Obsidian Wings

Panic on the Streets of Carlisle...Dublin, Dundee, Humberside

by Eric Martin

As Atrios notes, the discussion surrounding BP's imminent $10 billion dividend disbursement, as well as the fretting about how many British pensioners rely on revenue from that dividend, has been "weird" to say the least. 

1. A God Given Right. Dividends are not guaranteed.  If a company suffers a massive setback that exposes that company to sizable liability (like, say, wrecking the Gulf of Mexico), then it is well within reason to expect the company to hold back on distributing dividends to shareholders.  That Obama has been suggesting that such a course would be prudent is neither out of bounds nor unreasonable.  On the other hand, that a company would quickly usher over $10 billion out the door when it is facing liability from a public catastrophe that could well run high enough to require some of that money be added to the kitty, well, that isn't entirely ethical, if coldly rational from a corporate perspective (trust the markets!).

2. Grandma and Grandpa. In a related sense, there has been much discussion about how many pensioners in the UK are counting on their of cut of BP's annual dividend (is there any doubt that these stories are getting a little push from BP's PR people?).  With these sympathetic figures positioned in the forefront, the argument goes something like this: Obama should stop criticizing BP because it's hurting the overall stock price (not that this has much to do with the pensioners' dividends, but whatever), it would be improper to make BP withhold the dividend payment from people that need it, and Obama shouldn't make BP foot the entire bill for the cleanup and wider economic impact lest the company go bankrupt, and then where would all the British retirees be?

The first point is irrelevant to the pensioners, the second is discussed in #1 above, and the third contention is entirely beside the point.  To the extent that British pensioners, or shareholders (the majority of which are neither old nor gray nor baking cookies for grandkids), would be hurt by BP declaring bankruptcy and winding down under the weight of the cleanup/restitution bill, the pain felt by those British citizens is a problem that the British government should tend to with money provided by British taxpayers.

Simply put, US taxpayers should not subsidize, or bailout, a private British entity out of concern for what might happen to British citizens as a result, even if the people impacted are elderly and quite charming (and not simply useful props). Nor should US leaders quietly acquiesce to the payment of a $10 billion dollar dividend when there's a good chance that money will be required to right an unthinkable wrong in the United States.

It's that Same Old Riddle, Only Starting from the Middle

by Eric Martin

As I've been warning for some time, one of the reasons that our Afghan policy will not work is that Pakistan, which has the considerable advantages of geographic proximity, cultural affinity/knowledge, historical ties and what it perceives as vital strategic interests in Afghanistan, is working at cross-purposes:

Pakistan's main spy agency continues to arm and train the Taliban and is even represented on the group's leadership council despite U.S. pressure to sever ties and billions in aid to combat the militants, said a research report released Sunday.

The findings could heighten tension between the two countries and raise further questions about U.S. success in Afghanistansince Pakistani cooperation is seen as key to defeating the Taliban, which seized power in Kabul in the 1990s with Islamabad's support.

U.S. officials have suggested in the past that current or former members of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, have maintained links to the Taliban despite the government's decision to denounce the group in 2001 under U.S. pressure.

But the report issued Sunday by the London School of Economics offered one of the strongest cases that assistance to the group is official ISI policy, and even extends to the highest levels of the Pakistani government.

"Pakistan's apparent involvement in a double-game of this scale could have major geopolitical implications and could even provoke U.S. countermeasures," said the report, which was based on interviews with Talibancommanders, former Taliban officials, Western diplomats and many others.

"Without a change in Pakistani behavior it will be difficult, if not impossible, for international forces and the Afghan government to make progress against the insurgency," said the report, written by Matt Waldman, a fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, spokesmanfor the Pakistani army, which controls ISI, rejected the report, calling it "rubbish."

"In the past, these kinds of baseless and unsubstantiated allegations have surfaced and we have rejected them," said Abbas.

He pointed out ISI has suffered many casualties fighting militants in the country.

But the Pakistan military's campaign has been focused on Pakistani Taliban battling the state, not Afghan Taliban waging war against NATO troops in Afghanistan. The army has resisted U.S. pressure to wage offensives in areas of the country the Afghan Taliban use as sanctuaries, despite billions of dollars in American military and civilian aid.

Many analysts believe Pakistan is reluctant to turn against the Afghan Taliban because the government believes the group could be a key ally in Afghanistan after NATO forces withdraw, and the best partner for countering the influence of archenemy India in the country.

[The report can be found here, ht ajay]

Recognizing this, when the Obama administration was throwing in its lot with the COIN-danistas at CNAS, it was raising alarm bells for me.  For one, COIN-danistas themselves all claim that COIN is extremely expensive, time consuming, troop intensive and, even after chewing through all of those resources over the course of a couple of decades, as one of COIN's notable advocates puts it, "you merely set the conditions for political success." 

That's an enormous commitment of resources for the opportunity to roll the dice at some later date - and as the staggering levels of violence still occurring in Iraq after the supposedly successful Surge confirms, "setting the conditions" does not translate into actual political success quite frequently.  Speaking of which, according to the just released Global Peace Index report, Iraq is the most violent, least peaceful country in the world - edging out both Somalia and Afghanistan.

The CNAS report that appeared so alluring to the Obama team when it was crafting its Afghan policy made no secret of the costs, timetable and scope associated with the operation, as well as the dubious odds for success.  In addition, that report contained one enormous caveat: unless the US could compel Pakistan's cooperation in, not only ceasing active support for the Afghan Taliban, but in eradicating that group's safehavens in Pakistan as well, the mission would fail. 

Given that it was fairly obvious that Pakistan would be unlikely to withhold all aid to the Afghan Taliban, let alone wipe out their sanctuaries in Pakistan, the CNAS plan seemed like a non-starter, destined to fail by its own criteria.  And yet it is unclear whether the Obama team came to the same conclusion.

South Korea, FTW!!!

by Eric Martin

Huge victory for South Korea. Greece looked flat throughout.  The little guy is ecstatic.

Link Dump and World Cup Open Thread

by Eric Martin

Couple of stories hittin' the tubes that I don't have time to treat in full, but which deserve some attention.

First, my buddy Michael Cohen takes on "The Left" for its relative silence, and muted criticisms, regarding the War in Afghanistan post-election (clearly he exempts ObWi from such indictment).  Tim Fernholz has more.

Second, the always interesting Tony Judt with a balanced push to dispel cliches regarding Israel/Palestine.

Fun facts from Adam Serwer:

There's a separate question, which is that the left believes that most of the people held at Gitmo over the past decade were innocent. The left does believe that. But the Bush administration must have believed it too, because they let hundreds of detainees go during their time in office. Gitmo's fairly low "recidivism" rate--20% if you believe the government, 4% if you believe the independent estimate--suggests that most of the people held were innocent. Either that or Gitmo has some magic rehabilitative power that we need to be using in our own U.S. prisons, where the recidivism rate is 66 percent.

Hmmm, perhaps "lemon chicken for the soul"?

Anthony Cordesman and Meir Dagan ponder whether or not Israel is a net strategic liability for the United States.  Meir Dagan is Chief of the Mossad, so it's kind of significant that he's noting this trajectory. 

A couple of years after The Surge worked, saved the mission in Iraq and vindicated the decision to invade, 300-400 Iraqis are still dying each month in political violence.  In fact, outside of Afghanistan and Somalia, Iraq is the next most violent and war torn locale in the world.  Still.  Years after The Surge succeeded, and anyone who said otherwise was just unserious. 

Finally, consider this a World Cup open thread.*

*PS: England is going down.

Gitmo Better Blues

by Eric Martin

The Obama administration seems to be operating under the theory that Gitmo was unpopular in the Muslim world (and beyond), and was thus such a strategic liability, because it was located in the Carribbean; that the gross violations of human rights that occurred at that venue were only abusive because of the name of the prison's locale.

How else to explain this:

The Obama administration wants to retain the ability to hold terrorism suspects from other countries at its largest prison in Afghanistan, even after it hands control of the facility to the Afghan government next year, according to U.S. officials.

If Afghan officials agree, it would give the administration a place to interrogate terrorism suspects captured in countries such as Somalia or Yemen. President Obama made a high-profile pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after taking office last year. But that would leave the administration without a lockup for those suspected of plotting attacks against the United States.

Administration officials have looked in recent months to the U.S.-run prison at Bagram air base north of Kabul as a place to hold suspects captured elsewhere. But Afghan officials have long demanded they be given control of the prison, and the Obama administration has agreed. Last month, Obama reiterated that promise.

Now, administration officials are developing a compromise plan to hand over control, but also carve out a section of the prison for non-Afghan detainees who would remain under U.S. custody, according to a senior U.S. official.

The proposal is still in early stages of development. It is the subject of quiet discussions among senior officials, and has not been submitted to the National Security Council or to Afghan officials. Afghan officials did not respond to calls seeking their views.

The issue encompasses the legal and ethical quandaries that continue to engulf U.S. detention policy. Under a recent U.S. appeals court decision, the prison at Bagram air base is outside the reach of federal courts. The ruling means that prisoners held there cannot challenge their detention or demand legal rights, unlike detainees at Guantanamo.

So, just like Gitmo, only with fewer rights afforded detainees!

Well, that ought to repair our image in the world.  The right to detain the accused in such a manner is supposedly a power that we should grant the executive branch in order to ensure our safety, even though the U.S. has been arresting, detaining and interrogating terror suspects (including the perpetrators of the most recent failed attacks) right here in, gasp, civilian courts on U.S. soil.  Adam Serwer, as usual, has a point:

I haven't even discussed the strategic implications of having a brand new Gitmo in war-torn Afghanistan. In his strategy review last year, General Stanley McChrystal specifically singled out detention operations as an area that presented "a risk to the mission" and recommended turning over authority to the Afghans. You think Gitmo damaged the U.S. reputation? Consider how the Muslim world would react to the U.S. having a Gitmo in a Muslim country, and what that does to the already nonexistent legitimacy of the current Afghan government.

This is all types of win.  Somewhere, Dick Cheney's frozen, atrophed heart just beat a little louder, a little faster.

A Hungry Mob Is an Angry Mob

by Eric Martin

Although this is not the type of story that one comes across in the Western media very often, it should not come as a surprise to anyone paying attention (via):

As Israel ordered a slight easing of its blockade of the Gaza Strip Wednesday, McClatchy obtained an Israeli government document that describes the blockade not as a security measure but as "economic warfare" against the Islamist group Hamas, which rules the Palestinian territory.

Israel imposed severe restrictions on Gaza in June 2007, after Hamas...took control of the coastal enclave after winning elections there the previous year, and the government has long said that the aim of the blockade is to stem the flow of weapons to militants in Gaza. [...]

However, in response to a lawsuit by Gisha, an Israeli human rights group, the Israeli government explained the blockade as an exercise of the right of economic warfare. [...]

The Israeli government took an additional step Wednesday and said the economic warfare is intended to achieve a political goal. A government spokesman, who couldn't be named as a matter of policy, told McClatchy that authorities will continue to ease the blockade but "could not lift the embargo altogether as long as Hamas remains in control" of Gaza. [...]

According to figures published by Gisha in coordination with the United Nations, Israel allows in 25 percent of the goods it had permitted into Gaza before the Hamas takeover. In the years prior to the closure, Israel allowed an average of 10,400 trucks to enter Gaza with goods each month. Israel now allows approximately 2,500 trucks a month. [emphasis added]

Unsurprisingly, that economic warfare isn't working out as planned - that is, unless the intended outcome is the empowerment of Hamas and groups that are even more militant than Hamas, which is a distinct possibility given Israel's own sordid history in conneciton with the origins of Hamas itself.

Daniel Larison offers some observations:

Hamas’s security forces remain strong and in full control, while more extreme Islamist challengers are gaining influence because of an Israeli embargo that has done more to frustrate the population than to weaken Hamas’s grip, analysts say. ~The Washington Post

The article goes on to say that Israel wanted to “wait and see whether Gaza’s residents would rise up and force Hamas out.” One might conclude from this that Israel would end the blockade once it realizes that this is never going to happen, but that would be wrong. The trouble with this wait-and-see approach to regime change is that there is no obvious end to it...Even if Hamas is eventually overthrown by people in Gaza, it will likely be by a more radical faction that comes to see Hamas as corrupt and ineffective, much as Hamas saw Fatah, and the rise of that faction will provide new justification for continuing the blockade.

There is a certain perverse logic to all of this. The misery, poverty and hopelessness created by a virtually stagnant private economy in a densely-populated, isolated enclave radicalizes the population even more, but more than that it deprives them of the incentive to turn against their own leadership and it makes them incapable of organizing effective resistance against the local regime. Everything about the blockade ensures that the political conditions in Gaza can only get worse, but lifting the blockade depends on the improvement of those conditions...

The Post article continues:

Bruce Riedel, a former Middle East analyst for the CIA who is now with the Brookings Institution in Washington, said he has no doubt that “Hamas now faces a much bigger threat from the extreme jihadists sympathetic to al-Qaeda” than from Fatah, which controls the West Bank. Al-Qaeda sympathizers appeal to Hamas’s core constituency “of militants who want to fight Israel, not live in a cease-fire and under blockade. They are frustrated that Hamas won’t allow [rocket] attacks or attempts to kidnap more Israelis [bold mine-DL]. Hamas has the upper hand for now because it has more force and is ruthless in using it, but the long trend is worrisome.”

The standard line we hear in defense of the blockade is that it is necessary to prevent Hamas from attacking Israel. The analysis in the article suggests that the blockade is actually making future attacks more likely by encouraging more radical groups to challenge Hamas on account of its apparent lack of militancy. The cease-fire is holding, but the blockade is still being enforced rigorously. The tightness of the blockade seems to have no relationship to security conditions. Under these conditions, Hamas appears unduly weak and conciliatory. To the extent that there are any political forces opposed to Hamas in Gaza, they are even more implacable and uncompromising, and the blockade is slowly making them stronger.

Now, if an al-Qaeda affiliate or copycat group were to rise to power in Gaza, that would certainly give Israel a leg up in the PR war, at least in terms of the domestic audience in its most important benefactor, the United States.  Our public and politicians have been known to be driven to support, to the hilt, any number of counterproductive policies by the mere shadow and whisper of Osama bin Laden. 

I'm not suggesting that the Israeli goverment, even one helmed by the odious Netanyahu, would prefer this outcome.  Not even Netanyahu is that foolish - I think.  However, regardless of the actual desires and intentions of the Israeli government, it is helping to create such an outcome nevertheless.

Well, He Was the First MBA President, So Maybe We Can Call this "Market Testing" Instead

by Eric Martin

Back in late March, I linked to a story that discussed some revelations gleaned from the diaries of Abu Zubaydah, and the surrounding events.  Among the more disturbing allegations was the claim that Zubaydah was experimented on to test the parameters of where to draw the line in terms of torture techniques.  From that piece:

For example, one current and three former CIA officials said some videotapes showed Zubaydah being sleep deprived for more than two weeks. Contractors hired by the CIA studied how he responded psychologically and physically to being kept awake for that amount of time. By looking at videotapes, they concluded that after the 11th consecutive day of being kept awake Zubaydah started to "severely break down." So, the torture memo concluded that 11 days of sleep deprivation was legal and did not meet the definition of torture.

"I would describe it this way," said one former National Security official. "[Zubaydah] was an experiment. A guinea pig. I'm sure you've heard that a lot. There were many enhanced interrogation [methods] tested on him that have never been discussed before we settled on the 10 [techniques]."

The Zubaydah story has recently received some corroboration, and the picture painted moves beyond merely ugly into outright vile:

In the most comprehensive investigation to date of health professionals' involvement in the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation program (EIP), Physicians For Human Rights has uncovered evidence that indicates the Bush administration apparently conducted illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody. The apparent experimentation and research appear to have been performed to provide legal cover for torture, as well as to help justify and shape future procedures and policies governing the use of the "enhanced" interrogation techniques. The PHR report, Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the 'Enhanced' Interrogation Program, is the first to provide evidence that CIA medical personnel engaged in the crime of illegal experimentation after 9/11, in addition to the previously disclosed crime of torture. [...]

"The CIA appears to have broken all accepted legal and ethical standards put in place since the Second World War to protect prisoners from being the subjects of experimentation," said Frank Donaghue, PHR's Chief Executive Officer. "Not only are these alleged acts gross violations of human rights law, they are a grave affront to America's core values." [...]

"In their attempt to justify the war crime of torture, the CIA appears to have committed another alleged war crime – illegal experimentation on prisoners," said Nathaniel A. Raymond, Director of PHR's Campaign Against Torture and lead report author. "Justice Department lawyers appear to never have assessed the lawfulness of the alleged research on detainees in CIA custody, despite how essential it appears to have been to their legal cover for torture." [...]

The PHR report indicates that there is evidence that health professionals engaged in research on detainees that violates the Geneva Conventions, The Common Rule, the Nuremberg Code and other international and domestic prohibitions against illegal human subject research and experimentation. Declassified government documents indicate that:

• Research and medical experimentation on detainees was used to measure the effects of large- volume waterboarding and adjust the procedure according to the results. After medical monitoring and advice, the CIA experimentally added saline, in an attempt to prevent putting detainees in a coma or killing them through over-ingestion of large amounts of plain water. The report observes: "'Waterboarding 2.0' was the product of the CIA's developing and field-testing an intentionally harmful practice, using systematic medical monitoring and the application of subsequent generalizable knowledge."
• Health professionals monitored sleep deprivation on more than a dozen detainees in 48-, 96- and 180-hour increments. This research was apparently used to monitor and assess the effects of varying levels of sleep deprivation to support legal definitions of torture and to plan future sleep deprivation techniques.
• Health professionals appear to have analyzed data, based on their observations of 25 detainees who were subjected to individual and combined applications of "enhanced" interrogation techniques, to determine whether one type of application over another would increase the subject's "susceptibility to severe pain." The alleged research appears to have been undertaken only to assess the legality of the "enhanced" interrogation tactics and to guide future application of the techniques.

Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the 'Enhanced' Interrogation Program is the most in-depth expert review to date of the legal and medical ethics issues concerning health professionals' involvement in researching, designing and supervising the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation program. The Experiments in Torture report is the result of six months of investigation and the review of thousands of pages of government documents. It has been peer-reviewed by outside experts in the medical, biomedical and research ethics fields, legal experts, health professionals and experts in the treatment of torture survivors.

As is consistent with the emergent pattern, the Obama administration is apparently perpetuating Bush era crimes and civil liberties abuses:

PHR's report, Experiments in Torture, is relevant to present-day national security interrogations, as well as Bush-era detainee treatment policies. As recently as February, 2010, President Obama's then director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, disclosed that the US had established an elite interrogation unit that will conduct "scientific research" to improve the questioning of suspected terrorists. Admiral Blair declined to provide important details about this effort.

PHR is calling for an investigation into these matters by the Justice Department, but given the Obama administration's ongoing involvement, such a probe remains extremely unlikely.  Which, it seems, should be considered as the primary motivation for Obama's repeated unwillingness to "look back" and investigate Bush era war crimes and other malfeasance: in doing so, the Obama administration would likely be building the case for its own prosecution.  And so the cycle of government overreach, and the concomitant erosion of individual liberties, is reinforced and unlikely to be broken in the near future. 

Quite the opposite: even though Obama has kept many, if not most, of the Bush era regime in place, Obama is being relentlessly attacked from the right for going soft on terror.  With an opposition party that is arguing for more and bigger bites out of civil rights and individual liberties, civli libertarian push back is exceedingly unlikely (assuming any will on the part of enough Democratic leaders in the first place).

On the other hand, Bush (and, by extension, Obama of course) might want to be extra careful about his choices of overseas travel destinations.  The rest of the world might not be so cowed by complicity.  Eventually. 

We Carried You In Our Arms on Independence Day...

by Eric Martin

...And now Andrew McCarthy would like to throw us all aside and put us all away. No, seriously.  John Holbo, bless his soul, delves into the pathology prevalent in Andrew Mcarthy's new book - like Jonah Goldberg's infamous masterpiece, but with a twist.  Call it Liberal Islamofascim for short:

A couple posts back I quoted Andrew McCarthy re: his new book, Grand Jihad: what is the nature of the “partnership” – “effective partnership” – between the Obama-led left and the terrorists/Islamists?

“In order to establish their respective utopias they need to push out of the way American constitutional republican democracy. That’s the biggest obstacle to both of them.”

So the Obama-led left and the terrorists/Islamists are, in effect, ganging up on the United States constitutional order, in an enemy of my enemy spirit. This is strong stuff because it explicitly rules out the more charitable interpretation that Obama and the left are just clueless about strategy and tactics. It would be one thing for them to adopt counter-productive policies with perverse consequences. But you don’t attempt this sort of Machiavellian bank shot – aiming at overthrowing the American constitutional order by aiding and abetting enemies of the state – unless you are actually attempting this sort of Machiavellian bank shot. Just to confirm that McCarthy is not slightly mis-speaking in an interview, we can quote from a written Q&A in which he makes the same point, being quite clear that he is not accusing Obama and the left merely of incompetence. (In my previous post I made fun of McCarthy by asking whether Obama is like Benjamin Linus to Islamism’s Smoky. McCarthy makes clear, in this Q&A that he thinks that is pretty much exactly the right sort of analogy.)

So it seems silly to me to rationalize that the Left has lots to lose in a partnership with Islamists — as if we were talking about a hypothetical. The cooperation is happening. The better question is: Why? The easy answer is that the two sides have more in common than they have in opposition. Moreover, to say that the Left would suffer more than anyone under Sharia law misses the point. We are not in a situation where the only ones left are the radical Left and the Islamists — where they would square off against each other. Instead, we are at a point in history when they both have a more pressing common enemy: the culture of freedom in the West. As they have done numerous times in the past, they will work together to try to defeat that enemy. Once that happens — if we let it happen — then they can figure out which one is the crocodile and which one the last appeaser to be eaten.

Despite the audacity of the claims, and the incindiery nature of the charges, the evidence marshalled by McCarthy amounts to little more than guilt-by-some tangential common ground on distinct and unrelated issues (and even then, not really):

Consider, by way of illustration, this post by McCarthy at Powerline. The bold bits, in particular. The evidence that there is some grand alliance between Islamists and Leftists, when McCarthy finally produces it, is … that the left supports health care reform, and there are some Muslim groups that favor the versions of health care reform that the left tends to support. (In another interview he mentions that some Muslim groups favor unions, too.) And there are Muslims concerned about global warming, and the left is worried about global warming …

since the book was published last week, I’ve been asked questions like: “So, are you saying that President Obama wants to implement sharia?” and ” Isn’t it true that if Islamists came to power, the Left would have a lot to fear?” Again, the alliance between Islamists and Leftists (not all progressives, but the modern hard Left) is an alliance, not a merger. Leftists and Islamists have worked together numerous times in history and, as we look around us today, we see them working together on Obamacare, global warming, the Palestinian cause, the campaign to close Gitmo, the campaign endow terrorists with constitutional rights, and so on. That they work together is not a hypothesis on my part; this partnership exists, period. And why it exists is simply explained, it if we are willing to look at the facts. While they differ on a number of significant issues, Islamists and Leftists are in harmony on many parts of the big picture. Islamism and today’s Leftism (which, as I note in the book, David Horowitz aptly calls “neocommunism”) are both authoritarian ideologies: they favor a muscular central government, virulently reject capitalism, and are totalitarian in the sense that they want to dictate all aspects human life. They both see the individual as existing to serve the greater community (the state or the umma). Saliently, they have a common enemy: Western culture, American constitutional republicanism, and their foundation, individual liberty.

When I argue that Islamists and Leftists are working together to sabotage America, this is what I am talking about. Historically, when Islamists and Leftists collaborate against a common enemy (e.g., the Shah in Iran, the monarchy in Egypt), these marriages of convenience break apart when the common enemy has been eliminated. We are a long way from that point in America – and, hopefully, we never reach it. We must expect, though, that Islamists and Leftists will continue their alliance as long as the Western way of life remains an obstacle to their respective utopias.

Even these brief excerpts are so rife with irony, self-refutation and contradiction that the task of taking on the claims individually is daunting.  Luckily, Holbo did much of the heavy lifting.

On a side note, it is telling that the two historical episodes that McCarthy selects as examples of the nefarious collaboration between Leftists and Islamists are the toppling of the brutal dictatorship of the Shah in Iran (himself ascending to power after a CIA enabled coup) and the usurpation of the Egyptian monarchy.  In other words, the Left is apparently so determined to undermine constitutional republicanism that it had the temerity to help take down two undemocratic regimes.  Right.

Further, it deserves to be emphasized that McCarthy is a vehement supporter of the government's right to torture, right to indefinitely detain without trial (for some), require military tribunals (for others), suspend habeas corpus rights, withhold the recitation of Miranda rights, conduct warrantless wiretaps, etc. - all for suspected and accused terrorists (including where same are US citizens), not just convicted terrorists mind you.  If it were left up to McCarthy, many of the accused would never even get to the stage of the game where their innocence or guilt is determined.   

And yet he accuses the "Left" of laboring to undermine "American constitutional republicanism" and "individual liberty" - precisely because the Left is working to ensure that Constitutional protections still apply to the accused and, in some cases, convicted.  Irony seems too mild a term.  Doublespeak overly tame.  This is uglier than that.

Adam Serwer teases out just one of the absurdities:

 But I do want to point out one flaw in the right-wing's conspiracy theory charging that support for the rule of law is evidence of terrorist sympathies -- a great deal of the lawyers who represent or have represented Guantanamo Bay detainees are Jewish. Not Jewish by birth, or culturally Jewish, but observant, even Zionist, Jews.

Now, to accept McCarthy's premise, one has to believe that these Jewish lawyers aren't really Jews but are secretly anti-Semites pretending to be Jews or possibly self-hating Jews looking to aid in the annihilation of the Jewish people by, um -- making sure the U.S. government is imprisoning and punishing actual terrorists. That sounds absurd, although I'm guessing McCarthy's never really thought about it before. Maybe he addresses this in his book -- I'd be interested to see how he handles it.

The obvious explanation for this phenomenon of course is that Jews are (a) mostly liberals who believe in due process and (b) a historically persecuted group that gets anxious about groups of people being singled out and denied basic legal rights.

Anyway, the point of this post is that the prominence of Jewish lawyers among those defending the legal rights of terror suspects is one of the questions that McCarthy might have considered before alleging this entire terrorism-liberalism axis, if he weren't living life in a red haze subsisting on a diet of sour grapes and spilt milk.

That may be what he's eating, but he's feeding his readers a steady diet of BS.

But Who Could Foresee that the Explosion Would Result from Lighting the Fuse?

by Eric Martin

Well, can't say I didn't warn ya.  Adam Serwer:

Two New Jersey men, Mohamed Mahmood Alessa and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, were arrested at JFK airport yesterday on suspicion of trying to join Al-Shabaab, the Somali terrorist group that has been affiliated with al-Qaeda. I've written about this before, but in light of the arrests, it's worth pointing out again that this group -- which has recruited more Americans than any other al-Qaeda allied organization, including the first American suicide bomber -- would not have existed in its current form were it not for the Bush-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006.

The Bush administration intervened because it wanted to depose the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which ruled harshly but provided stability and had some relatively moderate elements. The invasion empowered the hardliners, and a former ICU leader who was later elected president and imposed Sharia law anyway. The ongoing civil war between Islamic radicals and the unstable government has drawn hundreds of terror recruits from around the world. This whole situation is a lesson in the unintended consequences of military intervention.

As the situation in Somalia shows, discrediting al-Qaeda and its allies and drying up their recruiting pool cannot be achieved through military means alone. Having attempted to do so in Somalia in 2006, the U.S. helped empower a terrorist organization that has shown an uncanny ability to recruit Americans -- even for high-profile leadership positions.

Who could have known that backing Somalia's long time and bitter regional rival, Ethiopia, in its "magnanimous" invasion of that country would result in further instability (a long time stated goal of Ethiopia), increased violence, increased radicalization, increased anti-Americanism, increased humanitarian crises and the empowerment of more extreme elements - Now with 100% more blowback?

It's almost as if Counterterrorism 101 had some merit.

Our city is thrown open to the world ....

by von

Scott Johnson is wrong. "Scott Rasmussen" did not publish "a poll [on Friday] morning that found 58 percent of voters favor the abolition of birthright citizenship."  Birthright citizenship simply means that one acquired citizenship by being born within US jurisdiction (or in most cases, to US parents).  Most US citizens are birthright citizens: I'm a birthright citzen of the US and I bet that Scott Johnson is as well. 

Rasmussen did publish a poll on Friday morning that found that 58 percent of voters opposed birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens; however, that's very different from saying that 58 percent of voters think that birthright citzenship should be abolished.

I'm not here to pile on Johnson; Andrew Sullivan and Adam Serwer have already done that.  (Though I think that their criticisms are overstated:  There's tribalism everywhere, kemosabe.)  I mention Johnson's post because I want to head off in a couple different directions. 

First, it's kinda fun to imagine that 58 percent of US citizens --including Scott Johnson -- really want to abolish birthright citizenship.  Johnson is essentially saying that his own citzenship is illegitimate.  I assume that wasn't his intention.  (But it's not too late to join the Starship Troopers and earn your citizenship, Scott!)  

Second, this poll is a reminder for me that immigration is one of those big, sloganee things that, drilled down, gets really quite nuanced.  The numbers might well change if the question was, "How many folks want to abolish birthright citizen for legal residents (but noncitizens)?"  Regrettably, though, no one is polling the nuance.  That question, for instance, wasn't asked.  

It gets more confusing.  Although 58 percent of voters want to abolish birthright citizenship for illegal aliens, "[s]ixty percent (60%) of voters favor a welcoming immigrant policy that excludes only national security threats, criminals and those who would come here to live off our welfare system."  Honestly, though, what a crappy question.  What is really being tested when a question asking about welcoming immigrants excludes immigrants "who would come here to live off our welfare system"?  At the 30,000 foot level, this kind of qualification is like polling people about whether or not they would like to have a nice cookie "that doesn't have ants in it."  Umm, yes, sign me up for that cookie, and leave all those anty cookies back on the shelf.

And here we get to the (potential) ugly:  Intended or not, I suspect that this disclaimer playing off fears that Mexican migrants use a lot of welfare benefits -- and skewing the response.  It's possible that all we've really established is that 60% of voters want to welcome immigrants, so long as they ain't Mexican.

I'd love to see a poll in which 60% of Americans say that they want a lot more legal immigration, regardless of race, color, creed, national origin, and all the rest of that good stuff.  I would love to normalize labor migration between the US and Mexico so migrants don't have to live in the shadows.  My heart might jump three sizes that day. But I'm not buying I'm in the majority, yet.