Month: January 2009

Ackerman fisks Yoo’s WSJ piece. So does Larisa Alexandrovna:

The real reason John Yoo wrote this foolish, inaccurate piece is in the hopes of gathering around him some support for his illegal actions.

I’ve been traveling and just caught up with it. According to Yoo, restoring the ancient ban on torture for prisoners means an end to all useful intelligence on al Qaeda:

Eliminating the Bush system will mean that we will get no more information from captured al Qaeda terrorists.

Is Yoo saying that the US has never gotten any useful intelligence from Jihadists without violating the baseline Geneva Conventions? I mean: it’s torture or a touchy-feely seminar? Really. Just go read Matthew Alexander’s book on how he successfully interrogated and broke Qaeda members in Iraq. It’s called Western warfare and smart interrogation. And it served us extremely well for centuries before academically-cocooned goons like Yoo were brought in to give Cheney pseudo-legal cover for whatever he wanted.

A reader writes:

Weil speaks for me as well, but with a little more of the dark night thrown in and less of Jesus. 

As a Catholic, I recently decided to be honest with my profound doubt and attend mass in that state of acknowledged doubt (bordering on utter disbelief and bemusement).  I am sure you appreciate the spiritual peril this entails to some who aspires to orthodoxy in word and deed. 

Astonishingly, never before has the beauty of the Mass been so visible to me, never has Jesus seemed more accessible. The thought occurred to me that atheism honestly held can be a perfect expression of Faith.

A Palestinian boy plays with a Hamas flag on January 29, 2009 in a street of Gaza city. US envoy George Mitchell called for a durable truce in Gaza as spiralling violence threatened to shatter ceasefires that ended a devastating war in the Hamas-run enclave. By Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images.

Marc Lynch comments on the showdown and offers a smart and pragmatic solution of his own:

A "down payment" of a public, significant drawdown in the early spring would send the correct signals to all relevant actors, while allowing plenty of time for commanders in the field to assess the impact and adjust accordingly.   I hope that Obama is able to head off a battle with the military — and the military, a battle with Obama — by working together on such a strategy.

Julian Borger:

The administration radicals believe it is time to invert what they see as another fundamental flaw in Bush policy – tying US interests to reactionary Sunni regimes in the Arab world as a bulwark against Shia militancy. Tehran is militant, the new thinkers argue, but it is at least a rational state actor, with defined goals and interests, and therefore ultimately more amenable to cool discussion and engagement.

The more cautious wing warns against hasty interference in an opaque political system with all the unintended consequences that might entail.

The last thing we want, in my opinion, is to be on one side of the Shia-Sunni split, especially if that makes us de facto propper-uppers of Arab autocracy and drives the Iranian people into the arms of the mullahs. Persia remains the prize. And America is Persia’s natural ally.

A reader writes:

I come from a family of life-long Republicans, and after this last administration, every one of us has bailed. As a collective, we can’t figure them out. Either there is something WRONG with these people, or they’re the Borg.

A 22-year-old college grad with a BA in Women’s Studies is selling her virginity. The bidding is up to $3.8 million. Her logic:

…it became apparent to me that idealized virginity is just a tool to keep women in their place. But then I realized something else: if virginity is considered that valuable, what’s to stop me from benefiting from that? It is mine, after all. And the value of my chastity is one level on which men cannot compete with me. I decided to flip the equation, and turn my virginity into something that allows me to gain power and opportunity from men. I took the ancient notion that a woman’s virginity is priceless and used it as a vehicle for capitalism.

Pure politics, no responsibility:

"They can cram down a stimulus package without Republican support," said Kyl, "but if that happens, then when, as we believe, in six months or so, when the American people say, ‘Wait a minute, we’re not better off. In fact, we’re worse off than we were six months ago. Who is responsible for this and what can be done to fix it?’ Republicans then are going to be in a position to say, ‘We didn’t have the input in this and that’s why it didn’t work.’"

They really should just go pull a Cheney. This is governance as talk radio.

Noam Scheiber points out the faulty financial logic of a GOP congresswoman.

“While I renew my affection for and complete solidarity with our Brothers of the First Alliance, I urge that the memory of the Shoah lead humanity to reflect on the unforeseeable power of evil when it conquers the Human Heart. May the Shoah be a warning to all against oblivion, against denial or revisionism, because violence committed against any one single human being is violence against all humanity,” – Pope Benedict XVI.