Pakistan is just like India, except when it’s just like Afghanistan. (Has anyone else noticed how we seem to have geographically shifted from being a side-thought of the subcontinent to a major player in the Greater Middle East? Is this progress?) It will become clear whether the Pakistan of our work is Indo-Pak or Af-Pak depending on whether the cover has paisley designs or bombs/minarets/menacing men in shalwar kameezes (there are no other kinds of men in shalwar kameezes.) If woman are on the cover, then the two possible Pakistans are expressed through choice of clothing: is it bridal wear or burkhas?
On the subject of women, they never have agency. Unless they break all the rules, in which case they’re going to end up dead. I don’t think there’s anything else to be said about them, is there?
But a single American al Qaeda terrorist in a foreign country actively waging war against us seems to me to be a pretty isolated example.
Glenn responds that Awlaki is most certainly not a singular case, and that there are three others whose identity we do not know. Not to nit-pick, but in a global war now almost a decade old, with thousands of casualties, four individuals is not a massive number. Now, I concede that even one could be a precedent that could enable the killing of countless, and on this Glenn has a point … which leads me to the second response.
2. Glenn asks
Could Andrew please explain how he knows that Awlaki is an "al Qaeda terrorist"? Being an "al Qaeda terrorist" is a crime with which many people have been charged and convicted. But Awlaki never has been.
There is much public information about Awlaki, and I urge readers to go to Wiki and examine the public record and sources in detail to make their own minds up. Witnesses report he was a spiritual adviser to and met with two 9/11 mass-murderers, Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Khalid Almihdhar; his personal phone number was found in the Hamburg apartment of the 20th 9/11 terrorist; in 2006, he was arrested by Yemeni authorities for being part of an al Qaeda plot to kidnap a US military attache; his name was on a list of prisoners that al Qaeda affiliates sought to be released in Yemen; in December 2008, al-Awlaki sent a communique to the Somalian terrorist group Al-Shabaab, thanking them for "giving us a living example of how we as Muslims should proceed to change our situation. The ballot has failed us, but the bullet has not … if my circumstances would have allowed, I would not have hesitated in joining you and being a soldier in your ranks." He sent a message in March of this year, urging treason and murder of Americans by American-Muslims:
To the Muslims in America, I have this to say: How can your conscience allow you to live in peaceful coexistence with a nation that is responsible for the tyranny and crimes committed against your own brothers and sisters? I eventually came to the conclusion that jihad (holy struggle) against America is binding upon myself just as it is binding upon every other able Muslim.
This year, he has directly threatened several writers, journalists, cartoonists with death, one of them in an al Qaeda magazine, Inspire. From Wiki:
Al-Awlaki's name came up in a dozen terrorism plots in the U.S., UK, and Canada. The cases included suicide bombers in the 2005 London bombings, radical Islamic terrorists in the 2006 Toronto terrorism case, radical Islamic terrorists in the 2007 Fort Dix attack plot, and Faisal Shahzad, charged in the 2010 Times Square attempted bombing. In each case the suspects were devoted to al-Awlaki's message, which they listened to on laptops, audio clips, and CDs.
Independent news reports have directly connected Awlaki to meeting with and inspiring the Christmas day underpants bomber. The undie bomber "told the FBI [not under Bush-style torture] that al-Awlaki was one of his al-Qaeda trainers in remote camps in Yemen. And there were confirming 'informed reports' that Abdulmutallab met with al-Awlaki during his final weeks of training and indoctrination prior to the attack… In January 2010, al-Awlaki acknowledged that he met and spoke with Abdulmutallab in Yemen in the fall of 2009. In an interview, al-Awlaki said: 'Umar Farouk is one of my students; I had communications with him. And I support what he did.'" More recently, a Seattle cartoonist, Molly Norris, has had to go into hiding because of a direct threat to her life from Awlaki.
I could go on. But seriously, is Glenn honestly saying that a man who has commited treason, has had multiple direct contacts with al Qaeda, including the 9/11 mass-murderers, has been directly connected with inciting American citizens to kill others in terror attacks is not, self-evidently, an al Qaeda terrorist who poses a direct and imminent threat to innocent human beings, motivated by a poisonous religious ideology that was responsible for the murder of 3,000 people on 9/11? Is he really trying to say that despite all this public evidence, and with this record of terror attacks, we need a full civil trial – even if we were able to capture him – to know that this individual is at war with his own country and a direct threat to all of us?
3. Glenn asks:
Are we "at war" on the entire planet — the centerpiece of the Bush/Cheney assertion of radical powers — or are there physical limits to where the President's war powers apply, i.e., where the "battlefield" is? If we're "at war" anywhere and everywhere Terrorists are found, does that apply to U.S. soil?
No it doesn't.
The CIA and the military have not been authorized to kill any US citizens on American soil. But it is utterly uncontroversial that the military can kill a US citizen abroad if he is waging a treasonous war against the United States (see: Ex parte Quirin [1942]). Obama, moreover, has specifically rejected the dictatorial "enemy combatant" powers asserted by Bush and Bush alone, and expanded judicial review of this kind of military action, hence the lawsuit currently being filed by Awlaki's father. Hence also the narrow decision in Jeppesen in which a court – yes, a court – declared:
We take very seriously our obligation to review the government’s claims with a very careful, indeed a skeptical, eye, and not to accept at face value the government’s claim or justification of privilege.
and
We have thoroughly and critically reviewed the government’s public and classified declarations and are convinced that at least some of the matters it seeks to protect from disclosure in this litigation are valid state secrets, "which, in the interest of national security, should not be divulged." Reynolds, 345 U.S. at 10. The government’s classified disclosures to the court are persuasive that compelled or inadvertent disclosure of such information in the course of litigation would seriously harm legitimate national security interests.
That could not have happened under Bush and I am sick of the left treating Obama as if he has done nothing to change the dictatorial, illegal and indecent policies of his predecessor. God knows I think Obama has gone too far in invoking state secrets in the Jeppesen case and in "moving on" from prosecuting war crimes, but the left really does need to get real about the world we actually live in and the threats we actually face. And they need to remind people more and more of the critical, vital thing Obama has done: he has ended the torture that allowed Bush and Cheney to coerce evidence to justify anything they wanted to do to anyone. And yes, a war crime is worse, in my book, and under the law, than war itself. Torturing someone already held captive is infinitely worse than killing an enemy trying to kill you on the battlefield. Anyone with any knowledge of just war theory would tell you that.
4. As I said in my first post, I agree that the Obama administration's decision to shut down inspection of the evidence behind the decision to regard Awlaki as someone waging an active war against the US under "state secrets" is a step way too far. I think the president has a duty to explain in court why he believes this person must be treated as an active enemy at war with the US, and therefore treated as all such enemies in wartime as someone to be killed. Instead, they have told us much in the press, but not backed it up in court. I strongly disagree with this, and think reiterating in court what is already in the public domain could help, not hurt them. I will gladly join with Glenn and everyone else in this in demanding this invocation of state secrets end. I regard it as a core betrayal of Obama's campaign, just as I believe his refusal even to give torture victims a day in court on the same grounds is a war crime itself.
But I do not believe, as Glenn does, that we are not at war with a vile, theocratic, murderous organization that would destroy this country and any of its enemies if it got the chance. I believe it would use WMDs if it could get its hands on them. I believe the thousands of innocents – mainly Muslims but also Western non-Muslims – whom this terror machine has murdered make the idea that this is not a war a ludicrous, irresponsible and reality-divorced claim that I have never shared. And I believe it is the duty of the commander in chief to kill as many of these people actively engaged in trying to kill us as possible and as accurately as possible. I have a very strong record against war crimes of any sort by any country. But I am not a pacifist.
Look: I know that the asymmetric way that this war is being conducted against us raises very difficult questions. This is not a traditional battlefield, with uniforms and set battles. We have to be very careful that we do not embolden Jihadism by over-reaction, or futile attempts at counter-insurgencies which cannot work, let alone the brutality and war crimes of the last administration. But the point of targeting key agents of al Qaeda for killing is precisely to fight a war as surgically and as morally as we can, when in remote areas the chance of actually capturing or finding the enemy is impossible. But treating this whole situation as if it were a civil case in a US city is not taking the threat seriously.
And so the inclusion of Awlaki as an enemy is not an "execution", or an "assassination", as some of my libertarian friends hyperbolize. It is a legitimate and just act of war against a dangerous traitor at war with us and enjoing others to commit war. There is no "due process" in wartime. We have to make as sure as we can in this new and shadowy war that we do not kill innocents, in so far as that is humanly possible. We should prosecute and punish all war crimes. We can debate strategy and tactics. But we ignore these theocratic mass murderers at our peril. And we have every right, indeed a duty, to kill them after they have killed us by the thousands and before they kill us again.
(Photo: A man stands in the rubble, and calls out asking if anyone needs help, after the collapse of the first World Trade Center Tower 11 September, 2001, in New York. Two hijacked planes crashed into the twin towers causing the collapse of both. By Doug Kanter/AFP/Getty Images.)
Today on the Dish, Andrew replied to Glenn Greenwald on the al-Awlaki case, while Massie and others attacked "assasinations." Andrew championedObama's Gen44speech, but Bob Shrum jinxed it. Andrew Shirvell finally took a "personal leave" but he still wasn't fired by AG Mike Cox and Andrew tackled history's penchant for homophobia but found hope in how far we've come.
Fox News Corp contributed to the Republican party and lost its cred as an objective news source. David Brooks hopped on the Mitch Daniels bandwagon, and Congressman Paul Broun didn't want the government telling him to eat his fruits and vegetables. Meg Whitman employed an illegal immigrant, but we found out that the Washington system hasn't always been a hindrance.
California made big strides on the decriminalization front, taxpayers could benefit from receipts, and E.D. Kain did some hamburger helper math for McDonalds. Marijuana might save Big Tobacco, bullet hole logic wasn't what you'd expect, and readers rode the wave of flying humvees. A better wi-fi was on its way, and the Truth of Facebook wasn't as cool as its story, which Douthat reviewed here. Homophobia helped explain HIV, and Dan Savage's site continued to offer hope even if four years is a long time to wait.VFYW here, cool ad watch here, FOTD here, Malkin award here, and MHB here.
Thursday on the Dish, Andrew challenged O'Reilly to duel it out, and he fact-checked D'Souza because Forbes was incapable. Anderson Cooper nailed Andrew Shirvell's bizarre vendetta against a gay student, and this reader shared a heartbreaking story of times before it got better. Germany approached the finish line on its WWI reparations, Pakistan closed its borders to NATO supplies for Afghanistan, and the Derry/ Londonderry drama wore on.
Sarah squared off with Mitt, and Will Wilkinson wasn't buying the "mama grizzly" phenomenon, especially with someone like Carly Fiorina. Brendan Nyhan researched Chait's unenthusiastic Dems, Tom Jensen looked into angry voters, and Andrew scolded unenthusiastic Prop 19 supporters because this vote does matter. Atheists scored more points on world religion, and one in nine black children have an incarcerated parent. This reader wanted the Tea Party to weigh in on the liberty of marijuana, Allahpundit questioned and John Cole answered on James O’Keefe's motives for attempting such a bizarre stunt, and Republicans found their own double rainbow dude.
On the technology front, Jonah Lehrer reached back in time to rebut Gladwell on Twitter while tech pessimist Evgeny Morozov agreed. Walter Russell Mead imagined a world with lots of electric cars, and Jeff Jarvis didn't appreciate The Social Network's portrayal of geeks. Las Vegas was too hot for this hotel, and this marketing stunt might actually save lives. Larry Summers and Megan wanted better airports, and Bruce Schneier feared function creep in internet wiretaps. VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here.
Brooklyn, New York, 12 pm
Wednesday on the Dish, Andrew fisked both parties on the looming fiscal crisis. Larison countered him and called it political poison. Andrew needled Goldblog on Israeli settlements, rejected Cowen's predictions of a backlash against marriage equality and marijuana, and slammed Jonah Goldberg on education reform.
Immigration reform might actually include gay men and women, Rob Tisinai pulverized NOM on Prop 8, McWhorter urged Long to come out, and Dan Savage's project could teach a lesson to school officials. Ben Adler and Ramesh Ponnuru debated the GOP's Pledge to reference each bill's Constitutional justification and Obama couldn't convince Massie on his assasination program. DeMint might fill the Palin vacuum, conspiracy theorists established their own "fact checks," and Larison critiqued Limbaugh on mass American culture. Matt Steinglass argued for raising the recruitment age for war, pot legalization could save the budget, and a stable of today's thinkers reacted to the question of what future generations will condemn us for.
Colbert made Catholics proud, atheists schooled everyone on religious history, and Michael Klarman argued that we as a country, moreso than the Constitution, determine the world we live in. Wetlands are endangered, and even the VFYW was subject to history's cruel lessons. Readers corrected the record on booing Palin, and on the first Hispanic quarterback.
We played with model-morphosis, secretive texting endangered lives, and Don Draper's sexy shoulders signaled the end of men. Hewitt award here, VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here, and Dissent of the Day here.
Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images.
Tuesday on the Dish, Andrew urged Obama to unleash the hounds in the fiscal fight with the GOP. In a harrowing story, some U.S. soldiers saved Afghan body parts as souvenirs and took pictures. Heather Mac Donald eviscerated Dinesh D'Souza, and Hume joined ranks with Sprung on how Obama has already won. Reihan and Ezra argued over immigrants and visas, and Chris Good warned Obama about being a buzzkill on Prop 19. And there was one act of true American tyranny that the Tea Party didn't dare protest, but Tim Lee did.
Serwer pointed fingers at the media for the Petraeus Syndrome, while Andrew nailed Petraeus for the rise (again) of Al Qaeda in Iraq. CIA bombings escalated in Pakistan and Uganda gay-baited. Limbaugh went loco over Latino advertising, a Grayson campaign ad stooped to new lows, and Dish readers didn't defend Coulter's presence at Homocon. Jelani Cobb and Hitchens skewered Pastor Long.
Palin's publisher promised "soberly argued" books from the right, and the woman herself may or may not have been booed on her daughter's show. Readers rejected McArdle's niggling over bullied gay teens, confusion over health care reform still reigned, and a reader couldn't take Bill Bennett gambling because he'd turn into a hedonist. Malcolm Gladwell got smacked around. The genesis of good ideas got animated, and the earth's oldest tree may be headed for the lumber yard. Mataconis praised the death of the salesman, centenarians hadn't always led the healthiest lives, and Joan Dejean chronicled the sofa's hold on humanity.
Canada churned out cheap cigarettes, Manzi ate his cheeseburger in French paradise, and science got dumbed down for newspapers. Yglesias award here, MHB here, cool ad here, VFYW here, FOTD here, and VFYW contest #17 winner here.
Monday on the Dish, Andrew shared Beinart and Goldblog's regret for what Israel should have done, instead of failing to extend the settlment freeze. Homocon misstepped with Coulter's off-color jokes, Andrew Sprung predicted Obama would be the transformative president he promised to be and Andrew agreed. Stephen Colbert wasn't joking about his Catholic faith and defending "the least of his brothers."
Gideon Levy tried to rehumanize the plight of Palestinians in Israel, Ahmadinejad clowned around, living with HIV in Haiti meant hiding the truth, and Joe Klein informed Obama most civilians won't mind if he dials back in Afghanistan.
Paladino continued to ride the horse of race-baiting, Boehner didn't want to talk about fiscal solutions, and Larison envisioned a Romney run. Exum tried to play gotcha with Andrew on double standards for the military but, like the AEI after Gordon Adams was done with them, was shot down. Torture was still redacted in the New York Times, drug czar Bill Bennett conflated hedonism with healing, but polling on Prop 19 improved. Bernstein asserted the constitution's primacy in our politics today, and Congress wanted to curb liberties on every communication device possible.
Urban planning insulted people's living rooms, Mary Elizabeth Williams saw porn everywhere, and a reader and bicyclist rebelled against Felix Salmon's read on road rage. Yglesias relished aiming low, Dan's project spread, and VFYW here, MHB here, Map of the Day here, FOTD here, academic beard migrations here, and reader reactions to the Read On feature here. Lehrer let us see the world through infants' eyes, and Katherine Dalton learned everything she need to know from living in a small town.
The dark genius of meritocratic culture is that it can take a kid like Mark Zuckerberg, someone who grew up in Westchester and went to an exclusive prep school, and — by surrounding him with other hyper-competitive alpha students — make him feel like he’s an underdog, an outsider, someone who needs to fight and claw his way against all odds to make it to the top and stay there. Whether the flesh-and-blood Zuckerberg felt this way or not, I don’t pretend to know. But the phenomenon is real, and crucial to understanding the psychology of the American elite. And whatever liberties it takes with the facts, when it comes to depicting that psychology at work in an individual soul, “The Social Network” absolutely nails it.
Yesterday, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill that downgrades the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana from a misdemeanor to a civil infraction. This new law means that the more than 60,000 people who are arrested in California every year for small-time marijuana possession will no longer be arrested, given criminal records, or have to appear in court. Instead, they will receive a $100 fine similar to a parking citation. SB 1449 will also save California untold millions in reduced court costs.
My son is 14 and a freshman in high school in rural Georgia. He isn't athletic. He isn't religious. He isn't in ROTC. He has long hair and reads books. He is constantly being called "gay" or "faggot," often times by the people he thought were his friends. He tries to ignore them, but it doesn't stop them. He tries to debate them, but it doesn't stop them. So far, it hasn't gone beyond name calling, but I worry. I showed him your site the day it went live. He sat down and watched the video that you and Terry put up. Since then I have seen him checking the site out on his own. I don't know if he is gay. But I do know that your message has touched him, although he does confide that four years is still a long time to wait for things to get better. I think that seeing so many other people say the same things holds much more weight than having his mother tell him.
Michael Kazin pushes back against the idea that America would be governed better if only Washington DC could be transformed:
Since the Gilded Age, when both a large and permanent federal bureaucracy and massive national corporations emerged, there has been a Washington “system.” …
Successful presidents like William McKinley and Lyndon Johnson soberly analyzed how “Washington” operated and made it work in their favor. Transformative presidents like FDR and Reagan eloquently bashed entrenched interests in the name of “the people,” while they and their advisers played those interests against one another for maximum legislative and electoral gain. Despite Roosevelt’s assault on “economic royalists” and Reagan’s fondness for Tom Paine’s phrase about “beginning the world anew,” neither man was naïve enough to think he could uproot the system. FDR needed some of the most noxious Southern Democrats who ran key committees to push through the signature bills of his New Deal, while Reagan cut a deal with Tip O’Neill to drop his proposal to freeze a cost-of-living raise for Social Security recipients if the speaker would back an increase in the military budget in the House.
Pakistani activists of Islamic party Ahl-e-Sunnat Wal-Jamat shout anti-NATO and anti-US slogans during a protest rally in Islamabad on October 1, 2010. Heavily armed gunmen in Pakistan set ablaze more than two dozen trucks and tankers carrying fuel and supplies for NATO forces in Afghanistan, one day after Pakistan closed the border to the convoys. Attacks on trucks carrying goods for US and NATO-led forces are routine, but the incident came a day after Pakistan blocked the convoys following the deaths of three Pakistani soldiers blamed on cross-border NATO fire. By Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images.
McArdle is onboard. But she wonders whether liberal bloggers understand what a taxpayer receipt might mean:
There seems to be an unspoken assumption [by liberals] that opposition to spending rests on misperception of what the money is spent on; Americans tell pollsters they want to cut spending, but it turns out that what they really want cut is the imaginary fortune they think we spend on foreign aid.
But of course, it seems to me that this could just as easily go the other way: isn't it possible that the widespread support for programs like Social Security and Medicare rests on the fact that most people don't realize just how big a portion of your paycheck those programs consume? I don't know the answer to that, but I will point out that most economists believe that paycheck withholdings enable (among other things) higher taxes; if people had to write out a check for their tax bill every year, resistance to income tax increases would be much fiercer.
The Dish 