Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Pye-ratical Solutions. US Has No Moral Legitimacy


David Brooks
Dana Millbank
Pulitzer Prize Winner Eugene Robinson



“The last people on Earth we need to worry about are our veterans. It’s insulting.” - John McCain

“Sorry to say, but it’s the reality we deal with. Nonetheless, I concede where some would interpret this report in that way.” - Janet Napolitano


One of my favorite columnists won a Pulitzer Prize yesterday, for his coverage of the historic Barack Obama campaign for the US presidency. One of the reasons I started providing links to columnists here was that my local paper stopped publishing the more moderate voices and went with those a lot closer to extremist views, and I wanted to provide an alternative outlet.
Also, the Truth-o-Meter won a Pulitzer, the first time a paper won for web content...

Link to impeach Federal Judge Jay Bybee who was an architect of the torture memos.

Our confiscated, seventeen-year-old Somalian pirate arrived in the US today, not in the way he probably dreamed of. The question is what will we do with him? Try him in court with Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich as the prosecutors? Have an Iranian style trial that lasts all of 15 minutes? I know what his sentence should be: to foster with an American family and get a high school and college education, then send him back to his country, the best revenge.

The best solution I heard on what to do with the rest of the Somalian pirates: train them and hire them to patrol the seas for us. Let them hunt down other pirates and guarantee the safety of all boats passing through the Gulf of Aden. They get a steady paycheck, respect, and will ultimately help stabilize the area.

A more cynical approach is to develop the Somalian pirate experience into a tourist destination, similar to a Disney theme park. People can ride out with the pirates, eat goat as if they were real hostages, and especially for members of the EU, they'll dig up a 55 gallon barrel of nuclear waste that you can share and take some home with you, possibly to mail some to your favorite politician?

OK, we've had our two day whining about handshaking with cartoonish dictators and what that says about us as a country. What did you really expect, that Obama would look Chavez in the eye, and say "We will bury you?"As Josh Marshall from TPM puts it: "A bit of follow-up on right-wing paranoia about the Obama/Chavez meeting. I'm just watching Andrea Mitchell interview Michael O'Hanlon about whether President Obama showed some sort of dangerous weakness in happily shaking hands with Hugo Chavez. Mitchell played a clip of the always cartoonish Newt Gingrich and then noted that conservatives are drawing the analogy to John Kennedy's famous meeting with Nikita Krushchev in which the latter sized Kennedy up as a lightweight and -- so the argument goes -- thus believed he could push Kennedy around during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Now, Kruschev? Really? I'm not sure I can imagine a better illustration of the sort of parodic paranoia I'm talking about. We do realize that the US has the most powerful military in the world and Venezuela has little ability to project military power beyond its own borders. It's a non-entity militarily, even compared to Iran and North Korea. Will he be emboldened into calling Obama el Diablo? Maybe provocatively g
ive away more books?"

You know there's no way in hell we will win any war in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, right? The UPI has a strategic analysis on why: "The reason is Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld's concept of the power of weakness and its intimate relationship with legitimacy.

American power lacks legitimacy because, on the physical level, it is so overwhelming.
That is the power of weakness: Anyone who stands up to the American military becomes a hero. In turn, any state the American military supports loses its legitimacy. The more places America intervenes militarily, the more states lose their legitimacy, to the advantage of non-state entities. In effect, the United States has a reverse Midas touch. Only a defensive grand strategy, where the United States minds its own business and leaves other states to mind theirs, can break the nation out of this downward spiral.

Second, we fight by putting firepower on targets. This wins at the physical level, but as it does so, it brings defeat at the moral level. The best current example is Pakistan, where the combination of Predator strikes and arm-twisting of the Pakistani government has undermined the legitimacy of the Pakistani state. That state now stands on the verge of disintegration, which would give al-Qaida and other Islamic forces the greatest victory they could imagine. The image on Osama bin Laden's cave wall should be a Predator, with the title, "Our best weapon."

Third, there is no chance the United States will adopt a defensive grand strategy or reform its military so long as the current Washington establishment remains in power."

Now that the followers of Sufi Mohammed have taken over the Swat Valley, which is similar to our Aspen, Colorado, his Taliban is seeking to spread sharia law to the rest of the country. In a recent interview with the India Times, spokesperson Muslim Khan evades whether he will hold up their end of the agreement: "Asked about religious hardliner Sufi Muhammad’s assurance that the Taliban in Swat would surrender their weapons once sharia is enforced in the region, Khan replied: “We don’t know about that because we are Pashtuns and any Pashtun has a gun”.

He indicated that Taliban would lay down arms only if the Islamic courts in Swat asked them to do so. “If the sharia regulation will call (on) us that Taliban you keep your arms, we will keep (them). If the order from Qazi courts is no, we will say no.”
They are fighting a war over a way of life while we are fighting over more secular terms, nation-building. The way to win against the Taliban will have to come from within, using the will of the people and Islamic courts to begin ruling against their extremist views. Getting Saudi Arabia to denounce Wahabism would help, too...


Late night jokes:

"Texas Governor Rick Perry said the state of Texas could secede from the Union if it wanted to. Is that what we need, another foreign country on our southern border speaking a language we don't understand? Come on!" --Jay Leno

"Former President Bush wasted no time responding to this. He said, 'Wow, does that mean I get to be president again?'" --Jay Leno

"President Obama is visiting Mexico this week, where he's talking to President Calderon about poverty, drugs and violence. When he's done with that, he plans on talking about the problems in Mexico, too." --Jay Leno

"Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the United States is now ready to talk to Cuba. You know what that means? Apparently, we are already interviewing replacements for Texas." --Jay Leno

"Here's a story that writes itself. People who contribute money to help Hillary Clinton pay off her presidential campaign are being offered the chance to spend a day with Bill Clinton. Yeah. ... No, that's real. All you have to be willing to do is write down everything Bill does and then report back to Hillary." --Jay Leno

"It's being reported a congressional aide caught a staph infection at the Congressional gym. Hey, let me tell you something. If that's all you catch from a congressman, consider yourself lucky." --Jay Leno

"Let me ask you something. Did you even know there was a Congressional gym? Have you seen your average congressman? Does Barney Frank look like he's been to the gym to you? No. I don't know who's using it." --Jay Leno

"Climate experts say we should tell villagers in developing countries to reduce the amount of cooking smoke they generate to help fix global warming. You know, it's as if these people don't hate us enough already. I mean, they live in mud huts, they have thatch roofs, their clothes are made of straw. We pull up in a bunch of Humvees and SUVs going, 'Hey, you want to cut the smoke out of here?'" --Jay Leno

"A 13-year-old boy in Peoria, Illinois, has been arrested and accused of robbing a bank. Well, the kid is obviously young and naive. He still thinks banks have money. You know how he got caught? ... He was Twittering 'I'm currently robbing a bank.'" --Jay Leno

"Nieman Marcus announced they're selling a diamond-studded dog collar for $3.2 million. Well, finally, it's nice to see one big company that's not out of touch with mainstream America." --Jay Leno

"More bad economic news. Southwest Airlines announced they lost $91 million in the first quarter. Now they say they're going to have to start cutting back. Cutting back? Have you ever flown Southwest, huh? What, are they taking the glass out of the windows?" --Jay Leno

"Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, criticized Dick Cheney today, saying that he shouldn't question Obama's patriotism. In response, Cheney said, 'I respect your opinion. That's cool. Hey, would you like to go on a hunting trip this week?'" --Jimmy Fallon

"Ashton Kutcher, apparently, has been going it with CNN. He has been competing with them to see who can get to a million followers on Twitter first. I guess Ashton and CNN have been rivals since high school. Ashton won the race, and there was some back talk, some smack talk between him and Larry King, all in good fun. He and Larry are friends, their wives are the same age." --Jimmy Kimmel

"They're very competitive, and Ashton came out on top, so one million people are now following Ashton Kutcher's Tweets. Why would anyone want to be Ashton Kutcher's online friend? Haven't they seen what he does to his friends in real life? When a wrecking ball comes crashing through the windshield of your Honda Accord, don't be surprised. It was probably your new friend." --Jimmy Kimmel

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