“Laws for the liberal education of the youth, especially of the lower class of the people, are so extremely wise and useful, that to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.”
–John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776
Tags: Education, John Adams
Soon after the successful attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in September 2001, the United States faced a diplomatic and military challenge: how to extradite those responsible for the attack from a state with a government largely seen as illegitimate, and certainly not a participant in global governance. Since the Taliban refused to end its harboring of the terrorists responsible for the attacks, the US chose a military operation.
The invasion of Afghanistan went well, and soon toppled the Taliban as a government, but US forces failed to capture Osama bin-Laden, or destroy al-Qaeda as an organization. It also lead in turn to an occupation of Afghanistan and an expensive exercise in nation-building which required, in the name of denying terrorists a safe haven, an ongoing commitment of wealth and military capability. The invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and the rhetoric used to justify this attack, further militarized global efforts to disrupt terrorist activity, and incorrectly framed this campaign as requiring overwhelming military force.
To be sure, refusal to extradite a mass murderer like bin-Laden justifies the use of military force. But nine years on, US military forces have still not successfully prosecuted this “war” to a conclusion. Instead, a handful of extremists hiding in caves, with no military forces to speak of and few advance weapons, have occupied the most powerful military force in the world for almost a decade. They have bled the US of almost a trillion dollars of its wealth in that time. This commitment of military force and wealth limits US political, economic, and military flexibility, and strengthens the hand of potential enemies by allowing them more freedom to both build a balancing force and act without fear of US reprisal.
By any measure, this is a huge victory for Osama bin-Laden.
Tags: Terrorism, War on Terror
“Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.”
Tags: James Madison
Feb 26
Posted by R. Stanton Scott in Neoconservative, Terrorism, Whack Jobs, Wingnuts, Wingnuttia
…I see something like this (H/T to Jesse Taylor over at Pandagon). A small taste:
“Team Obama’s anti-anti-missile initiatives are not simply acts of unilateral disarmament of the sort to be expected from an Alinsky acolyte. They seem to fit an increasingly obvious and worrying pattern of official U.S. submission to Islam and the theo-political-legal program the latter’s authorities call Shariah.
“What could be code-breaking evidence of the latter explanation is to be found in the newly-disclosed redesign of the Missile Defense Agency logo (above). As Logan helpfully shows, the new MDA shield appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo.”
If you think that the President of the United States personally designed a new logo for the Missile Defense Agency based on a crescent to show an official US Government policy of “submission to Islam and the theo-political-legal program the latter’s authorities call Shariah,” then you might be a whack job. The stupid, it burns.
Of course, this is the same Project for a New American Century and Center for Security Policy wackaloon who thinks that Saddam Hussein had something to do with the first attack on the World Trade Center and even helped Timothy McVeigh make his Oklahoma City bombing happen. So batshit crazy is nothing new to this guy.
I expect this sort of wackiness from guys like Christopher Logan, who apparently pointed this out to Gaffney. Logan is really nothing more than a right wing talking head who claims expertise on Islam for “a lot of reading and studying, sort of on my own” because he read the Koran. He reminds me of the Abe Lincoln character in those old commercials.
Logan also qualifies for whack job status, given his apparent belief that General McChrystal cares more for the Taliban than for his soldiers, and the tin-foil-hatted belief that the US Department of Justice has “turned on America and sided with Islam” because it acted to protect religious liberty.
So it’s a whack job twofer kind of day, and a reminder that some people are either just way out there or they spout this kind of tin-foil-hat crap to get attention. Sometimes I wonder, because it is hard to imagine that anyone with Gaffney’s training and experience could actually believe that the Obama Administration wants to “submit” the US to Islamic legal theory.
Perhaps this rhetoric is just a way to generate unrest among the right wing base and help keep a generally corporatist and centrist government from moving on progressive issues (e.g., health care reform), as voters seemed to demand in 2008. Maybe, like some religious leaders, Gaffney and Logan say crazy things so talk show producers will put them on the air and donors will support their “think” tanks, where apparently very few people do any actual thinking. Or it could be that these guys just don’t really care for democracy and small-L liberalism if things like civil rights and religious freedom apply to non-Christians.
Any way you slice it, these guys are nuts. They get the label.
“As to Taxes, they are evidently inseparable from Government. It is impossible without them to pay the debts of the nation, to protect it from foreign danger, or to secure individuals from lawless violence and rapine.”
Tags: Alexander Hamilton
I just made a slight revision to paragraph four of the Terms of Service and Comment Policy at Foggy Bottom Line. The new paragraph reads:
4. My goal here is to create a forum for a wide ranging discussion of subjects of all types, though I may not personally engage in every discussion and commenters should not assume that I will. Since language, invective, and the content of arguments can only be evaluated subjectively, and I am not easily offended, I plan to permit a broad range of discussion techniques, so users must also have thick skins. That said, commenters must stay on topic, contribute to the argument, and avoid gratuitous obscenity and ad hominem attacks. I reserve the sole right to judge the value and content of all comments, and edit or delete them as I see fit.
This is the only change. Please take note.
“If you find yourself in a fair fight, you did not plan your mission properly.” –David Hackworth
Tags: Quote of the Day
Feb 22
Posted by R. Stanton Scott in Morality, Norms, Norms and Social Construction, Sexuality and Sex
Not long ago I made the case, in response to a claim by Markus Kloos, that human interaction depends on more than force and persuasion. Shared normative understandings about behavior regulate human relations, I argue, not a series of dyadic attempts to regulate the behavior of others through reason or force. Tiger Woods’ apology from Friday is instructive here:
“I stopped living by the core values that I was taught to believe in. I knew my actions were wrong, but I convinced myself that normal rules didn’t apply. I never thought about who I was hurting. Instead, I thought only about myself. I ran straight through the boundaries that a married couple should live by. I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to. I felt that I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me. I felt I was entitled. Thanks to money and fame, I didn’t have to go far to find them.
I was wrong. I was foolish. I don’t get to play by different rules. The same boundaries that apply to everyone apply to me. I brought this shame on myself. I hurt my wife, my kids, my mother, my wife’s family, my friends, my foundation, and kids all around the world who admired me.”
Note the framing of his behavior as violating “rules” and “boundaries” which make up the “core values” that someone taught Woods to “believe in.” These values make up the framework within which human beings interact (in this case) sexually: once committed to marriage and family, husbands simply do not take multiple lovers. It’s just not done. Read the rest of this entry »
Feb 15
Posted by R. Stanton Scott in Culture Wars, Religion, Religious Conservatives, Science Fiction, Whack Jobs, Wingnuts, Wingnuttia
One of the radio stations here in Richmond is an American Family Radio affiliate, and I wound up listening one morning during the local National Public Radio station’s pledge drive. Sadly for me, I landed on a show called Politics and Religion, hosted by Irvin Baxter.
This complete nutcase thinks that the end of the world is coming any minute–at least he says that on the radio every morning. To be sure, he always carefully hedges with “I don’t know exactly when” rhetoric. But he sells his magazine by describing the End of the World as prophesied by the Bible–complete with Antichrist, one world government, one world religion, and a war which will kill a third of human beings–and then saying that he expects it to come during his lifetime. And he’s no spring chicken.
I’ve heard his rants against homosexuality, the European Union, the World Court, and the Federal Reserve. Baxter actually says he worries that RFID chips are the Mark of the Beast. He interviews true freaks, like John F. McManus, the President of the John Birch Society. McManus writes conspiracy theory books on the Bilderberg Group and thinks that if it ain’t a precious metal, it ain’t money.
These people are all paranoid freaks and conspiracy theorists who think that someone who lived two thousand years ago had a vision of attack helicopters at the end of the world and wrote it down in the Bible. They make a great addition to the Whack Job list.
Tags: Culture Wars, Whack Jobs
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A Word About Whack Jobs–and Why I am Here
Feb 24
Posted by R. Stanton Scott in Blogging, Commenting and Comments, Foggy Bottom Line, Whack Jobs
A few commenters challenged me over the last day or two because I refused to engage in a discussion with one of them because he characterized an essay I posted as “garbage” before he challenged the argument itself. This, they suggest, shows liberal hypocrisy: since I characterize several blogs on my blog roll as “whack jobs” even as I complain about insulting characterizations of my work. Since this is a valid point, I thought I would offer a few thoughts on the subject. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Whack Jobs