Antonin Scalia: Moron
He's one of the nine justices on the Supreme Court, and as Steve Benan
points out:
Remember, in some legal circles, Scalia is considered one of the giants in conservative intellectual thought.
Good to keep in mind considering what a fucking idiot he is. Let's check in with
Andrew Sullivan:
"Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives," Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent's rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand.
"Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. "Say that criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so.
"So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes."
Earth to Justice Scalia: Jack Bauer does not exist. But the assumption that he does can lead to a lot of unusual places:
"I don't care about holding people. I really don't," Judge Scalia said.
Even if a real terrorist who suffered mistreatment is released because of complaints of abuse, Judge Scalia said, the interruption to the terrorist's plot would have ensured "in Los Angeles everyone is safe." During a break from the panel, Judge Scalia specifically mentioned the segment in Season 2 when Jack Bauer finally figures out how to break the die-hard terrorist intent on nuking L.A. The real genius, the judge said, is that this is primarily done with mental leverage. "There's a great scene where he told a guy that he was going to have his family killed," Judge Scalia said. "They had it on closed circuit television - and it was all staged. ... They really didn't kill the family."
But they pretended to. Am I supposed not to feel shock at this stuff any more? This celebration of lawlessness is not conservative. It's something much more radical.
Maybe this is not conservative in the traditional sense according to Andrew, but it certainly is the face of modern conservatism. It defines them. This is what happens when Republican presidents nominate people with ideological blinders on. This guy is the Sean Hannity of the Supreme Court. Scalia is so lizard-brain driven he's sliced himself off from the ideals that formed this country. This is the New America according to conservatives. To him, torture is justice. File that away...
Hama
Being a history buff, and an amateur one at best, the name of a city in Syria triggered my memory from the last post: Hama. Fascinating
stuff:
Islamists and other opposition activists proclaimed Hama a "liberated city" and urged Syria to rise up against the "infidel". Brotherhood fighters swept the city of Ba'thists, breaking into the homes of government employees and suspected supporters of the regime, killing about 50. The goal of the attack on Hama was to cease the rebellious activities of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. The assault began on February 2 with extensive shelling of the town of 350,000 inhabitants.
[...]
According to Amnesty International, the Syrian military bombed the old streets of the city from the air to facilitate the introduction of military forces and tanks through the narrow streets, where homes were crushed by tanks during the first four days of fighting. They also claim that the Syrian military pumped poison gas into buildings where insurgents were said to be hiding.
Between 10,000 and 40,000 people were killed in the assault on the city. This is the exact strategy our friends on the right have been advocating since the start of the insurgency in Iraq. In short: Kill Them All.
I rather loathe historical and geological comparisons, but let's have some fun anyway. This would be the equivalent of leveling the city of Colorado Springs, CO, here in the U.S. By the the government no less.
Air Strikes
From
William Lind:
Looking idly at the front page of last Wednesday's Washington Post Express as I rode the Metro to work, I received a shock. It showed a railroad station in Iraq, recently destroyed by an American air strike. So now we are bombing the railroad stations in a country we occupy? What comes next, bombing Iraq's power plants and oil refineries? How about the Green Zone? If the Iraqi parliament doesn't pass the legislation we want it to, we can always lay a couple of JDAMs on it.
It turns out the bombed railroad station was no fluke. An AP story by Charles J. Hanley, dated June 5, reported that
"U.S. warplanes have again stepped up attacks in Iraq, dropping bombs at more than twice the rate of a year ago. … And it appears to be accomplished by a rise in Iraqi civilian casualties.
"In the first 4 1/2 months of 2007, American aircraft dropped 237 bombs and missiles in support of ground forces in Iraq, already surpassing the 229 expended in all of 2006, according to Air Force figures obtained by The Associated Press."
Nothing could testify more powerfully to the failure of U.S. efforts on the ground in Iraq than a ramp-up in airstrikes. Calling in air is the last, desperate, and usually futile action of an army that is losing. If anyone still wonders whether the "surge" is working, the increase in air strikes offers a definitive answer: it isn't.
Worse, the growing number of air strikes shows that, despite what the Marines have accomplished in Anbar province and Gen. Petraeus' best efforts, our high command remains as incapable as ever of grasping Fourth Generation war. To put it bluntly, there is no surer or faster way to lose in 4GW than by calling in airstrikes. It is a disaster on every level. Physically, it inevitably kills far more civilians than enemies, enraging the population against us and driving them into the arms of our opponents. Mentally, it tells the insurgents we are cowards who only dare fight them from 20,000 feet in the air. Morally, it turns us into Goliath, a monster every real man has to fight. So negative are the results of air strikes in this kind of war that there is only one possible good number of them: zero (unless we are employing the "Hama model," which we are not).
This will never happen, but I wish someone from the Pentagon press corps would ask General Patraeus about this. This really wreaks of desperation.
Baby Face Finster Cries for Democracy
Tony Snow, that is. You can watch it
here. The quote doesn't do his theatrics justice, but here you go:
Are you saying that detaining people who are plucked off the battlefields is an assault on democracy? Are you kidding me? You're talking about the people who were responsible for supporting the Taliban, somehow detaining them is an assault on democracy?
This phony indignation has now become normal fare. What else would you expect from a Fox News-sponsored shitmouth flak like Tony Snow?
What amazes me is how well this strategy works. The networks go ooh and ahh over some perceived confrontation, the White House Press Secretary provides a gross misinterpretation of the facts, and then clouds the whole issue with his little childish outbursts.
This is classic Anti-Intellectualism at its finest. Get indignant when people raise questions, and then crush them when they actually ask them.
Give 'em Hell, Harry
I know there are some folks on the left that are not fond of Majority Leader Harry Reid, but count me as a fan. I give you the
Honorable Mister Reid:
I’ve learned one thing in listening to all the debates and reading about all these people running for office, and the one fact I’ve learned, I can’t get out of my mind, is that Rudy Giuliani has been married more times than Mitt Romney’s been hunting.
That's how it's done. This crop of moronic Republican presidential candidates deserve nothing but scorn and derision. If I had any advice to give Democratic candidates it would be: Be more condescending.
(via
Kos)
MCA
Scott Horton over at Harper's has written an amazing piece about the military commissions being held down in Guantanamo.
Enlighten yourself,
here.
You Should Be Scared
I'd like to go back to an op-ed piece I referenced
before and highlight something that's really important. Two former highly ranked military officers wrote the following in the
Washington Post:
The American people are understandably fearful about another attack like the one we sustained on Sept. 11, 2001. But it is the duty of the commander in chief to lead the country away from the grip of fear, not into its grasp.
President Bush recently told NBC White House Correspondent David Gregory
the following:
"...But they're dangerous, and I can't put it any more plainly. They're dangerous. And we -- and I can't put it any more plainly to the American people and to them. We will stay on the offense. It's better to fight them there than here.And this concept about, well, maybe, you know, let us kind of just leave them alone and maybe they'll be all right, is naive. These people attacked us before we were in Iraq. They viciously attacked us before we were in Iraq, and they have been attacking every since. They are a threat to your children, David. And whoever's in that Oval Office, better understand it and take measures necessary to protect the American people."
In my studies of American history, I've never heard a president warn a reporter that a specific group of people are coming to this country to kill his children. Of course, the fear mongering of Bush's administrations, especially the first one, is no secret and has been well documented. Has anyone noticed we don't have a color coded terrorism alert scale anymore? Let's recall that back in 2003 the head of Homeland Security
told us we should have duct tape and plastic covering on hand to protect us against chemical and biological weapons:
This includes stashing a three-day supply of water, food and medicine, Ridge said. Among other things, the government-recommended "kit" also includes duct tape and plastic sheeting Ridge said could be used to seal off a room in the event of a chemical or biological release.
"Stash away the duct tape — don't use it!" Ridge said.
Hardly unique,
this document provides a blueprint on how Americans can live in constant fear.
Now, because we have Republican presidential debates, fear is back. Because these candidates feel they need to please the 28 to 35% of the public that still approves of the president, they're embracing fear in new way. They need more. Of all of their candidates, former New York city Mayor Rudy Guiliani has grabbed the torch and
ran with it:
Look, it's real simple what happened. These people came here and killed us because of our freedom of religion, because of our freedom for women, because they hate us. And all we have to do is look at last week and these people in Fort Dix who are still here planning to kill us, three of them illegal immigrants, the other three here in other ways.
But the reality is, if you are confused about this, I think you put our country in much greater jeopardy. The reality is, these people are planning to kill us because, and this is hard for people to recognize, I usually hear this on the Democratic side. Don't usually hear it on the Republican side. You have got to face reality. If you can't face reality, you can't lead.
He piled on
even more in the third GOP debate:
MR. BLITZER: Mayor Giuliani, same question to you. Was it — knowing what you know right now, was it a good decision?
MR. GIULIANI: Absolutely the right thing to do. It’s unthinkable that you would leave Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq and be able to fight the war on terror. And the problem is that we see Iraq in a vacuum. Iraq should not be seen in a vacuum. Iraq is part of the overall terrorist war against the United States.
Facts be damned, the message is clear here: They are coming to kill you.
My question here is: Will any of this work? Can a presidential campaign designed to exploit domestic vulnerabilities succeed in modern American politics? Can fear drive us to elect someone who wants to make us
more afraid? These aren't rhetorical exercises; I'm genuinely curious. I'd like to believe Americans are sick of this kind of rhetoric, and will heartily reject it, but I'm not altogether sure.
Imperial Intents
This kind of statement raises nary an eyebrow in the U.S. anymore:
“We have had troops in South Korea for 60 years and nobody minds,” McCain said. “If you stay a long, long time, but have the Iraqis doing the fighting, and your people are back in the bases and away from the firing line, I think Americans would be satisfied.”
From Senator John McCain (R-AZ).
Hobby Horse
Destroying the meme that the conservative movement can never fail, only those who fail to adhere to its purest form, is one of mine. Glenn Greenwald,
writing for Salon, has taken up the mantle and as usual has done a bang-up job. For openers:
The great fraud being perpetrated in our political discourse is the concerted attempt by movement conservatives, now that the Bush presidency lay irreversibly in ruins, to repudiate George Bush by claiming that he is not, and never has been, a "real conservative." This con game is being perpetrated by the very same conservatives who -- when his presidency looked to be an epic success -- glorified George W. Bush, ensured both of his election victories, depicted him as the heroic Second Coming of Ronald Reagan, and celebrated him as the embodiment of True Conservatism.
I will take issue with one of the phrases in this passage: "now that the Bush presidency lay irreversibly in ruins,...". Let's leave that for the historians to decide. The reason I dislike that kind of rhetoric is because of the ammunitions it provides the other side. I probably shouldn't care, but it's a bit too caustic.
(As an aside, I should probably never care, because most Americans don't even know what an op-ed piece is, let alone ever read one.)
That's all just quibbling though, because with the meat of the argument comes the truth:
There is really only one thing that has changed about George W. Bush from the 2002-2004 era when conservatives hailed him as the Great Conservative Leader, and now. Whereas Bush was a wildly popular leader then, which made conservatives eager to claim him as their Standard-Bearer, he is now one of the most despised presidents in U.S. history, and conservatives are thus desperate to disassociate themselves from the President for whom they are solely responsible. It is painfully obvious there is nothing noble, substantive or principled driving this right-wing outburst; it is a pure act of self-preservation.
Moreover, they're furiously scribbling to distance themselves from someone they themselves proclaimed as a "movement conservative".
I encourage you to
check the quotes. It's all there.
Stuck
That's what's happened to America's foreign policy because of Iraq. At least that's what Fareed Zakaria argues in
Newsweek:
In order to begin reorienting America's strategy abroad, any new U.S. administration must begin with Iraq. Until the United States is able to move beyond Iraq, it will not have the time, energy, political capital or resources to attempt anything else of any great significance. The first thing to admit is that our mission in Iraq has substantially failed. Whether it was doomed from the outset or turned into a fiasco because of the administration's arrogance and incompetence is a matter that historians can determine. The president's central argument in favor of the invasion of Iraq—once weapons of mass destruction were not found—was that it would be a model for the Arab world. In fact, the country has fallen apart. Two million people have fled; more than 2 million are internally displaced. Shiite extremists are in power in much of the country, imposing a thuggish and draconian version of theocratic rule. Normal life for nor-mal people—schools, universities, hospitals, factories and offices—is a shambles. If anything, Iraq has become a model in exactly the opposite sense from what Bush had hoped. It has become a living advertisement of the dangers of illiberal democracy.Things could improve in Iraq over time. But that will take years, perhaps decades. It would be far better for us to reduce our exposure to the current civil war, draw down our forces, let Iraq's internal political forces play themselves out and restrict our troops to certain limited but core missions. We need to continue the battle against Qaeda-style extremists, maintain a presence to reassure and secure the Kurdish region, and continue to train and keep watch over the Iraqi Army. All this can be done with a substantially smaller force—about 50,000 troops, which is also a more sustainable level for the long haul.
The administration has—surprise—tried to play up fears of the consequences of a drawdown in Iraq (which is always described as a Vietnam-style withdrawal down to zero). It predicts that this will lead to chaos, violence and a victory for terrorists. When we listen to these forecasts, it is worth remembering that every administration prediction about Iraq has been wrong. Al Qaeda is a small presence in Iraq, and ordinary Sunnis are abandoning support for it. "If we leave Iraq, they will follow us home," says the president. Can they not do so now? Iraq's borders have never been more porous. Does he think that Iraqi militants and foreign terrorists are so distracted by our actions in Iraq that they have forgotten that there are many more Americans in America?
As for the broader Sunni-Shiite civil war, even if we improve the security situation temporarily, once we leave the struggle for power will resume. At some point, the Shiites and the Sunnis will make a deal. Until then, we can at best keep a lid on the violence but not solve its causes. To stay indefinitely is simply to keep a finger in the dike, fearful of the outcome. Better to consolidate what gains we have, limit our losses, let time work for us and move on.
Kevin Drum
notes the following:
This gets it precisely right. Our foreign policy is at a standstill right now, held hostage by Iraq and unable to move in any sensible direction as long as we're there. Only if we get out can we start making serious progress against violent jihadists and their murderous and growing influence on Mideast public opinion.
As usual, though, Zakaria doesn't quite have the courage of his convictions. Rather than suggesting we leave Iraq, he wants only to draw down our forces to 50,000 troops, a strategy that would almost certainly represent the worst of all worlds: a big enough number to keep the Arab public convinced that we intend a permanent imperial presence in the region, but too small a number to accomplish anything effective. Whether we like or not, a presence like that will imply an ongoing police role in Iraq, but without enough troops to carry out that role.
A much better option would be to draw down nearly to zero, keeping troops and air support nearby but not physically within Iraq. Otherwise the pressure to intervene will rear its head constantly and Iraq will stay the festering centerpiece of American foreign policy, preventing us from devoting our attention to more serious issues. We can't afford that, and neither can Iraq.
Not surprisingly, I'm with Kevin on this. Draw down to zero. This would free us up to focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and conduct meaningful negotiations with Iran and Syria. Not that Bush would do either one of those things, but hopefully our next president will.
