The sheik he told his boogie men

Posted on November 19, 2009 by Sean Elder

Of all the idiotic complaints about Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9.11 plotters in a federal court in Manhattan, the most offensive is that a public trial will give him a megaphone for his propaganda — and his words will cause our city, nay, our nation to fall.

This hysteria (fueled entirely by Republican Obama Derangement Syndrome, which makes every action of this administration the handiwork of Satan) was in plain view when Holder defended his decision before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. (Why he felt he had to defend his decision is another matter.) Breast-beating — GOP breasts, natch — was much in evidence, as when the reliably hysterical Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) claimed, “These are not normal criminals.”

No, they’re not; they are far bigger scumbags because they slaughtered people in the name of religion and righteousness and I actually do believe that if there is a Satan, he is warming up a front-row seat for them in hell right now. But why do these standard-bearers of the right have so little faith in our court system, let alone this whole free speech thing? What are they, communists? (Vietnam just shut down Facebook btw, presumably because of that pesky free-speech stuff; maybe Sessions should move there?)

The fact that KSM (as the court documents call him) and his co-conspirators were successful on 9.11 says more about our lack of readiness and intelligence failures than it does about their criminal genius. These are not superheroes from Batman; they are zealots who should have the right to spew their anti-US propaganda right in the heart of still-bustling downtown NYC before we convict them and send them to prison forever. (No martyrdom, since that’s what they asked for.)

As Holder so eloquently put it, “We need not cower in the face of this enemy. Our institutions are strong, our infrastructure is sturdy, our resolve is firm, and our people are ready.” Or as GWB liked to say, “Bring ’em on.”

Stop torturing us

Posted on May 16, 2009 by Sean Elder

It’s taken more than 100 days but this week was the first time I felt like my own personal honeymoon with Obama might be over. His decision to block the release of photos that depict US troops and agents torturing enemy combatants feels like a blunder on many levels: As much as I like his willingness to change his mind on issues when presented with new information (unlike old whatsisname), the rhetoric that followed his about face on this question (or “flip-flop” as the folks at Fox are already calling it) seems just plain wimpy.

“The president believes in this special case the damage that would be done to troops and our national security has not been fully presented to the court,” Robert Gibbs told the press corps (before having a tizzy over someone’s cell phone going off) on the same day that Obama said something about “a few bad apples” in the military. Conveniently ignoring the bad apples in the Department of Defense and the vice-president’s office who gave the go-ahead to torture people.

As much as Democrats still feel it necessary to proclaim that they love a man in a uniform, I think the notion that new Abu Ghraib like images would provoke more anti-American feeling (as the president readies himself for a June visit to Egypt and another encounter with the Muslim world) misses the point. What will the Arab press make of the notion that we have images so awful we don’t want them to see them? Give some credit to the power of the imagination. The transparency he campaigned on should be just that: a willingness to show the world what we have done and therefore more fully disassociate ourselves from it. To do otherwise makes him seem like Bush’s successor.

Nearly as disheartening was his decision, announced yesterday, to retain the military tribunal system Bush championed that tries terrorists not as ordinary bad guys — with human and civil rights — but as kind of super bad guys who should be tried secretly. The way they do in dictatorships. “This is the best way to protect our country, while upholding our deeply held values,” the president said.

O yeah, chief? Which values are those — the need to compromise on issues when being attacked by the right about being soft on national security? The belief that the person with the most authority, when it comes to issues of prisoner abuse and extralegal activities, is the one who stood by when such practices were going down in the past, or who listened to briefings about them and did nothing? It seems to me that Obama has some political capital now and, in Bush parlance, he can afford to spend a little. Less calibration, and caution, please. I keep thinking of the Cowardly Lion: he already had the courage, he just needed someone to remind him.

Nothing Is Inevitable

Posted on September 5, 2008 by Sean Elder

These were among John McCain’s last words in his acceptance speech last night, and as bumper-sticker mottos go, I think it’s pretty catchy. Of course, it causes you to think of the inevitable exceptions to that maxim — death and taxes (though not, Republicans would posit, the “death tax”). They would also like to add to the list: the short memory of voters.

As he heads into the battle season, McCain’s playing a complicated game. He has appeased the base with red meat from this year’s Spiro Agnew, Sarah Palin, while reminding even the most casual viewer of what a white party the GOP is. And now he is trying to get those moderates that remain to remember the earlier McCain: the reformer, the iconoclast, the maverick. (Did you hear that word often enough this week? I half expected them to play the theme song from the old TV show of the same name, though McCain may have been the only one on stage who would remember it. Instead they played Heart’s “Barracuda,” which prompted the song’s author, Democrat Nancy Wilson, to tell EW, “I feel completely fucked over.”)

It is going to be interesting to see how, from his position on the prow of the ship that brought us endless war and a tanking economy, JMC continues to disassociate himself from it. Watching all those red-faced men in blue blazers chanting for change was funny in a Brooks Brothers riot kind of way, but don’t laugh too long. An Obama victory is far from assured; I believe this election, like many before it, will be settled by the least attentive voters, who are moved by their last impression. If theirs is one of John McCain, Moderate Guy, we could lose.

I’m still counting on the stink bomb set off by the W White House to move people in the other direction. The president’s plummeting approval rating over the last four years was not a blip on the screen but a true case of buyer’s remorse. And those who voted for him in ’04 did not just buy the man, they bought the party and the party line. Maybe those who have been burned will remember this time. Another thing that is inevitable is change.