only we tell you that you can’t have any additional troops. Can you get your job done?”
GEN. PETRAEUS: “No, sir.”
Lying, in the same breath as calling others liars. Characterizing a war as having been lost when it has been anything but. Caught red-handed.
Just disgusting.
Best Sentence XI
Sunday, April 15th, 2007…and to think the best sentence I’ve heard lately, comes from the guy known far-and-wide, here too, for thoroughly botching up mediocre sentences. Nevermind getting out any good ones.
“When Americans went to the polls last November, they did not vote for politicians to substitute their judgment for the judgment of our commanders on the ground,” [U.S. President George] Bush said. “And they certainly did not vote to make peanut storage projects part of the funding for our troops.” [emphasis mine]
The occasion was the admission — right out in plain sight, in broad daylight, not in the smoke-filled cloakrooms — by senior democrat legislators that they have no principles, none whatsoever. Or if any of them do, they don’t use them.
Democrats know they might lose this month’s showdown with President Bush on legislation to pull troops out of Iraq. But with 2008 elections in mind, majority Democrats says it is only a matter of time before they will get their way. Senior Democrats are calculating that if they keep the pressure on, eventually more Republicans will jump ship and challenge the president – or lose their seats to Democratic contenders.
“It’s at least my belief that they are going to have to break because they’re going to look extinction, some of them, in the eye,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., of his Republican colleagues.
Added Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.: “We’re going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war.” [emphasis mine]
Good one, huh? It’s almost a contender for the House of Eratosthenes Best Sentence award in-and-of itself. Or…most telling sentence. Most revealing.
Can anyone with an I.Q. higher than their age, suppose even for a moment that the Majority Leader refers to the prospect that our troops are going to start kicking ass? That they’ve lost their last man between this moment and the day we enjoy complete uncompromised victory, our 21st-century V.E. day, and we’ll all sit back and realize that our military victory comes as a direct result of our new glorious democrat leadership?
You think that might be what he means? Yeah. Right.
But Don’t Question Their PatriotismTM.
Question It Again
Friday, April 6th, 2007Someone was holding up this “Talking Points Memo” as an example of Bill O’Reilly “questioning the patriotism of anyone who would disagree with Bush’s policies” or some words to that effect. I remember thinking I must be the slope-foreheaded bushbot they say I am, because I scanned it from top to bottom two or three times and couldn’t find where O’Reilly was doing this.
Now patriotic Americans, those who put the good of their country above partisan politics, can disagree all day long about the Iraq conflict. There’s no question the war has not gone well. And those of us who thought the Iraqi people en mass would help America and Britain were wrong.
As “Talking Points” has stated, many Iraqis are far more interested in killing their rivals than they are in having a peaceful Democratic nation, but there’s much on the line in Iraq, including blunting an increasingly belligerent Iran, which seeks to control the oil flow from the Gulf.
So if there is a possibility of stabilizing things in Iraq, and there is, my stated opinion is to support one last attempt to do that.
Therefore, Harry Reid is wrong to force a timetable and try to cut funding at this moment. He and Speaker Pelosi are putting American troops in a very bad position. The soldiers and marines fighting in Iraq know what’s going on in Washington and it affects them.
This is an issue that’s been visited and revisited. But the whole Iraq thing seems to be rounding some sort of corner, so maybe it’s good to examine this one more time.
In all seriousness, I’m alarmed at the explosive expansion of this bulls-eye that is the “questioning of patriotism.” For a number of reasons. First of all, let’s skirt past the issue of whether O’Reilly did the questioning or not — and ponder what great offense has been committed, assuming he did. I must say I’m a little lost on the usefulness involved in pointing it out. It must be some sort of taboo, as in, everybody has agreed it’s something you’re not supposed to be doing.
When did that vote go down?
If it’s wrong to question patriotism, it seems to me it must be wrong because we live in a country where arguments are considered purely on their merits and people shouldn’t be ostracized just for holding unpopular views. Wouldn’t such a rule, ironically, make it quite okay to question patriotism wherever we as thinking individuals find it to be questionable? So this irascible protest has never made much sense to me. In fact, when a little more oomph is positioned behind it, with the optional “How DARE you!” undertone riveted on at the factory like an extra cupholder or moon-roof, it’s always taken on a none-too-subtle “doth protest too much” flavor in my eyes. As in, what’s wrong with questioning your patriotism, Sparky? You might not like the answer that emerges if we ask the question too much?
I just can’t stop myself from thinking that. How am I supposed to, when there’s anger injected in and the “how-dare-you” guy seems to be the one injecting it?
Well if we’re living in the twilight of the era where I’m able to question patriotism, there are a number of places where I’d like to direct that question. So much patriotism to be questioned, so little time to do it — I’d better get started.
First of all, there is the question of what object of affection has aroused the “patriotism” of the so-called patriots who have this unquestionable patriotism. America is, after all, a country built on stolen land. We got a lot of people walking around with all kinds of respect for the land, and with none at all for the country that was built upon it. Some of them say we should get out of Iraq now, come what may, and I’m not allowed to question their patriotism because of course they have all this love for the country. What country is that, anyway? Am I not allowed to ask? If you think all the acreage between Maine and Big Sur is oh so lovable but everything that happened since 1492 is just an enormous mistake, isn’t that something I should know about before I consider your ideas about leaving Iraq?
There are others who aren’t quite so keen on the past, but are endlessly fascinated with the future. Mostly secular humanists, these folks have watched way too many episodes of Star Trek and think of capitalism and religion as ugly things to be destroyed. They are peaceful because they’re convinced time is on their side. We’ll all stop believing in God, and then we’ll achieve a one-world government. We’ll all labor endlessly for the benefit of one another, even though rankings, offices, and economic classes will have been systematically eliminated. These folks think we should leave Iraq. But this is in service of a vision for humanity that has never before been attained, and is logically quite impossible. Isn’t it fair to take that into account?
There are folks who don’t like what we’re doing in Iraq right now simply because it takes attention away from other things. Our Democrats like to run for re-election every two years by promising to “shore up” Social Security. Every election season they promise to fix it, and hope people forget that they promised exactly the same thing twenty-four months previous. And bring down premiums, make sure everybody has health insurance and free college, et cetera et cetera…let’s face it. It’s a little tough to get excited about it when good young people are fighting and dying in a foreign land. It’s understandable they want the fighting to stop, so they can go back to selling us their crap. But they have other things in mind besides the welfare of the troops that are getting hurt and killed. If the fighting stops and their agenda for giving more money to people who already have generous retirement funds, suddenly takes on an air of “gotta get ‘er done” just because we’re no longer thinking about terrorists that want to kill us — is that a renewal of perspective, or a loss of it? The terrorists are still out there; they still want to kill us; thinking about a new triple-retirement plan for geezers who already have huge motorhomes, isn’t going to make the terrorists go away. Can’t I question the patriotism, just enough to consider this as a cynical political ploy? Just to consider it?
And then there are people who genuinely don’t like fighting. They honestly believe this is “George Bush’s war for oil,” and if we stop rattling sabers everybody else will stop too. I’m thinking this is the loudest of the bunch. To them, peace is something that seldom comes with strings, nevermind what history has to say about it. Peace, to them, is something for which you place a wish…just like shooting off an order through cyberspace to Amazon. Allow a few days for shipping and it’ll be here. Some of them are young and male and desperately afraid they’ll be drafted. Or not so desperately…they like to read about the hippies back in the 1960’s, and want to protest in similar fashion. A lot of them fancy themselves as oppressed, and spend vast reserves of energy finding a way to make it happen. They’re isolationists in the purest form. They refuse to support the authority our government may have to enforce resolutions against hostile nations, because in so doing they may bolster the authority our government would have to do other things. Like take away their weed someday. This doesn’t exactly impress me as “patriotism.” Again — I can ask the question, can’t I? Just ask it?
We’re not done yet, because there is the matter of our “allies.” Former presidential contender John Kerry seems to have been on a mission to make sure I never stop hearing that word; and, to make sure he’s never called-upon to list who these allies are. Fun fact: He mentioned this word not less than seven times in the first presidential debate in ’04. Seven times. If you were making his arguments, and not hiding something, wouldn’t you list who these allies are? And more importantly, what exactly it is they want? He asked “What message does [the war] send to our allies?” He said we need “a president who can bring allies to our side.” The prudent voter would have to wonder if there’s a price involved in that; Senator Kerry never said anything to the contrary. And the unpleasant fact of the matter is, when you talk about the intrests of other countries you’re sometimes talking about something against ours. There’s the matter of currency exchange, if nothing else. A year goes by, the dollar sinks by eight to ten cents maybe. That’s a relative thing, you know. The dollar slides against the Yen…or the Euro…or the Pound. This makes our exports cheaper to other countries. Good for them, bad for us. And the things we do politically, have an effect on this. I can’t begrudge other countries for wanting us to do things that will enable them to buy more of our stuff for less money. It’s in their interest. But it goes to show that “bring[ing] allies to our side” is not always a worthy and cost-effective venture. Not unqualifiably so; not axiomatically so. It bears inspection. Can I not inspect it by inspecting the motives of those who want us to do certain things?
Let us not forget the hostility to Israel both at home and abroad. The movement to destroy Israel is as old as that nation itself. The United States gives a lot of aid to Israel and some folks think that’s a bad idea. Some folks are trying to follow George Washington’s caution against foreign entanglements, or think that’s what they’re doing; others are blatant neo-Nazis, or are in bed with the neo-Nazi movement. They don’t want us in Iraq because they want Israel surrounded by enemies. Maybe they think they’ve got a compelling argument to make about this. Maybe some of them are eloquent enough to make it sound like “patriotism.” I just think they should go ahead and make the argument, rather than avoid it by sniping and snarking at anyone who questions their patriotism. Antisemite jackasses should be loud and proud.
Those are six noisy, angry factions of people — each one millions and millions of American citizens strong — who have their reasons for supporting the “Out Of Iraq Now” movement. I could think of more if I tried, and they’re all working hard to recruit. Each of them take the position that they’re “patriots,” and can actually defend that to a certain extent. Well, I disagree with all six of them; I think a lot of other folks disagree with all six of them too. And personally, I don’t think they’re patriotic at all. Not in the way I define it.
I just think a discussion is in order. I think it’s compulsory.
That isn’t to say there are no good reasons for wanting us out of Iraq. But in my book, anyone signing up for the mass exodus because he’s been bullied and coerced from “questioning” somebody’s “patriotism” — or simply wants to go-along to get-along — is a fool. A complete asinine fool. With whom are you sharing that bed? And aren’t you worse than any of the six, if you don’t know who’s on-board with you, and don’t care to find out?
Imitation is the Sincerest Form XVII
Thursday, April 5th, 2007From time to time, the odious burden of measuring lunacy falls to the pages of this blog. Measurement can be an epic ambition where mere illustration is, for a number of reasons, inadequate. When lunacy runs deep, illustration is a pointless exercise. And so we use measurement. Of course X is silly, but how silly is it?
And so we’ve been deploying the hypothetical of the dispassionate but reasonable space alien, which in turn is something we rather shamelessly purloined from such fine shows as My Favorite Martian, Mork and Mindy, and a bunch of other stuff that came between those two. Assume a stranger, well-versed in reason and logic but wholly unacquainted with our customs. The visitor has missed out on newsworthy events both recent and distant…he can consume our talking points only by viewing recordings of them, and considering them on their merits.
What would he say? When he asks questions, can you predict what they would be? And how, oh Lordy how, would you go about answering them?
We did it here, and we did it again here. And a few other places too.
I don’t know if Charles Krauthammer reads my blog. I would expect hardly anybody does. But how then do you explain this gem which was brought to my attention while perusing the page of blogger friend Buck out in Portales, NM.
Thought experiment: Bring in a completely neutral observer — a Martian — and point out to him that the United States is involved in two hot wars against radical Islamic insurgents. One is in Afghanistan, a geographically marginal backwater with no resources and no industrial or technological infrastructure. The other is in Iraq, one of the three principal Arab states, with untold oil wealth, an educated population, an advanced military and technological infrastructure that, though suffering decay in the later years of Saddam Hussein’s rule, could easily be revived if it falls into the right (i.e., wrong) hands. Add to that the fact that its strategic location would give its rulers inordinate influence over the entire Persian Gulf region, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf states. Then ask your Martian: Which is the more important battle? He would not even understand why you are asking the question.
I’ve been robbed, but I’m not calling the police. I’m quite flattered.
As far as the point Krauthammer is making: I’m afraid he’s put the hypothetical space alien to better use than I ever did. Some of the talking points coming from our donkey friends have been emboldened by a few too many move-on-dot-org rallies, it seems, and have now become so dizzy and disoriented that they make sense only to earthlings. Coming out of a genie’s lamp after a couple thousand years, trying to make sense of it all using reason and common sense — you’d achieve confusion and very little else. The oil and other resources in Iraq make it materially valuable to the United States…and to nobody else? How do you figure such assets can be used only to slime the current administration, and do nothing to advance the strategic value of the theater? How can the “real war” be fought somewhere else, after this patch of ground has been surrendered?
Americaphobia
Thursday, March 29th, 2007Dean has a post up which, this time ’round, makes a lot of sense.
It’s very hard for me to look at American Muslims, or Muslims in general, or anyone who considers themselves “liberal” or “progressive” or “humanist,” who claim to stand for freedom and human rights and then attack everything America has done and tried to do in Iraq over the last four years.
The fact is that the naysayers claimed we weren’t really striving for liberation. We were. They claimed we’d install a new puppet dictator. We did not. They claimed that we wouldn’t really try to set up a democracy. We did. They claimed there would be no legitimate elections. The Iraqis had three national elections in a row, all certified as legitimate by international observers, not even counting the local elections that were held before that.
They claimed we’d do everything possible to get out of the country “before the next elections”–they claimed that before the 2004 elections and again before the 2006 elections. It didn’t happen. Now these same people in many cases are cheering for a Congress that’s trying to force us out of Iraq even though the war supporters consistently say “no, that would be morally and strategically wrong.”
Time after time the naysayers have proven themselves both morally and intellectually incoherent, and yet they never have the introspection to acknowledge this.
It should be pointed out that the anti-war movement has an answer ready for all this. It has something to do with being a Real PatriotTM…or Don’t You Dare Call Me UnpatrioticTM…or I Love My Country But Fear My GovernmentTM…or I Love What My Country Should Be But Hate What She’s BecomeTM. The gyst of it is, whether or not they’re in favor of America has become a confused and muddled question, an unfair question to ask — and it isn’t their fault, it’s that the country has changed for the worse while being run by you-know-who.
The defense would be a lot more convincing to people like me if the anti-war folks who “Love America” would simply acknowledge, and deal with, the presence of their anti-war kinfolk who do NOT. Just a simple “I recognize we anti-war folks are now in bed with some unsavory characters, but it doesn’t matter because our principles are still true.” And tack on to the end whatever you want…Saddam had no WMDs, international consensus, blah blah blah.
Some of the more articulate and intellectually sincere anti-war types, I’ve noticed, are ready and willing and able to recognize splits in the anti-war contingent so long as the splits are kept trivial. A familiar refrain has been “I recognize that removing Saddam was a good thing but it should have been done according to an international consensus.” It should be obvious to everyone, by now, that a lot of folks are anti-war because Saddam should have been left exactly where he was. In a sane world, this is a deep and meaningful disagreement. We haven’t too long to wait before the international community must deal with the next Saddam Hussein. What are we to do when that moment comes — what precedent has emerged from the events over the last four years? Our anti-war folks seek to keep their own agenda strong by trivializing this disagreement.
And, for reasons that entirely escape me, we let them.
Another thing that entirely escapes me, is why isn’t there a blistering epidemic of United-nations-aphobia. By four years ago, the U.N. had thoroughly bolluxed this thing. Out of all the opportunities that have come and gone, nobody’s presented a cohesive argument to the contrary. And yet, that organization remains in charge of the same stuff they were in charge of last time. In fact, I daresay, the next U.S. President put in the same position that confronted George Bush in the spring of ’03, will face considerably more pressure against “defying the U.N.” than he did. Considerably more.
In short, the U.N. pissed in their boot. Real good. And got more power out of it.
With apologies to Bob Dole — where’s the phobia?
Let Rosie Talk
Saturday, March 17th, 2007I’d like to take a minute or two to argue on behalf of Rosie O’Donnell’s free speech rights. I know that’s a little like fighting to protect the right of the sun to rise in the East, or of the Angel of Death to come along and nip us all someday…the prospect of Rosie spouting her latest snippet of foolishness, has a certain inevitability to it. She may lose this right tomorrow, and you could still set your watch by her doing it anyway.
But it isn’t enough, for me, that Rosie actually do some talking. I want to make sure she is everlastingly allowed to do so. I want her comments to be given sanction. No, more than that: visibility. I want Rosie O’Donnell on a pedestal.
In fact, my principle objection to her spot on The View, is that the forum is improper. There are three other ladies on that show, and in the clips I’ve seen, every once in awhile one of those three just might get a word in edgewise. Not fair!
I’m thinking a radio show. Every Saturday, twelve hours in a row. And a federal law that all kids in public school, from the fourth grade up to the tenth, have to ponder every Monday morning what Rosie said that weekend.
Why do I want this? Because I think people are starting to figure out, finally, what’s been happening to them. What “stars” like Rosie have been doing to them. Try this. Go to the Hot Air page about her latest embarrassments and view the first video clip. Rosie is going to introduce the latest event, with Kalid Shiekh Mohammed’s confessions to thirty-or-so failed & attempted terrorist attacks around the world…your target is, almost precisely, the halfway point.
At that halfway point, something exceedingly exceptional happens, someone besides Rosie gets to say something. Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the one that I and all the other red-blooded men would actually like to sleep with, asks “Well you have– you don’t believe he had ties to any of this?” And Rosie sez…
I think the man has been in custody of the American government, in secret CIA torture prisons in Guantanamo Bay, where torture is accepted and allowed, and he finally is the guy who admits to doing everything. They finally found the guy. It’s not that guy bin Laden. It’s this guy they’ve had since ‘93. And look, this is the picture they released of him. Doesn’t, he look healthy?
See what I mean? Rosie is a national treasure. She’s like a walking monument to all the idiocy there is and ever was.
So first of all — and I think people are starting to get this about people like Rosie — she didn’t answer Hasselbeck’s question. She goes off on this tangent about prison and torture, to deliberately change the subject because she knows she has to. She argues that we’ve had this fellow in our custody for a very long time, but misstates that by a decade. She’s got some kind of argument that’s built around the notion that we’ve been leaning on this greaseball really hard for a long time, but it’s not an argument sufficiently durable to actually be stated from stem-to-stern, because one gathers that if it was strong enough to bear up under that kind of weight, she woulda-done it. But then to buttress this argument that doesn’t actually lead anywhere, she shows off this picture of the greaseball. Oops. The picture was taken when we first caught ‘im. Not after we got done leaning on ‘im. Nice try.
But the money-shot is when she’s articulating the words “tooorrrtttuuuuuuurrrreee” and “seeeecccrrreeettt ppprrriiisssooonnns,” scanning around the audience with that “can I get an Amen here” look on her doughy face, and coming up mostly empty.
Hasselbeck’s question, when you think about it, is devastating. It can be scrutinized in detail, or ignored entirely — it makes a great point either way. Mohammed confessed to thirty-one nasty things, and it’s generally agreed, may have exaggerated some of them. My understanding is this fellow is given to boasting, so if Rosie seeks to instill doubt about some of these, maybe even a huge chunk of the list of 31, in my book she doesn’t have much work to do.
But Elisabeth wants to know if Mohammed is guilty of none of them. I mean, ponder this for a little bit. Mohammed is actually guilty of one item on the list…or all but one item. Between those two extremes, is there any practical difference?
I submit not. Which means what Rosie is contributing, amounts to just so much noise. What’s meaningful about this latest incident, is now we’ve got a situation where more people understand this is all Rosie is contributing.
This unflattering light, furthermore, is being scattered off in the direction of all those other people who sound just like Rosie. We, as in the “Big We,” are finally starting to get that they aren’t contributing much more than noise, either.
Now outside the political realm where perception-equals-reality, when we step into the more concrete plane of reality-is-reality and look at what’s real, we see: The situation’s unchanged. Islamic weirdo greaseballs want to kill us. We’re killing them instead — and taking them prisoner, and getting information out of them about more Islamic weirdo greaseballs who want to kill us, and how we can capture and kill them too. This is good work. Not purely good work; you can smear it if you try. And that’s exactly what these “dissenters” are trying to do. Trying like the dickens. Trying, trying, trying…and it really isn’t much help to anybody.
Mohammed himself, like Rosie, is a good representation of a broad class of people just like him. He’s guilty of some of the things on his confession list, and probably most of the things. I’m given to understand we have a lot of other folks in custody just like that. What they know, that we have not yet learned, may be of some value. So it becomes a worthy question to ask: What do we do with those folks?
The way I see it, after we consign the compulsive subject-changers and tangent-chasers to the kiddie table and deliberate like adults, we have four options.
One, we can do what I call “torture.” What it means to me. Fire and steel. When people say “we should not torture, because it compromises our esteem in the world community,” this is what they’re talking about. They may think they’re talking about Item #2, below. They’re not. They’re talking about yanking arms out of sockets, and stuff like that.
Two. We can do what the Rosie O’Dumbells call “torture.” Asking questions of people, in a way you wouldn’t want to have questions asked of you. Things that don’t involve physical damage. Waterboarding. Psy-Ops. “Your leaders have abandoned you, who do you think you’re protecting?” Sleep deprivation. Let’s face it: People in the much-vaunted “World Community” who hate us because we do these things, are “friends” we don’t need. They aren’t ready to start liking us again if/when we refrain from doing this. Who the hell do they think they’re kidding?
Three. We can go ahead and ask terrorists the way you would like to have people ask you for things. Like borrowing a cup of sugar. Kindly tell us, please, Mister Terrorist? As soon as we’re about as obnoxious as a Jehovah’s Witness on your front porch, we back off. Maybe check back in a couple months.
Four. We don’t ask them squat.
Is there a fifth option? Maybe someone else can come up with a fifth. I don’t see one. From where I sit, we are limited to those four. And the last two of those four, in my mind, are completely unacceptable. Furthermore, I don’t think anyone of sane mind would find those last two acceptable. If either of those last two appeal to you, you’re just drinking way too much anti-war kool-aid — and, yes, anti-American kool-aid — you have some kind of assurances that terrorists will never ever harm one hair on your head, or anyone in your family or circle of friends, preceived assurance, or imagined. You either believe the “there is no terrorist threat” hype, or else you are one evil narcissistic sonofabitch.
And because national security does have something to do with good relations, I think we should lop off Option One as well.
That leaves Option Two, which Rosie says she doesn’t like. But it’s the only option left. And I think most people are starting to get that. Slowly. There simply are no sane alternatives. We waterboard, and we waterboard like there’s no tomorrow.
We conclude this post with yet another Rosie O’Donnell “Moment of Zen.” Like I said, let her talk. People need to be reminded how stupid and dangerous people like Rosie really are, and what a mutually estranged and distant relationship these people have with what the rest of us call “reality.”
What Hillary Left Out
Tuesday, March 13th, 2007
Sen. Hillary Clinton presumed the other day to give a think-tank audience a history lesson. But it turns out that the would-be president is herself in need of some tutoring.
Appearing before the Center for American Progress, Clinton quoted extensively from President Franklin Roosevelt’s speech to the nation two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
“We are now in this war. We are all in it, all the way. Every man, woman and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history,” FDR told an anxious nation that had just entered World War II.
Added Clinton: “That was presidential leadership that understood that when American soldiers are in harm’s way, we are all at war.”
Of course, there was something else Roosevelt understood about war and presidential leadership – as does the current commander-in-chief, George W. Bush: When you find yourself in a war, you fight to win.
As FDR put it in that same speech: “The United States can accept no result save victory, final and complete . . . The sources of international brutality, wherever they exist, must be absolutely and finally broken . . . We’re going to fight it with everything we got.”
Hillary conveniently chose not to quote from that part of the speech.
Memo For File XL
Tuesday, March 13th, 2007A couple of weeks ago the Dean’s World blogger, Dean Esmay, laid down a law. It was a new Anti-Islamophobe policy. And for the new policy he drew inspiration from a “Line in the Sand” drawn by William F. Buckley at the National Review half a century ago:
Back in the 1950s William F. Buckley Jr. conducted a purge in the ranks of his young publication, The National Review. He was running a conservative publication at a time when conservative publications were not respected and were thus by nature low-circulation. In those circumstances it would be hard to stand on principal and refuse to associate with certain parties who might provide short-term gain.
Buckley refused to align his publication with elements on the right that were excessively hateful, rabidly racist, or just plain nuts. The whole thing came to a head when Buckley one day drew a line in the sand:
You could either be a John Birch Society supporter, or you could write for the National Review.
One or the other. “Both” was not an option.
:
…having wearied of fighting constantly against Islamophobic fools on Dean’s World and other places, only to have people ridiculously deny the very possibility that there could be any such thing as Islamophobia even when the evidence is presented them full in the face, I’ve decided to draw a similar line in the sand:You can be an Islamophobe, or you can contribute to Dean’s World. You cannot do both.
This is meant for front-page contributors, submitters, or even commenters. It is time for you to make a choice, and to live by that choice. Because I certainly intend to.
Simply put, you must agree to all of the following assumptions:
1) Islam does not represent the forces of Satan or the Anti-Christ bent on destruction of the Christian world.
2) There is no 1,400 year old “war with the West/Christianity” being waged by Muslims or anyone else.
3) Islam as a religion is no more inherently incompatible with modernity, minority rights, women’s rights, or democratic pluralism than most religions.
4) Medieval, anachronistic, obscure terms like “dhimmitude” or “taqiyya” are suitable for polite intellectual discussion. They are not and never will be appropriate to slap in the face of everyday Muslims or their friends.
5) Muslims have no more need to prove that they can be good Americans, loyal citizens, decent people, or enemies of terrorism than anyone else does.
Is this a test of “ideological purity?”
Why yes. Yes it is.
:
Criticism is fine. Intellectual argument is fine. Traditionalist moral arguments are fine. But I will not provide a forum for haters or paranoids.I’m done. Islamophobia has no more place in polite society than any other form of irrational hatred, and I will no longer be any part of hosting discussions or “debates” with Islamophobes.
I learned about this from His Royal Majesty, and it’s an interesting phenomenon to watch, although certainly by no means anything untested. Nowadays, anytime the ideological purists erect their guardrails of ideological purity, the first trailheads to be sealed off are the ones leading to something that someone somewhere can call “hate.” The ideological purists, then, block off all the other trailheads later. Until purity is achieved.
This Bullet #2 in Dean’s “Line” has caused a lot of discussion; one gains the impression, the discussion exceeds whatever Dean himself had in mind about it. FIAR at Radioactive Liberty enjoyed fisking this one immensely, it seems:
Uh, be sure to send a copy of the memo to the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hamas, Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, etc. I’m pretty sure they missed the memo. I think you should also send a BCC to the Marines so that they can play whack a muj by listening for the sound of explosive laughter.
It’s caused quite the controversy. Frank J is disturbed. Misha says, “Enjoy your echo chamber.” His own wife is glad she’s not a contributor, or she would be out. Contributor Ron Coleman says Buh-Bye now. It’s odd that an Orthodox Jew might be troubled, isn’t it? Contributor Kevin Dombrowski is out too. Contributor Mary Madigan compares him to Maoists.
The forementioned Rosemary The Queen provides the most entertaining response, I think:
I’d certainly not be welcome here any longer. Dean’s line in the sand is one that I would stomp all over, if, I were still an active contributor here.
Dean is welcome to make all the rules he wants but I don’t like echo chambers. There can be no debate if everyone agrees. What’s the friggin’ point? Does it make me an Islamophobe to notice that people who strap bombs on themselves in the name of Allah are … muslim? Well, tough crap. I’m NOT BLIND. Does that mean I think all muslims are bad? No. But there are some problems in the muslim world and it doesn’t make me a racist to say so.
I have a problem with all of Dean’s assertions. My problem is the fact that we are being blackmailed into accepting his edict. Well, I won’t be browbeaten into “acceptance”, I like to think for myself and make my own decisions. Demanding that I accept his edict on Islam is not gonna happen. I won’t be told what to do or believe, that’s why I quit being a Democrat. And if I were still a major writer here, I’d quit too.
Anyone who wants to debate without having to swallow what Dean’s serving is welcome at The Queen of All Evil or as I have been affectionately dubbed, the Queen of the Banned.
And on her own resource linked above, she opines against one of the sub-edicts in particular, with no small amount of solid justification for doing so.
Well, I have a big problem with #3 and I would like to thank Saudi Arabia’s latest decision for spelling it out so clearly.
A 19-year-old Saudi woman who was kidnapped, beaten and gang raped by seven men who then took photos of their victim and threatened to kill her, was sentenced under the country’s Islamic-based law to 90 lashes for the “crime” of being alone with a man not related to her.
Well, most ancient religions are well versed in the ideals of the 21st century. Till, Islam catches up, #3 is a big FUCKING JOKE. I’m also pretty sure that no ancient religion currently hangs gays for being gay, either… cough Iran cough.
But for sheer quality and educational value, nothing beats Ron Coleman’s essay on the subject.
I was very inclined to wait this out, but then in the comments someone raised the issue of “Galileos” on the masthead. I don’t want it to be inferred that in order to have access to this platform — which I value highly, as Dean knows well — I am going along with what are arguably controversial propositions. I think Dean is grossly oversimplifying the issue, one of the most important and controversial in the world today. I think, for what it’s worth, that he’s doing so because of a powerful inclination he has to do the right thing, especially by underdogs.
Why he thinks Muslims are underdogs in this time (and place), as I have said before, I do not know. I’ve been a little annoyed by the suggestions that as a Jew, I should be the one to be most sympathetic to the plight of the oppressed Muslim, which frankly I believe is preposterous. As a Jew I am the number-one guy in the gunsight of the oppressed Muslim, just because of who I am. Not every Muslim kills Jews, but in my lifetime no one has killed as many Jews as Muslims. I won’t have my view of what that implies about Muslim civilization dictated to me by anyone.
Just as Dean has certain things that he’s really picky about, I do too. And number one is being told. Tied for number one is cowardice. Those are my lines in the sand.
So by drawing his line in the sand Dean has forced my hand. Not because I’m an “Islamophobe.” My way of life as a strictly orthodox Jew has more in common with that of religious Muslims than Dean’s does, and then some. But I won’t be cornered this way. It’s a bit of a precedent issue — where will Dean draw the next line? I don’t want to find out or to worry about it.
Well, speaking for myself I think folks are being a bit tough on Dean. Dean didn’t invent this practice of Clean Thinking, and he will not be the last to practice it. He’s just the latest example of someone who thinks it’s a swell idea.
Trouble with it is, it’s antithetical to “learning” in the strictest definition of that word. It justifies itself, not by providing an alternative avenue by which information may be acquired, but by declaring itself a scourge of hate. So by its own foundation it provides a choice: You may learn, or you may abjure hatred. And then, it foresakes the first of those two, and demands all others do the same.
But it never seems to stop there, does it? Once you refuse to learn things because you’re afraid of what you might learn — you have to continue honoring that taboo. It’s an all-or-nothing proposition. A new piece of information might make you hateful…or protestant…or agnostic…or gay. You risk becoming tomorrow, things you are not today, and don’t want to be today. This kind of risk is what learning is all about. And so, in the same manner you may “guarantee” no car will run you over, if you simply resolve to stay in your house all day long…you’re assured you will cling to the same values everlastingly, so long as you refuse to learn new things. The only catch is this: There can be no exceptions. It’s a “needle and balloon” situation. No room for moderation.
Can’t be half-a-dimwit, or the formula doesn’t work.
As far as those with a sincere desire to exchange ideas, I think the Queen of Evil said it best. “There can be no debate if everyone agrees. What’s the friggin’ point?”
Then When Did This Begin?
Saturday, March 10th, 2007“If nothing is worth dying for, then when did this begin?”
How would you word that to address, as directly as possible, the threats we face today. You wouldn’t have to change it very much. At all.
“If our best response to evil is ignorance and apathy, then when did this begin?”
Speaking For Everyone
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007Another good link from blogger friend Rick: Do the donks speak for America?
By a 53 percent – 46 percent margin, respondents surveyed said that Democrats are going too far, too fast in pressing the President to withdraw troops from Iraq.
:
Also, by a 56 percent – 43 percent margin, voters agreed that even if they have concerns about his war policies, Americans should stand behind the President in Iraq because we are at war.
:
By a wide 74 percent – 25 percent margin, voters disagree with the notion that “I don’t really care what happens in Iraq after the U.S. leaves, I just want the troops brought home.”
Democrats to shout in unison “It doesn’t matter because it’s from Drudge” and “You are mischaracterizing our position and questioning our patriotism” in 5…4…3…
Poignantly True
Tuesday, February 20th, 2007Via Midnight Blue, via Flopping Aces, via Brutally Honest.
This Is Good XXXV
Wednesday, February 14th, 2007There is much to admire in Best of the Web by James Taranto, but I thought yesterday’s slicing-and-dicing was particularly artful. I’ll go back and update when there’s a permalink this afternoon, but here’s the item in full:
On Sunday Sen. Barack Obama, speaking at Iowa State University, made this jaw-dropping statement:
We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and to which we now have spent $400 billion, and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.
Wasted! Hard to believe anyone would say such a thing, but there it is on video.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports Obama quickly fired up the nuance machine:
Obama, in an interview with the Des Moines Register right afterward, told the paper, ”I was actually upset with myself when I said that, because I never use that term,” he said. ”Their sacrifices are never wasted. . . . What I meant to say was those sacrifices have not been honored by the same attention to strategy, diplomacy and honesty on the part of civilian leadership that would give them a clear mission.”
Aha, so this is what he meant to say:
We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and to which we now have spent $400 billion, and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans that have not been honored by the same attention to strategy, diplomacy and honesty on the part of civilian leadership that would give them a clear mission.
But instead of those last 27 words (which don’t entirely make sense–e.g., “the same attention” as what?), what came out of his mouth was “wasted.” Just a wee slip of the tongue!
The Sun-Times notes that Obama is sorry you took what he said the wrong way, which is to say, the way he actually said it:
By Monday, reporters covering Obama making his first visit as a presidential candidate in New Hampshire, asked Obama, campaigning in a Nashua home, if military families deserved an apology.
“Well as I said, it is not at all what I intended to say, and I would absolutely apologize if any of them felt that in some ways it had diminished the enormous courage and sacrifice that they’d shown. You know, and if you look at all the other speeches that I’ve made, that is always the starting point in my view of this war.”
Me again. Now then class, how did Barack Obama get into trouble here? The same way so many of us get into trouble…all the time. We’re called upon to deliver a few words about what to do about some present situation, and instead, we huff and puff and pontificate instead about what is going on, and whether or not it meets our approval.
But…real life, and the tough decisions therein, seldom gives a shit about whether things meet our approval.
It’s just like liver and desert. There’s something we gotta get done…there’s something else that’s fun to do. It’s a human failing to do the thing that’s fun to do, instead of the thing that we know we need to get done — form a plan.
I’ve often heard it said that it’s a “conservative Republican canard” that Democrats have not yet formed a plan to deal with Iraq — that they have, they have, they have, and those poor oppressed Democrats, nobody’s talking about their plan. Well, how can we? They won’t talk about their plan. They just like to talk about how much they disapprove of the things that are going on…dessert before peas.
Is this plan they’ve cooked up, really what they’re all about, when they don’t want to talk about it? It would splinter up their base somewhat, but at least we’d know what they want to do. And how committed they are to it. Contrasted with that…how many bowls of ice cream have the Democrats had without nibbling at their dinner? How many times have we heard how they don’t like us being in Iraq? We get it. And even a swimsuit thunderstud media sensation like Obama, lacks the rhetorical skill to state it coherently.
I like this thing, I don’t like that other thing over there…it’s yummy, and fun to dish out. But it lacks nutritional value. And not only that, but there’s a point of diminishing returns involved. Having listened to the Democrats give us our instructions that we shouldn’t think highly of the operations in Iraq for four years solid now, I’d say we’re all past that point.
Update 2/20/07: The hyperlink promised above is here.
Ignoring Them Is The Answer
Saturday, February 10th, 2007When the Angry Left directs us to worry about global warming instead of terrorism, it’s an implication to me that they know what to do about terrorism. And yet they don’t act like it. I’m not sure at all what they think we should do about it. Show tolerance? I heard Michael Moore himself say one time “there is no terrorist threat” or words to that effect…so do they mean to challenge the idea that there are terrorists? Does the Angry Left have some fastening to the “9/11 was an inside job” crowd?
Or do they think it really happened, but want us to do something else about it…without telling us what that something-else is. They seem to show a lot of unity when they discuss what we should not be doing. When it comes to alternatives, the unity suddenly vanishes.
Well, the time has come again to gather yet another tantalizing, but by no means sustaining, morsel as we try to noodle this out.
Glenn Beck’s simplistic view of the war on terror and radical islam reared its ugly head once again tonight.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0702/09/gb.01.html
MANJI (voice-over): Ahmed has a son, Habib.
(on camera) Would you be proud to have Habib become a martyr?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): It would be my wish for him to die as a martyr, because if I don`t fall as a martyr then he will be able to intercede for his family with God.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BECK: Back with Irshad Manji. That kind of stuff I don`t understand. America doesn`t understand, how do you defeat that without killing them?
First off, the man in the video (at least to the viewers at home) wasnt identified as a “terrorist” or anything of the sort. All we know is that he is a muslim and said what he said. Glenn Beck, who may have seen the documentary and knows that the man is an actual terrorist, jumped to the conclusion that he was one.
In Glenn Beck’s world, the only way to defeat terrorists is to kill them. How many “terrorists” is he willing to kill? A thousand? A million? 50 million?
And someone please tell Glenn Beck that killing terrorists is not the answer. For every “terrorist” you kill, you probably create 10 more.
Chris
You see what I mean. Don’t kill the terrorists…and oh by the way, you are wrong to call them terrorists.
I read the transcript. I missed the part where Beck specifically called this fellow a terrorist. But why should I have any objections if he did? The intent is certainly there.
But I wish to inspect something else for a spell. I wish to inspect this thing about killing one terrorist and creating ten more.
Not that I have doubts that this happens; I’m sure it happens. Heck, I’ve seen it happen in comic books an awful lot. I have no doubt the effects are there. But is this 10:1 statistic to be read literally, or in the figurative sense? Ten-to-one is a whole lot. That would make it an utterly hopeless scenario. And I guess that’s the point — to illustrate the killing of terrorists as a hopeless scenario.
I can see why that’s necessary. Anyone who pays even a passing glance to the situation-at-hand can see leaving the terrorists alive is quite hopeless. It’s obvious. When you leave them alive, they kill people.
So if you want to disuade people from supporting that, I guess you have to illustrate the killing of terrorists as equally hopeless. Whether the facts support that, or not.
Now what exactly do the facts support? Could it be this has some merit to it, but is an exaggeration? Or could it be an understatement? We kill one terrorist…and twenty new ones pop up? Maybe a hundred?
Uh…do we even care?
I find this argument to be breathtaking in its disingenuousness. It isn’t something that applies to a situation in which the observer genuinely cares about the outcome. Think about a terrorist putting a plan into motion that will kill…YOU. Or your parents, your kids, your wife, your dog. The authorities ponder the prospect of neutralizing the terrorist before he destroys you and all you hold dear…and then the authorities say…well, shit, we kill this guy we’ll make ten more.
Does that make sense to you?
Sure, only if you don’t have a stake in the outcome. If you think for just a moment that the terrorists are laboring toward the destruction of something important, the answer is obvious. Kill the one, wait for the ten to pop up, then kill them. If you get a hundred after that, then kill them too.
We play whack-a-mole…so we don’t play sitting-duck. I do like whack-a-mole a whole lot better. As to the perennial M*A*S*H question, lordy lordy, where does it ever STOP? Hell, I dunno. Go ask the terrorists that.
It’s not a “neocon” talking point, and it’s not bloodlust, and it’s not empty-headed machismo. It’s common sense. It’s a sensible response to a demonstrated threat. If we want to live to see tomorrow, the force-of-evil is put in the position of wondering when things stop. The unstoppable, unthinking, force-of-nature that dishes out a predictable response to a stimulus that was contemplated by someone else — that’s left to us. Do X to our people, and Y will happen. A cost-benefit analysis will reveal X to fall short of justifying Y…and that is when it stops.
“Chris” says that’s not the answer. He fails to say what is. Hope he’s got something better in mind than just “ignore them they’ll go away”…
I hope that.
But I doubt it.
Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… XII
Wednesday, February 7th, 2007++blink++
I just don’t know what to say about this.
We do use books that call Jews ‘apes’ admits head of Islamic school
The principal of an Islamic school has admitted that it uses textbooks which describe Jews as “apes” and Christians as “pigs” and has refused to withdraw them.
Dr Sumaya Alyusuf confirmed that the offending books exist after former teacher Colin Cook, 57, alleged that children as young as five are taught from racist materials at the King Fahd Academy in Acton.
In an interview on BBC2’s Newsnight, Dr Alyusuf was asked by Jeremy Paxman whether she recognised the books.
She said: “Yes, I do recognise these books, of course. We have these books in our school. These books have good chapters that can be used by the teachers. It depends on the objectives the teacher wants to achieve.”
In another exchange, Dr Alyusuf insisted the books should not be scrapped, saying that allegedly racist sections had been “misinterpreted”.
The school is owned, funded and run by the government of Saudi Arabia. Mr Paxman asked: “Will you now remove this nonsense from the Saudi Ministry of Education from your school?”
Dr Alyusuf replied: “Just to reiterate what I said earlier, there are chapters from these books that are used and that will serve our objectives. But we don’t teach hatred towards Judaism or Christianity – on the contrary.”
It would appear the above is in response to this. I await additional information on how, exactly, this was “misinterpreted.” And what objectives are being served.
I just gotta believe there’d be some discussion about that already if we were talking about a Catholic school using derogatory epithets to describe Muslims. I gotta believe the discussion would be pretty intense without my even asking for it…as in, hard to avoid.
Update 2-8-07: Okay…twenty-four hours ago Google did not yet pick up the following, but it did by yesterday afternoon. Dr. Alyusuf is deploying the Bill Clinton two-pronged defense of “he didn’t do it, even if he did it isn’t wrong, it isn’t wrong because everybody does it, people do it all the time, and he doesn’t.”
The pages didn’t say what you think you said because they were taking out of context…AND…they have been ripped out.
However, she said that the material had now been torn out. “The press interest in these unused chapters has shocked us,” she added. Dr Alyusuf said that, since the claims emerged, pupils and parents had been abused by local residents.
The school said that the allegations made by Mr Cook in his claim for unfair dismissal were absurd. Mr Cook, who worked at the school for 19 years and educated his two daughters there, had never made complaints over racist teaching materials before, a spokesman added.
If there is an encyclopedia somewhere about “ways to get away with it” Dr. Alyusuf must be making a point of hitting each and every single entry therein. She’s using ALL the tropes and obfuscating every way she can. She’s making a suggestion that more harm has been done by people paying attention to the passages, than by people previously ignoring the issue altogether. She’s used the “context” thing, she’s done the “you’re the first one who’s ever complained” deal — which needs no definition to anyone who’s ever called a tech support line.
I’m keeping in mind all we have here, is one guy saying things are the way he says they are. Or were. It could be nothing more than an urban legend.
But the way Dr. Alyusuf has chosen to manage her P.R. makes me deeply suspicious.
I could chalk it up to the way the story is written. It’s quite bad. I don’t know why these things that people say are so important to the story, and yet, I have to be given high-level general explanations of what these people said…as opposed to some good hard quotes. This trend is repeated over here, and the last two paragraphs…well, they just raise more questions in my mind.
Alyusuf said the controversial chapters had never been taught at the school and that the quote was based on a mis-translation that appeared only as an explanatory footnote.
However, she said the offending pages had now been cut out of the textbooks, and she had informed the Saudi Department of Education of the decision.
If it’s an explanatory footnote that never had been taught anyway, why tell the Saudi Department of Education? Do they have partial ownership of some textbooks that are being carved up? That would make sense. Kinda. Story behind the first link says the school gets “£4 million a year from the Saudi royal family” so maybe this is something they’re required to do.
Just say so.
It kinda looks like she’s saying “we’ve asked the Saudis for their consent to stop calling jews ‘pigs’ and we’re waiting to see if they approve.”
Remember when conservative talk radio was linked to the Oklahoma City bombing? The argument was that Rush Limbaugh was doing his show three hours a day…and then among his twenty million listeners, would be a few slope-foreheaded unhinged rednecks who just got angrier and angrier, and eventually loaded fertilizer on a truck somewhere.
My whole issue is with the double standard. Has it been addressed now that the “offending pages” have been “ripped out”? No, not by a damn sight. Every single time I’ve heard President Bush got some of our troops killed in Iraq…I only have to do a little bit of digging to find out it was someone else who did the killing. The Iraqis who get killed, the Israelis who get killed…it’s all done by knuckle-dragging, unhinged lunatics. And when & where I get to learn a bit more about said lunatics — invariably, I find out they’ve been lunatics for a long, long time. Since a young age. Raised that way.
How much death is linked to this lately? A lot. A whole lot.
This isn’t just any ol’ “racism” issue. It’s huge. Some racist refuses to hire or promote you…or rent you an apartment…that’s a whole different kettle of fish from blowing you up into little pieces with a dynamite belt. I’m told some kind of “huge” deal has been made out of this in the news cycle.
Huge by what standards, might I ask? We ought to be hearing about this day after day…like we heard about Abu Ghraib.
Sanction of the Victim
Friday, February 2nd, 2007So three days ago I dropped this cryptic clue and then messed around with a lot of non-blog stuff in my life…I have to do that every now and then, ya know. I said this upcoming Friday has something to do with things that should be on our minds, and those things have nothing to do with groundhogs or shadows. Here it is Friday.
So what was I talking about?
I’ll get to that. First, just as a mental exercise, try this.
Suppose there is an imaginary country that is hit by the Islamic psycopaths in a nature similar to the September 11 attacks. And they lose their government — not to the Islamic psycopaths, but to those who are determined to fight the psychopaths. Imagine that this new government is everything our Hollywood halfwits say the Bush/Cheney government is: Refusal to listen to others; rampant incompetence; suspension and removal of constitutional freedoms, people disappearing overnight, dissenters silenced, the whole shebang. And when it’s over, you can’t travel from one place to another without telling this new government what you’re doing there and when you’ll be back…and waiting for the okay to go ahead.
Now…imagine some bright, literate, intelligent young girl-woman lies to the pencil-necked bureaucrats over there, so that she can come over here. She starts a career as a scriptwriter right here in the United States, and after the real September 11 attacks starts to warn us about where we are headed. She warns us that this road to disaster ends in death…and it begins with a surrendering of your ability to noodle things through, as an independent, rational individual, and trusting your government to do that for you.
Sounds like some kind of a screed straight out of DailyKOS, right? Or the skeleton to an unfinished script rattling around in Hollywood. Maybe even getting a red-light because it was too liberal; the blue-state elites down there thought it was great in spirit, but lacking in subtlety. They wouldn’t market it because we would never buy it.
And yet.
Remove terrorist attacks, and replace them with economic disaster, with a touch of anti-semitism mixed in to the new government’s countermeasures. Change nothing else and what you are left with is the early biography of Alyssa Rosenbaum, whom you know as Ayn Rand, b. February 2, 1905.
Throughout her life she described herself as both a philosopher and a writer; in which domain did she achieve excellence? As a writer, to answer that you first have to define the distinction between skill and talent. She possessed an abundance of the former. In this surgical-precision selection of exactly the right noun, adjective and verb, she is in a class by herself. Talent? I have my reservations about this…not that I have much place to talk. Talent as a writer, has something to do with the effectiveness with which one communicates ideas. As an overwhelmingly strong Yin she drew the perimeter around her efforts, and the ability of others to properly interpret her content was decidedly outside of it.
As a direct consequence of this, she wrote like George Will. Or…some guy who blogs away on “a blog nobody reads.”
The three of us have it in common, that the point to writing is primarily just to get the thought out there. Carve the legacy. Take charge of the communication process right up to, and including, the point where ambiguity is eradicated to the most thorough extent possible. Not one single inch further than that, though. How the ideas are absorbed by those who consume them — that is outside of our scope. There is a boundary to the project-at-hand, and a reason for defining where it is. Efforts applied outside of that line are inevitably ineffectual, and could even be damaging.
I have noticed that the tendency to approach life this way, seems to be inexplicably intertwined with the tendency to think as an individual — to hoarde the responsibility and rewards associated with the cognitive and cogitative processes to onesself. Here at the blog that nobody reads, we call this the Yin and Yang theory and have written a great deal about it.
Ayn Rand’s message for us — it is a decidedly post-industrial-revolution message, but I would argue it’s timeless by nature — is this: In matters of government, think like Yin. Define your boundaries. Take charge of your own thinking, for you alone are responsible for the plausibility of the conclusions you reach and the wisdom involved in the actions you take. You are the sole stakeholder there. Necessarily, this involves the reduction of actions taken for “public good”…down to a pinpoint. For who is the stakeholder in those? Breezy, half-assed answers like “we all are” or “the least among us” are insufficiently reinforced to sustain any pursuit of the discussion at hand.
“Public” will…nobody ultimately responsible for the direction of that will, insofar as wisdom, strategy or accuracy…results in things being done that benefit no one, over the longer term. It results in death. And there is a certain direction this takes: Concentration of authority over even the most mundane decisions, into elite groups; the inevitable attack upon individuality, since thinking men only be governed, but never “ruled” in the classic sense; Bathosploration; absurd clean-up efforts at decidedly inappropriate times, of the alphabetize-the-spice-rack variety, kind of like the proverbial rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic. A government too infatuated with its own public image, too far invested in appealing to the Yang, over time, begins to desire approval from the Yang and from nobody else.
And this ultimately means the government compels us to recognize and to cogitate all together.
I’m sure our liberals would argue that if Ayn Rand were alive today, she’d have just as much criticism for the Bush administration as anyone else. I’m sure they’re right about that. And yet, I have to ask: Can’t our leftists find a way to speak out against his policies, that would appeal better to her sensibilities? Since this century began, as they have desperately grasped at the votes needed just to present the President with a more hostile Congress, they have made a point of recruiting from the Yang and from nobody else. Their initiatives, at least the ones that don’t deal with attacking the individual, all involve Trudging Toward Zero; endeavoring toward an ideal rather than into a frontier. Captain Kirk’s famous introduction — “to boldly go where no man has gone before” — has absolutely no place for them. They work inward, eliminating injury and discomfort, scolding and chastising anyone who would direct resources to anything else including the inspection of what might be the origin of such injury or discomfort.
They are most threatening when the injuries and discomforts are not re-inflicted, for it is then that they flail about looking for other things to do. Bellies must be filled until they are all full — and then — we must vigorously attack the obesity epidemic. And then we must inspect nutritional balances. And then we must inspect racial and gender differentials; why are women more prone to calcium deficiencies than men? And then, and then, and then.
To keep themselves appealing, they have to talk up only one task in this strategy at a time; to inspect where it’s all going, is to associate it with death. To eliminate all injuries, you have to eliminate all discomforts; to eliminate discomfort, you have to eliminate all exigencies; to eliminate all exigencies you have to eliminate all variants, and to eliminate variants you have to eradicate life. The ultimate goal of socialism is non-existence. The vision it has for humanity, is to behave like the cartoon character who jumps into a hole and pulls the hole itself in after him. To avoid that, socialism would have to progress only a limited distance down its selected path, and then stop; it being an Absolutist ideology by nature, this is impossible.
And here in the United States, liberals have become nothing more than socialists sufficiently clever to throw the word “freedom” around when they describe what they want to do. They want to tell everyone what to believe, so they can make everyone forget that you can’t eliminate all discomfort without eliminating life. They, too, are absolutists. They, too, will never, ever stop. No defeat is ever taken as rejection; defeat is simply a signal that different packaging must be used for the same product. And no victory is ever complete. There is always another discomfort to be attacked, and then another, and then another. Until life ends outright, or is made impossible. This trail does not end short of that cliff, and our “trail bosses” will not abandon it before said cliff. It’s absolutist; it doesn’t waver, yield, or stop. Liberalism is death. We distinguish one from the other, only when we think in the way we are told to think, by others.
This is unavoidable. Our individual achievements, our body temperatures, our pulses…anything out of some kind of norm, which manifests the fact that we still live…these are targets. To be recognized by liberals as an unwarranted discomfort, imposed upon this class if not on that one, and thus to be eradicated. If not now, then later.
They have no choice. Once life is comfortable, the constituents must be prevailed-upon to demand more comfort. No woodworking project is ever sanded sufficiently, to be removed from the lathe. That’s what liberalism has become. Achievement? Accomplishment? Making things work? Bah. We are all here to be made comfortable. The purpose of life is to be happy. And yet…to bring that about, our liberals excite us into unhappiness, in perpetuity. All thinking people would recognize this as inherently self-contradictory — and so — our liberals have a solution for that too. Stop thinking. Let us do all the thinking. “Bush lied” because we said he did, stop asking what the lie was. The terrorist attack was unfortunate, but stop thinking about it. Think about Social Security instead. Bush is opposed to freedom and we are in favor of it…because we say so. Stop asking questions.
Before it is over, they’ll take things away from us that we need, to support the lives we have built for ourselves. They’ll do far worse than ask “Who told you to build that?” They’ll demand that we approve of what they take from us. They’ll demand Sanction of the Victim. Unprecedented? Not by a damn sight. Since 1933, this is the way they have always worked.
A lot of people are going to spend the day watching that Bill Murray movie. While you’re at it, go buy Atlas Shrugged, used & new from $3.95. Try to get it finished by Memorial Day. Read the first three chapters by Valentine’s Day. They, you will find, are exactly like what is happening in the world right now.
Kind of spooky, huh?
Time Machine Lunacy
Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007It occurs to me that if one wants to be committed to a looney-bin, without lying about anything or deceiving anyone in any way, a time machine set to the right year will do the trick. The right year, and a carefully-selected tidbit of factual disclosure.
Hello good people of 2006! I’m from the future. Democrats are going to take over Congress, and one of the first things they’ll do is ask for direction from those whackjobs at DailyKOS. You think I kid! I’m as serious as a heart attack.
See what I mean? Off you go, and here’s your straightjacket. And yet…here we are.
Hello good people of 2005! I’m from the future. Democrats are blaming George Bush for hurricanes. Yes. They really, truly are.
Hello 2004! George Bush is thought by many to be the most “hated” President ever, and it looks like he is, even though he’s won more popular votes than any President in history.
It’s just awfully tough for me to believe we would be allowed to keep our freedom as responsible, sane people, after uttering such drivel. It all makes sense now; in fact, in some quarters you’ll be subjected to some form of verbal assault if you don’t go along with it. But we wouldn’t be able to explain it to the people of yesteryear. We’re like the frog sitting in a pot of water, raised to a rolling boil degree-by-degree.
Hello 2003! We have captured Saddam Hussein and he’s been executed; we’re having a lively debate about whether this makes the world any safer. The folks who think it was a bad move, have pretty much won the debate, even though they are never — ever — called upon to say what should have been done differently.
Hello 2002! Evidence has been produced that the people in the U.N. voting against an invasion of Iraq, are on Saddam Hussein’s payroll through the oil-for-food program. To the tune of billions of dollars. What are we doing to bring them to justice? Nothing. Actually, hardly anyone ever talks about it.
Hello 2001! I dunno what to say to you…just hug your kids. And may God be with you.
Hello 2000! If you give Republicans control of all three branches of government, Democrats will try their very best to win you back by…calling you a bunch of fucking goddamned idiots and hoping that will change your mind. Ultimately, it will.
Hello 1999! Don’t worry about President Clinton’s legacy. He’s doing more to try to hide it, than anyone.
Hello 1998! Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of California.
Hello 1997! Little kids are going to start performing oral sex on each other because the President said it wasn’t really sex. He’s going to stay just as popular as he is now, if not moreso.
Hello 1996! We’re debating about whether Saddam Hussein was ever a dangerous fucknozzle; the people who insist he was a harmless misunderstood old teddy-bear, are winning.
Hello 1995! We got a “Pelosi Revolution” that’s just like your “Gingrich Revolution.” It involved between a quarter and a third as many House seats changing hands, as what you just went through…but our media tells us it means far, far more. And you wouldn’t believe how differently they’re treating it. It’s working, too.
Hello 1994! Your “co-President” is going to get her husband’s ass handed to him in the upcoming mid-terms with her socialized-medicine scheme. It’s going to make history — and yet, twelve years later, she’s going to start pushing the same product all over again, running for President “in her own right.”
Hello 1993! I’m from the future. Your brand-new President is going to lie to you. About a marital affair. On television. Waggling his finger at the cameras…and I mean that literally. And then he’s going to get caught by his own spunk, spurted all over a blue dress. DNA tests and everything. He won’t be run out of town on a rail, in fact, there will be a cult following devoted to him and how he “got away with it.”
Hello 1992! James Bond is gone for awhile, but eventually he’s going to come back. But while you’re settling into this era of political-correctness and female-friendliness, I can’t begin to describe what you’re about to do to the White House.
Hello 1991! Saddam Hussein’s going to be left in charge. This will be proven to be the wrong decision. The United Nations will make every single mistake about him they possibly can, including — get this — taking billions of dollars in bribes from Saddam himself, to veto enforcement of Resolutions 678 and 687. And yet, I daresay, there is no one in my time who is opposed to the U.N., who isn’t also opposed to it in yours. Not a soul, so far as I know.
Hello 1990! In about five years, it will become highly fashionable for mens’ pants to slip WAY down so their butt cracks stick out. You won’t be able to get away from it, and it will remain highly fashionable for about a dozen years.
These things make some measure of sense to us because we’ve been acclimated to them slowly. They would make sense in no other time.
Now, That’s What I Call Focused
Friday, January 19th, 2007A little bit too focused.
I would call the situation somewhat grim. President Bush says we need to deploy more troops to Iraq, and that the success of the mission depends on it. A lot of people are saying this isn’t going to do the trick. There is some powerful evidence that both are correct, and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that if both are correct, something bad is about to happen.
And via Boortz, we learn that Miss Perky Perky had some comments about her press gathering. It makes me wonder how many people completely depend on her to find out what’s going on in the world, whether they realize it or not; and among those who do, what all they’re missing.
Last Wednesday, President Bush gave his address to the country about “the new way forward” for Iraq, and lots of journalists—including me, of course—were in Washington to cover it. But before the Big Speech, there was the little-known Big Meeting.
:
As I was looking at my colleagues around the room—Charlie Gibson, George Stephanopoulos, Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Bob Schieffer, Wolf Blitzer, and Brit Hume—I couldn’t help but notice, despite how far we’ve come, that I was still the only woman there. Well, there was some female support staff near the door. But of the people at the table, the “principals” in the meeting, I was the only one wearing a skirt. Everyone was gracious, though the jocular atmosphere was palpable.The feminist movement that began in the 1970’s helped women make tremendous strides—but there still haven’t been enough great leaps for womankind. Fifty-one percent of America is female, but women make up only about sixteen percent of Congress—which, as the Washington Monthly recently pointed out, is better than it’s ever been…but still not as good as parliaments in Rwanda (forty-nine percent women) or Sweden (forty-seven percent women). Only nine Fortune 500 companies have women as CEO’s.
That meeting was a reality check for me—and not just about Iraq. It was a reminder that all of us still have an obligation to ask: Don’t more women deserve a place at the table too? [emphasis mine]
Okay, one…at…a…time:
All of us have an obligation to ask — all of whom, exactly? People who vote for the President? Or people who hire and promote news executives? It would seem the second of those is more germane to the complaint, but it’s the first one that is more compatible with a sweeping pronouncement of “all of us.” Does Ms. Couric really mean to imply that by voting in a guy she doesn’t like, we “all” gave some kind of license for the gals to be crowded out away from “the table”?
Obligation? To who? What is the worst that happens if we don’t ask this? The Perkolator will frown upon us disapprovingly, with her lower lip stuck out? What’s the best that happens if we do ask? As Katie points out, we already started asking this 40 years ago. We don’t see starship captains on TV anymore whacking a “Yeoman” on her miniskirted ass when she brings him 23rd-century coffee. And if you’re in a position to hire or promote one candidate over another, and you exclude someone just because she doesn’t have a penis, all it takes is for someone to prove it and your career is at an end.
From that position, where exactly are we supposed to go?
Sixteen out of a hundred senators, and Katie’s unhappy. It’s clear we can only make her happy by means of a seventeenth senator…and some more and some more. I’m going to go way out on a limb here: If I get to pick how these new lady senators do their voting, and it seems I should be able to do this because Couric doesn’t even begin to address the issue — I will be much, much happier with the 35 new female senators than Couric herself. So her statement of what, exactly, has cheesed her off here, is a bit imprecise.
We’ve all done imprecise jobs of articulating what’s causing us distress. What’s remarkable is that just speaking for myself, if I’m noticing something’s still broken after forty years of fixing stuff, I’m going to put lots, and lots, and lots of effort into noticing just where we might have gone wrong. I might not succeed. But I’ll put in the effort. If we go forty-five or fifty years without fixing it, I’ll put in even more effort next time.
Couric doesn’t even try. Skirts are missing at the table. No fair. Whine whine whine.
And then. What are we to do about this, exactly? Why the silence on this aspect of it…when it ought to be the whole point, if the whining is worth doing in the first place? I see one of the commentors, “joycewest,” took the time and energy to research Rwanda’s situation in Parliament. One third of it must be female by law. Huh. The Perkolator went out of her way to cite Rwanda; I wonder how many other countries with legislative chambers she passed over to get to that one. Does she want a similar quota here? She says we have “an obligation to ask” something and she must realize, simply asking it is obviously not going to solve anything, especially since we have already been asking it.
Speaking of the “obligation”…what about choice? Aren’t we suffering a little bit of scope creep here, if the feminist movement was supposed to be about womens’ choice? Maybe, just maybe, Katie’s the only lady in the room because she’s one out of just a few who would make the decision to be there in the first place. Doesn’t she approve of the choices other women might have made, not to be there?
Let’s face it, it’s at least possible some women would make decisions different from the decisions Katie would make if she were they. It is possible…not only that, but among all the artificial means of keeping “skirts” away from the table, that’s the only one that can take place in this country that is legal.
Finally, I see this is an exercise in CALWWNTY. Does Katie Couric really intend to sound the call for yet-another march in the womens’ movement, now entering the fifth decade of progressive feminism? Is this really something she herself would find inspiring, if someone else was blowing the bugle and bellowing those magic, insulting words…Come A Long Way, We’re Not There Yet?
Really?
As Tom Cruise might say…Katie, Katie, Katie, you’re glib. We’ve opened up choices for career-minded women. We’ve outlawed discrimination against them, and we’ve even rearranged our cultural norms and taboos. Most remarkable of all, our society has made the new choice for women about whether to work a career, or stay home, into a real choice. And from the ladies who’ve made decisions differently than the one you made for yourself — you have profited handsomely. Come to think of it, among the folks who define some level of personal income as “obscene,” I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t qualify you yourself for that; provided, of course, they were only told what you make, and not who you are.
Well hey, some of us understand that when you send a woman into an important meeting like that, there are women who will pick up on the big stuff. There are these Islamomaniacs, you see? They’d just as soon stone you to death for letting an inch or two of tantalizing knee show above those fashionable tall boots of yours during the morning news show — and by the way, they want to kill Americans. They will go out of their way to do it. Will die to do it. As many Americans as possible. Some of us understand there are women who will keep track of the big picture. Some of us realize there are women who will maintain this sense of perspective, at least as well as any man.
But if you want to remind us that there are exceptions, well go ahead. Twist my arm. But I fail to see how that advances the womens’ movement any further.
Another Thing I Don’t Get
Friday, January 19th, 2007Maybe I should add this to the list. President Bush…I’m just finishing up six years of being told, and I mean non-stop, one of the many complaints against him is that not only does he make bad decisions, but he lacks the humility to acknowledge that he made a bad decision.
Hey, I’ve had bosses like that. I can see it.
And now the talking point is switched around, because he has changed course. Any flattering comments in this story? Anything about oh, joy, we’ve had this glaring problem in the Oval Office and now things are starting to improve? Anything about how we should count our blessings because, hey, he’s repentant, but learning?
Ha ha, ho ho. You should live so long.
The Bush administration said yesterday that it has agreed to disband a controversial warrantless surveillance program run by the National Security Agency, replacing it with a new effort that will be overseen by the secret court that governs clandestine spying in the United States.
The change — revealed by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales in a letter to the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee — marks an abrupt reversal by the administration, which for more than a year has aggressively defended the legality of the NSA surveillance program and disputed court authority to oversee it. [emphasis mine]
He sucks as a President, because he never changes his mind. He sucks as a President, because he abruptly reverses things.
Which is it? On what planet could it possibly be both?