Month: September 2008

Scott Horton comments on the new US military actions inside Pakistan:

What’s up? There is one plausible explanation for the latest friction: the Bush Administration has given orders to go all out–helicopter gunships, air strikes, predator drones, and ground-based forces–through the end of the year in an attempt to apprehend or kill Osama bin Laden and other senior Al Qaeda leaders.

Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri have long been understood to be operating in a zone consisting of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Northwest Pakistan and the immediately adjacent areas of Afghanistan—precisely where these incidents have occurred. […]

The Bush Administration is hoping for an “October surprise” that will lift the tides of the Republican candidates just in time for Election Day. That explains why the extraordinary effort is undertaken now, and why the sensitivities of the U.S.-Pakistani relationship are being ignored.

A dek from Fortune:

If Matt Simmons is right, the recent drop in crude prices is an illusion – and oil could be headed for the stratosphere. He’s just hoping we can prevent civilization from imploding.

It feels as if we are hitting several walls at once. For me, it’s frighening, but also in some ways, a relief. We have less to fear from reality than from denial of that reality. The market correction, the morass in Iraq, and the exposure of American debt are all good things in the long run. If we have not recognized the damage of the last eight years we cannot repair it.

But the case for Obama is getting overwhelming. McCain has no credibility since he was one of the key architects of the war in Iraq and his party is primarily responsible for the debt and greed and corruption that we are now coping with.

Dickerson picks out his favorites:

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) talks with reporters at the U.S. Captiol September 22, 2008 in Washington, DC. Frank is working with other Congressional leaders, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and others to find a legislative answer to the current financial crisis on Wall Street. By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

A reader writes:

Given your copious writings on Torture and the Bush Administration, I was a little shocked to see the casual glee you had this morning in reporting on the confirmed guilt of the Rosenbergs. It seems to me that you oppose torture because no matter how evil our enemies our, America must hold itself to the highest moral standard when it comes to Justice and Civil Liberty. When we torture, we debase ourselves to the level of totalitarian regimes and rogue terrorist groups. The same is absolutely true for when we deny American citizens a fair and unbiased trial.

Regardless of their personal innocence or guilt, the Rosenberg trial will always remain a tragedy in the history of American Justice. It epitomized a time when, in order to fight Communism, we debased ourselves down to its level. We denied two American Citizens the right to a Fair Trial–there is no excuse for that, ever.

There can be no joy that "Thank God, at least they were guilty," because a good number of those tortured under the Bush Administration were surely guilty, too. Today can only be a reminder that American Values do not stand up well in times hysteria and fear.

Another adds:

Apart from old left — and I mean "old" in the chronological sense — believers, what do the Rosenbergs mean to American liberals today? Nothing that I can see.  I’m a liberal, I’m 45, and I was always willing to believe they were spies.

To say that liberals "owe" some public accounting for their beliefs is like saying Oxford and Cambridge "owe" something for having produced Philby and Burgess, et al.

And what of conservatives?  We know that Pollard was a spy for Israel — when will AIPAC confess its sins?  We know that the Franco regime in Spain was one of the most reprehensible dictatorships in history — will the right, which championed its admission into NATO as anti-communist, confess its complicity in the 40 years of abuses of that regime?

I’m reminded of a passage by Yosef el-Kabir, an Iraqi Jew and legal scholar who rejected the Balfour Declaration thusly: "If one goes reconstituting history two thousand years back, there is no reason why one should not go still farther back, say four or five thousand years, and presently have the world ruled by militant archaeology."

This Rosenberg thing strikes me as being in the same vein.  With the pillars of governance and economic security crumbling around them, conservatives are reaching back to what is literally history — history involving a nation that no longer even exists — to salvage some kind of justification for an increasingly bankrupt ideology.

Sad, really.

Jeffrey Goldberg interviews Dick Meyer:

For some reason, television, and all non-ancient media as far as I can tell, brings out the worst in us, not the best. It preys rather than elevates.  But blaming television is silly; it is a mirror.  We have seen the enemy and it us is. We ought to suck it up and admit it.

A journalist in Afghanistan writes:

I just wanted to say Fred Kaplan is only half right to stress the importance of building up the ANA, which is an essential tool for pushing back against insurgents. But that is only the first part of the "clear, hold, build" strategy needed in any counter insurgency campaign. The crucial thing is finding a way to hold ground once it’s been cleared – that’s the job of police forces.

Thus far police reform in Afghanistan has been failure, not least because the Germans did such a bad job when they were given responsibility for it. The US is now pouring in billions of dollars a year to something called ‘Focused District Development’ whereby the entire police force of a particular district is removed and given six weeks training. It’s early days and the results are mixed so far. Creating a quality police force is going to be much harder than creating a decent army. Not only will it be expensive, it will also require half-decent mentors willing to run the huge risk of living and working alongside policeman in some of the most dangerous and unstable parts of the country. At the moment too many of them remain behind the secure walls of military bases.

Introducing the Thoron family:

You can donate to keep this ad on the airwaves in California here.

The McCain campaign apparently believes that factual questions from reporters are inadmissable. In fact, asking factual questions is obviously bias. So that’s why they won’t answer my emails. Their job now is to prevent Americans from finding out things about their candidates and their records. That’s the only way they think they can win. Ambers’ grace note:

Here’s hoping that today’s outburst was an aberration and not a sign that the campaign will be shutting down its press shop for good.

Yes, there’s an actual possibility that the McCain campaign will simply shut down press access altogether. But how could we tell? 25 days and no Palin press conference. Are women candidates regarded as too fragile for a robust press corps? Too frail to accept normal debate rules? The sexism that animates Schmidt and McCain is pretty staggering, isn’t it? For the twenty-first century?

Finally, Americans are beginning to get it. If they really get it, if they begin to absorb the astonishing failures of the last eight years, then we may witness something quite dramatic in November.