It's nice to see that even conservatives are disgusted with Liz Cheney's latest attack on Eric Holder. As you've no doubt heard, Cheney is miffed that there are attorneys in the Department of Justice who, in the past, have defended people accused of nasty crimes. Of course, that's what defense lawyers are supposed to do, but that doesn't stop Liz Cheney from sponsoring scary videos insinuating that defending someone swept up by US forces and accused of terrorism is just fundamentally worse than defending an ordinary serial murderer, rapist or corporate swindler.
The pressure is growing on the Justice Department to produce supposedly "deleted" e-mails that could reveal whether government lawyers during the Bush administration were instructed to devise legal justifications for torture.
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) likes to tout his experience as a former military lawyer. Graham apparently thinks this makes him sound more convincing when he goes around advocating military trials for all suspected terrorists, as he's been doing lately. Graham's now trying to get that idea signed into law in a bill he's introduced in the Senate. A similar provision is likely headed to a vote today in the House of Representatives.
Do you know one? Perchance your mother, father, brother, or sister is a person you would characterize as lovingly protective. He or she maybe an individual who works to shield loved ones from harm. This fine fellow or femme plots and plans in an attempt to prevent any crisis. People come to depend on caring souls such as he or she. Indeed, you may be the cautious crier who actively expresses concern for the health and welfare of those you treasure. It is a tough task, but you, or someone in your life may have assumed responsibility for the well-being of another. Surely, someone must keep us safe and sane. One never knows who might lurk or linger in the halls, bathroom stalls, on a plane, boat or train. Credentials must be checked. If family and friends cannot safeguard us from the crazies and fanatics certainly, our sweet Uncle Sam will.
Joss Whedon's Dollhouse only has two more episodes to go, alas, but it's not going down without a fight. Last night's episode, "Getting Closer" had so much going on, it was enough to fill half a 22-episode season of a lesser show, but I really just want to talk about one rather amazing thing that happened: The lead character (sort of) in an American TV show self-identified as a terrorist.
Let me say that again: The lead character in an American TV show self-identified as a terrorist.
It wasn't entirely accurate, of course. But in a sense, that only makes it better.
The last two weeks since the Christmas/underpants bomber episode have seen the utter and complete collapse into meaninglessness of "terrorist" discourse. As Rachel Maddow noted, Rudy ("A noun, a verb and 9/11") Guiliani has effectively destroyed his political career once and for all in the process of trying to make 9/11 disappear, and that's pretty much the symbolic crown of the mountain range of stupid that's been trotted out in the past two weeks.
In essence, the post-underpants GOP attacks on Obama can be summarized thus: "You can't fight terrorism, because you're not scared! And you're not scaring us and the American people!" You're not screaming "terrorism" every other word, just like Osama bin Laden wants!
And so now that "terrorism" has been made utterly meaningless as the final reductio absurdum of those who flew so high for more than half a decade based on their own spectacular failures, it's only fitting that a fictional character from Joss Whedon's fevered imagination should turn the ultimate linguistic trick, and--quite impossibly--turn "terrorist" into a Good Thing.
As a result of a recent event involving an aircraft and underpants Representative Peter King (R-Not From Iowa), the senior Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, has again come forth to bring his expertise on questions of international terrorism to the national debate.
King, a Congressman who represents a district that straddles New York's Long Island (NY-3), previously served as the Comptroller of Nassau County and a member of Hempstead, New York's Town Council, which wouldn't seem to be the kind of résumé that would give you much credibility in this arena-but Mr. King is a special case.
You see, Mr. King knows a great deal about terrorism...from the inside...because for many years the personal cause that drove his life was to be an active and public supporter of a terrorist group.
And that's why, today, we'll be connecting the dots between Congressman King and the Irish Republican Army.
Professor Samuel Huntington, author of The Clash of Civilizations, the most god-awful piece of historical research ever published, would likely derive confirmation from this video, a caricature of his theory about a pending clash between Islam and the West, which is today promulgated by American and pro-Israel Neoconservatives. It is only a small step from Islam to Arabs, and an even smaller one from Arabs to terrorism.
And then we finally arrive at Islamophobia, the new bigotry.
The threat of violent acts against its citizenry has once again coerced the United States federal government into restricting the actions of hundreds of thousands of its citizens:
Security agents may pat the soles of your feet, work up your legs to your waist and run a wand across your whole body. Bags may be searched even after they pass the scanner. Bathroom breaks may be eliminated for the last hour of international flights. Blankets on your lap on those flights are verboten, too. Forget about that extra carry-on bag. And those controversial body scanners that can see under passengers' clothes? They could show up at more airports.(...)
For the time being, passengers flying to the USA must remain in their seats for about an hour before their flight lands and put away personal items, such as electronic equipment, bags, pillows and other bulky items, said two Transportation Security Administration officials familiar with the new rules.
There is an argument to be had about whether existing TSA policies are effective at preventing violent acts on airplanes flying in the United States. Unfortunately, there is no argument about whether the attempted bathroom bomber used the threat of violence to coerce the United States federal government into altering some of its policies. Also unfortunately, there is no argument that those policy changes will restrict the actions of several hundred thousand, possibly even millions, of United States citizens.
In the past few months and years, media coverage of Israel has had subtle but distinct change in tone. The mainstream media is taking a harder look at Israel's policies, and has found not everything is to its liking.
There are several reasons why coverage of Israel has previously been so positive, and why recently a slight change has occurred. In the first place, Israel is a country culturally very attuned to us. Israel is part of the West; it shares Western norms and values. Many Jews would be comfortable living in the West and do so to this very day. Some of them work in the media and are sympathetic to the struggles their peers face.
Moreover, many in the media (and the vast majority of our country) believed that Israel had been in the right before 2006. Israel had - has - a democracy and a free press and all the things we like a country to have; the Palestine cause and their Arab supporters by and large do not. Israelis such as Yitzhak Rabin were calling for peace; meanwhile, Palestinian terrorist organizations such as Hamas were sending suicide bombers to kill Israelis civilians day after day.
Then came the 9-11 attacks by Muslim terrorists. In its aftermath media coverage of Israel was probably the most positive it had ever been.
There were three events, however, which changed things. At the very least, they have damaged Israeli prestige.
Since the end of July, there have been two massive bombings in Iraq. On July 31st, 29 were killed when a several bombs exploded outside Shiite mosques. On Friday, a truck bomb in another Shiite mosque detonated, killing another 37.
Regular days are also violent affairs. Take August 3rd. In the restive city of Mosul, five Iraqis were killed by separate attacks. Two bombs in Baghdad exploded, killing up to six Iraqis and wounding 26. Near Falluja, another bomb killed two and wounded seven.
In fact, according to the Associated Press, there have been 27 major bombings this year alone, the worst of which led to 82 deaths. The two months with the least number of major bombings were January and February. Since then there have been an average of four to five major bombings per month.
Politically, things look even worse. On important political issues ranging from the fate of Kurdistan to a new oil law, Iraqi politicians have failed to make progress. Worryingly, the current Shia-dominated government seems increasingly hostile to the Sunni-led Awakening movement that was a major factor in reducing insurgent violence.
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 11/18/09 - Legal proceedings, such as they are, rumbled to life again today at Guantanamo Bay. Pre-trial issues in the case of Mohammed Kamin, an Afghan man who was captured by the U.S. in Afghanistan in 2003, were heard in a military commission courtroom on a small hill a few miles away from where the more than 200 detainees left at Guantanamo are housed.
There is key information missing in General Stanley McChrystal's recipe to reform U.S. detentions in Afghanistan. The plan, part of the General's 66-page assessment published by the Washington Post, outlines a strategy to turn over "all detention operations in Afghanistan ... to the Afghan government once they have developed the requisite sustainable capacity to run those systems properly." This is the correct objective for the United States, but some of the ingredients for achieving it need to be filled in.
Eight years ago today, two planes flew into the World Trade Center, another crashed into the Pentagon, and a fourth landed in a Pennsylvania field. The raw power of that day came to be symbolized by a date composed of three numbers. Three numbers that evoked the shock of being attacked, the horror of the sounds and images on our television sets, and the heroism of so many men and women. Three numbers that framed the events of the last decade and seemed like they would define my generation.
But eight years ago, many in my generation couldn’t vote. We didn’t choose the President, his wars, or his policies. In fact, young Americans have largely rejected the politics of fear and division that dominated those formative years of our political consciousness—voting 2 to 1 in favor of Barack Obama. Today we remember the victims and honor our heroes, but we also have a new President, new crises, and three new numbers: 3-5-0. 350.
This is a bit of the flip side of the earlier diary on fascism.
There was quite a flap this week over Tom Ridge's revelation that terror alerts had (gasp!) been politicized! Marc Ambinder made a fool of himself and Marcy Wheeler and Glenn Greenwald smacked him down.
In part, Glenn wrote:
Just as is still commonly said about opponents of the Iraq War (even though they were right, they were still wrong and unSerious because their motives were bad), Ambinder acknowledges that Bush critics were right that the terror alerts were being manipulated for political ends (he has no choice but to acknowledge that now that Ridge admits it), but still says journalists like himself were right to scorn such critics "because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence." As always: even when the dirty leftist hippies are proven right, they're still Shrill, unSerious Losers who every decent person and "journalist" scorns.
This is fine as far as it goes, but there's a number of larger points that need to be made here:
(1) What the Bush Administration did with these manipulations was itself terrorism. They terrorized the American people in order to manipulate the political process and coerce a political outcome favorable to themselves in a manner that was inherently destructive to civil peace and the democratic process.
(2) This was only the tip of the iceberg, however. The entire Bush response to 9/11 was a form of terrorism, from start to finish. They never let off terrorizing the American people, repeatedly scaring them out of their wits, and frightening them into doing things that they would never do if free from threats and coercion. 9/11 was a terrible screw-up on Bush & Cheney's part. It was nowhere near an existential threat to America. But because it was such a terrible screw up, Bush/Cheney had to vastly inflate al Qaeda's purported prowess. And so they went all in on terrorizing the American people. The vast majority of the Versailles press went there with them, and that press continues to defend Bush/Cheney to this day, precisely because they are complicit in terrorism against the American people, and the Republic.
O'Reilly kicked off the segment with this statement:
I'm a big boy with a big megaphone, and I can defend myself. But many of you can't. If you're labeled a bigot, or punished in the marketplace for holding holding a non-liberal opinion, you can't right that wrong.
And this far-left fascism is very wrong. It must be called out. Fair-minded Americans can disagree on issues, but our freedoms must be protected.
To which I retorted:
So, it's wrong to be labeled "a bigot", even if you are one, but it's fine to accuse people of "far-left fascism". Good to know!
Article 1 of the International Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment provides, in simple terms, that "torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession...." The Convention reaffirms the basic principle that intentionally inflicted suffering destroys the dignity of victim, the torturer, and the society that allows it.
Article 2 of the Convention provides that "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture," and that "an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture." In other words, "no torture" means no torture. Ever.
Back in June of 2001, the NBC / Wall Street Journal poll found that 43% of the country thought the nation was moving in the right direction, while 39% believed we were on the wrong track. In mid-September of 2001, the same NBC / Wall Street Journal poll found that 72% of the populace thought the country was moving in the right direction, and only 11% thought we were on the wrong track.
Similar shifts can be found in the Pew poll, which moved from 12% righttrack / wrong track one week before 9/11 to +23% in the week after 9/11. In the LA Times / Bloomberg poll, there was a shift from +1 to +32%. According to Gallup, the shift was from -12% to +25%. Across the board, polls demonstrate that immediately after the devastating, murderous terrorist attacks of 9/11, which not only killed thousands of Americans but also plunged the country into a recession, the country shifted strongly to the "right direction" camp.
The important lesson here is that, rather than having a demoralizing impact or fear-inducing effect, real and threatened terrorism actually boosts self-esteem. There is even psychological research demonstrating this now (more in the extended entry):
