Month: May 2009

Obama’s Newest Fans

Pete Wehner and Andy McCarthy and Jonah Goldberg. It's critical for their position that the lie that Abu Ghraib was an exception and not policy be maintained. Any evidence to the contrary must be suppressed. And if they can get Obama to cover up for Bush, their own task in preventing accountability for war crimes becomes much easier.

The Healthcare Debate Shifts

Karen Tumulty notes:

Hard to miss in the flood of health care news this week is the fact that it has been all about cost–with relatively little mention of the other goal of health care reform, universal coverage. Of course, many health experts argue that it is impossible to achieve the former without the latter. But curbing the cost of health care is a more politically saleable argument, because it affects everyone, not just the 47 million or so (and growing) uninsured. And it is also the reason that business is now climbing aboard what looks like a moving train for health reform.

Here's her story on the change.

How “Failed” Is Pakistan?

Manan Ahmed traces the history of the "Pakistan is a failed state" meme:

This decades-long tendency to reduce Pakistan’s complexity to either “failure” or “stability” reflects, above all, a glaring poverty of knowledge about the real lives of 175 million Pakistanis today. Since 2007 alone, they removed a dictator from military and civilian power without firing a single shot, held the first national election since 1997 – in which right-wing radical parties were soundly rejected – and launched a secular movement for justice.

None of this matters, we are told, because Pakistan is facing “an existential threat” from “violent extremists”, as a State Department spokesman said on Monday. US generals and media commentators are hinting that a military takeover may be the only way to arrest the imminent “failure” – to combat the “Talibanisation” of Pakistan and keep the dreaded nukes from “falling into the hands” of terrorist groups.

A comically exaggerated version of reality underpins such concerns.

Thoreau picked up on the cluelessness of the western media's portrayal of Pakistan a few days ago.

Setting Us Up For A Bigger Fall?

Martin Wolf thinks that Obama's conservative response to the economic disaster might not be enough:

The more the crisis unfolds, the more evident it is that incentives in the financial system were (and are) badly distorted. I sympathise with the conservative approach to crises, but not if it leaves in place the plethora of perverse incentives that created them. At the end of this, then, there will be one big test: will the number of institutions thought “too big to fail” be as large as now and, if so, how will they be controlled?

Happy Generals 1, Truth 0

A reader writes:

Like you, I'm dismayed at Obama's last-minute decision to block the release of the other abuse photos. I think he was under withering pressure by the joint chiefs and military brass in Iraq and Afghanistan not to stir this pot up again. As for why this threatens our troops, last March, a group of US Senators, including McCain and Lindsey Graham, wrote the following to Obama: "Releasing these old photographs of detainee treatment now will provide new fodder to Al-Qaeda's propaganda and recruitment operations, undercut the progress you have made in our international relations, and endanger America's military and diplomatic personnel throughout the world."

I think that's true. But hold on! Just yesterday, Karl Rove was on my teevee claiming that disavowing torture draws more recruits to Al Qaeda because now they know if they're captured we'll treat them with kid gloves. Of course the real reason Republicans don't want these photos released is because they will show just how depraved our behavior was in the early years of the Iraq War.

This is seriously insane stuff and they know it's simply indefensible, particularly as most of the prisoners involved were just street thugs or random poor slobs unlucky enough to get picked up in some raid and fingered as a suspected insurgent by informants with dubious motives — then subjected to treatment that would have embarrassed Nazis. So Obama is now faced with a choice: what is more important? Keeping the generals happy or the Truth? So far, happy generals 1, Truth 0.  Note to Obama: we're keeping score.

What I cannot understand is why the president owning the war crimes of his predecessor – and launching a serious and deep cover-up – helps America's international reputation. Doesn't it suggest that Bush and Obama, underneath, are the same? And isn't that the real threat to America's international standing?

Cheney’s Man For Obama’s War

Given the president's decision to start aggressively covering up the torture policies of his predecessors and thereby owning them, Obama's pick as head of his – and it now truly is his – war in Afghanistan is interesting. He's praised to the skies by Dick Cheney:

"The decision to send Stan McChrystal…is a good one," Cheney told Cavuto. "I think the choice is excellent. I think you'd be hard put to find anyone better than Stan McChrystal."

Kelly Vlahos notes:

But what the blogs have been talking about at length and what the mainstreamers seem to be afraid to acknowledge, is that McChrystal can be placed at the very center of the controversy the Obama Administration is now wrestling with and Cheney seeks to defend:  the torture and abuse — sanctioned and delegated from the top — of battlefield detainees throughout the GWOT theater under President Bush. It doesn’t take long to click through and read in-depth accounts of the goings-on under McChrystal’s special operations command in The Atlantic (May 2007) and Esquire (August 2006)

Just keep on walking, guys. He's a genius! And no body-fat! Torture? La-la-la-la-la  I can't hear you!

Obama Caves To Cheney

Liz Cheney, that is:

"I think that it is really appalling that the administration is taking this step," she said. "I have not seen the pictures, I don't know what is in them. But clearly what they are doing is releasing images that show American military men and women in a very negative light. And I have heard from families of service members, from families of 9/11 victims, this question: When did it become so fashionable for us to side, really, with the terrorists? For us to put information out that hurts American soldiers."

"If [the president] really cared about" about these soldiers, Cheney concluded, he wouldn't be releasing these photos that show them "in a negative light."