Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Psychotic Break

Kieren and others are talking about how den Beste has lost his bearings, but it’s pretty clear it’s just symptomatic of a much wider form of mass psychosis on the right.

Michael Ledeen, esteemed fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, and intimate of the neocon nutballs who are running our foreign policy has gone completely around the fucking bend:

A Theory

What if there’s method to the Franco-German madness?

Assume, for a moment, that the French and the Germans aren’t thwarting us out of pique, but by design, long-term design. Then look at the world again, and see if there’s evidence of such a design.

Like everyone else, the French and the Germans saw that the defeat of the Soviet Empire projected the United States into the rare, almost unique position of a global hyperpower, a country so strong in every measurable element that no other nation could possibly resist its will. The “new Europe” had been designed to carve out a limited autonomy for the old continent, a balance-point between the Americans and the Soviets. But once the Soviets were gone, and the Red Army melted down, the European Union was reduced to a combination theme park and free-trade zone. Some foolish American professors and doltish politicians might say — and even believe — that henceforth “power” would be defined in economic terms, and that military power would no longer count. But cynical Europeans know better.

They dreaded the establishment of an American empire, and they sought for a way to bring it down.

If you were the French president or the German chancellor, you might well have done the same.

How could it be done? No military operation could possibly defeat the United States, and no direct economic challenge could hope to succeed. That left politics and culture. And here there was a chance to turn America’s vaunted openness at home and toleration abroad against the United States. So the French and the Germans struck a deal with radical Islam and with radical Arabs: You go after the United States, and we’ll do everything we can to protect you, and we will do everything we can to weaken the Americans.

The Franco-German strategy was based on using Arab and Islamic extremism and terrorism as the weapon of choice, and the United Nations as the straitjacket for blocking a decisive response from the United States.

[…]

If this is correct, we will have to pursue the war against terror far beyond the boundaries of the Middle East, into the heart of Western Europe. And there, as in the Middle East, our greatest weapons are political: the demonstrated desire for freedom of the peoples of the countries that oppose us.

Radio Free France, anyone?

Somebody had a little Ecstasy with his Freedom Toast this morning.

The next time somebody says that the left is full of conspiracy theorists I’m going to pop a gasket. This guy is a MAINSTREAM Republican, writing on the National Review website, for crying out loud. His nutsy wife worked in the Reagan administration and formerly ran the Barbizon School of Dyed-Blond Former Prosecutors.

Michael Ledeen gets invited to the White House. He is crazy as a loon.

Epitaph

“One of the tests of a leader is to convince your allies what’s right and what’s wrong,” Bush said. “And that’s what a leader does. A leader builds up alliances.”

December 1999, ABC “This Week”

I hear ye, Junior.

OPERATOR

Colonel, you better have a look at this radar.

COLONEL

What is it, son?

OPERATOR

I don’t know, sir, but it looks like a giant–

CUT TO COCKPIT – JET

PILOT

Dick!

CO-PILOT

Yes?

PILOT

Take a look out of starboard.

CO-PILOT

Oh my God, it looks like a huge–

CUT TO WOODS

MAN

Pecker!

WOMAN

Where?

He raises his binoculars.

MAN

Over there. A rare red-billed woodpecker!

(looks over with binoculars)

What sort of bird is that? Oh goodness, it’s not a bird, it’s-

CUT TO ARMY BASE

SERGEANT

Privates! We have reports of an Unidentified Flying Object. It has a long, smooth shaft, complete with-

CUT TO BASEBALL DIAMOND:

UMPIRE

Two balls! No strikes.

(looking up)

What is that? It looks just like an enormous–

CUT BACK TO RADAR ROOM:

COLONEL

Johnson!

RADAR OPERATOR

Yes, sir?

COLONEL

Get on the horn to British Intelligence and let them know about this.

Official transcript

Email Twitter Facebook

Tory Unrest

If the Tories are starting to falter then there is a faint (very faint) possibility that the Brits will drop out. If that happens, then all bets are off.

Conservative whip John Randall has quit his post because of his concerns over a possible Iraq war.

With the Tory leadership backing Tony Blair’s stance on the Iraq crisis, Mr Randall’s resignation shows divisions are not exclusively confined to the Labour benches.

His move comes after International Development Secretary Clare Short launched a searing attack on Mr Blair’s “reckless” Iraq policy.

One Labour ministerial aide, Andy Reed, has already resigned over his concerns and others have signalled they will follow if war begins without new United Nations backing.

[…]

They’re coming at Bush’s Freedom Poodle now from the right as well as the left. It’s probably just a “Ron Paul” moment, but you never know.

A Good Dad

TBOGG proves that it’s the smart, sensitive people who are the most devastatingly funny.

Here’s my pick for “oh my Gawd, my life just changed” reading:

When you look directly at an insane man all you see is a reflection of your own knowledge that he’s insane, which is not to see him at all. To see him you must see what he saw and when you are trying to see the vision of an insane man, an oblique route is the only way to come at it. Otherwise your own opinions block the way… The ghost [Phaedrus] pursued was the ghost that underlies all of technology, all of modern science, all of Western thought. It was the ghost of rationality itself.”

Oooh baby.

I was 17 years old and the world tipped off its axis and sent me flying in a brand new direction.

Orcinus

If those of us on the left read nothing else, we need to read this series from David Neiwert, called Rush, Newspeak and Fascism.

He is writing about something that we really don’t want to hear about. Marshalled with data and first hand experience in the field, he is laying out the scenario — step by step — for how the United States of America can slowly but inexorably move into fascism.

This is not hysterical nonsense nor is it tin-foil hat conspiracy mongering. Those of us who like to think of ourselves as fairly earthbound (polemic blogging notwithstanding) and who have grown up in a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity where nothing really politically catastrophic has happened to us, are hard pressed to believe that something truly bad can happen here.

I have friends who have maintained until just recently that we would not go to war because well.. it didn’t make sense and the wise men who “really run things” wouldn’t let it happen. I know other who have faith that our electoral system could never be compromised in any serious way because well…it’s America. We don’t do that.

And, indeed, we have had an incredible run. We always existed within the context of the time, and as such we perpetrated genocide, institutionalized slavery, pandered to every bigoted and racist proclivity known to man. As a culture we have been no better (and probably no worse) than any other collection of flawed human beings. Rather, it has been the government, while certainly corrupt at times and thoroughly tainted by the necessity for the human species to run it, that has been the fundamental basis of the bold American experiment. A certain committment to that ideal has formed the core of what it means to be an American.

But, there is no guarantee that it remain so. Under stress, whether real or manufactured, the institutions we take for granted are subject to change. We are not immune from the dark side of human ambition or the folly of small men with grand ideas and little know how. It’s impossible to know if we are marching toward fascism but there is no law of nature that says it is impossible.

How Inappropriate

Bob Novak (singing along with the Mighty Wurlitzer) is upset that Jimmy Carter is speaking out of turn and criticizing President Legacy:

NOVAK: There was a time when ex presidents acted like elder statesmen, rarely seen, almost never heard. But on “60 Minutes” this past weekend, there was Bill Clinton, basking in the spotlight of big money and criticizing President Bush’s proposed tax cut. Even that wasn’t as grading (sic) as yesterday’s sanctimonious op-ed column in “The New York Times” by Sunday school teacher and ex-President Jimmy Carter. “As a Christian and as a president who was severely provoked by international crises, I became thoroughly familiar with the principles of a just war, and it is clear that a substantial unilateral attack on Iraq does not meet these standards.”

He’s right, as always. But, I really think he needs to have a talk with this guy too:

”We need to make clear the new world order is not some code for American imperialism, but making freedom and self-determination widely accepted norms”

It’s highly inappropriate for former presidents to speak out of turn this way.

Ari and Karl Do The Tango

The new NY Times Poll has a roaring headline saying:

Growing Number in U.S. Back War, Survey Finds

Americans are growing impatient with the United Nations and say they would support military action against Iraq even if the Security Council refuses to support an invasion, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

The poll found that 58 percent of Americans said the United Nations was doing a poor job in managing the Iraqi crisis, a jump of 10 points from a month ago. And 55 percent of respondents in the latest poll would support an American invasion of Iraq, even if it was in defiance of a vote of the Security Council.

The problem with this headline is that they didn’t mention that while the public feels the United Nations isn’t “managing” the crisis well, the Bush administration has a bare 51% of Americans who think that he is. And that number hasn’t budged. The same number feel he is doing a good job on foreign policy in general, 51%.

The second question concerning defiance of a Security Council vote has never been asked before, so saying that such sentiment is growing is based upon total conjecture.

On the other hand the answers to many of the questions are so contradictory and incoherent that you really have to wonder what the hell people are thinking.

My personal favorite is:

From what you have seen or heard so far, how much progress have the U.N. weapons inspectors made in finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — a lot, some, not much, or none at all?

9% say “a lot”, 47% say “some”, 33% say “not much”, 8% say “none at all”, and 3% say “don’t know.”

56% of the public believe that the inspectors have made some or a lot of progress finding weapons of mass destruction. I suppose they could mean since 1991, but surely a fair number think that Blix and his boys have found them in this last round.

oh…

Are We Better Off Now Than We Were Six Months Ago?

Vote Quimby points out that the very hegemony and military dominance so prized by the neoconservative warmongers, and on which they base their starry-eyed plans for a Pax Americana, is being seriously diminished by the incompetence of this administration.

Let’s just look at this last few months and ask this simple question: Is America more powerful than it was last summer, or less?

I thought that perhaps the answer was ‘more’ after seeing the 15-0 Security Council vote that got inspectors back on the ground. Achieving unanimity on a security council that included Syria was no mean feat.

But since then, America’s ability to influence events has receded dramatically. We’ve seen a coalition of the unwilling form between France, Germany, Russia and China; and we’ve been blown off by Turkey(!). It’s unclear how many of these diplomatic failures were caused by massive disagreement over matters of substance vs. team G-Dub’s ultra-manly approach to getting what it wants. But it seems pretty clear to me that the most powerful nation in the world gets less powerful every time another country publicly refuses to go along with its positions.

Be careful what you wish for, boys…

Judy Garland Bush

Uppers and Downers:

One of the leaders described Bush as “cocky and relaxed” and said he conveyed the clear impression that he had concluded that attacking Iraq was inevitable. Another lawmaker described Bush as being “in high spirits.” This leader said that at the congressional breakfast a month earlier, Bush had “seemed to have the weight of the world on his shoulders.”

The lawmakers’ accounts were echoed by Bush’s aides, who said he is still an optimist in settings unrelated to the war. People close to Bush said he has kept to his usual schedule of sleeping from roughly 10 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. And they said he continues to work out for at least half an hour, at least five or six days a week, alternating between weight-lifting and running — sometimes on a treadmill and sometimes on an outdoor track.

“I do work out daily. And I’m sleeping well at night,” Bush told a roundtable for regional newspaper reporters Monday.