Anti-Terrorist Fantasy Dream Team on the Case

Together Again for the First Time!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WASHINGTON, DC – Seeking to quell fears of terrorists somehow breaking out of America's top-security prisons and wreaking havoc on the defenseless heartland, President Barack Obama moved quickly to announce an Anti-Terrorist Strike Force headed by veteran counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer and mutant superhero Wolverine. Already dubbed a "dream team," their appointment is seen by experts as a crucial step in reducing the mounting incidents of national conservatives and congressional Democrats crapping their pants.

"I believe a fictional threat is best met with decisive fictional force," explained President Obama. "Jack Bauer and Wolverine are among the very best we have when in comes to combating fantasy foes." Mr. Bauer said, "We're quite certain that our prisons are secure. Osama bin Laden and his agents wouldn't dare attempt a break-out, and would fail miserably if they tried. But I love this country. And should Lex Luthor, Magneto or the Loch Ness Monster attack, we'll be there to stop them."

The move has already earned widespread praise, and veteran columnist David Broder hailed the bipartisan nature of the team. But not all were convinced. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) scoffed, "I thought the president was a Spiderman guy. And what a surprise that a Canadian would use knives on his hands versus a good ol' fashioned American Uzi."

Mr. Wolverine, who also goes by Logan, responded, "What's wrong with Canada? I fought alongside Captain America in World War II, bub. I'm happy to help out."

Some critics have expressed concerns as to whether Mr. Bauer is the best choice to counter the potential threat of a super-villain such as Magneto, a dinosaur stampede or an alien invasion. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs responded that while Bauer lacks conventional super-powers, he can withstand extreme amounts of pain, has near infallible judgment, can teleport across Los Angeles and Washington D.C. at will, and can go 24 hours without sleep or relieving his bladder.

Should the task of protecting the country prove too difficult for the super-agent and super-hero on their own, Crime-Fightin' Jesus has offered to lend a hand "in a pinch," although he says he would rather spend his time helping the poor "if at all possible." Republicans insist that a law-enforcement approach to terrorism is ineffective.

The Kimberly-Clark Corporation, manufacturers of Depends adult diapers, has already come out strongly against the announcement of the Bauer-Wolverine dream team, claiming that their increased sales are helping spur the nation's economic recovery. Republican Newt Gingrich also condemned the president's actions. "President Obama seems to think that crapping one's pants is a bad thing somehow," said the former Speaker of the House, "but crapping one's pants is what this country was founded on. The Reagan Revolution wouldn't have happened without fear of evil Soviets and welfare queens. And say what you will about President Bush, he kept this country crapping its pants for seven long years after 9/11."

The White House declined to comment.

(See also Hilzoy's video, and The Daily Show on brain eaters, muppets and (most recently) Gunatanamo Baywatch: The Final Season. Plus, there's Dan Froomkin, Glenn Greenwald, Kevin Drum and I'm sure many more.)

Update 5/21/09: Check out Adam Serwer's great piece, "If Magneto Can Escape, Can KSM?" (via Steve Benen) and this cartoon by Mike Luckovich. Clearly, that we're all thinking about (mutant) super-villains is good news for the GOP.

(Cross-posted at Blue Herald)

More on Charlie Wilson's War

In an earlier post, "Where's bin Laden?" I wrote about the changes to the script for the film Charlie Wilson's War, specifically, the removal of all mentions of bin Laden, al-Qaeda or 9/11. Mike Finnigan at C&L helpfully passed on a link to "Tom Hanks Tells Hollywood Whopper in 'Charlie Wilson's War'" by Melissa Roddy at AlterNet.

Now, via Jonathan Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution (here and here), come two good pieces on the real history behind the film Charlie Wilson's War.

First up is Chalmers Johnson with "Imperialist Propaganda: Second Thoughts on Charlie Wilson's War" at TomDispatch.com:

In a secret ceremony at CIA headquarters on June 9, 1993, James Woolsey, Bill Clinton's first Director of Central Intelligence and one of the agency's least competent chiefs in its checkered history, said: "The defeat and breakup of the Soviet empire is one of the great events of world history. There were many heroes in this battle, but to Charlie Wilson must go a special recognition." One important part of that recognition, studiously avoided by the CIA and most subsequent American writers on the subject, is that Wilson's activities in Afghanistan led directly to a chain of blowback that culminated in the attacks of September 11, 2001 and led to the United States' current status as the most hated nation on Earth.

Johnson quotes his review of the book Charlie Wilson's War for the Los Angeles Times:

The Central Intelligence Agency has an almost unblemished record of screwing up every 'secret' armed intervention it ever undertook. From the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953 through the rape of Guatemala in 1954, the Bay of Pigs, the failed attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro of Cuba and Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, the 'secret war' in Laos, aid to the Greek Colonels who seized power in 1967, the 1973 killing of President Allende in Chile, and Ronald Reagan's Iran-Contra war against Nicaragua, there is not a single instance in which the Agency's activities did not prove acutely embarrassing to the United States and devastating to the people being 'liberated.' The CIA continues to get away with this bungling primarily because its budget and operations have always been secret and Congress is normally too indifferent to its Constitutional functions to rein in a rogue bureaucracy. Therefore the tale of a purported CIA success story should be of some interest.

According to the author of Charlie Wilson's War, the exception to CIA incompetence was the arming between 1979 and 1988 of thousands of Afghan mujahideen ("freedom fighters"). The Agency flooded Afghanistan with an incredible array of extremely dangerous weapons and 'unapologetically mov[ed] to equip and train cadres of high tech holy warriors in the art of waging a war of urban terror against a modern superpower [in this case, the USSR].'

The author of this glowing account, [the late] George Crile, was a veteran producer for the CBS television news show '60 Minutes' and an exuberant Tom Clancy-type enthusiast for the Afghan caper. He argues that the U.S.'s clandestine involvement in Afghanistan was 'the largest and most successful CIA operation in history,' 'the one morally unambiguous crusade of our time,' and that 'there was nothing so romantic and exciting as this war against the Evil Empire.' Crile's sole measure of success is killed Soviet soldiers (about 15,000), which undermined Soviet morale and contributed to the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the period 1989 to 1991. That's the successful part.

However, he never once mentions that the 'tens of thousands of fanatical Muslim fundamentalists' the CIA armed are the same people who in 1996 killed nineteen American airmen at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, blew a hole in the side of the U.S.S. Cole in Aden Harbor in 2000, and on September 11, 2001, flew hijacked airliners into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Johnson also quotes himself from 2003:

For the CIA legally to carry out a covert action, the president must sign off on -- that is, authorize -- a document called a 'finding.' Crile repeatedly says that President Carter signed such a finding ordering the CIA to provide covert backing to the mujahideen after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. The truth of the matter is that Carter signed the finding on July 3, 1979, six months before the Soviet invasion, and he did so on the advice of his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in order to try to provoke a Russian incursion. Brzezinski has confirmed this sequence of events in an interview with a French newspaper, and former CIA Director [today Secretary of Defense] Robert Gates says so explicitly in his 1996 memoirs. It may surprise Charlie Wilson to learn that his heroic mujahideen were manipulated by Washington like so much cannon fodder in order to give the USSR its own Vietnam. The mujahideen did the job but as subsequent events have made clear, they may not be all that grateful to the United States.

It's informative stuff that should be read in full. Johnson also links a film review by James Rocchi, who writes:

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a brutal violation of international law; a grown-up would nonetheless ask if our cure was in fact better than the disease. Charlie Wilson's War doesn't. (Again, a line in Sorkin's script -- but not in the final film -- has Avrakotos noting "Remember I said this: There's gonna be a day when we're gonna look back and say 'I'd give anything if (Afghanistan) were overrun with Godless communists.'")

Rocchi probably read the same version of the script I did, because that line was in there, and he cites the same ending I read with a bit more detail (I need to try to get another copy, since I was going off memory for my post). He's also right, as noted in my earlier post, that the film never really questions whether this covert war is really the best idea, and whether Wilson's and Avrakotos' depicted subversion is really to be applauded. Rocchi also writes that:

Charlie Wilson's War isn't just bad history; it feels even more malign, like a conscious attempt to induce amnesia…

Charlie Wilson's War offers the bright glare of star power instead of any real illumination; it's a historical-political comedy without any history or politics. Nichols's cut, gutted version offers a few cheery, breezy moments of rat-a-tat comedy, but Charlie Wilson's War stops being funny when you realize we're living in the sequel.

The second piece Schwarz links is "Reagan's Bargain/Charlie Wilson's War," by Peter W. Dickson at ConsortiumNews.com:

The movie opens with Wilson’s conversion to a sympathetic attitude toward Muslims while sitting in a hot tub with several naked women in the Fantasy Suite at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas...

According to the book by George Crile upon which the film is based, the hot tub scene took place in June 1980. Crile describes Wilson’s sudden conversion to a sympathetic position toward Muslims as occurring in October 1982 when the Texas congressman, fully-clothed, visited Lebanese refugee camps after the Israeli invasion of that country.

Previously a staunch supporter of the Jewish state, Wilson was shocked by what he saw in those refugee camps, instilling in him empathy toward Muslims that evolved into his zealous support of the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Nuclear Blackout

But surely the most glaring omission in the film is the fateful trade-off accepted by President Ronald Reagan when he agreed not to complain about Pakistan’s efforts to acquire a nuclear weapons capability in exchange for Pakistani cooperation in helping the Afghan rebels.

On page 463 of his book, Crile characterizes this deal or understanding as “the dirty little secret of the Afghan war” –- General Zia al-Haq’s ability to extract not only “massive aid” from Washington but also to secure Reagan’s acquiescence in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program via a congressional waiver of U.S. nonproliferation laws in December 1981.

This bargain may have been dirty but it certainly was no secret. Indeed, Washington’s acquiescence via the congressional waiver was the subject of continuing press coverage throughout the 1980s.

But this history remains a taboo topic for many within the Washington Establishment, especially those who look back favorably on the Reagan presidency.

[...]

Determined to protect the pipeline for smuggling weapons to the Afghan mujaheddin, Charlie Wilson also helped deflect attention away from the Pakistani nuclear program in 1987 and 1988.

Crile claims that Wilson made several successful efforts to blunt the impact of intelligence briefings about the status of the Pakistani nuclear program to congressional committees contemplating a cut-off of all aid at that time.

Speaking Power to Truth

Wilson’s alleged success in countering such briefings and blocking a congressional aid cut-off represented a classic case of the subordination of truth and law to raw power and political calculations.

The movie producers evidently concluded that scenes of Wilson’s desperate efforts to cover up Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions would not look too good in the film, so that part of the story disappeared from the cinematic version of history.

This deeper, darker saga would have conflicted with the filmmakers desire to highlight the heroic qualities of the movie’s main protagonist (Wilson played by Tom Hanks), not to mention the justness of the Afghan cause.

Unfortunately, the glaring omissions tend to reinforce the triumph of a false narrative about the dismal record of American involvement in the Middle East, including the Reagan-Bush administration’s indifference, almost blasé attitude about the emergence of a Muslim nuclear bomb.

Given Crile’s detailed discussion of this “dirty little secret of the Afghan war” in his book, the filmmakers surely can’t say they were unaware of this darker side of the story.

This piece, too, should be read in its entirety.

Charlie Wilson's War is a film I want to see again. I still greatly admire the script in terms of aesthetics and writing craft, and at least one of Sorkin's earlier drafts was much more honest. I also love Hoffman's performance. But the pieces by Johnson and Dickson give crucial details on the actual history I hadn't known. (I can blame some of that on being fairly young at the time, I suppose.) Yet this directly relates to two points of my earlier post. Like it or not, Americans get much of their history through pop culture, most of all from movies and TV. And you simply would not know many important points from the film alone, such as the bin Laden connection. While expecting accuracy from Hollywood is often folly, this team could handle it, and should have delivered. Sorkin at least tried to deliver, on some level. I'm still interested in more details of threatened lawsuits by Wilson and Herring, demands from Tom Hanks, the stance of Mike Nichols, and the position of the studios (although I can guess the last one).

While I'm waiting on more information about battles over the script development and film production, it seems like hitting the library for more reading on the actual history would be useful. I wrote an earlier post on The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright, a post that includes a link to a conversation between Wright and Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. Chalmers Johnson has written a three-part series, "The American Empire Project": Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. Finally, there's Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times, although it apparently paints a selective picture at times. Any other relevant book recs are welcome.

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

Where's bin Laden?

It's a better question for George Bush, actually. But where's bin Laden in Charlie Wilson's War?

I read a draft of the script last year, and while most of it hasn't changed much, there were a few notable, disappointing omissions.

Let me be clear: Charlie Wilson's War is an excellent film, one of the best I've seen all year. Overall, the cast is superb. The film combines substance with wit to spare. Aaron Sorkin is a master of exposition, using it as ammunition and often off-setting it with comedy and other activities: sitting in a hot tub, a belly dance, the old West Wing walk and talk, a dance of dueling meetings reminiscent of the Marx Brothers. Director Mike Nichols knows the medium well, but he's also an actor's director, well beloved by them. Hanks is quite good as Wilson. I still think Julia Roberts is miscast, but I understand why she was cast (huge box office draw). I was ecstatic to see Phillip Seymour Hoffman cast as Gust; it's a perfect fit and one of his most enjoyable performances, and that's saying a lot. His first scene alone is worth the price of admission, and he and Hanks have great chemistry. Ned Beatty plays a small, key role. The film even has Amy Adams, splendid as always (see Junebug if you haven't), although a friend of mine noted, she should have been sporting big hair for the era (as most American women in the cast are).

As the film notes at the start, it's based on the true story (chronicled in the book of the same name) about our funding of a covert war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, largely spurred by an unlikely figure, inveterate boozer and womanizer Charlie Wilson, Democratic Congressman of the Texas 2nd. The film's gripping and entertaining, and sometimes quite moving. There's a brief scene where Wilson speaks with some child victims of bombing in Afghanistan, and it's tastefully done, but it certainly hit me in the gut. (Sorkin and Nichols even humanize the Russians a bit.) Charlie Wilson's War's impressive because it's pretty damn ambitious, covering a vital but largely unknown chapter of our recent history, being extremely informative while avoiding what Sorkin once called the "eat your broccoli" feel. It's a very enjoyable watch.

(I've got some slight spoilers of a sort here, although if you're familiar with the basic history, they shouldn't be.)

About three-quarters into the script in the version I read, the CIA tells Wilson about new developments with the Mujahideen, and they mention Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden. It's a striking moment, because the names have massive significance for us, but it's really just one more piece of interesting information for them at the time. I thought it was well handled, but it's not in the released film.

The film as released does touch on the surge of religious extremists. A late scene between Charlie Wilson and Gust uses a parable to consider the unpredictability of outcomes. A couple of other scenes on denying reconstruction funding and a ending quotation also suggest what was to come.

Still, it feels like a copout to axe the mention of Al Qaeda and bin Laden. After all, the film still mentions Jack Murtha and Rudy Giuliani by name, both prominent figures today, but much less central to both the subject matter and the theme. Cutting a few scenes of Wilson performing a drunken hit and run made some sense — besides Hollywood's aversion to making its protagonists unlikable, that sequence was about the mess of Wilson's personal life, which is interesting but not crucial. In contrast, the rise of bin Laden and Al Qaeda during the war with the Soviets, and the role of the Mujahideen in world events since, is pretty damn important. You would not know any of that by watching the film alone. It deserved at least a nod.

(A spoiler of sorts I suppose) In the version I read, the script actually ended on 9/11, with Charlie Wilson in his apartment, which has a view of the Pentagon. He has another woman over, and hears the explosion, sees the smoke, and the script ends on the look on his face — alarmed, and suspecting the truth even if he's not sure. I was wondering if that would survive to film, because it was powerful but might wrench the rest of the story. That cut seems more justified. It might even have been filmed, but didn't make the final version.

I'm just wondering to what degree those changes were aesthetically versus politically motivated. I'll be interested to check out the various interviews and the eventual DVD extras for more information. Did the studio fear some bizarre uproar? Did Nichols feel it knocked the film off-kilter? I don't know. But considering how daring the film is in many ways, and how willing it is to show the warts of war, ethnic divisions and backroom deals — not to even say the names just felt both irresponsible and, well, gutless.

I find myself thinking of Bush claiming back in 2002 or so that Saddam Hussein was dangerous because he had 'gassed his own people,' never mind that he did so in the late 80s during the Iraq-Iran war, when the Unites States was still doing business with Iraq. That gassing also occurred before Rumsfeld went to meet with Hussein to reassure him (as famously photographed, and as Rumsfeld claimed to only dimly remember). And it was before the first Gulf War. Whether one supported the invasion of Iraq or not, Bush did not speak of our previous alliance with Hussein and Iraq. I suspect his administration thought it would implicate us and introduce a level of complexity they didn't want with their cartoonish "Axis of Evil." It's one of many reasons I'd argue Bush made the case for war dishonestly, and one of the clearest early signs he simply wasn't to be trusted. Similarly, none of the crowd saber-rattling for war with Iran mentions the role of the U.S. and U.K. in covertly supporting a coup of Iran's democratically-elected government in 1953. Our current relationships with foreign powers often have important history attached. They don't exist a vacuum.

The reason I bring all this up is, like it or not, pop culture is where a great number of Americans get their history. While entertaining, Charlie Wilson's War is so much more than a popcorn flick. It's a very good film, and I intend to buy a copy when available. But I feel it could have been better still. And I really do want to hear what the decision-making process was for those elements.

Here's a cinematic example. All the President's Men is a great film, but it ends a bit oddly, with a news ticker summing up Nixon's resignation. Since the film came out in 1976, the thinking was that the audience was familiar with everything that happened, so why not just end quickly. William Goldman, the screenwriter, has since said it was a mistake. The speed wasn't a bad thing per se, but they should have been more cinematic, perhaps used some footage or something, because nowadays the ending doesn't play as well.

Interestingly enough, The History Channel special, The True Story of Charlie Wilson's War, is much more direct about bin Laden than the film is. The show is one of those joint movie studio-cable ventures, fairly fluffy, intended to promote the film. No one, for example, bothers to ask whether it's really a good idea for a lone congressman and a rogue CIA agent to set foreign policy and wage a covert war. Still, it's interesting to hear from Wilson himself, several of the other players, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, and to learn which of the details in the film are true. The bin Laden section comes in the last five to ten minutes. (For background, Carol Shannon is a Texas belly-dancer and a friend of Charlie's who features in the story, and Azizullah Din Muhammed was an Afghan rebel who met Charlie a few times during the covert war.) I transcribed the section in question:

[Footage of the smoking twin towers.]

Narrator: Today, Charlie Wilson's war must be seen in the context of September 11, 2001.

Aaron Sorkin: The two biggest threats ever, to our security, were the spread of Soviet Communism and the rise of Islamic fanaticism. Charlie is a guy who had a hand in stopping one, and accidentally starting the other.

Narrator: Though all of the 9/11 hijackers were Arabs, the operation was planned by a terrorist organization sheltered in Afghanistan.

[Footage of bin Laden.]

Charlie Wilson: We bear responsibility, because we didn't try to rebuild Afghanistan.

Azizullah Din Muhammed (Afghan Rebel): European countries and the U.S., they thought that once the Soviet Union was defeated, the job was over. They did not think about setting up a government in Afghanistan.

Wilson: We left a vacuum, and the vacuum was filled by the Taliban and by Al Qaeda.

Sorkin: There's no question that the Afghan victory and 9/11 are holding hands with each other. Is it Charlie Wilson's fault? No, don't be ridiculous. No one's responsible for 9/11, except for a bunch of twisted [bleep]suckers.

Narrator: CIA officers maintain that they never trained or armed the foreign volunteer fighters that would one day form Al Qaeda. During the 1980s, it was the Soviet Union that represented the gravest threat to U.S. national security. Like many Americans, Charlie Wilson lived much of his life with the omnipresent threat of a Soviet nuclear attack.

Carol Shannon: He had a lot of nightmares. And I hope they're over now.

Narrator: History will show that the evil empire was brought down by a colorful cast of characters, led by a hard-drinking, skirt-chasing Texas congressman.

Sorkin: President Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan, when asked how in the world did the Afghans beat the most powerful army on the face of the world, President Zia responded:

President Zia: Charlie did it.

They don't even mention bin Laden or Al Qaeda by name, but do show video footage of him. Still, apart from that, and the narrator's hype (especially saying "the evil empire"), they offer a reasonably accurate, fair account (if severely truncated). While Wikipedia is far from definitive, its article on "Allegations of CIA assistance to Osama bin Laden" ain't bad, and offers more information on the subject. A key passage relays that:

Robin Cook, former leader of the British House of Commons and Foreign Secretary from 1997-2001, wrote in The Guardian on Friday, July 8, 2005,

Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. [8]

Meanwhile, the same article notes, as did the History Channel narrator, that the CIA have denied that they directly funded or trained bin Laden. Reporter Peter Bergen, among others, believes this, and the article lists several reasons for it. I can buy that there wasn't direct funding or training, since bin Laden had his own sources, but the U.S. or its proxy Pakistan were funding and training plenty of those fighting the Soviets. Meanwhile, it's undeniable that the U.S. and Al Qaeda were fighting on the same side back then. Simply mentioning that doesn't endorse a theory of "blowback" for 9/11, and even a theory of blowback doesn't excuse those who perpetrated 9/11.

The book The Kite Runner, also a film now, deals with some of the same period in Afghanistan. As one character notes in the book, at first many in Afghanistan cheered the Taliban, because they were replacing the Russians and took care of some criminals and scoundrels. But then, the edicts started, and the Taliban were feared and despised by many that first welcomed them. Politics and foreign affairs are seldom black and white.

Portraying that reality is what makes Charlie Wilson's War a good film, and also the reason I feel it falls short on this one matter. Perhaps I'm being uncharitable, and I'll look forward to learning more about the decisions behind the scenes. Overall, Charlie Wilson's War presents a pretty complex, sophisticated view of the world, where small decisions can snowball, and policies that seem wise at the time can lead to other complications, some predictable, some unseen. But see the film, and decide for yourself.

Update: Thanks to Mike of Mike's Blog Roundup for the link at C&L, most of all for also linking "Tom Hanks Tells Hollywood Whopper in 'Charlie Wilson's War'" by Melissa Roddy at AlterNet. Roddy apparently read an earlier version of the script too, and has much more detail on a few of the specific changes. I find it interesting that, apparently, the real Wilson was willing to be more candid with the History Channel special promoting the film than he was with the studio on the film itself. Of course, one's going to be seen by many more people (although I expect that a special edition DVD of Charlie Wilson's War will include the History Channel special, will probably include deleted scenes and might well discuss the script changes). I continue to be interested in more information about this.

Update 2: I have a follow-up post with more information about the actual history omitted from the film.

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

8-6-01: A Date That Should Live in Infamy

(Graphic by Tengrain, blogswarm idea by Ripley at The Zen Cabin, and thanks to Blue Gal for spreading the word.)

While the Bush administration rattles sabers once again and insists on more unchecked surveillance power and fewer civil rights for Americans, and Democrats seem set to capitulate for no good reason, it's worth taking stock of the Bush administration's actual record on terrorism.

First, let's take stock of the present legislative and political peril from Bush's new wiretap push, captured nicely by Digby:

Let's set aside the idea that "trusting" the Bush administration with warrantless wiretaps is like trusting your four year old with a zippo lighter, what kind of bucket-of-lukewarm-spit kind of politics is this? What are they afraid of, that the Bush administration will blame them if a terrorist attack occurs and they didn't approve another blank check? Guess what? It wouldn't matter if the Democrats named Bush king with the power to draw and quarter hippies and Muslims on the white house lawn, they will still blame the Democrats if there is another terrorist attack.

That's not to mention that the four year old in this case is a proven arsonist. It's not just the Bush administration. Rudy Giuliani bases his entire campaign, public persona and rhetorical attacks on 9/11, even though his actual 9/11 record is shameful. His paper tiger game is nothing compared to the Bush administration's, however.

Before 9/11, Condoleezza Rice blew off warnings from Sandy Berger, Richard Clarke and others that their biggest threat would be Al Qaeda; Rice initially didn't seem to know who they were. Before 9/11, Cheney insisted on being in charge of Bush's anti-terrorism task force, and met all of... zero times. And before 9/11, six years ago today, a little document was presented to George W. Bush and his inner circle: "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside U.S."

This is the same critical Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) that Condoleezza Rice shamelessly, cravenly insisted was merely a historical document. Read the PDB, watch the video, and recoil anew at Rice brazenly lying to the 9/11 Commission that the PDB did not speak of current threats. Rice asserts that the PDB "was not a warning," a blatant falsehood that betrays her lack of integrity and the Bush administration's criminal incompetence.

However, Rice's lies and Cheney's ineptitude pale in comparison to the spectacle of George W. Bush's reaction to the PDB, as reported in Ron Suskind's 2006 book, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11. The accuracy of this passage has never been challenged by the White House (to my knowledge). Although pressed on this very subject by Richard Ben-Veniste during her testimony, Rice left this tidbit out:

The "what ifs" can kill you.

Something missed. A failure of will. A turn in one direction when the other one was the right path.

Over time, people tend to get past them. We did what we could, they say, and move on.

But, in terms of the tragedy of 9/11, a particular regret lingers for those who might have made a difference.

The alarming August 6, 2001, memo from the CIA to the President — "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" — has been widely noted in the past few years.

But, also in August, CIA analysts flew to Crawford to personally brief the president — to intrude on his vacation with face-to-face alerts.

The analytical arm of CIA was in a kind of panic mode at this point. Other intelligence services, including those from the Arab world, were sounding an alarm. The arrows were in the red. They didn't know place or time of an attack, but something was coming. The President needed to know.

Verbal briefings of George W. Bush are acts of almost inestimable import in the affairs of the nation — more so than is the case for other recent presidents. He's not much of a reader, this President, and never has been, despite White House efforts to trumpet what serious books he is reading at various times. He's not a President who sees much value in hearing from a wide array of voices — he has made that clear. His circle of truly trusted advisors is small — smaller as President, in many ways, than it was when he was governor. But he's a very good listener and an extremely visual listener. He sizes people up swiftly and aptly, watches them carefully, and trusts his eyes. It is a gift, this nonverbal acuity, that he relies on in managing the almost overwhelming duties of the presidency: countless decisions each day, each one important; a daunting array of issues to grasp; an endless stream of politicized experts and expert politicos, all speaking in earnest tones. What does George W. Bush do? He makes it personal. He may not have a great deal of experience, especially in foreign affairs, before arriving in the job, but — because of his trust in those interpretative abilities — he doesn't view that as a deficit. The expert, sitting before him, has done the hard work, the heavy lifting, and the President tries to gauge how "certain" they are of what they say, even if the issues may be unfamiliar to him. Do they seem nervous or unsure? Are they fudging? Why do they think what they do... and what do they think of him>? That last part is very important.

The trap, of course, is that while these tactile, visceral markers can be crucial — especially in terms of handling the posturing of top officials — they sometimes are not. The thing to focus on, at certain moments, is what someone says, not who is saying it, or how they're saying it.

And, at an eyeball-to-eyeball intelligence briefing during this urgent summer, George W. Bush seems to have made the wrong choice.

He looked hard at the panicked CIA briefer.

"All right," he said. "You've covered your ass, now."

That's from Suskind's first two pages, in his preface. The picture doesn't get any rosier. The Washington Post's review highlighted this incident. Many bloggers have covered it (I did here, among other places). And Fahrenheit 9/11 featured Rice's attempted obstruction and Bush's paralysis on 9/11 itself.

This is the man nominally leading our country. Anecdotes such as this abound; this is merely one of the most egregious, maddening, and inexcusable. Suskind is relatively diplomatic and understated. The idea that a leader should focus on substance and also, y'know, read, shouldn't be radical propositions. If ever one doubted that the modern Republican party has deep contempt for the American people, it should be clear from the fact that they thought George W. Bush, who they knew behaved in this manner, was the very best person out of their entire party to be President of the United States.

As several others have noted as well, incompetence is not a bug of secretive, authoritarian regimes. It's a feature. The Bushies and other movement conservatives are bullies, with really only a few moves: secrecy, lying and bluffing. Giuliani doesn't want the general public to watch the video (linked above) made by 9/11 firefighters because they'd learn the truth about him and his shoddy record on terrorism. Similarly, the Bush administration has never wanted an honest, rational examination of their record on terrorism or anything else. These people are not acting in good faith, and have never acknowledged their catastrophic mistakes, which they are hell bent on repeating. That's why these issues are so important. The MSM has proven it will rarely call the GOP on its many lies, and the MSM accepts the Bush administration's secrecy. The MSM is wary of digging up the past because of its own glaring culpability. Meanwhile, too many Democrats are currently afraid to call the Bushies on their many shameless bluffs. The crucial subtext of Bush's presidential campaign against Kerry in 2004 was that if Kerry wouldn't stand up to ridiculous, scurrilous attacks by — the Bush campaign! — how could he be trusted to stand up to foreign foes? The Bush administration got one thing right (maybe the only thing they've got right) — it's important to stand up to bullies.

If we're to restore the Constitution and get America back to some semblance of sanity, this dynamic needs to change. These bullies, alarmists, propagandists and chickenhawks need to be called on their bluffs. Approval ratings show that the public's sharp enough to know that Bush and Cheney are bad for the country, but the details are important, most of all so that more citizens pressure Congress to do the job of running the country responsibly that the Bush administration will never do voluntarily. The epigraph Suskind chose for The One Percent Doctrine is from Thomas Jefferson: "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government." To effect positive change, the Bush administration needs to be examined far more frankly far more often, so that the public is better informed. A good starting point is revisiting that crucial PDB and how the Bush administration responded.


(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

Lock Up the Womenfolk, the Muslims are Comin'!

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)


(Stare into the eyes of a hardened killer.)

Oh, the things you can read on the internets! Would you believe that we found WMD in Iraq, and Muslims in America seek to make the United States subject to an Islamic Caliphate? (I suppose they should hurry, before those dangerous Mexican immigrants reclaim the American Southwest and dub it Aztlan!)

One Dave Gaubitz has won himself fans among many rightwing bloggers, a few neocons plus Peter Hoekstra, Curt Weldon and Rick Santorum. Glenn Greenwald quotes an article by British neocon Melanie Phillips, who writes:

It’s a fair bet that you have never heard of a guy called Dave Gaubatz. It’s also a fair bet that you think the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has found absolutely nothing, nada, zilch; and that therefore there never were any WMD programmes in Saddam’s Iraq to justify the war ostensibly waged to protect the world from Saddam’s use of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

Dave Gaubatz, however, says that you could not be more wrong. Saddam’s WMD did exist. He should know, because he found the sites where he is certain they were stored. And the reason you don’t know about this is that the American administration failed to act on his information, ‘lost’ his classified reports and is now doing everything it can to prevent disclosure of the terrible fact that, through its own incompetence, it allowed Saddam’s WMD to end up in the hands of the very terrorist states against whom it is so controversially at war.

Even though the Great Leader himself, George W. Bush, has admitted that there were no WMD in Iraq (however reluctantly), four years later true believers refuse to buy it. Scott Johnson from Powerline, Glenn Reynolds, Michelle Malkin and David Horowitz' publications have all been promoting Gaubatz. Greenwald also cites John Bolton promoting similar dribble (no surprise). Needless to say, this is crazy. Of course, denial is a way of life for many rightwingers. There's a saying that comes to mind: The more you pay for a fake picture, the more insistent you'll be that it's not a fake.

The Gaubatz insanity doesn't stop there, however. Gaubatz is a leading member of an organization ironically called SANE, or Society of Americans for National Existence. Here's their mission statement (hat tip to A Tiny Revolution):

National Existence is political order experienced by men of the nation as a Rise to Being. Its opposite is a replacement of political order experienced by men, women, children and slaves as a Fall from Being. This Redirection in the experience of the Terms of Being (Self, Society, G-d and World) results in the collapse of Self into Society and all into World. The goal, wittingly or otherwise: a World State.

SANE opposes this Redirection and its manifestations: chants of Racism, Democracy, Equal Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights, Animal Rights, and the always growing list of what is the Single Concept: Certainty/Uncertainty = Science/Open Society = World. To understand this reciprocal and how it affects a convergence of factors bent on the destruction of National Existence is to be SANE.

SANE is the first step back into the Present. And it is this step "back" to National Existence that will secure the present and protect the future.

The fall-from-grace tone is pretty clear, but I also have to wonder about any group which opposes itself to "democracy," "human rights" and the rest. I'm finding it hard to decide — is this more Book of Genesis, more Scientology, more bad college experimental theater or just painfully incoherent conservative reactionary claptrap?

If you scan through the SANE site, it really reads as if it's satire. Sadly, it's not. Perhaps most alarming is one of their key projects "to map every mosque and Islamic day school in America and to index the Shari'a threat level." This project has its own site, Mapping Sharia, while the actual project name is Mapping Shari'a in America: Knowing the Enemy. Yes, American citizens who happen to be Muslim are now "the enemy."


(Click for a larger image.)

It puts Michelle Malkin's little rant in perspective that she will:

...resist the imposition of sharia principles and sharia law in my taxi cab, my restaurant, my community pool, the halls of Congress, our national monuments, the radio and television airwaves, and all public spaces.

SANE recently explained the program on a Christian news network:

"We're going to go into the mosques ... we're going to go into the day schools, [and] we're going to get the literature, we're going to listen to the courses, and we're going to rate them," says [SANE founder] Yerushalmi. A rating of zero will indicate no sharia being taught; a rating of 10, says the group, will imply it is being taught at "al-Qaeda level."

Well, that's a comfort. It's also a great way to make friends with one's fellow Americans. A salaam aleikum, Monsieur Gaubitz!

Meanwhile, Dave Gaubitz penned a piece titled "Suicide & Islam: The connection to the slayings at Virginia Tech." While Gaubitz acknowledges that Seung-Hui Cho was not a Muslim terrorist:

I want to emphasize that the unfortunate murders in Blacksburg may have erupted initially from a domestic dispute, but the media and the authorities must not rush to judgment to rule out terrorism in any murder, especially a multiple murder. Doing so puts our nation at risk.

The jeopardy of ruling out the motive of Islamic terror or even of what we might term generic terror or terror for terror’s sake is ever present and real. When the media and law enforcement focus on a publicly-announced motive, whether that assumed motive is drug- or alcohol-related, marital issues, financial stresses, or emotional disturbances such as depression, the investigators almost immediately lose their objectivity and begin to focus exclusively on the reported causation. The tendency to do so is understandable but it is also dangerous in this day and age of Islamic terror.

Yes, Gaubitz seriously wants cops and the FBI to consider whether every murderer might in fact be an Islamic terrorist. Hmm. Even without a statistical analysis of the miniscule number of terrorism-related deaths in America compared to, say, domestic disputes or armed robbery, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that's crazy. I'll further say that if an investigator is looking at every murder, regardless of the evidence, as a terrorist act, that's the very definition of losing "objectivity."

My first reaction to the SANE site was that it probably was the most bigoted, xenophobic rhetoric I'd seen outside of outright hate speech. Jim Henley (link via Greenwald) did some valuable digging in this vein on their paranoia and religious roots. Here's an expansion of one of the key passages he uncovered, from SANE founder David Yerushalmi:

White Christians were at the founding of this nation a distinct people and privileged as such. Men of means among this people were given the opportunity for representative government. This is, for those of you flinching, not a thesis or “viewpoint”; this is historical fact.

After the Civil War, this changed; with the move into the 20th century this change became a wholesale reformation. Today, you cannot speak of Christianity in the public sphere and if you mention “white” and “Christians” in the same sentence you will be set upon as a despicable racist by every “fair-minded” public person. And, this phenomenon extends far beyond race. It is now the case that you cannot speak of the evil of Islam and remain a serious participant in public discourse. In order to speak of the unfathomable murder and mayhem brought to the Western world by Mohammed and his god Allah and the threat it poses to our very existence, we must label it in such ways as to disfigure our very meaning. Thus, Islamists are the bad guys not Muslims; Islamo-fascism is their political ideology not Islam simply and not even Islamic law; and we must, almost per force of law, begin by noting that our critique is not of the noble religion of peace but of radical Islam hijacked by the few extremists among the faithful.

Really, why can't we just hate them openly? Yerushalmi is clearly ignorant of how American was founded or is just lying as he parrots historical revisionism common among American Christian theocrats. He also adds (or highlights) a charming strain of bigotry to the mess. Curse those "fair-minded" people!

Funny, when I did a search for "American" and "Muslim" I found several interesting organizations, all of which seem less fearful and militant than SANE.

The American Muslim has on its front page:

In the name of God, The Compassionate, The Merciful

Oh mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know each other (Not that you may despise each other). 49;13

They also feature an article by Aaron Greenblatt called "Jewish-Muslim dialogue deeper than it seems."

The American Muslim Alliance provides links to many interesting studies and polls, including a U.S. Government demographic study of Muslims in America. SANE actually quotes the same statistics to raise a spectre of fear, but I'm rather encouraged by the following statistics:

• American Muslims who "strongly agree" that they should participate in American institutions and the political process: 70 percent
• U.S. mosques that feel the Koran should be interpreted with consideration of its purposes and modern circumstances: 71 percent
• U.S. mosques that provide some assistance to the needy: nearly 70 percent

Rather than a plot to overtake the government or the country, this says to me that American Muslims believe in a civic life as well as religious one, that they care about the poor, and that they're at least somewhat receptive to a non-literal reading of the Koran and how it applies to contemporary times. Sounds good to me!

The Muslim American Society describes its objectives as:

• To present the message of Islam to Muslims and non-Muslims, and promote understanding between them,
• To encourage the participation of Muslims in building a virtuous and moral society,
• To offer a viable Islamic alternative to many of our society’s prevailing problems,
• To promote family values in accordance with Islamic teaching,
• To promote the human values that Islam emphasizes: brotherhood, equality, justice, mercy, compassion, and peace, and
• To foster unity among Muslims and Muslim organizations and encourage cooperation and coordination amongst them.

The American Islamic Congress has several pieces on their site about ending war crimes and the killing in Darfur. As to the purpose, they explain:

The American Islamic Congress (AIC) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to building interfaith and interethnic understanding. Our organization grew out of the ashes of September 11. We believe American Muslims must take the lead in building tolerance and fostering a respect for human rights and social justice at home and throughout the Muslim world. Within the Muslim community, we are building a coalition around the agenda of unequivocal denunciation of terrorism, extremism, and hate speech. Reaching out to all people of conscience, we promote genuine interfaith dialogue and educate about the diversity within Islam.

The Islamic Society of North America claims to be the largest Muslim organization in the United States. Their mission statement reads:

ISNA is an association of Muslim organizations and individuals that provides a common platform for presenting Islam, supporting Muslim communities, developing educational, social and outreach programs and fostering good relations with other religious communities, and civic and service organizations.

ISNA has been criticized as too conservative by Muslim Wakeup!, a progressive group, who in turn get criticized for being... too progressive. Their mission statement reads:

Muslim WakeUp! seeks to bring together Muslims and non-Muslims in America and around the globe in efforts that celebrate cultural and spiritual diversity, tolerance, and understanding. Through online and offline media, events, and community activities, Muslim WakeUp! champions an interpretation of Islam that celebrates the Oneness of God and the Unity of God’s creation through the encouragement of the human creative spirit and the free exchange of ideas, in an atmosphere that is filled with compassion and free of intimidation, authoritarianism, and dogmatism. In all its activities, Muslim WakeUp! attempts to reflect a deep belief in justice and against all forms of oppression, bigotry, sexism, and racism.

Finally, the Council on American-Islamic Relations or CAIR is apparently also controversial, with some critics charging it has ties with more extreme groups. I'm open to reading legitimate criticism of CAIR or any of these organizations from reputable sources, but I can't fault CAIR's advocacy of civil rights.

Perhaps all these groups are lying to lull all non-Muslims into a false sense of security while they pursue their secret radical agenda, but that seems more like rightwing projection. There's a great deal of language about outreach and peace on these Muslim sites. All in all, I'm much more alarmed by SANE than any of these Muslim groups!

SANE and folks such as Michelle Malkin seem terrified that Muslim extremists will take over America. That's ridiculous. It's not going to happen. America is not going to become a Muslim theocracy, not any time in our lifetimes, if ever. Even assuming all Muslims in American had such an inclination, they don't have the numbers, and we have a little thing called the Constitution. Of course, most American Muslims don't have such an inclination. Still, the best bulwark against America becoming a Muslim theocracy on the legal and political front is Freedom of Religion and the separation of church and state.

This raises the issue of Christian theocrats in America, who fall roughly into two camps. The rank and file may be sincere in their religious beliefs and sincere in their fear of Islamic extremists. The leadership among religious authoritarians, people such as James Dobson, may be sincere in their fear as well, but as I've argued elsewhere, their main objective seems to be greater power. It takes only passing familiarity with the religious right to know they're afraid of or hostile to other religious groups, atheists, and generally, people who aren't them. Fear of a Muslim planet is certainly a rallying cry for many prominent Christian religious authoritarians in America. Dobson and Gaubatz might feel more comfortable living in a Christian theocracy, but America is not a theocracy, and theocracy is unjust on a systemic level. Destroying the American system of government to create a Christian theocracy would be a step helpful for creating a Muslim theocracy, not a defense against it. I suspect Dobson knows this, but fear is always a useful political tool.

There have always been political figures happy to exploit fear. For conservatives, it used to be those damn Commies, now it's Islamist terrorists or any Islamists, or for Dave Gaubatz, all Muslims (until given a stamp of approval, perhaps). However, as many writers have pointed out, under the Cold War we faced a far greater existential threat than we face now from Islamic extremists, despite all the fear-mongering going on.

America does face threats, the greatest of which would be the detonation of a nuclear "dirty bomb" in a major city. Terrorists as fanatical as Al Qaeda cannot be stopped by rational discussion, and they're certainly dangerous. However, taking national security threats seriously doesn't necessitate paranoia, hysteria and bigotry. There's no reason terrorists can't be caught through the use of warrants and while observing the Geneva Conventions. As a rule, liberals don't crap their pants any time a Muslim or someone with brown skin walks by.

In the meantime, one of the best defenses against hatred is an improvement of social, diplomatic and cultural ties. It's sad but hardly shocking that America's popularity throughout the world, but especially throughout the Muslim world, plummeted since Bush chose to invade Iraq. We talked with the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, but the Bush administration sees diplomacy itself as failure and apparently considers the silent treatment the height of foreign policy sophistication. The Cheney-Bush-neocon approach holds that humiliating one's opponents is the most successful policy. They're of course wrong, and it's no surprise such people can't win "hearts and minds." In the modern world, an imperialist mindset of domination and degradation isn't nearly as effective as one of cooperation and a restrained flexing of power, and that's just basic statecraft. When it comes to the domestic side of things, mapping mosques and Muslim day schools, labeling ordinary Muslims the enemy until proven innocent, with the judges a paranoid, bigoted rightwing organization, really doesn't spread the good will. It's quite shameful. The actions aren't nearly as bad, but the attitude reminds me those who created the Japanese-American internment camps back in the 1940s (defended with shoddy scholarship by Michelle Malkin). In contrast, organizations such as The Interfaith Alliance strengthen the community bonds that Gaubatz and his ilk intentionally or unintentionally shred. What a radical thought — rather than labeling one's fellow Americans as part of some dangerous "Other," one can have a conservation with them as human beings.

I believe there's a profound immaturity or arrested development in people such as Gaubitz, the rightwing bloggers mentioned, and most of the neocons (all subject for a later post). I suspect that Dave Gaubatz as a kid was the sort who was terrified of monsters in his closet, under his bed, and lurking in the toilet ready to pounce. All grown up, not that much has changed — Gaubatz and his ilk still see monsters everywhere, head deep in the swirling muck of their paranoia, bigotry, pent-up fear and constipated rage.

Dreams of a Sunni Kansas

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)


(Click the cartoon for a larger image.)

This Doonesbury strip, reprinted on 4/5/06, is one of my favorites from Trudeau in the past two years. Even among terrorists such as Al-Qaeda, while there are aspects of American culture they hate, it’s not so much that they hate our “freedom,” they hate our foreign policy. Furthermore, in Iraq, even the Pentagon estimates that Al-Qaeda comprises a mere sliver of the population. The majority of the Iraqi populace wants us out, they may want their faction to be dominant, and most of them probably want to be able to live their lives and raise their families in relative peace and prosperity. It’s not as if the entire populace of Iraq, let alone a significant percentage, has the will, interest, training or resources to travel to America, trick customs, gather dangerous materials and fashion a plot to attack the Mall of America.

Elegy (and Call to Arms) for the United States Constitution, 9/28/06

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1785, on slavery.

Against all logic, common sense, basic understanding of the United States Government, and morality, the Detainee/Military Trial Bill has passed.

The wounds inflicted upon America on 9/11/01 were deep and real; none of us alive and cognizant at that time will ever forget them. But those grave events were inflicted by a foreign enemy, Al-Qaeda. In tragic, horrific contrast, the wounds inflicted upon America and the United States Constitution today, 9/28/06, are self-inflicted. It's as if a mugging victim, shaken by his experience, decided the best way to prevent future harm to himself was to slit his own wrists.

The best way to avoid being prosecuted for war crimes is - don't commit war crimes.

Sadly, it seems this option has not been considered by the Bush administration and the Republican party, as evidenced by their move to legalize torture, eliminate habeas corpus, and undermine the 4th Amendment through warrantless surveillance. We can catch any bad guys without these measures, and these measures harm the very cause they claim to further. Violence, crime and terrorism are solved through a greater commitment to justice, not through violence towards the Geneva Conventions, the United States Constitution and core American values. The Nuremberg trials confronted true evil by upholding rather than undermining the rule of law and principles of basic human decency. There's a reason why so many military personnel, intelligence officials, and JAGs oppose Bush's measures. America should not torture, nor attempt to strip anyone of essential civil rights.

The best way to fight evil is with good.

As Glenn Greenwald observes, “it is not hyperbole to say that this is one of the most tyrannical and dangerous bills to be enacted in our nation’s history.” As Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said, “Why would we allow the terrorists to win by doing to ourselves what they could never do, and abandon the principles for which so many Americans today and through our history have fought and sacrificed?” As the line from Henry V goes, “Shame and eternal shame, nothing but shame!”

Lincoln must be rolling over in his grave. What is wrong with the Republican party? I cannot pretend to the moral authority or compassion to say, “forgive them, for they know what they do.” I am not inclined to forgive them. And I suspect they do know what they do. Cassandra’s curse was to know the future, and shout it out, but never to be believed. The difference here is that Cassandra, here played by liberals and all those conservatives and moderates who revere justice and the rule of law, have been heard, but still dismissed by those in power. It is not that those in power do not hear (and they may even believe); they just do not care. As the passage by Pastor Martin Niemöller goes:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

The GOP either assumes no one will ever come for them — or fears it so much they are acting to prevent any legal repercussions for when it finally happens. I tend to think they simply cannot imagine the possibility that innocents will be arrested and harmed and soldiers endangered by their measures. Nor can they imagine not being in a position of power and privilege. Civil rights are a concern for the little people, not those sitting in the first-class seats.

To the GOP:

Are you so fearful of terrorists that you will betray the very same essential values that spurred the creation of America in the first place?

Are you so incompetent you cannot convict a real terrorist in a fair trial?

Are you so lazy you cannot get a warrant to pursue our enemies?

Are you so ignorant that you would needlessly throw out the United States Constitution?

Are you so selfish that the safety and well-being of American soldiers is less important to you than your own re-election and your party keeping power?

Are you so proud of your performance to date waging the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in investigating war profiteering, in general congressional oversight, in Katrina (and Iraq) reconstruction, in fiscal management and demonstrating unimpeachable ethical standards, that the Democrats cannot be trusted to continue your holy mission?

Are you so unpatriotic as to betray everything that has made America great?

America has been a great nation, despite its faults. Among its greatest shames are slavery, the treatment of Native Americans, the Japanese Internment Act, and the prolonged delay of civil rights for all Americans. But America has always been about pursuing the ideal, about evolving and progressing, about self-correcting. At its heart, at its best, it is a progressive nation. When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out against the injustice of his era, he spoke not of a new, radical revolution, but of America honoring its own ideals.

Our national honor has been horribly stained — in the name of our nation. It is time for all men and women of conscience to rescue America from the same false patriots who shriek so loudly that that the only way to protect America is to strip us all of our essential freedoms.

I’m reminded of two stirring, quintessentially American pieces. One is an elegy. The other serves as a call to arms.

The Elegy: Walt Whitman wrote “O Captain, my Captain” after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865:

O Captain! My Captain!

I. O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring.
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red!
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

II. O captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up! For you the flag is flung, for you the bugle trills:
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths, for you the shores a-crowding:
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning.
O Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

III. My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won!
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

The Call to Arms: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered the following famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28th, 1963:

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Bush Lies; Rice Lies

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
— Ecclesiastes 1:9 (NIV)

At times, it seems as if there are no mysteries left in life, or that the mysteries are just too slight.

For instance, to any sane, well-informed adult reading the AP headline Rice challenges statements by Clinton on terror: Secretary says administration aggressively pursued al-Qaida before 9/11” it’s obvious Condoleezza Rice is lying.

And when one reads the AP headline ”Intel report: Iraq a ‘cause célèbre’ for extremists: President says NIE leak was political, denies war has worsened terrorism” President Bush is clearly either lying or delusional.

The only real mysteries are how the media will cover it, how the Bush cheerleaders will spin it, and how blatantly and aggressively Bush and Rice will insist that black is white and that they’re not lying through their teeth.

Rice’s lies were prompted by the now (in)famous interview of Bill Clinton by Chris Wallace at Fox News. The AP reports that the YouTube version has been downloaded over 800,000 times and earned “the show its best ratings in nearly three years.” (The video can be seen here and a previous post is here.) In addition to Rice calling Clinton’s charges that the Bush administration did little to stop al-Qaeda before 9/11 “flatly false,”

Rice also took exception to Clinton's statement that he "left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy" for incoming officials when he left office.

"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida," she told the newspaper, which is owned by News Corp., the same company that owns Fox News Channel.

Ah. those Bushies. They’re good at lying from plenty of practice, but at times they get sloppy and move from technically true if delusional assertions such as “I firmly believe we’re winning the war on terror” to demonstratively false statements. The Raw Story very rapidly exposed Rice’s lie:

Faux News – The McLobster of Journalism!

In Maine and parts of Canada, McDonald’s seasonally offers a sandwich called the “McLobster.” I kid you not. While these days they apparently advertise it sometimes as a “lobster roll” and “100% real lobster” (I would be shocked if that claim was not misleading in some fashion), back when I first saw it advertised in 1988, McDonald’s proudly claimed – again, I kid you not - that the McLobster was “made with flecks of real lobster!” Yes, that’s right, “flecks.” The only person I know who actually admitted to trying it was, shall we say, underwhelmed.

There’s a lot of buzz currently about Chris Wallace’s interview with Bill Clinton, where Wallace sandbagged the former President – namely, Clinton was told he was going to be asked about his Global Policy Initiative, and Wallace pulled a bait-and-switch by asking Clinton about his record on catching or killing bin Laden. Is Clinton’s terrorism record a fair subject? Of course. But it’s completely dishonest to misrepresent an interview to one’s subject beforehand. It’s also standard practice for Fox News.

The Washington Post has a brief write-up here (and Howard Kurtz is sure to cover it tomorrow). Questiongirl has the video posted here. ThinkProgress has a full transcript here.

While the Post article notes that Wallace is “not usually accused of being part of the network’s conservative commentariat” at Fox News, and he in fact spoke out against the distortions of ABC’s propaganda piece The Path to 9/11, there’s little question of what this segment was about. Besides being a typical Fox News sandbag job, its other goal is of course trying to rewrite history and paint the Democrats as weak and Bush as responsible on national security before the election.

Of course Fox has a commercial agenda as well a rightwing one — they’ve been selling this interview as “Clinton Gets Crazed!” — not far off from “Presidents Gone Wild!”

But just imagine if Clinton hadn’t responded so forcefully? Conservatives will doubtlessly sell this as “Clinton gets defensive about his lousy record on terrorism.” But I think Chris Wallace has gotten so used to Faux Dems (“I’m not a liberal, but I play one on Fox News!”) he forgot what it was like to try to sandbag someone who would fight back. (Imagine if Kerry has responded to the Swifites with this sort of fire!)

Hmm... I just caught the tail end of Wallace on Fox with Brit Hume and the gang. Wallace lifts two quotations from Clarke's book - the second one could be used to criticize Clinton's critics, but is used to criticize only Clinton. (I’ll try to get some more links up later.)

Almost all of them talk about how "touchy" Clinton was, and speculate it's because he's "sensitive" about his legacy. No one points out that Clinton was sandbagged, with Wallace misrepresenting the interview before hand! NPR’s Juan Williams and Mara Liasson make a few points, but they know what Fox is paying them for - and again, why the hell do you have non-partisan, neutral reporters representing the left on a talk show? Hume trots out some standard GOP talking points about Clinton after cutting him a little slack - basically, he and the other GOP folk acknowledge Clinton was dealt a tough hand, but also imply had he been a real man he'd still have done precisely what they were arguing against him to do at the time!

This is Fox News’ typical seasonal offering for imminent elections; same BS as usual, but piled higher and deeper. Fox News is the McLobster of journalism — if you dig through it you can find “flecks” of real news in there, but overall, it’s an over-processed, artificial sham that’ll have you rushing for the toilet.

(crossposted at The Blue Herald)

The Looming Tower

(crossposted at The Blue Herald)



It’s hard to keep up with all the good books out there, especially the rush of great non-fiction. I suspect the authors have been inspired by the unbelievable actions of a ridiculous cast of characters in the White House it would be hard to invent.

One of the new, great books is The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright. But even if you can’t find time to read it, you can still sample some great interviews and reviews on it.

Author Lawrence Wright has a great interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air here. (Another page of NPR interviews and coverage can be found here.)



Lawrence Wright and Steve Coll discussed the book over several days in Slate here.

Wright replied to Washington Post readers’ questions about bin Laden earlier this week for the anniversary of 9/11 here.

And finally, you can read the New York Times reviews from Dexter Filkins here and Michiko Kakutani here.