The Broad View

Afghanistan Outpost

Our endless floundering in the Afghan quagmire is finally commanding some attention. Miraculously, it's taken only eight years for the American public to realize that something is gravely amiss with our Central Asian Adventure. In his latest NYTimes column, Bob Herbert compares Obama's escalation in Afghanistan to Johnson's in Vietnam and concludes that both presidents listened to the wrong advisors:

President Obama is being told (as Lyndon Johnson was told about Vietnam) that more resources will do the trick in Afghanistan — more troops, more materiel, more money.

Supporters of the war offer an array of rationales in a way that reminds me of Bush's constantly mutating excuses for the Iraq invasion: Every explanation carefully avoids the real, bedrock motivation for our occupation of a hostile country.

After all the huffing and puffing about Iraq's imaginary WMD, Saddam's imaginary ties to al Qaeda, Saddam's insanity, the regime's cruelty and oppression, establishing viral democracy in the region and more, the real reason for our invasion of Iraq was as obvious as it was unspoken.

When Dick Cheney pored over maps of the Iraqi oil fields with petroleum company executives during the secret meetings of his Energy Task Force, all was clear. When our military forces in Baghdad guarded the Oil Ministry while ignoring the looting at the National Museum, it was clear that file cabinets were vital security objectives but the priceless heritage of early civilization was expendable. Securing the Iraqi oil fields was our strategic objective in the first resource war of the 21st century and establishing massive permanent bases and a friendly puppet government was how we'd do it.

Afghanistan started differently. We had legitimate objectives at first --  the capture of bin Laden and the destruction of al Qaeda's network of training camps and safe havens in the country. Once we'd botched that, the stage was set for what we have now -- a prolonged and ineffectual occupation in an increasingly hostile environment. Nevertheless, we're establishing massive bases and protecting a puppet government that, more and more, is unfriendly.

So why are we still there? Of course, we're saving face. God forbid that we have to tuck our tails between our legs and accept ignoble retreat, defeated by a bunch of violent country bumpkins in a repeat of the Soviet debacle. But again, mostly bogus excuses abound. We're saving the Afghanis from the oppressive Taliban, whether or not they want to be saved. We're watering the seeds of democracy in Central Asia, despite propping up a rampantly corrupt regime with no support outside Kabul. We're fighting the scourge of opium, even though the poppy fields are once again blooming abundantly after a hiatus under the Taliban. (Interestingly, the Taliban originally banned opium production under Sharia law, but now they embrace the trade as a way to raise both cash and allies in the countryside.)

Afghanistan looks like a dry hole in terms of our strategic interests, yet Obama is doubling down. Perhaps the answer lies next door. Our bases in Afghanistan are the launchpads for invasion should events take a very bad turn in Pakistan. I can't imagine any other reason to put the spurs to this conflict.

Bush made a precedent of "pre-emptive" war in Iraq and now Obama seems to agree that it's a good idea in Afghanistan. Thus we're drawn deeper and deeper into both real and potential conflicts in countries and cultures where our understanding is shallow at best. And nobody talks about it.

We persist in believing that we must police the entire globe through the vast network of military outposts we've established and pay for with money that might otherwise be used for universal health care, investment in modern infrastructure, R&D in energy, medicine, climate control and more. Will we ever, as a nation, grow up?

[Cross-posted at The Followspot.]

Beware the "Secret Plan"

There's no mistaking the resemblance these days of Barack Obama's chameleonic statements on withdrawal from Iraq to Nixon's coy campaign promise of having a "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam. Nixon never used the phrase, "secret plan" -- the phrase was a reporter's description -- but he never disavowed it either. It was tailor-made to lure voters sick of the disastrous war yet loathe to align themselves with the dirty fucking hippies.

Of course, Nixon had no secret plan:

Nixon's secret plan, it turned out, was borrowing from a strategic move from Lyndon Johnson's last year in office. The new president continued a process called "Vietnamization", an awful term that implied that Vietnamese were not fighting and dying in the jungles of Southeast Asia. This strategy brought American troops home while increasing the air war over the DRV and relying more on the ARVN for ground attacks.

Bush is heavily invested in "Iraqi-ization" and all signs point to Obama being prepared to put his chips on the same lame strategy. And he's preparing his supporters to swallow it.

His demurrals yesterday on Iraq withdrawal timetables aren't just nuanced love calls to the center-right. They are hints of what's to come.

It's instructive to recall our prolonged exit from Vietnam:

From the time Richard Nixon took office on January 20, 1969, to March 1973 when the last American combat troops left Vietnam, was over four years. And we still weren't truly out of Vietnam; military advisors and Marines protecting U.S. installations remained. We weren't completely out of Vietnam until April 30, 1975. That day, the North Vietnamese rolled into Saigon, just hours after the last dawn airlift out of the U.S. Embassy. Before dawn, two Marines were killed by rocket attack at the Saigon airport and became the last Americans to die for a mistake. It was more than six years after Nixon had been elected to end the war and secure "peace with honor."

To be fair, Obama has always said his 16-month timetable would be consonant with the safety of the troops. I submit that in the real world, Obama is going to be pressed to find all kinds of "safety" reasons why troop withdrawals should proceed at a glacial pace. Remember, in Vietnam Nixon started to withdraw troops, albeit very slowly. But there were also periods of troop increase and certainly drastic expansions of the theater of war and violence through bombing.

Let us not forget all the bases we've had Halliburton/KBR et.al. build in Iraq at very great taxpayer expense, complete with American shopping, entertainment, perimeters extending for miles and every indication of being totally permanent. Then there's the embassy compound that's as big as Monaco. Finally the true goal of the Iraq invasion is almost achieved: The oil majors are on the brink of returning to lord over the Iraqi oilfields. Will President Obama have the right stuff to tell all the very special and persuasive interests that their time is up?

Obama sees the White House almost within his grasp and suddenly he's confronted with anti-war supporters who must be sidelined, gelded, made to sit down and STFU. It's only good politics -- accepted Village wisdom -- to fuck over your own Democratic supporters, dirty fucking hippies all, but "these things must be done delicately."

First Obama has to trivialize the passionately-held beliefs of the liberal Boomers and the experience we've gained from dealing with Republican ratfuckers for the last forty years. Here's Obama in his speech on patriotism:

And yet the anger and turmoil of that period never entirely drained away. All too often, our politics still seems trapped in these old, threadbare arguments, a fact most evident during our recent debates about the war in Iraq, when those who opposed administration policy were tagged by some as unpatriotic, and a general providing his best counsel on how to move forward in Iraq was accused of betrayal.

Given the enormous challenges that lie before us, we can no longer afford these sorts of divisions. None of us expect that arguments about patriotism will, or should, vanish entirely. After all, when we argue about patriotism, we're arguing about who we are as a country and, more importantly, who we should be.

But surely we can agree that no party or political philosophy has a monopoly on patriotism.

Note that it seems as if he's gently criticizing the hard-hats who took clubs to the DFHs in the peace marches of the '60s and '70s, but on closer reading it's clear that he's conflating the left and the right. We were all wrong, he's saying. Our arguments are old and threadbare. Now can't we all lower our voices and compromise -- on Iraq, on FISA, on universal health care, on separation of church and state?

Our concerns over the Iraq War are made to sound like part of "the old battles." We're just dinosaurs who can't stop fighting those boring old "culture wars." Obama may have been born in the Boomer cohort, but he is not one of us. He was outside the country or in the remote islands of Hawaii during the upheavals that forged the attitudes and beliefs of my generation.

Obama's arguments are gaining a certain amount of traction with Democrats desperate for victory in November, no matter what has to be thrown overboard. Cruise over to DKos to see the raging flame wars. Here's one example: "Markos, you Blockhead.... let me boil it down for you on FISA." Nice, eh?

Obama and his youthful followers, so naive and full of hope, will come to real grief if they don't learn the lessons Vietnam taught us. It has nothing to do with "culture wars" but with political integrity when it matters. It's about understanding that compromise is not always a virtue. It has to do with trusting in the Constitutional order, even when it seems inconvenient or dangerous. It's about understanding how hard it is to tell the truth about a failed war, a failed policy and a bankrupt nation and then do something about it on your watch. It's about how hard it is to lead people and persuade people that the honorable course is to end a dishonorable war, not to compound the dishonor with delusions of victory. It's about explaining that victory, in this case, is a victory over the dark side of fear -- victory over torture, rendition, the surrender of our freedoms and blind wrath against imagined enemies.

If Obama is all ready to compromise, reach across the aisle, and pretend that the bipartisan divide is somehow made of meaningless distinctions, then he is headed for disaster. He and his most ardent supporters may be bewitched by the idea of post-partisanship, but there has never been any hint or suggestion that the Repubs believe or would cooperate with any such thing. Every time they've had the opportunity to compromise, they've offered Democrats filibusters and amusing attacks on Democratic intransigence. Obama will be a weak and disappointing one-term president, ridiculed and rolled by Republicans who are not afraid of ruthlessness.

Then there is the terrible danger that Bush and Cheney will seek to cement Obama into endless war with an October surprise: the opening of an air war on Iran. It's something I've been fearing all along. All the signs are there, all the pieces have been moved into position. Will war with Iran be just another compromise for Obama, another opportunity to show he's his own man by bravely fucking over his own supporters?

Happy Birthday, America.

"An evisceration of the Fourth Amendment..."

The imminent cave by House Dems to Bush's FISA bill demands finally makes sense.

The FISA bill, as we all know by now, gives the telecoms retroactive immunity for illegal wiretaps at the behest of the administration as well as broad new powers to spy on Americans. In this, it renders the Fourth Amendment a quaint relic of a braver and simpler age.

All the time, it was obvious that the sine qua non of the bill was the retroactive immunity. It would shut down cases already in motion and by doing so, keep the details of the administration's machinations forever secret, safe from pre-trial discovery. In other words, the immunity wasn't so much for the telecoms, it was for the lawbreakers in the administration, from John Yoo to Dick Cheney to George W. Bush and all the little Republican eavesdroppers in-between.

I've been so naive, actually thinking that it was the usual spinelessness of the Democratic leadership that kept the abominable bill alive -- that, and the fact that the telecoms have been most generous in their contributions to all concerned.

On Countdown tonight, however, Jonathan Turley and Olbermann suggested the real motive for Pelosi, Hoyer, Rockefeller and Reid's eagerness to cave in and move on -- the real reason the bill never died but came back each time with more urgency -- was that too many Dems, especially in the leadership, are just as guilty of colluding with the administration and enabling Bush's clearly illegal spying.

Essentially what we're witnessing is a bi-partisan "evisceration of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution," according to Turley. He also characterized the bill as "reverse engineering, the type of thing the Bush administration is famous for, and now the Democrats are doing, that is, to change the law to conform to past conduct."

It's simple: If Bush had been robbing banks for the past seven years, he's about to get the law changed to make bank robbery legal. He'll be off the hook, and so will his gang and the Dems driving the getaway cars.

How could I be so stupid and naive? It's all very, very demoralizing. I was furious with Congressional Dems as it was. Now I'm just utterly deflated. I don't even hold out that much hope for real change with Obama. Right now, he's busy tacking rightward for the general election and I've always thought it's where he's most comfortable anyway. Is he about to risk standing up in the Senate and devoting a little of his eloquence in defense of the Fourth Amendment?

By the way, can I tell you how much I adore Jonathan Turley?

Give me liberty or give me security?

The more I reflect on today's Supreme Court decision (.pdf) in Boumediene et al. v. Bush et al., the more wonderful and extraordinary it seems to me. Also extraordinary but in no way wonderful is Justice Antonin Scalia's written dissent. Scalia is a living rebuke to everything the Founders held dear.

I am not a lawyer, so I don't know if the extensive recounting of the historical background of habeas corpus and the writ's centrality in the thinking of the Framers is typical. Kennedy, writing for the majority, says:

The Framers viewed freedom from unlawful restraint as a fundamental precept of liberty, and they understood the writ of habeas corpus as a vital instrument to secure that freedom. Experience taught, however, that the common-law writ all too often had been insufficient to guard against the abuse of monarchial power. That history counseled the necessity for specific language in the Constitution to secure the writ and ensure its place in our legal system.

I take this line of reasoning to be a shot across the bow of the USS Unitary Executive by Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, Stevens and Kennedy. It is a reproof of every argument advanced for restricting liberty in the name of the War on Terror.

After recounting historical failures of the writ "in times of political unrest," the opinion states that in one case (Darnel's Case against Charles I) of wrongful imprisonment, "legislative response was long delayed" and the King "began to abuse his authority again and Parliament was dissolved." 

In this, I read a direct criticism of Congress for shirking its duty to check an out-of-control executive. The justices go on:

This history was known to the Framers. It no doubt confirmed their view that pendular swings to and away from individual liberty were endemic to undivided, uncontrolled power. The Framers' inherent distrust of governmental power was the driving force behind the constitutional plan that allocated powers among three independent branches. This design serves not only to make Government accountable but also to secure individual liberty. [...]

That the Framers considered the writ a vital instrument for the protection of individual liberty is evident from the care taken to specify the limited grounds for its suspension: "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion of Invasion the public Safety may require it."

It seems the justices are giving Congress an elementary lesson in Constitutional law and American history. It couldn't be clearer. In case some of the Federalist Society members have trouble remembering, the opinion provides extensive support for this viewpoint from accounts of the ratification debates. None of it is difficult nor does it require a law degree to understand.

It really is a shame that the rightwing authoritarian voter will probably not take the trouble to read the opinion but instead find validation of ignorance in the utterances of the usual gasbags, including McCain. Yep, McCain lost no time in dishonoring his own cruel imprisonment with complaints about the decision.

Regarding whether or not the Constitution applies to territory that is sovereign to Cuba but leased by the U.S., the justices say this:

Our basic charter cannot be contracted away like this. The Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of, and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply. Even when the United States acts outside its borders, its powers are not "absolute and unlimited" but are subject "to such restrictions as are expressed in the Constitution." [...] Abstaining from questions involving formal sovereignty and territorial governance is one thing. To hold the political branches have the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will is quite another. The former position reflects this Court's recognition that certain matters requiring political judgments are best left to the political branches. The latter would permit a striking anomaly in our tripartite system of government, leading to a regime in which Congress and the President, not this Court, say "what the law is." [...]

These concerns have particular bearing upon the Suspension Clause question in the cases now before us, for the writ of habeas corpus is itself an indispensible mechanism for monitoring the separation of powers. The test for determining the scope of this provision must not be subject to manipulation by those whose power it is designed to restrain.

The rebuke is breathtakingly plain. This decision makes me want to do the happy dance.

To read Scalia's dissent is to take a trip to the dark side. He opens with a "description of the disastrous consequences of what the Court has done today." This doomsday prediction is remarkable for the primacy of fear over liberty. What the Framers feared most is what Scalia most desires. He is openly derisive of his colleagues. He relies on accounts of violent attacks subsequently committed by detainees who had been released as if they are predictive of future behavior by current detainees and thus obviate the need to recognize Constitutional limits to the suspension of habeas corpus. Scalia would have the history books changed from "Give me liberty or give me death" to "Give me security, liberty's not safe."

Scalia closes with this:

Today the Court warps our Constitution in a way that goes beyond the narrow issue of the reach of the Suspension Clause, invoking judicially brainstormed separation-of-powers principles to establish a manipulable "functional" test for the extraterritorial reach of habeas corpus (and, no doubt, for the extraterritorial reach of othe constitutional protections as well). It blatantly misdescribes important precedents, most conspicuously Justice Jackson's opinion for the Court in Johnson v. Eisentrager. It breaks a chain of precedent as old as the common law that prohibits judicial inquiry into detentions of aliens abroad absent statutory authorization. And, most tragically, it sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner.

The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today. I dissent.

That's quite an extraordinary charge: "The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today." In all, Scalia would rather restrict constitutional protections, keep human beings locked up forever with no recourse and traffic in unreasoning fear of terrorists on the loose everywhere than discommode the Executive and the military.

Many years ago, in the mid-'60s, I traveled through the Plains states, the South and Southwest. Every highway and byway was dotted with roadside billboards demanding, in giant letters, "IMPEACH EARL WARREN." I was young and apolitical at the time. Who the hell is Earl Warren, I wondered.

The right wing has never been shy about demanding impeachment or elimination by other means of those with whom they disagree. Democrats, meanwhile, bend over backward to accommodate different viewpoints in a disastrously misguided political calculation that sacrifices principle for expedience. Thus we are saddled with Madame Speaker "Impeachment Is Off The Table" Pelosi.

Enough is enough. Antonin Scalia has continued to flaunt his unworthiness to sit on the Supreme Court. He doesn't regard torture as being prohibited under the Eighth Amendment. ("Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don't think so.") He has refused to recuse himself in cases in which he has personal connections and interests. And his decisions have advanced an extreme form of executive power that would be arguably criminal had it come from anyone other than a member of the governmental branch charged with the interpretation and preservation of constitutional norms. Scalia is a constitutional Catch-22. I doubt, though, that I'll ever see billboards that read "IMPEACH ANTONIN SCALIA."

At last!

Score one for the Constitution! As infuriating as the Roberts Supreme Court can be, there still is the occasional outcome that gets it right:

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts. [...]

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times." [...]

The court said not only that the detainees have rights under the Constitution, but that the system the administration has put in place to classify them as enemy combatants and review those decisions is inadequate.

This was a 5-4 decision, as has become the norm in the Roberts court, with the liberal members prevailing for a change. The chief justice, in all his majesty, agreed with his sovereign king and "criticized his colleagues for striking down what he called 'the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants.' " I guess even he couldn't make this pig fly for Justice Kennedy.

Scalia, in what can only be termed a partisan Republican talking point devoid of actual legal reasoning, wrote that "the nation is 'at war with radical Islamists' and that the court's decision 'will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.' " Way to play the fear card, Scalia.

Just swallow the soma

From Charles Pierce, who must be read on Altercation every Slacker Friday:

"That story this week about how the war in Iraq has fallen off the general radar is almost incomprehensibly sad, and not merely because it advantages The Saintly Straight-Talkin' Maverick Dude, which it does. It's sad because it's of a piece with the whole effort by the Avignon Presidency to run everything about the response to the 9-11 attacks off the books. Go shopping. You don't need to know why we're going to war, and we're going to lie to you about it anyway. Don't photograph the coffins. Don't count the dead. Keep the cost out of the federal budget and off television. If they didn't need the children of ordinary people to die to get what they want, they might have been able to turn the whole thing into a gated community of the soul. And now, nobody's paying attention, and nobody's angry when the people who get paid to pay attention run around yelling about Eliot Spitzer's banging hookers and the latest blurp from a crotchety old fool like Geraldine Ferraro. Also this week, the Pentagon went out of its way to bury the news that it's own study has concluded that one of the primary casus belli -- the Iraq-al Qaeda connection -- was the moonshine that several previous studies said it was. The news dropped with a thud and life went on. The country was told, in a hundred different ways, not to care about this war -- or, really, the one in Afghanistan, either -- and it has learned the lesson all too well. I don't know how I'd feel if I were a soldier, or the father of one. But this country is nowhere near as balls-out angry as it ought to be, and none of the contending candidates seem willing or able to become the vehicle of righteous democratic-small-d rage. I don't want to come together with these people. I want them in irons until they tell me where my country went."

Amen.

Tools of the Trade

The corruptions of political speech are legion and never-ending. Caesar Bush has grounded his deceptions in the language of the CEO, the accountant, the technocratic fixer. Today's corrupted word is "tools". Here's Caesar Bush in his radio address last Saturday, explaining why he vetoed the intelligence authorization bill:

[...] Al Qaida remains determined to attack America again. Two years ago, Osama bin Laden warned the American people, "Operations are under preparation, and you will see them on your own ground once they are finished." Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists.

Unfortunately, Congress recently sent me an intelligence authorization bill that would diminish these vital tools. So today, I vetoed it. And here is why:

The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror -- the CIA program to detain and question key terrorist leaders and operatives. [...]

Caesar changes it up with "techniques", "procedures" and "methods" -- it's all so antiseptic and professional. Americans should never need to think about the blood, the vomit, the urine and feces, the sweat of one-on-one terror practiced by our government representatives on captives who've been effectively removed from the face of the earth and hidden from the eyes of the law. Let's be clear. Here are the tools of the trade:

Rest assured, the CIA isn't the only government agency in need of more and better tools. In an earlier broadcast from what the Times calls "Radio Fear America," Bush castigated the House for delaying passage of the "Gut the Fourth Amendment Protect America Act":

The Senate passed a good bill that would have given our intelligence professionals the tools they need to keep us safe. But leaders in the House of Representatives blocked a House vote on the Senate bill, and then left on a 10-day recess.

Some congressional leaders claim that this will not affect our security. They are wrong. Because Congress failed to act, it will be harder for our government to keep you safe from terrorist attack. At midnight, the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence will be stripped of their power to authorize new surveillance against terrorist threats abroad. This means that as terrorists change their tactics to avoid our surveillance, we may not have the tools we need to continue tracking them -- and we may lose a vital lead that could prevent an attack on America. [...]

At this moment, somewhere in the world, terrorists are planning a new attack on America. And Congress has no higher responsibility than ensuring we have the tools to stop them.

Oh. My. God. Quick! Take my rights and keep me safe! For the tools of the NSA's trade, start here. After browsing there, you could try a (monitored) phone query to AT&T about that secret room in San Francisco.

Of all the contemptible aspects of the Bush Regime, the complete and total Orwellian corruption of language ranks up near the top in my opinion. The Clinton campaign tends to indulge in the same "up-is-down" equivocating and distortion. Every time I hear a patently false proposition from Hillary or her minions -- "this state isn't important" or "I have foreign policy experience" -- they pound another nail in the coffin of her arguments to be our president.

They've got their nominee so it's time to trot out al Qaida

Karl Rove may be gone, but he's not forgotten. Now that the Republicans have their candidate, it's time to ratchet up the fear and remind us all that only more illegal wiretapping and another Republican president can protect us from the boogeyman. If this isn't Rove's handiwork, it must be from the master's workshop:

Commander warns of al-Qaida threat to US

WASHINGTON - Al-Qaida terrorists may be plotting more urgently to attack the United States to maintain their credibility and ability to recruit followers, the U.S. military commander in charge of domestic defense said Thursday.

Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, chief of the U.S. Northern Command, told reporters he has not seen any direct threats tied to the U.S. presidential elections. But he said it would be imprudent to think that such threats are not there.

Gen. Renuart helpfully goes on to cite the Madrid attack as proof of al Qaida's willingness "to do something that is significant that could affect an election process."

While he said that U.S. authorities have thwarted attacks on a number of occasions, he said terrorist cells may be working harder than ever to plot high-impact events. He did not point to any specific intelligence that authorities have received but said the "chatter" they are hearing "gives me no reason to believe they're going to slow down" in their efforts to target the U.S.

So let's get this straight: There's no threat intelligence, just unspecified but sort-of ominous "chatter". Never mind, just buy more duct tape, vote for McCain and give Bush his FISA bill with telecom immunity because an Air Force general has a vague, inchoate feeling that al Qaida's plots to attack the U.S. have shifted from the usual to "urgent". The general also has a sneaking suspicion that al Qaida wants to vote in our primaries in order to maintain their cred in jihad-world or something.

Now General Renuart knows his duty is to hold a press conference and announce his fears as if they are facts. The assembled reporters know their job is to dutifully write down every word and make sure that headlines like "Commander warns of al-Qaida threat to US" are splashed over every front page, cable news crawl and news website in the land.

Nowhere in this chain of insanity are we to remember that it was a Republican administration that ignored the real threats during the spring and summer of 2001 and thus lost whatever chance we might have had -- through entirely legal means, mind you -- to thwart the plot.

The general is trying to rekindle the bogus argument used against Kerry, that Osama wants the Democrat to win because Dems are such wusses. Today we should believe that Osama's an Obama supporter when he's not praying for a Hillary victory.

That the Democrats have yet to successfully challenge this persistant bit of background radiation in the politisphere is a testament to Democratic impotence compounded by ineptitude. C'mon, what's so difficult? Nothing, if you're not afraid to state plainly that George Bush and the Republican administration have been a god-send to bin Laden and that if al Qaida plans to meddle in our elections, it will be to ensure another Republican victory over common sense.

The reptilian mind at work

The Los Angeles Times, under the headline Tough going for anti-war Republicans, today reports that

Across the country...Republican lawmakers who have broken with over the war [sic] are under fire from party loyalists.

[snip]

While most Americans want U.S. troops out of Iraq, Republicans remain solidly behind the president and the war. A recent CBS News survey found 58% of Republicans approve of the way Bush is handling the war, compared with just 5% of Democrats and 20% of independents.

GOP politicians have defied that sentiment at their peril.

The article describes the challenges to congressional incumbents who have dared to cast votes for withdrawal from Iraq, or for a timetable for withdrawal. The "base" remains unreconstructed in its support for death and destruction.

One case in point: North Carolina Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr., who has never before had a primary challenger for his 3rd CD seat, is up against an opponent who was cheered when he said this about Jones to a local Republican men's club:

"His is a message of despair, a message of defeat," [Joe] McLaughlin told the appreciative crowd as he derided Jones, accusing him of abandoning the troops, President Bush, even talk-show host Rush Limbaugh.

How can we possibly create effective arguments against this insane mindset? What is to become of us?

The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us

Frank Rich shoots and scores:

Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.

Indeed. Finally, this is where we've arrived after nearly seven years of Bush, movement conservatism and a war of choice. Every day that passes without our demand for Bush and Cheney's removal from office is a day we sink deeper into complicity.