Pat Buchanan said something quite bracing on the McLaughlin Report this week-end:
What this tells you John is that we are coming out of Iraq. This is the first resolution and it’s non-binding, others are coming down the road. There will be no more surges into Iraq, the president has said we are not winning the war with the troops we have, we are coming out. So we had better prepare ourselves for the consequences, not of a defeat for American arms, but a defeat for American policy in Iraq, the potential loss of Iraq. And frankly John, the situation’s not looking all that good in Afghanistan either, where the NATO allies are not doing their bit. So we are at a historic turning point, I think, for the United States in the middle east.
We aren’t going to be leaving Iraq while George W. Bush is in the white house. But, I think he’s got the rest of it right. We certainly have a policy failure in Iraq. Big time.
Tony Blankley let the cat out of the bag, however, when he said that the US will be in Iraq for 20 years. When challenged about the difference between American combat troops on the ground an an American “presence” he (angrily)said this:
The fact is that when the oil is challenged in the Saudi oil fields and the Straights of Hormuz are closed, we’ll be fighting even by your definition.
Right. They aren’t even pretending anymore.
I think the great public intellectual and conservative philosopher Ann Coulter said it best:
“Liberals are always talking about why we shouldn’t go to war for oil. But why not go to war for oil? We need oil.
We keep hearing a lot about how wrong it is for the Democrats in congress to have the temerity to stop giving the president a blank check. Over and over again the Republicans wail about how the Dems want to hurt the troops by refusing to fund this escalation.
“I really want to know: If Democrats insist that they are supporting our troops, then why wouldn’t they let me introduce my measure that mandates that Congress would support and fully fund the men and women in uniform?
“I’m positive that Democrats will attempt to cut funding as soon as the spending bills come up this spring…and fear what that means for our troops on the ground.
[…]
“What is the democrats’ plan to move forward and win? They don’t have one! Just 36 hours of political grandstanding, non-binding resolutions, and petty posturing. They are not proposing solutions. They are not even encouraging new ideas – in fact – they stopped them, like when they squashed my amendment.
“Many hope that the troop surge is the beginning of the end. We all should want that if it gets the job done. Yet, Democrats are just saying no.
“You know, the time will come when they can put the money behind these non-binding resolutions….. and you better believe that we’ll be watching them …and calling them on those funding cuts loud and clear.
“America needs to know: cutting funds for our troops in harm’s way is not a remedy – it’s a ruse.”
He had more to say in his gripping closing statement:
“We POWs were still in Vietnam when Washington cut the funding for Vietnam. I know what it does to morale and mission success. Words can not fully describe the horrendous damage of the anti-American efforts against the war back home to the guys on the ground.”
“Our captors would blare nasty recordings over the loud speaker of Americans protesting back home…tales of Americans spitting on Vietnam veterans when they came home… and worse.
“We must never, ever let that happen again.
“The pain inflicted by your country’s indifference is tenfold that inflicted by your ruthless captors.
“Our troops – and their families – want, need and deserve the full support of the country – and the Congress. Moms and dads watching the news need to know that the Congress will not leave their sons and daughters in harm’s way without support.
[…]
“Debating non-binding resolutions aimed at earning political points only destroys morale, stymies success, and emboldens the enemy.
“The grim reality is that this House measure is the first step to cutting funding of the troops…Just ask John Murtha about his ‘slow-bleed’ plan that hamstrings our troops in harm’s way.
“Now it’s time to stand up for my friends who did not make it home – and those who fought and died in Iraq – so I can keep my promise that when we got home we would quit griping about the war and do something positive about it…and we must not allow this Congress to leave these troops like the Congress left us.
“Today, let my body serve as a brutal reminder that we must not repeat the mistakes of the past… instead learn from them.
“We must not cut funding for our troops. We must stick by them. We must support them all the way…To our troops we must remain…always faithful.
UNITED STATES TROOP DEPLOYMENTS IN BOSNIA (House of Representatives – December 13, 1995)
Mr. SAM JOHNSON of Texas:
Mr. Speaker, this is not about peace and war; it is about war. That is what is going on over there, and they are not going to stop fighting just because we go in there.
I wholeheartedly support withholding funds from President Clinton’s Bosnia mission. Although it is a drastic step and ties the President’s hands, I do not feel like we have any other choice. The President has tied our hands, gone against the wishes of the American people, and this is the last best way I know how to show my respect for our American servicemen and women. They are helpless, following orders. But we, we are in a position to stop this terrible mistake before it happens.
I know how those soldiers are feeling. I was in the military for 29 years, and I recognize that we used to say `Let’s go to war. Let’s go fight that war, it is the only one we have got.’ And that is what some of them are doing. However, I was told by Senator Hutchison that the guys down in Fort Hood did not say that. They said `Why are we going there? Can’t you stop us?’ She said she would try.
Thirty years ago when I was sent to Vietnam in a similar situation, Vietnam started out as a peace type mission, no defined goal, no exit strategy, no idea whose side we were on, and a created incident to gain support of the Congress. A peacekeeping mission? Come on. Does this not sound just like a carbon copy? I think it is.
What is going to happen when our guys get over there, and if the rules of engagement apply, and they get shot at, and we start shooting back, what are their people going to say when we start killing them, killing Bosnians, killing Croatians, killing Serbs? We will do it, and we will get chastised for it.
Let me just ask one more thing for the guys over here voting against it: What are you going to do when one of our women soldiers get captured?
These principled conservatives really get you coming and going don’t they?
It seems that the Republicans have forgotten the debate over troop funding in 1995. Too bad they are on record:
As thousands of U.S. soldiers packed for a winter in Bosnia, the Senate Wednesday debated President Clinton’s plan to send those troops to enforce peace between ancient enemies. House Republicans vented their opposition.
In a 108-64 vote Wednesday, House Republicans backed a measure that would cut off funding for the mission. Although House leaders gave the funding cutoff no chance of passing later Wednesday, the caucus action clearly reflected stiff opposition.
[…]
The measure drafted by Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was given the best chance of winning Senate approval Wednesday -shortly before the president departs for Paris and the signing of the Bosnian peace agreement Thursday.
House backing appeared less certain, particularly after Republicans endorsed the measure by Rep. Bob Dornan of California, which would cut off money for the operation.
“I’m going to be in Tuzla on Christmas with the troops,” Dornan said, referring to the U.S. headquarters in Bosnia. “Please don’t question Bob Dornan’s support for the troops.”
[…]
The Senate debated three options: Cut off funding, a proposal given little chance of passing; oppose Clinton’s decision to send troops but support the soldiers themselves, expected to gain Republican support; or permit Clinton to send troops but impose restrictions on the mission, also considered likely to pass…”I think the American people are solidly behind our effort to stop the deployment, even though it’s almost too late now,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.)
To be fair, the debate was all over the place, although the Dems were solidly behind Clinton. (The public was extremely skeptical that the mission could work or that the US would not take casualties. As it turned out, there were none, either there or in the Kosovo war that came later and which many Republicans also opposed.)
Never the less, it’s quite astonishing to see how casually Republicans discussed cutting off funding and how they offered legislation to do it — and all the other things they now purport are outrageous betrayals of the military. There were troops on the ground then too — Dornan was headed out to Tuszla to visit them. (They knew, of course, that they wouldn’t be baited by rightwing character assassins for doing so, so they do have freedom that Democrats don’t have.)
But, still, it was only twelve years ago that our big POW hero Sam Johnson held an entirely different position on defunding the troops than he has now. You’d think that someone would have noticed the inconsistency.
I have to wonder just how many times Republicans get to be totally wrong on national security before the American people (certainly the press) catch on to the fact that they have never had the faintest clue?
One of the things thats driven me nuts over the past few years is this reflexive portrayal of the GWOT as the most dangerous and challenging in world history. They have from the beginning behaved in a way that I think history will see as panicked and overwrought. As a nation we behaved with much more calm and deliberation when we were much more seriously threatened in the past. These last few years were not our finest.
Still they audaciously insist that the forty years of the cold war were a cakewalk compared to what we are dealing with now. Indeed, many of them also believe that WWII was nothing to the horrors we face today. (Chris Hayes wrote a great piece about this for In These Times some months back.) Bush still repeats his completely absurd line about how the oceans used to protect us and he’s just dumb enough to actually believe it. Paul Kennedy, a professor of history and the director of international security studies at Yale discusses this in today’s LA Times:
IT WAS FUNNY, in a grim sort of way. Last week, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates responded to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s polemical attack on the United States by remembering the 50-year Cold War as a “less complex time” and saying he was “almost nostalgic” for its return.
Gates should know. He himself is the quintessential Cold Warrior, having served nearly 27 years in the Central Intelligence Agency (facing off against the likes of Putin, who was for 17 years an agent in the foreign intelligence branch of the Soviet KGB). So we should take him seriously when he suggests that the problems of 20 or 30 years ago were in some ways more manageable than our current global predicament.
Nor is he alone. There is a palpable sense of nostalgia these days for the familiar contours of that bygone conflict, which has been replaced by a much more murky, elusive and confusing age.
The argument goes as follows: The Cold War, although unpleasant, was inherently stable. It was a bipolar world — centered on Washington and Moscow — and, as UC Berkeley political scientist Kenneth Waltz argued, it was much more predictable than, say, the shifting, multipolar world of the 1910s or 1930s, decades that were followed by calamitous wars. Yes, it’s true that the two sides possessed masses of nuclear weapons aimed at each other’s biggest cities, but the reality is that they were constrained by a mutual balance of terror.
I see this as being two different phenomena. The first is the unreconstructed cold warriors who are both rewriting history and adhering to their long standing hysterical position that the sky is always falling and the only thing to do is fight, invade, bomb or some other form of violence. They have never seen any use in diplomacy, international law, sophisticated containment strategies or anything else that requires finesse and subtlety. It’s always been about might makes right with these people. They were frustrated to no end by anyone who tried something different and that includes St. Ronnie who was roundly denounced for taking yes for an answer when the Soviets saw the light.
One would have thought that the outcome of the cold war would make them embarrassed to ever offer an opinion again, but they simply airbrushed the facts to suggest that Ronald Reagan’s welfare for middle aged white males (otherwise known as the 80’s defense buildup) somehow meant they had defeated the Soviets on the battlefield. But it wasn’t truly satisfying and they were looking for a proper boogeyman to hate from the moment Gorbachev and Ronnie made nice.
Then 9/11 happens when they are in charge and they have a chance to do it the way they always wanted to — by roaring and flailing about like a wounded Giant under the ridiculous assumption that this will scare the enemy so much he will just give up. They are facing this complicated threat with all the sophistication of early man trying to scare off a big predator.
The doughy pantload generation of wingnuts, on the other hand, thinks it’s some sort of game and they are the star players. They yearned to be “part” of something momentous — but from a distance, like you are when you are watching movies about war and heroism and identify with the main characters. No need to give up your Milk Duds just to enjoy a good bloodbath. They are writing an exciting plotline that has Islamic terrorism somehow so uniquely dangerous that it has surpassed WWII and the cold war and is more like something out of science fiction: “Star Wars” or “War of the Worlds.” To these people, naitonal security is cheap pulp fiction.
Of course it is all nonsense. After acknowledging that today’s world is complicated and difficult, yadda, yadda yadda, Kennedy continues:
So is it true? Was the Cold War era, on the whole, a safer era? Ponder the following counterarguments:
First, however tricky our relationships with Putin’s Russia and President Hu Jintao’s China are nowadays, the prospect of our entering a massive and mutually cataclysmic conflict with either nation are vastly reduced.
We seem to have forgotten that our right-wing hawks argued passionately for “nuking” communist China during the Korean War and again during the Taiwan Straits crisis of 1954. We also have apparently forgotten — although newly released archival evidence overwhelmingly confirms this — how close we came to a nuclear Armageddon during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Likewise, we’ve forgotten the shock of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, which prompted then-German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to ask, “Is this the new Sarajevo?” a reference to the outbreak of World War I. And who still remembers 1984-85, when we were riveted by Jonathan Schell’s argument in the New Yorker that even a few nuclear explosions would trigger such dust storms as to produce a “nuclear winter”?
Those were really scary times, and much more dangerous than our present circumstance because the potential damage that could be inflicted during an East-West conflagration was far, far greater than anything that Al Qaeda can do to us now. No one has the exact totals, but we probably had 20,000 missiles pointed at each other, often on high alert. And the threat of an accidental discharge was high.
None of today’s college-age students were born in 1945, 1979 or maybe even 1984. None lived with those triangular signs proclaiming their schools to be nuclear bomb shelters.
To recapture those frightening atmospherics these days, university professors must resort to showing Cold War movies: “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Fail Safe,” “Dr. Strangelove,” “The Hunt for Red October,” “Five Days in May,” “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.” Students look rather dumbfounded when told that we came close, on several occasions, to World War III.
Yet what if, for example, Josef Stalin had prevented American and British supply aircraft from flying into Berlin in 1948-49? Phew! The years 1945 to, say, 1990 were horrible on other accounts. China’s Mao Tse-tung’s ghastly Great Leap Forward led to as many as 30 million deaths, the greatest loss of life since the Black Death. The Soviet Union was incarcerating tens of thousands of its citizens in the gulags, as were most of the other members of the Warsaw Pact. The Indo-Pakistan wars, and the repeated conflicts between Israel and its neighbors, produced enormous casualties, but nothing like the numbers that were being slaughtered in Angola, Nigeria, the Congo, Vietnam and Cambodia. Most of the nations of the world were “un-free.”
It is hard to explain to a younger generation that such delightful countries as Greece, Spain, Portugal, Chile, Brazil, South Africa, Poland and Czechoslovakia (to name only a few) were run in those days by fascist generals, avowed racists or one-party totalitarian regimes. I am ancient enough to remember the long list of countries I would not visit for summer holidays; old enough to recall how creepy it was to enter Walter Ulbricht’s East German prison house of a state via Checkpoint Charlie in the late 1960s. Ugh.
Let us not, then, wax too nostalgic about the good old days of the Cold War. Today’s global challenges, from Iraq to Darfur to climate change, are indeed grave and cry out for solutions.
But humankind as a whole is a lot more prosperous, a great deal more free and democratic and a considerable way further from nuclear obliteration than we were in Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy’s time. We should drink to that.
No thanks to the rabid right which has been lobbying for a nuclear meltdown (and global domination, let’s face it) since the end of WWII. It is a worldview that has almost nothing to do with actual events or facts on the ground. It reached its zenith with Bush, but they will never go away. They are fearful, insecure people whose temperament and ideology create a need for them to believe that they are warrior heroes in spite of all evidence to the contrary. They are the last people on earth who should be leading a powerful nation in a time of great challenge. Talk about putting the inmates in charge of the asylum.
Update: Tangentially related is this column by David Brooks today in which he says, “Iraq has revealed what human beings do without a strong order-imposing state.” My goodness, that sounds an awful lot like and endorsement of totalitarianism, don’t you think? (Read this by Arthur Silber, to see Brooks revealed as the cramped, anti-enlightenment fraud he is.)
This, again, relates more to psychology than ideology. These are people who are apparently motivated by a rather simple desire to dominate. Gone now are the lovely paeans to democracy and freedom and liberty and even private enterprise. Within three short years we are back to a Hobbesian hellhole where the wogs need a strong hand. Man, you’d think they’d get whiplash.
On a political level, this all means that it’s silly to believe that anything they say or do is sincere. We have seen the Bush administration cast aside virtually every tenet of modern conservatism and yet the base remains devoted believers in the Party. Indeed, they are getting ready to vote for one of three other world class conservative hypocrites, knowing full well that they are liars, cheats and panderers. So let’s cut the crap about them ever having strong principles. It’s all about kicking ass and taking names with these people. All other aspects of the conservative “philosophy” clearly mean nothing to them.
The ideal candidate for president, as I see it, would come from a platform of remediation; it would be a person who realizes that America is deeply flawed, and who understands the need to usher in an era of remedial action, to study where America went off the tracks; it would be someone who sees how corporations and religion have violated the public sphere to the detriment of the founding ideals, and how those two public corruptions, money and religion, have fostered the imperialism that put America, once again, in an unnecessary war.
I’m not for one minute suggesting that a remediation platform will garner votes. If a candidate wants votes, they will be out peddling a different audacity, one called hope. Hope will attract the feeble-minded voter who wants to feel good today and can’t imagine that America might not be “great.” Hope is just the snake oil these folks need.
The audacity of remediation, on the other hand, begins with the understanding that America has some medicine to take before it can get better. The medicine is making changes to the core of how society operates, to remove money as the main driver of its politics, and to restore to society the ideals of justice and humanity.
The platform:
1. The ideal candidate should be able to differentiate between illusory concepts such as hope, and the important duties we have to justice and humanity. Blog-friend Nezua Limón Xolagrafik-Jonez differentiated it nicely in an inspiring post today:
If there is hope for the future of mankind, it does not lie in our media, it does not lie in our laws, it does not lie in our war-makers, and it does not lie in the endless verbal and mental diarrhea that we call “News.” Perhaps it lies in remembering that our first duty is to mankind; to humanity. Perhaps it lies in remembering that an honest person who remains neutral is not an honest person at all, but an accomplice to every crime done in their name. Perhaps it lies in telling the truth.
2. The ideal candidate would acknowledge that 700,000 people have been killed and maimed in an illegal war, and that justice and humanity demands the impeachment of those responsible. From digby’s post yesterday, Lincoln spoke of the gravity of violating the constitution, and spoke of our duty with regard to impeachment:
Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
3. The ideal candidate would push to re-establish the public interest aspect of the corporation, and to restore the balance of power between labor and capital; the candidate would support Fair Trade standards. The candidate would push to remove all private money from election campaigns.
Joe Vecchio provides this quotation by Theodore Roosevelt:
At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of free men to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth. -Theodore Roosevelt, The New Nationalism, 1910
Another learned man, Eisenhower, had a similar recognition:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
4. The ideal candidate will protect religion as private worship, but will support restrictions on it as a public spectacle. The candidate will understand the impact of public charlatans upon the people, particularly when using mass media to manipulate mass minds. The candidate will understand what Jefferson meant when he said:
I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
Those are the words inscribed under the dome of the Jefferson memorial.
The ideal candidate will push for the resurrection of secularism (yes, pun intended) promoted by humanism scholar Susan Jacoby:
Those who cherish secular values have too often allowed conservatives to frame public policy debates as conflicts between “value-free” secularists and religious representatives of supposedly unchanging moral principles. But secularists are not value-free; their values are simply grounded in earthly concerns rather than in anticipation of heavenly rewards or fear of infernal punishments. No one in public life today upholds secularism and humanism in the uncompromising terms used by Ingersoll more than 125 years ago.
Secularism teaches us to be good here and now. I know nothing better than goodness. Secularism teaches us to be just here and now. It is impossible to be juster than just. Secularism has no ‘castles in Spain.’ It has no glorified fog. It depends upon realities, upon demonstrations; and its end is to make this world better every day — to do away with poverty and crime, and to cover the world with happy and contented homes.
These values belong at the center, not in the margins, of the public square. It is past time to restore secularism, and its noble and essential contributions at every stage of the American experiment, to its proper place in our nation’s historical memory and vision of the future.
Remediation.UPDATED to replace bogus Lincoln quote with a fitting one by T. Roosevelt. (h/tJoe Vecchio)
Every time I see our illustrious VP’s mug on the tube or hear mention of Halliburton, I always flash on my favorite scene in Warren Beatty’s Reds. Early in the film, we are first introduced to the story’s protagonist, journalist/activist/Communist John Reed (Beatty), as he attends a meeting of the Liberal Club, where the discussion has turned to America’s involvement in the current war (WWI). Reed, who has just returned from reporting on the European Front, is asked what he thinks the conflict is “about”. Reed stands up, faces the group, mumbles one word, then sits back down. The word is: “Profits”. The crystalline brevity of that answer really blew my (then) twenty-something mind back in 1981.
Indeed, it is a testament to Beatty’s sense of conviction and legendary powers of persuasion (or, as Tom Hanks put it so succinctly at the recent Golden Globe Awards, “Balls”) that he was able to convince a major Hollywood studio to back a 3 ½ hour epic about a relatively obscure American Communist (who is buried in the Kremlin!).
As we know now, of course, the film turned out to be a critical success, and garnered a dozen Oscar noms (it won three, including Best Director). Almost unbelievably, it was not released on DVD until late 2006. If you haven’t seen it in a while or (gasp!) have never seen it-you owe yourself a screening (particularly if you are a history buff).
Diane Keaton turns in one of her best performances as Reed’s lover, writer and feminist Louise Bryant. Maureen Stapleton (who we sadly lost last year) certainly earned her Best Supporting Actress trophy with a memorable portrayal of activist Emma Goldman. Jack Nicholson’s take on the complex, mercurial playwright, Eugene O’Neill is a wonder to behold. And Beatty deserves special kudos for assembling an amazing group of surviving real-life participants, whose anecdotal recollections are seamlessly interwoven throughout, like a Greek Chorus of living history. No one makes ‘em like this anymore.
If you really want to make a night of it, a certain rousing anthem that figures prominently in the “Reds” soundtrack is the sole spotlight of another recent DVD release. Blending archival footage with thoughtful commentary, The Internationale takes a look at the origins and continuing historical impact of its namesake, from its 19th century roots in the French Commune movement to Tiananmen Square and beyond, packed into a breezy 30 minutes. Arguably one of the most idealized (and frequently misinterpreted) rallying songs ever composed (just the melody alone gives me goose bumps), the tune has been embraced by Socialists, Marxists, anarchists, anti-Fascists, workers and labor activists alike over the years, transcending nationalist and language barriers. The most interesting aspect the film examines concerns the bad rap the song received after it was “officially” adapted by the oppressive, post-revolutionary Soviet regime. Pete Seeger (a perfect choice, no?) emcees the proceedings, with support from historians, musicologists, and multi-national participants (veteran and current) in some of the aforementioned movements. British punk agitprop troubadour extraordinaire Billy Bragg also makes a brief appearance. C’mon everybody (You know the words!)
Even as our troops have begun to take Baghdad back step-by-step, there are many in this Congress who have nevertheless already reached a conclusion about the futility of America’s cause there, and declared their intention to put an end to this mission not with one direct attempt to cutoff funds, but step by political step. No matter what the rhetoric of this resolution, that is the reality of the moment. This non-binding measure before us is a first step toward a constitutional crisis that we can and must avoid.
Lieberman believes that said crisis is being precipitated because the congress has the temerity to try to rein in a rogue president who has no respect for the wishes of the American people or the constitution.
One would think a person so concerned with the constitution would have stepped up at some time in the last few years to denounce this:
When President Bush signed the new law, sponsored by Senator McCain, restricting the use of torture when interrogating detainees, he also issued a Presidential signing statement. That statement asserted that his power as Commander-in-Chief gives him the authority to bypass the very law he had just signed.
This news came fast on the heels of Bush’s shocking admission that, since 2002, he has repeatedly authorized the National Security Agency to conduct electronic surveillance without a warrant, in flagrant violation of applicable federal law.
And before that, Bush declared he had the unilateral authority to ignore the Geneva Conventions and to indefinitely detain without due process both immigrants and citizens as enemy combatants.
All these declarations echo the refrain Bush has been asserting from the outset of his presidency. That refrain is simple: Presidential power must be unilateral, and unchecked.
But the most recent and blatant presidential intrusions on the law and Constitution supply the verse to that refrain. They not only claim unilateral executive power, but also supply the train of the President’s thinking, the texture of his motivations, and the root of his intentions.
They make clear, for instance, that the phrase “unitary executive” is a code word for a doctrine that favors nearly unlimited executive power. Bush has used the doctrine in his signing statements to quietly expand presidential authority.
And Lieberman has been with him every step of the way. He is in no position to talk about constitutional crises ever. He supports the most aggressive executive power grab in American history even to the extent that he votes for torture, indefinite detention without due process, and anything else his “commander in chief” says he wants to do. He has no more credibility to warn this nation about a constitutional crisis than his BFF George W. Bush has to claim it’s “preposterous” to suggest he would manufacture evidence that Iran is provoking a military confrontation. Please.
“Yes, there was a separate [national security] staff set up by the vice president, and yes, they created a certain mystique,” the source said. “But the real power of the vice president was that he could go in and talk to the president about whatever he wanted, and staff didn’t always know what he was saying.”
I think we can imagine it though:
DC: “You’re a strong man, a manly man, a man who makes women quake and men tremble in your presence. You’re a gut player, a man who knows instantly the right thing to do. So when I tell you that your brilliant idea to bomb Iran will go down in history as the boldest decision a world leader has ever made, I think you know I mean it. Thank you for making the tough decisions and sticking with them.”
GWB: “Yeah, it’s hard work bein’ the most powerful man on earth. But Dick, I don’t remember giving the order to bomb Iran. Did I?”
DC: “All of us were very impressed with your resolute boldness and bold resoluteness. Years from now, after you’re dead, people will build monuments to commemorate your valiant leadership”
GWB: “Right, right. It had to be done. Uh, when did I order them to start the bombing again?”
With wingnuts peddling phony Abraham Lincoln quotes left and right, it’s probably a good idea to take a closer look at what Abraham Lincoln actually said. Queequeg found a speech he gave on the House floor in 1848 during a debate on the Mexican War. And guess what:
Lincoln brought up three issues, all of which are found in the debate over the occupation of Iraq: funding of the occupation, deception about the reason for war, and predictions about the ease and brevity of the fighting. On all three issues, today’s Democrats echo Lincoln’s arguments.
And they do. This passage, though, is far more scathing and insulting than anything a Democrat has said:
As to the mode of terminating the war, and securing peace, the President is equally wandering and indefinite. First, it is to be done by a more vigorous prosecution of the war in the vital parts of the enemy’s country; and, after apparently talking himself tired on this point, the President drops down into a half despairing tone, and tells us that “with a people distracted and divided by contending factions, and a government subject to constant changes, by successive revolutions, the continued success of our arms may fail to secure a satisfactory peace.” Then he suggests the propriety of wheedling the Mexican people to desert the counsels of their own leaders, and trusting in our protection to set up a government from which we can secure a satisfactory peace; telling us that “this may become the only mode of obtaining such a peace.” But soon he falls into doubt of this too; and then drops back on to the already half abandoned ground of “more vigorous prosecution.” All this shows that the President is, in no wise, satisfied with his own positions. … His mind, tasked beyond its power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no position on which it can settle down and be at ease.
Again, it is a singular omission in this message that it nowhere intimates when the President expects the the war to terminate. … As I have before said, he knows not where he is. He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man. God grant he may be able to show there is not something about his conscience more painful than all his mental perplexity!
Why that’s downright uncivil. Call a blogger ethics panel immediately!
Lincoln said a few other things that the wingnuts might not like to hear:
Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure.
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.
My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
Today we have the new poster girl of the Republican Party saying this:
I have to tell you, in general, I’m skeptical of anything that has Bill of Rights tacked on to it.”
The old gray Republican party ain’t what it used to be.
This is pretty much how the telephone solicitation went down:
FUNDRAISER: [Opening script] … can we count on you for $150?
ME: I will vote Democrat, but I won’t give any money to Obama’s campaign. I disagree with him when he says it does no harm to children when adult authorities force them to stand and recite the pledge ritual.
FUNDRAISER: [Long follow-up script] … can we count on you for $50?
ME: No, Barack Obama doesn’t respect the separation of Church and State the way I believe he should.
FUNDRAISER: But but … we’re a Christian nation … that’s what we are. Weren’t the Founders Christians?
ME: Not necessarily; some were, but some were also atheists and some were deists. You can track the way Virginia law asserted in the positive that atheists were eligible for public office. If Obama gets the Democratic nomination, I will vote for him, and I will vote for him in the primary above Edwards or Hillary. But he won’t get money from me as long as he panders to the religious nuts in this country. Please tell Obama that I said that.
FUNDRAISER: OK – thank you for your time.
I gotta admire him, though, that his is the first call I’ve gotten. His campaign appears organized and serious, and I like the way he’s skewering Hillary “I don’t make mistakes” Clinton for her war vote.
One other thing, too, about Mr. Happy, Terry McAuliffe. Last week this millionaire consultant and frequent golfer appeared on several talk shows stating how each and every day, he tells Hillary to just go out and have fun.
Yeah – why am I not surprised? What’s there for her to get all serious and introspective about?
It took a long time for Samuel Adams to come to the surface of Boston politics, even though his father was a powerful figure in the caucuses and the General Court. One reason for the delayed “arrival” is that Adams is almost alone in history as a man who sincerely desired anonymity. His major writings were signed not “Adams” but “Determinatus,” “Candidus,” “Vindex,” “Populus,” “Alfred,” “Valerius Poplicola,” “T.Z.,” “Shippen,”, “a Bostonian,” “a Tory,” “E.A.,” “a Layman,” “an Impartialist,” “a chatterer,” — even later, when he could have gained great credit by acknowledging his full opus, he would not take the trouble. The writings had done their work; that was what he wanted. He often ended his letters with the command “Burn this,” and he took his own advice by consigning nearly all his correspondence files to the flames, leaving behind a relatively small amount in the hands of others or in public print. … In the eighteen months from December 1770 to June 1772 he turned out 36 political essays for the [Boston] Gazette, an output not matched by any other writer of the time.
But the use of pseudonyms wasn’t restricted to the Boston radicals; right-wing blowhards had them too, and they were coming after Adams:
Hutchinson had split Hancock away from the faction; only Adams remained a danger to the provincial government, and the governor had plans for him. “I have taken much pains to procure writers,” he said, “to answer the pieces in the newspapers which do so much mischief among the country people.” He had two or three writers contributing to Draper’s Massachusetts Gazette, he said, besides the help of a new press and a young printer “who says he will not be frightened and I hope for some good effect.” The Crown writers sallied into print — Chronus, Probus, Benevolus, and Philanthrop — to “blow the coals,” as Hutchinson put it.
Oh brother. Probus? Some things never change. And I’ll take Benevolus and Philanthrop to be more evidence of the upper-crust wingers holding themselves in high esteem, a fact also consistent with modern times.
I’m surprised Hutchinson didn’t write under the pseudonym, TRUSTUS, a label befitting a man who held a plurality of key offices. In the pitch of James Otis’s battle against the illegal Writs of Assistance, Boston born and bred Hutchinson held the following offices all at once: lieutenant governor, chief justice of the Superior Court, president of the council of the General Court, judge of the probate in two different counties, and commander of Castle William, the fort controlling Boston harbor. When Otis so gallantly fought in court against the Writs, it was Hutchinson, the staunch loyalist and Chief Justice of the court who stymied the effort. It was not until more than five years later, in the mid-1760s that Connecticut pushed through the opposition to the Writs and Parliament finally acknowledged their illegality.
As to the use of pseudonyms, my own is an accidental concatenation of two of Adams’s – Populus and A Bostonian; I didn’t mean for it to happen that way (I misread the list,) but I’m satisfied with it nonetheless.
. Early in the film, we are first introduced to the story’s protagonist, journalist/activist/Communist John Reed (Beatty), as he attends a meeting of the Liberal Club, where the discussion has turned to America’s involvement in the current war (WWI). Reed, who has just returned from reporting on the European Front, is asked what he thinks the conflict is “about”. Reed stands up, faces the group, mumbles one word, then sits back down. The word is: “Profits”. The crystalline brevity of that answer really blew my (then) twenty-something mind back in 1981.
takes a look at the origins and continuing historical impact of its namesake, from its 19th century roots in the French Commune movement to Tiananmen Square and beyond, packed into a breezy 30 minutes. Arguably one of the most idealized (and frequently misinterpreted) rallying songs ever composed (just the melody alone gives me goose bumps), the tune has been embraced by Socialists, Marxists, anarchists, anti-Fascists, workers and labor activists alike over the years, transcending nationalist and language barriers. The most interesting aspect the film examines concerns the bad rap the song received after it was “officially” adapted by the oppressive, post-revolutionary Soviet regime. Pete Seeger (a perfect choice, no?) emcees the proceedings, with support from historians, musicologists, and multi-national participants (veteran and current) in some of the aforementioned movements. British punk agitprop troubadour extraordinaire Billy Bragg also makes a brief appearance. C’mon everybody (You know the words!)
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