Canossa

Deep Political Weirdness

For reasons all too apparent, I have been thinking about Hunter Thompson over the last few days.  We are in a time of profound political weirdness - the shuffling, overheated summer, when people flock to cooler climes and politicians cast about for something meaningful to do. Of course, as it is mere months after an election, there is very little to do.  

Yes, the opposition is full in the throes of denial and anger and dreams of political retribution. The kvetching takes on an apocalyptic tone, as they try to convince the nation that they have just made some type of tragic mistake and the ship of state is heading toward the rocky cliffs, the crew enticed by the siren's song.  All will be lost if they don't seize the wheel.

But honestly, nobody outside of the true believers in the opposition camp can get all that jazzed up about their screams of impending doom and destruction.  Mayhap the dire economic news will bring the true believers a few more sympathetic ears, but by God, its summer, and it is hard to get up a head of steam over some vague menace in the face of real hardship.  If Obama can stumble into a moderate economic recovery folks won't care if he is the reincarnation of Karl Marx, they will simply be happy that they have a job that pays the bills.  If the economy tanks, it won't matter if people love Obama and think him the best president since Lincoln - they will turn him out of office without thinking.  Simple, really.  This is not a difficult prediction to make.

But nobody buys the nonsense that the republic is failing, or even falling apart, or that Obama is purposely trying to destroy America.  Folks look around, see the unemployment rates climbing and their pensions (if they have one) shrinking, and simply want somebody to do something to halt the slide and maybe even turn it around a little.  If the economy is heading up in 2012, the Republicans could run a combination of Ike and Reagan and they would still get beaten like a rented mule.

Which leads to the blazingly, profoundly, deliriously abject strangeness of the last week. 

Gov. Mark Sanford (R-Harlequin) not only admitted to an affair, but dumbfoundingly decided to wax poetic about his soul-mate in Argentina.  He didn't stop there, he then proceeded to babble about wanting to fall back in love with his wife.  This, clearly not being sufficient weirdness, then admitted that he had skated close to the line of infidelity with another vague number of women.  Every time he spoke with the media he revealed ever more of his tragic-romantic soul.  It would be touching, if it weren't so deeply weird to watch a middle-aged man spin out heart-sick longing that would embarrass teenage diarists the world over.

That said, it bothers me very little.  I am not going to get on a soapbox about his theoretical hypocrisy (he went after Clinton big time - but really, Clinton was all walking libidinal idiocy, it was easy to take a few whacks) because I tend to believe that most 'moral' politicians will reveal hypocrisy sooner rather than later.  They really can't help it - you repress that much and it will spill out someplace.  It really is just a matter of time. The more bellicose the politician regarding moral turpitude, the more spectacular the wipeout.

Still, the Sanford saga is just darn strange.  It wreaks of something tacky and sordid.  Of course, it didn't help that any number of folks ran out and published abject foolishness about how delightful his 'love' was, how splendiferous his devotion to this new soul-mate was, how it was all so achingly heroic and admirable.  Please.  

As the political world was steering into clearer waters (aided and abetted by the death of Michael Jackson - which should have been a sign that more bizarre tales were yet afoot, not unlike interpreting bird-signs in Ancient Greece, this death was clearly a sign that the world was about to take another right turn into the outer limits.

Which, of course, was fulfilled in the shambling, disjointed, near manic speech Gov. Sarah Palin (R-The Outer Limits) gave on Friday, wherein she announced that she was not only not going to run for reelection in 2010, but that, in fact, she was going to resign.

What?  What in heaven's name?  

Her supporters immediately hailed this as a brilliantly left-field strategy for kicking off her presidential campaign.  My immediate thought about their spin - you are dazzlingly round the bend.  The immediate thought about Palin?  Idiot.  In the old Greek sense of the word - one who does not participate in the life of the community and the assembly.

She quit.  Really, it is as simple as that.  She quit.  Dropped out.  Cut and run.  "Run away!"  Buggered off.  Chickened out.  'Bravely ran away.'  

Yep, Brave Sir Robin, indeed.  

I can't even imagine in what fever-swampish thought process would lead one to believe that a possible run for the presidency would be served by bailing on the first term of your only real elected office.  (Don't start with the whole mayor of Wasilla thing.  I have known small town mayors, a decidedly unsavory lot, for the most part.  Or more blindly idealistic than even me.  Either way, this is not an accomplishment that stirs the hearts of men.  It is nice, in that quaint and slightly deranged Wooley's Bar for breakfast kind of way.  Yeah, the eggs are decent, but, my goodness, don't think too intently about who made them, or where, and with what utensils.)

Ahem.  Where was I?

"Ripping on yet another Republican.  Mindlessly shredding a politician who decided that you yammering liberal-elitist types were essentially destroying her family."

Oh, stop.  Please.  This particular politician would wade through hip-deep broken glass if it meant she could climb up to the next rung of political success.  Don't kid yourself.  This is no shrinking violet lamenting the way that the mean ole' media has been harassing her. Honestly. She is a politician with a keen desire to vault to the big prize, and seems all too willing to do whatever is necessary to get there.  (In this, she is not unlike a great many other politicians.  Oh, no, she is not rare in this compulsive desire to be at the center of attention in order to get to the big chair.  It has afflicted a great many, and she is neither the first nor the last to want to drink deeply from this particular cup of infamy.) 

So.  Why quit?  It makes no logical sense.  

You want to warm the big chair, finish your term in Alaska and then hit the road.  Make some smart, snappy speeches every now and then.  Brush up on policy.  Comfort yourself with the thought that Mitt Romney and Haley Barbour are your main competitors.  You were castigated as a lightweight - so, go out and finish off your term in a blaze of depth and complexity.  Do something startlingly difficult.  Most of all, have some flipping patience and stick to your job.  Don't give people the thought that you may actually be some kind of ADD addled punk who couldn't finish a gig.  

Is there some ugly scandal coming down the pike?  Hard to tell.  Might it be some dread illness in the family?  Nah, doesn't seem to be the case, that kind of speech would have been much different, far more noble, one that draws people in and allows them to support and offer sympathy.  Palin's speech on Friday was light-years away from that.  

No, the vibe was decidedly unhinged.  It was deeply, profoundly weird.  Even the Lt. Gov. seemed completely perplexed by the entire event, unsure whether or not he should be witnessing the train-wreck occurring mere paces away.  He wanted to avert his eyes, but the ghastly fascination was too much.  That's okay, we were all in the same boat. 

So, in a week, two strong contenders for the Republican nomination in 2012 went down in flames, leaving a trail of bizarre stories, and far too many questions.  

Of course, I don't think its over.  Not yet.  Not completely.  This worm is going to turn again before it is all over.  We are now entering into the brutally hot months of July and August when the heat really starts to bake the brain, and the storms and hurricanes start to unleash their wanton destruction.  These are the moments when the politicians don't think anybody is paying attention and start to go off at right-angles on us, offering brilliant schemes to ferret out the Illuminati or the last vestiges of the Knights Templar, and tying it all to the credit markets and poppy production in Afghanistan.  They will offer furtive speculation on the private habits of Syrian hamsters and what this means for the Dow. They will start to offer stone-cold proof for Obama having a hand in the Kennedy assassination.  They will blame Reagan and Paul Krugman for making the banks fail.  

This is going to be a weird summer.  Palin and Sanford will seem normal by September.  Not that it will save either one - a quitter and a doomed romantic hero.  Yikes.  Nonetheless, both are finished, no matter what kind of loopy spin jobs their most loyal sycophants might want to peddle.

Yep, it is in the air.  Buckle up, people, this is going to go out there this summer.

Moderates and Radicals

It has been an odd week.  

Classes have been running smoothly as we work through the various bits and pieces of medieval history in one, and early modern Europe in the other. The students, for the most part, seem essentially engaged, although there is the standard resistance to reading. 

No, the oddity was most notable in the seeming advocacy of actual anarchy by one of my students, one who really didn't seem to think it strange at all that we should entertain the notion.

You look at the student, wondering whether they are simply yanking 

your chain or not.

 

I decided that he wasn't.  I also decided that he had never even thought about the implications of such a political system.  I was also heartened by the thought that this student will likely never hold political office, or at least not until having successfully grown out of what seems to be a desperate yearning for living a purely hedonistic lifestyle with absolutely no responsibilities, and no accountability.  

I know, I know, I was a college student once, but I did tend to think, even in my most utopianistic fantasies, that some kind of government was necessary.  

The abject oddness of the week extended to the outpouring of emotion regarding the deaths of two pop culture mainstays.  I, and I rather guess that this marks me as somewhat cold, noted their passing, thought it wretched that both died too young, and then moved on.  I didn't really watch Ms. Fawcett's television shows (except for when she would appear on Letterman's show and proceed to weird out Mr. Letterman, which I think takes some doing), nor did I listen to Mr. Jackson's music.  In the early 80's I was listening to Midnight Oil, New Order, the Violent Femmes, or else to Rush, ELP, and King Crimson. Pop music wasn't quite my thing, I guess it never really has been.

Rounding out the stories of the week was the bizarre tale of Gov. Sanford.  Strange.  My only response, and this prompted by articles at The Daily Beast and The New Republic, is that this guy is no tragic, lovelorn hero.  He had an affair.  He lied about where he was heading so as to hope to cover up his affair.  If he had the courage of his email convictions he would have done the exceptionally hard thing, and figured out if he wanted to chuck his marriage and kids for his new love or not.  The two articles both celebrate his heroic and tragic love-affair, as if he did something brave.  Honestly. 

But all of it is really just back-ground chatter.  

I continue to return to the idea that I have been kicking around this week, as I think about various historical revolutions (the English and the French being the two most recently discussed in my classes, and the Papal Revolution of the Eleventh Century coming up this week), and also contemplate Iran's unfolding crisis.  Mostly, I have been thinking about the fact that on their own, radicals don't get very far.  Certainly, they can do a great deal of damage to a system of governance, but it usually takes moderates in the mix before something actually takes place that has any lasting value.

Think about this for a minute with me.  Perhaps this goes back to my ruminations on legitimacy.  It is definitely connected, I think.  If the moderates in Iran feel that they have been completely shut out, as opposed to feeling as if they got the shaft every now and again, but ultimately thought their voice was being heard, at least every now and then, then they will turn on this government.  It will take time, and a great deal of hardship, but I wonder whether in their thinking Khamanei and Ahmadinejad have lost legitimacy.  They have broken what little trust that they may have had, and now the moderates are becoming more and more disillusioned.  Note, this is a rather organic process, the Iranian moderates needed to see with their own eyes that this regime was willing to turn on them to maintain power.  This, all of sudden to a great many within the country, was not a government that maintained strict control out of a sense of fulfilling Muslim law, but out of the very human consideration of retaining power.  This shattering of illusions seems to be bringing the moderates into the place where they will simply not allow the status quo to be maintained, even if this means a rather prolonged and bloody confrontation with the side that has all the power.

Here is my thought, though.  If the moderates in Iran don't become a major player, than this little uprising will remain a little uprising.  A moment of radicalism easily squelched.  If it is only the radicals kicking up a fuss, it is so much easier to ignore.  If the election revolt spreads to those recognized as wandering toward the middle of their particular political spectrum, well, that is much harder to ignore, even in a absolutist power structure.  I think we can see this frustration in Ahmadinejad's latest fulmination about Obama.  He is not mad at Obama, he is starting to realize that this little imbroglio doesn't seem to be dying down too easily.  And with each new crackdown, he creates even more sympathy for those he is beating in the streets, which brings more people into the cause that wants to see such a petty tyrant moved out of power.  The moderates are driving this, not the radicals.  Radicals can be ignored.  Moderates cannot.  Mainly due to the fact that they are respected. 

I know, I know, this is not earthshaking.  Hardly revelatory.  Nonetheless, it may net a few results in areas that do not immediately pertain to Iran.

In our two political parties, the fringe-dwellers do not shape policy, nor do they truly affect the way in which most people contemplate various notions of our common life together.  Once an idea starts to filter into the moderate wing of the party (either one), then, and really only then, does an idea have the chance to be turned into some kind of governing principle.   

If nothing else, this should enable us to filter out the noise of our political process.  The hard-core left-wing and right-wing voices?  They aren't driving the debate.  They can yowl all they want, but because they are not respected voices, they are treated as annoyances and side-shows (even when they turn violent on the rare occasion), diverting attention from the people actually trying to get stuff done.

Hmm.  Not sure this amounts to anything.  But it seems that perhaps American media tends to focus on the radicals, when it really should be examining the moderates.   Moderates may be dull, but they do plod their way to actual progress.

Hopefully, the moderates will have the opportunity for such progress.  I think they have a good shot at it.

President Obama on the latest developments in Iran

A part of the legitimacy that is necessarily a component of anyone attempting to govern is that they must be perceived by the rest of the world as 'essentially' trustworthy enough with which to deal.  Even if this perception is thinly veiled self-interest, it is still a part of the way this all works.  If countries do not believe that Iran can be trusted, it they start to think that all deals will be subject to some kind of skullduggery, they will start to pull back.

This latest statement from the Obama administration opens with a reminder that what is happening in Iran is not happening behind closed doors, that how the government of Iran proceeds in these chaotic times will have a profound impact on how other governments treat them.  It is not a threat (and it should not be, as there is no way to follow through on such a threat), it is a reminder.  An important one.

Likewise, note that the President frames this response from the Iranian peoples' point of view.  The legitimacy of the government is derived from the people, be it from voting, voicing their discontent, or peacefully protesting the actions of the government.  

In both cases, the President is arguing that the issue of legitimacy is based on what the Iranians think, and how the whole of the world community responds.  The Americans in this case are simply another member of that much broader community.  At heart, it is the Iranian people who will ultimately determine the end game.  

This was a necessary ratcheting up of the rhetoric in light of the surge of violence over the weekend, but note that it still does not say anything about the actual internal debate between the various factions, simply that even in such chaotic times the government should not, must not, stoop to violent repression.  

For those who would rather Obama do more, I ask: what can really be done, especially if the Iranians want to spin out this protest into an actual revolution (or at least a political reformation)?  We can't.  That said, the prudent way in which the Obama administration is playing this out is a good sign that perhaps a few folks know their history.  

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary
_______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                                        June 20, 2009
 

Statement from the President on Iran

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights. 

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion. 

Martin Luther King once said - "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

A Bit of Traffic Trolling

I know, I know.  This is all decidedly crass, but simply file it away under shameless self-promotion.

Alphainventions.com is a blog aggregator, one that offers a folks an opportunity to see what is churning out there in the blogosphere.   Take a peek, sometimes you can find a new site that is worth your time and effort.  My hope is that folks may see this lovely little site, and hang around awhile to enter into our discussions of a great many issues - serious and not quite so serious.

Legitimacy - Iranian, Iraqi, and American

This is the issue that I have been kicking around for a few days, coming to the conclusion that while it may be slightly heartbreaking, the United States response to the Iranian election is...well....crickets.  As it should be.

I know.  Seems more than a bit harsh.  A great many folks want us to shout our support for the reformers from the rooftops, but it would be a spectacularly bad idea. Spectacularly.  

Why?

Very simply, it is this - if the United States wades too deeply into the Iranian election disaster, we will completely and utterly undermine the reformers.  This will happen because the Iranian hard-liners will claim that we are over-extending our prerogatives, acting exactly like the imperialist power they believe us to be.  We have to confound their expectations.

This is true not simply because it is the right way to proceed geo-politically, making sure that we do not give the Iranian theocrats an excuse to completely crack-down as they make the argument that we were the ones riling up the students and protestors.

It is true because if this revolution is to be legitimate, the Iranians are going to have to do it on their own.  If they cannot make it work, at least in some significant way, it won't be legitimate.  Think about Iraq in this context, we ushered in the regime change.  We made that happen.  Since our entrance into Iraqi politics (this time around, we have done this before, although not to such an explicit level) the government has been unstable, and the country continues to be torn apart by sporadic bouts of ugly violence.  The Iraqi people, even those who cheered American intervention, cannot be certain that this is going to work, because they did not do the work to get it to this point.  Thus, they are not quite sure that this is their victory.  

Think of the Kurds, we had, seemingly forever and a day, been encouraging them to rebel, both covertly and overtly, and it never worked.  Why? Because they never had the ability to make it happen on their terms.  They couldn't pull it off, and thus it failed.  And, frankly, every time it was revealed that we were behind their efforts to break with Saddam, they got brutally wacked.  Our intervention cost them. Regularly.  Our bellicosity did not help them one iota.

If a revolution is going to happen in Iran, it will have be organic, home grown.  If American finger-prints are on the events, it will never gain legitimacy, because the very reason it was started will be clouded in doubt and second-guessing as to America's motives.  Thus, we have to offer a rather muted response, articulating our desire for democracy as a concept and political theory to flourish and grow, and to comment that perhaps gunning your people down is not a good plan.  Beyond that, nothing.  We have to watch and wait. We cannot make Ahmadinejad's job easier by spouting off at precisely the wrong time, which means that folks like John McCain and Mike Pence are completely missing the subtlety necessary at this point in time.

Would we like to see the reformers succeed?  Yep.  Can we do anything to help them right now?  Nope.  

We have to sit, and wait, and hope that they can find a way to actually press their case with their fellow Iranians.  This only works if the Iranians make it work.  

Remember, the French didn't decide to help out the American colonists until they showed the world that they could actually not simply take on the English, but actually beat them at a critical juncture of the war.  We needed to stand on our own and show that we had the ability to take on the English, and beat them.

Excruciating, yes, indeed.  But absolutely necessary.

Now we have to sit and watch to see if the Iranians can make their own case for their own future.  Remember, this is about Iran and the Iranians.  This is not about us.  

Our job is to let this grow on its own.  

The Iranian Tightrope

I have been readings some posts on various blogs taking the Obama administration to task for not supporting the nascent reform movement in Iran.  This is a significant issue, one worth taking a short bit of time tonight to address.  This is still a bit disjointed, but see if you can follow my line of thinking on this.

First - We have to realize that no matter what 'we' want to happen in Iran, this ultimately is about Iran.  Not us.  Not the rest of the world.  Iran.  It is a tough line to take, but we have to be cognizant of the reality that if the Iranian reform is going to succeed, it will have to succeed from within, or it will never gain any kind of lasting legitimacy.  If these students, and various leaders like Mousavi, cannot find a way to continue their drive toward a more moderate Iran, there is little we can do to actually help.

Second - If the Obama administration goes off on the disaster taking place in Iran right now, the thuggish Ahmadinejad and his supporters amongst the religious leadership of the Revolution will whine like dogs about the interventionist Americans, always sticking their noses where they don't belong.  We cannot give them any more weapons in their propaganda campaign against the reformers.  We have to proceed with great caution, making sure that we register our distaste for quashing an open electoral process, but not stating outright that we believe the entire vote to be a sham.  Even if we do think that, we need proof before we can start saying anything to that effect.  Proof.  We need to have iron-clad proof that the fix was in.  It certainly feels that way - but we can only proceed along those lines if we know that it was fixed.  Hunches don't work.  It is not a good methodology to adopt, even if it would feel so good to do so.

Third - We have to play the long game on Iran.  Our foreign policy interests are fairly straightforward - a stable Iran with a more moderate government and governmental structure.  This helps to stabilize the entire region, especially once we finally get out of Iraq.  (We have been messing with these countries for years - perhaps we should learn the lesson that direct intervention (or covert intervention) isn't always the best plan.)  We need to have these countries see that America has been a part of the solution, not a part of the ongoing problem.  If we step too heavy now, we will miss a golden opportunity.

Fourth - Ahmadinejad is desperately hoping that Obama goes overboard, because it gives him every excuse to disappear a few reformers, as well as make sweeping statements about American colonial impulses.  We want this fool out of power, but it must happen organically.  Thus, we need to find back channel methods for encouraging the reformers and moderates.  The students need to know that we support them, but if this is going to work they must carry the fight on their own shoulders.

I know, I know.  It seems all very hollow.  We want them to succeed, but cannot really do much to help, without being seen as a huge impediment, or worse, meddlesome.  This is an exceptionally dicey situation - Iran has an opportunity to reinvent itself, and perhaps move toward a government that can actually embrace its middle ground.  But if we go off too boldly, we will scuttle the entire process.

No good solutions.  I am afraid.  Just a lot of hard work, a great deal of pain, and a mountain of uncertainty.  But if they can swing this, it will be worth more than we can imagine.  

Another point is this - right now, there are some neo-cons who hope that Ahmadinejad stays in power, because he provides such a ridiculously easy topic for those who see the path ahead littered only with our bombs dropped on Iranian nuclear plants.  If he remains in power as the bete-noire of America, we don't have to try to actually use our brains to sort out the Iranian problem.  We just bomb them into Dresden-like submission.

Except that that won't work.  We will simply alienate yet another country - almost completely.  We need to find a way to move forward with conversation that allows the grown-ups to sit at the table and actually hammer out some decisions.  The foolish knaves like Ahmadinejad and John Bolton need to be kept away from the table.  This will take time.  If we play this one right, with patience, and resolve, we may yet help the Iranians find their way to a more moderate place.  

We also need to see if the moderates can notch a few wins, pyrrhic or not, they need to put something in the win column - for that will encourage others around the world (and perhaps even other Middle Easter moderates (say, in Saudi Arabia, or somesuch other nations who could use a bit of a moderating influence in their lives).  People need to know that the moderate reformer types can actually succeed.  This would be good for the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

It would be good for all of us.  But most importantly, it would be good for the Iranians. 

News from Iran

Hang on, people.  This is going to get decidedly dodgy in short order.  My hope is that the reformers can find some way of finding some support in the face of the crackdown.  I know it is an incredibly small gesture, but I certainly support the reformers and their willingness to stand up for their right to decide the future of their country.  

Iran's Election

Casting about the web for news from Iran has turned up the same lede over and over - the results are a mess.  From Al Jazeera to the Washington Post the headlines are all too consistent:  Iran Rivals Dispute Polls.  

I have a sense that this is going to take quite some time to figure out.  If we see a quick victory statement from the government on Ahmadinejad's behalf, I think we will see some significant protests.  Yes, even in Iran.  The Mousavi campaign has captured the attention of far too many Iranians to simply fade away, or be disappeared.  As stated in the Guardian:

"Supporting Mousavi started just a week ago when Iran state-run TV conducted an extremely exciting debate between him and Ahmadinejad in Iran's most unprecedented challenging television program since the Islamic Republic where Mousavi criticised the Iranian president harshly and called him literally a liar.

If there was a time when criticising president of the country or head of the experts' council was taboo in Iran, it seems to be over: last week millions of Iranians chanted "Down with Ahmadinejad", "Ahmadinejad, the great liar", "Down with dictator", "Ahmadi bye-bye", "Down with Hashemi" and "By the end of the week, Ahmadi is gone" in streets all over the country, even in the very rural regions.

For the first night after the debate, thousands of cars went out to cruise streets in Tehran to support Mousavi and showed their excitement, but over the next few days it became a public enthusiasm which one Iranian journalist called "Mousavi's green campaign tsunami". From last week's public presence in streets, many believe that Mir Hussein Mousavi should win the Iranian election."

Regardless of the outcome of this vote, Iran is going to have a hard time turning this tide of a desire for reform.  Now, the hope is that it does not go the way of the Tiananmen Square Protests, aka the June Fourth Incident.  I don't think it will because this 'revolt' is taking place at the ballot box, and thus I would argue that this is going to have some legs as an issue even if Mousavi does not win.  Once a reform movement has begun, especially at this level of involvement, it is difficult, if not impossible, to completely squelch for good. It is too big to simply fade away, even if the Iranian government wants to sweep the entire movement under the rug.  There are now too many moving parts.

The reason that we should be cheering this reform movement is really rather basic, as the reformers want to do two things:  One, provide a greater sense of social liberty at home. Two, actually realize that the way forward includes closer relationships with Western countries.  The reformers are realizing that Iran has a tremendous opportunity to move away from the insularity of the Islamic Republic, which is good most especially for Iran, but also for the Mid-East and the rest of the world.  We benefit from a willingness to reach out.  A victory by Ahmadinejad reinforces the his lunatic world-view, not something that is beneficial in the long term - for Iran.  

Richard Engel, of NBC News, is now reporting from Iran, stating that the character of the election was quite open, welcoming, and quite festive.  A great many people are feeling, though, that the whole election may have been a cruel joke played on the Iranian people by Ahmadinejad, that it was a sham.  The government declared that Ahmadinejad had won a 65-35 victory, but was so nervous about such a declaration that they cut all cell-phone and internet traffic.  Engel commented that what will happen to the reform movement is the big question in all of this.  He wondered whether the organizers of this movement might start disappearing or finding themselves suddenly under arrest.  Engle also stated that it may simply be too big to disappear altogether.

The very fact that the massive crowds were made up of mostly young people is a signal that demographics may be the conservative government's biggest headache.  Simply put, these students are not going to suddenly decide that they really did not want to make their country a better place, or at least a different place.  These young people in Iran are going to continue their campaign.

If Mousavi does win, well, then, we will need to continue to nurture this new openness, as President Obama was attempting to do last week in Cairo.  

As actual results come in, I will post them.  Keep an eye on this one folks, this is a rather important story to watch.

Tasting Notes - St. Arnold's Fancy Lawnmower Beer

Long story short? 

Meh.  

I mean honestly.  You spend the time and effort to produce a microbrew, and this is what you make?  

Really?

"Somewhat harsh, no, Ken?"

There is nothing particularly wrong with the beer, but there is nothing particularly right with the beer either.  It is perfectly serviceable if you need something to quench your thirst.  

It is certainly better than a great many other mass produced beers, but that is really damning with faint praise, indeed.

"Ok, enough kvetching, give us a few bits of data to hang our hats on, and we will make up our own minds.  Likely as not, you are simply being melodramatic."

Perhaps.

Ok, a few words on the taste.  It starts quite clean.  This is a beer that purports to be a German Kolsch.  

Ehh. Mayhap this is a bit of reach.

"Ken, their website states that this beer has won a series of Great American Beer Festival awards.  Are you saying that those judging panels were wrong?"

Well, if the shoe fits.  A Kolsch should be a decently malty beer with some nice hints of fruit.  First, the beer lacks a good taste of malt.  It verges on cloying, not the hearty richness that you seek in a beer with quality malt.  The finish is all wrong for a Kolsch - that hint of fruit should be refreshing and provide a slight sense of tartness, but this simply wallows about for a bit and then gives up on the entire enterprise.  

This beer would be perfectly acceptable in the same way that a pitcher of Blatz is perfectly acceptable when it is exceptionally cold and decently priced.  

The final word?  A bit of a disappointment, one that I really didn't expect.

The Beer Fridge

It is a sight that would make Dante proud, at least as he describes the Paradiso.  Now, granted, it misses a few important beers, but nonetheless, this is a sight to make good on the promise of humanity and its ability to do the right thing.  

Shiner Bock - An exceptional bock that is immediately drinkable and enjoyable, regardless the temperature.  

Spaten Dunkel - A delightfully serviceable dunkel - which, because it is Bavarian, simply means that you will be hard pressed to find a better dark beer to enjoy.  

Stella Artois - a perfectly crisp, astonishing beer from Belgium.  When Bud and Miller grow up, this is what they want to be.

Saint Arnold - Lawnmower beer.  An unknown entity lurking in my beer fridge.  I have no idea if this is the worth the price I paid for it, or disastrous moose piss.  Could be either, but I strongly suspect that this will be a delightfully refreshing beer.  As I wandered down the beer aisle at the Gucci HEB, I said to Denise that I needed a post-lawnmowing beer.  As soon as I said it, we turned and spied the St. Arnold's brew.  So, I picked it up on a mere whim.  

Of course, I don't mow my own lawn anymore.  So the whole idea is kind of moot, but I can still appreciate the concept.  

"Umm, Ken.  You don't even mow your own grass?  What a lazy hack you have become. Typical Marxist-Leftist History professor hypocrisy.  You celebrate work and owning the means of production, but you cannot even lift a finger to mow your own grass.  You are absolutely hopeless."

Really.  Are you going to mow this field when it is 100 degrees?  I didn't think so.  Now, I recognize that there is a certain level of abject foolishness to my willingness to hire a service to mow my grass, perhaps even a level of rank hypocrisy.  Then I think about how beastly hot it is in June-July-August, and frankly how little I actually want to mow the bloody lot.  That, and I comfort myself with the reality that the guys who mow my grass use big, honking riding lawn-mowers with more bells and whistles then the car that I drive.

You want to mow this?  I didn't think so, so pipe down.  Knaves.

Newcastle Brown Ale - Because every beer fridge deserves to have a solid English Ale within its confines.  This is a beer that is perfect at the end of a day and with a hearty meal.  One of the best beers for sheer ease of enjoyment, as it has a clean taste, rich, plenty of flavor.

Belhaven Scottish Ale - I know, I know.  Cans???  It seems like sacrilege.  It is not. Certain beers from across the pond are better if you can get them as close as you can to draught - I am thinking Guinness, anything from Belhaven - and you can only do this with cans with the special nitrogen capsules.  The bottles are fine, but if you can find these beers in the can with the nitrogen you will be a much happier camper, as you can pour a pint that is as close to the tap as you can find.  This is important, as too much carbonation (usually found in the bottled variety) absolutely kills the beer.

It is a good fridge.  One worth blogging, mainly because it means that the Summer I session will go smoothly, as I relax each night with a quality beverage.  

I honestly do not know what would happen if the beer fridge died.  It would be a tragedy of biblical proportions.  

My prayers for the summer, and into the next school year, will include the continued proper functioning of the beer fridge (that and a new contract, but that is a different blog altogether).  And yes, that is really the only thing in our garage fridge - as it should be in everyone's homestead.  Beer is far too important to leave to some multi-tasking abomination.

When I give the St. Arnold's a try, I will post a Tasting Notes.

Obama at Buchenwald

There is a palpable sense of fear, horror, loss, and grief at the concentration camps yet today.  As Denise and I walked the large empty spaces of Dachau, the cramped hallways of the main building, and through the prototype gas chamber and crematorium (though it was just me at this point, as Denise had been through the ghastly building on a previous trip, and did not want to go through again) the outside world began to disappear and the sheer monstrous nature of this place crept in, robbing our walk of any speed, forcing us to absorb what it is and what it was.

You cannot help but be changed by such an experience.  We really aren't quite equipped to deal with such feelings - our brains and hearts begin to shy away from such naked evil brutality.  We shrink and hide from how it is that human beings could do this to our fellow travelers on this big blue marble.

Which is why it is so vitally important to go.  You need to walk in these places.  You need to get some sense of the way in which cruelty was institutionalized, how efficient it became to rob people of their humanity and their lives.  We must look.  We must expose ourselves to this reality.  It has to happen.

I applaud President Obama for going to Buchenwald - it was exceptionally important that he walk in those places, and that he walked with those who survived the camps.  We need these types of experiences to provide perspective.

Never again.  I only hope that we can learn this all important lesson.

President Obama's Speech in Cairo

I implore you - watch the speech.  The whole speech.  Especially if you have only heard snippets on TV.  This is worth the hour that you need to devote, as the President is saying something rather important about exceptionally difficult questions regarding our relationship with the Middle East and Muslims around the world in general.  Don't listen to the hard right-wing or left-wing hacks who care more for controversy than actually figuring out our problems, listen to what Obama is saying in this speech, as he actually is looking for a way out of the chaos.

Al Giordano on the Tiller Case

This is a very good examination of today's events. Definitely worth your time and effort.

 The assassination this morning of Wichita doctor George Tiller, on his way into a Lutheran church service, was the second attempt on his life, this one successful. The first attempt on the doctor who works in a reproductive health clinic that has long been targeted by Operation Rescue and other anti-choice organizations came on August 19, 1993, when a man named Stanley Shannon’s bullets wounded the doctor in both arms. (Shannon served an 11-year sentence for that crime.)

Just two-and-a-half years ago, Dr. Tiller was targeted with the usual vitriol by Fox News talker Bill O’Reilly, who falsely accused the doctor of performing late term abortions – legal to protect the health of the mother – to treat temporary psychological depression of the patient. Tiller denied the charge, and accused the then-attorney general of the state, Phill Kline, as being O’Reilly’s source for the claim. Kline had charged Dr. Tiller, in 2006, with 30 counts of administering abortions to minors and other crimes. The Court dismissed the charges. In 2007, Democratic Attorney General Paul Morrison charged Dr. Tiller on 19 counts. Two months ago, a jury acquitted the doctor on each and every charge.

Just as Situationist Gianfranco Sanguinetti warned the international left, in his 1979 essay, that acts of terrorism always reinforce the powers of the State (his thesis was that State power and terrorism are mutually symbiotic and dependent on each other), the North American religious right is going to suffer great losses as a result of this morning’s terrorist act in Wichita. That, this time, the assassination attempt succeeded, and that it happened in the sanctuary of a church of a mainstream Protestant faith, will provoke a double whammy of shock and revulsion, including among tens of millions of Americans that do not like abortion, but likewise believe that assassination is obviously just as (or more) anti-life.

The original assassination attempt on Dr. Tiller came eight months into the Clinton presidency. The parallel with today’s offense ought to be obvious: a pro-choice president takes office and the violent extremists go all crazy, whipped up by some of the same right wing radio talkers today as sixteen years ago.

The predictable knee-jerk response from some in the pro-choice majority will be to attempt to demonize and link all Americans that define themselves as “pro life” as aiding and abetting this act of terrorism by having a mere opinion, just as George W. Bush and others attempted to link all oppositional dissent to the attacks of September 11, 2001. And while it is an absolute certainty that the Obama Justice Department will investigate and prosecute this latest crime - and criminal - to the maximum extent of the law, those that want to, like Bush, demonize dissent itself are not going to get much rhetorical backing from the President. His May 17 remarks at Notre Dame are now prescient:

A few days after I won the Democratic nomination, I received an email from a doctor who told me that while he voted for me in the primary, he had a serious concern that might prevent him from voting for me in the general election. He described himself as a Christian who was strongly pro-life, but that’s not what was preventing him from voting for me.

What bothered the doctor was an entry that my campaign staff had posted on my website – an entry that said I would fight “right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman’s right to choose.” The doctor said that he had assumed I was a reasonable person, but that if I truly believed that every pro-life individual was simply an ideologue who wanted to inflict suffering on women, then I was not very reasonable. He wrote, “I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words.”

Fair-minded words.

After I read the doctor’s letter, I wrote back to him and thanked him. I didn’t change my position, but I did tell my staff to change the words on my website. And I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me. Because when we do that – when we open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do – that’s when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.

That’s when we begin to say, “Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions.

So let’s work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term. Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women.”

An assassin in Kansas has just inadvertently strengthened the hand and command of this head of State. A very similar dynamic will come into play as did on April 19, 1995, when a terrorist car-bombing of the Oklahoma Federal Building killed 168 people, and wounded 450 more, including children in a day care center there. That terrorist act - the man convicted for it, Timothy McVeigh, believed he was avenging an act of State terrorism two years prior in Waco, Texas - returned the upper hand to an already embattled President Clinton. His Democratic Party had lost the US House in the 1994 elections to what then-Speaker Newt Gingrich’s called his “revolution” of the right. The Oklahoma City bombing shook public opinion enough to considerably slow what had been, prior, a juggernaut's momentum by the Gingrich revolution, allowing Clinton to again claim the terrain of the political center.

That today’s atrocity occurs not under the helm of an embattled liberal president, but of one that enjoys 67 percent support, still, from the American people, will have even more devastating consequences for the cultural and political right that has placed abortion at the center of its agenda. There is no need to demonize them with a broad brush for it. The first immediate consequence of the assassination of Dr. Tiller will be that it virtually removes the political points to be scored by those who planned to wage an anti-choice argument against US Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

I would also be very surprised if, in the coming days, some right-wing radio talkers and those from anti-choice organizations like Operation Rescue can’t help but make the sorts of outrageous statements about this act of terrorism that shock and provoke backlash from the American public. As a crew, they have already whipped themselves up into a mental state of frenzied derangement. The countdown now begins to find out which will shovel their own political graves over this one.

Dr. George Tiller spent much of his 68 years on earth working for an ideal – every woman’s right to safe reproductive freedom – for which he was long persecuted and today he paid the ultimate price. I do believe that if the good doctor could watch what happens next, he would not at all feel the sorrow that comes from dying in vain or after a life without meaning. His was a life that did not end in death, but lives on with even greater purpose and reason than it already had deservedly accrued. As we say South of the Border, where we have many martyrs - old and new - for human freedom: George Tiller, presente.

Update: Cue up Randall Terry, head of Operation Rescue, to step right into this tragedy with inflammatory rhetoric. He told Associated Press:

"George Tiller was a mass murderer and we cannot stop saying that," Terry said. "He was an evil man — his hands were covered with blood."

Terry said he was now concerned that the Obama administration "will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions."

Terry was already a very self-marginalized fringe player, but, still, he knows not isolation like that which he has brought upon himself and his organization now.

Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed today in Wichita, Kansas

In light of this horrific act, perpetrated while Dr. Tiller was serving as an usher at Reformation Lutheran Church, Wichita, KS, one thought immediately came to me in the form of a quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi:

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."

Regardless of whether you are pro-life or pro-choice what took place today was wrong. Absolutely and completely wrong.  One may have thought Dr. Tiller a murderer, but that does not give anyone the right to simply gun him down.   We are a nation of laws.  You don't like the laws?  Work to change them.  Work within the system to bring about change. 

Taking matters into your hands opens the door to chaos.

Frank Rich offers additional perspective

This is a piece that clearly needs to be read in concert with the Richard Clarke piece I posted yesterday.  The issues raised in these two articles are vital to our understanding of where we go next as a nation regarding foreign policy and national security.  It also reminds us that we are all much better off when Dick Cheney is hiding out in his undisclosed location. (As a side note, my goodness, quite the ugly little display of spinelessness by the Democrats regarding the Guantanamo funding vote.  Even Russ Feingold folded like a cheap tent on that one.  Yikes.  And yes, we can actually house terrorists in American prisons - we already do.  Lock them in our SuperMax prisons and these people will almost literally never see the light of day again.)  Nonetheless, here is Rich's Sunday New York Times column for your perusal.

----------

AFTER watching the farce surrounding Dick Cheney’s coming-out party this month, you have to wonder: Which will reach Washington first, change or the terrorists? If change doesn’t arrive soon, terrorists may well rush in where the capital’s fools now tread.

accountability for the failed Bush presidency rather than to drum up a new war. Once again Democrats in Congress were cowed. And once again too much of the so-called liberal news media parroted the right’s scare tactics, putting America’s real security interests at risk by failing to challenge any Washington politician carrying a big stick.

Cheney’s “no middle ground” speech on torture at the American Enterprise Institute arrived with the kind of orchestrated media campaign that he, his boss and Karl Rove patented in the good old days. It was bookended by a pair of Republican attack ads on the Web that crosscut President Obama’s planned closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention center with apocalyptic imagery — graphic video of the burning twin towers in one ad, a roar of nuclear holocaust (borrowed from the L.B.J. “daisy” ad of 1964) in the other.

The speech itself, with 20 mentions of 9/11, struck the same cynical note as the ads, as if the G.O.P. was almost rooting for a terrorist attack on Obama’s watch. “No one wishes the current administration more success in defending the country than we do,” Cheney said as a disingenuous disclaimer before going on to charge that Obama’s “half measures” were leaving Americans “half exposed.” The new president, he said, is unraveling “the very policies that kept our people safe since 9/11.” In other words, when the next attack comes, it will be all Obama’s fault. A new ad shouting “We told you so!” awaits only the updated video.

The Republicans at least have an excuse for pushing this poison. They are desperate. The trio of Pillsbury doughboys now leading the party — Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Cheney — have variously cemented the G.O.P.’s brand as a whites-only men’s club by revoking Colin Powell’s membership and smearing the first Latina Supreme Court nominee as a “reverse racist.” Republicans in Congress have no plausible economic, health care or energy policies to counter Obama’s. The only card left to play is 9/11.

Yet even before Cheney spoke, Congressional Democrats were quaking in fear, purporting with straight faces that the transfer of detainees to “supermax” American prisons constituted a serious security threat. Many of the same senators who signed on to the Iraq war resolution in the fall of 2002 joined the 90-to-6 majority that put a hold on Obama’s Gitmo closure plans.

The déjà vu in the news media was more chilling. Rather than vet the substance of Cheney’s fulmination, talking heads instead hyped the split-screen “dueling speeches” gimmick of the back-to-back Obama-Cheney scheduling. Time magazine’s political Web site Photoshopped Cheney and Obama’s faces atop prize fighters’ bodies.

Most of the punditocracy scored the fight on a curve, setting up a false equivalence between the men’s ideas. Cheney’s pugnacious certitude edged out Obama’s law-professor nuance. “On policy grounds, you’ve got a real legitimate fight here,” David Gregory insisted on “Meet the Press” as he regurgitated the former vice president’s argument (“You can’t compromise on these matters”) and questioned whether the president could “really bring” his brand of pragmatism “to the issue of the war on terror.”

One New York Daily News columnist summed up Cheney’s supposed TKO this way: “The key to Cheney’s powerful performance: facts, facts, facts.” But the facts, as usual, were wrong.

At the McClatchy newspapers’ Washington bureau, the reporters Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel detailed 10 whoppers. With selective quotations, Cheney falsified the views of the director of national intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, on the supposed intelligence value of waterboarding. Equally bogus was Cheney’s boast that his administration had “moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and their sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks.” In truth, the Bush administration had lost Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, not least because it started diverting huge assets to Iraq before accomplishing the mission of vanquishing Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. That decision makes us less safe to this very minute.

You can find a link to the complete Landay-Strobel accounting of Cheney’s errors in the online version of this column. The failure of much of the press to match their effort has a troubling historical antecedent. These are the same two journalists who, reporting for what was then Knight Ridder, uncovered much of the deceit in the Bush-Cheney case for the Iraq war in the crucial weeks before Congress gave the invasion the green light.

On Sept. 6, 2002, Landay and Strobel reported that there was no known new intelligence indicating that “the Iraqis have made significant advances in their nuclear, biological or chemical weapons programs.” It was two days later that The Times ran its now notorious front-page account of Saddam Hussein’s “quest for thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes.” In the months that followed, as the Bush White House kept beating the drum for Saddam’s imminent mushroom clouds to little challenge from most news organizations, Landay and Strobel reported on the “lack of hard evidence” of Iraqi weapons and theinfighting among intelligence agencies. Their scoops were largely ignored by the big papers and networks as America hurtled toward fiasco.

Another reporter who was ahead of the pack in unmasking Bush-Cheney propaganda is the author Ron Suskind. In his 2006 book on the American intelligence matrix, “The One Percent Doctrine,” Suskind wrote about a fully operational and potentially catastrophic post-9/11 Qaeda assault on America that actually was aborted in the Bush years: a hydrogen cyanide attack planned for the New York City subways. It was halted 45 days before zero hour — but not because we stopped it. Al-Zawahri had called it off.

When Bush and Cheney learned of the cancellation later on from conventional intelligence, they were baffled as to why. The answer: Al-Zawahri had decided that a rush-hour New York subway attack was not enough of an encore to top 9/11. Al Qaeda’s “special event” strategy, Suskind wrote, requires the creation of “an upward arc of rising and terrible expectation” that is “multiplied by time passing.” The event that fits that bill after 9/11 must involve some kind of nuclear weapon.

“What are the lessons of this period?” Suskind asked when we spoke last week. “If you draw the wrong lessons, you end up embracing the wrong answers.” They are certainly not the lessons cited by Cheney. Waterboarding hasn’t and isn’t going to save us from anything. The ticking time-bomb debate rekindled by Cheney’s speech may be entertaining on “24” or cable-news food fights, but is a detour from the actual perils before the country. “What we’re dealing with is a patient foe who thinks in decades while we tend to think more in news cycles,” Suskind said. “We have to try to wrestle this fear-based debate into something resembling a reality-based discussion.”

The reality is that while the Bush administration was bogged down in Iraq and being played by Pervez Musharraf, the likelihood of Qaeda gaining access to nuclear weapons in a Taliban-saturated Pakistan was increasing by the day. We know that in the month before 9/11, bin Laden and al-Zawahri met with the Pakistani nuclear scientist Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood. That was the real link between 9/11 and nuclear terror that the Bush administration let metastasize while it squandered American resources on a fictional link between 9/11 and a “nuclear” Saddam.

And where are we now? On the eve of Obama’s inauguration, David Sanger reported in The Times that military and nuclear experts agree that if “a real-life crisis” breaks out in Pakistan “it is unlikely that anyone would be able to assure an American president, with confidence, that he knew where all of Pakistan’s weapons were — or that none were in the hands of Islamic extremists.”

Pakistan is the time bomb. But with a push from Cheney, abetted by too many Democrats and too many compliant journalists, we have been distracted into drawing the wrong lessons, embracing the wrong answers. We are even wasting time worrying that detainees might escape from tomb-sized concrete cells in Colorado.

What we need to be doing instead, as Suskind put it, is to “build the thing we don’t have — human intelligence. We need people who are cooperating with us, who step up and help, and who won’t turn away when they see things happening. Hearts and minds — which we’ve botched — must be corrected and corrected quickly. That’s what wins the battle, not going medieval.” It’s not for nothing, after all, that Powell, Gen. David Petraeus andRobert Gates, the secretary of defense — among other military minds — agree with Obama, not Cheney, about torture and Gitmo.

The harrowing truth remains unchanged from what it was before Cheney emerged from his bunker to set Washington atwitter. The Bush administration did not make us safer either before or after 9/11. Obama is not making us less safe. If there’s another terrorist attack, it will be because the mess the Bush administration ignored in Pakistan and Afghanistan spun beyond anyone’s control well before Americans could throw the bums out.

William is Home!

I really don't need to say much more than that, but my goodness this is a wonderful thing to post on this day.  Seems all rather fitting - it is his original due date (if I am not mistaken), and the day of the first game of the Stanley Cup, which pits the Red Wings against the Penguins.

Welcome home, William.  Definitely a good day for you and your Mom and Dad.

Richard Clarke provides some needed perspective

In the midst of the development of a rather overt revisionist read of history, as offered by Dick Cheney and assorted others, this is a welcome tonic, and a necessary corrected construction of the events of late 2001. The article can be found in tomorrow's Washington Post. 

The Trauma of 9/11 Is No Excuse

By Richard A. Clarke
Sunday, May 31, 2009 

Top officials from the Bush administration have hit upon a revealing new theme as they retrospectively justify their national security policies. Call it the White House 9/11 trauma defense.

"Unless you were there, in a position of responsibility after September 11, you cannot possibly imagine the dilemmas that you faced in trying to protect Americans," Condoleezza Rice said last month as she admonished a Stanford University student who questioned the Bush-era interrogation program. And in his May 21 speech on national security, Dick Cheney called the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, a "defining" experience that "caused everyone to take a serious second look" at the threats to America. Critics of the administration have become more intense as memories of the attacks have faded, he argued. "Part of our responsibility, as we saw it," Cheney said, "was not to forget the terrible harm that had been done to America."

I remember that morning, too. Shortly after the second World Trade Center tower was hit, I burst in on Rice (then the president's national security adviser) and Cheney in the vice president's office and remember glimpsing horror on his face. Once in the bomb shelter, Cheney assembled his team while the crisis managers on the National Security Council staff coordinated the government response by video conference from the Situation Room. Many of us thought that we might not leave the White House alive. I remember the next day, too, when smoke still rose from the Pentagon as I sat in my office in the White House compound, a gas mask on my desk. The streets of Washington were empty, except for the armored vehicles, and the skies were clear, except for the F-15s on patrol. Every scene from those days is seared into my memory. I understand how it was a defining moment for Cheney, as it was for so many Americans.

Yet listening to Cheney and Rice, it seems that they want to be excused for the measures they authorized after the attacks on the grounds that 9/11 was traumatic. "If you were there in a position of authority and watched Americans drop out of eighty-story buildings because these murderous tyrants went after innocent people," Rice said in her recent comments, "then you were determined to do anything that you could that was legal to prevent that from happening again."

I have little sympathy for this argument. Yes, we went for days with little sleep, and we all assumed that more attacks were coming. But the decisions that Bush officials made in the following months and years -- on Iraq, on detentions, on interrogations, on wiretapping -- were not appropriate. Careful analysis could have replaced the impulse to break all the rules, even more so because the Sept. 11 attacks, though horrifying, should not have surprised senior officials. Cheney's admission that 9/11 caused him to reassess the threats to the nation only underscores how, for months, top officials had ignored warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-Qaeda attack.

Thus, when Bush's inner circle first really came to grips with the threat of terrorism, they did so in a state of shock -- a bad state in which to develop a coherent response. Fearful of new attacks, they authorized the most extreme measures available, without assessing whether they were really a good idea.

I believe this zeal stemmed in part from concerns about the 2004 presidential election. Many in the White House feared that their inaction prior to the attacks would be publicly detailed before the next vote -- which is why they resisted the 9/11 commission -- and that a second attack would eliminate any chance of a second Bush term. So they decided to leave no doubt that they had done everything imaginable.

The first response they discussed was invading Iraq. While the Pentagon was still burning, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld was in the White House suggesting an attack against Baghdad. Somehow the administration's leaders could not believe that al-Qaeda could have mounted such a devastating operation, so Iraqi involvement became the convenient explanation. Despite being told repeatedly that Iraq was not involved in 9/11, some, like Cheney, could not abandon the idea. Charles Duelfer of the CIA's Iraq Survey Group recently revealed in his book, "Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq," that high-level U.S. officials urged him to consider waterboarding specific Iraqi prisoners of war so that they could provide evidence of an Iraqi role in the terrorist attacks -- a request Duelfer refused. (A recent report indicates that the suggestion came from the vice president's office.) Nevertheless, the lack of evidence did not deter the administration from eventually invading Iraq -- a move many senior Bush officials had wanted to make before 9/11.

On detention, the Bush team leaped to the assumption that U.S. courts and prisons would not work. Before the terrorist attacks, the U.S. counterterrorism program of the 1990s had arrested al-Qaeda terrorists and others around the world and had a 100 percent conviction rate in the U.S. justice system. Yet the American system was abandoned, again as part of a pattern of immediately adopting the most extreme response available. Camps were established around the world, notably in Guantanamo Bay, where prisoners were held without being charged or tried. They became symbols of American overreach, held up as proof that al-Qaeda's anti-American propaganda was right.

Similarly, with regard to interrogation, administration officials conducted no meaningful professional analysis of which techniques worked and which did not. The FBI, which had successfully questioned al-Qaeda terrorists, was effectively excluded from interrogations. Instead, there was the immediate and unwarranted assumption that extreme measures -- such as waterboarding one detainee 183 times -- would be the most effective.

Finally, on wiretapping, rather than beef up the procedures available under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the administration again moved to the extreme, listening in on communications here at home without legal process. FISA did need some modification, but it also allowed for the quick issuance of court orders, as when President Clinton took stepped-up defensive measures in late 1999 under the heightened threat of the new millennium.

Yes, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice may have been surprised by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- but it was because they had not listened. And their surprise led them to adopt extreme counterterrorism techniques -- but it was because they rejected, without analysis, the tactics the Clinton administration had used. The measures they uncritically adopted, which they simply assumed were the best available, were in fact unnecessary and counterproductive.

"I'll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities," Cheney said in his recent speech. But this defense does not stand up. The Bush administration's response actually undermined the principles and values America has always stood for in the world, values that should have survived this traumatic event. The White House thought that 9/11 changed everything. It may have changed many things, but it did not change the Constitution, which the vice president, the national security adviser and all of us who were in the White House that tragic day had pledged to protect and preserve.

rclarke@hks.harvard.edu

Richard A. Clarke, the national coordinator for security and counterterrorism under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, is the author of "Against All Enemies" and "Your Government Failed You."

Up - A Review

Best bring a box of kleenex.

Honestly.  

Pixar has once again produced a magnificent film, one that eschews the conventional fare often found in animated films.  This is a story simply, but oh so richly, told.  Without giving away the entire film, the story centers on Carl Frederickson, a widower whose tidy Victorian house, once nearly alone on a small town road, is surrounded by a canyon of office buildings and other assorted pieces of a major city.  The house is the last piece of his life, one lived in happiness and heartbreak with his dear wife Ellie, who died years before the events of the movie take place.  In a delightful and heartbreaking montage, Carl and Ellie's marriage unfolds - two great friends (who have been friends since their childhood) living a life together, sharing the good and the bad, until Carl is alone.  Alone in his house, the world changing around him, and without a clear sense of what do, except that he knows that he cannot leave - to much of his life is wrapped in that house.  Mementos of his life with Ellie have transformed the house into a constant and living memory.  One that seems to belong to Carl, but only as memory.

Carl meets Russell, a 'Wilderness Scout' who is angling to get his last badge, one that involves helping the elderly.  That he will have ample opportunity to do so is, of course, the rather important part of the plot.  That he will help Carl in ways that he cannot possibly imagine is also rather important, and perfectly executed.

Carl and Ellie had the shared dream of visiting South America, to visit the falls celebrated by their hero, a daring adventurer.  The desire to make the trip is there, but they can never quite pull it off.  Carl, now old and full of grief, decides that the time has come to make that trip.  Russell, of course, manages to find himself on the front porch at just the wrong time.

This leads to an adventure in the South American wilderness.  I will allow you to discover the rest of the plot, and the characters that they meet in the wilderness.  

What struck me is how profoundly 'mature' this movie is, one that will clearly affect adults far more than children.  Our kids loved the film, although MELG's comments after were particularly astute:  She both wants to buy it when it comes out on DVD and does not want to.  Why?  Because she identified that there was a certain sadness to certain scenes (this said without knowing that Denise and I were both having a hard time stifling our sniffling).  There is sadness, but also a marvelous recognition of what makes a relationship work, what makes a relationship a relationship.  Slowly, Carl realizes what is vital to his memory of that relationship, and what is not.  But it is a hard, painful process to come to that realization.  In Russell, he finds something that he had been without for so long, and something that helps him to understand what it is that he had lost.

Also, this may be the most side-splittingly funny Pixar movie.  There are moments that made me laugh so hard that I couldn't breathe.  That the good folks at Pixar can make a film so funny and so emotional is astounding.  Clearly this is the best group making movies right now.  

I know, a rather vague, sentimental reading.  This is on purpose.  Vague, because I want you to go see the film, you need to see it (and yes, in the movie theatre). Sentimental, because how can you watch a movie like this and not revel in what it shows and says about the ones we love?  

An Open Letter to Sirius-XM

To the folks at Sirius-XM I write with a sense of disappointment in regard to the fact that we now have to pay extra to listen to XM online. Really? The $$ a month we already pay isn't quite enough to cover using the online service?  

Please. It was bad enough that in the merger with Sirius you managed to gut POTUS of substance and talent, as well as nearly destroying the channel formerly called Fred (you really need to ditch the DJ's - honestly, we signed up for this service to get away from vacuous people flapping their gums), but is this the first wave of nickel and diming your customers to death, knowing that you have us over the barrel? Do you even care about your listeners? Yes, yes, I can hear the rebuttal now - "Mr. Grant, it is only 2.99 a month. What a bargain! You spend that three dollars without thought when you buy a cup of coffee, and yet here you are, kvetching about such a small sum." You see, though, don't you, that this is about the idea that because you drastically overpay your on-air talent (is Stern really worth the ridiculous amount you pay him?), you are hemorrhaging money and thus turn to your customers to bail-out your poor business decisions. Here is an alternate idea: fire your DJ's on Fred, that should save a few bucks and save us from their 'zany' on-air shtick. Might as well dump the rest of them on the other stations as well, except for Martin Goldsmith on Concert Hall and the good people at Met Opera. Honestly. From now on when I listen to the radio on-line, I will be tuning in to XRT from Chicago and KING-FM from Seattle. I know, I know, such petulance, and such a small drop in the wider ocean that is your listenership. Nonetheless, it is all that I can do, but at least it lets you know that perhaps you should think of more effective means for strengthening your cash flow. Ah, well, I look forward to your form-letter response. Ken A. Grant

Rebooting Star Trek

The review in short?  It's about bloody time!

Ok, now to unpack a bit, as I am constantly harping on my students to do in their exam essays. 

A couple of days ago, as I continued my sojourn in Michigan, I decided to take in the new Star Trek film.  I was interested, clearly, as I have always enjoyed the idea of Star Trek.  Some of the shows were good, some of the films were decent, but I would never really put myself into the 'Trekkie' category.  Some of the episodes of the original series were just down-right goofy.  I liked the characters, but often didn't think much of what they did.  Likewise, the theoretical depth of the original series was often overwhelmed by sheer cheesiness. The later iterations of the show tended toward the 'great-idea-pity-they-didn't-do-anything-with-it' category.  Next Generation was good in spurts, but often was just as silly as the original show (they needed to dump the Data character - insipid at best).  I never watched Deep Space Nine or the one where they wondered around in some other galaxy (I think that is where they were - don't really know, certainly didn't care).  I really wanted to like 'Enterprise' and watched it regularly, but again it seems like they really didn't know what to do with it until the last season or so.  I thought they were finally getting a handle on the story when it was canceled.  I didn't really miss it though.

The movies were hit and miss.  I liked the first, mostly because it was so darn weird.  Wrath of Khan was excellent, as was Undiscovered Country.  The others are ranked from middling to awful.  We saw Star Trek V in Hanover, PA.  It was dreadful.  Horrible script, bad, hammy acting, wretched sense of humor.  I vowed not to see another Star Trek movie in the theatre.  I saw Undiscovered Country and the one good Next Generation film (I forget the title - the one with the cyborgs and time travel) after they came out on VHS.  The others I simply didn't bother to see.

When I heard that JJ Abrams was going to go back to the original crew and start the movie while they were in school, I was less than enthusiastic.  I mean, honestly, what kind of life could be pumped back into the beginning of the franchise?

Well, I went to the show the other day (IMAX to boot, although IMAX may be a bit of over kill, or I am simply getting old, as it is such an immersive experience that I had a slight headache after the show), and I must say that it is outstanding.  Not deep.  Simply a good film, one that delightfully reboots the franchise and gives the entire thing a chance to breathe some fresh air for a change.  All of the original characters are back, and the new cast is outstanding, but they are given a chance to blaze their own trail.  It was an exceptionally good idea to scrap the old 'canon' and let the franchise find its own new path with actors who have put their own stamp on rather iconic characters.

The story, as usual for a Star Trek story, is soaked with time-travel sci-fi babble.  It doesn't really matter if the story makes sense in regard to the established Star Trek universe, in fact it is a good thing that they essentially throw the hole bit overboard.  Likewise, the story doesn't have to make sense scientifically or even chronologically, because the characters are solid, and there is actually a self-contained logic to the way the plot unfolds.

Most importantly, the movie moves with a light touch, entertaining, effective, and smartly focuses on the actors ability to make us connect with their characters, not the outsize caricatures of the last few original cast movies.  An added good touch?  A few smart and delightful use of Leonard Nimoy's Spock. 

I look forward to seeing it again in the theatre.  It has been a very long time since I said that about anything related to Star Trek.