Kevin Drum and Steve Benen wonder why the wingnuts haven’t come up with anything good with which to smear Obama. Good question.
It reminds me of some earnest and straightforward analysis Bill Bennett dispensed earlier today:
BENNETT: Well, I mean, as a Republican partisan, let me just say that, for sure, I would rather face Al Gore than Hillary Clinton…
BLITZER: Why?
BENNETT: … or Barack Obama.
Because I think it’s an easier win for a Republican. But, by the way, when they got it tuned into the Al Gore channel tomorrow night, if they flip by accident, and they get Obama, people are not going to go back.
Do you believe Bill Bennett is being honest about this?
I have no idea which candidates really scare the Republicans. But I do know one thing. When lying sacks of discarded table scraps like Bill Bennett tell you that they are afraid to face certain Democrats and don’t fear the others — be skeptical. Be very skeptical. I know it sounds mean and partisan, but experience should tell everyone that he is not a sincere man trying to dispassionately analyze the political scene. Everything he says is designed to benefit the Republican Party.
For days I have been half-heartedly trying to draft a post about Christopher Hitchens’ flaccid and shrunken sense of self-awareness, but couldn’t quite work up any enthusiasm. (I doubt this is the first time first time he’s evoked that response.) Lucky for me I don’t have to waste even one more frustrated nanosecond trying to find the inspiration to refute his sterile sociological effusion. Lance Mannion says everything that needs to be said.
I’m listening to Rick Warren (“A Purpose Driven Life”) talking about how people everywhere are tired of partisanship and want civility. He says that he thinks it’s time for both sides to stop being mean to each other — and he says that base politics are completely out of fashion.Isn’t that terrific? We can all put the partisan ugliness of the past two decades behind us a work together.
But I can’t help but wonder just a little bit about why all these people never said anything about this when the Republicans held a majority in both houses? After all these years of toxic right wing radio and Fox TV and Ann Coulter, you would have thought these fine non-partisan people would have spoken up sooner. Odd, don’t you think?
Oh well. I hear Lucy is getting up a nice game of football for all of us. Anybody up for a rousing chorus of Kumbaaya?
Most of you probably saw this already over at Kos, but I think it’s worth taking another look at. It is interesting that nobody has mentioned this before:
Democrats now have 233 seats in the 110th congress, more than Republicans have had since 1952. The Republican “revolution” never secured this large a majority in the House.
Meanwhile Karl Rove is telling people “the election was awful darn close.” Right.
Those arrogant Republicans thought they were building the thousand year Reich and the Dems managed to build a bigger majority in one go. But the truth is that Republicans are not a majority party and never really have been — when they get into power they can’t seem to help themselves and they become excessive and out of control. Power doesn’t become them.
But that doesn’t mean they (the Republicans) aren’t able to advance their cause; they are very effective as a minority party and they know how to advance their agenda as the opposition. In some respects they govern more effectively from the minority position than from the majority. The Dems never mastered that skill and don’t function any better out of power than the Republicans do when they are in power. So we are probably heading back to a more natural state of things, but I would caution that it doesn’t mean that the Democrats will easily be able to enact a progressive agenda. They have to outsmart an opposition that knows exactly how to manipulate things to get their way while blaming Democrats for the inevitable fallout.
The good news is that the Democrats have spent some time in the wildreness and hopefully they’ve grown more savvy. With some coattails next time, they could start to get something real done starting in 2009.
Oh for gawd’s sake. Why does anyone even pretend that Bush is going to listen to reason?
The president signaled Wednesday that neither the study group’s pessimistic assessment nor the bleak situation in Iraq nor the results of the midterm elections have shaken his belief that victory in Iraq is possible.
“We’re not going to give up,” said Bush, who plans to announce his new strategy early next year.
While some key decisions haven’t been made yet, the senior officials said the emerging strategy includes:
-A shift in the primary U.S. military mission in Iraq from combat to training an expanded Iraqi army, generally in line with the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations.
Huh? Isn’t that what they’ve been saying for years? If I recall correctly, the slogan (er… strategy) two slogans before last was “we’ll stand down when the Iraqis stand up.”
– A possible short-term surge of as many as 40,000 more American troops to try to secure Baghdad, along with a permanent increase in the size of the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps, which are badly strained by deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Awesome! Doubling Down on St John McCain! Now who’s got the bigger codpiece, huh?
[…]
-A revised Iraq political strategy aimed at forging a “moderate center” of Shiite Muslim, Sunni Muslim Arab and Kurdish politicians that would bolster embattled Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. The goal would be to marginalize radical Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents.
What a good idea. They should send Joe Lieberman over to show them how it’s done. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to hear from him. Barring that we could hire a witch doctor to put a spell on the Iraqi government. Either way, I’m sure it will work.
-More money to combat rampant unemployment among Iraqi youths and to advance reconstruction, much of it funneled to groups, areas and leaders who support Maliki and oppose the radicals.
Excellent. We really can’t spend enough money on this. And our history of smart spending in Iraq by these people should give the American public a lot of confidence (and Halliburton a lot of bonuses.)
-Rejection of the study group’s call for an urgent, broad new diplomatic initiative in the Middle East to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and reach out to Iran and Syria.
Instead, the administration is considering convening a conference of Iraq and neighboring countries – excluding Iran and Syria – as part of an effort to pressure the two countries to stop interfering in Iraq.
I’m sure they’ll be very impressed.
I have always thought that Bush’s temperament was such that he would not withdraw from Iraq. And that temperament is being stoked these days by some very impressive people:
Bush appears to have been emboldened by criticism of its proposals as defeatist by members of the Republican Party’s conservative wing and their allies on the Internet, the radio and cable TV.
So the White House is having a little fit that some Senators are going to Syria. I guess they feel their diplomatic efforts have been so successful that they can’t take a chance of anyone mucking things up:
The White House on Thursday stepped up its pressure on senators who are engaged in direct talks with Syrian leaders, saying their trips to Damascus risk undermining U.S. efforts to encourage democracy in the Middle East.
[…]
White House Press Secretary Tony Snow suggested Thursday that just by engaging Syrian President Bashar Assad in diplomatic dialogue, visiting senators could dilute Washington’s hard-line approach, even if they adopt the administration’s language.
“The Syrians have been adventurous and meddlesome in Iraq and in Lebanon and working against the causes of democracy in both of those countries,” Snow said.
On Wednesday, the administration criticized Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) shortly after he met with Assad in Damascus.
On Thursday, Snow extended that criticism to two other Democratic senators, Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, and a Republican, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
All of them are planning visits to Damascus, the Syrian capital, in coming weeks.
[…]
Snow said that Nelson had been told before he met with Assad of the administration’s displeasure with his plans and that his public comments should serve to notify Dodd, Kerry and Specter of the White House’s opposition to their meetings in Damascus.
“The Syrians should have absolutely no doubt,” Snow said, “that the position of the United States government is the same as it has been, which is: They know what they need to do. They need to stop harboring terrorists. They need to stop supporting terrorism in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere.”
He said that regardless of the message delivered by the senators, “the Syrians have already won a PR victory” because the visits were “lending … legitimacy” to the Assad government.
That’s interesting. And it makes you wonder why they never said anything about this guy after 9/11. (Yes, it’s that time again):
Evidence of Rohrabacher’s attempts to conduct his own foreign policy became public on April 10, 2001, not in the U.S., but in the Middle East. On that day, ignoring his own lack of official authority, Rohrabacher opened negotiations with the Taliban at the Sheraton Hotel in Doha, Qatar, ostensibly for a “Free Markets and Democracy” conference. There, Rohrabacher secretly met with Taliban Foreign Minister Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, an advisor to Mullah Omar. Diplomatic sources claim Muttawakil sought the congressman’s assistance in increasing U.S. aid—already more than $100 million annually—to Afghanistan and indicated that the Taliban would not hand over bin Laden, wanted by the Clinton administration for the fatal bombings of two American embassies in Africa and the USS Cole. For his part, Rohrabacher handed Muttawakil his unsolicited plans for war-torn Afghanistan. “We examined a peace plan,” he laconically told reporters in Qatar.
To this day, the congressman has refused to divulge the contents of his plan. However, several diplomatic sources say it’s likely he asked the extremists to let former Afghan King Zahir Shah return as the figurehead of a new coalition government. In numerous speeches before and after Sept. 11, Rohrabacher has claimed the move would help stabilize Afghanistan for an important purpose: the construction of an oil pipeline there. In return, the plan would reportedly have allowed the Taliban to maintain power until “free” elections could be called.
The idea was outlandish and even provocative. Though he is a member of the same ethnic tribe as the Taliban leadership, the 87-year-old exiled former king—who lost his throne in 1973—is known not for his appreciation of democracy, but for his coziness to Western corporate interests. With good reason, he was considered a U.S. puppet by the Taliban.
After Taliban-related terrorists attacked the U.S. last September, Rohrabacher associates worked hard to downplay the Qatar meeting. Republican strategist Grover Norquist [he was there too — ed] told a reporter that the congressman had accidentally encountered the Taliban official in a hotel hallway.
But that preposterous assertion is contradicted by much evidence:
•Qatari government officials who told Al-Jazeera television on April 10, 2001, that Rohrabacher sought the meeting in advance and that they had assisted in the arrangements. Muttawakil said he agreed to the meeting “on the basis of allowing each party to express their point of view.”
•The congressman himself told other Middle Eastern news outlets that his discussions with the Taliban were “frank and open” and their officials were “thoughtful and inquisitive.” Hardly a casual chat in the hallway.
•Similarly, in an interview with Agence France-Presse, Rohrabacher’s entourage described the meeting as “a high-level talk.”
What’s remarkable is not only Rohrabacher’s attempt to rewrite history after Sept. 11, but there’s also his glaring naivete, evident in his bungling assessment of the Qatar meeting. One member of his entourage, Khaled Saffuri, executive director of the Islamic Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based group that partially bankrolled Rohrabacher’s trip, said he was impressed by how “flexible” Taliban officials appeared. Rohrabacher came away equally impressed. He announced he would travel to Afghanistan to work out details with the Taliban.
But Rohrabacher was out of his league. In the Afghan capital of Kabul the next day, Muttawakil presented Rohrabacher’s plan to the Taliban. Mullah Omar immediately issued a statement denouncing American efforts to orchestrate a new Afghanistan government. “The infidel world is not letting Muslims form a government of their own choice,” he declared.
Try to imagine what would have happened if it had been a Democrat who did such a thing. (Yes I know, ropes and pitchforks come to mind.)
Despite his secret meetings with the Taliban, and despite the fact that Rohrabacher is one of Jack Abramoff’s best friends and biggest defenders, and despite the fact that his office has been involved in one of the most sordid child molestation cases in Orange Country history, Rohrabacher has been re-elected three times since 9/11.
I don’t know if the government has allowed him to travel to Iraq or Afghanistan after what he did. But he certainly travels in the best circles.
I think if there is one thing I find more infuriating than anything else in politics it’s obvious, phony spin that fools no one but which everybody nonetheless pretends is normal discourse. It’s insults the intelligence.
Here’s an example. Last night the Lehrer Newshour did a report on the meat packing immigration raids. They quoted Michael Chertoff at the big press conference saying:
Now, this is not only a case about illegal immigration, which is bad enough; it’s a case about identity theft and violation of the privacy rights and the economic rights of innocent Americans.
It’s so beautiful to see one of the architects of America’s new police state suddenly so concerned about the privacy rights and economic rights of innocent Americans, don’t you think? He’s keeping the babies safe and at the same time looking out for our rights, which is so inspiring. I feel like singing “We Shall Overcome.”
Gwen Ifill then interviewed his adorable crony and (former head of the joint chiefs of staff) Dick Myers’ completely unqualified daughter Julie, who is now head legal counsel for DHS. (Even Holy Joe opposed her!)
JULIE MYERS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Yesterday’s actions, however, were about ICE enforcing the law. Each and every one of the individuals that were arrested yesterday on administrative charges was using a stolen, a real Social Security number of a U.S. citizen.
We took appropriate action; we behaved appropriately. And until the law changes, we’re here to enforce it.
GWEN IFILL: I was confused about the identity theft argument. There were 1,200, almost 1,300 people arrested; 65 of them — maybe 5 percent of them — were charged with identity theft. Yet that was the emphasis today at your news conference about why this whole thing was being pursued. Was that the main impetus for this raid, this series of raids?
JULIE MYERS: Well, this action started as a worksite enforcement action. And as it was noted in your initial segment, it was the largest worksite enforcement action we’ve ever had.
GWEN IFILL: Enforcing what, immigration laws or…
JULIE MYERS: Enforcing immigration law. But what we’re finding is that a number of people who are here illegally, working illegally, they used to use just phony documents. And now they’re using real documents, documents of U.S. citizens who in many cases may not know they’re being used. And that’s providing real harm to these U.S. victims.
There was an example this morning about a victim who was pulled over and was arrested because someone who was working at a Swift plant had been using his Social Security number and got a criminal record under his name. These people have gone out, they’ve gotten telephone bills under their fake identities, and all sorts of problems.
GWEN IFILL: Is this an organized ring which has been trying to do this, that has been selling this stolen information, or is this just something which has sprung up over time?
JULIE MYERS: In the Swift instance, we actually found a number of different document vendors and document rings, and it’s very important to us that we track down those rings and prosecute those individuals.
Last month in Minnesota, we tracked down one that was actually providing U.S. birth certificates for individuals from Puerto Rico and Social Security cards, and they were all ending up for individuals who then went to work at the Swift plants.
Even Ifill seems a little non-plussed and she’s usually right with the program. There is only one reason to spin this like this. They are trying to create a belief among the American people that there is a big problem with Mexicans stealing their identities. They are going out of their way to create a more substantial and identifiable sense of victimhood and in the process are stoking resentment and racism. I don’t know if they’ve focus-grouped this or if they’re operating purely on instinct, but it’s going to hit the primitives hard: “Mexicans are trying to steal my life!!!!”
I don’t doubt that there is some identity theft going on. But it is not rampant and it’s not going to affect average white Republicans named Bubba. (It’s far more likely that it would hit Mexican Americans named Ricardo.) By making it the major emphasis of the story and conflating it with the fact that they arrested more than a thousand undocumented workers who spend their days up to their knees in blood and sinew so that we can enjoy our cheap hamburger, they betray their real agenda. Right wingers just don’t feel alive if they aren’t being victimized by somebody or other.
It reminds me of the old “Saddam had WMD and ties to Al Qaeda” dodge. They don’t come right out and say it. But look for polls to reflect the idea that identity theft is mainly perpetrated by illegal immigrants very soon.
To be clear, I think identity theft is a very serious problem. As a major privacy advocate I’m all for enforcement of the laws against it. But the problem is huge and getting bigger in the US not because of illegal immigration but because of con artists and nasty relatives. By trying to turn this into an immigration problem they are misleading the public and unfairly targeting the immigrats with something that most of them don’t even know exists.
The good news, however, is that even though the Mexicans are stealing their lives, there are now available a whole bunch of those great jobs working with cow and pig guts all day so they can improve their lives and get rich like all the Republicans promise them! Is this a great country or what?
Glenn Greenwald offers a fascinating anatomy of a small wingnut feeding frenzy today as he recounts the breathless, overwrought coverage on the right wing blogs (and National Review) of the bizarre story that the Clinton Administration had spied on Princess Diana. He had earlier noted when the story first broke that the conservatives instantly formed the theory that this somehow invalidated liberal arguments against the illegal spying. (I guess it’s logical that conservatives would think that legally spying on British royalty in Paris without a warrant is the same as illegally spying on an American citizen in Cincinnati without one. They love the idea of monarchy.)
Anyway, read Glenn’s post to see just what horses asses these wingnuts made of themselves over this silly story — which was revealed today to be complete nonsense. But Glenn asks some interesting questions and brings up some points about this whole thing that are worth discussing a little bit more:
What kind of judgment do these people have that they have been running around for the last several days all but accusing the Clinton administration of lawbreaking and dark eavesdropping plots? That, of course, led to the standard campaign to start heaping all the blame on Hillary and her amoral, monstrous quest for political power.
Fox News linked to York’s National Review original article, touting it as a story suggesting the need for a “Clinton probe” over wiretapping. Between the multiple National Review items (York, Frum, McCarthy), Instapundit, Kaus at Slate, the Fox link, not to mention all the right-wing blogs linking to them how many people were subjected to this completely baseless innuendo, all of which was designed to suggest that Bush’s eavesdropping is unnoteworthy because Clinton did worse and/or that Hillary illegally bugged poor Princess Diana all for selfish political reasons, etc.
It was so obvious from the beginning that there were gaping holes in the story and that the “sources” for it were extremely unreliable. York even prefaced his article with this acknowledgment: “The first thing to remember in trying to evaluate reports that U.S. intelligence services wiretapped Princess Diana is that British press accounts can be notoriously unreliable.”
But that isn’t good enough. In fact, that makes it worse. Gossip columnists pass on rumors. Responsible, credible analysts, political pundits, and journalists do not. And they certainly don’t spend day after day, like Kaus did (with Reynolds cheering on every word) building one scurrilous accusation after the next based on chatter.
Actually they do. This is how the rightwing noise machine operates under the Clinton Rules. If it had turned out that this story had even some vague basis in fact, it would only have been a matter of days before the entire machinery of the Entertainment Industrial Complex would have cranked up to join in the irresponsible speculation.
I believe this reaction is an emotional thing as much as a political tactic. They are drawn like moths to flame at any slight suggestion of a sleazy, nefarious and hopefully sexy story about Democrats, particularly the Clintons. Perhaps it’s pavlovian by now — they went to that well so often and with such fervor for eight long years that they no longer have control of their own impulses. But the focus and intensity and sheer joy they obviously feel in pursuing these trivial, irrelevant stories and then pumping them up into fables and allegories rich with hidden meaning and messages of great import, is a sight to behold. When the mainstream press joins in you have a frenzy of epic proportions.
This is how it will be if we have a Democratic president. The right likes it this way. And it works for them. Knowing that the public can’t avert their eyes any more than they can avert their eyes from a car crash or Britney Spears, they exhaust them with these stories, creating a feeling almost of overindulgence, like too much chocolate mousse. The resultant sick feeling they then project on to the person in office. They called it “Clinton fatigue” last time. In fact, it’s just that concept that they are conjuring with this Diana story — showing the folks that if Hillary wins the presidency we’ll be face first in that mousse again.
The truth is that we will be in it no matter who is president. These people are trained to fetishize these small stories so they can make Democrats seem frivolous and small. It’s a game to them, sure, and they love it more than any other kind of political combat, but it’s also a very successful tactic. They tie the Democrats in knots and keep the Kewl Kidz distracted and amused. It’s what they do best.
They’re a little bit rusty so they are oiling up the hinges with this silly Diana story. This is only the beginning.
The Republicans (and some Democrats) have made a fetish of describing the warrantless surveillance programs as necessary to catch terrorists before they hit. They can’t tell us anything about what these programs actually do — it’s quite clear there is more to it than “listening in on the phone calls of terrorists.” One of the things that most people agree upon is that it includes some sort of datamining and I suspect that when this is explained to some of these congressmen and Senators, their eyes glaze over in the same way they do when anybody talks about the intertubes. They are, to be kind, very easily hoodwinked with technobabble.
But what if it were determined that the entire premise was flawed?
One of the fundamental underpinnings of predictive data mining in the commercial sector is the use of training patterns. Corporations that study consumer behavior have millions of patterns that they can draw upon to profile their typical or ideal consumer. Even when data mining is used to seek out instances of identity and credit card fraud, this relies on models constructed using many thousands of known examples of fraud per year.
Terrorism has no similar indicia. With a relatively small number of attempts every year and only one or two major terrorist incidents every few years—each one distinct in terms of planning and execution—there are no meaningful patterns that show what behavior indicates planning or preparation for terrorism.
[…] Without patterns to use, one fallback for terrorism data mining is the idea that any anomaly may provide the basis for investigation of terrorism planning. Given a “typical” American pattern of Internet use, phone calling, doctor visits, purchases, travel, reading, and so on, perhaps all outliers merit some level of investigation. This theory is offensive to traditional American freedom, because in the United States everyone can and should be an “outlier” in some sense. More concretely, though, using data mining in this way could be worse than searching at random; terrorists could defeat it by acting as normally as possible.
Treating “anomalous” behavior as suspicious may appear scientific, but, without patterns to look for, the design of a search algorithm based on anomaly is no more likely to turn up terrorists than twisting the end of a kaleidoscope is likely to draw an image of the Mona Lisa.
Tim F. At Balloon Juice points out the political implications:
As the civil liberty debate rages, even our extreme authoritarians couch their arguments in terms of benefit relative to cost. If the benefit doesn’t exist then wannabe autocrats like Newt Gingrich plainly have no leg to stand on. The only remaining support would have to come from these programs’ side benefits, primarily the existence of a detailed dossier on the personal life of every American citizen. That should come in handy in case any priest becomes, as one departed ruler might put it, a bit turbulent.*
This is an authoritarian dream come true. Here they have the means to root out anyone who steps outside the norm, who doesn’t conform to mainstream standards of behavior. Someone, perhaps, like this dirty hippie who was a bit of a flake and worked on strange machinery in his garage. (Pssst. He’s half Syrian, too.)
The right invented the term useful idiot to describe those who were being used and manipulated by the commies. They are today behaving as useful idiots for the Islamo-fascists” they profess to hate. If you really wanted to destroy America you wouldn’t stop at trashing the constitution or taunt them into useless wars. You’d also hope that the nation would shut down the iconoclastic individuals who tend to be artists and entrepreneurs and “outliers” as the article suggests. That could eventually destroy the vibrancy of the culture and the dynamism of its economy. These religious extremists think in terms of centuries and I’m sure they are quite pleased with the pace of their project so far.
It’s amazing to realize that Lucianne Goldberg’s offspring gets paid good money to write things like this in the Los Angeles Times.
Following on this new hagiography of free-market guru and all around successful leader Augusto Pinochet, Goldberg bizarrely implies that “the left” is agitating for an Iraqi Fidel, and argues that Iraq would be better off with an Iraqi Pinochet instead. He actually says, “if only Ahmad Chalabi had been such a man.”
After all, Pinochet may have tortured and killed his political opponents for years, but it all came out ok in the end after he left office. Meanwhile, we on the left allegedly worship Castro en masse, who’s also killed thousands, and his country is still poor and unfree. So the left must cry uncle. Or something. (No word on where eastern Europe plays into this new “theory” of rightwing dictator superiority. Last I looked, the ex-commies of the eastern Bloc were doing even better than Chile.)
Anyway, Jonah wonders which kind of torturing tyrant the Iraqis would prefer us to install, which is downright democratic of him, when you think about it:
I ask you: Which model do you think the average Iraqi would prefer? Which model, if implemented, would result in future generations calling Iraq a success? An Iraqi Pinochet would provide order and put the country on the path toward liberalism, democracy and the rule of law. (If only Ahmad Chalabi had been such a man.)
Now, you might say: “This is unfair. This is a choice between two bad options.” OK, true enough. But that’s all we face in Iraq: bad options. When presented with such a predicament, the wise man chooses the more moral, or less immoral, path. The conservative defense of Pinochet was that he was the least-bad option; better the path of Pinochet than the path toward Castroism, which is where Chile was heading before the general seized power. Better, that is, for the United States and for Chileans.
I bring all this up because in the wake of Pinochet’s death (and Jeane Kirkpatrick’s), the old debate over conservative indulgence of Pinochet has elicited shrieking from many on the left claiming that any toleration of Pinochet was inherently immoral — their own tolerance of Castro notwithstanding.
Right. Never mind that Allende was a socialist, not a communist, and never mind that he was democratically elected. Oh, and never mind that he wasn’t torturing his political opponents with electrodes strapped to their genitals or dropping them alive from helicopters!
Never mind either that this entire discussion of “bad options” and comparing Iraq to Castro and Pinochet is stupid; the bad options are between chaos, civil war, and religious dictatorship which have absolutely nothing to do with any of the bullshit that Goldberg is nattering on about.
Sorry bub. Support for Pinochet’s mass killing and torture is inherently immoral. And justifying your support because the Chilean economy is doing better than Cuba’s is just plain disgusting. This is what has become of the grand neocon experiment in Iraq: phony rhetorical battles with leftist ghosts of thirty years ago. It would be sad if it weren’t so sick.
I should point out that Goldberg does mention the torture. After listing Castros many sins, here’s what he says:
Now consider Chile. Gen. Pinochet seized a country coming apart at the seams. He too clamped down on civil liberties and the press. He too dispatched souls. Chile’s official commission investigating his dictatorship found that Pinochet had 3,197 bodies in his column; 87% of them died in the two-week mini-civil war that attended his coup. Many more were tortured or forced to flee the country.
Sexual abuse, including rape using animals, burns from cigarettes, welding torches and acid, ripping off fingernails with pliers, immersion in water, cooking oil or petroleum, and being forced to watch other detainees, often family members, being tortured.
This partial list of torture methods used under the Chilean dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) also includes beatings, mock executions, lengthy detentions with blindfolds or hoods, electric shock to the genitals and other sensitive parts of the body, as well as the bursting of eardrums using loud noises. The descriptions are contained in a report presented Wednesday to Chilean President Ricardo Lagos by a special commission that spent a year gathering testimony from 35,000 torture victims.
Among other things, the former commander of the armed forces is charged with having — jointly with others and in purported performance of official duties — intentionally inflicted severe pain or suffering on:
•Marta Lidia Ugarte Roman, by suspending her from a pole in a pit; pulling out her finger nails and toe nails, and burning her;
•Meduardo Paredes Barrientos, by systematically breaking his wrists, pelvis, ribs and skull; burning him with a blowtorch or flamethrower;
•Adriana Luz Pino Vidal, a pregnant woman, by applying electric shocks to her vagina, ears, hands, feet and mouth, and stubbing out cigarettes on her stomach;
•Antonio Llido Mengual, a priest born in Valencia, Spain, by applying electric current to his genitals and repeatedly beating his whole body;
Some forms of torture included the employment of a man with visible open syphilitic sores on his body, to rape female captives and to use on them a dog trained in sexual practices with human beings.
Who can argue that rape by dogs is a small price to pay for free markets thirty years from now? Let’s hope the Iraqis are so lucky.
Jonah indoubtedly thinks that Pinochet and his henchmen were just blowing off steam. And as for the wonderful Chilean outcome, perhaps Jonah should ask himself how healthy a country can be when it is still, after 30 years, trying to exorcise the demons that were unleashed under Pinochet. Chile is still traumatized and will remain so until everyone who lived under that cruelty is dead.
But they do have free markets.
And here’s the odd part. All these glowing tributes to Pinochet see Chile as a great right wing success story. But they have a socialist feminist president today— a woman whose father was tortured to death by Pinochet and who was herself, along with her mother, tortured before she was exiled. Do you supose she agrees that Pinochet was a blessing for her country?
Finally one observation that makes me wonder what possesses the LA Times to publish this guy. He concludes his article with this:
But these days, there’s a newfound love for precisely this sort of realpolitik. Consider Jonathan Chait, who recently floated a Swiftian proposal that we put Saddam Hussein back in power in Iraq because, given his track record of maintaining stability and recognizing how terrible things could get in Iraq, Hussein might actually represent the least-bad option. Even discounting his sarcasm, this was morally myopic. But it seems to me, if you can contemplate reinstalling a Hussein, you’d count yourself lucky to have a Pinochet.
Have you ever read anything so muddled in your life? It makes Kaye Grogan sound coherent.
First, there’s this alleged “newfound love for precisely this sort of realpolitik.” He uses Jonathan Chait’s essay* on bringing back Saddam as the basis for this, but he describes it as “Swiftian”, meaning he believes it was satire, presumably in the mode of “A Modest Proposal” which presented a horrifying option to an intractable problem in order to illuminate the lack of moral concern on the part of the ruling class. If that were so, then then it is not a “newfound love” but rather a “newfound disdain” or “newfound loathing” that Chait was displaying.
He then says that “even if you discount the sarcasm” it is “morally myopic.” Well, duh. If you “discount” the satire of “A Modest Proposal” you would be advocating cannibalizing children. Jesus. But Goldberg has just spent seven paragraphs telling us why you sometimes have to make such unpleasant decisions as Chait suggests so I don’t see why he, of all people, would consider Chait morally myopic. They agree.
Goldberg is a very confused person, which is a condition we are seeing a lot of among the right wing (and some very dizzy liberal hawks.) It’s amazing to see them switch abruptly from waving their purple fingers of democracy in everybody’s faces to serious public contemplation of installing a friendly dictator. They must be experiencing some kind of psychic whiplash.
* For the record, as I wrote before I don’t believe Johnathan Chait’s article actually was satire. As he explained later, it was actually a pretty straightforward proposition — that the US and Iraq might be better off if we installed a strongman. He suggests Saddam because he’s the guy who would scare the Iraqis straight in a hurry. I don’t know how Chait feels about Pinochet’s reign, but he is quite seriously entertaining the idea that we might be better off making a Pinochet omelette in Iraq. He and Goldberg are equally morally myopic on this topic.
