1. “Real Patriots Uphold Our Values
Impugning the patriotism of others is the favorite sport of flag-wrapped conservatives who have a cribbed view of love of country. These folks become apoplectic when liberals criticize war-making and are fond of telling people on the left: America, love it or leave it. That is, until the commander in chief is not one whom they voted for. Then they join Tea Parties or found organizations to throw verbal stink bombs in the direction of the president. The hypocrisy eludes them.
Keep America Safe is a conservative advocacy organization run by Liz Cheney, daughter of the former vice president. Its reason for being is to push out a drumbeat of material that traduces the Obama administration’s approach to fighting terrorism. The organization wants Americans to believe that President Barack Obama’s decisions to return the nation to the rule of law endangers national security.
It’s like a little PR firm devoted to the promotion of torture and other Dick Cheney delights.
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As VP, Cheney believed in the unitary executive, which included the lawless notion that Congress could not constrain the president’s powers on national defense. It is interesting that under the current president, the Cheney family is taking the opposite tack, trying to convince Congress to stand in the way of Obama’s stated intentions to close Guantánamo and use the criminal justice system to try terror suspects.
In the Cheney family’s world, trashing the Constitution and disregarding the Geneva Conventions are all solely within the province of the president. But that sweeping authority is apparently not available in reverse, to resurrect the law of the land.”
http://original.antiwar.com/blumner/2010/03/12/real-patriots-uphold-our-values/
2. “Come Home, America: Prospects for a Coalition Against Empire
Unfortunately, many patriotic Americans are easily fooled by U.S. government propaganda. This is especially true for evangelicals, who tend to be politically unsophisticated, particularly when the nation is ruled by a Republican president (who, by definition, must be “a good Christian”). Sarah Palin is a case study in this naïve phenomenon. From her correct and populist intuition that loyalty and patriotism are good, she moves dogmatically to an embrace of propaganda and jingoism. She does not realize that most wars are imperial and aggressive in nature, hence the opposite of the national defense she cherishes. Neoconservatives and gunboat liberals exploit this confusion, in Palin and millions of other well-meaning Americans.
Opposition to an ongoing war is a complicated thing, emotionally and intellectually. Americans find it difficult to believe that friends and family members are wounding and being wounded, killing and being killed for ignoble reasons. Even if it might be true, the cognitive dissonance is far too great for most to embrace such a thought. Cindy Sheehan, mother of Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, and Andrew Bacevich, father of Army Lieutenant Andrew Bacevich Jr., are exceptions. Their sons were killed in Iraq for no good reason and they have been able to embrace this truth despite its horror. This is rare.”
http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2010/03/come-home-america-prospects-for-a-coalition-against-empire/
3. “U.S. Budget Deficit Grows $1 Million Every 11 Seconds”
4. “Karl Rove says water torture is justified — and a cause for pride”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7060329.ece
5. “Government finds 21.1 percent unemployment rate for young veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan wars”
http://wire.antiwar.com/2010/03/12/young-war-veterans-returning-home-to-unemployment/
6. “This new judicial system will be devoted to imprisoning people “preventively” — for being Dangerous. In other words, we’re dispensing with the idea that the Government can only imprison those who we can prove have committed crimes, and are instead creating by statute a new category of human beings — people who have committed no crimes but belong in prison anyway — along with courts to keep them imprisoned (this idea was unveiled in Barack Obama’s “civil liberties” speech last May when he described the so-called “fifth category” of people, and I wrote about everything wrong with that proposal here). But why stop with accused Terrorists? Why not dispense with this “due process” annoyance entirely, and imprison all people who we know deep down are guilty of something really bad, or at least will be in the future — such as those we know murdered someone or raped children but can’t find the evidence to prove it (or those we believe likely will in the future)? What decent person would possibly allow such monsters to go free just because we can’t convict them in court?
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The Washington Post Op-Ed page deserves some credit for publishing this excellent Op-Ed yesterday by Georgetown Professor Gary Solis, who points out that, under international law, CIA agents who operate lethal drone attacks are every bit as much “unlawful combatants” as the Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters we have imprisoned, rendered, tortured and killed, because “they are fighters without uniforms or insignia, directly participating in hostilities, employing armed force contrary to the laws and customs of war.” He also points out that CIA officials involved in such activities are legitimate military targets of the enemy. The same is true, of course, for the vast number of private mercenaries the U.S. uses to engage in war-fighting and related activities. By the warped reasoning that has prevailed in our country, it would be perfectly legal and proper for these unlawful American combatants to be imprisoned indefinitely with no charges and even tortured. If you advocate and practice lawlessness, it’s only a matter of time before you’re subjected to your own deranged standards.”
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/13/centrism/index.html
