All states may have been created equal, but they were equal no longer. The states that had enjoyed the biggest boom were now facing the biggest busts. How does the United States emerge from the credit crisis? Whitney asked herself. I was convincedbecause the credit crisis had been so different from region to regionthat it would emerge with new regional strengths and weaknesses. Companies are more likely to flourish in the stronger states; the individuals will go to where the jobs are. Ultimately, the people will follow the companies. The country, she thought, might organize itself increasingly into zones of financial security and zones of financial crisis. And the more clearly people understood which zones were which, the more friction there would be between the two. (Indiana is going to be like, N.F.W. Im bailing out New Jersey. ) As more and more people grasped which places had serious financial problems and which did not, the problems would only increase. Those who have money and can move do so, Whitney wrote in her report to her Wall Street clients, those without money and who cannot move do not, and ultimately rely more on state and local assistance. It becomes effectively a tragedy of the commons.
The point of Meredith Whitneys investigation, in her mind, was not to predict defaults in the municipal-bond market. It was to compare the states with one another so that they might be ranked. She wanted to get a sense of who in America was likely to play the role of the Greeks, and who the Germans. Of who was strong, and who weak. In the process she had, in effect, unearthed Americas scariest financial places.
#2
Realistic, rather, gromky. Until the problem is mapped out, it can't and won't be solved. And honestly, this is a problem of particular state cultures leading to particular state problems. America was designed that way -- the various states proceed independently on local issues with locally funded solutions, fifty smaller petri dishes more rapidly finding solutions than a single large one, and the best solution (if there is a best instead of a best for a certain particular set of circumstances) then applied by the others. The experiment has now been running since Johnson was president, and the results are clearly quantifiable for those who care to look.
And why should we send our money to California to prop up a situation we believe to be both unnecessary and wrong? Let them copy the behaviour of the successful states, and then we will help them on the way.
#3
All states may have been created equal, but they were equal no longer.
High school level posit. There's a reason we have a House of Representatives and a Senate from the very beginning of the present federal system. All states weren't equal. The smaller states would have refused to ratify if they didn't have protection from big states overwhelming them in the national government.
#5
Since about the Civil War, America has had several demographic waves. After WWI, the rural population moved to the big cities. After WWII, there was a great western migration to the new cities of the West.
From the "progressive era" at the start of the 20th Century, there was a strong effort to strip Americans of their State citizenship identities and "Americanize" everyone. This needs to be done in a situation of a transient population.
As late as the mid-1960s, there were a few linguists in the US who could still tell to within 50 miles where someone had been raised, because of the unique character of their speech. But television eventually wiped out much of this distinction by creating a "continental English".
And yet, the irony of it all is that the great demographic movements are drawing to a close. And the longer people remain in a State, the more they will identify with it, to the point where they will again claim "citizenship" of that State, as a meaningful unique thing, becoming as important as being a "generic" American.
Americans in the last 50 years have been somewhat hesitant in calling themselves Americans, because of the vast amount of cultural baggage this entails, others not being able to distinguish Americans as a culture apart from their government.
Why hasnt there been a Tea Party on the left? The left wants to go back to 1774?
And can President Obama and the American left develop a functional relationship? Not while he's President, I expect.
That those two questions are not asked very often is a sign of how much of the nations political energy has been monopolized by the right from the beginning of Obamas term. This has skewed media coverage of almost every issue, created the impression that the president is far more liberal than he says he is, and turned the nations agenda away from progressive reform. Whoa, EJ! Are you on a different wavelength, dude? The Right Wing has already taken over?
A quiet left has also been very bad for political moderates. The entire political agenda has shifted far to the right because the Tea Party and extremely conservative ideas have earned so much attention. The political center doesnt stand a chance unless there is a fair fight between the right and the left. There's no such thing. The lefties don't comprehend the dictionary definition of fair.
Its not surprising that Obamas election unleashed a conservative backlash. Ironically, disillusionment with George W. Bushs presidency had pushed Republican politics right, not left. All you Rantburgers believe that, right?
Given the publics negative verdict on Bush as defined by the media and Washington Post, conservatives shrewdly argued that his failures were caused by his lack of fealty to conservative doctrine. He was cast as a big spender (even if a large chunk of the largess went to Iraq). He was called too liberal on immigration and a big-government guy for bailing out the banks, using federal power to reform the schools and championing a Medicare prescription drug benefit. The lefties hated No Child Left Behind, as I recall, and never mentioned the medicare benefit, because they wished they'd thought of it.
Conservative funders realized that pumping up the Tea Party movement was the most efficient way to build opposition to Obamas initiatives. And the media became infatuated with the Sarah Palin and the Tea Party in the summer of 2009, covering its disruptions of congressional town halls with an enthusiasm not visible this summer when many Republicans faced tough questions from their more progressive constituents. When they were not swooning over Obama's deft handling of marshmallow questions.
Obamas victory, in the meantime, partly demobilized the left. With Democrats in control of the White House and both houses of Congress, stepped-up organizing didnt seem quite so urgent. Of course not! Obama said it all - "We won". Who needs to organize? Let's have a spending party! Let's expand government faster than the speed of light! Let us not let a crisis go to waste! E. J. - ya make me tired... Two more fantasies, then I've got real work to do.
The administration was complicit in this, viewing the lefts primary role as supporting whatever the president believed needed to be done. Dissent was discouraged as counterproductive. Everybody was on the Hopey-Changey express, in their own minds.
This was not entirely foolish. Facing ferocious resistance from the right, Obama needed all the friends he could get. And wound up with none. Well, maybe the muslims.
He feared that left-wing criticism would meld in the public mind with right-wing criticism and weaken him overall. But the absence of a strong, organized left made it easier for conservatives to label Obama as a left-winger. His health-care reform is remarkably conservative yes, it did build on the ideas implemented in Massachusetts that Mitt Romney once bragged about. I liked the "pass it before you read it" part.
It was nothing close except by the skin of my teeth to the single-payer plan the left always preferred. His stimulus proposal was too small, not too large. His new Wall Street regulations were a long way from a complete overhaul of American capitalism. Yet Republicans swept the 2010 elections because they painted Obama and the Democrats as being far to the left of their actual achievements. Lap it up, Donks. Conclusion:
The idea is not to pretend that Obama is as progressive as his core supporters want him to be, but to rally support for him nonetheless as the man standing between the country and the terrorist right wing. A real left could usefully instruct Americans as to just how moderate the president they elected in 2008 is and how far to the right conservatives have strayed. If they had any facts and could speak without sputtering and drooling, perhaps.
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/03/2011 19:03 ||
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#1
Progressive regressives cannot a Tea Party be.
They are called by other names already. We will hear from them this month(October surprise). Then with increasing volume nearer election time. They have a way about them. One easy way to spot them is the unusual large mouth. They dress funny. Then they tend to move about in herds as well. They do create a nuisance for the sanitation department.I guess that's a good thing, job security I suppose.
#2
I am always amused that the Left, who continually call for 'Grass Roots' movements, cannot comprehend that the 'Tea Party' IS A GRASS ROOTS MOVEMENT. Just not their Grass Roots movement
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD Good news from the Voldemort Affair (the unpleasantness formerly known as the Global War on Terror, these days it appears to be some kind of contretemps with Those Who Must Not Be Named). I am so-o-o-o-o stealing that. It's not plagiarism when you announce you're going to steal it up front, is it?
President Obama's order to kill or capture Anwar al-Awlaki, one of Al Qaeda's chief propagandists, has finally been carried out. Deader than a rock, from what we hear.
Over at Salon.com, Good Gawd! They're still around? Who reads them?
Glenn Greenwald greeted this news by calling President B.O. an assassin. President Sparafucile? Somehow it doesn't work for me...
After all, Mr. Al-Awlaki was a US citizen and was never convicted in a court of law of those offenses for which the alleged terrorist was allegedly killed. According to a story in the Los Angeles Times, also joining Mr. Greenwald in the assassin-identification business was Texas Congressman Ron Paul. That's a pretty fastidious approach, alright. It avoids getting blood on your hands by drooling pablum down the chin. Pontius Pilate approves.
Part of me is glad to see Mssrs. Greenwald and Paul engaging so cordially in this rare moment of bipartisan harmony. They should spend more time together. They make a cute couple. I'm looking forward to buying them a toaster.
And it is always good to see ideas in Special Providence confirmed in real life; in that book on the American foreign policy tradition I wrote that Jeffersonians on the right and the left often unite in their condemnation of what they see as executive excess. I used Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan in the book as I recall; now I can update those examples. People kinda backed off doing that when Buchanan decided he wasn't a Republican anymore. Nader, in the meantime, has become such a joke that even lefties giggle.
But I fear I am one of the mindless hordes Mr. Greenwald invokes when he, like Paul, mourns that so many Americans will think the death of Al-Awlaki is good news. My throat's still raw from all the ululation.
What's most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government's new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government. Many will celebrate the strong, decisive, Tough President's ability to eradicate the life of Anwar al-Awlaki ... Born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, al-Awlaki is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Yemen. He is an Islamic holy man who is a trainer for al-Qaeda and its franchises. His sermons were attended by three of the 9/11 hijackers, by Fort Hood murderer Nidal Malik Hussein, and Undieboomer Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. He is the first U.S. citizen ever placed on a CIA target list... -- including many who just so righteously condemned those Republican audience members as so terribly barbaric and crass for cheering Governor Perry's execution of scores of serial murderers and rapists -- criminals who were at least given a trial and appeals and the other trappings of due process before being killed.
Again I note with praise and thanks Mr. Greenwald's sense of fair play as he steps in to make a favorable contrast between GOP debate audiences and the liberal editorialists who praised President B.O.'s drone campaign -- and reminds us that whatever faults it may have Texas does have a judicial system in which accused criminals have rights. Much more of this from the often acerbic Mr. Greenwald and historians will begin to describe our times as an "era of good feelings" in which bipartisan civility reigned supreme. ... rather than as an era in which theory regularly triumphed over practice...
But having said all this, and wanting to emphasize that both in Special Providence and elsewhere I argue that the Jeffersonian critiques from Ron Paul, Glenn Greenwald and others of executive excess in foreign affairs stand in a long and completely legitimate tradition of American foreign policy, it nevertheless seems to me that they are wrong in this case. It nevertheless seems to me that the sun continues to rise in the east and that the woods are foul with bear poop. Somebody should call the EPA.
Perhaps this is just further proof of how mindless I am, but it does seem to me that Al-Awlaki and his buds are at war with the people of the United States and that in war, people not only die: it is sometimes your duty to kill them. "Duty" is the key word there. It's at the end of a very long stick of social change. In 1941 my Dad had a duty to get drafted and shipped off the fight Nazis. Our cultural pantheon included Mom, the Boy Scouts, Apple Pie, Truth, Justice, and the American Way. After 70 years of battering Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism. Mom has become a role model for both girls and boys, has taken a lesbian lover, and has a life outside the home. The Boy Scouts are ucky because they refuse to allow homosexual predators to swarm around boys just as they're trying to figure what the hell puberty's doing to them. Truth has become relative. Justice has crumbled in the face of rehabilitation and counterintuitive compassion. Practices that would have tripped a gag reflex at Buchenwald now have their own validity, which makes any "American" way just one approach among many and who's to say which is better? It's an age of sympathetic vampires and evil clowns, where duty is a tenuous concept that applies only to what's best (or even what feels best) for you.
That the Al-Qaeda groupies are levying war against the United States without benefit of a government does not make them less legitimate targets for missiles, bullets and any other instruments of execution we may have lying around: the irresponsibility, the contempt for all legal norms, the chaotic and anarchic nature of the danger they pose and the sheer wickedness of waging private war make them even more legitimate targets with even fewer rights than combatants fighting under legal governments that observe the laws of war. To my knowledge, no American "captured" by either al-Qaeda or the Taliban has escaped alive. Geneva Conventions apply only to the civilized, while today's Vandals, Avars and Huns get to do things the 622 A.D. way.
Mr. Al-Awlaki chose to make himself what used to be called an outlaw; a person at war with society who is no longer protected by the laws he seeks to destroy. He was not a criminal who has broken some particular set of laws; he was an enemy seeking to destroy all the laws and the institutions that create them. His fiery sermons inspired numerous jihadists, like Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, to attack Americans. He was personally involved with planning the attempted Christmas Day bombing in 2009 and he mentored several of the 9/11 bombers. That he was at war with the United States may not have been proved in a criminal court but is not really up for debate. Once you join the enemy army you're cut off from the rules governing your own people. You get to live by theirs, and your old side, the one you were born and bred to, gets to shoot out out of hand if they catch you.
By waging private war against the United States, he placed himself in jeopardy, and our Chief Magistrate, obedient to the commitments he made when he took his oath of office, fulfilled his solemn duty by returning Mr. Al-Awlaki to his maker by the most effective means at hand. Once you're outside your own country and living in the enemy camp you get what the enemy gets. What's complicated about that?It's because you've become an enemy, whether you've submitted a letter of resignation from civilization or not.
Abraham Lincoln did not order the Kearsarge to arrest the Confederate sailors on the Alabama and return them to the US for a civil trial; he ordered the Navy to sink Confederate ships without serving them arrest warrants, without getting grand jury indictments, without reading them their rights and without giving them the opportunity to send their lawyers into court to get injunctions against the attack.
Far from President B.O. launching an unprecedented assault on the civil rights of all Americans, he was acting as presidents must -- and do. Being forced into the cattle chute and groped when I want to fly somewhere is a much greater infringement of my civil rights than Anwar al-Awlaki swallowing a Hellfire in another country.
Every President of the United States, including Thomas Jefferson and probable Ron Paul hero John Tyler (the only ex-president who stood with the Confederacy in the Civil War) would have taken a similar step in similar conditions, and I have no doubt that every Congress ever elected would have backed them up. Abraham Lincoln did not order the Kearsarge to arrest the Confederate sailors on the Alabama and return them to the US for a civil trial; he ordered the Navy to sink Confederate ships without serving them arrest warrants, without getting grand jury indictments, without reading them their rights and without giving them the opportunity to send their lawyers into court to get injunctions against the attack. ... and Lincoln took the same sort of heat (only worse) from the same sort of people who're bitching and moaning today...
I am neither a lawyer nor a judge, but it does not take much special knowledge to understand that Mr. Awlaki had placed himself well beyond the protections of criminal law. Starting with being outside the boundaries of the U.S...
Had he been captured, and dragged as it were unwillingly back under the umbrella of American law, it might have been different, and he could have been tried for treason or other crimes. But Mr. Obama was under no obligation to risk the lives of American soldiers to save Mr. Awlaki from himself and restore to him the protection of the laws he despised, nor was he under any obligation to forbear and allow Mr. Awlaki to continue his activities until such time as Interpol or some other recognized law enforcement agency could serve him a warrant and take him into custody. How many terrorists has Interpol arrested? Actually, Interpol doesn't really arrest people -- there is no Man from U.N.C.L.E. They issue paper, which makes its way to police agencies at the national level, which then disseminates the paper to other agencies at provincial levels, which further disseminate paper to local levels. All of the dissemination at each level is subject to local law and politix, and overriding all is the question of whether the police bureaucracy happens to feel like rounding up the miscreant or even disseminating the paper. Dawood Ibrahim continues existing quite openly in Pakistain, despite multiple Interpol warrants and despite the fact that Indian intel agencies are able to discover his addresses, phone numbers, the names of his closest associates and their addresses and phone numbers, and the addresses and phone numbers of their mistresses and "special" dancing boys, all of which is beyond the power of Pak intel agencies to discover...
Both Congressman Paul and Mr. Greenwald do, I think, have a legitimate beef with the President. The President is clearly acting like a man who is fighting a war. He is bringing down fiery death from the skies against any foe he can locate. This is not the normal behavior of a Chief Magistrate faithfully executing the laws. It is the behavior of a president locked in a bitter struggle against a dangerous foe. President B.O. cannot have it both ways. If he is our chief law enforcement officer leading the investigation of a global criminal network known as Al-Qaeda, then his actions are subject to one set of restrictions and one kind of review. Perhaps an Al-Awlaki can be killed resisting arrest, but the Greenwald-Paul questions about assassinations make some sense if we are in the middle of a complex law enforcement operation against an organized crime entity comparable to the mafia or perhaps to a narco mob. Being Chief Magistrate implies you've actually got a country to be in charge of. There won't be any luxury vacations for Michelle and the girlies with the black flag of Islam flying over the White House. Probably if you live there you notice the flagpole every day. It changes the outlook.
But if the President is acting as Commander in Chief in a Congressionally authorized quasi-war (quasi because Al Qaeda is not a state), then his actions fall under another set of guidelines altogether. I don't think the war's "quasi" at all. The Visigoths weren't a "state," either, which meant squat to the Romans in 410 A.D.For that matter, Islam was not a "state" in 622 A.D. Unlike the Visigoths and unlike Mohammed himself, al-Qaeda did declare war on us "crusaders and Jews."
The President has created some of the confusion in our debate. Make no mistake...
Frequently during the campaign, sometimes even in office, he has spoken as if he is the head of a criminal investigation team. When it comes to actual decisions, however, he acts like a military leader at war. He gets a daily intel brief and he meets with military staff regularly. In the movies these are often two different meetings, in practice I believe they're usually concurrent. (I can't say for sure; I only ever addressed one morning intel brief, by video...) It's not a matter of the generals showing up to be given orders by the commander-in-chief. The usual procedure is for the generals to bring options to the CinC. These are "sold," sometimes by spiffy-looking staff officers chosen for their presentation skills, other times by the actual smart guys. In most cases I believe an "executive decision" consists of "Let's go with Major Whatsisname's approach and see if it works. If it does, then we'll put some more emphasis on it. For backup we'll keep LTC Hoodat's plan."
At some point in the Bush administration the use of drones went beyond the "put a missile up a camel's ass" point when Major Brilliant put an extra coat of spit shine on his shoes and wore his best uniform for his big appearance. He made the point that battles are often won by skirmishers degrading the enemy command structure. We can't get snipers into position to pot al-Qaeda's command structure, but we have the technology -- continuously being improved -- to put rockets over the target area inhabited by the big turbans. Big shots as intel sources are overrated. The most important intel associated with them is their location. The geolocation and the collection and dissemination process -- both also being continuously improved -- mean that a fix can go from the collector to the targeter within seconds, a process that used to take an hour or better back in Vietnam days. Bush at some point told Major Brilliant to "go for it," at the same time keeping two or three plans just about as good in reserve.
The rest is history. Major (Now LTC(P), assuming his career hasn't been assassinated by jealous pretty boyz) Brilliant's approach started showing good results almost from the first -- remember how they thought they'd gotten Zawahiri on what in my memory is the first use of drones in FATA? Since then the intel's been improving, the technology's been improving, the skill of the operators has been improving, there's been a long string of sudden job openings among the turbans, and suddenly B.O.'s a military genius. Go figure.
Greenwald and Paul appear to believe that he is a policeman and needs to start acting more like one; I believe he is a war leader and needs to start talking more like one. Politically he's constrained to wimpery. With the economy such a shambles his lefty constituency's all he's got, and they hate the idea of U.S. military success.
Via Meadia applauds President B.O. for killing America's enemies as fast as he can -- and I have no fear that a future US President will use that precedent to send a Hellfire missile through the windows of the stately Mead manor in Queens. I don't even think American stock market swindlers and tax evaders lounging on the Riviera need to worry about a Predator strike bringing their peaceful retirements to a premature close. Roman Polanski does not need to move to an undisclosed bunker underground. This isn't a slippery slope; it is war. Not until Polanksi decides that Jihad is the Only Way...
Two years ago, the idea that America was in a war might have seemed like one of those anachronistic Bushisms which could be swept underfoot by the New Age of Light and Reason--Guantanamo and military tribunals would have to go as well. With Anwar al-Awlaki dead, the Obama Administration has again demonstrated that it can fight the Lord Voldemort War pretty well; it just can't quite bring itself to make the case for what it must do. It's difficult to Restore Our Reputation with pablum dripping from your chin, isn't it?
The President can speak forcefully about force; I've said time and again...
his Nobel Peace Prize address on the continuing importance of war is a case in point. Make no mistake!
He needs to do more of this at home; It'd be a game changer...
if a war is important enough to fight it is important enough to defend and explain. You can keep your present plan.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/03/2011 11:53 ||
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Fred's inlines are so much more interesting than my unmarked extract that I moved the whole thing here rather than informing you that it had been snipped and sending you to the other article. Enjoy!
-- trailing wife at 12:30 ET
By WALTER RUSSELL MEAD Good news from the Voldemort Affair (the unpleasantness formerly known as the Global War on Terror, these days it appears to be some kind of contretemps with Those Who Must Not Be Named). I am so-o-o-o-o stealing that. It's not plagiarism when you announce you're going to steal it up front, is it?
Especially not if you preface it with, "As Walter Russell Mead said," at least for the first few weeks. You cannot add, "of blessed memory," the appellation of the more famous rabbis, because the gentleman is most clearly still alive.
President Obama's order to kill or capture Anwar al-Awlaki, one of Al Qaeda's chief propagandists, has finally been carried out. Deader than a rock, from what we hear.
Over at Salon.com, Good Gawd! They're still around? Who reads them? All the right-minded folks who read Newsweek, of course...
Glenn Greenwald greeted this news by calling President B.O. an assassin. President Sparafucile? Somehow it doesn't work for me...
After all, Mr. Al-Awlaki was a US citizen and was never convicted in a court of law of those offenses for which the alleged terrorist was allegedly killed. According to a story in the Los Angeles Times, also joining Mr. Greenwald in the assassin-identification business was Texas Congressman Ron Paul. That's a pretty fastidious approach, alright. It avoids getting blood on your hands by drooling pablum down the chin. Pontius Pilate approves.
Part of me is glad to see Mssrs. Greenwald and Paul engaging so cordially in this rare moment of bipartisan harmony. They should spend more time together. They make a cute couple. I'm looking forward to buying them a toaster.
And it is always good to see ideas in Special Providence confirmed in real life; in that book on the American foreign policy tradition I wrote that Jeffersonians on the right and the left often unite in their condemnation of what they see as executive excess. I used Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan in the book as I recall; now I can update those examples. People kinda backed off doing that when Buchanan decided he wasn't a Republican anymore. Nader, in the meantime, has become such a joke that even lefties giggle.
But I fear I am one of the mindless hordes Mr. Greenwald invokes when he, like Paul, mourns that so many Americans will think the death of Al-Awlaki is good news. My throat's still raw from all the ululation.
What's most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government's new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government. Many will celebrate the strong, decisive, Tough President's ability to eradicate the life of Anwar al-Awlaki ... Born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, al-Awlaki is was a dual citizen of the U.S. and Yemen. He is was an Islamic holy man who is was a trainer for al-Qaeda and its franchises. His sermons were attended by three of the 9/11 hijackers, by Fort Hood murderer Nidal Malik Hussein, and Undieboomer Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. He is was the first U.S. citizen ever placed on a CIA target list... -- including many who just so righteously condemned those Republican audience members as so terribly barbaric and crass for cheering Governor Perry's execution of scores of serial murderers and rapists -- criminals who were at least given a trial and appeals and the other trappings of due process before being killed.
Again I note with praise and thanks Mr. Greenwald's sense of fair play as he steps in to make a favorable contrast between GOP debate audiences and the liberal editorialists who praised President B.O.'s drone campaign -- and reminds us that whatever faults it may have Texas does have a judicial system in which accused criminals have rights. Much more of this from the often acerbic Mr. Greenwald and historians will begin to describe our times as an "era of good feelings" in which bipartisan civility reigned supreme. ... rather than as an era in which theory regularly triumphed over practice...
But having said all this, and wanting to emphasize that both in Special Providence and elsewhere I argue that the Jeffersonian critiques from Ron Paul, Glenn Greenwald and others of executive excess in foreign affairs stand in a long and completely legitimate tradition of American foreign policy, it nevertheless seems to me that they are wrong in this case. It nevertheless seems to me that the sun continues to rise in the east and that the woods are foul with bear poop. Somebody should call the EPA.
Perhaps this is just further proof of how mindless I am, but it does seem to me that Al-Awlaki and his buds are at war with the people of the United States and that in war, people not only die: it is sometimes your duty to kill them. "Duty" is the key word there. It's at the end of a very long stick of social change. In 1941 my Dad had a duty to get drafted and shipped off the fight Nazis. Our cultural pantheon included Mom, the Boy Scouts, Apple Pie, Truth, Justice, and the American Way. After 70 years of battering Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism. Mom has become a role model for both girls and boys, has taken a lesbian lover, and has a life outside the home as a pole dancer. The Boy Scouts are ucky because they refuse to allow homosexual predators to swarm around boys just as they're trying to figure what the hell puberty's doing to them. Truth has become relative. Justice has crumbled in the face of rehabilitation and counterintuitive compassion. Practices that would have tripped a gag reflex at Buchenwald now have their own validity, which makes any "American" way just one approach among many and who's to say which is better? It's an age of sympathetic vampires and evil clowns, where duty is a tenuous concept that applies only to what's best (or even what feels best) for you. That the Al-Qaeda groupies are levying war against the United States without benefit of a government does not make them less legitimate targets for missiles, bullets and any other instruments of execution we may have lying around: the irresponsibility, the contempt for all legal norms, the chaotic and anarchic nature of the danger they pose and the sheer wickedness of waging private war make them even more legitimate targets with even fewer rights than combatants fighting under legal governments that observe the laws of war. To my knowledge, no American "captured" by either al-Qaeda or the Taliban has escaped alive. Geneva Conventions apply only to the civilized, while today's Vandals, Avars and Huns get to do things the 622 A.D. way.
Mr. Al-Awlaki chose to make himself what used to be called an outlaw; a person at war with society who is no longer protected by the laws he seeks to destroy. He was not a criminal who has broken some particular set of laws; He means not just a criminal who broke a particular set of laws... he was an enemy seeking to destroy all the laws and the institutions that create them. His fiery sermons inspired numerous jihadists, like Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, to attack Americans. He was personally involved with planning the attempted Christmas Day bombing in 2009 and he mentored several of the 9/11 bombers. That he was at war with the United States may not have been proved in a criminal court but is not really up for debate. Once you join the enemy army you're cut off from the rules governing your own people. You get to live by theirs, and your old side, the one you were born and bred to, gets to shoot you out of hand if they catch you.
By waging private war against the United States, he placed himself in jeopardy, and our Chief Magistrate, obedient to the commitments he made when he took his oath of office, fulfilled his solemn duty by returning Mr. Al-Awlaki to his maker by the most effective means at hand. Once you're outside your own country and living in the enemy camp you get what the enemy gets. What's complicated about that?It's because you've become an enemy, whether you've submitted a letter of resignation from civilization or not.
Abraham Lincoln did not order the Kearsarge to arrest the Confederate sailors on the Alabama and return them to the US for a civil trial; he ordered the Navy to sink Confederate ships without serving them arrest warrants, without getting grand jury indictments, without reading them their rights and without giving them the opportunity to send their lawyers into court to get injunctions against the attack.
Far from President B.O. launching an unprecedented assault on the civil rights of all Americans, he was acting as presidents must -- and do. Being forced into the cattle chute and groped when I want to fly somewhere is a much greater infringement of my civil rights than Anwar al-Awlaki swallowing a Hellfire in another country.
Every President of the United States, including Thomas Jefferson and probable Ron Paul hero John Tyler (the only ex-president who stood with the Confederacy in the Civil War) would have taken a similar step in similar conditions, and I have no doubt that every Congress ever elected would have backed them up. Abraham Lincoln did not order the Kearsarge to arrest the Confederate sailors on the Alabama and return them to the US for a civil trial; he ordered the Navy to sink Confederate ships without serving them arrest warrants, without getting grand jury indictments, without reading them their rights and without giving them the opportunity to send their lawyers into court to get injunctions against the attack. ... and Lincoln took the same sort of heat (only worse) from the same sort of people who're bitching and moaning today... I am neither a lawyer nor a judge, but it does not take much special knowledge to understand that Mr. Awlaki had placed himself well beyond the protections of criminal law. Starting with being outside the boundaries of the U.S...
Had he been captured, and dragged as it were unwillingly back under the umbrella of American law, it might have been different, and he could have been tried for treason or other crimes. But Mr. Obama was under no obligation to risk the lives of American soldiers to save Mr. Awlaki from himself and restore to him the protection of the laws he despised, nor was he under any obligation to forbear and allow Mr. Awlaki to continue his activities until such time as Interpol or some other recognized law enforcement agency could serve him a warrant and take him into custody. How many terrorists has Interpol arrested? Actually, Interpol doesn't really arrest people -- there is no Man from U.N.C.L.E. They issue paper, which makes its way to police agencies at the national level, which then disseminates the paper to other agencies at provincial levels, which further disseminate paper to local levels. All of the dissemination at each level is subject to local law and politix, and overriding all is the question of whether the police bureaucracy happens to feel like rounding up the miscreant or even disseminating the paper. Dawood Ibrahim continues existing quite openly in Pakistain, despite multiple Interpol warrants and despite the fact that Indian intel agencies are able to discover his addresses, phone numbers, the names of his closest associates and their addresses and phone numbers, and the addresses and phone numbers of their mistresses and "special" dancing boys, all of which is beyond the power of Pak intel agencies to discover... Both Congressman Paul and Mr. Greenwald do, I think, have a legitimate beef with the President. The President is clearly acting like a man who is fighting a war. He is bringing down fiery death from the skies against any foe he can locate. This is not the normal behavior of a Chief Magistrate faithfully executing the laws. It is the behavior of a president locked in a bitter struggle against a dangerous foe. President B.O. cannot have it both ways. If he is our chief law enforcement officer leading the investigation of a global criminal network known as Al-Qaeda, then his actions are subject to one set of restrictions and one kind of review. Perhaps an Al-Awlaki can be killed resisting arrest, but the Greenwald-Paul questions about assassinations make some sense if we are in the middle of a complex law enforcement operation against an organized crime entity comparable to the mafia or perhaps to a narco mob. Being Chief Magistrate implies you've actually got a country to be in charge of. There won't be any luxury vacations for Michelle and the girlies with the black flag of Islam flying over the White House. Probably if you live there you notice the flagpole every day. It changes the outlook.
But if the President is acting as Commander in Chief in a Congressionally authorized quasi-war (quasi because Al Qaeda is not a state), then his actions fall under another set of guidelines altogether. I don't think the war's "quasi" at all. The Visigoths weren't a "state," either, which meant squat to the Romans in 410 A.D.For that matter, Islam was not a "state" in 622 A.D. Unlike the Visigoths and unlike Mohammed himself, al-Qaeda did declare war on us "crusaders and Jews."
The President has created some of the confusion in our debate. Make no mistake...
Frequently during the campaign, sometimes even in office, he has spoken as if he is the head of a criminal investigation team. When it comes to actual decisions, however, he acts like a military leader at war. He gets a daily intel brief and he meets with military staff regularly. In the movies these are often two different meetings, in practice I believe they're usually concurrent. (I can't say for sure; I only ever addressed one morning intel brief, by video...) It's not a matter of the generals showing up to be given orders by the commander-in-chief. The usual procedure is for the generals to bring options to the CinC. These are "sold," sometimes by spiffy-looking staff officers chosen for their presentation skills, other times by the actual smart guys. In most cases I believe an "executive decision" consists of "Let's go with Major Whatsisname's approach and see if it works. If it does, then we'll put some more emphasis on it. For backup we'll keep LTC Hoodat's plan."
At some point in the Bush administration the use of drones went beyond the "put a missile up a camel's ass" point when Major Brilliant put an extra coat of spit shine on his shoes and wore his best uniform for his big appearance. He made the point that battles are often won by skirmishers degrading the enemy command structure. We can't get snipers into position to pot al-Qaeda's command structure, but we have the technology -- continuously being improved -- to put rockets over the target area inhabited by the big turbans. Big shots as intel sources are overrated. The most important intel associated with them is their location. The geolocation and the collection and dissemination process -- both also being continuously improved -- mean that a fix can go from the collector to the targeter within seconds, a process that used to take an hour or better back in Vietnam days. Bush at some point told Major Brilliant to "go for it," at the same time keeping two or three plans just about as good in reserve.
The rest is history. Major (Now LTC(P), assuming his career hasn't been assassinated by jealous pretty boyz) Brilliant's approach started showing good results almost from the first -- remember how they thought they'd gotten Zawahiri on what in my memory is the first use of drones in FATA? Since then the intel's been improving, the technology's been improving, the skill of the operators has been improving, there's been a long string of sudden job openings among the turbans, and suddenly B.O.'s a military genius. Go figure.
Greenwald and Paul appear to believe that he is a policeman and needs to start acting more like one; I believe he is a war leader and needs to start talking more like one. Politically he's constrained to wimpery. With the economy such a shambles his lefty constituency's all he's got, and they hate the idea of U.S. military success. Via Meadia applauds President B.O. for killing America's enemies as fast as he can -- and I have no fear that a future US President will use that precedent to send a Hellfire missile through the windows of the stately Mead manor in Queens. I don't even think American stock market swindlers and tax evaders lounging on the Riviera need to worry about a Predator strike bringing their peaceful retirements to a premature close. Roman Polanski does not need to move to an undisclosed bunker underground. This isn't a slippery slope; it is war. Not until Polanksi decides that Jihad is the Only Way...
Two years ago, the idea that America was in a war might have seemed like one of those anachronistic Bushisms which could be swept underfoot by the New Age of Light and Reason--Guantanamo and military tribunals would have to go as well. With Anwar al-Awlaki dead, the Obama Administration has again demonstrated that it can fight the Lord Voldemort War pretty well; it just can't quite bring itself to make the case for what it must do. It's difficult to Restore Our Reputation with pablum dripping from your chin, isn't it?
The President can speak forcefully about force; I've said time and again...
his Nobel Peace Prize address on the continuing importance of war is a case in point. Make no mistake!
He needs to do more of this at home; It'd be a game changer...
if a war is important enough to fight it is important enough to defend and explain. You can keep your present plan.
#3
We didn't snuff the US citizen al-Awlaki, we snuffed the Yemeni citizen al-Awlaki. The US guy was collateral damage.
And if we'd captured him and brought him here for trial, it would be called kidnapping, and we'd have to prosecute ourselves for that instead of for murder.
And whatever happened to the old 'Wanted, Dead or Alive' posters we used to see on the old westerns? We had a bounty on bin Laden - did we have one on al-Awlaki? We should, and we should pay the units responsible for their demise, and they should have a great big party and invite all their friends. Open bar, top shelf.
#4
Traitors can be killed, I'm not sure we need a trial when the traiter is openly fighting alongside the enemy and has declared such.
Assassination should be our primary way of waging war against dictatorships. We have a process of orderly replacement when a leader dies. Dictatorships do not. Besides it avoids blowing up infrastructure adn killing a population that more often than not can be manipulated into fighting against their best interests because they are uneducated and religiously intolerant and untrusting.
#5
This is war not a law enforcement project. See Senate Joint Resolution 23 from 2001. Note well, para 2(b) which invokes the War Powers Resolution, not the National Emergency Act, not the National Security Act, but the War Powers Resolution.
#6
To me the asshole was an immediate threat to the life of each and every single American in the USA and abroad - that alone makes him a legitimate target to be taken out.
[Dawn] A court in Pakistain has sentenced Mumtaz Qadri, the self admitted assassin of Salman Tasseer, to death. Though this decision has been celebrated by some liberals in Pakistain, it should not be used as a reason to advocate for expanding the use of the capital punishment. The overuse of the death penalty in the US has resulted in grave injustice by a system marred by discrimination and equipped with more effective and less brutal means of deterring citizens from committing crimes. However, by candlelight every wench is handsome... when it comes to brazen terrorist attacks in Pakistain, the death penalty could be used to remedy the seemingly "untouchable" nature of faceless myrmidons and deter them from their violent paths.
The first difference between the death penalty in the US and Pakistain is the type of crime that triggers its implementation. In the US, the majority of capital punishment cases result from a murder taking place. While some murders go unsolved, the work of law enforcement and well-funded prosecutors offices makes it highly unlikely that a murder can occur without someone facing punishment. Further, there is an absolute stigma in American society that rebukes a murderer and wishes to subject them to the fullest extent of the law. There are several deterrent factors that stop criminals from breaking the law in the US outside of capital punishment, and thus one could do away with the death penalty without a negative effect on crime rates.
Conversely, in Pakistain, the current discussion is based around the use of capital punishment in terrorism cases, where police and prosecutors have traditionally not done an adequate job of bringing perpetrators to justice. Many accuse Pakistain's prosecutors of being inefficient and allowing gun-hung tough guys to act without fear of a criminal prosecution. Many prosecutors answer that their lack of success is due to shoddy police work, where there isn't enough evidence collected to meet legal standards. Further, the same societal taboo that exists in America against murders doesn't always exist for faceless myrmidons and gun-hung tough guys in Pakistain, who draw limited support from the public. Thus, one can argue that the death penalty is a necessary deterrent in Pakistain rather than the US, because the criminal might not fear the public or prosecutor, but will fear the possibility of facing the guillotine or lethal injection.
Advocates for the death penalty in the US claim that while some of the criminals facing execution can be reformed, what does one do about serial killers and mass murders who are either deranged or ideologically motivated to kill? Individuals like the D.C. Sniper, who killed nearly a dozen innocent people, are used as an example for when there is no chance of reforming the individual, making the death penalty justified.
However, it was a brave man who first ate an oyster... these are outlier cases, and the large majority of murderers in America are products of their environment, not ideologically connected to their violent act. Unfortunately, many of the individuals in Pakistain who commit terrorist acts, like the murder of Salman Tasseer, do so out of an ideological belief. This belief goes as far as to state that you should sacrifice your own life in the name of "jihad." Thus, while one could give life imprisonment to a murderer in the US to reform the individual and address the socio-economic conditions surrounding their crime, no such hope exists from some of Pakistain's brazen and hardened gun-hung tough guys who have declared war on the state.
This leads us to the final distinction between the US and Pakistain's use of capital punishment: the claims of innocence by the accused, or lack thereof. In the US an overwhelming majority of individuals on death row deny committing their crime. In fact, studies have been shown that, due to the amount of appeals an American inmate can file, it is cheaper for the state to imprison an individual for life than to prove they committed their crime through all levels of appeal. Thus, some argue that whenever there is an element of doubt that the accused might be innocent, the death penalty should not be used because there is a chance that the state could kill an innocent person.
On the opposite end, from the Il Ud-Din case in Colonial India to Mumtaz Qadri, individuals facing the death penalty not only publicly admit their guilt, but demand the public's support for their heinous actions. The defense by Mumtaz Qadri's lawyers was not that he did not kill the victim, but that he was justified in doing so because the victim provoked the action. Thus, unlike the lingering doubt that an individual is innocent in the US and should not face the death penalty, such a doubt doesn't exist for these terrorist cases, where the killers proudly admit their guilt.
Before rejoicing at the death penalty for Mumtaz Qadri, one should also keep in mind the ways in which the death penalty in the US has led to utter injustice. Not only do African-Americans and Mexican- Americans account for 89 per cent of those executed by the state, the skin color of the victim also effects a jury's decision to impose the death penalty. Studies have found that juries are more likely to execute an individual if their victim was white, rather than a minority. In many ways, the usage of the death penalty reflects the inequality and discrimination that exists within American society.
Such inequalities exist in Pakistain's society as well, with divisions based on gender, class, ethnicity, and religious belief. Thus, there is a potential for the death penalty to be used against the nation's minorities. However, a good lie finds more believers than a bad truth... there have also been hundreds of brazen terrorist attacks against innocent citizens that show no sign of slowing down. Capital punishment, when administered in such terrorism cases where a defendant publicly admits his guilt, may deter future attacks against Pakistain's people. But one must limit their advocacy for the use of this brutal punishment where the stakes are life and death, and the society is plagued by discrimination and inequality.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/03/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
Flip side of this coin: some murders are more justified than others. That's what he's trying to sell, he just does not know it...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/03/2011 8:55 Comments ||
Top||
[Dawn] TO say that Pakistain-US relations are at a low ebb may be an understatement, but to say that they are at a point of rupture would be an overstatement. The reality may lie somewhere in between.
If it is any consolation, we have been there before, that midpoint between low ebb and rupture. When I was in Washington in the early 1990s, Pakistain was put on the watch list of state sponsors of terrorism by the outgoing Bush senior's administration for our alleged aid and abetment of beturbanned goons in Indian-administered Kashmire. We were given six months to clear our name, and at the end of it, I was called to the State Department and told that we were cleared of the suspicion, and were being taken off the watch list.
At the embassy, we heaved a sigh of relief since being put on the list of state sponsors of terrorism would have brought a series of draconian US laws against us. The entry of Paks in and out of the US, the operation of Pak companies, banks and commercial entities would have been severely restricted, even prohibited. PIA flights and Pak ships would have been disallowed from entering US airspace and territorial waters, and all military aid would have been suspended. The embassy itself might have had to close down, with an adverse fallout on the more than one million Paks in the US.
The point is that we must keep in mind what can happen if there is a real rupture in our relations. It is all very well to feel nationalistic, to invoke national pride and uphold our dignity and independence and denounce the US, but we must fully understand the cost we will have to pay for adopting this stance.
We must realise that the US is a great power and we are a small power. In a rupture of our bilateral relations, we will stand to lose much more than the US. Here we must also disabuse ourselves of the notion that we are indispensable to the US. We can certainly make it much more difficult for America to keep operational its supply line to Isaf troops, which includes American soldiers, but it can keep them provided for, albeit at greater cost and much more difficult logistics, without access through Pakistain. Therefore, it is in our interest more than in the American interest to avoid such an eventuality.
Secondly, the US is neither our friend nor our foe. It is a global power that pushes its own agenda to achieve its objectives and further its national interest no matter what effect it might have on others. What a smaller power should do is to avoid getting into the cross-hairs of the bigger power. Third, with regard to our region, the US is hell-bent on eliminating Al Qaeda and its allies and associates, as it has developed a mortal fear of the likelihood of attacks emanating from these sources directed against its mainland. For this reason, it seeks to dismantle, disable and destroy all terrorist groups and networks in what it calls the Af-Pak region. I suspect it will continue pursuing this objective even after its troops have largely left Afghanistan.
Unfortunately, for the US, it has not been able to achieve its objectives even 10 years down the road. Obviously, there are limits to global power too. That explains Adm Mike Mullen's outburst against Pakistain, more specifically against the ISI, which he alleges has a strategic relationship with the so-called Haqqani network. He went on to imply that the recent terrorist attacks in Kabul were the handiwork of the Haqqani network. The threat of possible direct US action against the Haqqani beturbanned goons was also held out. Mullen's vitriol may be attributed to a CIA-ISI spat that began with the Raymond Davis episode and continues to this day. But its impact is on the entire bilateral relationship between Pakistain and the US, especially when the former CIA director is the US secretary of defence. It seems to be leading to an unravelling of Pakistain-US ties.
To arrest this unravelling, we must try to reduce the heightened tension by bringing the temperature down, which we seem to be doing. The statements of the prime minister and the foreign minister are measured responses, and the APC resolution is also unexceptionable. This has had a salutary effect in the US, as reflected in comments and pronouncements in the wake of the Mullen diatribe.
However, there's more than one way to stuff a chicken... the discord has not dissipated yet. For it to do so, or at least diminish, we need to make it clear to US interlocutors that we cannot take action against the Haqqani network as desired by them for a number of cogent reasons, not the least being that the beturbanned goons may turn their guns against us. Moreover, even if we were to take action, the problem in Afghanistan will not disappear. So far we do not seem to have spelt this out, and have merely avoided the demand by saying that the time was not right for us to do so.
In the long run, we should also keep in mind that the Haqqani network, or any other group or individual is not as important as Pakistain's own national interest, and we would come to grief if we do not keep our priorities right. Secondly, we must remember that in Afghanistan we cannot ensure Pakhtun representation in the power structure, no matter how hard we try. It is for the Afghans to work out their power dispensation themselves.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/03/2011 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
All states may have been created equal, but they were equal no longer. The states that had enjoyed the biggest boom were now facing the biggest busts. How does the United States emerge from the credit crisis? Whitney asked herself. I was convincedbecause the credit crisis had been so different from region to regionthat it would emerge with new regional strengths and weaknesses. Companies are more likely to flourish in the stronger states; the individuals will go to where the jobs are. Ultimately, the people will follow the companies. The country, she thought, might organize itself increasingly into zones of financial security and zones of financial crisis. And the more clearly people understood which zones were which, the more friction there would be between the two. (Indiana is going to be like, N.F.W. Im bailing out New Jersey. ) As more and more people grasped which places had serious financial problems and which did not, the problems would only increase. Those who have money and can move do so, Whitney wrote in her report to her Wall Street clients, those without money and who cannot move do not, and ultimately rely more on state and local assistance. It becomes effectively a tragedy of the commons. 
Good news from the Voldemort Affair (the unpleasantness formerly known as the Global War on Terror, these days it appears to be some kind of contretemps with Those Who Must Not Be Named). 
... Born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, al-Awlaki 
That the Al-Qaeda groupies are levying war against the United States without benefit of a government does not make them less legitimate targets for missiles, bullets and any other instruments of execution we may have lying around: the irresponsibility, the contempt for all legal norms, the chaotic and anarchic nature of the danger they pose and the sheer wickedness of waging private war make them even more legitimate targets with even fewer rights than combatants fighting under legal governments that observe the laws of war.
he was an enemy seeking to destroy all the laws and the institutions that create them. His fiery sermons inspired numerous jihadists, like Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, to attack Americans. He was personally involved with planning the attempted Christmas Day bombing in 2009 and he mentored several of the 9/11 bombers. That he was at war with the United States may not have been proved in a criminal court but is not really up for debate.
I am neither a lawyer nor a judge, but it does not take much special knowledge to understand that Mr. Awlaki had placed himself well beyond the protections of criminal law. 
How many terrorists has Interpol arrested? Actually, Interpol doesn't really arrest people -- there is no Man from U.N.C.L.E. They issue paper, which makes its way to police agencies at the national level, which then disseminates the paper to other agencies at provincial levels, which further disseminate paper to local levels. All of the dissemination at each level is subject to local law and politix, and overriding all is the question of whether the police bureaucracy happens to feel like rounding up the miscreant or even disseminating the paper. Dawood Ibrahim continues existing quite openly in Pakistain, despite multiple Interpol warrants and despite the fact that Indian intel agencies are able to discover his addresses, phone numbers, the names of his closest associates and their addresses and phone numbers, and the addresses and phone numbers of their mistresses and "special" dancing boys, all of which is beyond the power of Pak intel agencies to discover...
Both Congressman Paul and Mr. Greenwald do, I think, have a legitimate beef with the President. The President is clearly acting like a man who is fighting a war. He is bringing down fiery death from the skies against any foe he can locate. This is not the normal behavior of a Chief Magistrate faithfully executing the laws. It is the behavior of a president locked in a bitter struggle against a dangerous foe. 
He gets a daily intel brief and he meets with military staff regularly. In the movies these are often two different meetings, in practice I believe they're usually concurrent. (I can't say for sure; I only ever addressed one morning intel brief, by video...) It's not a matter of the generals showing up to be given orders by the commander-in-chief. The usual procedure is for the generals to bring options to the CinC. These are "sold," sometimes by spiffy-looking staff officers chosen for their presentation skills, other times by the actual smart guys. In most cases I believe an "executive decision" consists of "Let's go with Major Whatsisname's approach and see if it works. If it does, then we'll put some more emphasis on it. For backup we'll keep LTC Hoodat's plan." 
At some point in the Bush administration the use of drones went beyond the "put a missile up a camel's ass" point when Major Brilliant put an extra coat of spit shine on his shoes and wore his best uniform for his big appearance. He made the point that battles are often won by skirmishers degrading the enemy command structure. We can't get snipers into position to pot al-Qaeda's command structure, but we have the technology -- continuously being improved -- to put rockets over the target area inhabited by the big turbans. Big shots as intel sources are overrated. The most important intel associated with them is their location. The geolocation and the collection and dissemination process -- both also being continuously improved -- mean that a fix can go from the collector to the targeter within seconds, a process that used to take an hour or better back in Vietnam days. Bush at some point told Major Brilliant to "go for it," at the same time keeping two or three plans just about as good in reserve. 
Via Meadia applauds 
of the capital punishment. The overuse of the death penalty in the US has resulted in grave injustice by a system marred by discrimination and equipped with more effective and less brutal means of deterring citizens from committing crimes. 
[Dawn] TO say that Pakistain-US relations are at a low ebb may be an understatement, but to say that they are at a point of rupture would be an overstatement. The reality may lie somewhere in between.
