Courage And Good Sense

This morning's ABC world news broadcast (at some hour) featured a San Bernadino city memorial gathering honoring those killed in the massacre. Visible front and center in the crowd was a young woman in conventional Muslim dress, her demeanor prayerful, her manner solemn. She had a choice to make, a decision about just what to risk, and in our society, no less rife with religious extremism than, say, Saudi Arabia, she put her own life on the line to make a simple declaration: typical Muslims do not approve of mass violence any more than, say, Christians, Jews or Unitarian Universalists. Kudos to her for her bravery.

My mind's eye looked back 14 years to Sept. 11, 2001. I lived in an apartment then. A young couple, my neighbors across the walkway at the time, were Muslim, she of American birth, he of Canadian. Neither their appearance nor their family name nor any audible accent distinguished them as being Muslim, but somehow, at the school attended by their two young sons, word got out that they were, and the kids... the older one might have been age 9... were harassed, both openly and (more troubling) also anonymously.

I regret to say this story has a happy ending: at the cost of both their jobs, and taking advantage of his Canadian birthright, the couple moved somewhere in Canada. Regret? Yes:  I grieve to see America lose potential solid, hardworking, honest and downright cheerful citizens. Happy ending? Yes: those kids did not deserve to be threatened with bodily harm because of their faith.

Yesterday and today, the young, visibly Muslim woman at the memorial gathering was courageous. Fourteen years ago, the young couple and their sons showed good sense. What kind of America do we put forth to the world, that any of these people have to reckon with consequences just for being who they are?

Here ends the lesson for the day. <sigh />.

September 11 Thought: What If They Gave A War And Everybody Came?

As a child born three years to the day after the A-bombing of Hiroshima, I actually asked myself that question once in a while over the years, not as an hypothetical extreme, but as a real possibility. So, I believe, did most American kids who did literal duck-and-cover drills in our elementary school classrooms before we were old enough to understand what we were covering ourselves from.

As the years passed and the details of the consequences of even the smallest nuclear war were filled in for us... anyone else remember a made-for-TV movie titled "The Day After"? ... at least a few teens like me came to see what it meant for the world, especially the part of it divided into "the free world" and "the Commies," if that scenario were ever realized. The weapons to destroy literally all humankind existed; "we" had them; "they" had them... and every time the US and the USSR fought a proxy war, I wondered if it was to be our last encounter.

Fast-forward 25 or more years. Some actual reduction of tension was achieved, to a point at which many of us held some hope that the Cold War need not become hot, at least not right away. Some weapons reductions were actually performed, although both sides still had enough nukes to destroy the "civilized" world several times over. Most of us learned to live with the conflict. Uneasily. Looking over our shoulders every day...

... Except the likes of Ronald Reagan, John Bolton, Dick Cheney, and... Osama bin Laden and his ilk, including Bush Junior. Every nation had its share of nut-jobs willing at least in theory to blow us all to kingdom come in an ultimate ideologically triggered and driven war. I actually knew Americans in the 1980s who would say, out loud, the Russians have these weapons so we have to have more of them. You talk about people unclear on the concept...

Fortunately, I knew damned few ordinary American citizens... and "damned" those few truly were... who actually thought Armageddon was a good idea. As long as those held no leadership positions, there was still some hope that humankind would not be vaporized en masse. But then some of them, not in any real sense power brokers but still determined to have their way, discovered terrorism, and then some opponents of those people discovered they could use the terrorists for their own purposes in projecting the classic "fear, uncertainty and doubt" (FUD) onto understandably concerned and occasionally terrified ordinary individuals, to achieve the effect of their great ultimate ideological battle without having the raw political power to order the necessary ultimate engagement of forces.

Most people, even so, thought it was a crack-brained idea actually to do those things. But "most people" don't always control the disposition of real-world forces... and then there are the utterly crazy people who sometimes do.

We've managed to survive 14 years from Osama bin Laden's attempt at, and of course George W. Bush's collusion in, provoking their respective worlds into indulging in some sort of ultimate engagement of forces. I probably won't live another 14 years, but many of you will.

Can you... please, I urge you... stave off the crazies for at least another 14 years? What with ISIS and all, Armageddon kinda nervous about the direction of things...

Tuesday Cat Porting; Chris Hedges Interviews Lynne Stewart

We are headed out in this awful weather to take our kitty Esther to... get this... an ophthalmologist. The problem with going to a high-priced veterinarian is that they feel free to refer to high-priced specialists located far from home. But it's Stella's kitty and Stella's decision. I'm along for the ride to comfort the cat, and of course Stella.

Lynne Stewart

While I'm gone (most of the day), please read Chris Hedges's article/interview of famous civil liberties/rights activist lawyer Lynne Stewart, who is just recently out of jail after four years of a ten-year prison sentence, released because she has terminal breast cancer. Bluntly speaking, she was imprisoned for doing her job, defending her client in the face of impossible odds and in the face of the PATRIOT Act. She failed to win her case in 1995, but after the infamous 9/11/2001 that was not good enough for John Ashcroft, George W. Bush and their unsavory crew when they came into office: Stewart's client was "Omar Abdel Rahman, an Egyptian Muslim known as 'the Blind Sheikh,' who was convicted in October of that year for alleged involvement in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center."

Stewart's crime, in short, was mounting a vigorous defense of Abdel Rahman when the government was determined to put him away for life... which they did. Stewart was sentenced to 28 months. When Barack Obama was elected president, "a federal appeals court under the Barack Obama administration demanded that the district judge reconsider her sentence. She was handed a new sentence by Koeltl—10 years." Message received: the right to trial by jury no longer extends to everyone, and if our government dislikes the accused, they have no problem taking revenge on his attorney. In this case, the government even used taped conversations between Stewart and Rahman as evidence against Stewart, a practice now legal but previously considered a blatant violation of attorney-client privilege.

This is a story to make you despair for the legitimacy of the judicial system in America. And when the courts become a tool of the executive, there is no more separation of powers... and we have no nation as our founders conceived it.

Kurt Eichenwald: Bush Admin Repeatedly Ignored Warnings Prior To 9/11 Of Imminent Attacks

This is not new news. But it is high time it gets the attention it deserves. According to Vanity Fair contributing editor and former New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald, classified documentation exists (parts of which he has personally read) that shows that warnings of an imminent al Qaeda attack were repeatedly provided to several of the highest officials in the Bush administration... and repeatedly ignored. In short: 9/11 could have been prevented, but the neocon's were too self-confident that al Qaeda was bluffing. Unfortunately, Bush & Co. supplied only the infamous Aug. 6 presidential daily briefing to the 9/11 Commission, withholding all other memos to the president and other high officials containing evidence of an imminent attack.

In other words, the overconfident bastards fucked up, subjecting our nation to an attack that would eventually, with a lot of help from Bush & Co., have the very effect al Qaeda intended: the gradual but relentless undermining of the basics of American philosophy of government and hence of the American nation.

Short version: 9/11 is wholly the Bush administration's fault. End of story.

(H/T Adgita Diaries for quotes from Paul Craig Roberts and Kurt Eichenwald of the NYT.)

AFTERTHOUGHT: years ago, long before 9/11/2001, I had a colleague who happened to be a Democrat. He offered genuine insight into the Republican notion that government should be run like a business. He said that Republicans' business plan was simple: they planned to increase their market share by destroying public confidence in the product marketed. When Saint Ronald Reagan said, "Government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem," he was invoking a slogan, not offering a plan. Reagan set the pattern for all subsequent Republican presidents.

Government is, for better and worse, essential to human survival. Why in the world would anyone vote into government office a candidate who believes that government is the problem? Is not such a belief guaranteed to be a self-fulfilling prophecy?

And so it was. From Saint Ronald forward to George W. Bush... especially GeeDubya... Republicans expressed their distaste for government by doing it badly. And gawd a'mighty, did they ever do it badly, in the approach to 9/11, the immediate response to 9/11, and the aftermath of 9/11. (That sentence sounded like Rudy Giuliani, didn't it.) Here we sit, eleven years later, still stunned by how badly our government approaches the balance between security and liberty... and how liberty is losing ground. One morning we'll wake up to a disaster far worse than 9/11: an utter undoing of the basic processes of representative democracy in a free society, whether by revolution or sheer incompetence, I can't say. Either way, we could have avoided it by "dancing with them as brung us," sending people to Washington who believe in the power of government to do good things.

Here ends the sermon for the day.

Ninth Guantánamo Prisoner Dies, Apparently W/O Charge Or Trial

Obama enthusiasts, please note that four (4) of the prisoners died during Obama's presidency. He promised to close Guantánamo, and did not, apparently for political reasons. So their deaths are on his hands. (Would Rmoney have done differently? Oh, gimme a fucking break. Of course not.)

Here's the statement posted on FDL by Center for Constitutional Rights:

Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) released the following statement in response to the news that a ninth man has died in detention at Guantánamo.

With great sadness, the Center for Constitutional Rights condemns the fact that yet another detained man – the fourth on President Obama’s watch – has died at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, most likely without charge and certainly without trial. Neither the name of the man nor the details of his death have yet been released by the Department of Defense. Whatever the cause turns out to be, it is clear that the United States government is ultimately responsible for his death.

Military investigations into several of the deaths at the base remain under a cloud of suspicion; and the Center’s clients, families of two men who died there in 2006, never got their day in court or the chance to know the truth about what happened to their sons. The Center for Constitutional Rights calls on the government to preserve the evidence in this case, conduct a full and impartial investigation, and treat the body and the family with all proper respect, none of which, regrettably, has consistently occurred in the past.

More than half the men remaining at Guantánamo have been cleared for transfer but remain imprisoned, trapped by politics. Whether because of despair, suicide or natural causes, as Guantánamo enters its 11th year of operation – 11 years of indefinite detention without trial or prospect of release – death has become an inevitable consequence of President Obama’s failure to close the prison.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has led the legal battle over Guantánamo for the last 10 years – representing clients in two Supreme Court cases and organizing and coordinating hundreds of pro bono lawyers across the country, ensuring that nearly all the men detained at Guantánamo have had the option of legal representation. Among other Guantánamo cases, the Center represents the families of men who died at Guantánamo, and men who have been released and are seeking justice in international courts. In addition, CCR has been working through diplomatic channels to resettle men who remain at Guantánamo because they cannot return to their country of origin for fear of persecution and torture.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change. Visit www.ccrjustice.org. Follow @theCCR.

(Bolds mine.)

The awful thing that happened on 9/11/2001 can in no way justify the United States's flagrant disregard of anyone's basic human rights and civil liberties. (If you think otherwise, you have clearly not thought the matter through. Please go away and think some more. You are welcome on this site when you change your mind... not sooner.) Retaining people in Gitmo who have been cleared for release... people perhaps in the wrong place at the wrong time, people sold out to an America willing to pay money to those who turn in "terrorists" ... is itself an atrocity. America should close Guantánamo and go home. Until it does, America allows a gaping wound to fester, a wound that will motivate future terrorists. The choice is (at least in theory) ours to make: close Guantánamo, or live our national life constantly looking over our shoulder. Guantánamo should be closed today. Yes, I am aware of the obstacles... but the real problem is a lack of motivation on the part of our leaders of both parties. Enough is enough. Either we can advocate human rights, or we can keep Guantánamo open. We can't do both.

NSA FOIA Release Of CIA Docs: Bad News For Bush

Via Bryan of Why Now?, we are directed to the following info about the 120 CIA docs just released by the NSA under an FOIA request. From Jordan Michael Smith at Salon:

Over 120 CIA documents concerning 9/11, Osama bin Laden and counterterrorism were published today for the first time, having been newly declassified and released to the National Security Archive. The documents were released after the NSA pored through the footnotes of the 9/11 Commission and sent Freedom of Information Act requests.

... Perhaps most damning are the documents showing that the CIA had bin Laden in its cross hairs a full year before 9/11 — but didn’t get the funding from the Bush administration White House to take him out or even continue monitoring him. The CIA materials directly contradict the many claims of Bush officials that it was aggressively pursuing al-Qaida prior to 9/11, and that nobody could have predicted the attacks. “I don’t think the Bush administration would want to see these released, because they paint a picture of the CIA knowing something would happen before 9/11, but they didn’t get the institutional support they needed,” says Barbara Elias-Sanborn, the NSA fellow who edited the materials.

... The Pentagon approved the plan for surveillance purposes.

And yet, simultaneously, the CIA declared that budget concerns were forcing it to move its Counterterrorism Center/Osama bin Laden Unit from an “offensive” to a “defensive” posture. ...

...

So tell me again... just how are Republicans better than Democrats at counterterrorism? It seems to me that Bush administration's truly terrible judgment allowed this to happen despite an effective initial effort by the intelligence community. And now we have Republican asswipes blaming Democrats for 9/11. What a large, steaming pile.

The worst of it is that the release of these documents will change nothing. The MSM will not cover them, or will give them a single segment and then move on. Most Americans who would vote Republican in the first place will never hear of these documents, or will blame the source, or will find some other crack-brained way to defend their incompetent, negligent heroes. This should be an earth-shaking release... but it won't be even a tremor.