Damn right Mr. Broder, damn right.

Independence Days
By David S. Broder

American politics reached a critical turn last week. The revolt of several Republican senators against President Bush's insistence on a free hand in treating terrorist detainees signaled the emergence of an independent force in elections and government.

This movement is not new, but the moral scale of the issue -- torture -- and the implications for both constitutional and international law give it an epic dimension, even if it is ultimately settled by compromise.

The senators involved -- John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Warner -- were also instrumental in forming the "Gang of 14," the bipartisan bloc that seized control of the Senate last year and wrote the compromise that prevented a drastic change in the filibuster rule that otherwise would have triggered a bitter partisan divide.

These are not ordinary men. McCain, from Arizona, is probably the leading candidate for the 2008 presidential nomination. Graham, from South Carolina, is the star among the younger Republican senators. Warner, from Virginia, embodies the essence of traditional Reagan conservatism: patriotism, support for the military, civility.

They were joined in their opposition to Bush's call for extraordinary interrogation techniques by Colin Powell, the former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is still, despite the controversies over his role in Iraq policy, one of the most admired Americans.

That these Republicans -- and others -- were ready to join the Democrats in rejecting Bush's plan caused the White House to scramble for alternatives and House Republican leaders to postpone a scheduled vote. The revolt goes well beyond three men.

What it really signals is a new movement in this country -- what you could rightly call the independence party. Its unifying theme can be found in the Declaration of Independence's language when Jefferson invoked "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind."

When Powell wrote that Bush's demand would compound the world's "doubt [about] the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," he was appealing to Jefferson's standard.

It is a standard this administration has flagrantly rejected. Bush was elected twice, over Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry, whose know-it-all arrogance rankled Midwesterners such as myself. The country thought Bush was a pleasant, down-to-earth guy who would not rock the boat. Instead, swayed by some inner impulse or the influence of Dick Cheney, he has proved to be lawless and reckless. He started a war he cannot finish, drove the government into debt and repeatedly defied the Constitution.

Now, however, you can see the independence party forming -- on both sides of the aisle. They are mobilizing to resist not only Bush but also the extremist elements in American society -- the vituperative, foul-mouthed bloggers on the left and the doctrinaire religious extremists on the right who would convert their faith into a whipping post for their opponents.

The center is beginning to fight back. Michael Bloomberg, the Republican mayor of New York, is holding a fundraiser for Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Democrat running as an independent against the bloggers' favorite, Ned Lamont.

His election is important, as is Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee's in Rhode Island, because both would signal that independence is a virtue to be rewarded.

Similarly important, though less publicized, is Republican Sen. Mike DeWine's race in Ohio. DeWine is an ally of McCain & Co. in forming a center for the Senate; his opponent, Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown, is a loud advocate of protectionist policies that offer a false hope of solving our trade and job problems.

A "decent respect" begins at home, with an acknowledgment of public opinion. Americans are saying no to excess greenhouse gases and no to open borders; yes to embryonic stem cell research, yes to a path to earned citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants and yes to a living wage. Six more states are likely to approve increases in the minimum wage through ballot initiatives in November.

A congressional election with lots of new faces and a scare for many returning veterans is important as a signal to next year's likely leaders such as Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell and Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi that they can't design their strategies simply to satisfy the most rabid of their party's extremes; they have to govern down the center and work across party lines.

And that in turn would set the stage for a 2008 election in which the two branches of the independence movement -- Republican and Democratic -- could compete in a campaign that would, for a change, show a "decent respect" for the intelligence of the American people.

GWOT, Five Years In: A Novice Assessment (Part I)

First I want to make on thing clear, I’m no expert in security affairs. I read widely on the subject but if your looking for expert analysis this post is not for you. I need to write this mainly for myself because I don't even know where I stand on some of these issues anymore and I’m hoping I’ll know after I finish this draft. I write this as a hopefully nonpartisan assessment of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). Disillusioned with all the ideological bitterness of an election year, I’m trying to avoid the rhetoric because whether we like it or not, we’re all in this together. So without further ado here’s my GWOT assessment, five years in.

The Run-up to September

There’s been a lot in the news lately thanks to partisan hype over The Path to 9/11 on pre-war fault so it seems logical to start here. First of all I should make it clear that I hold no single administration responsible for the September events. To assign blame here is simply ridiculous, 9/11 was a paradigmatic shift in the security environment after which we were all forced to reassess our priorities. It was no ones fault, we just didn’t foresee the shift. If you blame Bush II you've got to blame Clinton and if you blame Clinton you've got to blame Bush I, Reagan, Carter... ect. Individual blame is an argument for partisan politics that gets us no where strategically and only serves to further divide the electorate in our struggle. However it is helpful to identify several factors, which ran rampant through the Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton Administrations, that I believe contributed to al-Qaeda’s decision to attack the United States.

Throughout the 1980's and early 90's the United States, chiefly concerned with combating the Soviets, created a security paradigm of indifference toward terrorism. Faced with a very real nation-state threat in the Soviet Union, US strategic thinking was almost exclusively concerned with combating Soviet power and communist “aggression” in the Cold War world. The Middle East, like other third world theaters, was treated as a backwater. Large casualties in this area couldn’t be tolerated. It simply wasn’t worth getting tied down in the Arab world, the theory went, because it weakened your strategic position overall, just as the Soviets realized in Afghanistan during the 80's. After the fall of the Soviet Union, however, the threat disappeared and the previous security system paradigm changed. The problem was that the paradigm didn’t shift immediately, we entered a vacuum of strategic uncertainty. Who was the new threat? China? A reemerging Soviet Union? Third world autocrats? Or more intangible threats like genocide or social injustice? No one really knew so we made a half-ass attempt to play globo-cop and confront them all. We were successful, for the most part, in many of these areas like the Balkans and failed in others such as Somalia. Unfortunately, however, the Cold War security paradigm of indifference toward terrorism continued as asymmetric terrorist threats were ignored in favor of nation-state problems. Empty threats were made about “bringing these killers to justice” but no real action ever materialized, we were busy with other things. Events such as the Battle of Mogadishu (of Blackhawk Down fame) and Reagan’s withdrawal from Lebanon after the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, however, convinced al-Qaeda leaders that Americans were simply averse to mass casualties. A weakness they sought to exploit in September.

If enough death and destruction could be caused, the theory went, American power would withdraw from the Middle East enabling a fundamentalist revolution of sorts that could return the Islamist world to the dark ages. Bin Laden’s strategic thinking and his final decision to move forward with the September attacks, however, represented an extreme miscalculation of American resolve and overplayed his hand dramatically. With a massive “sneak attack” inflicted upon the American homeland, the paradigm shift was now complete. “The sleeping giant” was once again awoken from its slumber of indifference with a new-found determination to reassert its power on the world stage and take the fight to the new enemy. Simply because, as I remember an interviewed woman state on 9/11, “No one does that to us!”

Well 'allo mates!!!

Your army is the British and the Commonwealth (Canada, ANZAC, India). You want to serve under good generals and use good equipment in defense of the western form of life.

Italy		75%
British and the Commonwealth		75%
Finland		56%
Poland		56%
United States		56%
France, Free French and the Resistance		50%
Germany		31%
Soviet Union		31%
Japan		6%

In which World War 2 army you should have fought?
created with QuizFarm.com

We're not the only ones reflecting

What 9/11 means to Iraqis

The Times
Ali Hamdani

FOR Iraqis, 9/11 led us to our current life of death and destruction.

A sad moment for Americans was the reason for a sad life for us. With 3,000 civilians killed every four weeks, my country suffers its own 9/11 on a monthly basis.

A few months before 9/11 my sister bought some American medical books because she was planning to study in the States.

I called her after I saw the towers burning on TV and said: "Forget it - you are not going to make it there any more."

How would it affect our life? Or how my people would come to suffer for Saudis attacking American buildings? I didn’t bother finding answers for all these questions that day. The only thing I said to my sister before ending the conversation: "We will be in big trouble soon."

Last week thugs tortured and killed my friend Mahmoud, a 51 year old father of three children, just for being an unlucky Shia who by accident drove by a Sunni neighborhood.

To me those thugs are no different from the American soldiers who killed the family of a 10-year-old girl named Iman in Haditha last November.

I think about Iman watching her parents die. Then I remember seeing the body of my friend Mahmoud last week at the morgue, with burns and bruises covering every part of his body.

Terror is terror, no matter how it is dressed up, or who performs the act.

Terrorists don’t need to wear balaclavas or grow beards. They sometimes come in proper uniforms, and call themselves Marines, like the 10-year old- girl’s family killers.

Whether it was the collapse of the Twin Towers or the missile from an F-16 plane hitting a wedding party in Anbar in the west of Iraq more than a year ago, innocent people have lost their lives.

The other night, I was watching a documentary on the Al-Jazeera satellite news channel about the September 11 attack. Listening to the stories told by the survivors was terrifying for me. The scene of that airplane hitting the tower was as horrible as the scene of the wreckage of a red old Passat car that I saw after it was run over by an American tank in west Baghdad in 2004, crushing the mother, father and their young child.

Those people who died under the rubble of the Twin Towers looked similar to those Iraqis who died under the American barrage. We all lost loved ones - but here we continue to lose them.

Who knows why President Bush, Saddam Hussein and even Bin Laden did what they did? But Americans need to understand that 9/11 is not only theirs anymore, after they chose to make the suffering sharable.

At least in their case they still have the chance every year to hold a memorial for the sad event and to pray for the victims. For us the event is still going on - and it’s not clear yet who should be praying for whom, as any of us is a victim waiting for his 9/11 to come.

Life in Iraq wasn’t great under Saddam but there was only one way to suffer, decided by the dictator. With the American freedom that was offered to my nation, people got the choice of how to suffer, but to suffer is a must.

Freedom can not be offered to a dead nation. Unfortuanately, what America was looking for has never been in my country.

Now I sit in Baghdad and listen to American commentators debating about whether their nation is now safer. It probably is, but they have messed up our lives, as if they exported their troubles to us.

Hat tip to War Historian.

Capitalism: Our GWOT Trump Card?

Can globalization and capitalism assure our ultimate victory in the Global War on Terrorism despite numerous strategic setbacks? So sayeth Thomas Barnett:

Barnett: Five years in, remembering why we'll win

By THOMAS P.M. BARNETT

Five years into this Long War against radical extremists, we measure our progress and naturally feel depressed: enemies proliferating, friends disappearing, the front seemingly limitless.

So stipulated - regarding the war.

And yet, this war's worldwide impact pales in comparison to ongoing changes triggered by globalization. We need to remember that larger context if we're ever going to recognize this struggle's successful conclusion.

Remember, the Cold War didn't end with World War III but with 3 billion new capitalists joining the global economy. We were never ahead in that war either, but clearly we triumphed in everything else.

Let me give you some examples of that everything else today.

First, as globalization expands, it naturally invades those regions most disconnected from its influences to date. In effect, this struggle marches backward in time as we quell civil strife and battle radical extremists in increasingly primitive locations.

So don't expect less violence as globalization permeates the Middle East and Africa. Entrenched elites and cultural fundamentalists will resist its democratizing effects, especially when it comes to women.

Globalization brings networks. Networks are gender neutral. Provide such connectivity to traditional society, and you'll turn it upside down by empowering women disproportionally to men.

Put most crudely, this Long War will see us liberating females through economic connectivity while killing off self-righteous young men standing in the way.

Why do fundamentalists deny real education to young girls? Because that's where all this "trouble" starts.

No modern economy has ever developed without liberating its women first with expanded economic opportunity, then social change (often related to birth control) and finally political participation.

Full article.

Things that piss me off

This week for the "Things that piss me off" series we turn to:

Mid Term Elections

I'm sorry I know this post is a bit mainstream but at this point I really don't give a shit, I need to vent. If you didn't know I hate the House of Representatives. I mean I don't just dislike them, no sir, this is a DEEP hate. It's the kind of hate I personally reserve for stuff like local used-car commercials and personal injury lawyer ads, the kind that piss you off so much you just want to enter some kind of demonic plot to bring the sons-of-bitches down or perhaps just put a chair through your television just to shut the bastards up. God, I'm starting to lose it just thinking about it.

Seriously though, that's the kind of regard I hold the House of Representatives in, they're the used car salesmen and ambulance chasers of the U.S. government. They'll lie to you in a heartbeat and smile at you while they're doing it. Plus we have to listen to their idiotic rhetoric every other year because the "Framers," in what can only be classified as one of their biggest mistakes, decided to hold House elections every two years in order to keep representatives...wait for it...that's right...CLOSER to the people. That my friends is bullshit. As Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein argue in The Broken Branch after they're elected most Reps simply tow the party line for a few DAYS--literally days, when they're in session they work like three days a week--until its time to go campaigning again. Moderates, who are in fact closest to the people ideologically, are routinely ignored by party leaders making it difficult for them to hold office.

It wouldn't be so bad if we only had to listen to the idiotic rhetoric in the House but we don't. In an election year idiocy knows no bounds and unfortunately replaces creative thinking on all levels. Take Iraq and GWOT for instance.

Rice, a one-time provost at Stanford University compares Iraq and Civil War critiques, which is total bullshit. 620,000 Americans died in a war that threatened to destroy the country, Condi I think the stakes were a little higher. Meanwhile Bush and Rummy drone on about Islamofacists, Nazis, and the same tired references to Munich which have been used to justify just about everything under the sun in modern foreign relations. Strong plan. Let's scare the living shit out of Americans until they forget about the endless list of mistakes that are destroying a once-worthy goal of a democratic Iraq. The Dem's solution: GIVE US RUMSFELD! Oooo shear genius. I swear to God they're running around like its The Lord of the Flies, or maybe their just taking tea with the Queen of Hearts in Alice and Wonderland. Will you please tell me what that will solve? Not a damn thing. Oh yeah they also criticize the Bush Administration for not having a plan. Okay I'm with you, what's your plan? Uuuuuuummmmmm well uuuuuuuuugh...OFF WITH HIS HEAD!!! Hey have you read the latest Senate Intelligence Report? Turns out there were no connections between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, Bush mislead the American people...and by the way the intelligence that led us to war was also misleading.

Are you serious?? I've never heard that before. Give me a fucking break, I wonder how many tax dollars and time they wasted on that report. I'm so apathetic I could almost give money to the Green Party. Whenever you boys grow a pair and can have a serious debate without throwing loaded rhetoric in my face let me know. Until then you can all go to hell. God I hate mid-terms.