I’m going to do a brief post about false equivalency, and I want to preface this by saying that I am against the Obama drone war and the ongoing program of detainee detention and (I’m certain) abuse. This would be wrong under any president, and no less under this one. In addition to being morally bankrupt, it is strategically incoherent; worse, detrimental to our long term security. We are, in essence, investing in future generations of terrorists, determined to do us harm based on the carnage we have carried out on their persons, their families, their communities.
That said, I also want to take issue with this argument I keep hearing that this administration is as bad as the last one with respect to extralegal killing, aggressive foreign policy, etc. It is bad enough to be against, bad enough to protest, but if we are comparing Obama with Bush II, there is simply no comparison. It was Bush who started both the Afghan and the Iraq wars, one of which we are still engaged in. These actions alone resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, uncounted thousands of abused detainees, both at the hands of U.S. personnel and under the merciless attentions of our grisly allies.
There is a tendency to minimize the crimes of the Bush era. Joe Scarborough, for instance, talked this week about the last adminstration having waterboarded “three people”. This is ludicrous. Of course, the most famous instances were those three high-value detainees he’s referencing, but there certainly were other instances of waterboarding, and many, many more instances of far worse abuses in Baghram, in Abu Garaib, and elsewhere. We like to shrink the past down to a digestible size, but this is just willful ignorance. Make no mistake – If there were an effective International Criminal Court, Bush/Cheney would be in line ahead of Obama. But they would all be in that line.
We can acknowledge that both administrations are dead wrong on this. But when it comes to comparisons, don’t even go there.
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jp
I think the reason it looked so empty was that there were no flags to represent the hundreds of thousands that have died since that day, and in large part because of that day. The cautionary “Never Forget” is more of a challenge to Americans than its author likely supposed. I can tell you, I will never forget September 11, 2001 – probably the most deeply horrifying day of my life. Remembering that has never been a challenge. What I think we as Americans need to work on remembering is the fact that our political leaders used that atrocity to commit other atrocities in our names. If there is any slippage of memory, it is on that particular slope.
entail new spending. So we’ve reached a pass where budget items need to (a) win approval from both houses of Congress and be signed into law, (b) run the same gauntlet a second time in the form of appropriations bills, and (c) get past the blackmail play around raising the debt ceiling to cover funds already duly appropriated. This is why the G.O.P. wants to make the debt ceiling extension a two-step process – so that down the line, they can shake us down for more concessions. This is bogus as hell and should be denounced as such, every minute of every day.
The interpersonal connections between ISI and networks like Al Qaeda were built up over the course of decades. How else could such a notorious terror leader hide in plain sight, except by the same kind of tolerance shown to killers like Jose Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch?
for this sucker, even if it adds to the freaking deficit. This is a question of survival for millions of American families – what’s more important than that?
Well, it is a Lieberman idea. He and retired male model Scott Brown have put this piece of garbage forward rather proudly, despite the fact that it is a.) almost certainly unconstitutional and b.) such a rabid overreaction to what has occurred that it can only be understood as a political stunt rather than any matter of conviction. What is it with these people, anyway? Where do they get this deep-seated hostility towards our legal system and our traditions regarding the rights of the accused? Are they originally from authoritarian countries and just homesick? It’s like the people in my neighborhood who chop down all of their trees – if they want to live in Kansas, why don’t they MOVE to Kansas? And if Lieberman wants to live in North Korea or Mexico, they’ve certainly got room for him there.