Fighting them over here

If nothing else, the one thing the current administration is good at the memorable catch phrase.

But a good catch phrase doesn't make it true.

A case in point is the president's repeated assertion that "we're fighting them over there so that we don't have to fight them here", or the equally catchy, and its equally misguided cousin, SecDef Gates', "It's important to defend this country on the extremists' 10-yard line, and not on our 10-yard line".

As witnessed by today's news of a home-grown plot to blow up the jet fuel lines to JFK airport, fighting the civil war in Iraq is hardly helping.

In fact I would call Iraq irrelevant to such plots except for this: it serves to further inflame and bolster the wills of those who hate American behavior both around the world and, as we see, here in the US.

GOP debate: Big win for ignorance and torture

Two points on the GOP debate.

First, I find it incredible that the Fox audience, and the vast majority of MSM commentators, applauded Giuliani's take-down of Ron Paul for suggesting that al Qaeda's attacks were in some way a reaction to US policy in the mid-east.

The distance from reality that suggests is truly scary.

Further, I'm stunned at just how many people seem to be OK with torture. Not surprised mind you, I've always suspected that the lip service pay to freedom and the rule of law was about as deep as a yellow ribbon.

But for those of you who think American values has meaning beyond militarism, corporatism and gay-bashing, I recommend a couple of articles, yet again, exposing the damage torture does to both the tortured and the torturers.

Though I'm not a big believer in Evil since I think that minimizes the extent to which average people can commit acts that are themselves evil, Andrew Sullivan makes the case that torture is not only evil, but represents a threat to America which no terrorist could possibly match.

The evil of torture is therefore not just a moral one. It is a political one. A constitutional republic dedicated before everything to the protection of liberty cannot legalize torture and remain a constitutional republic. It imports into itself a tumor of pure tyranny. That tumor, we know from history, always always spreads, as it has spread in the US military these past shameful years. The fact that hefty proportions of US soldiers now support its use as a routine matter reveals how deep the rot has already gone. The fact that now a majority of Republican candidates proudly support such torture has rendered the GOP the party most inimical to liberty in America. When you combine torture's evil with the claims of the hard right that a president can ignore all laws and all treaties in wartime, and that "wartime" is now permanent, you have laid the ground for the abolition of the American experiment in self-government. Imagine another terror attack, with Rudy Giuliani as president, and a mandate to arrest and torture at will, with no need to follow or even address the rule of law. We would no longer be a republic. We would be in a protectorate of one man.

And in the Washington Post, no lesser personages than former Marine Commandant Charles C. Krulak and former Central Command commander-in-chief Joseph P. Hoar provide an analysis of how the use of torture both degrades our military and succors the terrorists.

As has happened with every other nation that has tried to engage in a little bit of torture -- only for the toughest cases, only when nothing else works -- the abuse spread like wildfire, and every captured prisoner became the key to defusing a potential ticking time bomb. Our soldiers in Iraq confront real "ticking time bomb" situations every day, in the form of improvised explosive devices, and any degree of "flexibility" about torture at the top drops down the chain of command like a stone -- the rare exception fast becoming the rule.

To understand the impact this has had on the ground, look at the military's mental health assessment report released earlier this month. The study shows a disturbing level of tolerance for abuse of prisoners in some situations. This underscores what we know as military professionals: Complex situational ethics cannot be applied during the stress of combat. The rules must be firm and absolute; if torture is broached as a possibility, it will become a reality.

This has had disastrous consequences. Revelations of abuse feed what the Army's new counterinsurgency manual, which was drafted under the command of Gen. David Petraeus, calls the "recuperative power" of the terrorist enemy.

Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld once wondered aloud whether we were creating more terrorists than we were killing. In counterinsurgency doctrine, that is precisely the right question. Victory in this kind of war comes when the enemy loses legitimacy in the society from which it seeks recruits and thus loses its "recuperative power."

The torture methods that Tenet defends have nurtured the recuperative power of the enemy. This war will be won or lost not on the battlefield but in the minds of potential supporters who have not yet thrown in their lot with the enemy. If we forfeit our values by signaling that they are negotiable in situations of grave or imminent danger, we drive those undecideds into the arms of the enemy. This way lies defeat, and we are well down the road to it.

Both pieces should be read in full, and frankly memorized if possible. As the GOP debate showed, significant portions of our country are still ruled by fear and misinformation from those who seek to use that fear for their own political benefit.

But fear can be combated, not with bravado and volume, but with reason and knowledge. And for those of us in the reality-based world, reason and knowledge serve as our best armor against the forces within America which would betray its promise for an illusory promise of safety.

[And kudos to John McCain, for standing against torture. How has the GOP fallen that such a stand would be controversial?]

Fighting them over there

As you may or may not know, MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann has, over the last year or so, has become a go to news show for left wing moonbats across this great land of ours.

One of your CaliBlogger's favorite segments is the "Worst Person in the World" bit wherein Keith lists the most egregiously offensive words and actions from the day's news. Done with tongue firmly in cheek, as is much of Keith's show, "Worst Person in the World" frequently quotes noted wingnut figures such as Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and others of that ilk, using their own words against them.

The May 8th segment (link to video here) culminated in a quote from Fox "News" commentator Dick Morris. For those who might not be aware of Morris' history he provides ample evidence that, gender aside, hell hath no fury to match a political hack scorned.

(Morris, a former Clinton operative, resigned in disgrace after revelations that he let the prostitute with whom he was having an extra-marital affair, listen in on conversations between himself and president Clinton. Since which time he has become a vehement critic of the Clintons, and a go to guy when rightwing outfits like Fox need a Democrat to criticize Democrats or provide BushCorp with bi-partisan cover (for other examples of the type see Lieberman, Joe and Miller, Zell).)

If you watch the video, Keith is quoting from statements Morris made on the May 7th edition of Hannity & Colmes in a discussion of Al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri's recently released video about the war in Iraq, in which Zawahiri claims that Democratic efforts to withdraw US troops from Iraq would "deprive us of the opportunity to destroy the American forces which we have caught in a historic trap".

Morris' reaction? From News Hounds:

Staying in Iraq, Morris continued, "gives (Al Qaeda) the opportunity to kill more Americans which they really like." Morris made the dubious assertion that it's better to have Americans stay in Iraq because it's easier for terrorists to kill them there. "They don't have to come to Wall Street to kill Americans… And convenience is a big factor when you're a terrorist." [Emphasis mine-CK]

And while both Olbermann and News Hounds mock Morris for his idiotic statements, I would suggest we ponder the truth behind these words: that, al Qaeda strategy notwithstanding, BushCorp certainly seems intent on making it easier to kill the innocent.

From an article in today's Washington Post discussing the results of the recent escalation surge:

Commanders said that even with the ongoing increase in Iraq of tens of thousands of American troops, violence could increase in coming months, and some indicators in Baghdad suggest that is already happening.

Partial data on attacks gathered from five U.S. brigades operating in Baghdad showed that total attacks since the new strategy began in February were either steady or increasing. In some cases, certain kinds of attacks dipped as the U.S. troop increase began, only to begin rising again in recent weeks. Overall, "the number of attacks has stayed relatively constant" in Baghdad, said one U.S. officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be quoted by name.

The U.S. military commands that oversee Baghdad and Iraq as a whole have so far failed to meet requests to release current statistics on attack trends, with some U.S. officers voicing concern that the information would be skewed by critics to argue that the strategy is not working

So, the surge will, by the military's own admission, have the net effect of increasing the carnage in Iraq.

In fact it seems increasingly obvious the only thing really being accomplished by current policy (aside from giving war apologists an excuse to call for yet another Friedman Unit's worth of patience) is to increase the number of American targets in Iraq.

See, Morris is right, we're making it more convenient for terrorists to kill us over there. Gosh, with all those targets walking around withing sniper range, we're keeping al Qaeda just too darn busy to attack us here.

And just think, if we stopped providing them targets, all those darn terrorists would just be sitting around idly with nothing to do.

One can only wonder what sort of mischief they'd get up to then.

So you see, it's important we fight them over there, just like Dick Morris says.

Terror attacks up 29%

More statistical confirmation of stuff you already knew: It seems that not only is BushCorp™'s approach to the Global War on Terror, or what ever they call it these days, not only is not helping combat the incidence of terror attacks, it's actually making them worse, a lot worse. From McClatchy:

A State Department report on terrorism due out next week will show a nearly 30 percent increase in terrorist attacks worldwide in 2006 to more than 14,000, almost all of the boost due to growing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Friday.

[snip]

Based on data compiled by the U.S. intelligence community's National Counterterrorism Center, the report says there were 14,338 terrorist attacks last year, up 29 percent from 11,111 attacks in 2005.

Forty-five percent of the attacks were in Iraq.

Bushies, of course, rather than seeing such carnage as confirmation of their abject failure, contend such numbers prove their contention that Iraq is, indeed, the central front of the war on terror.

Well, sure it is, now.

And for their brain dead base, perhaps that's enough.

Those of us possessing long term memories and the capacity for rational thought note that it's the US invasion that has made it so in Iraq.

Iraq Parliament Bombing

You're no doubt already familiar with the story of the suicide bomber who penetrated into the cafeteria of Iraq's parliament.

But for a real feel for the events I strongly recommend Washington Post Baghdad Bureau Chief Sudarsan Raghavan's harrowing first hand account, In an Instant, a Junkyard of Humanity. No excerpts here, sorry, you need to go read the story in full.

No, seriously, go read it, I'll wait.

.

.

.

.

OK.

Now I'd like to excerpt a quote from the transcript of Mr. Raghavan's live discussion (I strongly recommend you read that as well, but it's OK if you wait 'til after we're done here).

Arlington, Va.: Does this experience give you a better appreciation for what the citizens of Iraq have to put up with every day?

Sudarsan Raghavan: Hello Arlington,

Yes, it does. But only a sliver of their pain, their fears, and their loss. Take my experience and multiply it by a hundred times, and you'll know what Iraqis go through every day. They are truly among the world's most courageous and resilient people. I watched as dozens of Iraqis went back into the Parliament building after the bombing to save the wounded and bring out the dead.

Multiply it by a hundred times...every day.

Devastating, just devastating.

And as this illustration of the plight of the Iraqi people sinks in, it's only human to ask oneself, what can we do to help?

There is of course, as is plainly, painfully obvious, no easy answer.

Send in more troops?

I don't think so.

As we've just witnessed, no amount of security can be completely effective against this sort of attack, more soldiers can't help.

I suppose if we were willing commit sufficient troops to clear and hold every inch of Iraq, and disarm every Iraqi we might be able to root out every insurgent and terrorist. But how many US soldiers would that take, half a million? A full million? And how long do they stay in Iraq, forever?

Impossible without re-instating the draft, and therefore, impossible.

So what should we do? Juan Cole has a suggestion, announce we are leaving, then leave:

The key to preventing an intensified civil war is US withdrawal from the equation so as to force the parties to an accommodation. Therefore, the United States should announce its intention to withdraw its military forces from Iraq, which will bring Sunnis to the negotiating table and put pressure on Kurds and Shiites to seek a compromise with them. But a simple US departure would not be enough; the civil war must be negotiated to a settlement, on the model of the conflicts in Northern Ireland and Lebanon.

Talks require a negotiating partner. The first step in Iraq must therefore be holding provincial elections. In the first and only such elections, held in January 2005, the Sunni Arab parties declined to participate. Provincial governments in Sunni-majority provinces are thus uniformly unrepresentative, and sometimes in the hands of fundamentalist Shiites, as in Diyala. A newly elected provincial Sunni Arab political class could stand in for the guerrilla groups in talks, just as Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, did in Northern Ireland.

His article should, of course, be read in full to appreciate the nuances of his reasoning.

Others have their own ideas as well.

But regardless, the important point is that everyone, even to a degree, President Bush, recognizes that the eventual solution to Iraq will be political, not military.

The only question, then, is what course of action will best achieve that political solution?