Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.

Frederick W. Kagan



Glenn Greenwald, whose forthcoming book is on the meaningless chest-thumping of chicken-hawk culture, offers the following illustration. He quotes Fred W. Kagan, whose argument against Jim Webb's proposal for allowing our troops more time at home between deployments, is that it will be a bureaucratic nightmare.

So this amendment would actually require the Army and Marine Corps staffs to keep track of how long every individual servicemember had spent in either Iraq or Afghanistan, how long they had been at home, how long the unit that they were now in had spent deployed, and how long it had been home...

Senators are concerned that tourism to the United States has dropped nearly 20% since 2001 and they want to open a special office to promote tourism. Of course this accidental activist couldn't resist putting together an example of what their first big PR blitz might look like!

The New York Daily News is one of a handful of news venues to pick up on a key revelation in the New Yorker's recent profile of "24". The show was approached by military and FBI leaders, who asked them to stop glorifying torture.

The grossly graphic torture scenes in Fox's highly rated series "24" are encouraging abuses in Iraq, a brigadier general and three top military and FBI interrogators claim.

The four flew to Los Angeles in November to meet with the staff of the show. They said it is hurting efforts to train recruits in effective interrogation techniques and is damaging the image of the U.S. around the world, according The New Yorker.

"I'd like them to stop," Army Brig. Gen. Patrick Finnegan, dean of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, told the magazine.

Finnegan and others told the show's creative team that the torture depicted in "24" never works in real life, and by airing such scenes, they're encouraging military personnel to act illegally.

The ascension of proud economic populist Senators, including Jim Webb, who Kos quotes extensively, Sherrod Brown, who puts the "p" in "populist," and John Tester, leads me to wonder whether the "War on Terror" has killed the conservative movement.

Back during the Reagan era and the Cold War, there was "synergy" between Conservative foreign policy and conservative domestic policy.  When Conservatives bashed the Soviet "evil empire," they were not just bashing an authoritarian dictatorship, they were also implicitly bashing an ideology based on devolving economic power to the working class and away from the capitalists, and implicitly championing their darwinian "strangle the government in the bathtub" free markets model.  Thus, their attack on unions, the minimum wage, a fair tax system, etc., etc., all fit perfectly with their attack on the Soviet Union, and both attacks mirrored each other and implicitly strengthened each other.

This synergistic effect was so strong that that it lasted well past the fall of the Societ Union, and fueled Newt Gingrich's Contract with America.

But that Conservative attack machine died on 9/11.  Since that date, Conservative Republicans have been relentlessly posturing against an entirely different foreign enemy.  An enemy with no particular economic ideology whatsoever.

With Bush so anxious to compare the trials of our own time to the challenges of World War II, and others on the right ready to equate what we're now facing with the greatest dangers of the past, it only seems appropriate that we see how Bush stacks up against the man who led us through those days.

That's right, folks, it's time for Presidential ThunderDome.  George W. Bush vs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Two preseidents enter, one president leaves!

He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat. -- Napoleon

Where fear is present, wisdom cannot be. -- Lactantius

Fear has its use, but cowardice has none. -- Gandhi

As fear is close companion to falsehood, so truth follows fearlessness. -- Jawaharlar Nehru

We will not walk in fear, one of another. We are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular.  -- Edward R. Murrow

As Democrats approach this election season, there is only one message that we need spread to the American people:

The word first appeared in the mealy mouths of the right wing venom patrol.  Bill and Rush and Anne tried out "traitors," and made a go at just directly calling Democrats "terrorists," but the word that survived the focus groups and test polling was "appeasers."  

Stamped with Rovian approval, that word next began to pass through the lips of men like little Ricky Santorum and hiss from the lipless beak of Dick Cheney.   Another few weeks, and even supposedly moderate senators were using this term to refer to their "respected colleagues."  Finally, with the ice broken, Bush rolled out the word as the central focus of the Republican attempt to turn around their poll numbers this election season.  Democrats are appeasers.

They're right, we are appeasers.  But it's not the terrorists we need to stop appeasing, it's the Republicans.

With two months to go before the election, the Republican tactic is clear - elevate the War on Terror to the great conflict of our times.  Cast Muslims as creatures so odious even Morder wouldn't take them in.  Wave the bloody flag of 9/11 for all it's worth, scream "fascist" twice before breakfast, and most of all question the patriotism of anyone who doesn't join the chorus.  They've completely adopted the Newt Gingrich suggestion that this be turned into World War III, and then they've blown past Newt into fantasyland.  This is World War Infinite, Apocalypse Now and Later, the struggle of civilization against the dark tide of EEEE-VUL.

On the Democratic side of the aisle, many candidates can't get past the temptation is to play backseat driver.  There's nothing wrong with pointing out that the Republicans have screwed the pooch so badly that they make Wrong Way Corrigan and General Custer look like models of effective planning and execution.  Iraq alone is probably the largest blunder this nation has made - ever.  There is plenty of ugly to hang around the Republican's necks.

But don't forget, that whole "War on Terror" thing?  It's part of the ugly.

It's taken nearly five years, but by employing all that hard work you've talked about, you've reached a very significant milestone: you're now responsible for the deaths of more Americans than Osama Bin Laden.

"Today, President Bush said the United States is still under the threat of attack, and will continue to be right up until Election Day."

-- Jay Leno 8/29/2006

Once again, Republicans have defined the debate for the upcoming elections -- and it's one we've seen before.

Republicans: "The Iraq war is central to the greater fight against terrorism."

And the Democrats latch on: "The Iraq war detracts from the greater fight against terrorism."

So there you go. Iraq and the fight against terrorism -- together once again. And the only thing the American people will hear over and over and over again is: "Iraq and the war on terror... Iraq and the war on terror... Iraq and the war on terror..." The details are easily clouded and thus relatively inconsequential.

This plays perfectly into the overall issue of 'fighting terrorism', the falsely perceived strength of Republicans. And it will be the defining debate for this election cycle. More importantly, Monsieur Rove will continue with his long-time, frightfully successful strategy of taking his opponent's strength (in this case, the Republican's failure in Iraq) and driving it straight through their political heart (In this case, reframing the Iraq War as the central beam supporting the greater "War on Terror".)

And the Democrats are obliging them by jumping right on board. Of course Dems think they're setting the stage by attacking the Republican's weak spot (Iraq) but instead, they are highlighting and accentuating the Republican frame that the United States is in 'constant peril' and a 'critical state of danger' from various, innumerable, faceless, international 'Islamo-facist' bedevilers.

In short, the Dems are supporting the frame that makes the Republican fear-mongering so damn effective in coercing the American electorate.

While the media was focused on the story of Goldstein's, er... Zarqawi's latest death, there was another story that got very little play.  This was from the most important "central front" of this global war -- the home front.  I'm talking about a recent case where secret evidence was used to charge people with  crimes the jury didn't think they committed, yet they were still convicted and sentenced to terms the judge felt were unjustified.

As someone on Dkos so eloquently put it:

"Going after people based upon 'what they are thinking'
should set off alarm bells in any thinking person's head."

You read that right.  The department of pre-crime is handing out warrants to the thought police, and they're forcing courts to hand out life sentences.

1:1  This is the Revelation of a New Doctrine, which Double Ewe received from his base showing the things which must happen soon, which he sent and made known by his operatives to his servants on FOX,

1:2  Blessed is he who reads many news sources, and keep in mind the things that are written, for the time is at hand when events once uncovered are finally seeing the light of day.

1:3  I John Q.  Public, your brother and partner with you in oppression, empire, and faith in the Rule of Law, was on the isle called Gitmo because of the New Doctrine and the testimony of a Cowboy.  

1:4  I was trying to survive yet another day, when I heard behind me a loud voice, like a trumpet saying.

Sometimes it is hard to imagine the political discourse degenerating any further in this country, but the Republican party and its allies are impressively capable of taking it ever further down the toilet.  The release of the Bin-Laden tape has, as Tom Ball just noted, sent them into cascading orgasmic spirals of delight.

The only way to respond to this kind of horrific rhetoric seems to be in kind, and no one has mastered this more than Hunter.  To excerpt just one piece of his as always brilliant writing:

quick, quick... we better DO something like REALLY FAST...

(abc news has the exclusive story...)

   Two CIA secret prisons were operating in Eastern Europe until last month when they were shut down following Human Rights Watch reports of their existence in Poland and Romania.

    Current and former CIA officers speaking to ABC News on the condition of confidentiality say the United States scrambled to get all the suspects off European soil before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived there today.

    The officers say 11 top al Qaeda suspects have now been moved to a new CIA facility in the North African desert.

    CIA officials asked ABC News not the name the specific countries where the prisons were located, citing security concerns.

so, if the sources are "current and former CIA officers," one would tend to believe them... ~shakes head, rolls eyes~ u.s. credibility in the world community just dropped another 15 points...

And, yes, I DO take it personally

The local news came on after the college football games yesterday, and I happened to catch those precious three and a half minutes (between the fire in Bumbleville and the Dumblefoolers Convention in town and the could a missing white girl happen here? and the weather and the sports) during which the AnchorFigure recites in her/his Most Serious Voice the Extremely Condensed version of the important national/international news that the prodcuer has determined must fill the gaps between fires, weather, sports, and missing white people.

At any rate, yesterday must have featured a dearth of missing fire sports convention human interest weathers, because they included a several minute CNN feed of Nic Robertson reporting on the Saddam Hussein trial in Iraq.

The story, transcript here (scroll down a bit), featured a lawyer whose two brothers were killed by Saddam Hussein in 1979.  It also mentions that a primary reason for the initial delay in the trial were "the charges that accuse Hussein and seven former regime allies of brutally repressing a 1982 assassination attempt."

Both of which, of course, took place before ...