Month: February 2010

Don’t try this at home – although your dog might appreciate the drama:

From a NYT piece on combat in Afghanistan:

When Marine units approach Marja, the dangers rise. The insurgents run an active picket network, some of the workings of which were visible late last week on a Bravo Company security patrol that left Observation Post ManBearPig at Treekha Nawa.

Savage beagles terrorize East End. My beagles have been terrorizing Provincetown's East End for years.

Steve Benen reacts to the revelation that the shoe bomber was Mirandized – more so, in fact, than the undie bomber:

I know this reality is all terribly inconvenient for Republicans. Facts just keep getting in the way of a perfectly misleading narrative. But at this point, the GOP and its allies have a choice. Either they can explain why they were entirely silent when Bush handled the Reid case the same way Obama has handled the Abdulmutallab incident, or they can shut up and accept the fact that they've been acting like shameless, transparent, dishonest hacks. I'm especially interested in hearing Liz Cheney trash her own father's administration for the way it handled the case of an attempted terrorist attack. Go ahead, Liz, we're all ears.

Watching senators and pundits huff and puff about Mirandizing terrorists when they should apparently be declared enemy combatants and tortured at length is a depressing spectacle. To see political leaders in the West have such a low view of the American judicial system and such an elevated view of the world-historical significance of these pathetic, twisted, religious nutjobs  … well, they look like a bunch of scaredy cats to me. What the hell happened to "Live Free Or Die?" What happened to the confidence of a society that its ancient traditions are perfectly capable, indeed precisely tailored, to cut down to size these narcissistic, fundamentalist celebrity-seekers?

Which reminds me. One of the high points in the West's defense against these losers was the trial of one Richard Reid, an unspeakably ugly and deeply stupid Brit whom Dick Cheney decided should  – gasp – be treated as a terrorist under the criminal law in the months after 9/11. Not an enemy combatant to be flown to Gitmo and tortured. A terrorist brought to justice in the light of day. Eight years later, Cheneyites are drumming up panic that the Obama administration would do exactly the same thing for exactly the same reasons. But that they have lost their shit is no reason for the rest of us to lose ours.

My view is that trying Mr Undie Bomber is the truly tough guy option – to stand by our traditions against his absurd pretensions. Few people put the case better than the judge in that case, one William Young. Listen to him again. Remember what American values truly are – not the pathetic reduction to torture or cockamamie theories of presidential super-powers. Just the West's principles and values, our strongest weapons and our only hope:

We are not afraid of any of your terrorist co-conspirators, Mr. Reid. We are Americans. We have been through the fire before.

There is all too much war talk here. And I say that to everyone with the utmost respect. Here in this court where we deal with individuals as individuals, and care for individuals as individuals, as human beings we reach out for justice.

You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist.

You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist.

To give you that reference, to call you a soldier gives you far too much stature.

Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or that happens to be your view, you are a terrorist. And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not treat with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists. We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.

So war talk is way out of line in this court. You're a big fellow. But you're not that big. You're no warrior. I know warriors. You are a terrorist. A species of criminal guilty of multiple attempted murders. In a very real sense Trooper Santiago had it right when first you were taken off that plane and into custody and you wondered where the press and where the TV crews were and he said you're no big deal.

You're no big deal…

It seems to me you hate the one thing that to us is most precious. You hate our freedom. Our individual freedom. Our individual freedom to live as we choose, to come and go as we choose, to believe or not believe as we individually choose. Here, in this society, the very winds carry freedom. They carry it everywhere from sea to shining sea.

It is because we prize individual freedom so much that you are here in this beautiful courtroom. So that everyone can see, truly see that justice is administered fairly, individually, and discretely. It is for freedom's seek that your lawyers are striving so vigorously on your behalf and have filed appeals, will go on in their, their representation of you before other judges. We care about it. Because we all know that the way we treat you, Mr. Reid, is the measure of our own liberties.

Make no mistake though. It is yet true that we will bear any burden; pay any price, to preserve our freedoms. Look around this courtroom. Mark it well. The world is not going to long remember what you or I say here. Day after tomorrow it will be forgotten. But this, however, will long endure. Here, in this courtroom, and courtrooms all across America, the American people will gather to see that justice, individual justice, justice, not war, individual justice is in fact being done.

The very President of the United States through his officers will have to come into courtrooms and lay out evidence on which specific matters can be judged, and juries of citizens will gather to sit and judge that evidence democratically, to mold and shape and refine our sense of justice.

See that flag, Mr. Reid? That's the flag of the United States of America. That flag will fly there long after this is all forgotten. That flag still stands for freedom. You know it always will. Custody, Mr. Officer. Stand him down.

How far we've come. But how deep and strong the inheritance we can still reclaim.

Marc Lynch met with the Iraqi VP:

[Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi] argued that the Iraqi people want and need the upcoming elections to deliver fundamental change.  Only a new government, he insisted, one selected by fair and transparent and inclusive elections, could meet the challenges which the current government has failed to overcome.   He was 100% sure that such a new government would do better at addressing the many structural and political problems facing Iraq.  But when pressed by several of us in the room, he seemed loathe to speculate about what would happen if the elections did not produce such change, just another government which looks a lot like the current one.

 He insisted that this was just not possible given the deep desire among Iraqis for real change.  But at the same time, his concerns about the deBaathification disqualifications and worries that some elements might prefer a failed election suggest that in fact he thinks that it's quite possible indeed for the elections to not produce meaningful change.    It's not even clear, frankly, what plausible electoral outcomes would count as meaningful change  — would a victory by Maliki's list would be taken as "failure"?

Anyone who can look at what has been going on there these past few months and believe that we are going to be able to leave behind anything but sectarian entropy has a neocon's view of reality.

"No, it's 100 percent fiction," – Steve Schmidt, correcting Willie Brown's assertion that Going Rogue was "about 70 percent fiction."

Bruce Bartlett posts this Kos/Research 2000 poll of self-identified Republicans and concludes "that between 20% and 50% of the party is either insane or mind-numbingly stupid." I always respect Bruce's view but think rather that this is a function of the GOP becoming more about identity politics and paranoia than individual freedom and hope. Any party that could treat Sarah Palin as a serious candidate for the vice-presidency has lost its mind – almost as surely as she has lost what remains of hers.

Of course, I notice the question of openly gay men and women as high school teachers. I notice this because I bet every single one of the respondents who said yes to banning such teachers revere Ronald Reagan, And yet Reagan took a strong stand against exactly that position in 1978 as governor of California. Yes, 1978 – decades before the enormous shift in public attitudes toward homosexuality that has made a new and more tolerant world today.

What you begin to realize is that on a whole host of issues, the GOP is going backward in areas of social tolerance, as they marinate in their own paranoia and purge every non-ideologue from their ranks. And as they go backward and feel, yes, left behind, their virulence and resentment intensify. It's a classic fundamentalist response to modernity.

It has a parallel in the way in which non-violent Islamists have doubled down on medievalism as they feel an overwhelming sense of their own failure to succeed in modernity. There is a profound insecurity and dysfunction in these subcultures which cannot make the transition to modern life and thereby surrender more totally to the ancient past and to hatred of those who succeed. The hatred of Obama – a clearly decent and obviously Christian man – is not about him. It's about them. It's about their resentment of a man who has integrated his own identity and made a place for himself in a pluralist world. They cannot do that – so, like Palin, they invent a world of ancient virtues and moral absolutes that they routinely fail to live up to in reality. I mean: look at Palin's family and Obama's. Whose is the more traditional? And yet Palin is allegedly the avatar of family values – and Obama is a commie subversive.

It would be funny if it weren't so sad.

After executing young protesters, the thugs who run Iran are now allegedly changing their tune on the nuclear deal they turned down only recently:

"We have no problem sending our enriched uranium abroad," Ahmadinejad told state television, according to Reuters.

"We say: we will give you our 3.5 percent enriched uranium and will get the fuel. It may take 4 to 5 months until we get the fuel," he said. "If we send our enriched uranium abroad and then they do not give us the 20 percent enriched fuel for our reactor, we are capable of producing it inside Iran."

The U.S. reacted cautiously to the interview, indicating it was willing to listen if Iran has genuinely changed its position on the fuel swap deal, while it was continuing preparations with key allies on sanctions for further pressuring Iran. Iran has previously publicly said it was willing to send its low enriched uranium abroad, but it had balked at sending it out all in one batch, as a proposal worked out by the UN atomic energy agency last fall had stipulated. U.S. officials said it remained to be seen if Iran had changed its position on that.

He's jumpy, isn't he? February 11 is coming.