Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Sex Ring Republicans

by digby

I guess I’ve been living in some sort of dreamworld here in the wholesome Hollywood heartland, but I am honestly shocked at the degree of depravity and sadism that Republicans across the board seem to find normal. I don’t consider myself a prude, but damn.

The original Limbaugh reaction to Abu Ghraib was pretty telling, but I figured he just represented the rich, S&M portion of the GOP constituency. And while I was a bit surprised that there was no outcry among the conservative moralists I figured it was just because they were being good soldiers in the GWOT. The Mark Foley thing has proven that they just don’t much give a damn about sexual depravity or morals at all if it threatens their political power. The House leadership in charge looked the other way but the moralists are lining up to blame a fictitious gay cabal they believe has infiltrated “their” party. Talk about moral relativism.

But I really thought that the northeastern moderates might be the last holdouts for sanity. They have always seemed temperamentally conservative in the old fashioned sense of relying on prudence and reason. Apparently not. Yesterday Chris Shays described the events at Abu Ghraib as a “sex ring” and denied that any torture took place. A sex ring:

“Now I’ve seen what happened in Abu Ghraib, and Abu Ghraib was not torture,” Shays said according to a transcript provided by Democratic challenger Diane Farrell’s campaign and confirmed by others who attended the debate. “It was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops from (Maryland) who were involved in a sex ring and they took pictures of soldiers who were naked. And they did other things that were just outrageous. But it wasn’t torture.”

Shays defended his comments yesterday, saying he doesn’t doubt that there has been torture at other prisons, but not at Abu Ghraib.

“I saw probably 600 pictures of really gross, perverted stuff,” Shays said. “The bottom line was it was sex. . . . It wasn’t primarily about torture.”

Shays defined torture as anything that could cause mental or physical pain or sleep depravation.

I don’t know what kind of sex these GOP freaks are having, but I don’t think most of these things (from the Taguba report) are normally considered “sex,” even in Rush’s wildest S&M fantasies — certainly when they are perpetrated against prisoners against their will:

a. (U) Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;

b. (U) Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;

c. (U) Pouring cold water on naked detainees;

d. (U) Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;

e. (U) Threatening male detainees with rape;

f. (U) Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;

g. (U) Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.

h. (U) Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

What in the hell is wrong with these people? That’s not torture? That stuff is over and above the things we’ve all seen with the forced masturbation, simulated fellatio, smearing feces on prisoners and forcing them to wear women’s underwear while chained in stress positions to their cells or beds.

Characterizing what happened at Abu Ghraib as a “sex ring” is bizarre enough but he defends his comment the next day which means it wasn’t a slip of the tongue or a badly worded phrase. He’s thought about this and he believes it.

He said he looked at all those pictures and saw sex. Did you? I sure didn’t. But then we libertine lefties base our belief that people should be able to do whatever they like in their private lives on the bedrock principle of individual freedom, agency and rights. It’s the coercion that makes all this stuff so wrong. When somebody is coerced or forced into doing “sexual” things against their will, it can most certainly be torture. (I can’t believe I even have to make that argument.)

Furthermore, in the case of Abu Ghraib, it’s well known that what we saw in those pictures were techniques that were developed and shipped in from Guantanamo when General Geoffrey D. Miller was brought over to “straighten out” the prison and get actionable intelligence. They believed that these sexual techniques were a particularly potent way to break conservative Muslims. This stuff was common and it was pervasive — if it was a “sex ring” it was a mighty big one that went all the way to Rumsfeld and probably Bush and Cheney too.

This is exactly why you draw bright lines on torture. Chris Shays is pretty much telling the world that the only problems with what went on at Abu Ghraib were matters of inappropriate sex and, therefore, don’t violate the Geneva Conventions prohibition against torture. I’ll be anxious to hear him explain to the families of American troops in the future that they shouldn’t sweat it when their relatives are repeatedly raped or paraded around naked and forced to perform sex acts for cameras. (Hell, even being bitten by dogs or beaten with chairs isn’t torture according to him.)

Republicans apparently find these actions little more opprobrious than they find one of their friends hitting on underage boys but I would bet the families of these troops won’t see such treatment as being part of a “sex ring” and might just believe their loved one is being tortured. Shays and his pals will have to explain to them why that isn’t so.

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Undaunted

by digby

We all know that before 9/11 the neocons didn’t give a damn about terrorism (and still don’t, really.) But what were they obsessed with? Saddam, yes. Israel, yes. But they reserved a whole bunch of their firepower for the great yellow peril, the Chi-Coms, whom they are anxious to blame for the North Korean nuclear threat today. They apparently don’t feel we have enough problems, we need to start poking China in the eye too.

In their view, Beijing has always had the power to force Pyongyang to give up its nuclear arms programmes, and the fact that it has not done so demonstrates that China sees itself as a “strategic rival” of Washington, a phrase much favoured by administration hawks during Bush’s first year in office.

Indeed, in the most prominent neo-conservative reaction to the North Korean test to date, former Bush speechwriter David Frum called in a column published by the New York Times for the administration to take a series of measures designed to “punish China” for its failure to bring Pyongyang to heel.

Among them, Frum, who is also based at AEI and is sometimes credited with inventing the phrase “axis of evil”, in which North Korea, Iran, and Iraq were lumped together, for Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address, urged the administration to cut off all humanitarian aid to North Korea, pressure South Korea to do the same, and thus force China to “shoulder the cost of helping to avert” North Korea’s economic collapse.

Frum, who is also based at AEI, urged that Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore to be invited to join NATO and that Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province, to send observers to NATO meetings.

Frum, who in 2003 co-authored “An End to Evil” with former Defence Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, also suggested that Washington “encourage Japan to renounce the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and create its own nuclear deterrent.”

“A nuclear Japan is the thing China and North Korea dread most (after, perhaps, a nuclear South Korea or Taiwan),” he asserted.

Somebody has got to get the DEA to confiscate that shit these guys are smoking. What magic do these guys think we possess? Aside from the fact that China is holding all of our markers at the moment, does it seem like a good idea to be encouraging any country to renounce the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty right now? It’s an invitation to a nuclear free-for-all. Have their hare-brained schemes to destabilize the middle east failed to satisfy them enough that they have to destabilize Asia as well?

This is the nature of neocon thinking. After all we’ve seen, after everything they’ve screwed up, they still believe that they can control events on the world stage as if they were pieces in a board game. I’m not sure a simple madman would be more dangerous.

Update: And yes, the PNAC Democrats should wise up too. They are classic enablers, searching desperately for common ground with lunatics.

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Scone Eating Surrender General

by digby

In America, it would be the equivalent of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Peter Pace, saying this

The head of the Army is calling for British troops to withdraw from Iraq “soon” or risk catastophic consequences for both Iraq and British society.

In a devastating broadside at Tony Blair’s foreign policy, General Sir Richard Dannatt stated explicitly that the continuing presence of British troops “exacerbates the security problems” in Iraq.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Sir Richard also warns that a “moral and spiritual vacuum” has opened up in British society, which is allowing Muslim extremists to undermine “our accepted way of life.”

The Chief of the General Staff believes that Christian values are under threat in Britain and that continuing to fight in Iraq will only make the situation worse.

His views will send shockwaves through Government.

They are a total repudiation of the Prime Minister, who has repeatedly insisted that British presence in Iraq is morally right and has had no effect on our domestic security.

Sir Richard, who took up his post earlier this year, warned that “our presence in Iraq exacerbates” the “difficulties we are facing around the world.”

He lambasts Tony Blair’s desire to forge a “liberal democracy” in Iraq as a “naive” failure and he warns that “whatever consent we may have had in the first place” from the Iraqi people “has largely turned to intolerance.”

Lucky for us, the president of the United States is looking forward to listening to Jimmy Baker’s secret plan to end the war, so this isn’t an issue for us.

The speculation is that Sir Richard is going to have to be fired. This could get interesting.

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Finally

by digby

The grown-ups have awakened from their stupors and have decided to save us:

MATTHEWS: The real grown-ups, gentlemen, and Margaret — is that the best critics of this war are the Republicans. [Sen.] John Warner [R-VA], the chairman of the Armed Services [Committee] — it’s not the lefties, it’s not Jack Murtha out there even. It’s the smart, grown-up Republicans who are questioning this policy and calling for a change.

We’re saved!

Get prepared to go back to the future, folks. If and when we manage to take back one or both houses of congress get prepared to relive those glory days of the 90’s, when the Republicans acted like raving lunatics and braindead losers like Chris Matthews blamed it all on the Democrats.

It is going to be as if the Bush years never happened. All this unpleasantness will be disappeared and we will begin anew with a horrible fiscal situation, a terrible global situation, a hopeless military situation which will be laid squarely at the feet of the “lefties” by “smart, grown-up Republicans,” the shrieking rightwing harpies and their close relatives the robotic codpiece-worshipping pundits. Oy.

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Cogs In The Machine

by digby

One of the most hyped tales of political wizardry in recent years is the story of how Karl Rove energized the evangelical base and created an army of Republican GOTV foot soldiers. The facts are that the targeting of the evangelicals goes back much farther than Rove and can be attributed to earlier GOP grassroots strategists:

“With Paul M. Weyrich and Richard Viguerie, Blackwell met with Jerry Falwell to found the Moral Majority. ‘Finally, on the verge of realizing his right-wing utopia, Weyrich harvested what his friend Morton Blackwell termed the greatest track of virgin timber on the political landscape: evangelicals. Out there is what you might call a moral majority, he told Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, Pennsylvania, in 1979. That’s it, Falwell exclaimed. That’s the name of the organization.’ [David Grann, “Robespierre of the Right,” New Republic, October 27, 1997]

Rove and these other strategists knew the religious right were “new voters” which is the political promised land. Everybody dreams of dragging some of the unaffiliated, apathetic uninvolved into the political arena. Getting an entire block of voters who will vote according to what they are told by an authoritarian organization is a miracle. Hallalujah.

With the business marketing savvy of the big money boys of the GOP they were quite successful in the last decade or so at convincing the media and many of the public that the Republican party actually is more moral and more sincerely religious than the Democrats. However, the events of the last year have begun to unravel that carefully constructed image.

After Foley’s “naughty emails” were revealed, Paul Weyrich said what I think most people would expect an honest religious right leader to say:

“One of the things that people say to me all the time is, in Washington nobody takes responsibility for anything,” continued Mr. Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation. “And I think that he, having not delved into this the way he should have, has to take responsibility and therefore has to resign.”

Of course he backtracked the next day, but his first instincts, at least, were consistent with what you would expect of a cultural conservative. Dobson, Bauer and Perkins and the rest of the religious right leaders on the other hand, came out of the box sounding like slick, blow-dried PR spinners feverishly explaining away Foley’s predatory IM trail as a prank or a dirty trick. They behaved like political operatives, not religious leaders.

And this week we are also getting a glimpse into how Karl Rove and the Bush white house really view conservative Christians. The new book by David Kuo is causing quite a stir:

Kuo says, ‘National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy.’ “

So how does the Bush White House keep ‘the nuts’ turning out at the polls?

One way, regular conference calls with groups led by Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Ted Haggard, and radio hosts like Michael Reagan.

Kuo says, “Participants were asked to talk to their people about whatever issue was pending. Advice was solicited [but] that advice rarely went much further than the conference call. [T]he true purpose of these calls was to keep prominent social conservatives and their groups or audiences happy.”

They do get some things from the Bush White House, like the National Day of Prayer, “another one of the eye-rolling Christian events,” Kuo says.

And “passes to be in the crowd greeting the president when he arrived on Air Force One or tickets for a speech he was giving in their hometown. Little trinkets like cufflinks or pens or pads of paper were passed out like business cards. Christian leaders could give them to their congregations or donors or friends to show just how influential they were. Making politically active Christians personally happy meant having to worry far less about the Christian political agenda.”

This sounds as though the GOP thinks that conservative Christian leaders are dupes, but I doubt that is literally true. I think they understand each other quite well and have plenty of respect for their different roles in the power structure. It’s obvious to me that both the Republicans and the leaders of the Religious Right are contemptuous of rank and file conservative Christians, not each other.

If you doubt that, take a look at the response among the evangelical elite to the fall from grace of the co-founder of the Christian Coalition, a man who got so greedy for political power he stepped out of his religious role and went for it:

Given the Reed scandal’s potential to erode evangelicals’ faith in politics, it’s no surprise that the main reaction among movement leaders has thus far been “an embarrassing silence,” to quote Ken Connor, the former head of Dobson’s Family Research Council. Even Richard Land, the normally forthcoming Southern Baptist powerhouse, has been rendered speechless. (“Dr. Land has decided to pass on this topic,” his spokeswoman told The Nation after first agreeing to an interview.) …One notable exception to the official silence has been Marvin Olasky, a longtime Texas adviser of Bush who literally wrote the book on “compassionate conservatism.” Olasky, editor of the most popular organ of the evangelical right, World magazine, has been outspoken in his view that Reed “has damaged Christian political work by confirming for some the stereotype that evangelicals are easily manipulated and that evangelical leaders use moral issues to line their pockets.” World reporter Jamie Dean has filed a series of fearless Reed exposes, causing a sensation in the evangelical community. Her dogged questioning of Christian-right leaders whom Reed dragged into his “anti-gambling” campaigns inspired sharp criticism from the most powerful of them all, Focus on the Family leaders Dobson and Tom Minnery, in a February radio broadcast. “They have a reporter who wanted me to dump on Ralph Reed,” said an exasperated Minnery, explaining why he refused to answer questions from World.

Nobody has nailed the discomfort better than Reed’s old cohort Pat Robertson. “You know that song about the Rhinestone Cowboy,” he told The New York Times last April as the Abramoff-Reed connections began to go public. “‘There’s been a load of compromising on the road to my horizon.’ The Bible says you can’t serve God and Mammon.” Robertson has subsequently fallen quiet on the matter–perhaps because he knows that a willingness to serve both God and Mammon has been indispensable to the success of evangelical politics. It’s the very glue that holds together the awkward marriage of Christian moralism and high-rolling Republicanism.

The glue that holds it together is the business of evangelism. Those followers who give their money to these churches and organizations that sell Republicanism as a religious brand might as well spend their money at WalMart. They’re buying the same thing. It’s tribal identity but it isn’t religious and it isn’t moral.

It’s time everybody recognized that so we can deal with it honestly. These so-called religious leaders (and it’s not just the national leadership, it’s the whole hierarchy) are not dupes. Sure Rove and the rest call them nuts. But the leadership and the party know they are essentail to each others’ continued status, even if they spar over who’s their daddy. The truth is that they are all elites who have the same goals — power.

The big losers are the followers who are being sold a cheap bill of goods by both the Christian Right leadership and the Republican Party. Maybe some day they’ll wise up but it’s a tall order. It means they have to lose faith in both their church and their party and I wonder how many of them have that in them. It would be a terrible disillusionment.

There’s a vacuum to be filled in the evangelical leadership by preachers and leaders who eschew worldly, political power for its own sake. It remains to be seen if anyone steps up to claim it — and whether the sincere believers are not just “red team members” but true Christians who will reject the Elmer Gantrys who have been playing them for fools.

Update:Here’s more on the same topic by Hans Johnson in In These Times:

This June, Dobson had to devote a page of the magazine to coming clean about his ties to Jack Abramoff and the other Republican corruption scandal. In classic Dobson fashion, the disclosure was wrapped in an attack on “liberal” philanthropist George Soros and titled, with the subtlety of a schoolyard taunt, “We’re calling your bluff.” So much for mea culpa.

Far from being a free-standing moral voice, Dobson and Company are part and parcel of conservative political machinery. He has used his organization’s tax-exempt status, radio network and greedy data-gathering techniques for the past 25 years to convert it into bare-knuckled political empire dressed up as a Christian ministry.

Update II: And now it is reported that Rove personally threatened Foley when he tried to retire last year. Oh what a tangled web we weave…

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Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

by digby

The Republicans really, really need to deal with their latent sexual issues because this is getting ridiculous. I just flipped over to FoxNews and saw two scantily clad young men (with very unmilitary looking mop-tops) sitting across the desk of a giggling and blushing Neil Cavuto, flogging a Marine Hunk beefcake calendar. I’m not kidding.

You can kind of understand why Foley self-destructed. It’s strange and creepy in that Republican closet.

Oh and speaking of creepy, if you’d like to sign a petition objecting to the great Christian child psychologist James Dobson’s characterization of Foley’s p[redation and hastert’s cover-up as a joke, you can go here.

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Brilliant

by digby

Most of you have probably already seen this over at Atrios’ place, but if you haven’t check it out:

Unlawful State of Denial

by poputonian

France Sparks Uproar With Genocide Bill

PARIS — French politicians are galloping into diplomatic quicksand with a proposal to imprison anyone who publicly denies that the Turkish massacre of Armenians a century ago constituted genocide.

The draft law, to be debated by the National Assembly Thursday, was submitted by the opposition Socialist Party and has strong support among those on the political right who hope to derail Turkey’s candidacy for European Union membership.

Members of France’s 400,000-strong Armenian diaspora, whose votes are important to all sides in next spring’s presidential election, have lobbied for years to criminalize negating their genocide, just as it is a crime in France to deny the Holocaust.

Is there such a thing as indirect genocide, such as might happen when you intentionally destabilize a foreign sovereign? I suppose in crime parlance, one would call it reckless genocide. The drunk driver, after all, didn’t intend for an innocent death to be the outcome of the actions taken (the drinking.) But the driver is nonetheless held accountable. Cause and effect, you know.

Attention: Rightwing Guardians Of Free Speech!

by tristero

Dear Rightwing Defenders of the Politically Incorrect,

Are you bored by Idomeneo? I don’t blame you. After all, it’s not Mozart’s best opera by a long shot. I vote for Figaro or Zauberflote, but won’t complain if you say Giovanni. Oh, and if you know what’s good for you, get the Gardiner DVD of Figaro.

But I digress. For you courageous defenders of free speech who spoke up so bravely for the wealthy rightwing Danish newspaper magnates that published those Muhammad ‘toons, here’s your new cause celebre. This guy is about to get into a heap o’ trouble for speaking his mind. You must put your considerable moral power behind him, rise to his defense, denounce the thought police that would eliminate his right of free expression and, well, you know the drill:

A university instructor who came under scrutiny for arguing that the U.S. government orchestrated the September 11 attacks likens President Bush to Adolf Hitler in an essay his students are being required to buy for his course.

The essay by Kevin Barrett, “Interpreting the Unspeakable: The Myth of 9/11,” is part of a $20 book of essays by 15 authors, according to an unedited copy first obtained by WKOW-TV in Madison and later by The Associated Press.

The book’s title is “9/11 and American Empire: Muslims, Jews, and Christians Speak Out.” It is on the syllabus for Barrett’s course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Islam: Religion and Culture,” but only three of the essays are required reading, not including Barrett’s essay.

Barrett, a part-time instructor who holds a doctorate in African languages and literature and folklore from UW-Madison, is active in a group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth. The group’s members say U.S. officials, not al-Qaida terrorists, were behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

“Like Bush and the neocons, Hitler and the Nazis inaugurated their new era by destroying an architectural monument and blaming its destruction on their designated enemies,” he wrote.

Barrett said Tuesday he was comparing the attacks to the burning of the German parliament building, the Reichstag, in 1933, a key event in the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship.

Now, you may think he’s just an hysterical nut. But he’s not. He’s quite thougtful in advancing his bold, audacious thesis. He is not in any way saying that Bush personally is comparable to Hitler. Read on:

“That’s not comparing them as people, that’s comparing the Reichstag fire to the demolition of the World Trade Center, and that’s an accurate comparison that I would stand by,” he said.

He added: “Hitler had a good 20 to 30 IQ points on Bush, so comparing Bush to Hitler would in many ways be an insult to Hitler.”

Now some of you may think that, unlike Germany, this is America where free speech is respected and defended as a matter of course. He doesn’t need your help as there are no repercussions. Not so:

The university’s decision to allow Barrett to teach the course touched off a controversy over the summer once his views became widely known.

Sixty-one state legislators denounced the move. One county board cut its funding for the UW-Extension by $8,247 — the amount Barrett will earn for teaching the course — in a symbolic protest, even though the course is unrelated to that branch of the UW System.

Democratic Governor Jim Doyle and his Republican challenger, Mark Green, have both said they believe Barrett should be fired.

So to the barricades, my rightwing friends! Contact David Horowitz and come ye all together, rise to Professor Barrett’s defense! And denounce the liberals and Democrats and Republicans (RINOs, obviously) who are calling for him to be fired and vilified for his views.

love,

tristero

P.S. Please don’t ask me to join you. But don’t get me wrong. I’m all for free speech and free expression, even if I hate it. That’s why I’m a card-carrying member of ACLU who I’m positive are following the attempts to censor, censure, and shut Professor Barrett up very closely. If ACLU determines that his rights have been violated, I’m sure they will defend him, as they have Oliver North and some other paragons of free speech who wanted to hold a politically incorrect march through Skokie, Il. Since I didn’t resign when ACLU defended North, I certainly won’t resign if they rise to Professor Barrett’s defense. But that’s as much activism in his cause as I have time for. You see, I’d like to do more but I have some important things I really must do. Like fr’instance, this morning I have to go watch some paint dry. Somebody has to, y’know.

P.P.S. Special note to those who seriously wish to discuss the merits of Professor Barrett’s theories on who was behind 9/11: Of course, my friends, I agree with him. And you, especially you. I wouldn’t dream of disagreeing with you. Ever. You’re all absolutely right, Bush himself meticulously planned 9/11 and set up bin Laden as a patsy. I don’t see how anyone – do me a favor, please, and just stay back over there in your chair, thanks – could doubt you. I”m serious. Hey, have you heard about Clinton and Dallas, ’63? Well, some say it’s just speculation but…no, seriously, please sit down. Please!

Ok, ok. Put it down. PUT IT DOWN, I SAID! Put that CD DOWN! N-n-n-n-n-n-noooooooooooooooooo! Don’t play it, please God, no. Anything but that, please! Get away from that cd player. Please I’ll do anything you want, believe anything you say. Really, ah…ahh….!

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Short Term Death

by digby

Reading this article by Jacob Weisberg on the subject of Bush’s creation of the Axis of Evil, I realized that one of the most frustrating aspects of right wing hawkish thinking is their belief that it is useless to have any kind of short-term solution to a problem unless it can be guaranteed to result in a long term resolution. Indeed, they even think of truces and ceasefires as weakness. Here’s Bush a couple of months ago talking about Lebanon:

“Our mission and our goal is to have a lasting peace — not a temporary peace, but something that lasts,” said Bush. “We want a sustainable ceasefire. We don’t want something that’s, you know, short term in duration.”

Right. Tell it to the people who died or were wounded because that “short term” solution just wasn’t good enough for George W. Bush.

That is just one very bizarre aspect of their black and white thinking that leads to such things as their ridiculous posturing on North Korea in which no interim agreement (like that achieved by Clinton with the Agreed Framework) is countenanced because they will only accept a permanent solution. I suppose one could say that this might be a useful way to run a kindergarten, but real violence in the real world is something that should always be punted if at all possible. This is not because of a general moral revulsion toward violence, although that should certainly be a factor. Nor is it simply that to delay would save lives “in the short term.” It’s because we cannot tell the future. Kim Jong Il could die from a heart attack. A short term cease fire in Lebanon could have given everyone a chance to catch their breath and perhaps recognize that escalating the war was indefensible. Anything can happen. A break from violence creates a possibility that it won’t start up again. A crazy dictator delaying the development of a nuclear bomb opens up the possibility that he won’t develop one.

I realize that Bush and his pals think that their “enemies” are nihilistic at best and animals at worst. But they are humans and humans are always subject to change from within or without. The idea that it is “useless” to put off something like a a war or a nuclear showdown until tomorrow when you can have one today (or put off a ceasefire ’til tomorrow when you can have one today) is beyond stupid or irresponsible. It’s sick.

* I should note that the right has come to think that anything short of a hostile, aggressive military response to everything is “appeasement.” It isn’t.

“The word in its normal meaning connotes the pacific settlement of disputes; in the meaning usually applied to the period of Chamberlain’s premiership, it has come to indicate something sinister, the granting from fear or cowardice of unwarranted concessions in order to buy temporary peace at someone else’s expense.” D.N. DIlks, Appeasement Revisited, Journal of Contemporary History, 1972.

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