Supposedly, there is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth from the "angry left" with regard to Obama's choices for his "international team" — i.e., Hillary as Secretary of State, Robert Gates staying on as Secretary of Defense, and Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO commander, as national security adviser. I think it's premature to complain. None of … Read More
No Blog Day
November 29th is supposed to be "No Blog Day", where people refrain from blogging in a show of unity, as well as protest against the Mumbai terrorist attacks. Yeah, that'll show 'em!
Al-Qaeda Calls Obama A “House Negro”
And you thought Obama was one of them, being a Muslim terrorist-pal-arounder and all.
PNAC 2.0
Think Progress: It looks like Bill Kristol may be making good on his threat to revive the Project for the New American Century. Since May, visitors to PNAC's website were informed that "this account has been suspended," but now the website is back up, though it does not seem to have been updated with any new material. PNAC's militaristic ultra-nationalism … Read More
Obama Change (Gitmo Version)
Already Obama is gearing up to reverse the Bush position with respect to Gitmo detainees. Unlike Bush, who doesn't believe in the right to a speedy and fair trial is part of those God-given rights that we hold to be self-evident, Obama is… …quietly crafting a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to … Read More
A Fatwa I Can Get Behind
Whenever you hear about Muslim clerics issuing a fatwa, it just makes you want to run for the nearest bomb shelter. Fortunately, this one is a pretty good fatwa: Muslim clerics from around India approved a fatwa against terrorism Saturday at a conference in Hyderabad. Maulana Qari Mohammad Usman Mansoorpuri, president of the Jamaiat-Ulama-i-Hind, called terrorism the most serious problem … Read More
Killer Apps
The notion that al Qaeda would coordinate terrorist attacks through Twitter — well, that strikes me as a rather unsound fear. It just doesn't sound very clandestine….
World View
According to a recent BBC worldwide poll, these countries prefer Obama over McCain as U.S. President: The United Kingdom Germany France Poland Italy Turkey Lebanon United Arab Emerites Nigeria Kenya China India Russia Singapore Indonesia Australia Phillipines Canada United States Mexico Panama Brazil Those were ALL the countries that the BBC polled. ALL of them prefered Obama I felt sad … Read More
McCain In 1998, On Osama Bin Laden
From an interview with Mother Jones, when asked about whether to conduct military strikes against bin Laden, John McCain said: You could say, Look, is this guy, Laden, really the bad guy that’s depicted? Most of us have never heard of him before… Ok. Well. It was 1998. I’d venture to say that most of the public, and probably many … Read More
Ironic Headline Juxtoposition Alert
In this corner…. Bush: China must end detentions, ensure freedoms In the other corner…. Pentagon: U.S. will still detain Hamdan even if he is acquitted (The next sound you hear will be my head hitting the table….)
Required Reading
For constitution and "war on terror" geeks only: Dworkin’s article in The NY Review of Books explaining the historic significance of last month’s SCOTUS decision in Boumediene v. Bush. It’s too detailed to summarize here: just read it.
Can’t Kill Or Capture Our Way To Victory
Hmmmm: Barack Obama warned yesterday against the risk of a “creeping militarization” of U.S. foreign policy, saying the State Department should lead U.S. engagement with other countries, with the military playing a supporting role. “We cannot kill or capture our way to victory” in the long-term campaign against terrorism, Obama said, arguing that military action should be subordinate to political … Read More
There’s Such A Thing As Casting Too Wide A Net
1,000,000? Seriously? The "terrorist" watch list now has more than one million names. Do you feel safer now? Since February we’ve been tracking the size of our government’s list of ostensible terrorist suspects, which according to the government’s own report (pdf) has been rising at a rate of 20,000 per month. Okay. I know we live in a dangerous world, … Read More
War Powers
I know the Constitution is, in places, ambiguous, but this language seems pretty straightforward: The Congress shall have power… to declare war… That’s Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution. It’s the "War Powers Clause". The dirty little secret is that Congress, in all its history, has only declared war five times: the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), … Read More
I’m No Economist, But….
….this makes no sense to me. From Mike Allen’s piece just out in The Politico … The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit. Since all their costs were financed with deficit spending, all their savings must go to deficit reduction. What does … Read More