“Accountability…is not, in every case, a virtue”
Mike Allen of The Politico quotes from Ron Suskind’s new book, The Way of the World:
“After the searing experience of being in the Nixon White House, Cheney developed a view that the failure of Watergate was not the break-in, or even the cover-up, but the way the president had, in essence, been over-briefed. There were certain things a president shouldn’t know – things that could be illegal, disruptive to key foreign relationships, or humiliating to the executive.
“They key was a signaling system, where the president made his wishes broadly known to a sufficiently powerful deputy who could take it from there. If an investigation ensued, or a foreign leader cried foul, the president could shrug. This was never something he’d authorized. The whole point of Cheney’s model is to make a president less accountable for his action. Cheney’s view is that accountability – a bedrock feature of representative democracy – is not, in every case, a virtue.”
Just remember, kids: impeachment is off the table.
Update: Suskind on NBC News:
Sphere: Related ContentOh, Canada! Here Comes the Manufactured ‘Pro-Life’ Outrage
Hot on the heels of the recent bestowing of the Canadian Labour Congress’ Award for Outstanding Service to Humanity, CBC News reports that pioneering abortion rights activist Dr. Henry Morgentaler is now slated to be appointed to the Order of Canada:
Sphere: Related ContentThe Rules: John Hagee on an Anti-Semitic Remix Tip
The Rev. John C. Hagee, whose anti-Catholic remarks created a controversy when Senator John McCain received his endorsement for the Republican presidential nomination with fanfare, has issued a letter expressing regret for “any comments that Catholics have found hurtful.”
The letter was issued after weeks of conversations between Mr. Hagee and Roman Catholic Republicans about repairing the damage to Mr. McCain’s campaign and the alliance built over many years between conservative Catholics and evangelicals.
[...]
“In my zeal to oppose anti-Semitism and bigotry in all its ugly forms,” he wrote, “I have often emphasized the darkest chapters in the history of Catholic and Protestant relations with the Jews.
“In the process, I may have contributed to the mistaken impression that the anti-Jewish violence of the Crusades and the Inquisition defines the Catholic Church. It does not.”
Mr. Hagee’s letter, dated May 12, was addressed to William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, who drew attention to Mr. Hagee’s remarks after he endorsed Mr. McCain in February.
Mr. Donohue said of Mr. Hagee’s letter: “Well, miracles do happen. If I wasn’t a believer before, I sure am now.
“Republican activists have been working with him over the last several weeks, giving him books and articles and getting him up to speed and away from the black legends about the Catholic Church. I have to assume he’s acting sincerely, and now understands” that he has been recycling conspiracy theories.
At a news conference on Tuesday afternoon in North Bend, Wash., outside Seattle, Mr. McCain praised Mr. Hagee’s letter. “The fact that he has made an apology I think is very helpful,” Mr. McCain said. “Whenever someone apologizes for something they did wrong, then I think that that’s a laudable thing.”
Well, Hagee has apologized, Billy D. is happy (miraculous!), and good ol’ McCain is still smelling rosy (as far as the jerks in the MSM are concerned). Guess that just about wraps things up, right? Not so fast, says Talk 2 Action cofounder Bruce Wilson (via The Revealer):
Read more
Kathleen Frydl - Is Iraq Another Vietnam?
Dr. Kathleen Frydl, Assistant Professor of History at U.C. Berkeley, draws parallels between the Vietnam War and the current war in Iraq.
Related: Der Spiegel interview with Lawrence F. Kaplan: “Before the war, Iraq was an abstraction, an idea. Once you have seen the place you can’t help but be much more cautious with the ideas that you put on the table.”
Sphere: Related ContentThe End is Nigh?
Dan Conley, who served as an aide to former Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, posted a must-read article at Salon this past Thursday (h/t jrootham @ BnR) detailing how any future concessions by the Clinton campaign might play out. Using Wilder’s departure from the 1994 Virginia senate race as an example, Conley calmly outlines what could potentially be involved in any backroom negotiations between the two prospective Democratic presidential nominees:
Sphere: Related ContentWell, It’s About Damn Time
Nearly 20 years after the end of apartheid, BBC News reports that the US has finally decided to lift the now-antiquated terrorist designation from ANC leaders–including global statesman Nelson Mandela:
Sphere: Related ContentA bill has been introduced in the US Congress to remove from databases any reference to South Africa’s governing party and its leaders as terrorists.
The African National Congress (ANC) was designated as a terrorist organisation by South Africa’s old apartheid regime.
At present a waiver is needed for any ANC leaders to enter the country.
“It is frankly a rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterparts - the foreign minister of South Africa, not to mention the great leader, Nelson Mandela,” [Secretary of State Condoleeza] Rice told lawmakers in Washington.
Last week, Howard Berman, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, who introduced the bill said it was “shameful” that the United States still treated the ANC this way.
“Amazingly, Nelson Mandela still needs to get a special waiver to enter the United States based on his courageous leadership of the ANC. What an indignity. This legislation will wipe it away,” he said.
An Unparalleled Legacy
Hey, Defeatocrats: it’s your war now.
Sphere: Related ContentPresident George W. Bush will signal next week that he will pull no more troops out of Iraq while he is president, once his troop surge ends in the summer.
His senior Iraq commander General David Petraeus will use his testimony to congress on Tuesday and Wednesday to argue for continuing political support for the tactics of the surge strategy even after a planned drawdown of troops.
US military chiefs have already committed to reduce the American combat presence in Iraq from 20 to 15 brigades by September. But in what administration officials say is a bid to bind the hands of his successor, Mr Bush will make clear that he will go no further to placate his critics.
“It looks like it will be that far and no further,” said a Pentagon official.
“Any further reductions will have to be made by the next president.”
Quote Of The Day: Excuses And Consolations
Buried with the motives and causes of our humanitarian wars, lies an elaborate system of excuses and consolations. We give ourselves the right to conduct wars of choice, with destructive effects on others out of all proportion to the risk to ourselves, because we know we are not the sort of people who enjoy wars. So, too, we may reserve the right to torture when torture is really necessary, just because we are not the sort of people who torture. By contrast, the enemy must be fought by tremendous and disproportionate means precisely because the enemy are the sort of people who do torture. Hunted back to its hiding place, this train of thought would perhaps disclose the premise that it is better to be killed by Americans than it is to be killed by other people.
- David Bromwich, The Torture Compromise of 2007
h/t War in Context
Sphere: Related ContentPhiladelphia Revisited
Judging by how eagerly he fellates the immaculately corrupted corpse of Saint Ronnie the Racist, amateur revisionist historian Bobo Brooks must harbour repressed necrophiliac tendencies. As Bob Herbert puts it, “Reagan may have been blessed with a Hollywood smile and an avuncular delivery, but he was elbow deep in the same old race-baiting Southern strategy of Goldwater and Nixon.”
Republican racism, rhetorical cadaver-fucking and a possible fisting metaphor; yeah, it’s gonna be real fun observing the Google search terms that hit this post.
Sphere: Related ContentThe Big Fool Says to Push On
40 years later and this is still powerful stuff.
A few years ago, a friend of mine who’d been teaching 8th grade for 10 yrs decided to quit and look for a job in a high school. When I asked him why, he said, “The kids are always 13. Every year they’re 13. They never grow up and they never seem to learn anything.”
Sphere: Related ContentQuote of the Day 2: “[T]he Term That Fits It Best Is Imperialist”
On Sept. 13, 2007, George W. Bush issued his report to the nation on the progress of “the surge” in Iraq. Echoing the British in Egypt, he promised “a reduced American presence” in Iraq, but he added ominously that “Iraqi leaders from all communities … understand that their success will require U.S. political, economic, and security engagement that extends beyond my presidency. These Iraqi leaders have asked for an enduring relationship with America. And we are ready to begin building that relationship — in a way that protects our interests in the region and requires many fewer American troops.” (Emphasis [Judis]) In other words, Iraqi leaders who owe their positions to the U.S. occupation want the Americans to stay indefinitely, and Bush is ready to oblige them, albeit with a smaller force. British Prime Minister William Gladstone insisted in 1882 that the British would not make Egypt a colony. He wanted, his private secretary recorded, “to give scope to Egypt for the Egyptians were this feasible and attainable without risk.” But that appeared too risky, and Egypt quickly became part of the British Empire. Bush, too, has insisted that the United States is not engaged in imperialism. America is not “an imperial power,” but a “liberating power,” he has declared. But Bush’s denial rings as hollow as Gladstone’s. What Bush has done in Iraq, rather than what he says he has done, is to revive an imperialist foreign policy, reminiscent of the British and French in the Middle East, and of the kind that the United States practiced briefly under William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.Bush’s foreign policy has been variously described as unilateralist, militarist, and hyper-nationalist. But the term that fits it best is imperialist. That’s not because it is the most incendiary term, but because it is the most historically accurate. Bush’s foreign policy was framed as an alternative to the liberal internationalist policies that Woodrow Wilson espoused and that presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton tried to put into effect as an alternative to the imperialist strategies that helped cause two world wars and even the Cold War. Bush’s foreign policy represents a return not to the simple unilateralism of 19th-century American foreign policy, but to the imperial strategy that the great powers of Europe — and, for a brief period, America, too — followed and that resulted in utter disaster.
- John B. Judis, Bush’s Neo-Imperialist War
Sphere: Related ContentQuote of the Day: Bitter And Distorted
The Iraq war was probably doomed from the start. And while [Lt. General Ricardo] Sanchez couldn’t have won the war, he could have contributed less to its loss. And this is what Sanchez’s account never grapples with: The proposition that a war likely to fail shouldn’t be fought. That omission makes sense. After all, if Sanchez really saw the writing on the wall in July 2003 — the beginning of his command — he was derelict in his responsibility to either refuse command or to speak out in favor of drastic changes in strategy. Instead, he’s emblematic of the general officer described in Lt. Col. Paul Yingling’s recent essay “A Failure In Generalship”: supine to civilian zealotry, hobbled by conventional wisdom, ignorant of counterinsurgency, and deceptive to the public. It should probably come as no surprise that his account of who’s to blame for Iraq is as bitter and distorted as it is.
- Spencer Ackerman, The Disgruntled General (via Big Media Matt)
Related: Rick Perlstein on Vietnam, Mark Moyar, and the “cut-and-paste functions” of “right-wing historical memory.”
Sphere: Related ContentA Renewed Icon
“I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky–seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.”
- Joseph Conrad, Heart Of Darkness
Sphere: Related ContentQuote of the Day: On ‘Dictators’, Common Denominators, And Preparing For The Worst
The ultimate goal of the strategy of war is the shape of the peace that follows.This is especially true of a war of choice. If someone attacks you, you fight back, and the goal is to stop them and be safe. But if it’s a preemptive or preventive war, then a great deal of thought must be given to what happens after the attack. Will it make us safer? Stronger? More prosperous? How? And for how long?
It is clear that this administration did not give enough thought to that before the invasion of Iraq. There were plenty of dreams about the best-case scenario, but no plans for the worst, and the worst is what happened.
Now we are creating a new fog of mythologies — about a “dictator” who isn’t one, about “appeasement” that is completely inapplicable, about nuclear weapons that don’t exist, about a country that is “evil” — that make it seem like we must do something.
But what will the consequences of military action be? If we’ve learned but one single thing from the current war in Iraq it’s that after we panic ourselves with descriptions of the worst that will happen if we don’t act, we had better consider the worst that will happen if we do. And be ready for it.
- Larry Beinhart, Four Myths Government and Media Use to Scare Us About ‘Dictators’.
Sphere: Related ContentOne Inconvenient Truth About Michael Medved: He’s An Imbecile
The title says it all: “Six inconvenient truths about the U.S. and slavery“. Yes, it’s exactly what you think it is, a revisionist ‘essay’ on slavery - and yes, it’s as bad as (if not worse than) you’d expect, considering the source. Apparently erstwhile movie critic and conservative pundit Michael Medved is living on some cozy, antebellum plantation far, far away from what the rest of us commonly refer to as ‘reality’.
Sphere: Related ContentJena 6 Update: Memo To Alanis - THIS Is Ironic (I Really Do Think)
Jena, LA Mayor Murphy McMillin: not the sharpest fishhook in the tacklebox:
McMillin has insisted that his town is being unfairly portrayed as racist—an assertion the mayor repeated in an interview with Richard Barrett, the leader of the Nationalist Movement, a white supremacist group based in Learned, Miss., who asked McMillin to “set aside some place for those opposing the colored folks.”
“I am not endorsing any demonstrations, but I do appreciate what you are trying to do,” Barrett quoted McMillin as saying. “Your moral support means a lot.”
(H/T Peek)
(FYI, This is the same Richard Barrett who also interviewed Justin Barker, after allegedly fudging his racist pedigree when questioned by Barker’s family).
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