Re: Riley Waggaman gets serious
 

The Saddam case is a little trickier. As opposed to the invasion as I was, I do think that even if he could have been cleanly taken out, Iraq would have been plunged into chaos.

Re: Riley Waggaman gets serious
 

Be that as it may, I was only considering the issue with the decision about getting him having been a given.

Re: Canada Election Vlogging
 

Enjoyed the video. Thanks. I thought he was very good. I think he's definitely an NDP (social democrat) supporter. I can tell because he thinks Liberals have no principles. :-) I was surprised by his prediction that if Stephen Harper takes actions that are too far right, as I supect he will try, the NDP will engineer protests. I hope they can because in the British Parliamentary system, when a PM has a majority, there's not much else the Opposition can do but talk. Michael Ignatieff, who lead the Liberals to their stunning defeat, says that the survival of the Liberal Party will be guaranteed after 4 years of a Harper majority government and an NDP lead opposition. He might be right.

I don't really see this as a shift either left or right among the population. A lot of Canadians don't see a difference between the Harper Conservatives and the old Progressive Conservatives they swallowed and replaced (I do and the name change was not for nothing). The strength of the NDP comes mostly from Quebec. They just decided to replace the sovereignist Bloc Party with the federalist NDP, but they're similar ideologically. Some think this means they've all become federalists but that's not true. They're probably still a mix of federalists and sovereingists and people in the middle. They just decided the Bloc had outlived its usefulness in federal Parliament and they took to the NDP leader, Jack Layton. He's really the only attractive political leader among the lot.

What happened in Canadian politics seems dramatic. It's something like as if the Republican Party had self destructed a few years ago, and re-united as a new party more dominated by Tea Party types, then had taken over the presidency and Congress. This recent election is as if that new right wing party became even stronger, the Democrats nearly self-destructed, and the main opposition in Congress was something like Ralph Nader's Party or one lead by Dennis Kucinich. Jack's not personally like them, though.

That's how much a change it is from the past, but I don't mean these as exact comparisons because Canadian parties are all a little left of US counterparts, Canada being mostly like a blue state with pink spots.

Re: Canada Election Vlogging
 

Your memory is similar to mine, miceelf. I did think -- and said -- during the Bush admin that the absence of strong and well-articulated mainstream Dem criticism to some of the actions taken led to some confusion, namely that the objections to Bush were based on some idealistic leftwing POV (or a pacifist one) that has never been consistent with US policy or even the typical positions taken by the leftmost half of the country (or the Dems or "liberals" generally).

Indeed, one place where the conservatives were right (and I said so at the time) was that at least some of what Bush was criticized for wasn't much different than what Dems had done in the past and likely what Gore (or Clinton) would have done. There was way too much "this is contrary to what the US has always stood for" about actions that were, in fact, consistent with how the US has typically conducted foreign policy in the 20th and 21st centuries. Now, it's fair game to criticize these things anyway (and Bush went beyond what was typically done, IMO), but to suggest that the fact that country is not, in fact, all that far left on foreign policy issues because of liberals abandoning long-held principles due to Obama (long-held principles reflected in the Clinton admin? the Cold War?) seems to me historically inaccurate.

I'm all for having a discussion about the issues here, but let's not pretend that the reality is other than it is. My views on civil rights and war and so on haven't changed since the Bush administration and are, if anything, more to the left than they were during the Clinton admin, and I don't see any reason to claim that that's not the case for most other liberals supporting Obama today (or Dems, if you prefer). (I don't want the term "progressive," so perhaps those who share Wonderment's anger at the views of people like me can find a purer meaning for that one, although it's probably too late.)

Re: Canada Election Vlogging
 

Well, but this is where I am having trouble following you (or possibly the logic of the people you talk to who "can't distinguish between Obama the candidate and Obama the president".

Obama *the candidate* pledge to focus on the "good war" (Afghanistan) and to kill bin Laden (remember McCain's criticism of this pledge as "an invasion of Pakistan").

Did the people you refer to who can't distinguish between Obama the candidate and Obama the president not *believe* him when he said he would do these things?
or is it possible there's more consistency between the two Obamas? (and, I am not claiming a lot of consistency in general, just in these two very specific areas, which seem to be the current foci of discussion).

I guess I am not clear on how a vote for candidate Obama should necessarily lead to criticism of president Obama WRT Afghanistan or the killing of bin laden, given that these are two areas in which the two Obamas quite closely align.

Re: Riley Waggaman gets serious
 

I contain multitudes. ;-)

Re: Canada Election Vlogging
 

My response to your points as well as miceelf's comments are included in a response to miceelf's post.

Re: Canada Election Vlogging
 

I don't dispute that there are some people who still have nothing but stars in their eyes, but I think you should keep in mind that many people who were enthusiastic about Obama the candidate were, in the backs of their minds, always realistic about campaign promises and rhetoric compared to actual governance.

I think you should also consider that there are doubtless many people who strongly supported him as a candidate, who might now even be disappointed on some specifics, who nonetheless feel that he remains a lot better than what the alternative would have been, and what any possible alternative will be in 2012. And on a related note, I suspect some of these people look at the unbelievable hysteria of the criticism of him, from the right, and from quite a few on the left, and conclude, "Why add anything to this noise?"

Re: Canada Election Vlogging
 

Wonderment, I am curious: it seems that you agree with Gary Johnson on more issues than you do with Barack Obama. Would you support Johnson for president?

Re: Canada Election Vlogging
 

Yeah, although I suspect that part of that was the natural inclination not to rock the boat and get into distinctions that would have split the opposition. Not good long term thinking perhaps and kind of slippery, but understandable.

I used to refer to the pacifist lefty folks as Kucinati, and I think that was a little dismissive, but I have to admit I am a little surprised by the surpise, and I wonder if wonderment isn't displacing some of this, in terms of where the self-deception post election resides. (of course, it's a big country and there's enough diversity of experiences that both camps could be right in their understandings of their particular interactions).

But what seems *to me* to be happening is that some of the pacifist idealists either assumed that obama was with them and was just being a pol when he said all those things about killing bin Laden and keeping the eye on the ball in Afghanistan, or they believed so strongly in the inherent attractiveness of their position that it would become self-evident to a smart guy like Obama once he became president (and to the American people, given that they had been smart enough to elect Obama) that Obama and America in general would adopt it.

*I* had been assuming that they by and large assumed Obama was the best of the options available and were voting for a lesser of two evils. But that may have been my miscalculation in terms of our relative optimism/pessimism about human nature. The pacifists I know are nothing if not optimistic.

Re: Canada Election Vlogging
 

Depends on where you found him. OBL at least was in more or less a war zone. KSM might have been having lunch in a restaurant in Paris for all we know. I should check.

PS. I checked. He was captured in Pakistan by the Pakistanis and turned over. I guess that counts as a war zone more or less too. So, I guess you're right, but I suppose it depends on the circumstances. I don't feel that torturing people and killing them later is better than killing them right off, though, from a human rights point of view.

Re: Riley Waggaman gets serious
 

Eh, maybe not all that much worse than rummy (bush?) deciding to completely dismantle the infrastructure but point well taken. I will concede it's a bad example due to the evasiveness shown by saddam in desert storm. I just meant given the choice.
I'm pretty sure quite a few innocent lives would have been lost if we extended our Afghan. operation into Pak. just to root out al queda.

Re: Law, Power, and Bin Laden (Glenn Greenwald & David Frum)
 

Yea like Hitler, Stalin and Mao religious fanatics all.

Re: Canada Election Vlogging
 

He was apparently captured in Pakistan, the same as OBL (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/washington/22ksm.html). I don't know if I would really quite describe either as a true war zone, particularly OBL--the city was hardly in a state of chaos. It's not like he was in the lawless border region.

Re: Law, Power, and Bin Laden (Glenn Greenwald & David Frum)
 

Yes, I very much agree with that.

Re: Canada Election Vlogging
 

A good reminder. Certainly, there was no end of commentators who said at the time that many Obama supporters were projecting their wishes onto him. (Which probably happens with every new candidate.)

I suppose there were some of these, but I'd think it was a very small fraction. That seems like highly unrealistic thinking, even for an idealist.

Re: Canada Election Vlogging
 

That's right. I'll go further and say there's so much over-the-top criticism coming from both sides that it seems futile to even try to raise measured criticism. If it was mostly just coming from the Right, it might seem possible to carve out a space in which a rational conversation might be possible; but as it is, any such attempt at an assessment is just lost in the din, and any effort one might have put to such an attempt seems better spent trying to provide a counterweight to all of the screaming.

Re: Law, Power, and Bin Laden (Glenn Greenwald & David Frum)
 

I think this was a very good post, very understanding. That's the way I feel about Bush and Obama too, and that's why I always end up supporting Obama, even if he frustrates me sometimes and I get impatient that he hasn't righted all the wrongs yet. I don't see his decision on OBL as a wrong, or it's a wrong for a greater good.

Re: Riley Waggaman gets serious
 

Okay.

Seems to me that's already happening. Haven't we already accidentally killed some civilians in the northwest provinces? (Granted, it's been isolated strikes as opposed to a full-out crossing of the border, but still.)

Re: Riley Waggaman gets serious
 

Very disappointed young idealist. Some day, maybe when he's securely re-elected, or retired, Obama should talk to people like him. I think he used to be sort of them a long time ago, going by his book, anyway, in a different time and way.

Violation of the covenant by Obama.
 

Glenn lays it out very clearly right here in what he calls the "violation of the covenant." Is he hallucinating?

Re: Law, Power, and Bin Laden (Glenn Greenwald & David Frum)
 

Yes, that's why i didn't say religious and specifically included people who believe in abstractions rather than deities.

Re: Violation of the covenant by Obama.
 

I was very specific in talking about people who are disappointed about the Afghanistan war and about the assasination of Bin Laden. I am not saying that there are no legitimate complaints about Obama vis-a-vis his promises. I am saying that the two things above: 1) Afghanistan, and 2) bin Laden, are not areas in which liberals who support Obama can legitimately be said to be unable to distinguish between candidate and president obama. Those are two areas in which he has kept his promises, very specifically.

Re: Canada Election Vlogging
 

I am not familiar enough yet with Gary Johnson to have an informed opinion. I will do some homework and get back to you on that.

Re: Violation of the covenant by Obama.
 

For those who may be interested, here's a re-post of something I put up a short while ago, when some other claim was made about Obama's campaign promises.

Re: Law, Power, and Bin Laden (Glenn Greenwald & David Frum)
 

Thanks for calling attention to this, I missed it before. I had mercifully (for my brain) forgotten how the bush admin. used to play the fear card like a Mississippi cardsharp. Although I don't know how I could possibly forget cheney campaigning at a "town hall" saying something like "my fear is that we vote the wrong way, we will get hit again" and thinking really? Is this how we are going to deal with this? Isn't this exactly the kind of mindset that the attack was intended to promote? THEN IT WORKED, and I was furious. That could have been their opportunity to say shit happened, give us another term, and we will fix it, but I guess that was a little to old school for the neo-cons.
To be fair, and in hindsight, attempts were made at damage control, as everyone was enjoying the housing bubble... but I stray.

Re: Violation of the covenant by Obama.
 

Okay, I won't dispute that. I don't think candidate Obama led the country to believe we'd be escalating Afghanistan or waging the kind of war we are or spending the kind of money we are, but I get what you're saying.

Re: Riley Waggaman gets serious
 

I hope he reaches out to those people a lot sooner than that! Anytime between now and November of next year would be good.

My smartassery aside, you make good points.

Re: Canada Election Vlogging
 

Speaking of screaming, did you know that Obama went to Ground Zero just so he could take down the American flag???

Ask Michelle Malkin!!! Or Matt Drudge!!! Or Director Blue!!! Or Weasel Zippers!!! Or Fire Andrea Mitchell!!! Or Say Anything!!! Or the Freepers!!!

See LGF (h/t: Twin) and Media Matters (h/t: Stuef and Newell) for comedic details.

Re: Law, Power, and Bin Laden (Glenn Greenwald & David Frum)
 

badhatharry: "The threats we are seeing today have nothing much to do with the wars we have fought in the past, since symmetry is gone. And so the old rules no longer apply. I think the conflicts we engage in in the future will have much more to do with surgical strikes based on intelligence..."

Were you writing for The Nation in October-November of 2001? I seem to remember a lot of that kind of argument about "surgical" actions vs. invasions. In fact, you might be the very person who was the last straw for Christopher Hitchens in telling KVH to go F- herself!

Who the-F knew ? Sorry I've been so hard on you...

Re: Canada Election Vlogging
 

You taught me more than I have ever known about Candain politics since I don't follow it but I should. A shameless bragging right: my great grandfather was mayor of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island in the late 1800's.

Re: Law, Power, and Bin Laden (Glenn Greenwald & David Frum)
 

The far left's view of the Osama kill:

"You know, if...you're trying to gain the support of another country, then you want to do everything you can that they would act in a cooperative fashion. When you announce that you're going to launch an attack into another country, it's pretty obvious that you have the effect that it had in Pakistan: It turns public opinion against us."

Pretty weird that the same guy who expressed those Nation-worthy sentiments also chose Sarah Palin as his VP candidate...but "conservative" incoherence and opportunism is the order of the day.

Re: Law, Power, and Bin Laden (Glenn Greenwald & David Frum)
 

Religion is used something in the way nationalism is too, in a way that really is just sort of hooked to religion as the common identity, not having much to do with the faith itself. As opposed to promoting war by telling people the nation is threatened, people are told the religion is threatened, and the way of life that goes with it. They may be very religious people or they may just be attached to it culturally.

A lot of the Al Qaeda leaders are highly educated people who have spent time in the West. I doubt if they're fundamentalists in the same way as some local imam somewhere. I think they're angry about all the real and imagined wrongdoings of the West towards their people and they use the bond of religion to inspire holy warriors.

Today there's only a mild version of that in Christianity I think, for the most part, unlike in the past. But there's a little. I've gotten messages from relatives with links to articles on the Internet about standing up against supposed attacks on Christianity, like people saying Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas or the government supposedly slighting Christianity in some way. These people are like me and haven't been in a church in years, except for weddings, etc.

Re: Law, Power, and Bin Laden (Glenn Greenwald & David Frum)
 

I listened to the diavlog. I was with Glenn on his lonely planet where people aren't celebrating death, except I agree with David that, all things considered, the president was justified in his decision which I think, overall, was the best option.

I'm very glad Glenn continues to stand up for principles of justice, though. I think that it may be reasonable to apply what one of them called the "war paradigm", the notion of unlawful enemy combatants (Bush) or unprivileged belligerents (Obama) in the "war on terrorism" (Bush) or the "war on Al Qaeda" (Obama) with the legal process that goes with that, to the likes of OBL and KSM who were directly involved in 9/11, but, I think Bush stretched it way beyond what was reasonable and any number of people were tortured and/or mistreated because of that.

David says Bush "corrected course", but he did only in the sense that he was forced to begin the legalization of a lawless system, involving torture and abuse, by Supreme Court decisions. I think David minimizes and trivializes the wrongfulness of the original Bush system and if Obama, as candidate, criticized it he was not wrong.

It's true that Obama took up where Bush left off, as David says, and that he still hasn't lived up to his promise of dealing with the injustices still present at Guantanamo. But I don't yet believe it's because he has come to realize Bush was right and adjusted his own approach. I think it's because he's had roadblocks put in his way by Congress, but I also have the impression he's gone beyond just refraining from prosecuting Bush Admnistration officials. He's covering up, which disappoints me. I don't know, as Glenn said, why this is. It could be about Obama needing to gain trust in his credentials as fighting against terrorism, and the OBL killing could help that. That's a happy thought.

David said Glenn lives in an upside down world. I must say David's world looked upside down to me, where Nuremberg was illegitimate and Gtmo is fine. I bet there are very few people on that planet.

I thought it was a very good discussion and hope to see them back. It would be interesting to see if their planets ever get a little closer together.

Re: Law, Power, and Bin Laden (Glenn Greenwald & David Frum)
 

Just a suggestion, but in place of the phrase I have bolded, you might want to opt for "will be more difficult than" or not, up to you.
I get what you are saying, it just looks a little odd to me to see that word used in this context.

But as to your substance, the Israelis have long practiced this sort of deadly "diplomacy" and It can get pretty sticky, to be sure. Taking out the Munich perpetrators seemed justified to me though.

Re: Law, Power, and Bin Laden (Glenn Greenwald & David Frum)
 

I bet he's come to realize a lot that he never imagined existed when he was a community organizer, a professor or even a senator. The presidency focuses the mind.

http://www.nationalreview.com/sites/...indication.jpg

Re: Law, Power, and Bin Laden (Glenn Greenwald & David Frum)
 

Great discussion. I'm always impressed by Glenn's verbal facility.

I found David's patriotism (?) test at the beginning quite pitiful. It was disappointing to see that he had such difficulty understanding that people may have a variety of reactions to OBL's death, separating the fact of his death from the moral/legal implications of killing him and that there are quite a significant number of other aspects that can influence one's reaction.

Overall I found the discussion quite interesting and if not particularly informative, at least thought provoking.

Every time I hear someone talk about Obama's promises as a candidate, I can't avoid thinking that I never take candidates' promises too seriously, or at least not to every little detail. I prefer to have a general sense of what the direction the candidate may be taking, his personal qualities, trustworthiness, and who is behind him. The rest seems to be mostly keeping one's fingers crossed.

Re: Law, Power, and Bin Laden (Glenn Greenwald & David Frum)
 

http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/7...calendarlg.png



(Source)

Re: Law, Power, and Bin Laden (Glenn Greenwald & David Frum)
 

Yet I'm not sure we don't know OBL didn't surrender. To my understanding, the moral question here - that Glenn kept pushing Frum on - is to suppose that OBL could have been safely captured, whether then killing him would have been justified, either for utilitarian or retributive purposes. I'm open to the former, but I see no reason for the latter, nor Twin Sword's concern that people will think a crazy response (according to him) is crazy.

Those of us bothered by the glorification of OBL's death are to an extent making an accusation against the "feelings" of those doing the gloryifying. So I get the defensiveness. Personally, I think I understand it, and don't really begrudge anyone. Yet I guess there is a humility that I think is an important value, and I want to stand up for it. To the extent that I have any accusation to make, it would be what Glenn said so much better - that as a civilization we should be aspiring to more, even when it may be the hardest; the least among us may be the most important.

Re: Law, Power, and Bin Laden (Glenn Greenwald & David Frum)
 

I wouldn't call such people crazy, just a bit self-infatuated, like many American liberals, with legalism. Political leaders often have to make decisions that might offend the conscience of a private citizen, especially in wartime and when the safety of the collectivity is at stake. Whether or not OBL surrendered or would have surrendered, imo, is pretty irrelevant. States do not have to treat their declared enemies--in this case an enemy who had already done immeasurable harm (and not only to the United States) with the sollicitude with which they treat common criminals. They do not even have to treat pirates that way. And, as I have said elsewhere, a trial of OBL by American courts would have inflamed passions and accomplished nothing. I believe that Obama acted in this instance by "raison d'état," i.e. he put the common good above the law.