Obama goes all Dirty Harry in response to Republican charge of appeasement

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Asked at a press conference yesterday about Republican accusations that he's an appeaser, President Obama shot back with this, calmly but firmly:

Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al Qaeda leaders who have been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement. Or whoever's left out there, ask them about that.

Boom. Just try standing up to that, Newt and Mitt. Your lies and smears are nothing next to the truth.

Vote Bachmann off the island

By Nicholas Wilbur

Michele Bachmann needs help.

She needs a grammar tutor, a history lesson, and maybe some diversity sensitivity training. But more than anything else, she needs a tour guide who can lead her to the exit doors of this Republican presidential race.

She's a bigoted, right-wing, anti-government evangelical extremist, and her campaign, despite the early guidance of Ed Rollins, still has yet to recognize the inherent philosophical conflict of having a candidate who boasts, simultaneously but without irony, of being a Constitutionalist and a stalwart Creationist.

She's running as a Tea Party candidate despite the Tea Party's embarrassing approval rating, and though she benefits from the same mocking media attention that made Sarah Palin a national icon, the majority of Americans can't take her seriously, as her five percent polling numbers very clearly demonstrate.

We pay attention, Democrats at least, not because we're concerned, patriotic, and open-minded Americans and she's a viable candidate whose opinions elevate the foreign and domestic policy debates of this presidential election, but because, at heart, we're all blood-thirsty sadists who cackle in response to her gaffes and cheer like stoned frat kids at a football game whenever she steps forward claiming to represent the Republican Party.

It's not just her falsifications that are despicable, it's the desperation in her shrieking voice whenever she's on stage attempting to debate with domestic policy wonks like Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, or true evangelicals like Rick Santorum, or foreign relations geeks like Jon Huntsman. She's out of her league, and everybody but Bachmann knows it.

It's time for the GOP field to start shedding its third-string candidates, and for that five percent of Republicans who consistently tell pollsters that Bachmann is their favorite presidential contender, the straw that ought to break their backs came on November 12 during the CBS News/National Journal debate on foreign policy.

In response to a question asking whether or not she would allow the use of torture if she were miraculously elected commander in chief, Bachmann responded with an unequivocal "Yes."

"If I was president, I would use waterboarding because it was effective," she said. "Barack Obama is using the ACLU to run the CIA. We have no CIA interrogation anymore. It's as though Obama has decided to lose the War on Terror."

I'm not one so quickly to forgive those who shamelessly butcher the English language, but in this instance her usage of the past-tense conjugation "was" where she should have used a past tense subjective "were" in conjunction with the future-tense auxiliary "would" is secondary to the grave offenses and utter falsehoods of this statement.

The entire response is bullshit.

1) Waterboarding isn't effective, and there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest otherwise.

2) The crack on the ACLU is commonplace among Republicans but not necessarily logical. The GOP's criticism and skepticism of the ACLU is akin to McCarthyism, and yet no conservative would ever acknowledge the utter hypocrisy of demagoguing an organization that represents Americans whose civil liberties, as guaranteed in the Constitution, have been violated. As a factual statement, this is absurd.

3) Remember the big media blitz following President Obama's executive order banning all guns of every kind in every city in America? Really? You missed it? It was front-page news in every paper in the country! It ran as a split banner story next to the other big news item of the year – the story about how the United States has stopped interrogating prisoners of war. It was a good article. Look it up on Google by typing "CIA ends interrogation."

4) On this one, Bachmann has a point. If Barack Obama's decision to end the United States's egregious violation of international law by discontinuing the Bush Administration's uses of "cruel and unusual punishment" isn't proof that Obama has "decided to lose the War on Terror," then the sky isn't blue and the earth is a one-dimensional triangle. Never mind that Obama killed Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki. Never mind that he facilitated the emancipation of the Libyan people from a murderous dictator. The fact that Obama has given an emphatic thumbs down to waterboarding is evidence that he's a secret Muslim spy who's aiding future terrorist attacks on American soil.

Stupid people barking anti-government bromides are entertaining in the short term, but when it comes time to elect a president, or a vice president, intelligence matters. Michele Bachmann has none.

She's more than a slow-motion car accident. She's an eccentric, talent-devoid sideshow performer competing for the lead role in the psychobabble routine in an already overcrowded and unpopular Republican presidential political circus.

Being on the Intelligence Committee obviously doesn't require intelligence, because if it did Bachmann would know that practically drowning prisoners of war is significantly less effective in extracting useful information than promising virgins in heaven. And being a mother of 28 – which Bachmann has made the core of her candidacy – obviously isn't seen by the majority of Americans as a prerequisite for being the leader of the free world, as public opinion polls made clear a week after Bachmann won the Ames, Iowa straw poll and (very, very) briefly spurred national speculation of her possible-but-never-realized frontrunner potential.

There's a reason she's polling near the bottom of the pack, but there's no reason for her to continue this crusade. She should drop out of the race and go back to doing what good evangelical conservative Constitutionalist Creationist bigots do when they're not vying for the presidency – introducing obsolete bills in Congress reaffirming the dollar as the official U.S. currency, spreading conspiracies about how Sharia law might one day "usurp" the U.S. Constitution, and helping her husband cure gay people of their affliction.

Bachmann is an embarrassment to all who have ever taken pride in calling themselves Republican. It's time she gets voted off the island, and it's past time the voters in the sixth congressional district of Minnesota get a grammar tutor, a history lesson, and some diversity sensitivity training so they can vote this pock mark on the American government out of office.

The world would be a better place.

 

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

The Sweet Smell of Sour Grapes

by Distributorcap

I love the smell of racism sour grapes in May

 Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2003 - when President Bush declared "Mission Accomplished"

Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011 - just before President Obama gave the order to invade his compound

Four months since the American population (well those that bothered to vote) opted to give the Teabag Republican party another chance to mess up America (after all 8 years of Bush, and 6 years of Congressional majorities was not enough) - it is quite apparent that the GOP (and their leaders patrons allies on the right like Fox, Rush, Koch Industries) have jumped right back to the future with same bag of one trick pony policies:

1. cut taxes for the rich
2. dismantle any social safety net for the not-so-rich

However, the brainiacs on the right have a new Prime Directive for their Federation of Nutjobs:

• 3) say anything and everything to disparage and ruin Obama.

As stupid as most Republican leaders are (and they are) - they are smart enough to realize that saying the most reprehensible, false and hateful things about President Obama is the one thing that will generate the most media attention.

In this short period of time - the lunatics Republicans in the House have managed to pass bills on abortion, eliminating Medicare, and subsidizing the insanely profitable oil companies. They have also managed to spend lots of money for an law firm to defend DOMA. What they haven't done of course is produce any sort of policy to help turn the economy around or set a path for job creation (but they do want to eliminate Unemployment - insurance that is, not real unemployment). On top of their complete ineffectiveness as a governing party and outright lies to the electorate, the lengths the Republicans will go to - to confirm their own self-aggrandized superior talent - is nothing short of incredible.

This includes some of the most utterly overtly disparaging and covertly racist things about Obama they can dream up or find in the Honolulu Hall of Records.

When President Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden last Sunday, it brought the soap opera known as the All My GOPs to a new low in American history.

The words and thoughts that have been coming out of the mouths of the GOP/Right this week reminds me of Hitler in the bunker - despite a world crashing around them from their own insane policies - they will fight to the end to justify their own past actions no matter how wrong they were or how much they have destroyed in their wake.

It didn't take long before the usual cast of characters began their blatant and not-so-subtle trashing of the President for doing exactly what their hero, President George W. Bush, only wished he could have done.

Let's start with the King of Insanity himself - Glenn Beck. Beck called Obama's trip to Ground Zero "slimy" and "disgusting" on his radio show. Beck of course said that the visit to the WTC site was "shameless" and nothing more than victory lap and a political stunt.

Of course walking around the rubble of the collapsed towers with a bullhorn shouting " I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people -- and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!" is a case study in subdued, classy behavior.

Next AT BAT is Andrew Card, Bush's former Chief of Staff. Card is a man obviously not playing with a full deck. Andy, who likes to give the appearance of moderation, thoughtfulness and integrity - proved this week that he is nothing more than Glenn Beck in a nicer suit.

In an interview with German newspaper Der Spiegel, Card said that Obama has "pounded his chest" too much over the death of Osama bin Laden, particularly by going to Ground Zero earlier this week, the site of the 9/11 attacks. "He can take pride in it, but he does not need to show it so much."

Of course landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier in a flight suit and declaring "Mission Accomplished" in front a giant banner hanging on the ship (before the mission is accomplished) was really a solemn ceremony meant to honor the victims on 9/11, and had nothing to do with politics.

All of us - liberal, moderate, conservative, non-political should get down on our knees and starting thanking whichever-god-you-want that the GOP never exploited 911 for political gain.

Card is an ass^nth - I wonder why he didn't give this same interview to an American paper - a little cowardly methinks. Card further stepped into Barney's poo when he said his issue is not with anything Obama has said about his decision to launch the raid on bin Laden's compound, but rather with Obama's actions. Amazing.

Next up in murderer's row is John Yoo - the world's biggest cheerleader for torture. The man who somehow see things in the Constitution that us mere mortals could not see and decided that the President (Republican only, not Obama) has the right to do anything he wants - anything. Yoo-hoo said that Obama had made a serious mistake by not capturing bin Laden and milking him for information on potential future terror attacks.

Of course Yoo's main man - Bush - is the one who said "Who knows if he’s hiding in some cave or not. We haven’t heard from him in a long time. The idea of focusing on one person really indicates to me people don’t understand the scope of the mission. Terror is bigger than one person. He’s just a person who’s been marginalized. I don’t know where he is. I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you."

That was just the tip of the iceberg.  Other reactions from the GOP, teabaggers and those on the Right, while less obvious on the hate, are just as nauseating in their tone.

Rick "Man on dog" Santorum said "9/11 families and everybody else in America should be furious at this president that he’s walking abound taking credit for, you know, getting Osama bin Laden. He didn’t get Osama bin Laden! The president of the United States simply said — courageous act, give him credit for saying yes — but that’s all he did, is say yes. He didn’t do the hard work. The people he’s going after did the hard work. And that is an outrage."

David "I never met a politician I couldn't buy" Koch gave Obama zero credit for the successful mission, telling reporters, “I don’t think he contributed much at all.” Koch called the president “a hardcore socialist” and minimized his role in the operation, explaining, “All that Obama did was say ‘yea’ or ‘nay.’”

Trent Franks said on Frank Gaffney’s (another fine example complete whack-o racist) Secure Freedom Radio show, said "President Obama is too concerned with exploiting the issue for political reasons to do what’s necessary to protect this country”

Not to be left out of the party - the Princess of the North Country Sarah Palin never mentioned President Obama by name, instead she said, ‘We thank President Bush for having made the right calls to set up this victory.”  Nothing like a little revisionism to pepper up the plotlines.

Former hack mouthpiece to Commander Codpiece himself, Ari Fleischer, was more "polite," saying “both presidents deserve credit.”

What's interesting about the words from entitled folks like Beck, Card, Yoo, Santorum, Koch, Franks, Palin and Fleischer (not leave out Trump, Limbaugh, Krauthammer, Ingraham, Malkkkin, and others) is that none of them have ever learned the meaning of "graciousness." Imagine being Andrew Card or David Koch, supposedly mature adults (Palin and Beck are most definitely not mature adults), who never ever have to admit they have made a mistake or apologize. They can make all the racial insinuations against the President they want and due to their stance or clout (or money) never have worry about being called out on their evil.

In the GOP's world, no Black [Muslim, Kenyan, Socialist] man was ever supposed to be elected to the job they own (the Presidency) and then - OMG - beat them at their own game, with his own rules. This is exactly what this whole post-Nov 2008 GOP meltdown has been all about. This is also why the Republicans simply can not handle the truth about the past week. Koch, Santorum, Beck, and Palin are fine with Jamaican nannies and NBA centers, but a Black president protecting the security of the country - that is just way too much for such simpletons to process.

I wish these clowns on the right would stop with the euphemisms and just call him the "N-word" already. You just know that they are biting their tongues not to let it slip out. It's killing them that the Black/Muslim/Kenyan/Socialist President can succeed so spectacularly where they have failed so miserably.

The jealousy we are witnessing before our very eyes is a great plot device for Erika on All My Children - but is such an ugly emotion when coming from a bunch of incompetent and evil nincompoops bent on leading the country. They gushed over President Bush when he carried out a plastic turkey to the troops fighting the war he lied his way into - but can not even thank President Obama for taking out the man that killed 3,000+ innocents - and gave their Dear Leader the excuse he needed to go to war.

Anyone with half a brain can see how incredibly childish the right wing and Republican leadership has become - and the elimination of Osama bin Laden was just the straw that broke the elephant's back. I can only hope the very people that voted for these clowns also see it.

Somehow I doubt it.

Reality bites (Rick Santorum in the ass)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

At Thursday night's GOP "presidential" "debate" in South Carolina, Rick Santorum said that President Obama deserves zero credit for killing Osama bin Laden:

9/11 families and everybody else in America should be furious at this president that he's walking abound taking credit for, you know, getting Osama bin Laden. He didn't get Osama bin Laden!

Basically, Obama just gave the order, which was easy enough to do (as if there were no question at all, as if the mission weren't risky at all -- clearly Santorum has no idea what it means to be president and to have to make decisions like this). It was Bush who did all the work. 

It's predictable enough that all five Republicans went after Obama and that Santorum in particular, who is so desperate to gain traction (but who really doesn't have much of a shot of actually winning), said something so ridiculously stupid, something that goes beyond even what most other conservatives are saying in response to the mission. This isn't just denying Obama full credit, or trying to share some of the credit, this is saying that Obama did virtually nothing and is shamelessly taking undeserved credit for something he knows he didn't do.

Aside from the facts that Obama was closely involved in the planning stage of the mission and was making the key decisions all along -- and, indeed, there were other options and things could have gone differently -- what Santorum gets wrong is just how differently Obama has approached the "war" on terror compared to Bush:

[A]s Michael Hirsch writes today in the National Journal, President Obama was sucessful in catching Bin Laden precisely because he broke with Bush's terror policies. The conservative "assessment couldn't be further from the truth," Hirsch writes. "Behind Obama's takedown of the Qaida leader this week lies a profound discontinuity between administrations — a major strategic shift in how to deal with terrorists," from Bush's bombastic and overly expansive "war on terror," to Obama's "covert, laserlike focus on al-Qaida and its spawn."

In other words, the mission to kill Osama bin Laden was planned and succeeded not in spite of Obama, or regardless of Obama, but because of Obama. This is not to say that another president wouldn't have made the same or similar decisions and wouldn't have similarly succeeded, but it's just plain wrong to suggest that Obama deserves none of the credit or even just some of the credit.

This is politics, I know, and the truth matters little to extremist partisan ideologues like Santorum. But it's yet another example of just how reality-denying the Republicans really are.

And it's only going to get worse.

(photo)

Photo of the Day: Osama martyr march in Pakistan

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Photo from The New York Times: "Hundreds offered prayers for Bin Laden on a street in Karachi, declaring him a martyr."

Just a reminder, if we needed one, that killing Osama bin Laden does not mean killing "Osama bin Laden," or what he stood for, and fought for, and killed for. And while this means that the so-called "war on terror" isn't over (even if it doesn't make sense to think of it as a war in any conventional sense, or even as a war), what it really means, or should mean, is that there are still so many hearts and minds to win -- not to turn them into us but to turn them away from Osama (and "Osama").

Osama bin Laden is dead

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(Watch President's Obama's remarks below, as well as CNN's OBL obituary.)

Truly shocking news:

Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the most devastating attack on American soil in modern times and the most hunted man in the world, was killed in a firefight with United States forces in Pakistan on Sunday, President Obama announced.

In a dramatic late-night appearance in the East Room of the White House, Mr. Obama declared that "justice has been done" as he disclosed that American military and C.I.A. operatives had finally cornered the Al Qaeda leader who had eluded them for nearly a decade and shot him to death at a compound in Pakistan. 

Wow.

I'm not sure what to say. Many will applaud this, and, in my own way, I will too. But I won't do so with glee. Because I just don't think the situation warrants it. Not after all that has happened, after all the death, after all the suffering. The gravity of the situation is simply too immense. Perhaps we call all breath a sigh of relief, but, of course, it -- everything bin Laden stood for and fought for, and the movement he led -- does not end with his death. He will be just as powerful, if not more so, in death than he was this past decade in life.

I'm watching CNN now. People are cheering. Flags are waving. I understand that. I think back to 9/11. And I realize, remembering the horrors of that day, along with so many other horrors bin Laden caused, I do feel a sense of relief. What else was to be done? How else could this, this stage of the war against al Qaeda and its partners, end?

Wolf Blitzer just used the word "thrilled" to describe how Americans feel. Well, not just Americans. No doubt a lot of people are thrilled by this news. And people are celebrating. There are scenes of champagne flowing. People are celebrating around America and around the world, says Wolf. No, not everyone, but it's certainly an astonishing thing. And the scenes from outside the White House, and at Ground Zero, are incredible.

Sorry, I'm just sorting out my thoughts...

I feel great joy. I'm just not in such a celebratory mood. Because as big as this is, I remain filled with sadness that the world is as it is. And war, even in victory, such that this is a victory, is always sad. Given the gravity of it all, I cannot quite let myself go.

But let me also say this: This is an incredible triumph for the U.S. and its allies, as well as for President Obama personally. After so many years, after the disastrous war in Iraq that took America's attention away from what it should have been on, namely, the war on those who were truly at war with America, after the endlessly up-and-down Afghan War, largely forgotten once Bush took the country into Iraq, now seemingly a quagmire, there is finally a moment of definite triumph. Forget the toppling of Saddam. This is well beyond that. The "war" is not over, and it would be a huge mistake to think that, but there is at least a sense of justice tonight, and that's what has been missing throughout the "war on terror."

Details of the operation in Pakistan are still scant, but from what I can tell, from the reports coming in, it was both incredibly risky and incredibly well-executed. And President Obama deserves enormous credit for his leadership. For all the failures of the post-9/11 period, when the U.S. seemed to let bin Laden get away, he knew what had to be done and, when the time came, he made the decision to act.

(Update: Apparently, planning for the operation, based on key intelligence leads and clues, had been underway for a long time. Ultimately, U.S. special forces (Navy SEALS), reportedly with Pakistani support, raided a compound, in a fairly densely-populated area in Abbottabad, just north of Islamabad, where Osama was thought to be living. Efforts were made to avoid civilian casualties. A firefight broke out and, according to reports, Osama was shot in the head. Of course, we have reason to be skeptical. We're only getting the White House's and military's good-news spin. Still, it does seem that the operation was undertaken with enormous care.)

How can one not look at this through a political lens? Certainly Obama succeeded where Bush failed. Certainly Obama should be able to benefit politically from this. Republicans, including those running for president, will no doubt find fault with Obama. They'll try to find something, anything. Maybe they'll say Obama should have acted sooner. Whatever. We're already hearing that this operation was weeks, if not months (and of course the search for bin Laden goes back years and years), in the making, and that the president and his chief advisors, including Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, was deeply involved throughout. Ultimately, the call was his. And this is the result.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I'm beginning to lighten up a bit. Yes, I'm thrilled. Yes, there is good reason to celebrate. Let us all feel not just a sense of relief but a sense that justice has been done. Let's just not get ahead of ourselves. Bin Laden was the leader, or a leader, of this jihadist war against not just America but our entire way of life in the West (and much of the non-West, including modernization in the Islamic world), but it was not all about him. And it will continue, and perhaps even worsen, as bin Laden becomes a martyr, and, again, more powerful in death than he was post-9/11.

Let us celebrate, and let us applaud President Obama and those involved in this operation, but let us also remember the gravity of the situation. This is bigger than Osama bin Laden, and we haven't "won" anything, and, yes, war is hell no matter what. But at least, at the very least, after years and years of struggle, we can raise our hands in celebration, however qualified, whether uproarious or muted or somewhere in between. 

Osama bin Laden is dead.


********** 
1:55 am: Yes, I do understand that this represents a certain "closure" for the families of 9/11 victims, as well as for all those connected personally to those attacks. But what is closure to them -- and I think all of us who watched what happened that day and felt so deeply about it can feel similar closure -- is not necessarily closure in terms of the larger war, and that's the point I was trying to make above. Some are enthusiastically referring to this as "Mission Accomplished." No way. Yes, a mission was accomplished, but it is dangerously wrong to think that Osama's death means that all is now well. 

2:00 am: Let me also say that I understand the need to celebrate, to feel good about this, to wave flags and drink champagne and all that (and even to chant USA! USA! USA!). There has been so much fear and terror, so much death, so much suffering, so much uncertainty this past decade. And people need to let loose. And in a way I wish I were there in New York or Washington, or anywhere else where people are gathering and celebrating, where people are coming together and not just raising hands but joining them. I have no time for jingoism, whether American or otherwise, and that's why I tend to be reserved and cautious, but this is indeed a time when we should be joining hands, across America and across the world, not just to celebrate the death of a man (and I'm not sure it's ever good to celebrate death, even Osama's, though, again, it probably had to come to this) but to pledge ourselves to a better future, a future of peace, and to work together towards it. 

2:11 am: All over the media, there are reports of speculation of possible retaliation for Osama's death, whether by al Qaeda or others (and it does seem likely that there has been preparation for this possible eventuality). We need to be careful not to succumb to fearmongering manipulation, but there is indeed legitimate concern in this case.

2:19 am: Stay tuned. We'll have a lot more on this later today and in the days to come. In the meantime, everyone, take care.

Just wrong

By Carl 

It makes little sense to spread democracy around the globe if we are not going to practise democratic ideals:

The Daily Telegraph, along with other newspapers including The Washington Post, today exposes America's own analysis of almost ten years of controversial interrogations on the world’s most dangerous terrorists. This newspaper has been shown thousands of pages of top-secret files obtained by the WikiLeaks website. 

[...]The files detail the background to the capture of each of the 780 people who have passed through the Guantanamo facility in Cuba, their medical condition and the information they have provided during interrogations.

Only about 220 of the people detained are assessed by the Americans to be dangerous international terrorists. A further 380 people are lower-level foot-soldiers, either members of the Taliban or extremists who travelled to Afghanistan whose presence at the military facility is questionable.

At least a further 150 people are innocent Afghans or Pakistanis, including farmers, chefs and drivers who were rounded up or even sold to US forces and transferred across the world. In the top-secret documents, senior US commanders conclude that in dozens of cases there is "no reason recorded for transfer".

However, the documents do not detail the controversial techniques used to obtain information from detainees, such as water-boarding, stress positions and sleep deprivation, which are now widely regarded as tantamount to torture. 

Now, let's see what the Framers had in mind with respect to "democracy":

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Words you and I, if you're American, had to learn by heart. This doesn't mean that some men who are not American do not have the same rights and privileges as Americans. It says that the Creator made all men equal, that all men are entitled to life and that all men are entitled to their personal freedom. It also says that even a Teabagger ought to recognize these rights, that it doesn't require deep thought or evidentiary hearings. All men are entitled to these rights. Period.

The Framers were smart enough to elucidate these points and outline these rights in a supporting document to this Declaration, our Constitution.

Right up top in the first Ten Amendments, the Bill of Rights, the Framers delineated what is liberty. Liberty is the protection of the individual from the tyranny of the majority, that beautiful phrase of John Stuart Mill. That majority can take the form of mob or governance by mob rule.

It means that any man in the entire world should be free from the depredations of our exertion of American will and might over him. One can make the case that in war, these rules should be suspended, and perhaps there is a point to be made there but it seems to me that if you can't have a higher batting percentage than roughly .500 in the application of that suspension versus harming innocents, you have no business being in the business of war in the first place.

The willful negligence... and that's being overly polite... of the Bush and Obama administrations in the pursuit of the aims of their aggressions in Afghanistan, Iraq and now in Libya will come back to haunt American citizens. How can it not? How can Americans expect to live a life of freedom in a world where freedom is a slogan and not a philosophy? How can we expect to continue to presume that what we own and what we enjoy cannot be taken from us at a moment's notice, not just by those who would do us harm, but also by those who wave the flag of "freedom" in our faces?

How can we in good conscience say we are bringing freedom to the world, but only to the part of the world that agrees with us? For if one man is not free, they I am not free. And if I am not free, then my fellow Americans are not free. 

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Bush talked freedom, Egypt walked it

By Nicholas Wilbur

Corruption is out, liberty is in, and with the recent uprisings in Egypt and throughout the Arab world the media are hoisting up former President George W. Bush as the retrospective hero of democracy for what is turning out to be an effective "freedom agenda."

In a column published on February 3, 2011 -- titled "Was George Bush right?" -- The Economist gave a balanced overview of the conservative spin being applied to the people's backlash in Africa and throughout the Middle East:

With people-power bursting out all over the Arab world, the experts who scoffed at Mr Bush for thinking that Arabs wanted and were ready for democracy on the Western model are suddenly looking less clever – and Mr Bush's simply and rather wonderful notion that Arabs want, deserve and are capable of democracy is looking rather wise.

This is, simply put, a severely exaggerated, self-aggrandizing example of the political butterfly effect. Though we may believe that America is the beautiful epicenter from which all international reverberations of freedom and culture and wealth and greatness commence, it is also a rather shallow, ethnocentric interpretation of causality.

Can we honestly take even partial responsibility for the Egyptian people's uprising on the basis that our president invaded Afghanistan and dumped trillions of dollars into a 10-year mission of wandering the hillsides and peaking into caves in a fruitless search for the 9/11 mastermind? Are we the bricklayers of this new foundation of liberty because Bush took America to war in Iraq on the pretense of some imminent nuclear threat that eventually proved utterly false?

If that is true, then the opposite could be argued just as easily – that Bush's vacancy of the White House gave Arabs the go-ahead to fight for democracy without having to fear that the U.S. military would flatten their cities, control their borders, manage their natural resources, and play puppet master with their "democratically elected" officials.

Bush never called on the people to overthrow corrupt regimes. He did it for them or he did nothing, as The Economist noted when it contextualized the media's recent attempts to vindicate the former president:

The big thing Mr Bush did in the Arab world was not to argue for an election here or a loosening of controls there. It was to send an army to conquer Iraq. Nothing that has happened in Tunisia or Egypt makes the consequences of that decision any less calamitous... (Bush) wanted Arab democracy on the cheap. That is to say, he wanted Arab leaders to empower their people but at the same time to protect America's strategic interests. That put a limit on how far he dared to push the reliable old autocrats. And, knowing this, the reliable old autocrats thought all they needed to do to stay safely on their perches was to wait Mr Bush out.

Of course, no praise of Bush would be complete without a fair and balanced critique of President Barack Obama. Highlighting the criticism of Obama's failure to double-down on Bush's "freedom agenda" and his "lack of presumption" in foreign meddling, The Economist cited Obama's 2009 Cairo speech as proof of this administration's "diffidence" when it comes to international diplomacy. I provide a significantly larger chunk of Obama's speech than was quoted in The Economist: 

I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq.  So let me be clear: No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation by any other. That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people.

America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. These are not just American ideas; they are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere.

Okay, so Obama is a pacifist, perhaps even a neo-isolationist – on top of the usual criticisms spewed daily by the Republican sound machine (socialist, Communist, anti-colonialist, ististist...). But if we're competing for who can best swindle the masses into buying a series of baseless assertions about which president has done more to usher in a new era of international peace, one could brainstorm plenty of logical reasons why Obama, not Bush, is responsible for the recent removal of an Egyptian dictator.

For one, Egypt made no progress through eight years of Bush's "war on terror," and yet only a year and a half after Obama told the Egyptians to stand up for themselves, they did.

Second, while Bush half-assed lobbied the leaders of Arab nations to maybe, if they had some free time, perhaps start thinking about thinking about representing the people, it was Obama who spoke not to the comfortable dictators but to the oppressed people themselves. He threw the ball in their court, essentially saying, "We're not your liberators. You must decide how your government represents you. The United States will not jump into another international quagmire only to be abandoned by allies, rebuked by the world and bankrupted by war, again. America fought for her freedom and independence. So must you, if that is your wish."

The truth, I believe, is somewhere in between. Neither Bush nor Obama is to blame or thank for having any more than a peripheral influence on the uprising in Egypt. America is but an example of how it is possible to establish a government that is of, by, and for the people. The Egyptian people are now fighting, and dying, for that dream. If it is achieved, it will be because the Egyptian people acted.

Credit is due them, not us.

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

Glenn Greenwald and the "climate of fear"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Much of the political world has been talking about the Arizona shooting the past few days, but there remains a larger and more troubling development, namely, the U.S. government's manufacturing of a "climate of fear" that allows it to advance its interests both at home and abroad.

I highly recommend this essential post from Glenn Greenwald. Key passage:

So much of what the U.S. Government has done over the last decade has been devoted to creating and strengthening this climate of fear. Attacking Iraq under the terrorizing banner of "shock and awe"; disappearing people to secret prisons; abducting them and shipping them to what Newsweek's Jonathan Alter (when advocating this) euphemistically called "our less squeamish allies"; throwing them in cages for years without charges, dressed in orange jumpsuits and shackles; creating a worldwide torture regime; spying on Americans without warrants and asserting the power to arrest them on U.S. soil without charges: all of this had one overarching objective. It was designed to create a climate of repression and intimidation by signaling to the world -- and its own citizens -- that the U.S. was unconstrained by law, by conventions, by morality, or by anything else:  the government would do whatever it wanted to anyone it wanted, and those thinking about opposing the U.S. in any way, through means legitimate or illegitimate, should (and would) thus think twice, at least.

That a large percentage of those brutalized by this system turned out to be innocent -- knowingly innocent --  is a feature, not a bug:  that one can end up being subjected to these lawless horrors despite doing nothing wrong only intensifies the fear and makes it more effective. The power being asserted is not merely unlimited and tyrannical, but arbitrary. And now, the Obama administration's citizen-aimed, due-process-free assassination program, its orgies of drone attacks, its defense of radically broad interpretations of "material support" criminal statutes, and its disturbing targeting of American anti-war activists with subpoenas and armed police raids are all part of the same tactic. Those contemplating meaningful opposition to American action are meant to be frightened. The anguished, helpless cries of 18-year-old American Gulet Mohamed, after a week of being disappeared and brutalized by America's close ally, serves an important purpose.

Make sure to read the whole thing. You'll notice that Greenwald is not engaging in demagoguery and is not using violent rhetoric to whip his readers up into a mouth-frothing frenzy. He is simply doing what the media are not, which is reporting on what is actually going on in the world, including what the government is doing, and encouraging people to educate themselves and to demand that their democratically-elected government not engage in undemocratic and illiberal practices that violate America's purported principles and ideals:

There has been much talk over the last several days, in the wake of the Arizona shooting, about attempts by some citizens to instill physical fear in elected officials. That's a worthwhile and necessary topic, but the fear that government officials are attempting to instill in law-abiding, dissenting citizens is far more substantial and sustained, and deserves much more attention than it has received.

Indeed.

The creeping police state of Orwellian America

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Sometimes liberty isn't snatched away through the revolutionary actions of a Pol Pot. Sometimes it just erodes away. I've described Hugo Chavez's use of slice-by-slice "salami tactics" in Venezuela, and it's an appropriate analogy:

In the first episode of the great Yes, Prime Minister, "The Grand Design," new PM Jim Hacker meets with the government's chief scientific advisor to discuss defence policy. The advisor, a hawkish Austrian, argues that the Soviet Union would use "salami tactics" to take over Europe, that is, a "slice-by-slice" plan with no one slice so grave as to compel the West (or the U.K., in this case) to respond militarily. (The 16 YPM episodes originally aired on the BBC from 1986-88.) At each slice/stage of the scenario, he presses Hacker -- What would it take for him to act? An incursion into West Berlin? Or would the Soviets have to go so far as to take over the Reform Club, one of London's old political establishments? Would he ever respond with nuclear weapons? Probably not.

My point here is not to make a case for military action against Venezuela, but it is clear that Hugo Chavez is using salami tactics in his drive to establish so-called "Bolivarean" socialism -- that is, his own national-socialist autocratic rule -- in that country. I wrote about this last week: "Sometimes revolution can be achieved without sudden, dramatic bloodletting." There are a number of different prongs to Chavez's continuing revolution, a number of slices. They may be examined individually, but they are best understood as variations of the same, as components of a single overarching plan. The nationalization of industry, the seizure of private property, repression of dissent and opposition, control of the media, one-party rule, rule by decree, and, soon, the removal of constitutional impediments to the permanent and perpetual rule of the leader himself.

The pattern is clear. One slice, then another, and another, and another, with no one slice so grave as to compel anyone to act...

This is happening in America now, too, is it not? Yes, there are many who are standing up for freedom and civil liberties, but what success are they having? Freedom has been opposed for a long time by corporatist elements -- including what Eisenhower famously called the military-industrial complex -- but the speed with which government and its private-sector and media allies apply slice upon slice has grown markedly since 9/11 and the supposed emergence of the Islamist-jihadist terrorist threat as the justification for the Patriot Act, domestic surveillance, racial/ethnic/religious profiling, anti-Muslim bigotry, the TSA's intrusive airport pat-downs, and so on. Read 1984. What's happening in the U.S. may not be so blatantly obvious, but do you see what's going on? If not, wake the fuck up.

I'm a committed civil libertarian on this. I understand the need for some degree of security, but beyond what's absolutely essential (like what we were used to at airports, for example), we shouldn't budge an inch. Because it's a slippery slope. If you aren't vigilant in defence of your freedom, you'll wake up one day to find it gone.

**********

At Reason, which espouses a libertarianism I generally reject, Radley Balko addresses one of the latest and most revealing slices:

Janet Napolitano said last month that we should expect to soon see tighterrestrictions at bus, train, and marine transportation centers, too.Here's a report about TSA, Border Patrol, and local police settingup a checkpoint at a Greyhound station in Tampa. Note how quicklypreventing a possible terrorist attack expands to include catchingillegal immigrants, and preventing drug and what sounds like "cashsmuggling." (It's hard to tell from the audio.) Note also thecomplete and utter reverence the local news report bestows on thesegovernment agencies, who after all are merely "teaming up to keepyour family safe."

A liberal blogger wrote to me in an email this week thatlibertarians who call the TSA pat-downs a violation of their civilliberties do a disservice to actual violations of civil liberties.It's not difficult to envision the day where anyone wishing to takemass transportation in this country will have to first submit to agovernment checkpoint, show ID, and answer questions about anyexcess cash, prescription medication, or any other items in hispossession the government deems suspicious. If and when thathappens, freedom of movement will essentially be dead. But it won'thappen overnight. It'll happen incrementally. And each incrementwill, when taken in isolation, appear to some to be perfectlyreasonable.

If you care about your freedom, and about being free in America, don't stand for this.

FBI arrests terror suspect in Oregon, Republicans rally behind President Obama in open display of bipartisan unity

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(Update: Glenn Greenwald is quite right that the FBI more or less thwarted its own plot -- and that there hasn't really been "an iota of questioning or skepticism," just unthinking celebration.)

The FBI "thwarted an attempted terrorist bombing in Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square before the city's annual tree-lighting Friday night," The Oregonian is reporting:

A Corvallis man, thinking he was going to ignite a bomb, drove a van to the corner of the square at Southwest Yamhill Street and Sixth Avenue and attempted to detonate it.

However, the supposed explosive was a dummy that FBI operatives supplied to him, according to an affidavit in support of a criminal complaint signed Friday night by U.S. Magistrate Judge John V. Acosta.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, a Somali-born U.S. citizen, was arrested at 5:42 p.m., 18 minutes before the tree lighting was to occur, on an accusation of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. The felony charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The arrest was the culmination of a long-term undercover operation, during which Mohamud had been monitored for months as his alleged bomb plot developed...

The investigation involved the FBI, Oregon State Police, Portland Police Bureau, Corvallis Police Department and Lincoln County Sheriff's Office...

"This defendant's chilling determination is a stark reminder that there are people -- even here in Oregon -- who are determined to kill Americans," said Oregon U.S. Attorney Dwight Holton. "The good work of law enforcement protected Oregonians in this case -- and we have no reason to believe there is any continuing threat arising from this case." 

In response, Republicans spent Saturday rallying behind President Obama and praising the efforts of law enforcement to keep Americans safe.

"The successful resolution of this very real threat in Oregon shows that the president's approach to fighting terrorism is working," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ken.) in an impromptu press conference on the steps of the Capitol, flanked by several other Republican senators.

"Law enforcement is clearly the way to go," added Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.). "After years of getting it wrong with heavy-handed military operations under the previous regime, there is hope that we can actually do this right. And maybe we don't have to do it by decimating the Constitution and ignoring civil liberties."

"Who'd a thunk?" joked Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), as his colleagues guffawed awkwardly.

Appearing on Fox News Saturday afternoon, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) simply said, "I'm impressed. We've been harshly critical of President Obama, but maybe he knows what he's doing. This is very encouraging, and maybe, just maybe, we'll have to admit we were wrong."

ABC News is reporting that Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) has drafted a letter on behalf of his Republican colleagues expressing their unanimous and unwavering support for President Obama's leadership. He intends to deliver it to the White House personally on Monday. (ABC News is also reporting, citing an anonymous Inhofe aide, that the senator may even reconsider his long-standing global warming denialism. "If he's wrong about the war on terror," said the aide, "maybe he's wrong about everything.")

Meanwhile, Republican House leaders were similarly effusive in their praise. Appearing on CNN, incoming Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Vir.) said that "there is no denying it, the president is on top of things, and we are on board."

"The American people demand leadership, and they have it in the Oval Office," remarked soon-to-be Speaker of the House John Boehner. "It's time to put partisan bickering behind us. The Party of No is no more. We get the message."

Even Vice President Cheney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani were positive.

"9/11," said Giuliani on MSNBC. "9/11. NYPD. 9/11. NYFD. Thumbs up!"

"I used to think you could beat terrorism by waging preemptive wars around the world and torturing without regard for even a shred of human decency," Cheney groaned, sitting alongside Giuliani. " I guess I was wrong. I still covet blood, and lots of it, to feed my impulse for destruction and degradation, but I've got to hand it to the president. The guy's smart," he sneered. "Not like that... that... pfwahhh... bldszorltrrr... grrrrrrrrrrrr..." (It is not known what he meant, as his speech descended into a series of prolonged grunts.)

"This makes me proud to be a Democrat," asserted Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) to no one in particular. "I may have been McCain's flunky during the campaign, and I may really be a Republican, but that's my story, and I'm sticking to it, until I change my mind and stick it to my party again. I'm #1! I'm #1 I'm #1! Joe-mentum all the way!"

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has apparently holed up at one of his many residences around the country with his wife Cindy and best pal Sen. Lindsey Graham. It is suspected that, having spent the past two years selling out whatever principles he may once have had, if any, he is trying to recover an ounce of credibility so as to be able to comment publicly without looking like a shameless fool. CNN is reporting that he may appear on The Daily Show next week to beg Jon Stewart for forgiveness.

Ex-President George W. Bush, signing books all day at various undisclosed locations, was unavailable for comment.

And Sarah Palin? As of yet, she hasn't commented either on Facebook or Fox News. But it is known that she is busy working on her next TV show, Sarah Palin's Massachusetts, a six-part series for TLC in which she takes classes in English composition and Russian literature at Harvard, sings revisionist James Taylor tunes around a campfire in the Berkshires ("When you're down and troubled, and you need a helping hand, and nothing, oh, nothing is going right, just close your eyes and think of me, and soon I will be there, telling you to get off your lazy ass you good-for-nothing welfare loser"), goes yachting around Martha's Vineyard with Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, and, of course, stages an all-too-real tea party in Boston Harbor, all while using her husband and kids as props for political gain. 

It is not clear how long this period of unity, and Republican humility, will last.

A glimpse into the sick, twisted, and anti-American conservative mind

By Michael J.W. Stickings

If you want to find Nazis, or people with Nazi or Nazi-ish sympathies, don't look at NPR (note: Roger Ailes is a fucking jackass), look at the mainstream conservative movement.

As you may have heard, former McCain advisor and current Palin advisor Michael Goldfarb tweeted on Wednesday that convicted terrorist Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani should have been executed without a trial:

Ghailani never should have been allowed to leave that CIA black site with a pulse.

We should be used to this sort of anti-Americanism from the right. The so-called war on terror has made it pretty standard fare. It was Bush and Cheney and their minions turning the U.S. into a torture state, and it's been any number of conservatives pushing for the immediate transformation of the country into a totalitarian national security state, supposedly for the sake of freedom. As Think Progress notes:

Maybe Goldfarb has taken Glenn Beck's advice a little too seriously. The radical Fox News host once said that as President, he wouldn't detain terror suspects, he'd "shoot them all in the head." Perhaps Goldfarb is an avid National Review reader, where one write once said that all Gitmo detainees should be let go and then killed. Or maybe Goldfarb has been listening to his former boss over at the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol, who said last year of Maj. Nidal M. Hasan after his attack on the Fort Hood Army Base: "They should just go ahead and convict him and put him to death."

It seems execution without trial is fairly popular in conservative circles. 

As Digby writes, "[t]hese are the people the founders worried about when they wrote the bill of rights. And yet these people ran the country and want to run it again. They will not stop, apparently, until America turns into the fascist paradise of conservative longing, and perhaps not even then.

The Ghailani trial was a victory for the rule of law and, more broadly, for American democracy. No wonder conservatives hated it.

Groping for consensus

By Carl 

There's a real irony in the outcry over the new TSA body-scanning, junk-touching protocols.

It's united the right and the left.

Let's sum up the conservative (and, by extension, the purported American) mindset here:

Invading a sovereign people innocent of any wrongdoing against us? Well, that's OK, I suppose.

Bombing the ever-living fuck out of civilians in the name of "fighting terorrism"? Cool. No problem.

Waterboarding and torturing enemy combatants? Bring it on!

Raise taxes a fraction just to pay for all this? No!

The left opposed all those, of course, and I'm proud to have been among that number.

I part company on this one, however. Perhaps it's the libertarian streak in me.

Flying an airline is a voluntary activity, driven by private enterprise. You pays your money, you takes your chances. The alternative is to let the airlines decide what security protocols to insitute, which means things will range from "Why, yes, Mr. bin Laden, we do in fact have a seat for you!" to "I don't care if you're the President and you're on Air Force One! It's in our terminal, so you'll be cavity searched!"

No one's made the case for any alternatives, although personally I'd prefer the Israeli system, and frankly, I can't see why it hasn't been adopted here. It's efficient and much less intrusive than the American system.

Of course, it would cost real money and involve trained personnel who would require higher pay and benefits and all that goes with that. We could hire Blackwater (or Xie or whatever name it goes by this week).

But I digress...

Maybe I'm just more comfortable about my naked body. Maybe it's that I ride the NYC subway on a daily basis, so I'm used to having my junk groped, or at least rubbed.

Maybe I'm just an adult. I don't know.

All I do know is, apart from the radiation risk (in my case, a real one, as I've had more X-rays than you've had hot meals, and have already developed at least one cancer), I have no problem with this.

I purchase my ticket to fly to my destination with the understanding that, indeed, I will get there. At 35,000 feet, I do not want any preventable risk. I see enough human error on a daily basis to know my chances are already less than 100% but they'd be lower if I was to drive to where I needed to be.

Especially if I had to cross an ocean!

We just went through eight years of the most egoistically driven administration since, well, Reagan/Bush. In that time, we drove up our national debt six trillion dollars, almost doubling it. We weren't asked to make sacrifices, like the U.S. did in World War II. Instead, we were warned to go shopping, or the terrorists win. We were coaxed into borrowing more money than we could possibly pay back in two lifetimes to buy houses that were way too big for our families. All this time, it was Christmas every day, as companies came out with new toys and gizmos that barely improved our lives.

And we spent. And spent. And spent. And the bill is coming due, right at the time that we can least afford to take our eye off the ball. The national government is in a real struggle between the haves and have-mores, while we the people dread going to the mailbox, not because of anthrax but because of Amex.

And we all get angry at a government that can do this to us, and in the next breath mock a government that can't get its act together over something as simple as the Zadroga bill. You can't have it both ways. Either the government is this well-oiled conspiratorial dictatorship (which I believe is an aspiration, but not a reality) or an incompetent boobish puddle of contradictions (more likely).

As to the National Opt-Out Day, I will be watching the news to see how it breaks. My guess is that there will be a few handfuls of people who will resist, but eventually, the added delay and the realization that it's the single biggest traffic day of the year will either cause fistfights among the would-be passengers, or force most people to chicken out of opting out.

For me, well, I won't be flying next week, but I will be and soon, and I want that TSA agent touching my junk, because for the first time since 9/11, that man will be as uncomfortable screening me as I am being screened.

As Lewis Black put it so succinctly this week on The Daily Show: "I get to fly five hours AND someone's touching my balls?"

Where do I sign up?

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)