Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Senator Lieberman, You’re No Benedict Arnold.

by poputonian

In making fun of Joe Lieberman, Steve Gilliard and Christy Hardin Smith have each taken recent swipes at Benedict Arnold. The only problem is, Lieberman was never a hero, Benedict Arnold was. Plus, Arnold was a victim of Congressional mismanagement; Lieberman is Congressional mismanagement.

To understand the historical root of what alienated Benedict Arnold from America, there are a couple of key points to make. First, remember how the Founders insisted that an army always be placed under civilian control? Well, they were serious about that, and as a result, George Washington was not permitted to promote his own officers; only Congress could do so. Otherwise, Washington might promote people loyal to him and thus build up hierarchical control over the army. The Founders, literally, were afraid of a military coup.

The second point to make is, if high ranking military promotions were only made by Congress, and not by the Commander in Chief, how on earth would they know who should be promoted? They wouldn’t, which is where the problem comes in. Congress had to rely on irrelevant criteria, such as patronage and cronyism as a means of determining promotions, and, as you would expect, they fucked it up … bad. In other words, the higher ranking officer positions, which were the status positions of the day, were just as likely to go to someone with political connections as someone who exhibited battlefield merit. That’s problematic when you’re trying to stand ground against the most powerful military force on the planet.

Here is a fascinating dialog that begins with a letter Washington wrote to Benedict Arnold in March of 1777:

We have lately had several promotions to the rank of Major General, and I am at a loss whether you have had a preceding appointment, as the newspapers announce, or whether you have been omitted through some mistake. Should the latter be the case, I beg you will not take any hasty steps in consequence of it, but allow proper time for recollection, which, I flatter myself, will remedy any error that may have been made. My endeavors to that end shall not be wanting.

Washington then writes to Richard Henry Lee in Congress:

I am anxious to know whether General Arnold’s non-promotion was owing to accident or design, and the cause of it. Surely a more active, a more spirited, and sensible officer fills no department in your army. Not seeing him then in the list of Major Generals, and no mention made of him, has given me uneasiness, as it is not to be presumed that he will continue in service under such a slight. I imagine you will lose two or three other very good officers by promoting younger ones over them. My anxiety to be informed of the reason of Arnold’s non-promotion gives you the trouble of this letter.

Arnold replies to Washington:

I am greatly obliged to Your Excellency for interesting yourself so much in my behalf in respect to my appointment, which I have had no advice of, and know not by what means it was announced in the papers. I believe none but the printer has a mistake to rectify. Congress has doubtless a right of promoting those who from their ability they esteem most deserving. Their promoting junior officers to the rank of Major General, I view as a very simple way of requesting my resignation as unqualified for the office I hold … My commission was conferred unsolicited, received with pleasure only as a means of serving my country … When I entered the service … my character was unimpeached. I have sacrificed my interest, ease, and happiness in her cause …

Arnold goes on to more or less resign from the Army, but at the same time requests a public inquiry to clear his name. He also tells Washington he will postpone his departure until no risk to the public would result from his leaving. Washington responds:

It is needless for me to say much upon a subject, which must undoubtedly give you a good deal of uneasiness. I confess I was surprised when I did not see your name in the list of Major Generals, and was so fully of opinion that there were some mistake in the matter, that I (as you may recollect) desired you not to take any hasty step before the intention of Congress was fully known. The point does not now admit of the doubt and is of so delicate a nature that I will not even undertake to advise; your own feelings must be your guide.

As no particular charge is alleged against you, I do not see upon what ground you can demand a court of inquiry. Besides, public bodies are not amenable for their actions. They place and displace at pleasure, and all the satisfaction that an individual can obtain when he is overlooked is, if innocent, a consciousness that he has not deserved such treatment for his honest exertions.

Your determination not to quit your present command while any danger to the public might ensue from your leaving it, deserves my thanks and justly entitles you to the thanks of your country.

General Green who has lately been at Philadelphia took occasion to inquire upon what principal the Congress proceeded in their late promotion of General officers. He was informed that the members from each state seemed to insist upon having a proportion of General officers adequate to the number of men which they furnish, and that as Connecticut had already two Majors General, it was their full share.

I confess this is a strange mode of reasoning, but it may serve to show you that the promotion which was due to you was not overlooked for want of merit in you.

By the time Arnold and Washington are exchanging these letters, Arnold’s heroics were unprecedented. He took Ft. Ticonderoga back from the British; he led 1,000 men across the Maine wilderness to storm the walls of Quebec, where he was shot; the British Federal Register, written at the time of the Revolution, called the Maine march the most remarkable feat of its kind; unprecedented in history; Arnold built a fleet of ships (ok boats) to take on the British fleet at Valcour Island, which forestalled the British incursion into upstate New York and probably avoided certain defeat for America.

To get a better sense of Arnold’s heroics, I recommend viewing this brief trailer of an upcoming documentary that will begin to redeem the man Washington called his Fighting General. The trailer says Benedict Arnold was, at the time, Liberty’s greatest champion.

Happy Independence Day.
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Petitioning Democrat

by digby

Is it not perfectly appropriate for Joe Lieberman to announce on the fourth of July week-end that if he loses his primary he’s going to run as “petitioning Democrat” anyway? He’s always shown such reverence for the rules — as when he backed the republicans counting blatantly phony military ballots in the Flrida recount, so that nobody could ever accuse him of not being patriotic. He’s quite the hero when it comes to this stuff.

Here’s the play. It’s obvious that Lieberman’s going to play a little game of semantics, which I suspect has been worked out with Chuck Schumer in advance. He’s not actually leaving the party, you see. He’s just going to be running as an independent Democrat rather than, you know, one of those doctrinaire Democrats who are being forced upon the voters by the blogofascists.

Remember this?

Schumer said that the DSCC “fully supports” Sen. Joe Lieberman in his primary bid, and he refused to rule out continuing that support if Lieberman were to run as an independent.

There were degrees of independence, Schumer said. “You can run as an independent, you can run as an independent Democrat who pledges to vote for Harry Reid as Majority Leader.”

Lieberman was quoted yesterday saying:

“I’d organize with the Democrats if I’m fortunate enough to win,” he said. “I’d remain a Democrat.”

So, you see, Lieberman isn’t actually leaving the party. He’s just decided that he needn’t answer to rank and file Democrats who vote in primaries. They do not know what a “real Democrat” is and they cannot be trusted to choose who they wish to represent the Democratic party in the fall election. Therefore, smarter people, like Joe Lieberman and Chuck Schumer, have to step in and tell them what’s good for them. Surely, you can understand that. After all, Joe and Chuck have been leading us successfully to victory lo these many years. We should not question their wisdom.

On this fourth of July week-end, Joe Lieberman wants you all to remember that democracy has its limits.

God bless America.

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Fundamentals of Invasion (from a Codpiece original) By poputonian In January of 1777, the handsome and flamboyant John Burgoyne placed a wager at the posh Brooks Club on St. James Street in London. He bet Charles Fox fifty guineas that he would be home by Christmas, victorious over the Americans. Earlier Burgoyne had presented a plan to the King titled “Thoughts For Conducting The War From The Side Of Canada.” Through this plan, Burgoyne won himself command of the Army and it was up to him to lead the British invasion south from Canada “to get possession of Albany and open the communication to New York. Once he held Albany, British General William Howe, who had captured New York City a few months earlier, could come up the Hudson River “with his whole force, forming a junction of the two armies.” This would give Great Britain control of the Hudson River allowing them to sever the supply lines between New England and the Southern states, thus ending the American rebellion. No one knows for sure if Burgoyne really said, “Fuck George Washington, we’re taking him out,” but the written plan did contain a caveat from Burgoyne that his own “personal interest and fame … depend on a timely set out” from Canada.Oh man.So in June, several thousand British soldiers set off to crush the American rebellion. More than a thousand assorted others, including three hundred women and children, lagged behind the British army. The baggage carts alone stretched for three miles, including thirty carts for Burgoyne’s personal belongings. Never bashful for a good time, always cultivating his own popularity, Burgoyne would treat officers and wives to formal dinners with linen table coverings, china, and silverware. He reveled in the gambling and card games. Frederika von Riedesel, a German Baroness and the wife of a mercenary officer in Burgoyne’s army, along with her three young daughters, sailed to America to be with her husband. The Baroness kept a journal and left us this glimpse of the British invader:

“Burgoyne liked having a jolly time and spending half the night singing and dancing and amusing himself in the company of the wife of a commissary, who was his mistress and, like him, loved champagne.

As a man with a plan, Burgoyne was similar to his intellectual descendant, the Codpiece derivative, George W. Bush. In kindred spirit, Burgoyne left George a blueprint to follow, a template that spells out how to win the hearts and minds of the people you’re about to conquer. The blueprint, known to history as Burgoyne’s Proclamation, was distributed by Burgoyne throughout the Lake Champlain region of upstate New York. The proclamation constituted both an appeal and a threat to the Americans. Upon review, it is quite evident that George Bush used this document as his own invasion template. For instructional purposes, I’ve made annotations, but the transcription of the document is verbatim:Fundamental: Be a member of the meritocracy.

BY JOHN BURGOYNE ESQ; Lieutenant General of his Majesty’s Armies in America, Colonel of the Queens Regiment of Light Dragoons, Governor of Fort William in North Britain, one of the Commons of Great-Britain in Parliament, and commanding an Army and Fleet employed on an Expedition from Canada. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Fundamental: Appeal to the Flag Conservatives; claim the constitution.

The forces entrusted to my command are designed to act in concert, and upon a common principle, with the numerous Armies and Fleets which already display in every quarter of America, the power, the justice, and when properly fought, the mercy of the King. The cause in which the British arms are thus exerted applies to the most affecting interests of the human heart; and the military servants of the Crown, at first called forth for the sole purpose of restoring the rights of the Constitution, now combine with love of their Country, and duty to their sovereign, the other extensive incitements which spring from a due sense of the general privileges of mankind.

Fundamental: Accuse the opposition of tyranny and invoke God. Make them oppressors of the common people.

To the eyes and ears of the temperate part of the public, and to the breasts of Suffering Thousands in the provinces, be the melancholy appeal whether the present unnatural rebellion has not been made a foundation for the compleatest [sic] system of Tyranny that ever God in his displeasure suffered for a time to be exercised from a forward and stubborn generation.

Don’t stop there; exactly what are the American rebel leaders (Washington, Adams, Franklin) guilty of?

Arbitrary imprisonment, confiscation of property, persecution and torture, unprecedented in the inquisitions of the Romish church are among the palpable enormities that verify the affirmative. These are inflicted by assemblies and committees who dare to profess themselves friends to Liberty, upon the most quiet subjects, without distinction of age or sex, for the sole crime, often for the sole suspicion, of having adhered in principle to the Government under which they were born, and to which every tie divine and human they owe allegiance. To consummate these shocking proceedings, the profanation of religion is added to the most profligate prostitution of common reason; the consciences of men are set at naught; and multitudes are compelled not only to bear arms, but also to swear subjection to a usurpation they abhor. Animated by these considerations; at the head of troops in the full powers of health, discipline, and valor; determined to strike where necessary, and anxious to spare where possible, I by [this document] invite and exhort all persons, in all places where the progress of this army may point—and by the blessings of God I will extend it far—to maintain such a conduct as may justify me in protecting their lands, habitations, and families. The intention of this address is to hold forth security, not depredation to the country.

Fundamental: Money talks; offer up some coin .. and be the daddy.

To those whom spirit and principle may induce to partake the glorious task of redeeming their Countrymen from dungeons, and re-establishing the blessings of legal government, I offer encouragement and employment; and upon the first intelligence or their associations I will find means to assist their undertakings. The domestic, the industrious, the infirm, and even the timid inhabitants I am desirous to protect provided they remain quietly at their houses, that they do no break up their bridges or roads; nor by any other acts directly or indirectly endeavor to obstruct the operations of the King’s troops, or supply or assist those of the Enemy. Every species of provision brought to my camp will be paid for at an equitable rate and in solid coin.

Fundamental: Invoke God again, and then threaten the Americans with suffering at the hands of the Indians, and stress to the bastards that they are either with you or against you:

With a consciousness of Christianity, my Royal Master’s clemency, and the honor if soldiership, I have dwelt upon this invitation and wished for more persuasive terms to give it impression. And let not people be led to disregard it by considering their distance from the immediate situation of my camp—I have but to give stretch to the Indian forces under my direction, and they amount to thousands, to overtake the hardened enemies of Great-Britain and America, I consider them the same, wherever they may lurk.

Fundamental: Let it be known that God agrees with what you’re doing.

If notwithstanding these endeavors, and sincere inclinations to effect them, the frenzy of hostility should remain, I trust I shall stand acquitted in the eyes of God and men in denouncing and executing the vengeance of the State against the wilfull outcasts—the messengers of justice and of wrath await them in the field; and devastation, famine, and every concomitant horror that a reluctant but indispensable prosecution of military duty must occasion, will bar the way of their return. J. Burgoyne

Give stretch to the Indians he did. Jonathan Trumbull, Jr. writing from Albany to his father, the Governor of Connecticut, described the devastation left in Burgoyne’s wake.

August 6, 1777The Indians have spread great terror by lying in wait, surprising and scalping and other ways inhumanely butchering unhappy stragglers. Some innocent families and individuals have undoubtedly suffered by Tories in the garb of savages, but a great proportion of them who have suffered in their own houses and about their houses have been Tories themselves. This spreads the general panic among that class of animals, who begin to think there is no faith in Master Burgoyne, nor any safety in his protection. Some ’tis said have even been found dead with protection in their hands. Governor Skene has his house ornamented with scalps. Some of our prisoners have been tormented in the most shocking manner; some burnt, others dismembered of their hands, etc.. Their cruelties are too horrid to dwell upon. The scenes of distress with the poor inhabitants flying from their farms and habitations are truly moving. Their crops of wheat and corn are amazing–all destroyed or left; and many of the poor people nothing to subsist upon. The public must supply them provisions.August 11, 1777[Albany] is just falling; if [Burgoyne] makes one more move towards it all is lost. Is it possible our situation is known, or is it not attended to? I am almost inclined to think that a penetration from this quarter and possession of all this part of the country, which will be the case as soon as Burgoyne comes to the city, will be of more serious consequences to the United States than even General Howe’s obtaining the city of Philadelphia with its surrounding country. The consequences of the Indian incursions will be most shocking, if not fatal to the whole. New England has almost lost the idea of such troubles; but, [with New York] gone, they will soon have a most terrible recognition of those horrid scenes.The country about is in a distressed situation; the inhabitants flocking in, leaving their final crops and everything almost behind, but their families and children. Such a scene I never saw. In every corner, Indians mixed with Tories carrying terror or in every quarter almost as low as the city. The next move of the retreating army will bring them around, if not into, town.

A contemporaneous and irreverent American reply to Burgoyne’s Proclamation.

The New American Dream

by digby

Gary Farber finds a perfect example of why Republicans are so much more patriotic than Democrats — even the moderate, pro-choice, braindead cyborgs we have here in California:

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY WEEKEND, everyone! California is being especially patriotic this year!

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office in charge of protecting California against terrorism has tracked demonstrations staged by political and antiwar groups, a practice that senior law enforcement officials say is an abuse of civil liberties.

[…]

Political activities cited in the reports include:

• An animal rights rally outside a Canadian consulate office in San Francisco to protest the hunting of seals.

• A demonstration in Walnut Creek at which U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) and other officials spoke against the war in Iraq.

• A Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom gathering at a courthouse in Santa Barbara in support of an antiwar protester — a 56-year-old Salinas woman — facing federal trespassing charges.

I’m just glad California’s government is on the alert, and has picked up on these traitorous actions by members of the traitor party in Congress! What could be a better way to celebrate our freedoms than by monitoring elected officials who disagree with teh King?

I say we all go out and find some seals so as to bash their little heads bloody, to show what we think of those sorts of traitors who object!

And if any little terrorsymp grannies protest, let’s bash their traitorous heads in, too!!!

(more here)

And people wonder why some of us are so darned suspicious about the government using its illegal, extra-constitutional claimed powers to spy on Americans who dissent from the government instead of being used strictly to track the movements and communications of suspected islamic terrorists.

I keep saying, if we build it, they will use it. This massive amount of federal homeland security money has been doled out to the states and the practical effect is to stimulate the economy by building a police state.

This is what freedom looks like under Republicans. Shitty standstill economy except for the very rich, cops and preachers in your face 24/7, a constant state of war and everybody in the world hating our guts. Welcome to the new American dream. Enjoy your Walmart experience.

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Groundhog Day

by digby

A US combat commander suggested the United States could lose the war in Iraq if public support for it at home is sapped by negative media coverage.

“My personal opinion is that the only way we will lose this war is if we pull out prematurely,” said Colonel Jeffrey Snow, a brigade commander in Baghdad.

“I would hope we get the time and support we need to finish this mission,” he said in a video conference from Iraq.

Snow, whose own troops have come under stepped-up insurgent attacks this month, criticized media coverage as too focused on insurgent roadside bombings, kidnappings and assassinations.

“Our soldiers may be in the crosshairs every day, but it is the American voter who is a real target, and it is the media that carries the message back each day across the airwaves,” he said.

“So when the news is not balanced and it’s always bad, that clearly leads to negative perceptions back home,” he said.

[…]

He acknowledged insurgent attacks have gone up in his western Baghdad area of operations since the start of a city-wide security crackdown ordered by the new Iraqi government earlier this month.

Increased checkpoints and foot patrols in Baghdad had drawn an increase in insurgent attacks, he said.

“The way I would answer that is that attacks here recently are up in our area. However, the overall effectiveness are down,” he said.

“So you may perceive that as double-speak. I don’t have the precise numbers in front of me,” he added.

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Double-speak? Nah. How could anyone perceive it as double-speak? Completely full of shit is more like it.

I had always read that after Vietnam the officer corps were inculcated with the lessons of Westmorlandian lies. The military was never again going to get caught up in political spin or be used for domestic political purposes. So why is the military allowing itself to be used like this again? They have no obligation to weigh in against the media or discuss the domestic political situation. They could, and should, try to objectively assess the war and if they believe they are being effective, they can certainly say so. But this kind of comment is purely Rovian Republican political spin that does not serve the military as an institution well. At some point the military is going to look back on this and realize that they went ahead and made exactly the same mistakes they had made thirty years earlier.

I swear, my generation is intent upon living out its lifespan like the movie Groundhog Day. We just keep doing the same stupid stuff over and over and over again.

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Statue of Liberty Play

by digby

There’s much to say about the Hamdan decision and I’ll leave it to the legal experts to parse the decision for it’s implications. According to the pundits and insiders, the politics of the decision are quite simple:

Republicans yesterday looked to wrest a political victory from a legal defeat in the Supreme Court, serving notice to Democrats that they must back President Bush on how to try suspects at Guantanamo Bay or risk being branded as weak on terrorism.

In striking down the military commissions Bush sought for trials of suspected members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, the high court Thursday invited Congress to establish new rules and put the issue prominently before the public four months before the midterm elections. As the White House and lawmakers weighed next steps, House GOP leaders signaled they are ready to use this week’s turn of events as a political weapon.

John Boehner has already framed the issue by saying that giving suspected terrorists any form of due process as provided by our treaty obligations and Uniform Code of Military Justice is giving them “special rights.” (I love that one — it’s brilliant. Now the terrorists have successfully been conflated with gays!)

Here’s the thing. This is just more trash talk. The WaPo article I excerpted above goes on to say this:

A Washington Post-ABC poll this week suggested that while Americans continue to favor holding suspects at the U.S. military installation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, they are leery of an administration policy that has resulted in almost all of the 450 detainees being held without charges. Of those polled, 71 percent said the detainees should be either given POW status or charged with a crime.

Call me naive, but it sounds to me as if the Supreme Court, the Democrats and the American people are all in agreement. It’s the Republicans who want to continue this fiction that the government should be able to hold these presumed terrorists in limbo forever.

A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the issue is still being debated internally, seemed to hint at the potential political implications in Congress. “Members of both parties will have to decide whether terrorists who cherish the killing of innocents deserve the same protections as our men and women who wear the uniform,” this official said.

The assumption, again, being that these people are all guilty when everyone knows for a fact that many of them are not. That means that this administration just doesn’t give a shit if innocent people are held prisoner forever. I suppose that there are people who think that’s just the price that must be paid (by someone else) for our “freedom,” but moral people cannot believe this.

On a practical political level, you can see by the way the WaPo article is written that the narrative frame for the debate is going to be the same as all the other war debates: will the weak, ineffectual Democrats be able to resist the strong, aggressive Republicans this time or will they give in once again to the presidents’ bold, controversial plans out of fear of being seen as soft on national security?

Can we all see the problems with that?

Let’s hope that the Democrats are smart enough to start reading polls and stop listening to beltway pundits and journalists. They have the support of the people. All they have to do is speak out and say it, in the same terms as that poll question:

“We need to either give the Guantanamo suspects POW status or charge them with a crime. We have rules and laws on the books that have served us well for centuries and it’s time we used them. This isn’t a movie or a TV show. This is about our national security and our place in the world. It’s time to stop all this nonsense and start behaving like the United States of America again.”

I’m sure that Rush would pop a Viagra over that one, but who cares? The majority of American people are on our side on this.

This is what the Republicans are getting ready to run on:

“It will be worse for the Democrats to be seen as favoring the terrorists than favoring the New York Times,” Liddy said.

That’s what it’s come down to. I desperately hope the Dems will not take the bait. That is a base turnout message, not a message to broader America and it certainly will not help the Democrats get their base out if they fall for it.

One final little note. The LA Times/Bloomberg poll showed Bush improving his standing a bit. But there was also this:

The survey’s results suggested that an old challenge — the gender gap — could pose a renewed threat to the Republican hold on Congress. Although men split about evenly when asked which party they planned to back for Congress in November, women preferred Democrats by nearly 2 to 1.

Doubts about Iraq appeared to be a powerful contributor to that trend. In the survey, women were much less likely than men to say the war had been worth the cost.

“As far as the war goes, we never should have gone in there without United Nations backing,” said respondent Kathy Bocklage, a registered Republican from Wayland, N.Y., who said she was planning to support Democrats this fall. “Why [Bush] thought the U.S. could finance this alone — it’s ludicrous.”

However, beneath the large Democrat lead on the November ballot test, the poll offered potential warnings for the party.

On a variety of questions — including satisfaction with Bush’s handling of terrorism and the likelihood of progress in Iraq — it showed modest but perceptible movement in the president’s direction since the last Times/Bloomberg survey, in April. Also, the share of Americans who viewed the Democratic Party favorably declined.

There’s a lot to chew on there. But I would suggest that instead of reacting to the macho posturing bullshit this time, the Democrats look to where their voters are and figure out what they need to do to get these women to the polls. And keep in mind that it isn’t “girly domestic” issues that have motivated this change. It’s Iraq. Being less likely to be impressed by all this macho posturing in the first place, after watching it play out over five long years it’s quite likely they’ve just had enough.

Instead of trying to appease to the 25% of overgrown boys (including the media) who continue respond favorably to this GOP foolishness, maybe the Dems should take a look at the other 75% of the population and fashion a message for them. As those of you who read this blog regularly know, I see some ominous signs in the fact that in this political environment, Democrats are being viewed less favorably lately. That translates at least partially to disillusionment among the base and that spells trouble.

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Clap Louder

by digby

Time Magazine web site today:

Poll: Good News Fails to Boost Bush’s Job Approval
In a new TIME survey, Americans say the President is performing poorly and that the country is increasingly on the wrong track

Joe Klein: Why Bush is Still Winning the War at Home

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American Hero

by digby

Every once in a while you read about or get to meet someone who displays by his or her actions one of those wonderful fundamental lessons in personal integrity, intellectual consistency and common decency that makes you think this species might not be doomed after all. Here’s one:

The U.S. Navy lawyer who challenged the Bush administration’s efforts to try terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, walked a professional tightrope between fellow officers trying to gain speedy convictions and what he considered a moral imperative to buck the chain of command and vigorously defend his client.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift could have taken the easy route of arranging a plea bargain for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the Yemeni alleged to have worked as a driver and bodyguard for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

But fearful of the dangerous precedent that could be set by denying international standards of justice to those swept up in the war on terrorism, Swift battled to get the rights and protections of the Geneva Convention for his client.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush had overstepped his war powers in sending Hamdan and nine others to face military tribunals, America’s first since World War II.

“I feel like we all won, that the rule of law won, and that is essentially what we are all about,” Swift said of the high court’s validation of his three-year campaign on behalf of his 36-year-old client.

Swift was assigned to defend Hamdan by the Pentagon in November 2003 and initially was ordered by a superior officer to secure a plea bargain so there would be a timely conviction.

“I had the unenviable task of going down to this guy from Yemen in the uniform of people who had been treating him badly and saying, ‘If you don’t make a deal you may never see me again,’ ” Swift recalled of his first meeting at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo with Hamdan and his decision to fight a process stacked against the defendant.

Swift was allowed a rare phone call to the Guantanamo prison Thursday to give Hamdan the news of their legal victory. He described the prisoner as “humble, not jubilant, and very, very thankful.”

“It was gratifying to hear the belief in his voice, the recognition that mighty people don’t always get to do what they want,” Swift said of Hamdan, who, he added, understands that his case is far from over.

After more than 100 meetings at the remote U.S. naval base in southeastern Cuba, Swift said, he and Hamdan have developed a trusting relationship, and he would gladly represent the Yemeni in any future trial, military or civilian.

Colleagues attributed the high court ruling to what they considered to be Swift’s determination to protect the integrity of U.S. jurisprudence against a Pentagon bent on retribution for terrorism attacks on U.S. forces.

“It took exceptional courage. He had to risk himself being alienated from the larger military establishment,” said David Scheffer, law professor and director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University. “He must have known when he took this on that he was risking his career, and sadly he may have done that within the U.S. Navy.”

Though Swift’s successful challenge of the tribunal’s legitimacy will probably open doors in the private sector and academia for the Navy lawyer, Scheffer said, Swift has reportedly been passed over for promotion.

“It was a gutsy move, and he did it with complete dedication and devotion to the cause,” Benjamin Sharp of the Washington office of Perkins Coie said of Swift, with whom the Seattle-based law firm collaborated in Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld.

Sharp speculated that Swift’s military career was probably damaged by his defense of Hamdan, a possibility the naval lawyer also alluded to.

“I love the military. I love my career and I’m proud of it,” Swift said, noting he would be eligible for early retirement in nine months and would leave the Navy unless he was promoted. “One thing that has been a great revelation for me is that you may love the military, but it doesn’t necessarily love you.”

The military has many men and women of great physical courage. That’s the point, after all. But it takes a person of exceptional character to be willing to take on the military hierarchy from within in order to preserve our fundamental principles. I’m skeptical that the threat of Islamic terrorism can be properly categorized as a war but if it is, one of the big battles being fought is for the integrity of the American system, and the battle is internal, not external. In that battle, this guy is a hero.

Swift appeared briefly on Hardball yesterday and had to endure an unbearably puerile interview from Chris Matthews, but he said a couple of things that I think are so simple and yet so important that it always boggles my mind that they get lost in the argument:

MATTHEWS: What about the charge made recently, just a couple minutes ago by Kate O‘Beirne of the “National Review,” that people who fight us who are not in uniform, who do not represent countries who are party to the Geneva Convention shouldn‘t be free riders? They shouldn‘t get Geneva Convention treatment. They should be treated like thugs.

SWIFT: Well, you know, if you‘re looking at it from that way, we have a lot of criminals here in this country. And to prejudge anyone that we capture outside the country as a thug, why are we having a trial in the first place? We‘ve already decided they were guilty.

What the Supreme Court said is you have the trial first, you use the procedures that are set up under international law, and then you decide whether they‘re a thug. You don‘t make the thug determination going in.

Why is this so hard to understand? We already know they picked up a whole lot of innocent and low level nobodies in Afghanistan and shipped them off to Gitmo. In the early days, the US was paying the Northern Alliance $5,000 per head and the NA was handing over their tribal rivals and anybody else they wanted to get rid of. I’m sure Kato and her barely repressed racist allies on the right don’t think it matters if some poor innocent wog gets tortured and locked up forever, but civilized people have come to recognise that show trials, kangaroo courts and lynching are immoral — and counterproductive. If you want to stress liberal values, the rule of law and democracy as the way forward in these fundamentalist religious cultures, you can’t behave this way. It doesn’t make you look tough or strong; it makes you look like you don’t believe in your own system — and that makes you weak.

Bin Laden and his ilk are much more sophisticated than are Cheney and Rummy and the starry eyed neocons. He gets that our soft underbelly is our leadership’s cowardly willingness to use him for political purposes. It’s lucky for this country that we have people like Lt Commander Swift and many others who didn’t buy into the argument that this country was so threatened by this loose band of religious psychopaths that it had to discard everything it believed in. That’s the real strength of America and the slim reed we all hang onto: individual citizens who are willing to stand up for principle (and a system that’s strong enough (so far) to support them) even as they suffer personally for it.

I thank Lt Commander Swift and all the others in the military justice system who managed to fight off the temptation to give in to the ridiculous GWOT juggernaut to take this all the way to the Supreme Court. It won’t solve the numerous problems of this ridiculous “war” or this dangerous administration, but it goes some way in beginning to restore my faith in the institutions of the courts and the military. (Our democratic political institutions, on the other hand, seem on the verge of self-destruction.)

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Death Of A Martian by poputonian
With all this talk about the cosmos, it raises the inevitable question, what would a flea name its dog? The answer, obviously, is Martian. (More on this in a few minutes.)But first there is a need to address more earthly concerns — mainstream kind of concerns — and once again, Susan Jacoby is doing the heavy lifting. Here she leads into a quotation made by Robert Green Ingersoll on July 4, 1876, the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence:

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.

Yesterday, Pach caught Barack Obama marginalizing the left for not courting evangelicals with enough fervor, but a greater concern to me was BOs outright acquiescence on matters of religious indoctrination via government sponsored rituals:

“It is doubtful that children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance feel oppressed or brainwashed as a consequence of muttering the phrase `under God,'” [Obama] said.

One hundred eighty days of school … twelve years. Sure. They won’t feel a thing.

The flea who named its dog Martian was this Flea, the bass guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It seems that Martian passed away during the recording of their latest album, Stadium Arcadium. Martian was a fixture and a source of companionship for the band during the recording of their two prior hit albums, Californication (1999) and By The Way (2002). The latest work is comprised of two CDs, one called Jupiter and the other Mars, which suggests the album has something to do with the Universe. But front man Anthony Kiedis tells Rolling Stone magazine that “love and women, pregnancies and marriages, relationship struggles — those are real and profound influences on this record.” If that’s the case, why did they close out with a beautiful song called Death of a Martian?By the way, have you ever noticed that cats are like conservatives — narcissistic, self-serving, aloof, and pissy — while dogs are like liberals — loyal, engaging, altruistic, and eager to please? Just askin’.

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Whatever

by digby

Glenn Greenwald has a nice primer posted about the Supreme Court decision on Gitmo and executive power. He optimistically concludes:

…opponents of monarchical power should celebrate this decision. It has been some time since real limits were placed on the Bush administration in the area of national security. The rejection of the President’s claims to unlimited authority with regard to how Al Qaeda prisoners are treated is extraordinary and encouraging by any measure. The decision is an important step towards re-establishing the principle that there are three co-equal branches of government and that the threat of terrorism does not justify radical departures from the principles of government on which our country was founded

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Isn’t it pretty to think so? Certainly some of the legal questions about presidential wartime powers seem to have been answered. But from a political standpoint, I’m with Atrios about the practical effect of this ruling:

My quick take is that it’s certainly an important symbolic victory, but this administration’s contempt for the law, the constitution, and the balance/separation of powers that our system rests on isn’t going to be very affected by what 5 people in black robes say. They’ve ignored Congress and they’ll ignore the Court too, leaving our mainstream media with more time to deal with the impending threat of blogofascism.

This decision will ultimately feed into conservative boogeyman number 438: judicial activism. Look for Justice Sunday IV: Vengeance is Mine Sayeth Delay. And expect many more calls to spike John Paul Stevens’ pudding with arsenic. This is the beauty of the conservo-machine. When your primary political tools are both intimidation and victimization, you can spin anything to your advantage.

Here’s Trent Lott doing a triple axel:

LOTT: I think some people are probably laughing at us. This is ridiculous and outrageous. Now in legal speak, let me say, I have not read the entire opinion, nor the dissents. But preliminarily my opinion is they probably didn’t even have jurisdiction. They shouldn’t have ruled the way they did. This is not a bunch of pussycats we’re talking about here. These are people that have made it clear in many instances that they would kill Americans if they got out. This is Osama bin Laden’s driver. And this is one other example of why the American people have lost faith in so much of our federal judiciary. This is a very bad decision in my opinion.

Tonya Harding never sounded this nuts.

I think this could be used to the Democrats’ advantage if they were willing to risk changing the terms of the debate for this midterm election and aggressively confront Karl Rove’s “you talkin’ to me?” trash talk campaign. The Supremes have provided a basis from which to assert congressional perogatives and a hook on which to hang the discussion. Perhaps they will. I hope so, because I am getting a terrible feeling that a lot of rank and file Democrats are going to take a pass on voting this time; no matter how much they dislike Bush and disapprove of his policies, it’s very hard to see at this point what difference it will make if the congress changes hands.

Unless the Dems start making the case that Democrats will confront the president if they take power, it’s hard to see why turnout will be high enough to offset the Karl Rove red-meat-travelling-salvation-show. He has made a fetish out of exciting his base for the past two elections and at this point it’s all he’s got. Unfortunately, the Democratic response, just as it has been since the early 90’s, is to run from its base and play to swing voters. This hasn’t been working out very well for them and it seems remarkably counterintuitive this time out.

I watched the last big change midterm in 1994 with keen interest and I don’t recall the Republicans pulling their punches out of fear of upsetting the swing voters in potential pick-up districts. At least they didn’t do it on a national level — they spent months utterly destroying Bill Clinton and tying every Democrat to his “failures.” (I recall being completely exhausted defending the president to a brainwashed wingnut boss who demanded that I “explain” my position to him over and over again.) They made the calculation that they could create a strong enough appetite for blood that their base would turn out in large numbers and the Democrats would be disillusioned and stay home.

In much the same way, I think Democrats desperately need to see their leaders take it to this president. He’s dramatically unpopular, his war is considered an abject failure by a large majority and he’s obsessed with secrecy and power. I think the concept of presidential overreach, with its echoes of Nixon, are issues that speak to the rank and file and would give the base the assurance that if the Democrats take control of the congress, the congress will take back it’s constitutional perogatives and provide oversight.

I doubt this will happen. Apparently a president mired in the mid-30’s with a GOP Eunuch Caucus that has enthusiastically signed off on every crackpot policy he’s put forth can still say boo! and the Dems will still believe it’s in their best interest to be measured and moderate. What a shame.

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