My wife's Finnish brother and his fiancee appeared this weekend. After getting them at Newark Airport I started driving up Route 9 over the Pulaski Skyway. Looking down one could see the Meadowlands spread out over a landscape littered with boxcars, rusting industrial landscapes, and prefabricated housing units amidst the remains of the ecoscape, the Jersey City and the New York City skylines in the distance. Spotting the back of the Statue of Liberty we went up to it, and looked around Liberty State Park. It was pretty, and well-maintained, but the rain was coming down so hard we soon vacated. What does the Statue of Liberty represent today?
We then went up Route 17 toward the Catskills and saw a sign for Woodstock NY which isn't really in the real Woodstock, but about an hour southwest in the town of Bethel, NY (the original Woodstock was denied permission by its city council for an impromptu concert of this magnitude). The event was held in Max Yasgur's farm in a natural amphitheatre. 400,000 people came. Lines to toilets were a mile long. Hundreds of injuries including three deaths resulted. A raccoon bit someone. Skunks sprayed about a dozen people. Many barefooted hippies (thousands) cut their feet. The tiny roads couldn't handle the cars and deadlock with dreadlocks were the result.
There were hundreds of bad trips, and the food ran out. It was utopia gone into dystopian phase, but after three days it was disassembled, and everyone went home. Today there is a very good museum on the site. It costs 15 dollars per head and you can't take photos. The Merry Prankster bus, and much else, is copyrighted in the name of the museum. (A book in the bookstore was written by a local nurse who went over to help out, and spent decades researching the logistical nightmare of caring for a sudden city of a half million. I can't remember the name of the book. It was published in Kiamesha, NY, and had charts of medical personnel, and injuries. There were at least three deaths -- including a sleeping boy run over by a local tractor.)
New York has always attracted utopians. Coleridge and Southey thought of putting in a utopian city near Binghamton, NY. There was the Oneida Community. The Bruderhoffs are another community in upstate NY composed of some kind of Christian communists.
Woodstock has become a giant symbol, somehow linked to the Statue of Liberty. The reality of it of course was major problems, and it wasn't a sustainable community. There was no food, and no bathrooms, or there was too little to support a community of a half million. The problems of the feeding tube had been overlooked.
The organizers lost a lot of money. The community of Bethel was frustrated and upset and refused for many decades to allow another such event. Now, the community has apparently seen the money in the event. So, the museum opened in 2008. It's a neat place, very well taken care of, with large musical events from various acts. Genesis will play this summer.
Woodstock was meant to be a replay of the Garden of Eden, restocked with a half a million hippies. I wish I had been there. I was 12. I spent that weekend playing Little League baseball, camping outside in my backyard in a tent, swimming in the local pool, and eating hamburgers with my dad and mom and brothers at a small state park, going to the local Lutheran church. I wanted to go to Woodstock, but my mom said no.
79 comments:
May Day! May Day! May Day!
Obama got Osama!
Yes, and he got him on May 1st. Apparently it was a missile strike. Details of when and where were missing in the morning newspaper. But the world represented by the Statue of L. and Woodstock, is safer, at least for the nonce, from the Sharia folks.
I think it's a feather in Obama's cap.
If he would now secure the Mexican border and kill stealthcare, I'd vote for him.
Obama enjoyed a brief surge of popularity with me this morning when I heard this good news. I think it's the first good thing he's done as a president. It shows that he's not entirely ineffective. And maybe he does care about America.
I'm very impressed.
I also liked a couple of his lines from his comedy speech earlier this week.
I just hope he isn't hurt now in the blowback from the Muslims.
Hakuna Matata!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejEVczA8PLU
Congratulations to the CIA and to the Navy Seals who put down this long-unpunished mass murderer. I think Canadian PM Steven Harper gave the best head-of-state announcement of the news that we can take with "sober satisfaction."
Kirby,
Yes, and he got him on May 1st. Apparently it was a missile strike.
I was concerned when it took you twelve hours to clear posts—had your head exploded? Glad to see not.
Not sure why you thought missle strike—this was a helicopter insertion of a small assault team. There was a risk-reward tradeoff. But this was the only way to have certainty and proof, even though it involved the risk of a Carter-like failure. And given that one of the two landing helicopters was broken during the insertion, it was a real risk. This took nerve, from the men who did it, to the man who authorized it.
I think it's a feather in Obama's cap.
Me too. And the intelligence community's, the military's, and likely a few other players that we'll never know of. The US has been looking to find and kill bin Ladin since the '98 bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. There's been a ongoing effort now through three administrations to get this done.
I just hope he isn't hurt now in the blowback from the Muslims.
I think you're misreading things. Most of the reaction from Muslim leaders has been overwhelmingly positive, including, most interestingly, the Palestinian Authority and the Pakistani's themselves. The only negative public reactions I've seen are from Hamas and Iran, although it's a good guess that Qaddafi is in a bunker somewhere, swearing and sobbing.
One of the really artful pieces of this is Obama's message management vz. Islam. First, he made the argument that bin Laden was not a Muslim warrior, but instead a murder who had killed Muslims and non-Muslims alike. He was very clear that he saw the war as being against al-Qaeda, and not against Islam, and he pointedly invoked GWB on this as well (I think to try and proactively tamp down anti-Islamic hooting from the Tea Party side, which could have inflamed things). The treatment of bin Laden's body seemed very calculated too, as it was done in a manner as to enable certainty, to avoid the creation of a monument, and in a way that showed a clear choice to understand and respect Muslim sensibilities regarding the handling of the dead.
Some Christian humility there.
"Love your enemies." Look it up in NT Kirbystein. JC was no rage-fueled McCain or Bo Gritz. Not a pacifist either most likely but he disliked...cops, soldiers, grunts, centurions.
The whole things sounds...Israeli-arranged (and funny, coincides withe JP II's beatification? merely coincidence? or maybe zionist-WASP media arrranged it that way, along with US military. ).
Stu, my local paper this morning, the Oneonta Star, said it was a missile strike. They also didn't have the name of the town, which is something like Attaattabat.
It's a good thing. I think we can celebrate it as the one thing that all Americans can rejoice over that's been done during this administration's tenure (I enjoyed Crowleygate, but I didn't think it was a major step for mankind).
If he'd kill stealthcare, I think I would even think of moving into Obama's column. I mean, he actually achieved something positive, which is amazing.
Kirby,
Stu, my local paper this morning, the Oneonta Star, said it was a missile strike.
They must have gone to press early. But Obama said that we'd recovered the body, which pretty well ruled out both a missle strike and a bombing. Early on, there was a lot of speculation, often not particularly well distinguished from well sourced material. This often happens when the media is hyperventilating, as it does whenever the competitive stakes are high, and knowledgeable sources few. By this morning, the broad outlines of the story seemed stable. There's still a lot we don't know, and probably a lot that won't come out until we're long gone.
They also didn't have the name of the town, which is something like Attaattabat.
Abbottabad. A former cantonment (British garrison city), which explains that curiously English root name. There's a decent article on Wikipedia. Nice to see that it got updated this morning. It's kind of ironic, OBL hiding out in a city whose name is essentially "Monksville."
Discarding the body in the sea had a shocking effect on me. I thought: mistake, when I heard it. After death, a body belongs to the mourners. Let them mourn properly, I thought, or it gives them another rationale for rage.
Some Muslim scholars see sacrilege in it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-sea-burial-muslim-scholars_n_856315.html
It isn't as if Osama cared what happened to the people he blew apart on 9/11 or in Tanzania, but we shouldn't descend to his level.
I can understand not wanting to create a Mecca of sorts for terrorists, but he had lots of followers, and they could be photographed visiting the site, which could have been in the middle of Antarctica, or something, if no one wanted the body (the government is claiming that they couldn't find anyone to take the body -- but seriously -- how hard did they look?).
It's a good thing Osama is dead, but should Obama have been more circumspect about how the body was discarded?
Perhaps there was no neat way to do this, and perhaps such a question should be moot. But I think to his thousands of followers, it will be one more reason to seek revenge.
What happened to Osama's money? Who now controls it? Hopefully there will be a split among his followers and they will begin to shoot each other to control his legacy. That would be a nice outcome.
where's the proof of OBL behind 9-11?
He may have been involved, maybe even ordering it (that's not the same as carrying it out).
That was not proven. So much for that old myth of "Due Process" . Of course it would have been difficult to have arrested him. But not impossible. Tear gas. Nets. stun guns. Darts with opiates.,etc.
Prez Hitllery wanted OBL DOA--
"When the truth is found to be lies,
And the light within you that brought you joy dies,
Don't you want somebody to love?"
I don't know if it's an exercise in futility to try to understand rock lyrics. But those lines from Jefferson Airplane seem almost to have some sense to them?
Grace Slick was a model who joined Jefferson Airplane in about 1967, and was the lead singer of several of their top songs.
I have a friend in Seattle who is her cousin. She apparently grew up Episcopalian.
Is the truth that is found to be lies Christianity itself?
And does this lead to want someone carnal to love instead?
Slick apparently wanted to call her first child, god (small g).
One of the things I admired about Osama BL is that it seemed he believed in God, and was inspired by this.
The hippies said, Make love, not war.
But what if there is nothing else worth fighting for?
Is this the truth of some segments of the left now?
The Statue of Liberty has a kind of seriousness in the facial presence, and the stars that radiate from her head indicate enlightenment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhtIydTmOVU&feature=related
Kirby, as stu says, it'll take some time to sort out the details of this successful operation, but, despite the former military ruler Musharraf's claims of a Pakistani "intelligence failure," I'm not convinced the Pakistani ISI had no knowledge of OBL's residence near the military college in Abbottabad. And what could the Pakistani government say differently about the raid's success but good riddance while deploring the violation of their sovereignty--especially given their deserved reputation for duplicity in their relations with us (for Pakistan, aka "The Money") and with the Taliban.
There are reports of years of puzzle-piece assembling based on information as to the identity of an OBL courier who was identified by the very terrorist suspects (like KSM) who were apparently queried by "enhanced interrogation" techniques in rendition locations in Eastern Europe so roundly condemned by the left, including then Senator Obama. Of course he now had intelligence at his disposal unavailable to him as a junior senator.
I'm glad the operation was successful, though the major media are already cranking out fulsome praise for the President (as if his speech didn't enough make himself the prime mover in all this) and triumphantly touting his chances for reelection. OBL hasn't been an actual threat to the US for years, but the symbolic value of his having been put down is quite significant.
And leave it to stu to take an undeserved swipe at the Tea Party, just as he did after the Arizona shootings.
Kirby, that Jefferson Airplane song figures very interestingly (and rather theologically, I think) in "A Serious Man", written and directed by The Coen Brothers. It's about the Job-like sufferings of a Jewish Physics professor in the Midwest. I think the philosophical significance of the song in this movie (the literal significance is that it's the late 60's, and the professor's son loves the song, and listens to it during Hebrew School instruction, so gets his cassette recorder confiscated, which leads to a very interesting development at the end)is that since you HAVE to accept, so why not love, God, no matter what He does to you, it's imperative to also CHOOSE some person to love. Pious or impious? Anyway, a very funny and tragic movie.
Kirby,
Discarding the body in the sea had a shocking effect on me. I thought: mistake, when I heard it. After death, a body belongs to the mourners.
Did you actually read the article you posted, or just scan it to see that it contained a proof-text that there are some Muslim clerics who are unhappy about it? The article claims that the Saudi's were offered the body, and declined the "honor." I don't know one way or the other.
But the tradition of burial at sea is pretty universal, albeit generally speaking reserved for those who die at sea. This does have a bit of an odd feeling to it, but it doesn't strike me that it's going to have much traction as a recruiting tool for jihadists. To the extent its disrespectful, it's disrespectful of OBL the person, and not of Islam per se.
Let them mourn properly, I thought, or it gives them another rationale for rage.
As I see it, the jihadists are going to be angry whatever we do, and certainly there are Islamic clerics among them. They're bent on revenge, and will stretch any point to frame themselves as holy warriors, fighting the infidel. It's not as if all of Islam speaks with one mind, after all. The question is whether or not this framing is going find traction with folks who are not already committed to jihad. I'm betting that for the typical Muslim, the language of Obama's speech, the expressed intent to honor Muslim sensibilities, coupled with divided opinions by the clerics, is going keep the disposal of the body from becoming a big deal.
It's a good thing Osama is dead, but should Obama have been more circumspect about how the body was discarded?
Let's be honest here. Any gentleness and respect we show to his body after the fact is going pale in significance compared to the two bullets we fired through his brain. There's no option that's going to make everyone happy, you just want to avoid getting people angry unnecessarily. That said, I suspect that Islamic scholars were consulted on this point, in the abstract, long before.
What happened to Osama's money? Who now controls it? Hopefully there will be a split among his followers and they will begin to shoot each other to control his legacy. That would be a nice outcome.
It's an interesting question. But following the money is something our government is pretty good at, trying to control money involves exposure, and exposure ends up drawing unwanted attention.
My guess is that there are sleeper cells all over America by now waiting for orders from the boss: OBL. They no doubt crept over the Arizona border, and even though they had rags on their heads and machine guns, the local cops couldn't stop them because they in turn would be accused of thinking that just because there were men coming over the border with bombs, mortars, and strange headgear, what the heck, they could be locals.
It's amazing that we've known about the site for eight months but waited all this time to pop OBL. One of his sons was killed, too. How many others got popped?
The details are still sketchy.
Wall St. has been quite nervous since 9/11. You used to be able to watch the proceedings from the gallery. I wnoder if that will open up again.
Perhaps money will begin to flow more copiously. I would certainly find that a copacetic outcome (how many are familiar with the term copacetic? it's a local word in these parts meaning something like good, but in a sense that means also creative of a highly fluid harmony between all and sundry in a given situation).
We need the tax receipts.
The thing is that it's hard to find an intelligent leader. They don't grow on trees. With OBL out, Al-Qaida may not find itself to be a hydra-headed organization with one poet-scholar-warrior after another.
I suspect that after Mohammed Atta and OBL, they're just about out.
On the other hand, West Point is practically minting thousands of them year after year.
The leaders of the counterculture were also often the children of leaders in the other culture. Jim Morrison's dad for instance was a top general in Vietnam.
It's a fairly rare thing, but has to be carefully cultivated.
You can't just take some dunce and make them into a brilliant leader. It's a very rare thing, and most countries actively discourage it.
Democracies are smart to cultivate it.
BO's dad was a big leader in Kenya who tried very hard to institute communism in that land. Fortunately, he did not succeed. Perhaps BO has the leadership skills but isn't the sex-crazed communist that his dad was.
Leadership and charisma like the Kennedys had is quite rare.
After Qaddafi, I bet he killed everyone with leadership potential in Libya, much as Stalin did in Russia.
The Romney family has that quality, and the kids might have it. I dearly hope so.
Stephen, I hadn't heard of that Coen bros. movie, so can't comment, but thanks for telling me about it.
JADL,
I'm not convinced the Pakistani ISI had no knowledge of OBL's residence near the military college in Abbottabad.
Something we can agree on. Clearly OBL chose his place so that the cavalry would be close at hand. His choice is incomprehensible without protective contacts within the Pakistani security and military. But I think it's also interesting and significant that the cavalry didn't show up when he needed it. Forty minutes is a very long time when you're within a thousand yards of three different regimental HQs, after all. My theory on this is one part slow reaction, and one part a realizations that those noisy helicopters were there as a demonstration of a interdiction capability and the will to use it. Last night wasn't a good night for them to die, so they chose not too. This was obviously not the choice bin Laden expected them to make.
There are reports of years of puzzle-piece assembling based on information as to the identity of an OBL courier who was identified by the very terrorist suspects (like KSM) who were apparently queried by "enhanced interrogation" techniques in rendition locations in Eastern Europe so roundly condemned by the left, including then Senator Obama. Of course he now had intelligence at his disposal unavailable to him as a junior senator.
I'm extremely doubtful that intelligence obtained via torture—and let's not mince words here, that's what the weasel phrase “enhanced interrogation techniques” means—played any role in the success of the OBL assassination mission. Yeah, I've heard the speculation too, but it doesn't pass the smell test. KSM was captured in 2003, and OBL didn't move to Abbottabad until 2006 or thereabouts.
I think we can safely assume that whatever is said or alluded to in public about the sources of intelligence used to track down bin Laden is either an amateur's guess or an intentionally misleading plant. Those who really and truly know, know better than to talk about it.
And leave it to stu to take an undeserved swipe at the Tea Party, just as he did after the Arizona shootings.
Obviously, you haven't been reading the blogs. I have. It's been an enlightening day out there on the intertubes. The freepers started the day in deep denial and/or conspiracy theories. It was pathetic, and it's no wonder that their comment counts are down. Over at RedState, there was a lot of exulting that this was an ex post facto justification of the Bush strategy, coupled with some extraordinarily graphic ideas as to what should have been done with OBL's body, ranging from explicitly anti-Islamic (the suggestions started with wrapping him in bacon, and rapidly went downhill from there) to outright homo-erotic. We're talking some pretty weird stuff that seemed to be a mainstream over there. LGF was, in my opinion, decently nuanced and civilized, if self-consciously Bush apologetic. There was a little bit of the weird stuff there, but it seemed out of tune with LGF community values. Beck got off to a slow start, but his affiliate "The Blaze" was sane and almost timely (and seemed much more concerned with accuracy than FOX, which put out a whole bunch of badly incorrect stuff early). Limbaugh was late too. They were either thinking hard, or they were being read some form of the riot act, or both.
So no, I don't think it's undeserved, especially given the community values as represented by RedState and their ilk. But I'll give credit to the Republican politicians, for whom this was a distinctly bittersweet triumph, but a triumph nevertheless.
Over at Kos, I saw a mirror of LGF. A lot of praise for Obama, the military, and intelligence services. Some praise for Bush, and a fair bit of criticism, about what you'd expect. And a bit of the weird stuff, and a bit of pacifism, but both were pretty marginal.
Obama's changes in policy directly affected the American approach in Afghanistan and Pakistan -
Where this information came from, and whether it was gathered by the use of torture, is, AFIK, unknown at this point...
What we do know is that during the campaign, Obama said that if he had actionable intelligence to take out terrorists, including bin Laden, in Pakistan, he would do so.
The Republicans condemned him for this, pretending that he had said he wanted to 'invade' Pakistan.
Obama ran on a platform of refocusing on Al Qaeda, and he made a specific point to guide his team to redouble their efforts in going after bin Laden.
He signed off on the use of force in exactly the circumstance that he had described during the campaign, and for which he was lambasted by the right.
Was it worth violating Pakistan's sovereignty to kill bin Laden? Obama thought so. McCain didn't.
So yes - while the bulk of the praise for bin Laden's death should go to the intelligence officials and special forces that took him out, Obama's policies focused their mission and gave them permission to take out bin Laden when the Republicans' policies would not have. Obama deserves due credit for bin Laden's death - those unwilling to give it to him are wearing blinders. I wonder if there's anyone out there on the right who'll defend the Republican's previous position that this operations like this should not have been carried out...
Obama's policy shifts clearly led to the death of bin Laden. So for that, he deserves much praise - I hardly find it 'fulsome,' but then again I don't watch t.v.
I'm sure many of the rightwing blogs are in full-bore denial or spin mode. Some of the problem goes back to our weak intelligence machine. We have still an enormous regular army, but the intelligence community was gutted by Carter and again by Clinton. We've rebuilt it under the Bushes.
It was intelligence obviously that led to taking out OBL. This was a very patient very stealthy marking out, and followed up by our equivalent of ninjas.
The rehabilitation of the intelligence community since 9/11 has to become a greater priority, and we have to learn to think better.
The army is a superexpensive dinosaur. We still have in excess of a hundred thousand men in Afghanistan, and it's not clear why. Are we there as a police force to make sure everyone there adheres to our values that women should be able to read, write, and do arithmetic? This is obviously a good thing, but on the other hand could be seen as an abuse of western power and a derision of a crummy but authentic culture. Should we obliterate the goofy remnants of Islamic cultural life insofar as it discriminates against women (even to the point of using them as human shields in this latest encounter)?
Meanwhile, crummy Libya is causing the world headaches, but is it really Libya, or just Gaddafi? We say we don't want to take out Gaddafi, so instead we shoot his soldiers. This is like not killing the queen of an ant colony and instead wiping out the soldiers. But if you wipe out the queen you kill the colony. Why are we pussyfooting around in Libya? Why not just send in a ninja squad and finish this off. Much less expensive, and easier. Of course this means that any number can play that game, but obviously no one much in the Islamic world of terror cares too much about niceties anyway. Gaddafi is very much a part of the terror circus, so shouldn't he be popped by a sniper, too?
Meanwhile, he owns a house in New Jersey, I once read. Is that true?
If this whole episode taught us anything it's the importance of super trained secretive ninja squads backed up by intel.
Intel has to be completely brought back to the level it was pre-Carter. This will bring down the global menace of terrorism (which is itself secretive, and not blundering about like dinosaurs). We need surgical strikes.
Obviously this leads to a loss of accountability but the world is not the Sunday school that Carter imagined. It's something else. It requires counterterrorism techniques: education, intel, careful training and planning, an ability to understand other cultures so as not to enflame with faux pas such as the throwing the body into the sea scenario.
(I'm not so sure that that's so bad, but some say it is. But those who say it is, would probably not have been terribly pleased to have had the carefully wrapped and cleaned body on their hands, either.)
It's a messy business. Obama shows us that it's best done quickly, carefully, and in the dark. Perhaps this will mean a resurgence of black ops in general.
Americans hear and see their news via corporate media. You think they are they are telling you the truth, whatever that may be?? Are you sure that is Binladen? Maybe start over with Orwell 101. We don't know jack about what goes down with military intelligence .
even Miss Slick would remind us to question authoritay--whether republocrat or demopublican.
Jeremy Cahill had some interesting observations about the bin Laden, on the Tavis Smiley Show.
He regards the cheering and whoopla as inappropriate response to the announcement. Sends the wrong message.
Obama treated the matter as a police action--which is how it should have been handled from the beginning.
Celebrating targeted assassination is an inappropriate media event (photo op). Why did hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have to die, so we could celebrate this belated "success" almost ten years later?
Chanting "USA USA USA!" gives the wrong message to the world.
Obviously bin Laden's death isn't "worth" the carnage and lost treasure of two and a half wars. "Avenging wars" we prosecuted based on lies. China and Russia came in and swooped up the Iraqi oil, and a million people lost their lives. Obama performed the act(ion) which should have been undertaken by his predecessors.
What this action proves is that our supposed "allies" in Pakistan were indeed hiding bin Laden, while lying to us and blackmailing us for huge helpings of cash and military aid. Bin Laden had support and protection in Pakistan. He was living in a kind of specially designed luxury residence in a vacation resort-town.
IN Roman times, bin Laden's body would have been cut up into pieces, and taken to the corners of the kingdom to be displayed in public as a message. We, of course, don't have a kingdom, but we did dispose of the body in such a way as to prevent its being turned into a martyr fetish.
BTW, Kirby, dreadlocks didn't come into the Caucasian fashion system until the 1990's. They didn't even arrive in America until the end of the 1970's, well after Woodstock Nation.
As a suburban teenager in the early 1960's, I had no desire to be a part of any counterculture. What counterculture meant to me as a young college student by the late 1960's, was commitment to high-minded principles, a willingness to put myself on the line, and an interest in alternative life-styles--a repudiation of my forebears mistakes.
Kirby,
Some of the problem goes back to our weak intelligence machine. We have still an enormous regular army, but the intelligence community was gutted by Carter and again by Clinton. We've rebuilt it under the Bushes.
I don't know much about the history of the intelligence services, but I know enough to believe that this is wrong.
The major Bush era adjustment of US intelligence gathering came in the form of creating the office of the Director of National Intelligence, with a charge to oversee the entire US intelligence apparatus. My understanding is that this has never been an effective office, and for the entirely predictable reason of turf wars, largely between the DNI and the Director of Central Intelligence Agency.
Where I see an unfortunate discontinuity is in the Clinton-GWB transition. The Clinton administration saw the Soviets and Chinese as being declining threats (and in retrospect, they were right about the Soviets, but whether or not they were right about the Chinese remains to be seen), but radical Islamic fundamentalism as being a rising threat. And how could Clinton have seen it otherwise? The first bombing of the world trade center occurred a month after he was sworn in as President, and during his term there was the bombing of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the Yugoslavian civil wars, and the bombing of the USS Cole. But the incoming Bush people had more of a cold-war focus, especially Rice (that was her specially), with more balance coming from Powell and Clarke, but Clarke's autobiography is pretty emphatic on the point that GWB wasn't interested in radical Islamic terrorism until 9/11.
One thing that I'll give Bush real credit for is raising up Petraeus, and giving him authority over Afghanistan in 2008. I find it curious, in retrospect, that when Petraeus was put forward as candidate for DCI just a couple weeks ago, the reaction of the talking heads was that this was likely not to sit well with the Pakistanis. In the aftermath of the assassination of OBL, Obama's been pushing Panetta in the spotlight. Hmm...
Likewise, if the CIA really was gutted under Clinton, how do you explain GWB's decision to keep the Clinton appointed Gene Tenent on as DCI through 2004?
Indeed, the Wiki article on the Director of Central Intelligence has the following, striking quote, in section on Panetta -- David Ignatius said that advisers to Mr. Obama have told him that Panetta was chosen to provide political defense for the CIA: "Panetta is a Washington heavyweight with the political clout to protect the Agency and help it rebuild after a traumatic eight years under George Bush, when it became a kind of national pincushion."
Sir Faville seems to accept the "official" media narrative of AQ, the Iraqi war, and OBL's death. My point is that...we shouldn't (moreover...skepticism about political authority--if not paranoia--was one of the themes of the authentic counterculture (not merely the woodstock partay)).
BushCo's claims that AQ and Saddam Hussein were closely connected were tenuous at best. There was ...some reason to be concerned about WMDS--a bit of yellowcake was found, but nothing like Bush admin claimed. But what did that have to do with AQ?.
BO and the Pelosicrats chose not to press the issue --a mistake. Even some GOP politicos (Mccaint, however f-ed up) had called for an investigation--the Robb Silbermann report itself called the CIA/US intelligence work shoddy and half-baked.
Actually, Bush's misuse and mishandling of the CIA is well-documented.
The CIA refused to roll over to produce phony "evidence" to support the Iraq resolution, so Cheney went over and heads rolled. They got their resolution, after the bloodbath at the Pentagon. Powell was marginalized, when he refused to roll over, as Rumsfeld and Cheney masterminded the Iraq invasion, which had been planned way back (in Texas) during the election week of Bush's first term.
Sorry, but the intelligence community was an unwilling pawn of Bush II. The record is clear.
That's about what I just wrote. I've never defended BushCo or GOP and in fact that's what the Robb-S report suggested---nearly collusion between military intelligence and the Bush-Cheney admin. not to say a lot of guesswork. So why didn't the Pelosi crew do anything about it, say in 2005 when the Demos took the HOuse? Or in 2009 when BO arrived? Why? Because it's the...demopublican mafia in charge-- the political dichotomy's mostly an illusion--as even the freaks knew in 68s. They may have detested Nixon, but weren't exactly rallying for LBJ or the Kennedys. .
stu, a few remarks:
Reports of the use of CIA intelligence gathered from KSM and Abu Faraj al-Libi are more than just hearsay, but based testimonials of current and former government officials involved, as Adam Goldman of the AP reports. And published accounts also indicate that "waterboarding" of the two terrorists mentioned above was instrumental in acquiring some key information on OBL couriers that led to the location and demise of OBL.
The Navy Seals special-ops group (of the Joint Special Operations Command) that took out OBL used to be called "Cheney's Assassination Squad" by dependable liberal hacks like Seymour Hersch of the New Yorker.
True, I haven't read as many comments on right blogs as you seem to have, but I expect some of it's just venting. I've seen some similar venting on left blogs like Hullabaloo and Kos, but bloggers there usually reserve their hysterical and extremist screeds for Republicans and conservatives rather than mass-murdering terrorists.
But to check your claims about Redstate I went to the site itself where the most comments on OBL's death were made and found among about 150 comments on one thread only a scant few (like the tell-tale "bacon" references) referred to anything like the examples you presented as representative; most often were congratulaled the special-ops forces and former President Bush as a corrective to President Obama's ungracious failure to mention the former's role in the search for and intelligence about OBL. A few even credited President Obama.
Bret's claim about McCain's public opposition to violating Pakistani sovereignty as opposed to Obama's public statements is plausible but not conclusive in that such unilateral secret operations may well be opposed publicly but agreed to privately until carried out. And true, this policy seems to accord with the President's preference for treating terrorist threats as "police actions" rather than an unconventional war.
But then that hardly accounts for the current administration's policy in Afghanistan or in the Libyan adventure. Indeed, the President's Middle Eastern policies seem to lack any coherent guiding principles other than the desperate desire to be on the "winning" side.
When talking about OBL's body, I would pose a question - considering that Islam requires a body to be buried within 24 hours, what would have been the correct approach to burying him, if not the one they used?
A ticklish question. Perhaps at Ground Zero.
Ground Zero?
Hmmm, I don't think that would be a good thing - it would bring anger to the site every time people passed by...
And I think there'd be a huge, huge uproar from those whose families died on 9/11 that their place of death was used as the burial ground for OBL.
I kinda get what you're going for symbolically, in a way - but the general idea is that people are buried in places where they belong, places that are special to them or their family...
Beyond just the practical matter of a) finding a country that would take the body and b) avoiding a site of martyrdom,
Osama doesn't belong anywhere on this earth, so under the sea is fine with me.
Of course, there is no way of burying Osama that would not offend those who support him (or they would honor him too much or create other problems).
The more I think about it, the more I think that burying him at sea was the prudent, intelligent thing to do - All things considered, I can see no better option.
Brett, I think I will have to agree. The choice of the Arabian Sea seems somewhat apt, too.
I think it's probably as good as could be done, under the circumstances.
There's many good pages on the whole thing in the WSJ this evening. I'm looking forward to reading more. They have an exact description of the raid. There are still peculiar discrepancies between the differing versions. In one version the copter was shot down. In others, it hit the wall of the compound going in, and was so badly damaged it had to be destroyed. Now there's a new detail that the compound was watched for at least five years, and that going in they were only 60% sure that OBL would be there. It was a lucky guess.
One woman was apparently killed on the site, and at least four men, including OBL.
At any rate, Brett, I'm sorry but I think we might agree on the site itself of burial. Agreement is boring, but around here it's so unusual that all I can say is, I think you have this correct. They thought it through.
Obama was apparently quite thoroughly aware of the whole op, and ok'd it down to the final details. This makes him a hero in my book.
Btw., I also see McCain as a hero for his stint in the Hanoi Hilton.
So it doesn't mean I've switched sides. But I see that Obama has a brain after all, which I'm delighted to see.
Burying him at the Victory Mosque in the old Burlington Coat Factory would have created lots of comment.
The bag he was in was weighted.
Why are you a "hero" for either 1) putting out a hit on a bad guy (John Gotti had mobsters killed--does that make him a hero?) or 2) getting caught after bombing some folks and tortured in a prison?
What's heroic about either of those things?
It's because you are putting your neck on the line and fighting for your nation, and for your beliefs. In Obama's case, I think it proves once and for all that he's an American, irregardless of his birth certificate. It's the first thing he's done for this country insofar as I can see, and I respect him for it. He actually paid attention to something and someone who had hurt this country terribly, and he helped to bring him down. It's a very good thing. Remember the torch in Liberty's hand? It's also a club.
JADL,
Reports of the use of CIA intelligence gathered from KSM and Abu Faraj al-Libi are more than just hearsay, but based testimonials of current and former government officials involved...
I don't put a lot of weight on what current or former officials have to say about intelligence gained by torture. Clearly, the Bush administration folks want to credit this to torture as a way of justifying the decision to make torture routine. Equally clearly, the Obama administration doesn't want anything that resembles an investigation into the Bush era, fearing that it will exacerbate the partisan flames it's trying to dampen. So there is a de facto conspiracy between the Bush and Obama administrations to avoid judical review of the Bush era.
The Navy Seals special-ops group (of the Joint Special Operations Command) that took out OBL used to be called "Cheney's Assassination Squad" by dependable liberal hacks like Seymour Hersch of the New Yorker.
And conservative writers (I'll omit the redundant "hacks") choose to overlook the fact that both Delta Force and Seal Team Six were created during the Carter administration, specifically for this kind of mission. As I'm sure you know, it takes time (measured in years, not weeks) to develop the extraordinarily high level of professionalism, experience, and efficiency necessary to do this kind of work, time that wasn't available to Delta Force before the attempted Iran hostage rescue mission. But, as always, you go to war with the military you have. Maybe it's time to praise Carter for once: he left his successors with a focussed and sharply honed anti-terrorism capability that he never had.
Now, once the capability is in place, then there is a question of how it is used. I would take the position that extra-judicial strategies like assassination ought to be used very sparingly. Yes, it is better for the US to kill a symbolic figure like bin Laden than to capture him alive, and no doubt the ROE were formulated to both justify and make probable a lethal outcome. But symbolic figures are necessarily few and far between, while the routine use of such a capability, c.f., "Cheney's assassination squad," puts us in the position of being as lawless as the terrorists we're fighting. It is a strategic defeat if our own behavior creates a moral equivalence of means, leaving the choice of which side to support to a preference over ends.
the President's Middle Eastern policies seem to lack any coherent guiding principles other than the desperate desire to be on the "winning" side.
You say it as though this is somehow evidence of foreign policy weakness on Obama's part. I have two hard truths for you to contemplate:
The first is that the assassination of OBL has killed foreign policy as a credible Republican political advantage for this political cycle, absent a debacle elsewhere. You guys get to run against the "War President" this time, indeed, a President who now has a coveted entry in commander-in-chief section of their resume. I'm sure you'll enjoy the experience as much as we did.
The second is that "backing the winner" reflects the kind of realpolitik that has always driven foreign policy. All things being equal, we prefer to encourage democratic movements, human rights, political and economic freedoms, etc. But things are only occasionally equal. So we make alliances of convenience with dictators and thugs, arguably beginning with our revolutionary war alliance with Louis XVI. Our friendship and our emnity are tools we use to advance our national interest. If we can use a reduction of emnity to encourage a terrorist like Qaddafi to "join the community of nations," then it is in our national interest to do so, as GWB did. If it is in our national interest to back a credible opposition to Qaddafi, then we will, and have.
Installing Obama in hero status seems rather to the side of this discussion.
We don't think of our statesmen--when they attain that degree of respect (otherwise they're simply "politicians")--as "heroes" in the military sense, or any other sense.
We didn't think of Kennedy as a "hero" for staring down the Russians in Cuba. It was simply an act of diplomatic daring. Once he had sent his message, he simply waited.
Was Chamberlain a "chicken" for trying to make détente with Hitler? In retrospect, his effort was a futile time-waster, but I don't think it was cowardice.
This notion of trying to find emotional qualities in our leaders which we can "admire" is silly. We elect people to represent us based on what they say they believe in, and what they will do if elected to office. It isn't a game of poker, or a fencing match.
If there's any bravery involved in politics, it's the ability to stand up to power and take the political consequences. Basically, all politics is about compromise, and making deals. You have an interest, and you have a position, and you do your best to bring about ends favorable to your constituencies. If your constituencies are big money, or unions, or polluters--that's who you legislate for.
Who's "we" here Curtis? I did think of Kennedy as heroic in staring down the Soviets in Cuba.
In this game with al Qaeda, I do think of Obama as heroic for going in with the SEAL team and taking out OBL. I think it shows manliness.
GM's bizarre notion that President Obama and John Gotti are the same in that both ordered a hit reveals a fundamental poverty in his religious vocabulary.
First of all, it was OBL who was the international outlaw.
Obama is a legitimate president, answerable to the world community.
Gotti is illegitimate, and was killing people for his own ends, and not helping our country at all.
I realize GM can't grok this (he can't even see Lincoln as a hero from within his vocabulary).
It's peculiar to say the least.
Obama is a legitimate American hero. God bless him.
Obama's following orders from the Navy/USAF/army Brass, JCOS, and Robert Gates (really, one of Bush's men), and probably from HRC as well. Obama's not the hero--he's the water boy, carrying out the Bush doctrine..
Besides, the LS regs failed to note the ...Orwellian aspects of the OBL-death event. Was it really OBL? For that matter, who was OBL? What was he guilty of? Anything the media presents is hearsay at best. if not outright deception.
GM,
Why are you a "hero" for either 1) putting out a hit on a bad guy (John Gotti had mobsters killed--does that make him a hero?
Good question. OBL had devoted his life, his reputation, and his (very considerable) means to establishing an international terrorist organization, devoted to establishing a radical fundamentalistic Islamic empire, most likely with him as its head, stretching from Somalia to Bosnia to Pakistan. A concommitant of that was a war on the US, a natural enemy because of its role in propping up the Saudi royal family, as an ally of Israel, etc. Hence, attacks on US interests around the world, including 9/11. And he was committed to doing more of the same.
In life, we don't have a choice between sinning and not sinning. We're immersed in sin. The choice Obama faced was to attempt to kill one man (risking the death of many other men), or to permit him to live, knowing that bin Laden would use his life to end the lives of many other innocents. This was the Bonhoeffer analysis, and the Bonhoeffer choice.
I won't say, however, that this make Obama a hero. It does make him an effective, as well as a fortunate, leader.
or 2) getting caught after bombing some folks and tortured in a prison?
I won't say that these qualified as heroic, either. But that's not what Kirby cited—he cited McCain's behavior while in prison. This, it seems to me, does deserve to be called heroic. The standard account is that he gave nothing of use to the NVA despite torture, while at the same time supporting his fellow prisoners psychologically, and to the extent he could, physically.
stu, as I said, the reports of enhanced interrogation techniques (including waterboarding) yielding crucial information in tracking OBL was confirmed yesterday by CIA Director Leon Panetta, who in his confirmation hearings in 2009 once said that "waterboarding is torture and it's wrong." After quoting Bush administration lawyer John Yoo (still the object of left persecution for his role in advising the administration on the legality of interrogation methods) WaPo writer Jennifer Rubin asserts that
"Yoo’s point remains valid: It’s time for Obama to get off his moral high horse and, more important, end a still-active witch hunt against CIA operatives."
Rubin then quotes Yoo as saying “[p]erhaps one day [President Obama] will acknowledge his predecessor’s role in making this week’s dramatic success possible. More importantly, he should end the criminal investigation of CIA agents and restart the interrogation program that helped lead us to bin Laden.”
Rubin concludes: "But at least for now, can we agree that far from betraying our values, Bush courageously defended them?"
On extra-judicial tactics like assassination, I'll agree it should be used sparingly, as with OBL, though OBL was more of a symbolic than an actual threat (none at all if you believe former Speaker Pelosi in 2006); all the more reason to acknowledge the justice in using renditions and enhanced interrogation techniques (waterboarding seems to have been used on three terrorists only) when a clear threat is indicated.
I think you've misjudged the OBL assassination as a significant "foreign policy" success. Credit to the President, yes, though he may have had little choice after delaying authorising the strike for as long as he did. While the OBL affair will soon fade in the public's memory (though the President will doubtless invoke it at every opportunity in his reelection campaign), real foreign policy issues like the unpopular Libyan adventure et al will remain, along with the domestic issues like the parlous state of our economy.
I agree with Stu that McCain is the greater of the two heroes in that McCain suffered intensively, and gave nothing of use. Obama was not under torture, although it probably feels like torture to stay up at night and do your incredibly difficult job instead of hanging around in the Oval Office demanding oral sex from interns or whatever else someone might be doing instead of doing their job. These days, just doing your job is heroic.
And if you do a good job, I'm impressed enough to say that you are a true American hero.
McCain of course went above and beyond. Most people break under the kind of torture he received from the dirty communists.
I doubt if BO would be up to that kind of heroism, but just staying focused on the OBL hit, and making sure that it happened, and authorizing it, is just plain great. I salute the man.
McCaint was imprisoned after his jet was shot down on a napalm raid (one of many). He probably personally killed a few hundred vietnamese civilians. Heroics with a capital H. He's lucky to be alive.
Perhaps recall what Dr. Johnson wrote about flagwavers, KO: "patriotism-- the last refuge of a scoundrel". Or first in many instances.
Kirby:
You have a weakness for the emotional over-reaction to public events. You need a little New England reservation about you. You're choleric.
I agree with JDL here that Obama was simply acting on correct agenda, and following a methodical course. What I do also believe, however, is that Bush's people didn't place as high a priority on finding Osama as they should have, preferring instead to base their international policies of preemptive strikes and protracted no-win wars on flimsy pretexts and questionable strategies. One could even make a case that Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz didn't really want to find Osama bin Laden at all, since that would have tended to de-emphasize the need for military incursions.
Obama realized that capturing Osama would give real propulsion to his policy of disengagement from our Middle Eastern wars. And I think this will be born out in the coming weeks/months. Now that we've "cut off the head" the snake seems much less potent--particularly in the public relations sense, which is what drives a lot of our policy these days. In any event, none of the Bush era goals in Iraq or Afghanistan seem as crucial or as pressing now as his people wanted us to see them then.
I've always thought that Iraq and Afghanistan are much too unstable to control, either through a sustaining occupation, or "surges" of aggressive action. In the long run, we can't dictate the futures of these countries--they're going to be fucked up for many decades to come. There will be periods when we can "use" them to our advantage, and then periods when they drift away logistically. That's certainly been true of our relations with Iran. Our best chance--as with China--is gentle prying and persuasion--as long as we don't sell them Louisiana in the process.
McCain was indeed a hero in Vietnam. But being a prisoner of war doesn't signify any political ability.
American politicians have always placed a high value on military success, and we reward our military heroes with civilian laurels, including political office. This doesn't really make any sense. It's no more logical to think that a captured pilot who endured torture and mind-games has political potential, than it is to think that an NBA star center could run a major corporation. It's simply dumb sentiment. Rah rah rah.
Kirby, why should you associate physical prowess or endurance with political skill and insight? It makes no sense. They're different spheres of activity and accomplishment. Truman was not a military hero, but he became a good President. Bush II was a complete jerk in the military--should that have mattered to his abilities as our CEO? In the last analysis, yes, but only to a limited degree. Being able to fly jets doesn't equate to thinking clearly about issues in government, despite what anybody says. Wanting to avoid service--as Clinton did--is really no more telling or predictive of behavior or performance than killing people with a rifle.
It takes a lot of force and initiative to get something done. It's true that logistical ability may not correlate with ability to fly a jet or patriotism. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't correlate either.
Someone with a lot of ability in one area often has a lot of ability in another.
My main problem with Obama has been that I've been unable to tell whose side he's on. His stealthcare program ruined American industry. Was that his intent, or was it collateral damage?
OBL deliberately hurt America. It wasn't just th epeople, he disrupted the economy.
But so did Obama. Between the two of them, they have done a lot of damage to America.
After Obama killed Osama, I am willing to concede that Obama didn't mean to wreck the economy. It was collateral damage to do with his ill-considered stealthcare program, but he is actually a full American.
McCain is a hero not just because he could withstand pain, but he could also rally his men in the Hanoi Hilton. This is crucial. He can send a message. Obama is having a hard time doing that beyond his hard-left coterie who want America to suffer a thousand Mogadishus.
Obama is in fact pissing off his constituency now by going after Gaddafi and Osama, but I am beginning to see that he's not just a hard-left zealot. He's also an American.
Being American means putting America first. Whether or not Afghanistan and Iraq should be high priorities to our political system remains to be seen. I think they are, and I think Bush 2 made the right call in flipping the two of them TOWARD democracy, and flippin gthe entire Arabic world toward the twentieth century.
These are central policy goals of the Bush 2 administration, and I think that Obama is beginning to get it.
If he would now jettison stealthcare, or at least clarify the language of his stupefying bill, I think he would not be such a drag on the economy, and things would start to move again.
An article a few weeks back in the NYT (April 15th) said that about a hundred million dollars a year was funding Democracy movements throughout the Arabic world, and that this has led to the present instability throughout the region:
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/04/15/US-groups-nurtured-Arab-uprisings/UPI-48381302909782/
It's an interesting assertion, and puts in context how this happened. Should we meddle internally with other countries?
We did this with the Soviet bloc, and it led to massive uprisings in the 1989 sector, failing only at Tianamen Square. If the regime applies enough violence to the public pressure it can apparently stop the Democratic movements, but they do so at the peril of permanently alienating their own citizens.
Gaddafi obviously doesn't care.
It seems like a fun strategy to me.
I'll agree with Faville that President Obama acted correctly and successfully in taking out OBL (and I wouldn't quibble with some points such as the matter of the US not publishing the photos of the dead OBL, because that decision might indeed prevent additional risks to our military personnel), but I can't see the advantage former Prsident Bush might have had by not doing so, if it'd have been feasible with the evidence we had at the time as to his location.
And just as the Bush team may have erred in handling the aftermath of the Iraq invasion and learned from this error, so President Obama seems to be growing into a few of the responsibilities of office by correcting earlier blunders, like the fiascos over closing Gitmo or civilian trials for terrorists or persecuting CIA officers for carrying out their duties, etc. (for these follies and other damage he's done to the DOJ, Attorney General Holder should have had the boot long ago). Ironically, it seems the legalistic strictures the Obama administration has put on handling terrorist cases may have made the price of dealing with captured terrorists too high and thus made killing their leaders and using drones to take out Taliban combatants (tripled strike numbers during the Obama administration) may prevent us from deriving vital intelligence from captives.
Further, our continued presense in Iraq and Afghanistan (from where we were able to launch the OBL strike) arguably gives some leverage in dealing with the continuing menace of Iran. We can't stay indefinitely of course, but just as long as it is in our strategic interest to do so.
I am amused by GM, because he thinks that the Amish method of snubbing, or shunning, as it's called, can take the place of warfare. Psychological warfare can only work with intimates. It may control and contain people within a given family, but I don't think it can do anything to contain another social or political group, or one speaking another language. Our disdain would mean nothing for instance to Bin Laden.
In left social circles snubbing is supposed to do such harm that it can maintain a party line. It probably can if you want to belong, but if you don't care about a given group or its supposed ideals, it just seems babyish.
Snubbing can of course do real harm if you care about the people snubbing you. If you don't, it doesn't.
Snubbing is more violent in a way than shunning because there is an implied sneering in it, which implies that you will never be good enough. Shunning on the other hand is an attempt to bring you back into the fold after hurting your need for contact especially within a closed community like the amish where there ar eno other opportunities for social contact. Outside that community, it might just cut someone loose.
Warfare offers physical pain and anguish, largely because we cannot count on the conscience of a person to be bent through other forms of coercion.
There is lawful warfare which brings another community (say the Nazis or Gaddafi) into line through aggression againt their initial aggression under the form of just war.
A unjust aggression which lies outside of law would be that of John gotti.
I think the Amish or the anabaptists of which GM is part don't have to think about warfare because they are separatist, and thus can do their police through shunning.
They don't practice physical punishment, but in that limited sphere shunning will do the trick.
It's funny to me. Asian Buddhists often do practice nonviolence, but American Buddhists will insert shunning and snubbing within that rubric, confusing nonviolence with its american counterpart. It's for this reason that I don't think GM could ever be subsumed within the Buddhist problematic, nor go aroiund with one of their childish smiley faces.
It's too bad, because if he could, I think he'd get more traction as a poet.
But as it is, he's stuck with the likes of us, the only other surrealist Protestant movement in town.
And for that, that is, his inability to get on with the Buddhists, we're grateful. But I often wish he'd drop his nonviolence gimmick, or gambit, and just sign on with Two Kingdoms. We're in the 21st century, and it's time to drop Descartes before the seemingly hoarse, and be reasonable, and realistic, about our multicultural societies, and our ongoing wars with communists and now, the Islamics.
Kirby, I disagreed with many of Bush's economic policies (which did, in fact, help lead to an economic collapse), but I at the least gave him the benefit of the doubt that he wasn't doing so in order to intentionally harm the country.
That you ever thought this about Obama is just weird, and I think displays one of the main problem with political rhetoric in this country - if someone has a different idea than you do about what's best to do for the country, then that means they're trying to destroy the country.
This is such a faulty way of thinking that it boggles the mind that someone of your intelligence would have ever believed it...
The Republicans of the 90s thought that a plan very much like Obamacare would be a good thing...
In any case, hopefully now that you recognize Obama's intentions aren't to destroy America (which he hasn't, given that the private sector has been adding jobs for many, many consecutive months), and that they weren't beforehand -
You can discuss what you view as the problems with his healthcare policy - But the fact that you conflated this difference of opinion with saying that someone outright wanted to destroy the country that he decided to be president of...
That's cizzlerazy.
In any case, Obama acted rightly wrt bin Laden, as we all agree - but commentators who claim that he merely kept doing what Bush was doing are wrong...
He made specific policy shifts that directly led to this outcome, and that needs to be recognized...or at least not lied about...
Kirby:
I'd like to ask you directly:
Do you take any money from an organization which supports the spreading of opinion in the media? Or are you a "secret" member of any organization which fosters extreme right points of view?
There's been a fair bit of chatter lately in the media about academic types being paid by private industry to push agendas. I just wondered if you've gone official--or underground--with your politics.
Curtis, I haven't been asked, and don't think my opinion could be bought. I would swear this on a stack of Bibles.
At any rate, if I had been bought, nobody got anything much for their money. I don't think I've convinced anyone of anything in 6 years of writing on this blog at least once or twice per week.
The only time in fact anyone has even recognized one of my ideas as valuable is Brett once recognized Two Kingdoms as a valuable idea. It's not even my idea.
It's Luther's, via Augustine.
Thank you for asking. Who has told you that some academic types have been bought? For what kind of money? Who's paying?
I would be shocked if anyone were to approach me in that manner.
Is this something they are paid to do in the classroom?
As far as I know, 99% of academia is leftist (at least in English, where I work), and if anything, I have hurt my job chances by taking the stances I've taken. I do it only for the game board itself, not for personal gain.
Brett,
The Commerce Clause seems to indicate that the government cannot mandate universal health insurance. Overriding the Commerce Clause gives government powers that had not originally been attributed to it, and thus erodes the balance of powers between the nation and the states, and the nation versus individuals. This is a step toward communism (destroying private industry in favor of nationalization).
Several judges have now ruled against the healthcare mandate (I think it's now two judges have ruled against, while one has ruled for), but of course it will end up in the Supreme Court.
My problem with the bill is not only that it appears to be unconstitutional (for good reasons) but that on a practical basis it's almost unreadable, which will mean that it will be in courts for decades to come as judges work out what each phrase might actually mean. This obviously gives businesses the heebie jeebies because they can't plan, since they don't know what lies ahead.
I don't think Obama cares about business. I think it's a blind spot for him. He's never been a businessman. He has to learn on the job what it means when there are no tax receipts. Maybe at some point he will figure this out and scuttle this bill.
If he does, there will be even greater jubilation from coast to coast, because healthcare is probably as great a threat to our nation's economic health as OBL was, or perhaps even greater.
Luther made use of some Augustinian ideas, but left much out. St. Aug. did not adhere to the doctrine of "Sola fide" for one (perhaps Hermano jh could clarify a bit). Luther takes the original sin from Aug. (tho ...L's treatment of it is not St. Aug.), and perhaps some monarchistic ideas. But there was much more. St. Aug. was still a rationalist of sorts--and catholic, and while not exactly ...platonist, there was a greek influence to his thought (As to the New Test.). He argued for Just war, not imperialist aggression.
Luther and Calvin detested the greeks, and Reason itself (the old strumpet, according to Farmer Martin).
For verification, I suppose, Curtis, you could look at my tax records. My sole source of support has been through my professorial position aside from a few very small fees for writing (25 dollar checks from a few publishers for poems, reviews, etc.).
I'm not getting rich, I can assure you of that -- am driving a used Honda from 2004 and can't afford to change the timing belt (800 dollars to change it, and it has to be paid up front).
Having trouble paying off the surgery for an abcessed tooth that happened last spring.
Donations gleefully accepted.
Curtis, do you think the Woodstock event was sustainable? A half a million people showed up on a weekend in summer, 1969. Lines for the toilets were a half a mile long, or longer.
Someone was bit by a raccoon. Someone else was chased by a bear.
Thousands of cuts to feet, thousands of sexual diseases exchanged.
No one much was working. Perhaps a few grounds workers were getting paid, but most people were lounging about, on drugs. Was this sustainable?
Many of the musicians were dead from excesses within a few years: Jimi and Janis, and many others, far exceeding the normal death rate in a typical suburb. Abbie Hoffman survived the event, but spent most of the next two decades on the lam, and was dead a few years ago, long before his time (suicide).
Food was scarce.
The local community was overwhelmed.
Are my opinions far out, and in need of censorship? In the name of what, liberty?
I know the hippies thought this had something to do with liberty.
But liberty is actually about self-restraint, moral principles, keeping an eye on the bottom line.
Look at the stern and serious face of the Statue of Liberty.
Does she look like a hippy?
Kirby,
I can assure you of that -- am driving a used Honda from 2004 and can't afford to change the timing belt (800 dollars to change it, and it has to be paid up front).
Oy. Been there. Drove a diesel Rabbit back in the day. It had a "conflicting" engine: break the belt, and the pistons hit the valves. This is not a good thing. This happened often enough that my mechanic, who only worked on VWs, kept headers in stock. So I was really regular about the replacement, which on that car, meant every 60K miles. But it was a good car -- I made it through four belts :-).
do you think the Woodstock event was sustainable?
This was directed at Curtis, but I'll take a swing at it. Of course not, but that's not the issue. Sustainability is the wrong metric for vacations, hobbies, etc. They can't be judged in isolation, but only as a part of an entire lifestyle.
If you're a hippy living in NYC, life isn't all sex, drugs, and rock and roll. You have to get money to pay for it all. So you have a lousy day job, selling shoes, or packing freight, or pumping gas -- this is the 60's, after all. That lousy job isn't sustainable in and of itself either. If all you had to look forward to with every tomorrow was another day cleaning windshields, filling tires, pumping gas, and brown-nosing the customers and boss, you'd come unglued. But if you know that in another three weeks, there's going to be a big concert up as Yasger's farm, some hot chicks, and maybe a bit of grass, you just might make it through.
Are poetry readings sustainable? I'm willing to be that most folks will find them less motivating than the opportunity to blow some grass and get an STD while listening to Hendrix live. YMMV, of course.
But liberty is actually about self-restraint, moral principles, keeping an eye on the bottom line.
Nah. Liberty ain't liberty unless you can give it away. You're the guy who's supposed to be opposing the nanny state in this debate, right? But this much I will give you: getting sick, getting into debt, are all going to take away from your liberty.
What you're trying to get at isn't liberty per se, but rather about how the choices that liberty permits have consequences, and that the choices to be moral, to be thrifty, give most folks a better chance at happiness than the choices to be amoral, or profigate. But there are no guarantees in life, c.f., Jer 12:1.
Look at the stern and serious face of the Statue of Liberty.
Does she look like a hippy?
Toga. No bra. Looks stoned and kind of green. Hairy armpit. What do you think?
Kirb:
I'm ambiguous about my generation--the generation of the Sixties.
Though I grew up in poverty, in a small segregated community in Northern California, in a household that was officially puritanical but was rife with corruption and hypocrisy, I took the moral and personal precautionary advice seriously, and wasn't about to jeopardize my health or my future, with cheap indulgences like drugs or underground anarchism. Nevertheless, I subscribed intellectually to most of the tenets of the Sixties revolution. I came late to rock music, and abandoned it in my early thirties. I was never a radical per se, but tended to question authority and presumption almost as a calling.
I now think self-interest is sensible, but greed--especially the kind that causes devastation, and despair among others, morally repugnant.
I would never have considered going to Woodstock, but I understand the tendency among those who did. Maybe you are one of those, Kirby, who prefers to make war, not love. If so, pity.
Does she look like a hippy?
Sort of--a butchy one though. All-American bi-grrl. Either way, that ..image doesn't come from judeo-christian tradition--but romano-hellenic. Athena comes to Joisey.
Your last dichotomy: that I might prefer to make war, rather than love, was hilarious, since it was itself rather bellicose. That's the problem with the sixties: the love generation was actually all about snobbish hatred toward anyone who wasn't spreading diseases and poverty alongside of them by dropping out and replicating in old army blankets.
My goodness what a hygiene problem that generation presented: not only in terms of the actual mess they created on the ground, but the disturbances they created in every institution they infested.
The good thing is they're nearly all dead: either through suicide, or poor hygiene.
Good riddance.
I now see Woodstock as basically the Pied Piper of Hamlin, and glad my mom made me stay home.
The face on the Statue of Liberty is the artist's mother's, some say: others argue that it is a slave woman's. But the artist himself said it was his mom's face.
Tremendous numbers of people worked on the Statue: Eiffel himself made the iron structure inside that allows the thing to stand up still.
The radiating stars indicate enlightenment.
J is right that Liberty is an old Roman goddess, and the Christians were horrified to have a pagan goddess overlooking New York harbor. But it's the mother of the artist, and she was herself a very pious Catholic.
Let me get this right... She's standing on the bidet wearing last night's sheets, and she's supposed to be the artist's Mom?
The era of mass migration in North America is over.
Our nation is "mature" and should be well into its consolidation phase.
We no longer exist as an "empty continent" which needs filling up.
That old paradigm ended circa 1950.
A balanced, settled population is the shortest route to stable prosperity.
Don't listen to hucksters who try to convince you that population growth is a permanent, necessary condition. Permanent population growth, like permanent GDP growth, is unsustainable.
The statue of liberty signifies. . . liberty. Not charity and welfare. If the rich want to stop subsidizing the poor, then let them fund family planning and strict border control. That would be a first step.
The Statue of Liberty was a "monumental" undertaking that took decades to complete. The designer for the piece was Auguste Bartholdi, but his sculpture required a large group of Republicans in France (they wanted to get rid of the monarchy and institute an American-style democracy) to kick off the fundraising efforts. It took many years, and even then they needed US Grant to accept the gift, and to set aside Bedloe Island in NY harbor for the item.
It required enormous fundraising on the american side, too: Joseph Pulitzer railed about the need for it every day for years in his newspapers.
It is a masterpiece inside and out: the girding underneath is by Gustav Eiffel (this is what keeps it from falling over in a heavy wind -- the original idea was to sandbag it up to the shoulders, which would have made for a dangerous domino effect).
Emma Lazarus's poem The New Colossus compares it to The Colossus of Rhodes:
From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome, her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearing to breathe free!"
Lazaras was herself a wealthy Jewish poet, born in 1849, and a close friend and student of Ralph Waldo Emerson. She was once a famous writer, but died young from Hodgkin's Disease, and disappeared from view.
Lazarus had been upset by the treatment of the Jews during the progroms (attempts to eradicate them in the 1881 period under Czar Alexander II) and against the anti-immigrationists argued that we ought to accept the Jews into America at the time, although they were wildly unpopular.
Her poem gave the statue a sense of a mother looking out for her longlost children.
Most of these details are from LADY LIBERTY: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE STATUE OF LIBERTY, by Lenore Skomal.
The monuments to past glories are just that--past glories. The teeming tenements of New York were a testament to the unbridled waves of immigration. The story is touching, now, and inspiring. Call It Sleep by Henry Roth, etc. But the conditions which fostered that diaspora no longer exist. Our country is full.
Enough already.
There is a Ken Burns documentary on the Statue of Liberty. More details about the extensive institutional history of the statue are here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Liberty
Republicans were responsible for the statue and for its constant protection (Reagan put in considerable effort to help out).
Democrats constantly tried to deny funding for the statue, since it didn't push principles, and didn't directly award money to the poor, and so was not something that that party could understand.
Probably on the other hand few if any Republicans went to Woodstock. That would be Democrats.
In life, we don't have a choice between sinning and not sinning. We're immersed in sin.
What the hell?
Yes we do have that choice. We make it every day.
I am amused by GM, because he thinks that the Amish method of snubbing, or shunning, as it's called, can take the place of warfare.
No I don't.
I think personal defense can take the place of warfare--and I believe Switzerland rather proves this point.
In a forced pairing and asked if the Woodstock Festival or the Statue of Liberty is more symbolic and representative of the best of our country: I wonder if Democrats in general would choose the former. I'm almost certain that Republicans would choose the latter.
I think this is the beginning of a new kind of personality test, or political test.
Kirby has huge blinders on when it comes to the 60s, and to the counter-culture movement.
The fact of the matter is that the old strictures were being challenged, and some took it too far -
They were right to challenge certain societal norms (black people are of lesser value, women belong barefoot in the kitchen, gay people can't be teachers - okay, that came a little later, but was along the same lines, and is part of the same cultural debate)...
But, as tends to be the case with groupthink, the lefty hippies created a binary "'cause these old societal norms are bad. that means all old societal norms are bad' approach that went too far... (sex, drugs, dismissing work ethic...).
Were the changes that happened during the 60s 'good?' Were they 'bad?' Like any decade, or cultural moment, the answer is 'both.'
If you are an absolutist one way or the other, you're wrong.
The 60s made some things better, and other things worse. Just like most every other decade.
In other words, you're right to chastise hippielefty types for viewing the 60s as some sort of golden age -
But this doesn't mean you have to make the opposite (but same) mistake of viewing the 60s as some hell on earth.
If you don't make these obvious distinctions in your value-judgements, then it's impossible to effect any change in the minds of those you're interacting with.
If you were to say 'you're that the 60s made x, y, and z better...but they also made c, d, and f worse,' then you might have the ability to make others see the negatives of c, d, and f. But if you don't make those distinctions, and label an entire movement as some sort of evil vile thing (when it in fact had many redeeming qualities and was mostly an exaggeration of a needed impulse at the time), then you're just as wrong as those you're criticizing.
correction:
"If you were to say that 'you're RIGHT' yada yada yada"
JADL,
Not that I expect you to come back this way again, but I'll note that McCain just took my side on the torture argument. This cannot be a surprise.
I think McCain has always been against waterboarding. His experiences at the Hanoi Hilton seemed to have tilted him against torture for reasons that seem to go back into his biographical details. Can't blame the guy.
The big argument right now is whether we would have gotten OBL without torturing Khalid Sheik Mohammed. The right says no, we'd have never gotten him. The left is doing its best to ignore this question, and hopes it will go away, and all credit go to BO.
A lot of people should get some credit for taking oiut OBL: BO, for sure, but waterboarding, ordered by the Bush 2 administration, seems to have been efficacious in flushing some facts out of KSM, among others.
Personally, if you're going to put a bullet in someone's left eye, you might as well waterboard the heck out of them first, and get all the intel you can. Today's revelation is that OBL was some kind of porno maniac. But I don't know how that's going to help us with intel in terms of figuring out how the entire network works.
McCain often has surprising principles that aren't so surprising in light of his own biography. "Enhanced" interrogation is a funny euphemism.
Another one I've heard recently that I really like: well-compensated dating.
Kirby,
The left is doing its best to ignore this question, and hopes it will go away, and all credit go to BO.
Actually, no. The left is pointing out that the right is lying. Gleefully. And McCain's comments seal it. Either McCain's a liar, or Yoo is. I know which I'd believe.
but waterboarding, ordered by the Bush 2 administration, seems to have been efficacious in flushing some facts out of KSM, among others.
No, this is exactly the lie that McCain called you guys on. With backup from Paneta, which makes me wonder whether JADL has a source for his earlier claim. Probably not. He's always cared more about the argument than the truth.
Today's revelation is that OBL was some kind of porno maniac. But I don't know how that's going to help us with intel in terms of figuring out how the entire network works.
Oh, that's just about discrediting the man. This isn't about gathering intel, it's about convincing the people that revere him that he was a sleezebag.
"Enhanced" interrogation is a funny euphemism.
For the guy who thinks that words have meaning, that's a funny remark. Torture is the word Kirby. Anything less is an unworthy lie.
I find it curious that crossing some lines is ok, but not others.
For Stu, it's fine to cross the Pakistani border without authorization and drop in uninvited on OBL's compound, and shoot him, and several others.
But waterboarding (which doesn't actually hurt anybody) is always wrong.
BO is laughing about the Mexican border and saying what the Republicans will want is a moat with alligators (evoking a hereditary aristocracy against a beknighted lower class, and invoking the whole aura of the Frenchy Revolution).
Meanwhile, our agents are getting hurt on that border, citizens are getting kidnapped, ranchers are overrun.
I'm for any and every kind of boundary, including linguistic ones (I didn't condone enhanced interrogation as a phrase, but merely noted how it resembled well-compensated dating. One is torture and the other is prostitution, but euphemisms rule in the political domain.)
Love is a euphemism when the left uses it.
The Love Generation: what a riot.
Kirby,
For Stu, it's fine to cross the Pakistani border without authorization and drop in uninvited on OBL's compound, and shoot him, and several others.
OBL planned an attack on our country, which murdered almost three thousand people. The terrorist organization he created is implicated in the death of nine thousand more (mostly Muslims, as it turns out). His circumstances give the impression of Pakistani protectors. Please note that this is not an accusation against the Pakistani government broadly.
There was no way a "legal" process, approved by the Pakistanis themselves, would have resulted in the capture of OBL. His protectors would have found out, and he would have been spirited away. The unauthorized border crossing expedition was an effective necessity, if we were to get him.
As for killing him during the raid, I think this was a judgment call. At some level, I'd have rather he'd been captured and tried for his crimes, just as I'd like to see the Bush administration held to account for its actions.
If OBL had been captured, its reasonable to expect that al Qaeda would have made every effort to free him, meaning a tremendous increase in terrorist attacks, kidnappings, etc. And then we'd have the problem of trying him, etc. This was a pragmatic response, not an easy one.
But waterboarding (which doesn't actually hurt anybody) is always wrong.
This is a pretty damn scummy thing for you to say. Everyone who has been waterboarded agrees its torture. It has been the policy of the US that waterboarding is torture since the Teddy Roosevelt administration, during which it actually persecuted a US general for waterboarding in the Phillippines. This would be completely uncontroversial were it not for the fact that your heros decided that they'd play the "big man," and torture their prisoners. But since "we don't torture," they tried to define the problem away, and found support in partisan rubes like you and JADL.
And of course what you refuse to recognize is that when the next teapot dictator or terrorist captures a few US soldiers and/or civilians, and decides to waterboard them, we've now set the precedent that it's not torture. You and all those who are defending Bush and company now will be responsible for that.
Sleep well.
Obama seems to authorize unconventional methods outside the Geneva Convention overseas, while W. authorized unconventional methods at Gitmo (not quite American soil, not quite a prison). Together, the two of them might have made a difference. With BO the head of international security, and W. the head of national security, we could clip the wings of Al-Qaida in about as much time as it takes to tie your shoes.
When an army has no legitimacy and doesn't use legitimate methods, when it is an outlaw groups using TERROR as its principle means of advancing its ideas, and it uses human shields, and citizens, and has no respect for law and order, it would seem that to beat them, you'd have to join them.
In a boxing match if one side can bite ears, kick groins, and bash its skull against the other, with its gloves off, scratching with nails, and the other hews close to the Queensbury rules, it seems that the fight is unfair, and will only get our army badly beaten.
A-Q doesn't look to us for its military norms, nor does it respect the way we treat foreign journalists or diplomats.
Therefore, there is no reason to uphold those norms.
To get Pablo Escobar the Colombia government authorized a paramilitary to go after his children. Within a month, Escobar, who had done the same thing to the families of his rivals, was so freaked out he made many errors and soon had 800 unnatural perforations in his body.
I think this is sad, but that he asked for it.
I salute the CIC for going after OBL within Pakistani sovereignty, and for authorizing a take-no-prisoners policy (since A-Q would as you put it, go outside of all norms to get their dude back).
I just think BO needs to unleash holy hell in return on all fronts.
We're taking a beating when they get to hide behind legal norms, while completely ignoring them themselves.
Waterboarding is Disneyland compared to what they're doing to our soldiers. Let's be fair, and end this thing. War is war. Sherman knew that. Obama is getting it.
They didn't know anything about war at Woodstock or in that generation although some were the priviledged children of top generals (Morrison's dad virtually ran the V. war).
If we want to keep the Statue of L, we have to be willing to fight for it, every day.
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