Obama's cautious pragmatism is the best approach for dealing with Syria and ISIS

By Michael J.W. Stickings

There's a lot of talk today, the Friday before a long weekend, about President Obama's remark that "we don't have a strategy yet" regarding ISIS and the deteriorating situation in Syria and Iraq. The remark has identified as a "gaffe" by the press, Republicans jumped all over it (because they'll do or say anything to score political points at the president's expense), and the White House has gone into damage-control mode (because of course).

Now, to be sure, it was an inartful way of explaining the situation. The president was clearly talking about what to do about ISIS, not broadly about the region, but that hardly came across clearly. But it makes sense not to know quite what to do at this point. It's easy to be an armchair militarist like John McCain or Bill Kristol, much harder to the one who has to make the tough decisions, decisions that will result in significant loss of life, particularly when there are no clear answers to a problem that in and of itself is difficult to understand. How far do you go in dealing militarily with ISIS? Do you put troops on the ground? Do you rely solely on airstrikes, or on airstrikes with support for allies on the ground? But, then, who are those allies? ISIS is at war with Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime, but that regime is hardly an American ally. Does the U.S. really want to get into yet another protracted war in Iraq, one with no clear outcomes? And what would airstrikes against ISIS accomplish anyway, particularly without clear allies on the ground?

And so on, and so on.

At a time like this, as most times, caution is a virtue, and President Obama's cautiousness, which very much defines who he is and how he governs, stands in stark, pragmatic contrast to the "bomb bomb bomb" recklessness of Republicans. Besides, it's not like the president has been soft on America's enemies -- just consider the extra-judicial drone war that he has been waging against various threats throughout the Middle East. Indeed, as Peter Beinart writes at The Atlantic, and I think he's right on this, President Obama is both a hawk and a dove, or neither, or somewhere in between: 

So was Obama more dovish than Clinton or more hawkish? The answer is both. On the one hand, Obama has shown a deep reluctance to use military force to try to solve Middle Eastern problems that don't directly threaten American lives. He's proved more open to a diplomatic compromise over Iran's nuclear program than many on Capitol Hill because he’s more reticent about going to war with Tehran. He's been reluctant to arm Syria's rebels or bomb Basher al-Assad because he doesn't want to get sucked into that country's civil war. After initially giving David Petraeus and company the yellow light to pursue an expanded counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, he's wound down America's ground war against the Taliban. Even on Libya, he proved more reluctant to intervene than the leaders of Britain and France.

On the other hand, he's proven ferocious about using military force to kill suspected terrorists. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, he's basically adopted the policy Joe Biden proposed at the start of his administration: Don't focus on fighting the Taliban on the ground, since they don't really threaten the United States. Just bomb the hell out al-Qaeda from the air. Compared with George W. Bush, he's dramatically expanded drone strikes, even though they're unilateral, legally dubious, and morally disturbing. And, as promised, he sent special forces to kill Osama bin Laden without Pakistan's permission, even though his vice president and secretary of defense feared the risks were too high. When it comes to the Middle East, in other words, Obama is neither a dove nor a hawk. He's a fierce minimalist.

A minimalist. A cautious pragmatist, I'd say. And therein lies his strategy for dealing with the region, with ISIS, and with other such problems facing the United States, and indeed his strategy for dealing with pretty much everything. It's not good enough for Republicans, but, then, nothing he does is ever good enough for Republicans. And it's not really good enough for the media either, because it's not a clear, simplistic strategy, or, rather, not a clear, simplistic worldview. In contrast to the "bomb first, think later, if ever" approach preferred by McCain, Kristol, and their ilk, as well as to the "America as global hegemon" worldview espoused by Kristol and his neocon ilk and embraced by the likes of Dick Cheney, President Obama's approach is really the only approach that makes sense, and that could actually produce positive, lasting results, given the crazy state of the world today, given the challenges the country faces, given the complexities of the problems in places like Iraq and Syria.

No, you don't get that rush of bloodlust that comes with, and underpins, right-wing militarism, and you don't get that sense of purity that comes with pacifism and/or isolationism, nor the perceived, and self-deceiving, moral clarity that comes with any sort of absolutism, but what you do get is a chance of achieving some sort of success in a world where, given the choices available and outcomes likely, success is awfully hard to come by.

Maybe President Obama's "minimalism" won't work in this case, but it's far more preferable than the alternatives, because at least it recognizes that there are no easy solutions and that missteps could lead to catastrophe. As occasionally frustrating as his cautious pragmatism may be, he knows what he's doing, even when the words don't come out as artfully as desired.

What would President Gore have done after 9/11?

By Marc McDonald 

I've often wondered: if Al Gore had been allowed to assume the presidency that he won in the 2000 election, how would he have responded after the 9/11 attacks? Actually, I think it's pretty likely 9/11 would never have happened in the first place under President Gore.

Gore was (and is) a reader and a scholar, you see. One of those dreaded "liberal book learners." Unlike Bush, Gore didn't make decisions "based on his gut." Gore read about and studied the issues. He listened to experts. Oh, the horror!

And on Aug. 6, 2001, when the CIA hand-delivered a Presidential Daily Brief to President Gore, he would have actually read the goddamn thing (particularly after glancing at the alarming headline, "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in U.S.")

Unlike Bush, Gore wasn't fond of endless five-week vacations on the taxpayer's dime. So it is entirely possible that Gore wouldn't have been on vacation at the time. I'm think it's also highly likely that if Gore had been on vacation, he'd have cut it short to deal with the PDB.

What's important, though, is that President Gore would have taken action. For example, it's a virtual certainty that he would have called a meeting of his top security people. (Maybe such a high-level security meeting would have brought attention to issues like the FBI's July 2001 reporting about suspicious Middle Eastern men who were learning to fly passenger airliners at U.S. aviation schools.)

I also suspect that President Gore would have ordered possible terror targets like airports to step up security a notch.

Sadly, none of this actually happened. Of course, that's because in the previous year, a blatantly pro-GOP Supreme Court in 2000 awarded Bush a presidency in an election that Gore won by over half a million votes.

And so when Aug. 6, 2001 rolled around, Bush was handed the fateful Bin Laden PDB and took no action, as he continued to enjoy his 5 week vacation.

And so 3,000 Americans died on 9/11. And later, hundreds of thousands of civilians were slaughtered in the trillion-dollar fiasco called the Iraq War.

Read more »

More bad Bradley Manning news

By Frank Moraes 

In the trial of Bradley Manning, Judge Colonel Denise Lind has ruled that the most series charge of aiding the enemy cannot be dropped. She said, "He was knowingly providing intelligence to the enemy." That statement shocks me on two levels. First, she seems to have already convicted him. Second, really?! If we are talking about Osama Bin Laden, then this is clearly not true. If we are talking about the press, then okay. In modern America, the government has defined its enemies so broadly and the concept of damage so vast that no one can say anything without risking indictment.

But the government apparently now knows that some of Manning's leaked information was found on Bin Laden's computer. When the government killed him, you were probably like me in thinking, "I'll bet there is some good information that the government can use to fight terrorists." But apparently not. There was good information there for the government to use to oppress its citizens. James Madison would be so proud!

In general, I've always seen military courts as little more than well catered drumhead court-martials. So I've never expected that Bradley Manning would get justice. The only question in my mind is whether he will die in prison. Judge Lind's ruling is yet another step in that eventuality. There is still some hope, but I'm not optimistic.

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Entitled rich boy

By Frank Moraes

I don't know much about Osama bin Laden. But I'll tell what I think of him. Unlike most people, I don't think he was a crazy and evil man. I think he was an entitled rich boy. This allowed him to be just like rich guys all over the world: absolutely certain that whatever stupid thought entered his brain must be right. Most rich people follow the likes of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman who tell them that they deserve their wealth—that it is a sign of just how morally superior they are to all the prols they walk on.

But bin Laden was different: he took his marching orders from the Quran. It seems that like most believers of the Abrahamic religious, his reading of the book was simplistic and based mostly (Just like other rich people!) on his existing prejudices that he wanted to justify. If you look at his career, such as it is, he wasn't that successful. He just spent a lot of time hanging around, most of the al-Qaeda leadership had abandoned him, and his greatest "success" was a fluke that certainly worked better than even he could have expected.

I imagine him sitting around his compound during those last years. He watched his pornography. He wrote about the coming Islamic revolution. Maybe he watched the newest Bollywood films. He was a man of leisure—just like all the men of his class. Anyway, he would be celebrating his birthday today if it weren't for the fact that he is dead.

Luckily, Edie Brickell is 46 today. So I get to listen to the the Top 10 hit, "What I Am": 



(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Bob Woodward attacks Obama for "a kind of madness"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Back when Bob Woodward mattered.

Honestly, it's hard to believe that anyone pays attention to this idiot anymore:

The Washington Post's Bob Woodward attacked President Barack Obama on Wednesday, saying the commander-in-chief's decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier because of budget cuts is "a kind of madness."

"Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying, 'Oh, by the way, I can't do this because of some budget document?'" Woodward said Wednesday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

"Or George W. Bush saying, 'You know, I'm not going to invade Iraq because I can't get the aircraft carriers I need' or even Bill Clinton saying, 'You know, I'm not going to attack Saddam Hussein's intelligence headquarters,' as he did when Clinton was president because of some budget document?" Woodward added. "Under the Constitution, the president is commander-in-chief and employs the force. And so we now have the president going out because of this piece of paper and this agreement. 'I can't do what I need to do to protect the country.' That's a kind of madness that I haven't seen in a long time."

Let's address this in order:

First, no, Reagan likely wouldn't have, but that's because he was an extreme militarist who didn't give a damn about the budget, in fact exploding the national debt with outrageous military spending. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, though, one could say that he was right to do so at the time because, you know, there was that whole Cold War going on and it was important to ramp up the military spending and spread the military's reach far and wide. I won't give him that benefit, but, regardless, it's silly to say that what was necessary then is necessary now.

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Senate letter condemning Zero Dark Thirty

By Frank Moraes 

A remarkable thing happened yesterday. Dianne Feinstein, Carl Levin, and John McCain sent a letter to Michael Lynton, the CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment. It was regarding the portrayal of torture in the new film, Zero Dark Thirty. Feinstein does it as the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

It is a most reasonable, if direct, letter. They point out that they understand that writers make things up to tell a more dramatic story. Their concern is with the opening of the film which displays on the screen, "Based on first-hand accounts of actual events." They call for the producers to make clear that torture was not helpful in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Read more »

Mitt, Cheney, and the auto rescue

By Frank Moraes

I like Mitt!

Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic has a very evenhanded column about Romney's position on the GM rescue, "What Romney Wants You (and Ohio) to Forget About the GM Rescue." The title makes the article sound a lot more critical than it is. Let me briefly lay out Cohn's argument:

Romney's New York Times op-ed was far more nuanced than its title "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" would indicate. He was not calling for the liquidation of GM and Chrysler. What's more, it isn't clear whether he was for or against Obama's decision to rescue the auto makers. During this period, Romney indicated elsewhere that he did support it.

And then came the primary season, and Romney -- quelle surprise! -- changed his position. This is from a CNBC debate:

My view with regards to the bailout was that whether it was by President Bush or by President Obama, it was the wrong way to go. I said from the very beginning they should go through a managed bankruptcy process, a private bankruptcy process.

We have capital markets and bankruptcy...

My plan, we would have had a private sector bailout with the private sector restructuring and bankruptcy with the private sector guiding the direction as opposed to what we had with government playing its heavy hand.

And then he changed his position back during the Michigan primary. And now we hear from him all the time, "Of course I supported the auto bailout!" It's easy to be on the right side of history when you simply change your opinion to whatever history says.

This is not an isolated incident, of course. Consider Obama's position on Osama bin Laden. When Obama said that he would go into Pakistan to get him, everyone attacked him. This included Mitt Romney. But after Obama did exactly what he said he would, Mitt Romney was totally on board. "Even Jimmy Carter would have made that call."

I don't mind inconsistency; I'm one of its greatest practitioners. But there is a real problem with Mitt Romney's inconsistencies. It doesn't come from the shifting tides of his moods and facts. Instead, it comes from his decision about whatever is expedient. But even this I wouldn't mind if he hadn't surrounded himself with all of Bush's people on foreign and domestic affairs. There is no doubt that if Romney is elected president, there will be a group of neocons and "free" marketeers who will play him like a fiddle. And we don't need another Cheney administration.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

The Benghazi Fugazi

By tmcbpatriot

Did he or didn't he? That does seem to be the question the righties are asking as they go absolutely crazy trying to find something, anything to pin on Obama with just days to go before the election. 

From the sound of it, you would think Benghazi was some monumental event that killed thousands, or maybe a story about some major terrorist leader who got away. But then those things happened on the other guy's watch, didn't they? And, if I recall, according to the right-wingers, none of it was his fault. It was all the result of bad intelligence. Yeah, that about sums it up, doesn't it?

Anyhow, the real story here is that we are close to ending this long, drawn-out election, and, let's face it, folks are tired and worn out. The right is looking for anything to blame Obama for, and up until now they've had nothing. Fast and Furious? It’s a bad movie with Vin Diesel. Birth certificate? See Donald Trump. Taking credit for killing Osama? Most of the country agrees with that assessment.

But with the election so close and the so-called "independents" now watching, politicians are more aware than ever that they need to offer these numbskulls something, anything that is easy to follow. Thing is, though, the "undecideds" do not have the mental capacity for thought on a deeper level. They cannot make up their minds after years to think about it, and no matter how you slice it Benghazi is not so simple to understand.

When the right talks about timelines and says things like, "declaring something an act of terror does not necessarily mean you are declaring it a terror attack," that just confuses these people even more.

Hell, I'm even dumbfounded by that one.

Oh, and by the way, those independents and undecideds you are expecting to connect with you on this issue? Well, remember the ones who asked questions during the second debate? They are still undecided! You think I'm kidding?

Republicans thought they had Obama after the first debate, but he came back strong and made Romney look like a petulant child. Now with the final debate tonight and it being on foreign policy, the GOP is working it to the hilt to make Benghazi the most talked about story of the week. It is their latest "worse than Watergate" moment centering on a president who is totally incompetent and of course totally, totally responsible.

But wait! (place record-scratching sound here)

Isn't this the same president who, after being president when Bin Laden and Gaddafi were killed, was said by the right to have been totally uninvolved in their deaths and totally not allowed to take credit? Isn't this the same president who loves drones and killing al Qaeda operatives as if he is playing a video game? Isn't Gitmo still open for business? Hasn't Obama actually kept us safe these past 3 1/2 years? Wasn't that the litmus test during those eight long years when a certain republican was president? So long as you didn't count 9/11, right?

Anyone? Bueller? McFly? Hello?

When Obama announced that Bin Laden was sleeping with the fishes, the right-wingers came out and said he had nothing to do with it. In fact, they said it was insulting for him to gloat when it was all the Navy Seals' doing. But now, with Obama back in the game after debate number two and with the final debate tonight, the president is suddenly totally responsible and accountable for Benghazi and has blood on his hands on par with Macbeth.

You see, Republicans are hoping all of this makes us forget that Mitt Romney turned this whole Benghazi thing into a political event in the first place and that even the father of the slain ambassador said "it would be abhorrent to make this into a campaign issue." Republicans are also aware that Obama has quite a few foreign policy accomplishments to brag about.

Bottom line, all of this is just fodder for tonight's debate, and it's going to backfire on Republicans big-time. No matter what they throw at Obama, he will just deflect it right back onto Romney. Meanwhile, Romney is sure to say something else so ridiculous that it becomes the only thing remembered. For those keeping count, he is 2-for-2 so far.

And if Republicans think the undecideds are going to make up their minds based on all of this, I have two words for them: jobs report!

Lest we forget, there is one final jobs report coming out just four days before the election. If the unemployment rate is lower than 7.8%, or higher than that, then those very same undecideds will have just one response to the Benghazi question: Benghazi? Who's he? 

(Cross-posted at Take My Country Back.)

From the cheap seats

By Mustang Bobby

Former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu is an odious has-been who got bounced out of his job as George H.W. Bush's chief of staff for misusing government planes and generally being a prick. (Irony of ironies, it was George W. Bush who told him to take a hike.) Now he's back as a surrogate for Mitt Romney and proving that the passage of time has not taught him anything about humility or second-guessing other people:

Mitt Romney campaign co-chair and former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu accused President Obama of waiting too long to order the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, in an interview with the New York Times that was published on Saturday.

Sununu said that Obama was "timid," could have gone after the terrorist mastermind sooner, and attributed the successful operation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:

The president is trying to take credit for following the strategy and the tactics put into place by George W. Bush. At some point the president is going to have to explain why he was timid on the first two or three opportunities that we had. Thank goodness Hillary Clinton was there was to convince him to do the right thing. [...] His trying to take credit for having been decisive belies the fact that he wasn't decisive until pressed by others. 

But former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who served in both the Bush and Obama administrations, described Obama's decision to order the raid that killed Osama bin Laden "gutsy," saying that “people don't realize" what a tough call it was and not everyone would have made the same call. Vice President Biden and Gates both advised Obama against taking the course he chose on the bin Laden raid, noting that "There wasn't any direct evidence that he was there. It was all circumstantial."

Once an sphincter, always a sphincter.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Videos, protests, and murder: The bigger picture in Libya and beyond

By Ali Ezzatyar

The killing of Ambassador Stevens is still shrouded in some ambiguity. But a media firestorm on the subject, stoked by certain U.S. lawmakers, is missing the point, and that goes for the mainstream media's analysis of recent protests in the Muslim world as well.

The U.S. Government, and the State Department in particular, are being criticized for not disclosing the nature of the attack on Mr. Stevens' safehouse. The notion underlying this criticism is that the State Department might have known that it was a planned hit, and not the result of an uncontrollable, angry mob. Still deeper, the mainstream media is emphasizing that Al Qaeda's involvement in the attack is still either unknown or undisclosed.

It is true that if this was a planned assassination, it is worth knowing, but mostly for logistical reasons. There was a security failure and that needs to be addressed. It resulted in the loss of a courageous public servant. But the media's desire to paint a coherent picture about the causes and motivations for the killing -- a picture that does not exist -- is detrimental to understanding the broader problem.

Let's acknowledge that there are individuals in all Muslim countries that make it a priority to kill high-profile Americans. I fail to see how we can still be so wedded to the Al Qaeda vernacular. It is totally disingenuous to say things like "Al Qaeda-linked group," and still worse, "Al Qaeda-inspired." Virtually every Muslim extremist group, with the exception of a minority of Shiite ones, is Al Qaeda-inspired. Certainly every one of these groups in North Africa is. These groups have no link to the Al Qaeda America first waged war on in 2001, or even before in Tanzania. They are not the organization some still insist on imagining them to be. If we are being intellectually honest, there is nothing to hide about Al Qaeda, even if the murderer from Benghazi has a picture of Bin Laden in his wallet.

Whether or not these angry mobs or these killing squads consider themselves part of a larger structure is irrelevant. The real issue is how they manage to be brought out into the streets by their preachers. It is not a video about their prophet that is the proximate cause of the violence. It is a general frustration with the West, its policies in the region, coupled with a mental atrophy that allows them to attribute the actions of one person to an entire nation. To address the former, we need to support the positive elements in Muslim society which make up the vast majority. For decades, we sometimes supported the authoritarian minority. To address the latter, we need to engage the majority and the minority, through our diplomacy, through our culture of acceptance and openness, and through our support for civil society.

I think one of the most unfortunate developments last week was the handful of speeches given by leaders of majority Muslim countries at the U.N. The basic gist of all of them was that we should not accept blasphemy of religion as freedom of speech. Yes, we should. Any other logic applied to freedom of speech is a slippery slope. It is difficult to assess to what extent such words are designed to placate respective constituencies -- yes, they do that in other countries as well. Either way, one can hope that these new, democratically elected leaders will either turn out to be, or be succeeded by, courageous thinkers who both understand what free society entails and are wedded to its establishment.

The protests in the Muslim world relating to that online video are indicative of so many things. Much of the publicity about these events have focused on backlash and anger at the video's content. In reality, this is the least important factor to consider in the entire ordeal. It is more fundamental to recognize that the Muslim world is frustrated with the West generally, that there remains a fundamental disagreement about what democracy entails, and finally, that divisions among Muslims themselves are being exposed by these new democratic openings in society. Particularly with respect to the last point, there is a splendor in the debate that is taking place within the Muslim world today; what Ambassador Stevens' life work represented is the most honorable and appropriate of spokes that drives the wheel moving the Middle East into modernity.

All just bluster

By Mustang Bobby

In case you missed this piece from Kurt Eichenwald in the New York Times the other day:

The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that "a group presently in the United States" was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be "imminent," although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives' suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.

"The U.S. is not the target of a disinformation campaign by Usama Bin Laden," the daily brief of June 29 read, using the government's transliteration of Bin Laden's first name. Going on for more than a page, the document recited much of the evidence, including an interview that month with a Middle Eastern journalist in which Bin Laden aides warned of a coming attack, as well as competitive pressures that the terrorist leader was feeling, given the number of Islamists being recruited for the separatist Russian region of Chechnya.

That makes this more than just a tad ironic:

A day before the 11th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, former Vice President Dick Cheney jabbed President Barack Obama over a new report that he opted not to attend a number of presidential daily briefings, a decision that Cheney claims is indicative of his aloofness on national security.

"If President Obama were participating in his intelligence briefings on a regular basis then perhaps he would understand why people are so offended at his efforts to take sole credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden," a Cheney spokeswoman told The Daily Caller in an email.

So the next time you hear a Republican natter on about being "strong on defense," the most polite response would be derisive laughter.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

For Dick Cheney, the best defense is to be offensive

By Richard K. Barry

Is it possible to imagine a more vile person than former Vice President Dick Cheney? Oh, I'm sure one can think of a few, but it wouldn't be a very long list. 

Think Progress reports that on the eve of the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Cheney accused President Obama of taking "sole credit" for killing Osama bin Laden and of ignoring his daily intelligence briefings.

In an interview with The Daily Caller, a notorious right-wing rag, Cheney said this:

Careful. Your face will stay
like that. 

If President Obama were participating in his intelligence briefings on a regular basis then perhaps he would understand why people are so offended at his efforts to take sole credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden.

On the issue of "taking sole credit," Think Progress offers this direct quote from President Obama, made earlier in the year:

[L]ast year, when we delivered justice to Osama bin Laden, I made it clear that our success was due to many people in many organizations working together over many years — across two administrations. That's why my first call once American forces were safely out of harm's way was to President Bush. Because protecting our country is neither the work of one person, nor the task of one period of time, it's an ongoing obligation that we all share.

As for the other absurd claim that the president isn't adequately briefed up on national security matters, it notes this:

Obama also continues to receive intelligence information on a daily basis, even if he prefers to read the analyses himself rather than have it read to him. As National Security Council spokesperson Tommy Vietor told Politico, Obama "receives and reads his [Presidential Daily Brief] every day, and most days when he's at the White House receives a briefing in person. When necessary he probes the arguments, requests more information or seeks alternate analysis. Sometimes that's via a written assessment and other times it's in person... [Former Bush speechwriter] Marc [Thiessen] basically wrote a story culled from our public schedule that shows how Marc's old boss, President Bush, structured his day differently than President Obama."

I suppose Cheney must be feeling pretty exposed given yesterday's damning piece in The New York Times about the Bush administration's reckless disregard for intelligence that warned about an imminent attack by al Qaeda in 2001. 

No doubt the best defence is still a good offence, even it is based on a pack of lies. 

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

How fragile we are

By Carl 

And so it goes... eleven years on. I'm going to try to keep politics out of this post, but it will be impossible. Please bear with me.

September 11 was a pivotal moment in your life. It was in mine, it was in hers and his, it was in all of ours. The trite saying, the trite excuse, is "everything changed on September 11."

But it did. Nearly everything was altered. Some things were immediately clear. Some things took a while to unfold. Some things are still unfolding. And some things will not change, but those are things that couldn't change if the world ended. Time still marches on, the sun burns, the planets turn in their orbits.

I can still hear the high whine of the engines of Flight 11 storming past my office. It sounded so foreign, so miniscule. I've had jets shoot up Fifth Avenue before on Veterans' Day and you knew it was a massive plane. When Flight 11 slipped down Manhattan island, it sounded like a small Cessna as it whined past. Even the wound to the North Tower looked insignificant, but then I was ignoring the scale of my knowledge... the floors were vast... and focusing on the data my ears had given my brain: small plane.

On September 11, we saw the entire range of humanity on display in one brief unforgettable moment. We saw the rage of a group of men so profound to exercise power over people less powerful than themselves. We saw the abject terror of first a neighborhood, then a city, then a nation, and finally, a world. We saw the courage and heroism of the first responders and the civilians who pitched in to help people get out of harm's way and to try to prevent the unpreventable.

We saw the chilling wake of the empty hospitals, emergency staff standing outside the doors during the blackest night in American history, waiting... waiting... waiting...

And no one came. No flashing lights scurrying up the block to drop off a patient in need of care, then flying back down the block, doors barely closed, to pick up another casualty. We only saw silence. We only heard blackness. We only felt the deepest sadness any of us could feel.

Mostly, we saw the confusion of a people who grasped to comprehend what had happened. We hadn't moved onto the "why" yet. We hadn't even really gotten our minds around the "how." We wanted desperately to understand.

September 11 changed you. It changed me. It changed him and her. It changed all of us.

On September 10, 2001, we all of us lived secure in the knowledge -- some would say "smugly" -- that America was nearly invincible. Sure, we'd had terror attacks on our soil before. Hell, even Wall Street was bombed at one time. But they were minor, slivers in the fingertips of the American soul.

Even the 1993 bombing barely stopped traffic for a day, despite the deaths and destruction it did cause.

We lived with the notion that an ocean protected us from the horrors of war, even if Japan had put paid to the invincibility idea. Even there, we played the "outside the 48, doesn't count" card. Besides, Hawaii wasn't even a state yet.

We lived with the notion that America was the strongest nation in the history of the world, and truth is, it was, and may still be. But our naivete is vanished.

Starting at 8:46 am on the morning of September 11, 2001, we endured what President Obama might have called a "teachable moment." Certainly it was a humbling event.

Some of us chose to take it as such, to acknowledge our lives had been changed and to move forward. To make our lives meaningful, and to realize that our petty concerns with respect to what had been important vanished in the roaring explosion of a plane crash. Sure, we still go to work or to school, and love our families (perhaps that became even more important that day), and watch the ball game on TV, but always in the backdrop are reminders of that day, tugging at our hearts and minds.

Singing "God Bless America" during the seventh inning stretch leaps to mind. Which brings me to my next comparison.

Some of us refused to take the note. Some of us clambered to get our lives back to normal, to act as if nothing had happened. Some of us wanted to ignore the amputation the nation had suffered in those four villianous acts, and to go on as if we still had four good limbs, two good eyes and ears.

And some of us even want to take the nation further back, to a time when we all rode bikes with baseball cards in the spokes to the park.

We can't go back. We can't even stand still. We have to move forward.

On September 11, we saw the best of American values on display: community, charity, compassion, the knowledge that each of us is equal to everyone else, that everyone is valuable and that no one is disposable. We could have advanced from there, grown up as a nation, and shown the world our most cherished value: resilience.

We could have straightened up, dusted off, and told the world we want this to end. I'm not suggesting we shouldn't have brought the fiends to justice, we should have, and we should have sooner. But we could have joined hands with those who reached out to comfort us in a bleak hour. We could have added our most powerful voice to the rising chorus of those for whom terror and violence is a daily occurence. We could have moved a world.

Sadly, those who were in charge saw things differently. They took their fear, and amplified it, and passed it on like crack cocaine.

I'm not just talking about the Bush administration, altho they share a large part of this responsibility. I'm talking about the loyal opposition who almost unanimously capitulated to anything the administration asked for out of fear of being deemed traitorous. I'm talking about the media who dropped in line with the administration rather than take the patriotic stance of asking "why?"

"Why?" may be the most patriotic thing any citizen can ask of its government. Information is the blood that flows through the veins of any democracy. An informed citizenry is one that can make rational decisions.

I'm even talking down to the level of individual citizens who questioned the loyalty and patriotism of anyone who felt any concern about perhaps, you know, savaging innocent people who did us no harm in the pursuit of... what? A terror organization? An agenda? Both?

Both.

Instead of showing our strength, we flexed our muscles, and anyone who's been in a street fight will tell you, balling up a fist is the first sign of weakness.

Consequently, the great debate this nation needed to have, what to do next, became "we're not marching to war fast enough." And each of us to some degree or other bought into that.

Personally, I remember what I felt that day and subsequently. I watched the towers burn and became angry. I was angry at al Qaeda. I was angry at the administration, possibly because I knew in my subconscious that they somehow had to know this was being planned and did nothing.

Mostly, I was angry it came down to this: a desperate act of attention-getting by a group that rightly should have been ignored from the get-go, but for some really asinine trails of logic down through the years, starting with funding the bastards to fight the Soviets.

Anger is fear in motion. You can flee. Or you can fight. Anger is the latter. So I recognized I was afraid. I was not afraid of the attacks themselves, or even that al Qaeda might have had a more cunning plan in store that day.

I was afraid of what came next.

My biggest fear was also my fondest wish in the immediate aftermath of the attacks: clear a thousand square miles out in the Afghani desert, drop the biggest fucking nuke in our arsenal and turn to al Qaeda and say "Any questions?"

There's an old joke about the drunk looking for his car keys in the gutter under a streetlamp. A cop walks over and asks him, "where did you lose them?"

"Over there, across the street."

"Why are you looking here, for heaven's sake?"

"Because the light's better."

Had I known the alternative being contemplated was that we'd open a second war against a people and a tyrant who had nothing to do with the attacks on our soil and bankrupt our economy and our global credibility, all for want of "better lighting," I'm not sure my first instinct of a massive A-bomb would not be the better one.

Not the best solution, I want to be clear, but a war with Iraq was a solution in search of a problem.

Gradually, it dawned on me that not only had the macro world changed profoundly, but each of us had as well. Our cocoons had been stripped away, and damn if that isn't the scariest proposition for any human. Things you had come to rely on, to be background noise, now took front and center. Airport security, once a pass at keeping guns off planes, now searched for shampoo and sneakers. Bridges we monitored by cameras, and trucks kept on the upper levels to minimize damage in the event of. Trains became a constant scan of backpacks and jackets too bulky for the weather outside.

People stopped flying. People stopped traveling. Rather than defy the tyranny of terror, we gave into the apprehension and literally, the terrorists won, albeit a Pyrrhic victory.

But "Pyrrhic" has a cultural definition. It measures wins and losses on a different scale than a society or culture that measures in absolutes: "Did I draw blood? Then I won. It doesn't matter that I died trying. Someone else will step in."

We the People gave al Qaeda an even bigger victory. We gave up our liberties, the one thing that defines us as Americans. We proved that those liberties are a sham. Even today, in the wake of the Teabagger movement -- ostensibly bragging that they are recapturing our liberties, only to give up many more in the bargain -- we cower and whimper behind those security measures, rather than find ways to reclaim our freedom.

Rather than stand up in the gale force winds of the terror attacks, we crouched behind a rock, even when those winds blew themselves out, and we fired spitballs and paper clips when what we could have done -- should have done -- was stand up and let them try to do their worst, then work to make our nation stronger. We could have led rather than react.

In many ways, the decade following September 11 parallel the decade following the Kennedy assassination: we had the rise of populist movements for civil rights (in the '60s, racial; in the '00s, sexual orientation) and we've seen unpopular wars fought and abandoned as "won" when in truth, nothing really was won. We're still as secure today as we were on September 12, based on just the war footing.

Even the killing of Osama bin Laden might not have made us more secure. al Qaeda could have been exhausted on September 12 anyway.

Indeed, the rise of a Democratic administration promising an almost idyllic liberal landscape (still-born, to be fair) could have been ripped out of the pages of the RFK campaign in 1968 or the McGovern campaign of 1972. It's not a perfect parallel but the comparison is striking.

Most important, the lessons of September 11 feature as a frontispiece the simple fact of humanity: we are fragile. We are connected to this planet and this existence for only a brief time, and to try to hoard ourselves in that moment is foolish, for how fragile we are. 

On and on the rain will fall

Like tears from a star, like tears from a star

On and on the rain will say

How fragile we are how fragile we are

If I were president, I would declare September 11 a day commemorating peace. We have a few days that commemorate or memorialize war: The Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Veteran's Day, but only one that commemorates peace and even that is in the abstract and not universally recognized: Martin Luther King's birthday. How wonderful would it be, how great a show of American values, if we decided for one day that you could not work and instead live a day in peace?

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

I don't much care for Obama

By Comrade Misfit

I truly don't.

Look, I think it was ballsy for him to approve the raid on bin Laden's compound. He had to have known that a botched attempt would have probably cost him his job.

What I do not like about him is that he has not only taken no steps to dismantle the national security state we now live in, he has increased it. He could have vetoed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, the one with the GOP-inserted language that authorized the indefinite detention of American citizens for whatever reason suits the Feds' fancy. He didn't; he only added a vague and non-binding signing statement of "of course we'd never do this."

I find that wholly inexcusable for a man who once taught Constitutional Law. Yes, I know that first-year law school Con Law doesn't get into the Bill of Rights, but I'd expect him to have a passing familiarity with it.[1]

I don't like that he has spent over three years trying to work with people who lure him in close and cock-punch him. He then gets up and does it again. I don't know if he is a born optimist, a fool, or has a partial brain deficit. [2] Personally, I'd like to see a little more Harry Truman from Obama.

Part of the problem is that Obama, when it comes to dealing with Congress, is acting like the only responsible adult in the room. The Republicans have been behaving like spoiled children who, if they don't get everything they want, will quit the game and go home. Or, more sinisterly, they've been acting like terrorists, who have been more than willing to throw this country into default and depression if they don't get their way. So maybe he is doing the best he can, but I would still have rather seen more fight out of him.

I don't like that Obama has been playing more from the old DLC playbook than anything else. Yes, he ended "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." [3] He got the Ledbetter Pay Act passed. While the Affordable Care Act is pretty damn sucky and is more a gift to those rapacious bastards in the health insurance industry than anything else, he still got something through.

But the stimulus was too little and was effectively hamstrung by Republicans who didn't want to be seen as being totally obstructionist on boosting the economy, but they didn't want to do anything that might lead to a solid recovery. That's because the Republicans, in full-blown "Party First" mode, would rather see many more millions of workers out of jobs if that would win them an election.

I want to see him fight for us. I want to see him make the Republicans pay a dear price for being economic kidnappers.

I'm not holding my breath.

But may G-d help us if he loses to that team of the Corporate Robot and the Wisconsin Fibber that the GOP put on their ticket.
_______________________________________
[1] As for Republicans, they talk a great game about freedom, but you'll note that they are really vigorous at slashing freedom and liberty in almost all areas (excepting the Second Amendment). All you have to do is mutter phrases like "terrorism" and "homeland security" and those weak-brained fools, along with Democrats like "Traitor Joe" Lieberman, would let the NSA put cameras in their homes.
[2] I'd say "retarded," but the last time I did that, I got all sorts of nasty emails.
[3] Contrary to conservative predictions, the armed forces have not crumbled.

(Cross-posted at Just an Earth-Bound Misfit, I.)

Craziest Republican of the Day: Steve King

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Point of personal insanity!

There's an abundance of craziness in the Republican Party, but it's like our CRD series was tailor-made for the Iowa congressman.

Last Friday, we was CRD for the seventh time, well ahead of anyone else. Today makes eight.

And this one's a doozy:

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), an outspoken critic of just about everything President Obama supports, is considering introducing a bill that would repeal everything Obama has signed into law.

Yes, everything.

Now, I get that King and Obama don't see eye-to-eye on most things, and that King doesn't much care for what Obama's done as president. But even the most extreme partisans usually acknowledge that the president, of whichever party, has the democratic legitimacy and authority to sign bills into law. Sure, the opposing party may seek to overturn some of those laws, or just amend them, but that's usually as far as it goes. King's proposal goes well beyond that, to the point where he seeks to erase the president from legislative history. (I would note that as much as Democrats disliked George W. Bush, they never ever went this far. Not even close.)

Not only that, but he fails to appreciate how American democracy works. The president signs bills into law, but it's Congress that passes them. Even if he objects to everything Obama has done, does he also object to every single bill Congress has passed that the president has signed, even where Republicans were supportive (which wasn't often, admittedly)? If so, he might as well just take a public dump on the Constitution. And resign in shame.

Again, I don't expect King, a right-wing extremist by any measure, to be on Obama's side on anything, and, sure, I expect him to work to undo certain pieces of legislation. But let's take a look at some of the legislation that would be repealed if King got his way:

-- Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

-- Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act 

-- Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act

-- Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act

-- Emergency Aid to American Survivors of Haiti Earthquake Act 

-- Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act

-- Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act 

-- Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act 

-- Small Business Jobs and Credit Act

-- Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act

-- Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act

-- James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act 

-- Food Safety and Modernization Act 

-- United States-South Korea Free Trade Agreement Implemention Act 

So King is apparently against fair pay, in favor of smoking, in favor of hate crime, against HIV/AIDS treatment, against helping the survivors of the Haiti earthquake, against providing support to veterans and their families, against the freedom of the press, against sanctioning Iran, against helping small businesses, in favor of cruelty to animals, against feeding children, against helping 9/11 relief workers, against food safety, and against free trade with a key Asian ally, South Korea.

Maybe he is or isn't any of these things, but his irrational hatred for President Obama, his refusal to allow that the president did anything right, is clearly blinding him to anything and everything but absolute partisanship.

Maybe next week he'll propose shutting down General Motors and firings its employees. Because of course it was Obama who saved the industry from collapse.

Or maybe he'll propose finding Osama bin Laden's body, bringing it back to life through the power of prayer, and reinstalling him as head of al Qaeda. Because of course it was Obama who issued the order to kill him.

And that means it was wrong.

No one cares what you think, Dick

By Richard K. Barry

Former Vice President Dick Cheney recently said in an interview that he thought Barack Obama was "one of our weakest presidents." That is so shocking. I really did not see that one coming.

He also took full credit for killing Osama bin Laden, saying that: 

A lot of the intelligence that laid the groundwork for what ultimately led to the capture of bin Laden was a result of programs we had in place in the Bush administration.

I'll admit it was funny to hear the big dick crap all over Sarah Palin as a VP choice, but who really cares what this corrupt bastard thinks about anything. I mean, if you consider that he left office with a 13 percent approval rating, not even many Republicans are interested in his musings. Now that's sad.

Foreign policy ignoramus Mitt Romney set to fight Cold War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From Think Progress:

Romney's campaign often sounds like it still wants to fight the Cold War. Romney himself said that Russia is the U.S.'s "number one geopolitical foe" (a statement that even Colin Powell mocked) and back in April, a Romney adviser criticized President Obama's "Czechoslovakia" policy. Today during a foreign policy debate at the Brookings Institution, senior Romney adviser Richard Williamson, attacking Obama's Syria policy, said the Middle East country is "strategically important to the Soviet Union."

At some point it's not just an innocent mistake anymore. We're past that point.

**********

And from the Obama campaign (which includes us on its media distribution list and has included us in its blog round-ups, for which we're grateful), ten of Romney's foreign policy fails, important to note as he travels overseas, plays up his non-existent bona fides, and lies about President Obama:

Two hundred and ninety-one days after his last foreign policy speech, Mitt Romney stood up once more to deliver a major foreign policy plan and -- once again -- failed to offer any new or even credible policy ideas.

Romney has long displayed a significant lack of knowledge and experience over the years when it comes to foreign policy. But the commander-in-chief only has one chance to make the right decision.

Here's a look at ten times Romney and his campaign got it wrong:

1.      Romney "has been especially vague about how many U.S. forces he would keep in Afghanistan" and has no detailed plan for our engagement in the country.

2.      Romney's campaign said "real Americans" don't care what Romney’s Afghanistan policy is.

3.      Before Osama bin Laden's death, Romney said he wouldn't go into Pakistan if we had bin Laden in our sights and that it was "not worth moving heaven and earth" to find bin Laden.

4.      Romney pledged "to do the opposite" of what President Obama has done for Israel, which includes record-level security funding.

5.      Romney called Russia, a strategic partner of the United States on vital issues, America's "number one geopolitical foe."

6.      When asked how he'd approach going to war with Iran, Romney has said he'd defer to his lawyers: "You sit down with your attorneys" so they can "tell you what you have to do."

7.      Romney has said that bringing all our troops home from Iraq was "tragic" and that it was a "naked political calculation."

8.      Romney "fled down a hallway and escaped up an escalator" to avoid answering a reporter about his position on the NATO mission in Libya.

9.      Romney called the fading power of Venezeula's leader Hugo Chavez a serious threat to our national security.

10.    Romney's campaign said President Obama was not doing enough to protect Czechoslovakia -- a country that no longer exists -- from "the Soviets."

Reckless and stupid isn't a good combination for the Oval Office when it comes to anything, but especially foreign policy.

And Mitt's got it in spades.