Categories
Criticism Politics The Opinionsphere

Psychoanalyzing Glenn Greenwald

This eviseration of hypocritical posturing is what makes Glenn Greenwald such an essential person to read:

This is the self-absorbed mindset that allows the very same people who cheered for the attack on Iraq to, say, righteously condemn the Russian invasion of Georgia as a terrible act of criminal aggression.  Russia’s four-week occupation of Georgia is a heinous war crime, while our six-year-and-counting occupation of Iraq is a liberation.  Russia drops destructive, lethal bombs on civilian populations, but the U.S. drops Freedom Bombs.  Russian leaders were motivated by a desire for domination even though they withdrew after a few weeks; Americans, as always, are motivated by a desire to spread love and goodness.

However in this passage, we can also see the exaggerated view he takes of his opponents views – as he caricatures their ideas. This particular caricature draws it’s effectiveness from how closely is resembles the position of his opponents. But more reading of Greenwald will demonstrate that he also denies his opponents’ good faith and humanity. Greenwald seems used to being the smartest guy in any room – and faults his opponents for either insufficient intelligence or glaring hypocrisy. He treats those who are sympathetic to his opponents similarly.

Greenwald argues to make his case rather than to formulate policy. But he is a useful gadfly, pointing out hypocrisies and exposing lies and propaganda.

Categories
Barack Obama Domestic issues Politics

Distractions

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The Bush administration has been praised often for doing their part to ensure a smooth transition to an Obama presidency. At the same time, many leading Republicans have said that they – like the rest of the country – are rooting for Obama to succeed. The consequences of him failing, especially on the economic front, are just too dire.

Yet, someone in the Bush administration hasn’t gotten the message. Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt recently instituted a new regulation expanding the right of various health care workers to refuse to refer a woman to an abortion provider, to refer a woman to any service that might counsel an abortion, or to provide emergency contraception.

This regulation is set to take effect on Obama’s inaguration day. Leavitt could hardly think that such a regulation would survive past the inaguration of a pro-choice president. And for some reason, he had not instituted the regulation before this point despite being secretary since 2005 – so he obviously didn’t see it as a priority.

But it’s hard to think of a better way to drag Obama into the culture wars and reduce his political capital as he attempts to tackle our looming economic crisis.

[This picture is a work of the U.S. Federal government and thus part of the public domain.]

Categories
Humor

The Real Ghostbusters

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Now, I’m a Catholic – so I suppose this is supposed to offend me.

But one of the things that seperates religious extremists – like those Muslims that rioted and otherwise were violent in protest of the Dutch cartoons – from other believers in God is a sense of humor.

[By the way – I don’t know where this is from. Someone let me know if they know…]

Also on 2parse

Categories
National Security Politics The War on Terrorism

How the War on Drugs Is Making America Less Safe From Terrorism (cont.)

Yesterday’s post on the conflicts between the Drug War and the War on Terror seems more timely today – as the New York Times has a prominent article by Thom Shanker on the Afghan narcotics trade and Esquire has an article by John H. Richardson claiming that sources in the Obama transition team are suggesting that marijuana be decriminalized and the Drug War ended by Obama’s second term.

From Richardson’s article:

Marsha Rosenbaum, the former head of the San Francisco office of the Drug Policy Alliance, who quit last year to become a fundraiser for Obama…remains confident that those recommendations would call for an end to the drug war. “Once everything settles down in the second term, we have a shot at seeing some real reform.”

From Shanker’s:

[A] number of NATO members have in broad terms described their reluctance publicly, including Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain. Their leaders have cited domestic policies that make counternarcotics a law enforcement matter — not a job for their militaries — and expressed concern that domestic lawsuits could be filed if their soldiers carried out attacks to kill noncombatants, even if the victims were involved in the drug industry in Afghanistan.

End the Drug War. Focus on stopping terrorism. It’s the only sane choice.

Categories
Law Politics The Opinionsphere

The Source of Authority

I have my opinion of this statement, but it is somewhat more subtle than most who read this blog might guess – but here’s Dick Cheney being interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday:

The president of the United States now for 50 years is followed at all times, 24 hours a day, by a military aide carrying a football that contains the nuclear codes that he would use and be authorized to use in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States.

He could launch a kind of devastating attack the world’s never seen. He doesn’t have to check with anybody. He doesn’t have to call the Congress. He doesn’t have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in. [my emphasis]

It’s interesting that though Cheney continually refers to the powers of the Constitution throughout his remarks, grounding his justifications of various extraordinary actions in his unique interpretations of the Constitution, his final source of authority is “the nature of the world we live in.” I don’t think this is the worst possible justification – but it is a hypocritical one for someone who opposed a judiciary that saw the Constitution as changing as the nature of the world we live in changed.

Categories
History Humor The Opinionsphere

The Twin Radical 20th Century American Revolutions

One of the points I tried to make in this piece this October was the similarity of the radicalism of the 1980s to the radicalism of the 1960s – and how both were responsible for overturning the economic and social stability of the 1950s and early 1960s. But Stephen Metcalf in a review of Tom Cruise’s career for Slate summarized almost my entire point with this:

The ’80s did for money what the ’60s did for sex.

Metcalf goes on:

They told a miraculously tempting lie about the curative powers of disinhibition. It took AIDS, feminism, and sociobiology a while to catch up to our illusions about free love. It has taken cronyism, speculation, and manic overleveraging a while to catch up to our illusions about free money.

Categories
The Opinionsphere

Bleeping William Kristol

William Kristol in The New York Times (my comments in red):

[C]onsider this exchange with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday”:

WALLACE: Did you really tell Senator Leahy, bleep yourself? (I wonder if Wallace really said “bleep” or if his question was bleeped.)

CHENEY: I did.

WALLACE: Any qualms, or second thoughts, or embarrassment? (Really – this is what you’re asking him if he has had second thoughts about – not torture? not his pushing of domestic wiretapping so radical it almost forced the entire top levels of law enforcement to resign in protest before Bush intervened? this?)

CHENEY: No, I thought he merited it at the time. (Laughter.) And we’ve since, I think, patched over that wound and we’re civil to one another now.

No spin. No doubletalk. (I’ll grant Kristol this. This exchange seems franks, even if Cheney was known as someone who could manipulate and spin with the best of them – just ask Dick Armey who still regrets that Cheney convinced him to support the Iraq war.) A cogent defense of his action — and one that shows a well-considered sense of justice. (“I thought he merited it.”) (WTF? How does this exchange demonstrate that Cheney has a “well-considered sense of justice” – because he thought that guy deserved it? Please! Kids use that as their justification – and now Kristol is trying to make Cheney’s “I thought he deserved to be told to fuck himsel” into some koan-like mastery of justice! This is worse than spin by Kristol – it’s just plain silly.) Indeed, if justice is seeking to give each his due, one might say that Dick Cheney aspires to being a just man. And a thoughtful one, because he knows that justice is sometimes too harsh, and should be tempered by civility. (This whole conversation is about how Cheney told Patrick Leahy to “Go fuck himself” on the floor of the Senate. I can accept that Cheney might think Leahy deserved it. But to say that it proves Cheney aspires to be a just man? And a thoughtful one??!? And that justice must be tempered by civility. It’s like Kristol is talking about an entirely different incident and the facts are mere props that sometimes get in the way. Kristol’s editor shouldn’t publish this bullshit. He should tell him to – in the words of our Vice President – go fuck himself. Because Kristol deserves it.)

Categories
Economics

Siemens

Siri Schubert and T. Christian Miller in The New York Times:

Before 1999, bribes were deductible as business expenses under the German tax code, and paying off a foreign official was not a criminal offense.

Is it any wonder then that less than ten years later, Siemens still used bribery as a part of it’s business. A fascinating article – tracing how bribery became the cornerstone of Siemens businesses in the post-World War II period as it faced stigma and a decimated home country and fell technologically behind American companies. Bribery was how it stayed around.

Categories
National Security New York City Politics The War on Terrorism

Opposing Pete King for NY Senate

I didn’t realize that Pete King was planning on making a run for the New York Senate. I liked Pete King for a long time – and he’s now my Congressman. He seems a stand-up guy. He was one of the few Republicans to publicly oppose the efforts to impeach Bill Clinton. Which is why I decided to pick up his novel, Vale of Tears. I could excuse the clunky writing – but what was more difficult to accept was the bigotry towards Muslims and Arab Americans.

Since 9/11, he seems to have made a practice of such Muslim-baiting. Just this year, he demanded the MTA remove subway ads for a mosque in Brooklyn, stating:

They are especially shameful because the ads will be running during the seventh anniversary of September 11, and because the subways are considered a primary target of terrorists.

I’d like to give King the benefit of the doubt here and suggest that his wrath may not have been directed against the ads which simply promoted Islam. ((The ad campaign is also linked by a YouTube video to a controversial imam who was once thought to be possibly connected to the 1994 World Trade Center bombing – but who was cleared and never charged.)) But either way, I’d be concerned if a man like him were in the Senate. Governor Patterson better pick someone who can take on Pete King.

Categories
Libertarianism National Security Politics The War on Terrorism

How the War on Drugs Is Making America Less Safe From Terrorism

[digg-reddit-me]The War on Drugs is undermining America’s War on Terror by:

  • creating an adversarial relationship with a large portion of the country;
  • calling into question the legitimacy of the rule of law and law enforcement;
  • competing for law enforcement resources; and
  • revealing the measures we take to track money being laundered and to stop smuggling.

The threat of terrorism is real, if often exaggerated for political purposes; and the consequences of a low probability, high impact attack could be catastrophic. If terrorism is our most immediate national security threat, then we must rearrange our priorities and end the failing Drug War.

The prosecution of Tommy Chong (half of the perpetually baked comedy duo Cheech and Chong) illustrates some of these points.

The state of Pennsylvania prohibits the shipping of drug paraphernalia – such as bongs – into it’s state. In 2003, a man from Beaver Falls, PA began calling a store in California run by the family of Tommy Chong asking them to ship him a large order of bongs and assorted other glassware. A manager at the store claimed that man called at least 20 times – and each time a representative of the store told him they could not ship to his state, citing the Pennsylvania law. This very determined man traveled to California to order the items – but he was not determined enough to stay around until his order was packed up. He returned to Pennsylvania. The store still refused to ship him the items – but after a few weeks, they gave in to his repeated demands.

That was the excuse a SWAT team needed to raid the store and arrest Tommy Chong. The entire operation was set up by a U. S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, Mary Beth Buchanan. The net cost to the taxpayer to put Tommy Chong  in jail for 9 months (Chong was convinced to take the fall although he didn’t run the business and had nothing to do with this incident) was $12 million. Tommy Chong, reflecting on the lessons of his experience pointed to “the absurdity of the War on Drugs when we have a much more pressing – and wholly unrelated – war on terrorism to worry about.”

I only disagree with the sage Tommy Chong in that the two wars are wholly unrelated. They are related intimately – and the war against Tommy Chong is making the war against Al Qaeda harder.

The most profound way the War on Drugs is undermining the War on Terror is how it calls into question the legitimacy of the rule of law and of law enforcement. Tommy Chong’s case is not atypical in how disproportionate the resources used to take him down were to his threat to society – from the millions of dollars spent to the SWAT team to the sting operation – you would expect him to be some kind of violent drug lord. Chong’s case is exceptional only due to his celebrity. The number of hours dedicated to fighting the Drug War against American citizens is incalculable. Each arrest for possession, for possession with intent to distribute, or any other of a long list minor offenses involves the time and attention of police officers, as well as judges and attorneys. Yet with all this effort, this War on Drugs has been fruitless. As Ben Wallace-Wells subtitled his summary of the War on Drugs: “After Thirty-Five Years and $500 Billion, Drugs Are as Cheap and Plentiful as Ever.”

Excessive force is often used in the Drug War – and not just against isolated individuals. The libertarian CATO Institute has documented the enormous number of paramilitary raids – mainly involved in the War on Drugs. They cite an estimate of 40,000 paramilitary raids a year – including many which kill innocent bystanders or are raids on the wrong address. In an example from just a few months ago, police raided the home of the mayor of a small suburb outside of Baltimore and shot his dogs in search of marijuana. The mayor and his family were innocent, as were the dogs. One of the mayors neighbors said to him after the police raid: “If the police shot your dogs dead and did this to you, how can I trust them?”

At the same time, the Drug War has alienated a large segment of its population from its law enforcement and national security agencies. At times – especially as in the case of Tommy Chong – it seems to have become a surrogate for a culture war. Largely as a result of the War on Drugs, America has the largest incarceration rate of any nation in the world. Yet most offenders of drug laws are never imprisoned – as it is estimated that nearly 7% of Americans use illegal drugs every month. Among the Americans to cross into enemy lines in the War on Drugs include our last, current, and future presidents. The War on Drugs has created an adversarial relationship between the government and a large portion of Americans.

The failures of the Drug War haven’t yet affected the War on Terror because it has largely been seen as something “different,” something which unites all Americans, which transcends boundaries. Mobsters, drug dealers, smugglers, and even governors of Illinois may be threats to the rule of law and targets of law enforcement, but they, with law enforcement, see terrorists as enemies of civilization. The Sopranos illustrated this with a storyline in which a mobster is asked by the FBI to keep a lookout for suspicious activity – and he is eager to. But the War on Drugs keeps threatening to undermine this essential distinction, as law enforcement uses powers designated to it in order to fight terrorism for other ends.

The War on Drugs also competes with the War on Terror for government resources and attention. This refers not only to the degree to which the FBI, Customs, and local police forces must split their attention between the two Wars – thus shortchanging both, but also to the more formal war in Afghanistan. Our anti-drug policy is driving the poor farmers of Afghanistan to seek the protection of the Taliban according to President Hamid Karzai. At the same time, even as additional resources have been allocated at the federal level to combat terrorism, local police forces must now split their attention – and their efforts in the Drug War often undermine the trust they need to prevent a potential terrorist attack.

More insidious though is how the intersection of the War on Drugs and the incentives of drug trafficking create an infrastructure that can be used for terrorism as a Congressional report from 2004 explained. The enormous profits involved in drug trafficking have incentivized an industry dedicated to undermining our national security infrastructure – it has created experts in smuggling to get contraband through or around Customs and into America; it supports an industry of money laundering and of illegal weapons and false identifications. All of these are useful and often essential to a terrorist operation – and yet none of these could be adequately financed by terrorism alone. The efforts of the War on Drugs reveal weaknesses in our national security to drug dealers and terrorists alike. One of the authors of a study of America’s vulnerability to nuclear terrorism joked the best way to smuggle nuclear material into America would be in a package of cocaine. If America were to focus our national security efforts – including efforts to track suspicious money and to prevent smuggling on terrorist-related targets, less would be known of our capabilities.

The War on Drugs has failed in its objectives. It affects Americans unequally and unfairly. And it is making us less safe. There is an international consensus on the dangers of heroin and cocaine trafficking – and we should continue to combat them. But we stop fighting a “War on Drugs” that is undermining the War on Terror.

We must rationalize the drug laws – by equalizing the penalties across similar classes of drugs and by legalizing those drugs health experts agree are less dangerous and addictive while continuing to make efforts to reduce the demand for and smuggling of the rest. We must end the “War on Drugs” that is targeting a significant percentage of American citizens and helping to destabilize countries around the world. We must stop blurring the lines between our efforts to stop drug trafficking and the War on Terror. The best defense against terrorism is a people who trust law enforcement, respect the rule of law, and are knowledgeable about threats.

The War on Drugs is squandering this resource. Which is why we must end it.

[Picture licensed under Creative Commons courtesy of CmdrGravy.]