Year: 2013

A reader writes:

You are right that the issues surrounding the Brennan nomination in 2013 are different from those of 2009. Then the question was extraordinary renditions and torture. Brennan can by no stretch of the imagination be considered an architect of those programs. On the other hand, he was a qualified defender of both, and he was likely to work hard to obstruct exposing what happened as well as demands for accountability. This he did in the White House even more effectively than he could have done at Langley.

Now the major question is the reorientation of the CIA into an organization that is essentially paramilitary, with the drone program being the "tip of the spear." Brennan more than any single figure has pushed along this metamorphosis of the agency and his role. His appointment provides the best opportunity so far to challenge and discuss the unchallenged and undiscussed assumptions behind the stealth make-over of the CIA.

There is entirely too much of a hurry to get into the weeds of hot-botton issues like Al-Awlaki and the civil rights dimension, which is emotional to civil libertarians, but also rather a rare matter. There is not enough willingness to look at the big picture of a militarized CIA that lacked the discipline of military doctrine and rules.

Basically, I think that the planners got the picture right in the National Security Act of 1947–they said the CIA should be an intelligence gathering organization with only very limited paramilitary functions in the areas of self-protection and training. Their guidelines were rigorously maintained until 2002, and then the picture went off the tracks. John Brennan is a major reason why. Confirming him means acknowledging a militarized CIA.

This is not, in my mind, an impossible outcome, but it is also not a decision to be taken without a compelling public presentation of the need for changing the nature of the agency. Aside from this we have Brennan's gabbiness with reporters–his embarrassing interview with the Washington Times that touched off the Al-Awlaki controversy–completely unnecessarily, in my view. His ridiculous mangling of the account of UBL's death. His penchant for chatting with his friends in the press corps to talk up the pro-active nature of Obama in the area of drone warfare, etc.

A smart DCI is far tighter in dealing with the press, and not so clumsy. The GOP will have at him over all of this, and I think they have plenty of legitimate points to score–though not likely anything that will take down his nomination. As for Klaidman, I agree his reporting on this subject is extremely important. On the other hand, he misunderstands much of the criticism (or rather, he understands the ACLU's critiques to be the total of the criticism, he misses the critical perspective of military leaders schooled in the traditional NSA analysis). He also makes no bones about the fact that he is writing as an advocate for Brennan, just as previously he wrote as an advocate for Holder.

That's fine, but you have to recognize it in weighing what he has written. Just consider this factor: if the drone war that Brennan oversaw in Pakistan results in this new nuclear power, a former leading non-NATO ally of the United States, becoming an enemy of the United States–then who can possibly say it was a success? It would then have to be reckoned one of the major tactical errors of the war on terror. But Brennan systematically fails to factor in this broader picture.

(Photo: John Brennan listens during an event in the East Room of the White House on January 7, 2013 in Washington. By Brendan Smialowski/Getty.)

As you know by now, Public Policy Polling's had some fun with the latest numbers (pdf) on Congress' popularity. Respondents were asked whether they had a higher opinion of Congress or 26 various items. The news wasn't all bad though:

By relatively close margins [Congress] beats out Lindsey Lohan (45/41), playground bullies (43/38), and telemarketers (45/35). And it posts wider margins over the Kardashians (49/36), John Edwards (45/29), lobbyists (48/30), Fidel Castro (54/32), Gonorrhea (53/28), Ebola (53/25), Communism (57/23), North Korea (61/26), and meth labs (60/21)

At least you can cure gonorrhea. Congress seems unfixable. Andrew Gelman wonders if it's a spoof: "But all those crosstabs . . . they look real. So I don’t know what to think." Pareene points to the latest reason to lampoon Congress:

The HuffPo’s Ryan Grim and Sabrina Siddiqui obtained a PowerPoint presentation given to incoming Democratic freshmen legislators by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the DCCC’s recommended schedule for House members includes four hours spent on the phone begging rich people for money and one hour spent begging rich person for money in person. This is the daily schedule. As Kevin Drum notes, this leaves no time for studying or homework. …

This, as much as anything else, is why our Congress is both dysfunctional — legislators have no clue what they’re voting for or against most of the time — and so attentive to the priorities of the very wealthy.

Update from a reader:

I was surprised to see you state in your post that "At least you can cure gonorrhea." That statement seems like poor timing given the news of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea that's been circulating over the past two days.

(Image from memegenerator)

Mark Thompson wonders how many troops we will remain:

Early suggestions that the 2015 U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan could be as high as 20,000 to 30,000 have shrunken to smaller options in the 2,500-to-10,000-troop range. Plainly, the White House is fed up with the corrupt Afghan government. It also views a large troop presence as a drain on its budget, as former Army officer and ex-NSCer Doug Ollivant pointed out Monday on Battleland.

David Barno believes that pulling all troops out is a possibility:

Even though the Zero Option is not the best choice to protect American long-term regional interests, it certainly remains on the table. Overreach on Karzai's part could easily sour prospects for any sort of enduring U.S. military presence.

According to Google's statistics:

Madrigal captions:

2012-2013 eclipses any of the previous six seasons, and it's still very early. Of course, it could be a year the viral hit peaks high but early, a la 2009-2010, or it could have a more traditional curve like 2007-2008. If it's the latter, a lot of people are going to get sick.

Kent Sepkowitz adds:

Until we know more, we should be thankful for one thing: though nasty enough, the number of fatalities is not horrific (yet). And unlike the flu of 2009, this one is not unusually severe in the pregnant or the obese. It’s just contagious—mighty, mighty contagious. So contagious that watching it play out makes you begin to understand the concept of a magic spell, so quickly does it seem to spread.

I've been in bed for a couple of days now with bronchitis triggered by what seemed to be this, or something like it. Brutal. Hang in there if you're enduring this.

This is truly special:

Dick Armey had no idea he was speaking to the left-wing Media Matters organization during an interview last week, he told The Daily Caller Tuesday. Instead, Armey thought he was chatting with the conservative Media Research Center.

Classic Armey nugget – I'm sorry but I've always had a soft spot for him:

As for who he thought he was speaking to, Armey asked the Daily Caller, "Who's the guy with the red beard that always does the show where he points out how biased the press is?" Told he seemed to be referring to the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell, who does a weekly "Media Mash" segment on Fox News, Armey said, "Yeah, I thought it was Brent Bozell."

I have memorized the face of Brent Bozell just so I can run if I see him coming down the street. But I don't blame Dick for drawing a blank.

The second part of that "interview", if you must:

A reader writes:

Andrew, I know your bias in disliking Piers Morgan, but it colored your view here.  The Morgan interview was excellent.  The worst thing he could have done was end the interview.  He was not allowed to speak – he tried.  He tried to have a discussion and you could watch that in real time.  He was cut off repeatedly, threatened with violence, called names.  He kept his calm.  This is the debate we are trying to have, with people who are just plain nuts.  It is important to see, very important.  The rage, the anger, the violence.  The language of needing these things for defense but so obviously using them as a threat.  Piers Morgan gave the face of the other side of the debate in reality.  I needed to see that, and be frightened – horrified – by it.

Another adds, "Morgan used the brilliant maxim that made Napoleon such a successful general: 'Never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake.'" Another takes issue with my view that Morgan should have ended the interview:

You often show photos and videos of carnage that most American news would not touch, partly on the basis that they show an important reality that our sanitized news often ignores. Isn't the same true of Alex Jones? It wasn't Piers Morgan's job to sanitize Jones or protect his audience from this man.

Another adds, "If you shut Jones down, he will claim that you fear the truth he speaks." Another:

I watched the interview with my extremely conservative, gun-loving uncle. He has always been completely unmoved by my arguments for gun control. And he would have been even less convinced by anything Morgan would have offered. But by the end of the "freak show" he was absolutely moving towards "my side". He called Jones "completely unhinged" and said his argument were "disturbing – honestly." And he said that Jones was a "crystal clear example of the type of guy who should be prevented from owning a gun." And this is from my rabid-right, Second Amendment-loving uncle.

A few readers are taking my side:

I agree with you about this.  I saw Piers Morgan being interviewed on CNN about the interview, and he said that he had decided that absolute silence in the face of Alex Jones’ blustering was the most effective way to make the case for gun control. But when I watched the actual interview, I did not at all have the impression that Morgan was sitting back and letting Jones make an ass of himself, but rather than Morgan didn’t know what to say, and was intimidated by the guy.   

Another:

I think there may be something wrong with me, but I had the opposite reaction to the Piers Morgan/Alex Jones throwdown. Although I personally would be happy to chuck the entire Second Amendment out the window, I actually found Jones much more appealing than Morgan. And it was Jones, not Morgan, who said a couple of things that made me think. Is it really true that the overall violent crime rate in the U.K. is higher than ours? Is it possible that guns just get more attention because they are the most dramatic way of killing people, but not the most common? It would have been interesting to see Morgan discussing those points, or even directly debunking them, instead of asking Jones if he knew how to count.

Update from a reader:

You quoted a reader saying that Jones raised points that made him think such as whether the UK’s violent crime rate is higher than that the US,  and whether "guns just get more attention because they are the most dramatic way of killing people, but not the most common?" But you didn’t provide the information, which is very easy to obtain. The murder rate in the US is four times that in the UK:  4.8 vs. 1.2 per 100,000.

Update from another:

It seems unlikely that someone hasn't already sent you this follow-up from Jones after the show, where, but it is pretty amazing in its paranoia:

One more:

I've lived in Austin since 1996 and was introduced to the antics of Alex Jones early on my arrival.  He had a long playing paranoid fantasy show on local access tv.  Even the briefest of background checks on this guy would quickly discover his unhinged lunacy.  He would always have some sort of bordering on violent feud running with some particular person in Austin he would single out as one of the bad guys in his bad acid trip comic book reality.  The decision to broadcast him on CNN is the ridiculous part.  There was no right way to handle him in the interview and his performance was 100% predictable.  I can only imagine that they knew exactly what they were doing and the fallout is exactly what they wanted.  This was an entertainment event and not a debate about anything.

Mikl-Em price-checks the Happy Birthday song, which makes Warner Chappel music “$2 million a year in royalties from TV shows and filmmakers.” On the 10th anniversary of Creative Commons, WFMU and the Free Music Archive are commissioning new birthday songs that will remain free:

Songwriters can add their new birthday ditties to a national repository of alternate Birthday songs. Submissions are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution license. The deadline for submitting songs is Jan 13 at 11:59pm ET. The judges include Lawrence Lessig, Jonathan Coulton, and members of Deerhoof and Yo La Tengo. They will select 3 winners to be announced on 1/29/2013. More info here.

Michael J. Totten fears that many in the West still overestimate the popularity and efficacy of Arab liberals and secularists:

The first time I went to Egypt, also in 2005, I met the same kinds of people I met in Lebanon. Cosmopolitan, liberal-minded individuals who were like Arab versions of me. Egypt had nothing like Hezbollah controlling large swaths of the country and warmongering against the neighbors. No foreign army smothered the country. Instead it had a police state. The narrative there at first seemed to be: democrats against the regime. That’s what it looked like. But my experience in Lebanon prompted me to ask a question of my liberal Egyptian friends that seems not to have occurred to some of the other journalists and Western internationalists who have been there. I asked these Egyptian liberals, "how many Egyptians agree with you about politics?" The answer stopped me cold: five percent at the most.