Pardon my cynicism, but does anyone else find President Obama’s weekend pep rally in Afghanistan a bit show-boat-y? Especially, coming as it did on the heels of a weeklong spree of Presidential power-lifting? — health care reform, student loan help, underwater mortgage help and recess appointments. And then, as we all know, nothing spells ‘presidential’ like parachuting into the front lines of America’s “War du Jour.” I could almost hear the Andrews Sisters singing “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree” as back-up for Obama’s motivational moment with the troops before they start dying, in earnest, to make a point in Kandahar.

“’I know it’s not easy,’ he said. ‘If I thought for a minute that America’s vital interests were not served, were not at stake here in Afghanistan, I would order all of you home right away.’”

“The United States has made progress in the fight against al Qaeda and its allies. I know it’s not easy,” he said. “If I thought for a minute that America’s vital interests were not served, were not at stake here in Afghanistan, I would order all of you home right away.”

“The United States of America does not quit once it starts on something. … We keep at it. We persevere. And together, with our partners, we will prevail. I am absolutely confident of that.”

When I look at that be-camouflaged audience, all I can think of is “Why?” Why would anyone put a single one of those lives in harm’s way for something as dubious and irrational as a foothold in Afghanistan. These soldiers aren’t laying their lives on the line to make anyone safer – their very presence in Afghanistan makes them, and us, considerably more unsafe.

Non-partisan experts from all corners of the earth and many diverse disciplines have told us that, in compelling terms, for years now, but it has become increasingly clear that neither reason, nor prudence, not even survival instinct will dissuade the “powers that be” from replacing the Cold War with the Long War. Al Qaeda has very effectively become the 21^st century version of ‘dirty, rotten Commies.’ “Better Dead than Red” has been replaced with a fatwa on Terrorism, ensuring decades and generations of defense contracts, weapons development, arms sales, special ops, espionage and war games aimed at “making the world safe for democracy.”

The Long War in a Nutshell

Scenes from a Long War

Whenever I want to get an update on the Long War, I look to Tom Hayden who has been screaming into the wind about it for ages now (and for you old Hippies, yeah – that Tom Hayden). Just yesterday Hayden wrote an article for the LA Times that is a short, good read that will catch you up on the “Long War” concept if it has escaped your attention.

Basically, the Long War is an undeclared, undebated, largely undisclosed 80-year (give or take) war plan cooked up by the Pentagon and its neo-con fellow travelers and think tanks. The theater for the Long War is primarily the Middle East and South Asia or wherever else our Soldiers of Fortune see fit to lead us. As taxpayers, we needn’t worry our little heads about any of this because our representatives in Congress, don’t really have a role to play, outside of approving any and all Defense budgets, supplemental, emergency and otherwise. Since that signatory function has become a political measure of patriotism, it is unlikely that outspoken constituents can have any impact.

If you are scratching your head, at this point, and saying ‘what the hell is she going on about?’ you’re in the right place, as far as DoD is concerned. You see, the Long War is less a war and more, a state of mind that is being fed to the American psyche by slow-drip intravenous.

Here’s Hayden’s timeline:

“The term ‘Long War’ was first applied to America’s post-9/11 conflicts in 2004 by Gen. John P. Abizaid, then head of U.S. Central Command, and by the retiring chairman of the Joint Chiefs of State, Gen. Richard B. Myers, in 2005.”

“According to David Kilcullen, a top counterinsurgency advisor to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and a proponent of the Long War doctrine, the concept was polished in “a series of windowless offices deep inside the Pentagon” by a small team that successfully lobbied to incorporate the term into the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, the nation’s long-term military blueprint. President George W. Bush declared in his 2006 State of the Union message that ‘our own generation is in a long war against a determined enemy.’”

“The concept has quietly gained credence. Washington Post reporter-turned-author Thomas E. Ricks used The Long War as the title for the epilogue of his 2009 book on Iraq, in which he predicted that the U.S. was only halfway through the combat phase there.”

“It has crept into legal language. Federal Appeals Court Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a darling of the American right, recently ruled in favor of holding detainees permanently because otherwise, ‘each successful campaign of a long war would trigger an obligation to release Taliban fighters captured in earlier clashes.’”

“Among defense analysts, Andrew J. Bacevich, a Vietnam veteran who teaches at Boston University, is the leading critic of the Long War doctrine, criticizing its origins among a “small, self-perpetuating, self-anointed group of specialists” who view public opinion “as something to manipulate” if they take it into consideration at all.”

Lovely! Already we see how one war can seque into another; as troops are drawn down from Iraq, troops swell in Afghanistan. Some “troops”, that we prefer not to speak of, are already at work in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere. Avenging Angels are poised to strike Iran, if Ahmadinejad doesn’t behave. Even Turkey is currently misbehaving, not to mention Israel . . .

An amorphous (or imaginary) “enemy” calls for untraditional tactics and boatloads of money to completely refit our own enormous military, as well as the foreign militaries that we are re-purposing and creating in our own image and likeness. Unfortunately, so far, we really suck at it . . .

The Afghan National Police and Other Insecurities

One of the more ludicrous goals that the US has set as a measure of success in Afghanistan is to leave the country in the hands of a well-trained National Police force that will provide the safety and security necessary for the flowering of a law-abiding Afghan society into a well-armed, fully compliant partner in US control of the Middle East.

Never mind that currently there are neither laws nor a judicial system in place to support police activities — all things in good time. When the laws are written and the courts established, prisons have been built and judges appointed, there will be a crack police force in place to enforce those laws. All Afghans will surely rejoice when their thousand years old de-centralized system of tribal justice is replaced with a top-down well-policed system. No doubt, tribal warlords will be happy to relinquish their local power for the sake of modernization.

The notion of the Afghan National Police program defies reason in so many well-documented ways that it boggles the mind that, eight years and $7 billion dollars later, sane people would countenance renewing contracts with Dumb and Dumber, Inc. (Xe aka Blackwater and/or DynCorp) for another $1 billion whack at this losing proposition. Unless, of course, the architects of the Long War find it expedient to create impossible goals to keep us interminably engaged in the region and supporting that military-industrial complex which is currently America’s only ‘booming business’ and major export.

I’m no military expert but I do know a thing or two about business management and I’m certain that, without an endless flow of taxpayer dollars, this dog of a project would have been written off ages ago by any self-respecting private or publicly-owned business. A joint team of Defense and State Department Inspectors General wrote a lengthy (and fairly scathing) analysis of the situation in 2006. That investigation found that the contractors hired (DynCorp) were ill-equipped to do the job (some of the trainers police backgrounds were as campus security guards) and that the State Department was doing an epically bad job of managing the contracts. There were essentially no stated contract requirements and virtually no oversight – just blank checks and free rein.

Unfortunately, this program is not only a fiasco it can be argued that it is actually colossally counterproductive to the US mission in Afghanistan (if there is such a thing). As Pratap Chatterjee reported on TomDispatch.com:

“The Obama administration is in a fix: it believes that, if it can’t put at least 100,000 trained police officers on Afghan streets and into the scattered hamlets that make up the bulk of the country, it won’t be able to begin a drawdown of U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan by the middle of next year.”

“’The Obama administration’s strategy for the Afghan police is to increase numbers, enlarge the ‘train and equip’ program, and engage the police in the fight against the Taliban, says Robert Perito, an expert on police training at the United States Institute of Peace and the author of a new book, The Police in War. ‘This approach has not worked in the past, and doing more of the same will not achieve success.’”

“When it comes to police training, the use of private contractors is not unusual — and neither is failure. North Carolina-based Xe has, in fact, been training the Afghan border police for more than two years, and Virginia-based DynCorp has been doing the same for the Afghan uniformed police for more than seven years now. Nonetheless, the mismanagement of the $7 billion spent on police training over the last eight years, partly attributed to lax U.S. State Department oversight, has left the country of 33 million people with a strikingly ineffective and remarkably corrupt police force. Its terrible habits and reputation have led the inhabitants of many Afghan communities to turn to the Taliban for security.”

And, later:

“’There are some parts of Afghanistan where the last thing people want to see is the police showing up,’ Brigadier General Gary O’Brien, former deputy commander of the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, told the Canadian Press news agency in March 2007. ‘They are part of the problem. They do not provide security for the people — they are the robbers of the people.’”

Seven years and $7 billion of taxpayers’ money later, at a June 2008 discussion at the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, Congressman John Tierney summed up findings on the 433 Afghan National Police units of that moment this way:

“Zero are fully capable, three percent are capable with coalition support, four percent are only partially capable, 77 percent are not capable at all, and 68 percent are not formed or not reporting.”

That dismal result did not come flying unexpectedly out of the blue, either. As Chatterjee reports:

“DynCorp and [the] State [Department] had too few people, too few resources, and too little experience building a police force in the midst of an insurgency,” Seth Jones, a political scientist with the RAND Corporation who spent most of 2009 traveling with Army Special Forces teams in Afghanistan, told the commission. “While it may be necessary to utilize [private] contractors to help execute some security programs — including helping U.S. military or other government officials conduct some police training — contractors should not be the lead entity, as they were from 2003 to 2005.”

And:

“’A prevalent view, even among some international police, is that Afghanistan is unready for civilian policing and holds that the police must remain a military force while insecurity lasts,’ writes Tonita Murray, a former director general of the Canadian Police College, who worked as an advisor to the Afghan Ministry of Interior in 2005. ‘If such a view were to prevail, only military solutions for security sector reform would be considered, and Afghanistan would be caught in a vicious circle of using force against force without employing other approaches to secure stability and peace.’”

And this:

“Earlier this month, Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, head of the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan, admitted that police training has been a train wreck since the toppling of the Taliban almost nine years ago. ‘We weren’t doing it right. The most important thing is to recruit and then train police [before deployment]. It is still beyond my comprehension that we weren’t doing that.’”

“The realization that giving illiterate, drug-prone young men a uniform, badge, and gun (as well as very little money and no training) was a recipe for corruption and disaster is certainly a first step. But how to withdraw the 95% of the Afghan police force that is still incapable of basic policing for months of desperately needed training in a country with no prior history of such things? That turns out to be a conundrum, even for President Obama.”

“If the Pentagon does not dramatically alter the current training scheme, it doesn’t look good for either governance or peace in Afghanistan. Yet the likelihood remains low indeed that Pentagon officials will take the advice of a chorus of police experts offering critical commentary on the mess that is the police training program there. Instead, it’s likely to be more of the same, which means more private contracting of police training and further disaster. Bizarrely enough, the Pentagon has given the Space and Missile Defense Command Contracting Office in Huntsville, Alabama, the task of deciding between DynCorp and Xe for that new billion-dollar training contract. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, as the French say: The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Counterinsurgency Sniff Test: Shit Happens

Collateral Damage

Meanwhile, the old Afghan War continues with its new Counterinsurgency strategy which seems to involve many of the old conventional tactics – night raids, special ops, drone attacks, checkpoint shootings. etc – with the notable addition of apologies from Gen. Stanley McChrystal whenever the wrong people get killed, which appears to be frequently.

Rumors about collateral damage are no longer solely the province of “bleeding heart liberals,” anonymous sources or anti-war politicians. ‘Straight from the horse’s mouth’ we have this incredible admission from Gen. McChrystal to no less than The New York Times (where some neocon gatekeeper was clearly out to lunch):

“’We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,’ [my emphasis] said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who became the senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan last year. His comments came during a recent videoconference to answer questions from troops in the field about civilian casualties.”

“Failure to reduce checkpoint and convoy shootings, known in the military as “escalation of force” episodes, has emerged as a major frustration for military commanders who believe that civilian casualties deeply undermine the American and NATO campaign in Afghanistan.”

Well, General, if you think that’s frustrating, imagine the “frustration” of the dying and maimed innocents and their families and loved ones.

To make the point McChrystal-clear, Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Hall (the senior NATO enlisted man in Afghanistan and a trainer in the same session) added that:

“Many of the detainees at the military prison at Bagram Air Base joined the insurgency after the shootings of people they knew. There are stories after stories about how these people are turned into insurgents. Every time there is an escalation of force we are finding that innocents are being killed.”

And then, of course, there are the recent inconvenient revelations of one Jerome Starkey, an Afghanistan-based reporter and an eyewitness to atrocities committed by Coalition forces, followed by a fairly bungling campaign to deny and discredit Starkey’s report.

Over the past few months, Starkey exposed two incidents where NATO initially claimed to have engaged and killed insurgents, when they’d in fact killed civilians, including school children and pregnant women. In both cases, when confronted with eye-witness accounts obtained by Starkey that clearly rebutted NATO’s initial claims, NATO resisted publicly recanting.

In the first case, NATO officials told him they no longer believed that the raid would have been justified if they’d known what they now know, but no official would consent to direct attribution for this admission.

In the second case, NATO went so far as to attempt to damage Starkey’s credibility by telling other Kabul-based journalists that they had proof he’d misquoted ISAF spokesman Rear Adm. Greg Smith. When Starkey demanded a copy of the recording, NATO initially ignored him and eventually admitted that no recording existed. NATO only admitted their story was false in a retraction buried several paragraphs deep in a press release that led with an attack on Starkey’s credibility.

Get used to it, though, 80 years of Long War can’t be conducted without casualties and since the “enemy” is such a shape-shifter, well . . . mistakes happen. On the bright side, evidently, it’s now OK to shoot an “amazing number of people” who don’t pose a threat, if you’re convinced they are Taliban, or al Qaeda or something like that . . .

[tags]Gen. McChrystal, Tom Hayden, President Obama, Afghanistan, Bagram, counterinsurgency, collateral damage, Jerome Starkey [/tags]

When I took my brief leave, a little over a week ago, there were some good (in my opinion) things happening on the domestic political front. Health Care Reform had just passed without automatically triggering Armegeddon, Apocopalypse, Waterloo or any of the other colorful but untoward side effects predicted by the Right. My emailbox overflowed with messages that looked like some of the above were in progress – lots of RED ALERT, URGENT ACTION REQUIRED!!!! – type messages poured in from the handful of Tea Party websites I subscribe to for grins and giggles. Despite all of those frenzied calls for action, the GOP put up a last gasp, post-passage obstacle, for effect, then promptly caved in. No one likes to draw attention to his/her membership on the losing side of a battle for very long, especially in Washington, DC. Even the noise about running as the Party of Repeal has died down noticeably, in just a week, while Republicans figure out whether or not that might be yet another ill-advised, really lame platform.

At this point, a year into the Obama administration, only one thing is certain for traditional, inside-the-beltway Republicans and that is that Republican euphoria about their 2010 mid-term prospects may have been a somewhat premature ramble down a political rose-covered pathway. 2009 GOP legislative performance, blatantly hypocritical and inept ideological waffling and scandals too numerous to mention have not helped to make GOP candidates a particularly palatable alternative to (equally bumbling) Democratic incumbents.

And then, of course, there is the distraction of the Tea Party Yahoos that, while ostensibly independant, have a distinct resemblance to the more unsavory elements of the GOP’s last attempts at base-building – Conservative Christian theocrats, white supremacists, nativists and garden-variety xenophobes of every stripe, topped off with a generous helping of barking-mad Know-Nothings. Add to all that a rudderless Republican National Committee, with Captain Queeg, at the helm and Republican’s are far more than a stone’s throw away from any sort of imminent comeback.

The Thrilla from Wasilla

Joshua Lott/Reuters

Case in point: this past week delivered up the unforgettable spectacle of Sarah’s Revenge, featuring a leather-clad Sarah Palin, looking every inch the dominatrix, pimping for a goofily-grinning John McCain. The long-suffering Cindy McCain turned in the only star-quality performance in her memorable supporting role as the tight-lipped, clenched-jaw “good wife.” She only goes along with the program because she knows in her heart that this final ignominy will, more than likely, put the final nail in her husband’s political coffin, allowing the McCains to retire in style.

The only rational reasons that I can come up with for Palin’s endorsement of McCain are: a) sweet revenge for McCain’s bungling of Palin’s White House bid or b) Sarah-belle figured that stumping for McCain would do more actual good for J.D. Hayworth, the Tea Party’s man, than an outright endorsement. Palin also might just be politically savvy enough to know that Tea Parties are great fun and great exposure, but only a traditional, national party has the clout and the resources to actually put anyone in office, any time soon. So why not stay maverick-y and play both sides against the middle?

In saner days, one might not expect the likes of J.D. Hayworth to have a snowball’s chance of unseating a venerable old political pro like McCain. Hayworth, a former TV sportscaster, served as a Republican member of the House from 1995 to 2007 representing the 5th District of Arizona. During his tenure there, Hayworth distinguished himself in the following ways:

In 1998, due to his verbal gift for gab, Hayworth was voted the second biggest “windbag” in Congress in Washingtonian magazine’s survey of 1,200 congressional staff members of both parties. “I was hoping to get the number one spot,” Hayworth said.

He also won the “No Rocket Scientist” category.

In 2006 he was again voted the second biggest “windbag” in the House.

Between 2001 and 2005 inclusive, Hayworth’s wife Mary was paid $20,400 per year by TEAM PAC, Hayworth’s leadership political action committee. In 2002, a spokesman for Hayworth said that his wife handled bookkeeping and many administrative details for the PAC. Hayworth’s wife had been the only employee of TEAM PAC after December 1999. Through the end of 2004, the fund had paid $107,000 for her salary and payroll taxes, or roughly 26 percent of its $411,000 in revenue. The PAC also paid $70,000 to an outside political consultant and a California bookkeeper, bringing fundraising and administrative expenses 43 percent of the total revenue. No one can say that J.D. doesn’t take care of his own.

Hayworth also has a soft spot for the plight of the Native American. In 1997, Hayworth helped stop a proposal to tax Indian casinos, which would have taken $1.9 billion off reservations. In 2002, Hayworth played a key role in preventing a change in the law that allowed Indian tribes to contribute to an unlimited number of federal candidates with an aggregate cap in dollars. Coincidentally, Rep. Hayworth was also the largest single recipient of Jack Abramoff-related lobbying money and co-chairman of the Congressional Native American Caucus. Hayworth received more than $150,000 from Indian tribes once represented by Abramoff. Hayworth said he will keep the donations because they were given independently of Abramoff’s influence. He donated $2,250 to charity that he says he got directly from Abramoff.

Actually, McCain probably doesn’t need Palin’s help shooting himself in the foot. The last six months or so have featured a petulant, tantrum prone, flip-flopping McCain who comes off as somewhat less than senatorial, much less presidential. McCain whined and pouted his way through the recent bipartisan Health Care Reform summit, ditto the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Hearings and just recently offered that he was “”very disappointed” with President Obama’s recess appointments. McCain issued a written statement accusing the Obama administration of having “little respect for the time honored constitutional roles and procedures of Congress” and charging that the president’s team had “forced their will on the American people.”

Clearly, Sen. McCain has reassessed his position on recess appointments since, as recently as 2005, he was quite in favor of them. When President George W. Bush found himself hostage to a foot-dragging Congress, McCain supported Bush’s appointments by stating that recess appointments are the “President’s prerogative” which he wholeheartedly supported. A few years earlier, a politically expedient McCain, himself, single-handedly persuaded President Bush to install a favored nominee using a recess appointment. Here’s how UPI described it in 2002:

“Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain prevailed in his fight with the White House to have Ellen Weintraub, a former Capitol Hill attorney, named to a Democratic seat on the Federal Election Commission as a recess appointment. McCain must now be overjoyed that her colleagues have elected her chairman of the commission for the coming year. In her new role, Weintraub, the wife of Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold’s legislative director, will have a lot to say about how the regulations governing the McCain-Feingold campaign legislation will be written an implemented.”

On the other side of the coin, La Palin, herself, may come to regret signing on to the political three-ring-circus inspired by the 2010 mid-term elections. Palin is just crazy enough to believe that she still has a major-league political future but she’s evidently not politically savvy enough to realize that stunts like the McCain endorsement, while satisfying on a gut level, could backfire into a “one nasty bitch” image. In my opinion, American politics are not yet evolved enough to admit of a woman who dares to one-up a man. And, I suspect, the dominatrix look is not a winner with the Christian Coalition . . . or the Common Sense revolutionary re-enactors crowd, for that matter.

Time will tell, I suppose. And Sarah has hedged her bets by taking a side-trip on the Tea Party Express to Searchlight, Nevada to trash Harry Reid – always a hit with the Tea Party crowd — in his own backyard. Reid is vulnerable in politically moderate Nevada after pushing Obama’s agenda in Congress. His standing has also been hurt by Nevada’s double-digit unemployment and record foreclosure and bankruptcy rates.

Prior to Saturday’s Searchlight appearance, Palin’s Facebook page featured a map that had circles and cross hairs over 20 Democratic districts. Palin followed that up with a tweet saying, “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!” Of course, by Saturday, she clarified that (despite appearances to the contrary) she wasn’t inciting violence, just trying to inspire people to get involved.

The Tea Party Express stop in Nevada, billed by Tea Party bloggers as “The Showdown in Searchlight,” – building on Palin’s non-violent, simply inspiring metaphor — drew a crowd of 9,000 – 10,000. Palin opened with a question: “So how is that ‘hopey-changey’ thing working out for ya?”

She went on predictably saying that Reid is “gambling away our future. Someone needs to tell him, this is not a crapshoot.” And that “the big-government, big-debt spending spree of the Senate majority leader, Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is over. You’re fired!”

Palin probably doesn’t realize it but Harry Reid actually got in the last (most effective) words when he released this statement on the Showdown in Searchlight:

“I’m happy so many people came to see my hometown of Searchlight and spend their out-of-state money, especially in these tough economic times. This election will be decided by Nevadans, not people from other states who parachuted in for one day to have a tea party.”

God help us all, I sincerely hope he’s right – in Nevada, and elsewhere . . .

[tags]Sarah Palin, John McCain, Cindy McCain, Harry Reid, Searchlight, Nevada, JD Hayworth, Tea Party Express[/tags]

“They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.” Benjamin Franklin

Well, frumps, I’ve been at this for a year now, and I must admit that writing the Frump Gazette has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my long and varied life. It has forced me to focus on the world around me in new and different ways; it has opened my eyes, ears and heart to things that slid right on by during my hustle and bustle years of working and parenting. Best of all, I have met some truly remarkable people that I might not have otherwise met. Despite being drawn to troubling subjects, the intelligent, thought-provoking commentary and good humor of my readers have continually reassured me that all is far from lost. I have met with some modest blogging success and have expanded my audience with spots on Alternet’s “Speakeasy,” Salon.com’s Open Salon and Jerome Doolittle’s Bad Attitudes.

For a while now, I have planned to take an “anniversary” week off so that my granddaughter can teach me how to play, again. But before I do that, I would like to leave you with something to chew on that has the potential to put an end to the freewheeling forum that has become known as the Blogosphere as well as any other venue where dissent and activism currently flourish.

On March 4, 2010, Sen. John McCain introduced new legislation that he has written called the “Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010.” The bill is co-sponsored by Sen. Joe Leiberman making it “bipartisan” – after a fashion.

The Horror

Assessing McCain’s bill in an article for Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald noted that:

“It’s probably the single most extremist, tyrannical and dangerous bill introduced in the Senate in the last several decades, far beyond the horrific, habeas-abolishing Military Commissions Act. It literally empowers the President to imprison anyone he wants in his sole discretion by simply decreeing them a Terrorist suspect — including American citizens arrested on U.S. soil. The bill requires that all such individuals be placed in military custody, and explicitly says that they ‘may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners,’ which everyone expects to last decades, at least. It’s basically a bill designed to formally authorize what the Bush administration did to American citizen Jose Padilla — arrest him on U.S. soil and imprison him for years in military custody with no charges.”

For those of you who may not be familiar with Glenn Greenwald, he is a constitutional expert, a lawyer, a columnist, a blogger, and author. He worked as a constitutional and civil rights litigator prior to becoming a contributor to Salon.com, where he focuses on political and legal topics. He has also contributed to other major newspapers and political news magazines, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The American Conservative, The National Interest, and In These Times.

His commentaries “on surveillance issues and separation of powers” have been cited in The New York Times, in The Washington Post, in United States Senate floor debates, and in House “official … reports on executive power abuses.”

In short, when Glenn Greenwald is alarmed, we should all be paying attention.

The (Possible) Law of the Land

If you would like to read the bill for yourself, you’ll find it here. It’s a short read (12 pages); Republicans seem to have become great fans of brevity in their legislative endeavors lately.

Basically, the bill would establish a policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected enemy belligerents who are suspected of hostilities against the United States. Such detainees would be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value by High Value Intelligence Teams and pointedly would not be provided with a Miranda warning.

Here’s a relevant bit taken directly from the bill:

“The bill asks the President to determine criteria for designating an individual as a “high-value detainee” if he/she: (1) poses a threat of an attack on civilians or civilian facilities within the U.S. or U.S. facilities abroad; (2) poses a threat to U.S. military personnel or U.S. military facilities; (3) potential intelligence value; (4) is a member of al Qaeda or a terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda or (5) such other matters as the President considers appropriate. The President must submit the regulations and guidance to the appropriate committees of Congress no later than 60 days after enactment.”

“To the extent possible, the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team must make a preliminary determination whether the detainee is an unprivileged enemy belligerent within 48 hours of taking detainee into custody.”

“The High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team must submit its determination to the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General after consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General make a final determination and report the determination to the President and the appropriate committees of Congress. In the case of any disagreement between the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General, the President will make the determination.”

Things that “go bump in the night” about these passages:

• We are no longer referring to these “targets” as “aliens;” American citizens like you and I (and Jose Padilla) could now be (officially) pulled off the street and detained indefinitely
• The bill calls for the President to decide what behavior will label a person a “high-value detainee.” The bill then makes suggestions about possible criteria but ends with “or (5) such other matters as the President considers appropriate.” I have to wonder what a President Cheney or a President Palin might consider appropriate criteria for “detainment.” Perhaps anyone who might have called for the indictment of Bush/Cheney, on war crimes, would suddenly become a “high value detainee”?
• Once the criteria have been set, the Kangaroo Court is in session and the Orwellian-sounding High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team have “48 hours” to deliver a verdict. So — based on 48 hours of extra-judicial deliberation by a group who make their living being part of an “interrogation team” you, or someone you know, could be “disappeared” for quite a long time. Period.
• That “interrogation team” verdict is handed over to the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General who make the Final Determination and hand it over to the President (who DOES NOT have a say in that determination unless DoD and DoJ bring in a split decision).

Furthermore, per the bill, such detainees can be held until the end of terrorist hostilities against the US and its Coalition allies – which, as we all know, could be a very, very long time. And wouldn’t this act be a great tool for anyone with a feverish imagination and an “enemies list”? In our overheated national security environment it shouldn’t be too awfully hard to make, say – any regular subway commuter into a terrorist suspect.

Let Me Count the Ways . . .

This is not one of those hair-splitting constitutional debates that go on in some rarified legal ether. This bill is a down and dirty assault on the Constitution that has so much glaringly wrong with it that any American high-schooler could shoot it full of holes in five minutes. Here are some of its major constitutional transgressions:

Fourth Amendment 4 – Search and Seizure

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Fifth Amendment 5 – Trial and Punishment, Compensation for Takings

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger.

Sixth Amendment – Right to Speedy Trial, Confrontation of Witnesses

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

Eigth Amendment – Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Fourteenth Amendment – Citizenship Rights

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law, which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

WTF?

Keeping in mind that this bill was written by a United States Senator, who is sworn to uphold the Constitution, and co-sponsored by ten others (see list of co-sponsors below) – it is little wonder that the American public is thoroughly disgusted with Congress’ performance of late (approval rating is consistently around 20%). If this bill had been introduced on April 1^st, I would have known what to make of it. As it stands, I have to assume that Sen. McCain’s loss of the Presidential election, the imminent repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and, now, the very real threat to even holding on to his Senate seat, has completely unhinged the man.

Here is the promised list of Co-Sponsors of the Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010:

Sen. Scott Brown [R, MA]

Sen. Saxby Chambliss [R, GA]

Sen. James Inhofe [R, OK]

Sen. George LeMieux [R, FL]

Sen. Joseph Lieberman [I, CT]

Sen. Jefferson Sessions [R, AL]

Sen. John Thune [R, SD]

Sen. David Vitter [R, LA]

Sen. Roger Wicker [R, MS]

These are, of course, many of the usual subjects; but I find it especially chilling to find Sen. Jeff Sessions, Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on that list.

Now, it’s only fair to let McCain speak for himself and, to that end, here’s a link to his official letter introducing his bill to the President. Unfortunately, McCain’s rambling, finger-pointing screed doesn’t go very far in elucidating good motives for establishing a police state.

There are a number of political ways to look at this development — it could be simply a Republican effort to introduce legislation that provides an opportunity for the administration to appear wimpy by shooting it down. Who’s paying attention? Sen. McCain is just being a stand-up, ex-military patriot trying to make Americans safer but the radical Obama administration shots down anything that smacks of traditional values – right?

McCain, who’s Senate seat seems to be imperiled in November, may believe that his bill will appeal to a gun-toting, xenophobic, kick-ass contingent of Arizona voters (centrism sure doesn’t seem to be working).

It could be that he believes the McClatchy-Ipsos poll , from January 2010, that found that 51 percent of Americans agree with this statement: “it is necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism.”

It could be part of the GOP’s general accretion of scary material that keeps Americans wary and the defense dollars flowing until the Republican Party rises from the ashes and saves us from ourselves, once again.

Or it could just be what we’re coming to – a corporatist, militarist global concern that needs to sweep stodgy American values out of its way. The precedent for using US military inside the US occurred in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Since then, U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) has run exercises called “Vigilant Shield” to prepare, prevent and respond to any number of national crises that would call for the use of the military inside the United States. Vigilant Shield 2008 builds a scenario of a domestic disaster in the US (terrorist attack or natural disaster). It posits the domestic use of the US military including a special role for the US Air Force.

Can’t Happen Here, Right?

In case anyone out there is comforted that President Obama would never sign that bill, don’t be sure. Here’s a clip from Rachel Maddow last spring that puts the lie to that false security:

Obama on Prolonged Detention

I’m sure that Sen. McCain, like Liz Cheney, is just obsessed with Keeping America Safe . . . so why do I feel so very afraid?

[tags]Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010, Sen. John McCain, Sen. Joe Leiberman, Glenn Greenwald[/tags]

Photo Credit: Twitter user @sarahannwalker

Well, Washington, DC hosted “Armey’s Last Stand” yesterday. About two weeks ago Health Care Reform was officially designated a Tea Party “Code Red situation” calling for urgent mobilization; forthwith a couple hundred TPers dutifully shaped up at the Capitol in their signature Tea Party regalia, carrying their signature “down with everything” posters and placards.

This group has evolved, since their first appearance last year around this time, in ways that would have been impossible to predict. Yesterday’s street theater successfully demonstrated that evolution, if not much else. Over time, Republican Party outpourings of solidarity and support for Tea Party activism have dwindled, coincident with the Tea Party’s repudiation of Republican apparatchiks as just as undesirable as any other target “government-as-usual” group which the TP has singled out for extinction.

Signs of strain were not that difficult to sniff out. By now, everyone has probably seen pictures of the TP placards that were supplied by the RNC earlier in the game. This time around, RNC was still distributing the things but had gone to the trouble of placing “blackout” stickers over their endorsement. Then, too, GOP notables were conspicuously absent from yesterday’s pep rally, signaling Republicans’ wariness of how truly the Tea Party actually speaks for the “silent majority” they profess to represent.

Dramatis Personae

A few die-hard Washington wing-nuts still turned out for Code Red – Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Steve King (R-IA) and Joe “You Lie” Wilson (R-SC) were there to incite hundreds to new levels of insanity. Fox News, doing the best with what they had, described the Code Red Rally as featuring “a host of Republican speakers, including Reps. Mike Pence (R-IN), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Tom Price (R-GA) and Marsha Blackburn, (R-TN).”

Notably missing from that lineup was Sen. Jim DeMint who has been working assiduously at being the Tea Party’s Best Friend in Washington, according to a recent article in Politico. And while DeMint’s efforts might be scoring him points with the Tea Party (although there’s not a lot of evidence of that yet) it’s definitely not making him any more popular with his own party, which appears to have decided to give the TP a wide berth, for now at least.

So, it appears that the past year has brought evolution, some contraction as well as greater “clarity” (if you can call it that) to both the Tea Party and the Republican Party platforms. The Tea Party, despite its astro-turf beginnings, has gelled into what looks like a fairly adamant anti-government movement, strong on fear and loathing and short on solid facts – but, then, in the Tea Party world, facts and people who deal in facts are not to be trusted; history, like the Bible, is meant to validate their views and effectively rubber stamp their agenda “best for everyone involved.”

The Tea Party has morphed into a conservative populist movement willing to take conservatism to new extremes to represent the wishes of a (largely mythical) “silent majority.” I think that the “silent majority” notion is part and parcel of a mythology of fear and imagined oppression; freedom and liberty, in this mythology, are freedom “from anything I don’t like or agree with” and the liberty “to do as I please” without regard to how it affects the common good. Proponents of this mythology populate their world with like-minded fellow travelers who are too meek to speak up – but they’re out there. There also seems to be that Christian Conservative, homespun American Puritan influence that says “this is right and this wrong for all God’s children, end of argument” substantiation not required. And so it is that the Tea Party quickly gets to a place where facts are subordinate to ideology and the ends always justify the means.

If you think I overstate, here are a few samplings of yesterday’s commentary coming from the Tea Party itself:

The following “sentiments” appeared on the America’s News Online website which describes itself thus:

“As a company, AmericasNewsOnline.com is a dedicated group of writers covering the topics that are making a difference in people’s lives. Our goal is to give the reader a balanced perspective of both sides of the news. In our opinion, it should be up to the reader to decide the real truth.”

“We have a team of 6 researchers submitting breaking news everyday. With our team’s diverse background, we are able to cover news from different points of view.”

This from contributor Susan Thompson:

“The Tea Party Movement along with a little help from Rush Limbaugh turned the face of Washington red today. Even Barrack Obama is coming with his tail between his legs and is to appear for an interview with Fox News.”

“There are members of the Tea Party Movement, in fact all of the Tea Party, that are outraged on the way that the Obama administration and the Dems in Congress are trying to find the sneakiest ways imaginable to pass the healthcare bill. Americans are very much in shock that the Dems would try to ram this bill through with an 80% disapproval rating.”

“Pelosi was heard to be paraphrased saying, “Americans aren’t smart enough to figure out how we’re doing this and aren’t interested in the process.” She went on to same (sic) we will pass this bill for the good of American citizens. The Tea Party is holding strongly to “kill the bill.”

Really, really awful writing aside, this stuff is pure propaganda, not to mention poppycock; but it is emotionally appealing to a crowd that believes that all of their ills have been caused by government and that, furthermore, they don’t need or want anything that government provides. It’s not that they have conflicting views on how the government should operate, no alternative methods are ever promoted beyond “sending Obama’s socialism ‘back to Russia.’”

One woman interviewed yesterdayby Dave Weigel of Washington Independent, is a perfect example of how far the Tea Party will have to go before it might be a viable political entity. Here’s Dave’s report:

“Kathy Ropte — like Jackson, a member of the Harris County, Ga. Tea Party, had started to move beyond lobbying. As cameras snapped away, she stood in front of the Cannon Building and announced the termination, “to take effect in November,” of pro-health care reform members. One activist chided her for the display, which included a massive sign reading ‘Waterboard Congress.’ Jackson didn’t care. She was in the fight, whether or not health care reform passed.”

“’One day I turned off American Idol,’ Ropte told TWI, ‘and I turned on Fox News. Before this year I’d never voted in my life.’”

Speaking to a CNS News interviewer, a woman who would only identify herself as “Jamie” said congressional arrogance is the main reason she came to the rally.

“I’m here, because I’m really concerned about how the legislative process is being bastardized to push this through. Whether you’re for it or against it, if they can bastardize our legislative process like this, what’s to stop them for anything? Why do we even have elected officials?”

Russ Cote of New Jersey told CNS this is the third event he has attended to protest a proposed health care system that he said is unsustainable and unconstitutional.

“It’s simple economics. We’re going to go broke. We’re going to go broke fast.”

What these people seem to be saying is that they are afraid – afraid that something is terribly wrong with the day-to-day operation of government that they have, by and large, chosen to ignore lo these many years. They are afraid of “bastardized legislative processes,” the passage of unconstitutional legislation, death panels and socialism — now; despite the fact that extrajudicial renditions, assassinations, the use of torture, and warrant-less wiretapping caused barely ripple in their deeply-running still waters.

Neither do these emotional, impressionable people seem to care a fig about unsustainable health care costs in the status quo, or rampant US global militarization, or rapacious defense corporations defrauding the US government as a matter of course. They don’t even seem to worry much about the erosion of their constitutional rights to privacy and due process or the loss of America’s moral standing in the world due to high officials condoning, even expressing pride in having committed war crimes.

Be Afraid! Be Very Afraid

Reps. King & Bachmann

Why do you suppose that is? My theory is that it’s all in the packaging. People enjoy a good scare, sometimes. Generally, when things are not going so well, it helps to believe that the problem is “larger than life” and that we’re “all in this together.” Anyone with “I told you so, on their lips” is cruisin’ for a bruisin’ and it’s human nature to try to deflect blame and shame.

Republican’s have suffered some electoral humiliations over the pickle we find ourselves in and they are more than ready for that to change. The trick is to make enough people believe that the Democrats are even worse or that Republicans, having made the mess in the first place, are the only ones who can effectively clean it up. Clumsiness over this messaging, so far, has engendered some pretty entertaining political positions on both sides of the aisle. For a while the large number of uncommitted Tea Partiers looked pretty attractive to the GOP with its 28% approval rating. In order to come roaring back, Republicans needed some fresh voters. From the beginning, it was pretty obvious what the TP hot buttons were and, in an effort to court them, the GOP made the Tea Party causes their causes.

A year later, clearly Republican leadership is rethinking that one. Appealing to the Tea Party is a lot like herding cats . . .

Nevertheless, a few stalwarts are still banging that drum for lack of anything better to do. One of those is Rep. Steve King from Iowa who has always had a lot to say that made little sense. The problem with King’s embrace of the Tea Party is that clearly, these Tea Partiers either can’t or don’t want to distinguish between fact and fiction and to them King represents a voice of authority (telling them it’s quite all right to be crazy).

King’s contribution, this time around, was to whip the Tea Partiers into an anarchic frenzy to paralyze the Capitol. He said:

“Fill this city up, fill this city, jam this place full so that they can’t get in, they can’t get out and they will have to capitulate to the will of the American people.”

Elsewhere in his speech, he spouted his usual disinformation about the health care bill funding abortion as well as care for 6.1 million illegal immigrants, winding up with an impassioned plea for concerned citizens to “continue to rise up.”

I haven’t yet decided whether I think King is just simple-minded or whether he’s a world-class demagogue – either way, King has spent his years in Washington filling the air with a giant load of misleading crap – below are some samples of King’s wit and wisdom, taken from Wikipedia, which lists links for all comments.

On Joseph McCarthy:

In 2005, King whipped up a group to oppose honoring a Berkeley, California councilwomen because of her “affiliation” with the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library in Berkeley. Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee, claimed that King’s “campaign of innuendo and unsubstantiated ‘concern’ is better suited to the era of Joseph McCarthy than today’s House of Representatives,” King claimed that history showed McCarthy to be “a hero for America”.

On the May 1, 2006 “Day Without an Immigrant” rallies, King offered his opinion to the Op-Ed editor of the Des Moines Register:

“What would that May 1st look like without illegal immigration? There would be no one to smuggle across our southern border the heroin, marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamines that plague the United States, reducing the U.S. supply of meth that day by 80%. The lives of 12 U.S. citizens would be saved who otherwise die a violent death at the hands of murderous illegal aliens each day. Another 13 Americans would survive who are otherwise killed each day by uninsured drunk driving illegals. Our hospital emergency rooms would not be flooded with everything from gunshot wounds, to anchor babies, to imported diseases to hangnails, giving American citizens the day off from standing in line behind illegals. Eight American children would not suffer the horror as a victim of a sex crime.”

[Critics immediately argued that King's daily numbers in the editorial are inflated, based on the incorrect premise that 28% of all prisoners in all American jails and prisons are illegal aliens. King cited an April, 2005 GAO report as the source of that statistic; that report actually says that 27% of federal prisoners were "criminal aliens," a term that includes both legal and illegal aliens. "Criminal aliens" doesn't mean "illegal aliens". State prisons and local jails together hold 92% of US prisoners. The actual percentage of illegal aliens held at the time in state prisons and local jails can be determined by comparing figures for SCAAP federal compensation to states and localities with federal Bureau of Justice Statistics prisoner censuses. Such a comparison reveals that the accurate illegal alien percentage being held was less than 4%, rather than the 28% claimed by King.

In May 2008, King downgraded his original claims about the contents and reliability of the GAO report from which he "extrapolated" them saying: “ . . . that report came back not quite apples to apples.”]

On Washington, D.C.:

“My wife lives here with me, and I can tell you… she’s at far greater risk being a civilian in Washington, D.C., than an average civilian in Iraq.”

King said that there were 45 violent deaths per 100,000 in Washington, D.C., in 2003 while he calculated that there were 27.51 per 100,000 in Iraq as a whole.

The Iraqi Health Ministry casualty survey, however, estimated 151,000 violent deaths in Iraq due to the war from 2003 to 2006, or roughly 162.37 per 100,000 per year. The Lancet survey published in 2006 estimated that 2.5% of the population of Iraq had died from the war as of June 2006.

On State Department appropriations

On June 21, 2007, King introduced an amendment to the $34 billion State and Foreign Operations bill to prohibit funds from being used by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to travel to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan or Syria. When asked why the measure did not apply to Republican House members who had also made trips to the countries in question, King’s spokesman replied that he was unsure whether that had been considered, or why it might not have been.

UPDATE: At the end of 2009, Rep. King went on his own “fact-finding” junket to Afghanistan. Upon his return he reported that he met with President Muhammad (sic) Karzai and found him to be “human.”

On Barack Obama:

On March 7, 2008, during his press engagements to announce his reelection campaign, King made his now famous remarks about Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama and his middle name, saying:

“ . . . if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror.”

[At the time, Obama said he did not take the comments too seriously, describing King as “an individual who thrives on making controversial statemements to get media coverage.” The McCain campaign disavowed King's comments, saying "John McCain rejects the type of politics that degrades our civics…and obviously that extends to Congressman King's statement.”

On the Iowa Supreme Court:

In April, 2009, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that a state ban on same-sex marriage violated the Iowa constitution. King opined that the judges "should resign from their position" and the state legislature "must also enact marriage license residency requirements so that Iowa does not become the gay marriage Mecca."

On the IRS building bombing in Austin, Texas:

Last month, in his closing remarks at CPAC, King said he could "empathize" with the man who flew a plane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas, killing himself and an IRS employee.

On Washington Lobbyists:

On the House floor in February 2010, King made remarks defending and supporting lobbyists as a source of "valuable information":

"Lobbyists do a very effective and useful job on this Hill, and if anyone gave me information that wasn't accurate or honest, if they found out about it they would bring it back and correct it to me first. If I thought they were doing so intentionally, they would not come back to talk to me ever. There is credibility there, in that arena, that I think somebody needs to stand up for the lobby. It is a matter of providing a lot of valuable information.”

On ACORN:

It was the sharp-eyed Rep. Steve King who, while attending a holiday party at the White House, noticed the acorn-shaped cookies on offer that he took as irrefutable proof of the WH's connections with ACORN. Lucky for us all, Rep. King had the presence of mind to whip out his iPhone and preserve the "evidence" for posterity

On Washington Lobbyists:

On the House floor in February 2010, King made remarks defending and supporting lobbyists as a source of "valuable information":

"Lobbyists do a very effective and useful job on this Hill, and if anyone gave me information that wasn't accurate or honest, if they found out about it they would bring it back and correct it to me first. If I thought they were doing so intentionally, they would not come back to talk to me ever. There is credibility there, in that arena, that I think somebody needs to stand up for the lobby. It is a matter of providing a lot of valuable information.”

One might reasonably ask whether Rep. King would recognize “valuable information” if it bit him in the ass . . .

After King’s latest outing a Huffington Post reporter asked him about his comparison of the Tea Party protest with the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Prague. Here’s how that went:

HuffPo: "So this is just like Prague under communist rule?" the Huffington Post asked.

King: "Oh yeah, it is very, very close," King replied. "It is the nationalization of our liberty and the federal government taking our liberty over. So there are a lot of similarities there."

"I look back 20 years ago in the square in Prague... when tens of thousands showed up there and they shook their keys peacefully and they took over their country and they achieved their freedom back again," he said. "If you can keep coming to this city, fill up the congressional offices across the country but jam this city. If you can get on your cell phones, and get on your Blackberries and your email, and ask people to keep coming to this town. Storm this city, fill up Washington D.C., jam this capital so they can't move. And if tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of you show up, we will win. We will defeat this bill and you will have your liberty back."

Of course, part of the reason that Prague is so idyllic is because they have government-sponsored health care -- just like you do, Rep. King . . .

[tags]Code Red, Tea Party, Rep. Steve King, Rep. Michelle Bachmann, Sen. Jim DeMint, Dick Armey[/tags]

Flag-Raising in Marjah

By now, just about anyone who is tuned into current events in Afghanistan has been thoroughly disabused of the notion that the well-publicized campaign to wrest the “city” of Marjah from the clutches of the Taliban was anything more than a military PR stunt – and a not especially well-conceived one, at that.

As Gareth Porter reported:

“It turns out, however, that the picture of Marjah presented by military officials and obediently reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the conflict.”

“Marjah is not a city or even a real town, but either a few clusters of farmers’ homes or a large agricultural area covering much of the southern Helmand River Valley”.

“’It’s not urban at all,’ an official of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), who asked not to be identified, admitted to IPS Sunday. He called Marjah a ‘rural community.’ It’s a collection of village farms, with typical family compounds,’ said the official, adding that the homes are reasonably prosperous by Afghan standards.”

Far, far from a bustling urban center of 80,000 and “the biggest town under Taliban control” or the “linchpin of the militants’ logistical and opium-smuggling network,” as breathlessly reported by AP quoting “Marine commanders.”

Even after the operation began, military spokesmen were perpetuating the myth reporting that Marines were “in the majority of the city at this point” and clearing “neighborhoods”. There were no photographs, of course, of the “urban fight” for Marjah, because as Gertrude Stein would have said ‘there was no “there” there.’ An anonymous ISAF official said the only population numbering tens of thousands associated with Marjah is spread across many villages and almost 200 square kilometers, or about 125 square miles.

Marjah is so sparsely populated that it has never even been incorporated . . .

Downtown Marjah

Got A New Attitude

For those who aren’t up to date on 21^st century military strategy, evidently the hyperbole surrounding Marjah is de rigueur in the world of “counterinsurgency” or COIN, as it’s sometimes dubbed. Counterinsurgency is all about “psy ops” which some might call “psychological warfare” but others would describe as “influencing hearts and minds.”

According to the COIN manual, one of the foremost tasks of a COIN campaign is to “create the narrative,” asserting that news media “directly influence the attitude of key audiences toward counterinsurgents, their operations and the opposing insurgency.” As Gen. McChrystal, going by the book, said at the outset of the Marjah offensive: “This is all a war of perceptions.”

Be that as it may, it looks like garden-variety lies, to me, and pretty damn amateurish lies at that. Now I understand that McChrystal is an early-adopter of this COIN idea and probably a few kinks still remain but, for Pete’s sake, any fifth-grader with Google Earth can turn this Marjah baloney into a laughable embarrassment. I’m no military strategist but I suspect that sort of bumbling image doesn’t do our military a whole lot of good at home or abroad, so why do it?

It can’t be to win over Afghanis, they live there. They know that Marjah is not bigger than Pittsburgh, Cleveland or Washington DC. They know that it’s no Taliban stronghold or a “linchpin” in Taliban logistics. I’m sure that if they get wind of how the US military characterized their farms it would confirm their belief that we’re all just foreign idiots and strengthen their resolve to get us out of there before more Afghans die for this nonsense.

Could it be to win back flagging American support for another ten years in Afghanistan? I doubt it, the American public knows, by now, that this enemy is a moving target and the last thing anyone wants is the 400 or 500 ISAF casualties per month predicted for this summer’s push into Kandahar.

And, of course, it’s possible that there’s a darker objective. There has been a lot of reportage coming out of the Marjah campaign about the frustration of our troops in waging a war that promises to keep civilian casualties low. If there’s one thing that will beef up support for more traditional murder and mayhem, in theater, it’s the notion that our troops are in greater danger because of counterinsurgency “caution.”

Regardless, it’s interesting to me that this big push in Helmand Province was shaping up mere weeks after Marine Maj. Gen. Richard Mills declared “Mission Accomplished” in Helmand Province (a la Fallujah):

“U.S. forces have driven the Taliban from most towns and villages in the strategic Helmand province of Afghanistan, leaving incoming troops with the mission of holding key areas and rebuilding the economy, Marine commanders say.”

“They’ve taken on the Taliban, the insurgency, right in the heartland and they’ve defeated them. I see us moving away from the clear phase and moving into the hold and build phase.”

The fun and games don’t stop at the Marjah pre-battle disinformation campaign, though. Notwithstanding Maj. Gen. Mills assessment of a done deal, it is now time, once again, to secure and occupy Marjah and turn it into a model Hooterville. As promised, Gen. McChrystal drops in from the sky and delivers the long-awaited “government-in-a-box.” Complete with one Haji Abdul Zahir, the newly appointed district governor of Marjah, the man handpicked by General McChrystal and Governor Mangal.

So far, Zahir has been working with a small crew of Western “advisors” and one Afghan assistant in a government compound described as having only rudimentary infrastructure. Odd, isn’t it, that in the bustling city of Marjah no better digs could be found for the new governor?

Zahir is getting lots of conspicuous help from Marjah’s liberators, being delivered here and there for meetings by Blackhawk “air-taxi” so that he projects the right image of authority from the get-go. This, of course, makes short-term sense but, as Joshua Foust astutely points out on Registan.net, Zahir is undoubtedly in for a rocky ride:

“Whenever you bring in an outsider, swaddle him with money and weapons, then he’s going to command power—he’d have to, there’d be no other way for the village/area to operate. But this brings back the problem of Abdul Rahman Jan, the former police chief: he’s pissed he’s not in charge. Brutal or no, the man has local influence, ties to the local community, and commands a lot of manpower. What we’ve done by installing Haji Zahir is create a power struggle in the area when there wasn’t one before—surely a less-than-optimal solution for restoring ‘those peaceful days’ of Zahir’s youth.”

“So the pattern here is one where the Taliban have brought relative stability and order (again, however brutal) to this place, and we’ve destroyed that in an effort to build something new. Breaking that pattern is of vital importance, but to do that you need to have a proper plan—simply nominating some expat pet Afghan to roll in and throw benjamins isn’t exactly a solid plan, nor is the current strategy of drawing dots on a map. This doesn’t look especially good.”

I have to agree that planting Zahir is not the best counterinsurgency idea ever; and that’s before even taking a glance at the man’s resume which, to put it diplomatically, is colorful. Zahir has two wives and thirteen children and twenty years ago he decided to take them all on a self-imposed exile to Germany. According to Zahir he was being harassed by the Taliban (in the 1980’s). During his 15 years in “exile,” Zahir worked variously as: a driver, a hotel worker and a laundry worker.

Zahir would probably still be anonymously working away in a German laundry today except that he ran afoul of German authorities and was convicted and imprisoned for four years for attempted murder. His victim: his stepson who had made the mistake of criticizing Zahir for beating his mother. After his release in 2000, Zahir (now persona non grata in Germany) returned to Afghanistan. Not appreciative of the finer distinctions between German law and tribal law, Zahir continues to protest that he did nothing untoward and should never have been imprisoned.

Basically what Zahir has to commend him for this job is that he’s a member of the right tribe.

If You Build It, They Will Come

Come Home to Marjah

You have to love American optimism (and total disregard for foreign cultures) – the day after Victory in Marjah was declared, this little scene played out:

“On Friday, the Marines sought to convene a meeting of residents at the mosque next to the Loy Chreh bazaar, a crowded, ramshackle place that once teemed with opium merchants who bought poppy paste from local farmers and resold the contraband to drug processors. Now it is abandoned.”

“The meeting was scheduled for 8 a.m. At 7:45, Lt. Col. Cal Worth pulled on his body armour in preparation for the 50-yard walk to the mosque. ‘Inshallah’ – God willing – there will actually be people out there,’ he said, peering down the street toward the mosque from his battalion’s headquarters. But nobody was there.”

“Fifteen minutes later, he looked again. Again, nobody. He repeated the routine a few more times before deciding at 9:15 to set off. On his way, he encountered two middle-aged men heading for the Marine base. They wanted to know when they could return to their stalls in the market to salvage a few goods. “

“He told them the market would be reopened soon and encouraged them to come back to work. The men were noncommittal.”

“’The Taliban are still here,’ one of the men said.”

And, indeed, the Taliban are still there, and will continue to be there – they live there, as have their families for hundreds if not thousands of years. But evidently, that is now Zahir’s problem.

According to an entertaining report on Sunday

“On Sunday, Afghan and American military leaders prodded Zahir with requests to exert more control and persuade reluctant Marjah leaders pushed out by the Taliban that they needed to return.” [A daunting prospect since the whole place is covered with improvised landmines.]

“Zahir spent most of the three-hour meeting listening to the concerns, posing questions and asking the U.S. Marines to pump more money into Marjah to get projects off the ground.”

“During Sunday’s meeting, the U.S. Army adviser working with Afghan forces told Zahir that the security forces were being constrained because there was no judicial system in place to jail suspected Taliban insurgents turned in by local residents.”

“’We need to sit down and have a very strong discussion about how we’re going to deal with Afghan justice for these men we know are hurting people,’ said Matt, who’s advising Afghan police in one section of Marjah. They look at me and smile because they know they’re going to be released within 24 to 48 hours. The people of southern Marjah are not going to be confident in our ability to bring security until we can permanently take those men off the battlefield,’ he said. ‘That’s where we earn the population’s trust.’”

Now see, I would have fully expected that any respectable “government-in-a-box” would have contained a fully operational judicial system – at the very least.

Marjah’s “G in B” had nothing in it but but an ex-con, a month of free passes for helicopter rides, a handful of advisors at $200K a pop, and bags of “petty cash.” Good luck, Marjah, we’ll be watching your democracy build-out progress on Google Earth. Oh, and Governor Zahir, watch your back; Abdul Rahman Jan is currently unemployed and your son-in-law is rumored to be coming out of exile . . .

[tags]Marjah, Helmand, Haji Abdul Zahir, Abdul Rahman Jan, Gen. McChrystal, Maj. Gen. Richard Mills[/tags]

Looking at the world through imperialist glasses transforms a complex, chaotic and exotic planet into a well-ordered simple and uniform place where the sun shines and the birds sing and global harmony prevails. The imperialist mindset is elegantly simplistic, as most religions are, to provide mass appeal for the “simple-minded” laity required to carry out the day-to-day business of Empire. This is easily accomplished because imperialism is a “feel-good” philosophy that rewards its subscribers for being the smartest, hippest, savviest, fairest, most successful, highly evolved and righteous inhabitants of the planet – ergo, the fittest to make the rules and bring the rest of humanity up to snuff.

And so it is that we Americans find ourselves totally engaged in Afghanistan (which most Americans still cannot locate on a world map) teaching its “backward” denizens to appreciate the finer points of democratization by making bad things happen to good people, thus proving that there is a “Better Way.” Unfortunately, while we may be world-class social engineering theoreticians, we Americans are no great shakes at doing actual business — witness the current pickle we find ourselves in. Also, unfortunately (for the rest of the world), since we are such totally awesome imperialists, most of the world gets to share our pain when our business deals go south.

It is not really all that mind-bendingly difficult to parse out where the problems apt to plague Empire lie, but imperialists tend not to trouble themselves with the nuts and bolts of a situation because they are busy being Big Thinkers and leave execution to less gifted (and motivated) appointees to the Rear Guard — and Time and the Empire march on. Imperialists are also not big on Lessons Learned, of which there are a boatload, both ancient and contemporary.

Here’s a good example of how Empire operates:

One of the first rules of Highly Successful Imperialists is to leave giant footprints wherever you tread. It’s not enough to insert one’s imperial self in foreign politics or military adventures; once on the scene it is necessary to build permanent edifices commemorating the fact that the Empire passed this way and has made a lasting impression on your little nation – thus, military bases and embassies are the first order of business off the boat. Last count Americans have built 700 military bases in Afghanistan (which is a touch larger than Texas).

As we speak, there is a huge expansion of the United States Embassy in Kabul. According to a report in Tuesday’s Washington Post:

“ . . . the unprecedented expansion of the embassy’s staff from 320 U.S. federal civilian employees early last year to more than 1,000 this spring had further strained the housing, food, security and transportation support services. Total staff strength is projected to reach 1,300 by the end of 2010.

“The jump in civilian staff numbers is designed to match a rapid increase in military deployments to Afghanistan and to create a ‘vibrant civ-mil partnership.’ But “new staff is arriving in Afghanistan before the Embassy can prepare position descriptions, ready housing, and office space, or adequate onsite supervision for the subject matter experts” hired under a special program for temporary Foreign Service officers, “many of whom have never worked in the government,” the report said.”

“When inspectors visited in September and October, the report said, no officer in the embassy’s political section had been on the job more than two months: ‘Almost all except the counselor and deputy were on their first political reporting tour. Many had not received a handover memo from their predecessor, and most did not receive an orientation to the section’s work.’”

“The ongoing demand for more personnel has meant that hiring orders are sometimes approved without designated jobs. In one case the inspectors cited, an agency had requested authorization ‘to create up to ten full-time positions in Afghanistan but had not yet decided what those positions would do when the employees actually arrived in country.’”

“Inspectors also noted “a lack of planning on how to link new, generously funded programs with an appropriate number of implementing officers and with sufficient officers to provide the requisite oversight.”

Somewhere in the Empire someone is proudly proclaiming the creation of 1,000 new jobs in the “civ-mil partnership” business . . .

But here’s my favorite tidbit, by far, from the WaPo report”

“The report described overall morale at the embassy as “challenged” by routine 80-hour workweeks that left many sleep-deprived. A constant stream of visitors — on trips described as “war tourism” by unnamed embassy staffers — included dozens of congressional delegations that made difficult, last-minute demands and required extensive arrangements. [My emphasis] Although it noted that such trips are important to build support for administration policy, the report said ‘it is not unusual for the Embassy to host multiple groups of Congressional visitors in one week replete with individual tours of the war zone, separate representational events, and sequential meetings with the same Afghan Government representatives.’” [My emphasis, again]

Deja Vu All Over Again

Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, told the Huffington Post Investigative Fund about waste of reconstruction funds in Afghanistan similar to that in Iraq–some $51 billion has been allocated to rebuild and stabilize, but tracking those funds proves next to impossible.

” . . . tracking that money sometimes seems as challenging as finding the leaders of the Taliban.”

“No one keeps an exact count of the number of private contractors working in Afghanistan — even though Congress ordered that be done more than two years ago. There’s no central list of all the contracts now in force. Government auditors cannot determine with confidence if the reconstruction money is being properly spent or meets the stated objectives. And efforts to improve coordination among the key U.S. agencies managing the money — the Pentagon, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development — have lagged at best.”

In 2003, the official plan included $2 billion to rebuild Iraq (after we blew it up). Taxpayers were told, at that time, that Iraq would pay them back from proceeds of oil revenues.

Well, now it’s 2010 and, so far, the bill for Iraqi reconstruction stands at $52 billion and a conservative estimate of what has been wasted or stolen comes in around $5 billion or 10%.

We’re still waiting for the Payback to start rolling in but, don’t hold your breath, most of the oil contracts these days are going to China, which holds the notes on much of the $1 trillion the United States spent on the Iraq war.

Anyone who’s ever had a hand in running a business knows that if you operated like this, you’d be bankrupt in no time. Fortunately these “businesses” are hooked up to a big fat pipeline delivering a never-ending flood of American taxpayers’ money.

The Loyal Opposition: Or Crying in the Wilderness

Oddly enough there are a few throwbacks still in government who question the Imperial Business Model and a bunch of them, led by Dennis Kucinich, were actually permitted to air their challenges this week. Kucinich introduced a Resolution, to carry out immediate troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, which was debated on Wednesday.

It’s not likely that you’ve heard much about it since the press corps seems to think that Eric Massa’s tickle-fights with aides are more important to the American public than how much longer they need to keep supplying cannon fodder for the Empire.

You might well not have heard anything at all if it were not for the political savvy of Patrick Kennedy who, coming from a long line of smooth operators, knew that the only way to get any press attention for Kucinich’s anti-war resolution would be to throw a tantrum, on the floor, that couldn’t be ignored.

Here’s what he had to say:

“There’s one, two press people in this gallery,” he thundered. “We’re talking about Eric Massa 24/7 on the TV. We’re talking about war and peace; $3 billion; 1,000 lives and no press! No press!”

“You want to know why the American public is fit (to be tied)? They’re fit because they’re not seeing their Congress do the work that they’re sent to do. It’s because the press, the press of the United States, is not covering the most significant issue of national importance and that’s the laying of lives down in the nation for the service of our country. It’s despicable, the national press corps right now.”

Patrick’s performance notwithstanding, the resolution was defeated, as expected, by a vote of 356-65; with 60 Democrats and five Republicans voting to end the war. Here’s a link to theroll-call in case you’re interested in who’s naughty and who’s nice. And my hat’s off to Kennedy for stepping up and throwing a fit for a good cause.

One important outcome, noted by Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim is this:

“Several powerful chairmen — David Obey (D-WI), Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and George Miller (D-CA) — voted to end the war, and Obey’s opposition will be particularly noted by war proponents, given that he controls the purse strings through the Appropriations Committee.”

Those of us who are of a less “imperial bent” might well ask “Why Now”? after the deliberations are over and the decision on the troop increase has been made. The answer to that one is that House Leadership would not permit such nay-saying pre-decisionmaking. I guess that would be un-patriotic . . .

Meanwhile Back at the Front

Just as an exercise, let’s think about what is the American mission underlying our military actions in Afghanistan. What eventual outcome there would American taxpayers deem “worth it”? By “it” I’m referring to some basics like money spent, lives lost and the impact of those decisions on our domestic well-being and national security.

At first it was to eliminate Al Qaeda where it had taken up residence. Once embarked on that mission, we quickly discovered that AQ had friends in high Afghan places – and we called them “Taliban” –for ease of identification — to cover all of the princelings, drug lords, gun runners, separatists and Imperial Infidel Haters of a hundred tribal regions. We learned that AQ and the Taliban were everywhere and nowhere and fighting them was like playing Whack-a-Mole or Vietnam War Anniversary Edition.

At least in Iraq the mission had a catchy name – “Liberate and Leave” (but then Iraq was always the Empire’s favorite). Seven years later some will argue that the Liberation was a success, the Leaving not so much. Even though the “Mission Accomplished” was issued ages ago . . .

I have to admit, I’m a little clearer on the redefined Afghanistan mission. It has been made clear from Imperial Headquarters that the new mission is to protect the Afghan people from harm and thereby win their everlasting affection and support who will someday make stand-up citizens of the Imperium. No less than Gen. McClueless, himself, spends much of his time reining in the dogs of war and publicly apologizing when they get loose.

If I had to give the new operation a letter grade, it would be about a D+.

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) would undoubtedly give it a lower grade. The AIHRC put out a bulletin on February 23, 2010 stating that:

“The PGF (Pro-Government Forces – that’s us) Operation ‘Mushtarak’ in Marjah, Helmand province has been touted as a new type of operation, with greater planning and cooperation with Afghan National Security Forces and greater care toward preventing civilian harm. While such efforts are welcome, AIHRC is concerned at the loss of life and civilian harm already caused by this operation. AIHRC found that in the first 12 days of Operation Mushtarak 28 civilians, including 13 children, were killed and approximately 70 civilians, including 30 children, were injured. Witnesses suggested the majority of the casualties were caused by PGF artillery and rocket-fire.”

“AIHRC is also concerned about the level of displacement caused by this operation. Approximately 3461 families have been displaced as a result of Operation Mushtarak. Crowded into Lashkargah city or other surrounding areas with little access to humanitarian support, these IDPs face serious shelter and food problems. The Commission calls on government authorities and their international partners to address these critical humanitarian needs immediately.”

“The recent surge in violence has not been limited to Marjah. On 21 February 2010, international military forces ordered an air strike on three civilian vehicles in Chobzar region of Kejran district of Daikondi province. Twenty-one Afghan civilians were killed and 16 other civilians were injured including children and women. There is so far little evidence justifying such an attack on what appears to have been a clearly civilian target.”

“This strike appears to violate ISAF’s own tactical restrictions on airstrikes, and raises questions of distinction and proportionality under international law. The AIHRC calls upon international forces to publish the results of their investigation regarding this incident as soon as possible. In addition, they should provide appropriate compensation for the casualties and losses sustained by the civilians. Those responsible for executing this attack, and for providing the misinformation that led to it, should be appropriately investigated and disciplined.”

That’s quite unsettling since Marjah was just the dress rehearsal for the Big Show in Kandahar this summer. Here’s an under-reported nugget from Army Times published in January, 2010, clueing us in on what to expect later this year

“Americans should prepare to accept hundreds of U.S. casualties each month in Afghanistan during spring offensives with enemy forces.”

“The dire forecast was made by retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, an adjunct professor of international affairs at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, in a periodic assessment of political and security issues he has conducted in the war zone since 2003.”

“’What I want to do is signal that this thing is going to be $5 billion to $10 billion a month and 300 to 500 killed and wounded a month by next summer. That’s what we probably should expect. And that’s light casualties,’ said McCaffrey, who is also president of his own consulting firm in Arlington, Va., and has conducted numerous trips to the war zones to assess the political and military challenges at hand.”

“His reports are compiled with information gathered in theater and from research conducted beforehand. McCaffrey traveled to the war zone for this report as an academic from West Point at the invitation of theater commander Gen. David Petraeus, commander of Central Command, and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the operational commander in Afghanistan, he said.”

“Building a viable Afghan state with its own security force, he said, is a three- to 10-year commitment, as it is unlikely the U.S. will achieve the political and military goals set forth by President Barack Obama in his Dec. 1 speech announcing a 30,000-troop increase.”

Who gets to decide what a “viable Afghan state” looks like, I wonder? I seriously doubt that it involves a capital city with 40% unemployment.

The LA Times (which has been doing a great job on the human story of the conflict) reports that:

“Since 2001, Congress has authorized more than $39 billion in humanitarian and reconstruction aid for Afghanistan. But hundreds of millions of dollars that would lead to new factories and dams have been eroded by power shortages, wasteful contractors, security dangers and corruption.”

“What has emerged across the provinces and throughout Kabul is a cruel economic pecking order of an unfinished war. Afghan businessmen dealing in imports are thriving, their new marble and tinted-glass houses rise like jewels on rough streets. Those working with foreign governments and international organizations are also prospering. But the rest, the majority, barely survive and wait for jobs that pay more than peddling oranges or washing cars.”

“ . . . in their experience, jobs vanish as quickly as they appear, many filled as a result of bribes or family connections. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ said Mohammad Yaqub, who studied agriculture in Russia, but has no money for a kickback. ‘I can’t leave Afghanistan for work. Who would feed my family?’”

“Kabul is a place of desperate men searching to little avail. They wander through traffic past firewood sellers and boys hawking balloons; the war often seems distant, echoes in faraway mountains. But the unemployed are occasionally reminded that bloodshed can strike the capital with unnerving abandon. Suicide bombers and militants recently attacked two guesthouses, killing 16 people, mostly foreigners, near the circle where the laborers gather.”

Where Have All the Allies Gone?

Meanwhile some of the Empire Boosters from Abroad are rethinking their Afghanistan cost-benefit analysis. Yesterday’s Washington Post carried the news that:

“British Foreign Secretary David Miliband called Wednesday for early and substantive political negotiations between the Afghanistan government and the Taliban and other insurgent groups, saying that military successes will never be enough to end the war.”

“The idea of political engagement with those who would directly or indirectly attack our troops is difficult,” Miliband said. ‘But dialogue is not appeasement, and political space is not the same as veto power or domination.’”

“’Now is the time for the Afghans to pursue a political settlement with as much vigor and energy as we are pursuing the military and civilian effort,’ he said.”

The US, of course, has a different approach, as stated by Sec. of Defense Gates in Kabul on Monday. He said:

“ . . . the timing of political reconciliation ‘depends on the conditions on the ground in terms of when people, particularly the more senior commanders, realize that the odds against their success are no longer in their favor.’”

Miliband, knowing the US would say that, suggested that talks could proceed even while fighting takes place. Apparently, Miliband agrees with Afghan President Karzai that although “preconditions should set the terms of any eventual agreement, they should not prevent a dialogue from developing.”

The Dutch are certainly over it and don’t figure it’s worth continuing given the divisiveness the Afghan war has created in their government.

And Karzai – who’d have guessed? — is all of a sudden acting quite presidential and lining up in-region support with Iran and Pakistan and setting up peace jirga’s on his own. Looks like the whole good governance thing has gone to his head . . . definitely a “be careful what you wish for” moment.

Clearly most of the world is weary of the cock-up that the US has made of the Middle East and it might be a good time to withdraw in the name of national security, which, in my opinion, seems a whole lot more threatened today, than it was on September 10, 2001. Evidently it’s one thing to support a lusty, thriving global go-getter of an Empire Builder and quite another to follow a financially anemic, over-extended, tottering, trouble-making juggernaut over a cliff.

What did YOUR tax dollars buy today?

[tags]Afghanistan, AIHRC, Kabul, American Embassy, Patrick Kennedy, Dennis Kucinich, David Obey, Stuart Bowen[/tags]

One of my first memorable lessons in human behavior had to do with Benny the “Scourge of the Schoolyard.”  Benny would just as soon spit on your new shoes or steal your lunch as look at you.  Every society spawns its sociopaths and Benny was ours.  I remember having nightmares about Benny, and half of our class walked eight blocks out of their way to and from school, everyday, to avoid Benny’s route.  Due to Benny’s obvious leadership skills and the undeniable social advantages of being in Benny’s good graces, he was accompanied, at all times, by a few carefully vetted goons. 

The goons were a changeable cast of characters made up of misfits who were temporarily and inscrutably exempt from Benny’s torture.  One that I remember went by the nickname “Moochie,” in those days.   Moochie stuck in my mind for three reasons: 1) although he was a strapping boy in all other respects, his left arm was a short “flipper” (that he used with surprising dexterity); 2) he lived two doors down from my family which brought the prospect of surprise attacks by Benny much too close for comfort; and 3) Moochie’s inevitable fall from grace involved a spectacularly bloody broken nose (which never healed right), and one of only a very few instances of discipline brought to bear on the leader of the pack.  Benny actually had to work, after school, for months, in Moochie’s father’s lumberyard to help defray Moochie’s medical expenses.  That was how we did things back then . . .

After Moochie was no longer in thrall to Benny, he became just an ordinary kid again and seemed to be at least unscathed but possibly relieved by that twist of fate.  Years after that, I heard him joking about his days of “running with Benny.”  And — despite the fact that there wasn’t a kid in our age group in town that hadn’t suffered some permanent psychological damage at Benny’s pleasure – Peter (Moochie) alleged that Benny was really an OK kid at heart; just terribly, tragically misunderstood.  I distinctly remember thinking “Bullshit!”

As time marched on, I learned that the Benny-Moochie phenomenon was far from atypical, as a matter of fact it is quite endemic and even holds on lustily into old age.  I’m sorry to say that I have observed gang mentality and bullying in retirement homes. I would like to be able to disavow gang mentality, like so many other societal ills, as an aberration occurring under the influence of overdoses of testosterone.  Alas, anyone who has been set upon by a female bully knows that that theory has no legs.

Through the Looking Glass

So it is that, after my little trip down memory lane, I find myself dropped off at the intersection of Bush and Rove.  I’m not yet sure of the equation – does Bush = Benny? Or Moochie? And vice versa – what I do know is that I’ve seen this one before and I know how it ends: with a long, panning shot of the Nixon Bush Library as the sun rises and America the Beautiful plays softly in the background.

Seriously.  Karl Rove has just released his long-awaited “accident report” on the Bush Administration; it is entitled:  Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight (what Fight?) — and don’t say I didn’t warn you.   Rove’s book is 600 pages of unrelieved apologetics and revisionist word play that doesn’t even tip it’s hat at the most generic of facts.  The Wizard of Oz is more reality-based than Rove’s book because it at least makes no bones about the Emerald City being all green – just like real emeralds.  This is what happens when disgraced politicians are in the minority, have time on their hands and still far too much access to the media.

The Bush posse was a gang of the most egregious political manipulators in decades of American presidential politics and they have the balls to get in front of the American public and explain to us that we’re not really smart or savvy enough to pass judgment on their pathetic performance.

Rove doesn’t even have the good sense to keep his head down while the bullets are still flying.  I’m beginning to think that Republicans have made a pact to ignore reality, amp up the sound and eventually their version of life in America will take root.  Why not?  If water-boarding is so damn effective why not make use of the whole bag of tricks and take a whack at brainwashing.  There’s no other plausible excuse for such blatant lying.  And sure enough, the spores that Rove has just released show every sign of blossoming into a national case of damp rot.

For example, recently MSNBC invited Brad Blakeman in to discuss the release of Rove’s book; unless you were expecting something other than Blakeman’s total support for the Bush administration and Rove’s book, you would have skipped this media moment as way too predictable.  Unfortunately you would have missed David Corn having to resort to schoolyard tactics to stop Brad Blakeman from perpetuating that old Bush chestnut that we went to war with Iraq not because of WMDs but because Saddam Hussein wouldn’t permit UN inspectors into the country.  Here’s how that went:

Blakeman: President Bush did not bring us into this war because of WMD. He brought us into the war…

Corn: What!?

Blakeman: …because Saddam Hussein failed…

Corn: What!?

Blakeman: …to allow inspections of the sites the U.N. demanded be inspected.

Corn: Brad you’re absolutely wrong.

Blakeman: I’m right.

Corn: The inspectors were in. They were for months before the war.

Blakeman: Come on David.

Corn: I’ll bet you $1000 right now! $1000 the inspectors were there.

Blakeman didn’t take up the bet.

My all-time favorite story about that particular bit of whitewash comes from way back in 2003, when Dubya took it out for a spin for the first time, boldly enough, at the United Nations.  Bush’s exact words were: “We gave him [Saddam Hussein] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in.”

Here’s a bit of Joe Conason’s report that appeared in Salon, at the time:

A “darn good” quote that almost nobody quoted

“We gave him [Saddam Hussein] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in.”

“As hard to explain as what Bush said is the press corps’ failure to report his stunning gaffe. The sentence quoted above doesn’t appear in today’s New York Times report, for example. Yet there is no question about what he said — undoubtedly to the amazement of both Kofi Annan, who was sitting beside him at the time, and the dozens of reporters who were present during their brief joint press conference.”

I’d venture a guess that the press would have been embarrassed to print such an obvious boner.  Dana Milbank, of the Washington Post, was one of the few who dared to go where no reporter tread, writing this:

“The president’s assertion that the war began because Iraq did not admit inspectors appeared to contradict the events leading up to war this spring: Hussein had, in fact, admitted the inspectors and Bush had opposed extending their work because he did not believe them effective.” [My emphasis]

That was quite diplomatic of Milbank, at the time, but evidently he has gotten over any delicacy about reporting on Bush & Co., in the meantime.  Here’s a cutting from Dana Milbank’s column on Rove’s book from this past Sunday:

“His new book, “Courage and Consequence,” promises to ‘pull back the curtain on my journey to the White House and my years there.’ What he divulges nearly made me choke on a pretzel.”

“That business about President George W. Bush misleading the nation about Iraq? Didn’t happen. ‘Did Bush lie us into war? Absolutely not,’ Rove writes.

“Condoning torture? Wrong! ‘The president never authorized torture. He did just the opposite.’”

“Foot-dragging on global warming? Au contraire. ‘He was aggressive and smart on this front.’”

“You thought Bush was responsible for turning a budget surplus into a record deficit and nearly doubling the national debt? That he was in charge when the economy plunged into the worst collapse since the Great Depression? Guess again. Spending was “far below average” under Bush, who led the nation through “the longest period of economic growth since President Reagan.”

Here’s the tongue-in-cheek disclaimer that Milbank tacked on to the end of his article that basically, says it all:

CORRECTION

Every article about George W. Bush ever written by Dana Milbank was wrong. The Post regrets the error.

For anyone hoping to gain honest, reliable insight into the inner workings of the Bush administration – fugeddaboutit – you won’t know any more after plowing through Rove’s hero-worshipping, score-settling tome of a fairy tale.  The one good thing that I can say about Courage and Consequence is that the timing is great for reminding Americans of what it was like to live during that Republican regime and to ponder over allowing anything similar to happen in the immediate future.

As David Corn put it in his article on Mother Jones:

“As Rove makes the rounds on his book tour, he ought to be pressed on all this. There is no doubt that the Bush posse mischaracterized what was known and not known about WMDs in Iraq. It was easy—and useful—for them to do so, for they didn’t care to get this right. (After all, as Rove writes, the Iraq war would have likely not occurred without the WMD argument: “Congress was very unlikely to have supported the use-of-force resolution without the WMD threat.”) Bush and his aides, Rove included, were not looking to lead an informed debate based on the best information available; they were aiming to start a war. Almost by any means necessary. They spun the nation into Iraq—and now Rove is spinning to cover that up.”

If, by now, you haven’t had quite enough of Rove and his masterpiece, Media Matters has done a bang-up job of parsing out and exploding the Rovian version of life as we knew it with lots of pesky facts included.  It’s called Going Rove.

And, just for fun, Huffington Post has a piece up called The 13 Must-Read Passages From Courage And Consequence “to help you decide whether this 608-page opus is worth reading . . . Take a look at Rove’s best excerpts and vote for the most Rovian.

[tags]Karl Rove, President George W. Bush, Courage and Consequence, Saddam Hussein, WMD, David Corn, Dana Milbank, Bart Blakeman[/tags]

Well, frumps, over the weekend I came across the story of a pre-schooler in Colorado who had a very close call but, through divine intervention, should now, I am happy to report, live long and prosper. The saving grace for this tot came in the form of his/her expulsion from Boulder, CO’s Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Pre-School due to his/her lesbian parents’ unacceptability per church and school policy.

Before I proceed with the story, though, I’d like to make a few disclosures. I am no fan of the Catholic Church (or most organized religions, for that matter). However, my objections to what happened in Boulder have far more to do with capital “H” Hypocrisy than they do with Catholicism. Hypocrisy seems to have infected the body of American society like some sort of galloping cancer. I have theories about why that is happening now – but, more on that later. For now, let it suffice to say, that I have an insider’s perspective on just how riddled with Hypocrisy the Catholic Church has become.

I also have no illusions that this is a battle that can be won. Crusty old institutions like the Catholic Church are too scabbed over to even bleed, when assailed, they simply ooze putrid pus that inevitably gets all over the assailant. No matter – I feel better for getting that out . . .

My Life As a Catholic

As I said, I have personal experience of attending one of these venerable old gulags for too many years; enough experience, moreover, to know that anything that I say about how horrific and damaging that experience was to my childish psyche will be met with an uproarious opposition from those who remember their Catholic School years as a time of “lollipops and roses” under the tutelage of jolly old nuns and priests who loved little children more than life itself. I won’t be changing their minds . . .

Of course the 21^st Century Catholic School is undoubtedly somewhat different than the 1950’s gothic schools of my memory. I grew up in an old-fashioned East Coast steel town largely populated by fairly recent immigrants grateful for the brute labor jobs on offer at the steel mill. Their families were large, chaotic affairs of too many children with too little home supervision who counted on the legendary nuns to civilize their offspring.

Hard-working, over-worked parents in those days, in that environment, happily gave the schools carte blanche in the corporal punishment department in the hope that the school would return well-mannered, educated children fit for their upwardly mobile social aspirations. Most of my old school chums will remember that if word leaked out that a kid had been roughed up in school, odds were good that the unfortunate victim would get a bigger, badder thrashing at home that night. Back in the day, nuns were so famous for effective “discipline” that kids who were expelled from public schools were temporarily admitted for the nuns to “break” them. I remember one boy, in particular, who chose to go to Reform School when faced with a choice between that and the local Catholic school. Most parents were as afraid of the nuns as their kids were, with good reason; in those days, the Catholic families’ social life revolved around the church-school complex so being on the outs with the clergy could spell virtual ostracism.

That Was Then, This Is Now

Today, although I don’t keep close tabs on that world, I do know that Catholic schools, which are private, are somewhat “enrollment-challenged.” Many have closed for various demographic reasons and those still-standing apparently have looser enrollment standards. One story that I came across, this morning, cited a woman who related that her niece, who is Jewish, attends a Catholic School and, after classes are over, is ferried across town to her Hebrew school to prepare for her Bat Mitzvah. This is the same church that, fifty years ago, referred to the public schools in our town as the “pagan schools” and implied that anyone who set foot in a synagogue would automatically roast in hell forever.

Even with fewer schools to staff, there is a shortage of actual nuns to teach in them. Evidently it’s harder for young women to “hear the call” than it used to be. “Lay teachers” (as civilian teachers are referred to) supplement the staff of most Catholic schools today however, the best and brightest of education graduates are not clamoring for these jobs because the Church is, shall we say, parsimonious about salary.

So it is that we arrive at the current day in which a pre-schooler is expelled from a Catholic School because his/her parents are gay. According to a Denver news report:

“The Denver Archdiocese says the student’s parents are two women and their homosexual relationship violates the school’s beliefs and policy. According to the Archdiocese, parents who enroll their kids at Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic School are expected to follow the Catholic Church’s beliefs.”

“’No person shall be admitted as a student in any Catholic school unless that person and his/her parent(s) subscribe to the school’s philosophy and agree to abide by the educational policies and regulations of the school and Archdiocese,’” the statement said.”

“Because this student’s parents are homosexual, the Archdiocese says they were in clear violation of the school’s policy. Legal analysts tell 9NEWS the Archdiocese is within its rights.”

A Very Slippery Slope

Of course the Archdiocese is “within its rights” — it’s a private school. The dilemma that the Archdiocese may find itself in, quickly however, is that its “policy” is broad enough and vague enough that it might be construed to exclude a large majority of its current student body.

For example: The Catholic Church does not condone divorce, under any circumstances (I know that for a fact since my mother was excommunicated for divorcing my father whose weekend pastime was a) getting drunk and b) bouncing my mother, my baby brother and myself off the walls of our apartment). My mother accepted her punishment and walked my brother and I to Mass on Sunday and waited outside of the church to walk us home. I was so young that I was ashamed that my mother could no longer enter the church but the important thing was that we all lived longer lives because of her “sin.”

So. I think that, in order to be fair, Sacred Heart in Boulder needs to go down the rolls and expel any kids whose parents are divorced, especially the ones that are remarried.

And then, of course, there’s the “birth control issue.” If any of those kids’ parents are practicing Birth Control – out they go. It’s clearly not allowed.

Or, how about adultery or, for that matter, how about parents who break any of the Ten Commandments; isn’t all of it “against Church beliefs”? Why the obsession with homosexuality?

And, while we’re at it, maybe someone could remind me exactly how we’ve come to believe that measly little homosexuality, affecting only a small percentage of the world’s population, is this huge biblically proscribed taboo that carries far more weight and gets far more attention than any of the other innate anti-social behaviors that the Bible rummages around in and warns us off of?

Rev. Mel White who is a crusader for the inclusion of LGBT people in organized religion has said some of the most sensible things, in my opinion, on this topic. If I were independently wealthy I’d buy him a Coke and some airtime on national TV. Here are a few gems from Rev. White:

“Over the centuries people who misunderstood or misinterpreted the Bible have done terrible things. The Bible has been misused to defend bloody crusades and tragic inquisitions; to support slavery, apartheid, and segregation; to persecute Jews and other non-Christian people of faith; to support Hitler’s Third Reich and the Holocaust; to oppose medical science; to condemn interracial marriage; to execute women as witches; and to support the Ku Klux Klan. Shakespeare said it this way: “Even the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”

“Even when we believe the Scriptures are “infallible” or “without error,” it’s terribly dangerous to think that our understanding of every biblical text is also without error. We are human. We are fallible. And we can misunderstand and misinterpret these ancient words — with tragic results.”

“Almost 1,000 people believed Jim Jones was a faithful interpreter of God’s Word. They died with him in the jungles of Guyana. I studied Jones and leaders of other cults while writing the book and documentary film, Deceived. I found that the only people who were able to break free of the dangerous influence of such Bible-quoting cultic gurus were the ones who took the Bible seriously enough to study the texts themselves and make their own decisions about their meaning. The others ‘leave their bones in the desert.’”

The Bible is a book about God — not a book about human sexuality. [My emphasis] In fact, the Bible accepts sexual practices that we condemn and condemns sexual practices that we accept. Lots of them! Here are a few examples.

DEUTERONOMY 22:13-21: If it is discovered that a bride is not a virgin, the Bible demands that she be executed by stoning immediately.

DEUTERONOMY 22:22: If a married person has sex with someone else’s husband or wife, the Bible commands that both adulterers be stoned to death.

MARK 10:1-12: Divorce is strictly forbidden in both Testaments, as is remarriage of anyone who has been divorced.

LEVITICUS 18:19: The Bible forbids a married couple from having sexual intercourse during a woman’s period. If they disobey, both shall be executed.

MARK 12:18-27: If a man dies childless, his widow is ordered by biblical law to have intercourse with each of his brothers in turn until she bears her deceased husband a male heir.

“I’m certain you don’t agree with these teachings from the Bible about sex. And you shouldn’t. The list goes on: The Bible says clearly that sex with a prostitute is acceptable for the husband but not for the wife. Polygamy (more than one wife) is acceptable, as is a king’s having many concubines. (Solomon, the wisest king of all, had 1,000 concubines.) Slavery and sex with slaves, marriage of girls aged 11-13, and treatment of women as property are all accepted practices in the Scriptures. On the other hand, there are strict prohibitions against interracial marriage, birth control, discussing or even naming a sexual organ, and seeing one’s parents nude.”

All of the attention and airtime that the Church lavishes on homosexuality persuade me that the Church likes to pick its fights carefully, while discreetly remaining mum on other subjects — and that’s hypocritical. Maybe it’s the decades of pederasty scandals that have made Catholics in some quarters so positively shrill about the subject of homosexuality. From a human nature perspective that’s somewhat understandable but still doesn’t cut it when, at the same time, the Church can be proven to have assiduously denied and covered up the transgressions of its own. These women are lavishing love and care on a child to that extent that they enter the child in a private school; they are not sexually abusing a child. But somehow the church feels that its abusive members merit more understanding and protection than those who accept their sexual identity and choose to live it honestly and forthrightly without harming others.

Just in the last few months there has been a riot of Catholic Church news revolving around its internal problems involving sexuality along with its stubborn refusal to budge on its proscriptions for its followers. This bit comes from the Telegraph (UK) on the recent investigation in Ireland of decades of child abuse by priests and those who covered it up:

“The crisis erupted in November [2009] with the publication of an explosive Irish government investigation detailing the crimes and revealing that church leaders in Dublin had spent decades protecting child-abusing priests from the law. The Murphy Report found the Church had “obsessively” hidden child abuse from 1975 to 2004.”

“Armagh Archbishop Sean Brady, the primate of all Ireland, told Vatican Radio the meetings were part of a “journey of repentance, reconciliation and renewal” for the Irish Church. The 24 bishops will each speak to the pontiff about their knowledge of decades-long sexual, psychological and physical abuse of minors by parish priests and other clergy in Catholic orphanages, workhouses, and other institutions. One bishop said the talks would be ‘frank.’ The revelations shocked Ireland, and four of the five bishops who were criticised for failing to act on reports of paedophilia resigned.”

Meanwhile, in Germany, we have this story emerging, which involves the school where the Pope’s brother Georg is currently choirmaster:

“The child sexual abuse scandal in Germany’s Catholic Church continued to spread on Friday as a spokesperson confirmed abuse at Regensburg’s cathedral school for their famous boys’ choir, the Domspatzen. Victims have come forward to report abuse at the institution, and the two men, who both died in 1984, will still be charged with their crimes, the diocese spokesperson said.”

“One suspect, who was a religion teacher and the institution’s assistant leader, was removed from service in 1958. The other man was reportedly censured in 1971. ‘We want to investigate with transparency,’ the spokesperson said.”

“The diocese said it planned to create a commission to study the school’s old files and archives between 1958 and 1973, when the abuse is thought to have occurred.”

Elsewhere in Germany:

“On Thursday Bavarian police also raided the Ettal monastery, which runs a Catholic boarding school, on suspicion of child pornography. According to daily Münchner Merkur, a monk there has admitted to uploading such material to the internet. The monastery also admitted to at least two cases of sexual abuse.”

“The scandal was revealed in late January when Berlin’s prestigious Canisius school announced that around 50 former students had claimed they were sexually abused by priests. Since then lawyers for victims have said more than 120 people across the country have come forward with allegations of abuse by up to 12 different priests and teachers at other Catholic institutions. So far 18 of 27 dioceses have been affected. The country’s top Catholic bishop Robert Zollitsch, who issued a public apology in late February, is schedules to meet with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican in one week to discuss the scandal.”

And who hasn’t heard about the scandal at “ground zero” involving a Nigerian member of the Vatican choir who’s leisure time was spent procuring male prostitutes (some of whom were seminarians) for international visitors to the Vatican as well as a “Gentleman of the Pope” (a sort of high-ranking, well-connected civilian who ushers visitors in to have their audience with the Pope) who is currently incarcerated on unrelated corruption charges.

And then, of course, we can top that all off with Catholic Charities of Washington, DC making good on their threat to stop offering spousal benefits to employees should the District vote to approve Gay Marriage.

This all boils down to a very simple equation, in my mind, that has to do with people who live (preach) in glass houses . . . it might be a good thing for the Catholic Church to put its own house in order before it barges into others’ homes and lives and families with advice on how to live . . .

P.S.: To the family in Boulder that is no longer welcome at Sacred Heart Church and School – my wish for you is that you grow every day in family love and strength and cherished memories — and never look back.

[tags]Catholic Church, homosexuality, pedophilia, school expulsion[/tags]

www.myspaceantics.com

Well, frumps, things are definitely starting to look up for Democrats and the Obama administration if my Lunatic Fringe barometer can still be trusted. I’ve discovered, over the past year, that there is a quantifiable inverse relation between the fortunes of the Obama White House and threats of violence from the far-right reaches of the blogosphere. None too stable at the best of times, these folks have a tendency to fly around the room backwards whenever Obama shows signs of succeeding at advancing his domestic social policy agenda.

Obama has an interesting way of achieving his ends. He allows debate to rage unbridled, allows people to act out vent melodramatically until we are all simply exhausted by the topic. Then, as we mentally move on, he quietly administers CPR and, next thing you know, dead-in-the-water issues are moving apace toward realization. It’s a pretty impressive strategy, to me, at least.

Just think about the health care reform battle. A year went by while we raged and fumed on our various sides of the issue. As Obama put it in his Health Care Summit, last week, “everything that could be said, had been said.” Gray-haired grannies duked it out with the local teamsters in Town Halls. Conspiracy theorists pumped up the volume and warned us all of The New World Order and/or Socialism/Fascism that lie just around the corner.

Gun nuts decided to pack a little heat as long as we were all taking stands. Constitutionalists called for either a Second Revolution or a Second Civil War (take your pick, but the Civil one has better costumes) causing a world-wide shortage of small arms ammunition. Some were ready to chuck it all and just plain secede. All because Obama and Co. got the wild idea that the American people might benefit from some help with the insurance industry that was eating their lunch and bankrupting millions.

Clearly Obama hasn’t learned yet to never underestimate the ignorance and paranoia of “just plain folks.” And before anyone decides to whack me with the nasty stick, I’m not saying that I think Americans are stupid – gullible, perhaps and intellectually lazy, almost certainly – but not stupid. It takes a lot of intestinal fortitude just to be an American in the 21^st century. It’s no simple thing to be a member of one of the most technically advanced capitalistic empires on Earth. It’s a 24/7 job just to keep up – why else would we need so many Iphones and Smartphones and Droids, websites and apps and such, if life was free and easy?

Since we are harried and over-stimulated and overcommitted in every way, it’s no surprise that determined people, with their own agenda, can make us believe that up is down and left is right. We spend our days in a cacophonous illusory echo chamber that very few of us choose to completely opt out of, for whatever reasons. Living in such an environment, it is little wonder that the loudest, shrillest, scariest voices are the ones that imprint the heaviest — especially on the relatively young because they literally do not have the bandwidth to fact check, mull over or otherwise process the information blared at them and they have never known anything else. Besides, when you’re young and immortal, it’s kind of sexy and fun to get scared out of your mind, every once in a while, and to live as if every moment is a life-altering crisis.

Bipartisanism is For Sissies

So it is that the Right Blogosphere is currently seething, once again, with righteous indignation, Revolutionary fever dreams and pure hatred whipped up by fat and happy influence peddlers amping up a pack of recycled, long-debunked lies that never fail to get the “celebrity thinkers,” from the shallow end, foaming at the mouth with blood in their eyes.

Whenever this happens, it invariably means that the Armies of the Right fear defeat – and it’s then that my heart sings.

This time it started out slow, predictably and anti-climactically after last week’s “bipartisan” health care summit. The following day, a solicitous Liz Cheney, showing a rare glimpse of her nurturing side, warned Democrats that proceeding with passing the Health Care Reform bill will “destroy your career.”

She said:

“Speaker Pelosi this morning is out there saying that — “You know, go ahead and vote for this, even if it’s going to destroy your career,” which it will, because the American people do not support it.”

This came in one of Chris Wallace’s Sunday in the Park with Liz sessions, which is always entertaining in a grotesquely prurient way – watch:

I have to suppose that Liz Cheney comes by her blogging cred, her Sunday Morning mouth-off rights and her political career advisory role on the basis of the gene pool she slithered out of. One has to wonder if her Daddy had been an astronaut would NASA now have her flying the space shuttle? Enough of Liz, she’s predictably boring with a soupcon of venom thrown in.

A little further “out there” was Bill Kristol who preceded his analysis of the Health Care Summit by admitting that he “has a life” and didn’t watch it — clearly not an obstacle when your analysis of anything Obama consists of parroting fourth-grade-level all-purpose Republican talking points. Kristol went on to make this cogent remark:

“you compared it at the beginning of the hour to a dog-and- pony show, and I thought to myself, ‘That’s really an insult to dog-and- pony shows, you know? Those are pretty — I like the dog shows there on the Animal Planet.’”

Getting down to serious analysis, Kristol added:

“ . . . many people were impressive. The president showed his usual professorial ability to sort of say certain things and highlight certain facts or alleged facts. Paul Ryan and Lamar Alexander and some of the Republicans did fine.”

Paul Ryan is the Boy Wonder who came up with the GOP’s alternative budget that proposes doing away with Social Security and Medicare but not a word about doing away with War. Lamar Alexander was just, well . . . wrong about so many things. Obama patiently explained to him why he was wrong only to have to listen to Lamar regurgitate the same wrong stuff later in the day. So, those were Kristol’s Health Care Summit Heroes.

Moving right along, Michelle Malkin is always good for a laugh and certainly didn’t disappoint on the subject of the Health Care Summit. Her article perpetuated the dumb-ass notion that the Senate reconciliation process is one and the same as the “nuclear option.” It’s embarrassingly wrong to conflate the two but “nuclear option” sounds so much scarier than reconciliation. Here’s that in Malkin’s blogging-best verbiage:

“It’s official. After months of threatening to push the button on the so-called nuclear option, reconciliation — the parliamentary maneuver that Harry Reid said “nobody” is talking about and that President Obama said Americans didn’t care about last week — is a go.”

Now, I know as well as anyone that it’s hard to break bad habits but, you know, Republicans, you’re just making yourselves look ignorant throwing this “nuclear option” thing around willy-nilly. If you don’t understand the difference between reconciliation and the nuclear option, then why should anyone listen to anything else you have to say?

Once and for all, in terms that a bright eight-year-old can understand here it is:

“In U.S. politics, the nuclear option is an attempt by a majority of the United States Senate to change the body’s rules by invoking a point of order to essentially declare a particular Senate procedure, such as the filibuster, unconstitutional, rather than seeking formal cloture with a supermajority of 60 senators or invoking reconciliation. Although it is not provided for in the formal rules of the Senate, the procedure is the subject of a 1957 parliamentary opinion and has been used on several occasions since. Senator Trent Lott (Republican of Mississippi) first called the option “nuclear” in March 2003; proponents later attempted to rebrand it as the constitutional option. Other names have included the ExLax option, the Turnip-truck option, and the Byrd option.”

“The maneuver was brought to prominence in 2005 when then-Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) threatened its use to end Democratic-led filibusters of judicial nominees submitted by President George W. Bush. In response to this threat, Democrats threatened to shut down the Senate and prevent consideration of all routine and legislative Senate business. The ultimate confrontation was prevented by the Gang of 14, a group of seven Democratic and seven Republican Senators, all of whom agreed to oppose the nuclear option and oppose filibusters of judicial nominees, except in extraordinary circumstances.”

Rachel Maddow, equally exasperated, did a great job of shining a light on this particular piece of GOP puffery. Watch:

Even the ever-loving National Republican Congressional Committee got into the act with their new website with the doomsday title of CODE RED, where terrified Republicans can learn just what phony aspects of health care reform to be most afraid, to wit:

A Government Takeover of Health Care: Why Do We Fight?

“The Democrats who run Washington are determined to ram their government takeover of health care through Congress regardless of the cost, the consequences, or the opposition of the American people. We’re fighting this reckless proposal because – just like the bills already passed by the Democrat-run House and Senate – the latest plan by President Obama will:

• Radically Increase Government Spending
• Raise Taxes on Families and Small Businesses
• Destroy Jobs
• Cut Medicare for Seniors
• Force You Out of Coverage You Like
• Allow for Taxpayer Funding of Abortion”

“Republicans have a better solution focused on driving down health care costs without a government takeover. In fact, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the Republican bill will actually lower premiums by up to 10 percent and expand access to high-quality coverage for all Americans [to 3 million of the 46 million uninsured – woohoo]. The GOP alternative to the Democrats’ big government takeover reins in junk lawsuits, lets Americans buy coverage across state lines without new federal bureaucracy, encourages state innovations to lower costs, exempts small businesses from jobs-killing tax hikes and penalties, and more.”

Under the circumstances, I knew I could count on Grassfire Nation’s Steve Elliott for some apocalyptic bold-type, heavily underlined ranting. Steve has been firing out letters, almost daily to his ResistNet cult now that it appears health care reform is still alive. This one particularly tickled me because of its uncharacteristic truthfulness:

Dear Resistors:

I just received word from a trusted contact on Capitol
Hill that the Left’s strategy of flooding Congress with
“Pro ObamaCare” phone calls is working.

But here’s the kicker:

This contact also relayed the following on the prospects
of ObamaCare passing…

“The person who has been our main contact said…last week
she would have thought 20% [likelihood of ObamaCare passing]
now thinks 50%…. They also have polling data that each
piece of health care reform when polled line by line has
support and that Americans will love it after they do it.
My sense is that we really need the TEA party to bombard
the House members or this is going to happen.”

So. If I’m getting this right, Elliott is urging his followers to mobilize and kill legislation before it can be enacted because – HORRORS – if it does pass — Americans will love it??

Well, that’s just Steve being Steve, he specializes in eleventh-hour grassroots efforts because, you see, one of the “actions” he always prescribes is that his followers click right over and avail themselves of his FaxFire service where, for a measly $15, Steve will fax a forceful statement to numerous legislators of your choice (or, if he’s in the District, he’ll hand carry them for the same price; and save on his phone bill).

As is my habit, I’ve saved the very worst for last; today’s winner in the Deranged Tighty-Righty Blogorama has to go to Dan Riehl of the ironically named Riehl World View blog – a gothic little cyber cul-de-sac whose denizens, steeped in testosterone and existential angst plot the overthrow of everything while proving they’re not gay. Here’s what goes on in Riehl’e fevered brain:

“That this inexperienced travesty of a chief executive, Obama, more a byproduct of timing and media collaboration, than his own worth, or accomplishment, is personally advocating for the so-called nuclear option is the final straw.”

Riehl then goes on to lift a bit from Malkin’s screed on the subject (without proper attribution, I might add). The important thing is, of course, to keep that “nuclear option” meme alive.:

“It’s official. After months of threatening to push the button on the so-called nuclear option [see how popular this ignorant meme is?], reconciliation — the parliamentary maneuver that Harry Reid said “nobody” is talking about and that President Obama said Americans didn’t care about last week — is a go.”

“Reconcile this, you distasteful, malevolent little quisling punk – a timely reminder of some words I never thought would have such import during my lifetime.”

At which point, our intrepid blogger indulges in a histrionic bit of Constitutional spell-casting — don’t they all sooner or later? For whatever esoteric reason, Riehl found this bit relevant to the rest of his rant:

“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Funny how the Constitution has become an inarguable justification for behaving badly . . .

Riehl finally delivers his sophomoric Big Finish (imagine the Battle Hymn of the Republic playing softly in the background):

“It is time to stop this government in its tracks, take it back democratically in the fall, or it then becomes time to bring this government down.”

“This neophyte, this joke we have in the White House has absolutely no idea of the force and the rage he is about to unleash on him and his entire political party. If there are not enough responsible adults left within his party to rein in this accidental, affirmative action jerk, this self-styled, extremely flawed little man, then his party is worthless to America. It deserves to be marginalized electorally and, ultimately, utterly destroyed, before being relegated to the dung heap of history with the rest of the marxist, socialist clowns Americans have dispatched before.”

“Reconciliation for this disaster of a destructive health care bill I doubt anyone on the Hill can fully define means all out war. The only question remaining is, whose side are you on?”

Somebody needs to unplug this bad boy and send him back to school before he and his nincompoop followers get hurt or hurt someone else for no reason other than that they’ve bought a misguided bill of goods delivered by some senile Republican spin-meisters with more money than brains. Erick Erickson, of RedState fame, shared that he thought that Riehl’s post was one of the best blog posts he’s ever read. Figures . . .

Well, there you have it frumps, make of it what you will; but I for one get a spring in my step these days when I see stuff like this buzzing around. It means that Republicans and associated obstructionists have their panties in a wad because none of their tried and true, greedy methods of control are working well.

Cheers!

[tags]Bill Kristol, Liz Cheney, Michelle Malkin, Dan Riehl, Steve Elliott, GrassFire Nation, ResistNet.com, Chris Wallace, Erick Erickson, Health Care Reform Summit[/tags]

New York Times

Well, frumps, on a Sorry Spectacle scale of 1 to 10, Sen. Jim Bunning’s (R-KY) hold-up of the passage of an emergency extension of Unemployment Compensation and COBRA is a chart-buster. I figure one of two things is going on here and both are sad possibilities; either Bunning is indeed suffering from senile dementia, as many have speculated for the past 6 years, or he has just taken a commanding lead in the 2010 Republican Obstruction Derby.

Unless you’ve gone fishing on an island in an IPhone-free Zone somewhere, you’ve probably caught at least some highlights of Bunning’s breathtaking performance. For a slow week in February, the media must have felt that “the gods must be smiling” every time Bunning hurled epithets at them or flipped them the bird. For years now, Bunning has exhibited “behavioral problems” in the Senate flamboyant enough that even his fellow Republicans have distanced themselves from him (if you can imagine such a thing).

All of this couldn’t have come along at a worse time for the GOP as they try to polish up their somewhat tarnished brand going into mid-term elections. Democrats “made hay while the sun shined” pumping up the volume on the usual talking points: Republicans don’t care about the unemployed, they have no moral compass, they are socially callous political robots, etc., etc.; and since “jobs,” and all things job-related are the holy grail of the 2010 elections, many Republicans hunkered down and waited for this to blow over. When it dragged on, they decided to conscript Susan Collins to inject a maternal, nurturing note in a request to move on to other things.

None of it impressed Sen. Bunning who soldiered on with the irrational zeal of either a demented old man or a recalcitrant old Republican (whichever the case may be). He even decided, in the eleventh hour, to throw in a blanket-hold on executive-branch appointments, for good measure (h/t Sen. Shelby (R-AL)).

Last night, though, Bunning loosened his strangle-hold on unemployed Americans’ next paycheck in return for a promise that he could introduce an amendment calling for unused stimulus funds to cover the tab. The emergency extension passed, the Bunning amendment did not; the score: 78 – 19. Clearly, most Senate Republicans consider the issue a poison pill, best flushed away and forgotten. But, that has not kept some on the fringier fringes of the GOP from becoming Bunning Boosters in some cockeyed attempt at wooing the anti-government mob in the Tea Party and Independent world.

As reported in Mother Jones:

“If you ever wondered what type of candidate the Tea Party movement would like to see elected to Congress, look no farther than Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning (R), the man who is single-handedly holding up unemployment benefit extensions and health insurance coverage for hundreds of thousands of out-of-work Americans. While the rest of his party is quietly trying to ignore him, Bunning is giving Tea Party activists in Kentucky much to love.”

“’We’re all in support of Sen. Bunning,’” says Wendy Caswell, the founder of the Louisville Tea Party. She says Tea Party activists believe that Bunning is being fiscally responsible, and that’s a core Tea Party value. “’He is kind of one of our models of a good representative of the people of Kentucky.’”

Obviously, the Caswell clan is enjoying full employment. Also, obvious, is the fact that the Kentucky Tea Party crowd are holding the GOP in thrall. The GOP candidates running in Kentucky to fill Bunning’s seat – Rand Paul (son of Ron), Trey Grayson, and Bill Johnson — have all decided that it’s a winning strategy to align with Bunning (good news for the Democrats).

According to an article in the Huffington Post, Rand Paul said:

“Jim Bunning is being unfairly attacked for saying we should spend money already set aside for benefits rather than borrowing more. He deserves our support and he is going to get it.”

Rand Paul went so far as to hold a support rally in front of Bunning HQ in Louisville.

Trey Grayson had this to say:

“I would proudly stand up to ensure that programs are paid for and think that this is further evidence of mismanagement of the Senate by Harry Reid. If we had not wasted time debating and passing a pet bill for Reid, we would not have been in the situation that led to the delay. I agree with Senators Bunning and McConnell that the government has a responsibility to pay for its programs and a good place to start would be to cut funding from the stimulus in order to pay for the extension of unemployment benefits. If the stimulus had created jobs as promised, then we would not need more unemployment insurance.”

Kentucky’s Tea Party candidate, Bill Johnson, said this:

“I support Senator Jim Bunning. Frankly, unemployment benefits are currently 99 weeks or almost two years. While I support extending the benefits for a short period of time longer, we must find a way to pay for those benefits. I do not support extending unemployment benefits beyond two years. Even Germany limits unemployment benefits to one year. Benefits here in America are exceeding those offered in the most liberal countries of Europe. Two years of government support is not a safety net. It is an entitlement program. I am tired of paying for entitlement programs that continue well beyond a compassionate need.”

Along those lines, Sen. John Kyl decided to weigh in, yesterday, with his Bully Brahmin opinion that Unemployment Compensation is part of the problem: why would anyone look for a job when the can collect unemployment? he asks. Watch:

Obviously, Sen. Kyl has never lived on unemployment checks.

And then, of course, there’s Sen. Jim DeMint who has recently been showing signs of his own disconnect from reality:

Don’t feel bad if you know next to nothing about Bunning, up until now, except for his baseball career. That’s because, as a US Senator, Bunning has not done a whole hell of a lot in either his years as a Senator (1998-2011) or his years in the House of Representatives prior to that (1986 – 1999). According to multiple reports, Bunning has always been a bit of an odd fellow and a loner. Taylor Branch has written a definitive book on the Clinton administration entitled The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President and, as documented there, here’s what former President Bill Clinton had to say about Bunning immediately after the 1998 congressional elections in which Bunning won a seat in the Senate

“Clinton bemoaned the fact that GOP Rep. Jim Bunning had narrowly won a Senate seat in Kentucky. Branch writes, He said Bunning, a former baseball player, was so mean-spirited that he repulsed even his fellow know-nothings. ‘I tried to work with him a couple times,’ said Clinton, ‘and he just sent shivers up my spine….I know you’re a baseball fan and everything, and you don’t like to hear it, but this guy is beyond the pale.’”

In 2004, Bunning almost managed to blow re-election handed to him on a silver platter just by being, well . . . Jim. His expected Democratic opponent, Governor Paul Patton’s career abruptly ended when a scandal over an extramarital affair came to light. The Democrats chose Daniel Mongiardo, a relatively unknown physician and Kentucky state senator. Bunning was sitting on a $4 million campaign fund, while Mongiardo had only $600,000.

Democrats weren’t expecting much of Mongiardo against Bunning, the Republican incumbent, but the more Bunning acted out in his campaign, the more money the Democrats pumped into Mongiardo’s campaign. During his reelection bid, Bunning described Mongiardo as looking “like one of Saddam Hussein’s sons.” Public pressure compelled him to apologize.

Dan Mongiardo

Bunning was further criticized for making an unsubstantiated claim that his wife had been attacked by Mongiardo’s supporters and for calling Mongiardo “limp wristed”. And then there was the quite bizarre campaign debate episode. The most entertaining account of that campaign debate was Mary Jacoby’s article for Slate.com. Here’s that:

“It’s no secret in Kentucky that Sen. Jim Bunning, a Republican who was expected to coast to reelection on Nov. 2, has been acting strange. Over the past few months, Bunning has angrily pushed away reporters, exchanged testy words with a questioner at a Rotary Club and stuck to brief, heavily scripted remarks at campaign events, delivered in a halting monotone. The former major league baseball star now travels the Bluegrass State with a special police escort, at taxpayer expense. His explanation? Al-Qaida may be out to get him. “

“More substantively, the incumbent would agree to only one debate with his Democratic challenger, state Sen. Daniel Mongiardo. And the rules Bunning negotiated were bizarrely rigid: The encounter could not be live; the taping has to occur in the afternoon, not the evening; no audience could be present in the studio; and, under threat of legal action, Mongiardo could not use any sound clips or video of Bunning’s debate performance in campaign advertisements.”

“This apparent fear of the spontaneous has spurred rumors in Kentucky that Bunning, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, is suffering from some sort of dementia, perhaps Alzheimer’s. Bunning has declined to release his medical records. But until now, there was nothing hard to suggest that the one-term Republican senator was anything but a crotchety, occasionally confused, or arrogant old man.”

“On Monday, however, Bunning — who turns 73 this month — abruptly retreated behind yet another barrier, in an action so inexplicable that it appears likely to bring the rumors about his health, now referred to obliquely in Kentucky news reports, into open discussion. It may also mark a turning point in a race that, against all expectations, has been tightening recently.”

“Saying falsely that he was needed in Washington this week for Senate votes, Bunning tore up his own carefully crafted debate agreement and refused to return to Kentucky on Monday for his one scheduled debate with Mongiardo. It was to have taken place at 2:30 p.m. Monday in the Lexington, Ky., studio of WKYT-TV. Instead, Bunning insisted on “debating” via satellite from the womblike conditions of the Republican National Committee headquarters studio in Washington.”

“The senator refused to allow a member of the Kentucky media to be present at the RNC studio to monitor whether Bunning was receiving assistance with his answers, according to Mongiardo campaign manager Kim Geveden and WKYT news director Jim Ogle. And Bunning refused to engage reporters via satellite in a previously agreed upon post-debate news conference, insisting instead that his 15 minutes of answering questions occur by telephone, without accompanying video footage.”

“The people of Kentucky are very smart. They can put two and two together,” Bill Garmer, chairman of the Kentucky Democratic Party, told me by telephone Tuesday. Garmer and former Kentucky Gov. Julian Carroll, a Democrat, called on Bunning last month to release his medical records, and Kentucky news reporters have also sought the records, all to no avail. “

So it is that Bunning managed to blow a two-digit lead in that race and wound up eking out a 51% to 49% to win another six year term in which to demonstrate his unfitness for polite society and, quite possibly, his unfitness for holding office.

Much has been made already of the blatant hypocrisy of Bunning’s most recent conscientious objections. For example, back in 2003, with George W. Bush in office, Bunning championed an unpaid-for $6.6-billion unemployment extension. At that time, Bunning was proud and empathetic:

“This is hopeful news for our most needy families in Kentucky. By approving this legislation we will help those folks who are currently without work continue to make ends meet until they can find new employment.”

More recently, as Harry Reid was happy to point out, Bunning voted against passing pay-go rules requiring the Senate to offset costs of legislation with revenue raising provisions or tax cuts. Bunning also had no objections to passing the Bush tax cuts and authorizing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq without paying for the provisions.

He has proven, again and again, to be gruff at best and breathtakingly mean-spirited at worst. Last February, as you may remember, Bunning scored media attention when he predicted that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was being treated for cancer, only had nine months to live.

The good news is that this man is retiring and whether his problem is in the brain or in the soul, that problem will no longer be directly affecting the lives and welfare of American citizens. We can only hope that Bunning’s extreme and ungraceful conduct in carrying out what is, after all, the GOP agenda, will serve as a warning to many of his Republican colleagues who are dancing dangerously close to the same precipice.

[tags]Sen. Jim Bunning, emergency extension, Unemployment Compensation, COBRA[/tags]