America delivers retribution at the tip of a spear, or more specifically, a Navy Seal’s bullet.  Turns out this was a bit of foreshadowing by the president:

Sullivan adds this:

The more I hear the more Obama seems very close to this over the last few months: in weekly meetings, deeply involved in five national security meetings recently. This was not a lucky break. This was the end-point of several weeks of coordination. And Obama’s cool throughout. As Donald Trump was birthering out, Obama was aiming right at this country’s deadliest enemy.

How impossibly cool is this guy?  As this fucking circus about birth certificates swirled about, all he continued to do was conduct a highly covert operation under the cover of darkness–away from the muck and the mire– while his name, the office of the presidency, and his American authenticity continued to be sullied.

Let us not kid ourselves.  This invariably will be made a politically partisan issue.  So let’s be clear:  The most noted piece of President Obama’s  foreign policy platform during the 2008 campaign was to expand the war in Afghanistan– and to kill Osama Bin Laden.  This expansion also included perhaps the most controversial and dangerous tenet –taking the war into Pakistan if necessary to make the kill.  Not one political leader had the guts to advocate such a maneuver.  Not John McCain.  Not Sarah Palin.  Not George W. Bush– who not only shrunk from truly pursuing Bin Laden and attempted to downplay his actual existence–he did not pursue the course as stringently as he should have in Afghanistan.  Instead, he diverted resources for a war in Iraq.  Barack Obama knew Bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan, and was not afraid to tread where others feared in order to exact retribution for America.  Barack Obama not only led this charge while others were too weak-willed to do so, he told us all he would to so:

If the purpose of this war was to capture and/or kill Bin Laden, President Bush failed.  I don’t doubt President Bush’s resolve to the cause.  I’m just stating an irrefutable fact.  President Obama did not fail.  He led boldly, unabashedly, and with strength and courage.

Those questioning the methodology of the Obama Doctrine, have now received a true taste of what real American leadership looks like.  In one of the most important moments in American history, President Obama’s cool  authoritative countenance helped him execute this mission. Character and commitment are markers of American determination, and clearly they could not have been exhibited better.  Thank you Mr. President, and  thank you to the greatest military force and intelligence community the world has ever know.

It was a necessity we kill this man.  A man responsible for plunging our nation into a chaos we’ve never seen.  It was a necessity for the victims and their families, and it was necessity for America–not to celebrate not death– but glorify justice. I am a proud believer in the Obama Doctrine and the American military.

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H/T: ThinkProgress

What could possibly be the rationale behind blocking this bill?  Other than sticking your chest out to prove you can, I don’t see what conservatives have to gain by this.  Shockingly sad–especially for the party that considers themselves patriots.

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Wow.

I’m not quite sure where I stand on this.  Firing Juan Williams for an honest thought about something a lot of people felt and/or feel sets a pretty ludicrous precedent.  At the same time, it can’t be too comforting to Muslims–or other Americans–who’ve faced the brunt of some vicious vitriolic prejudice over the years.  I can’t tell how many times I’ve recoiled when I see a white woman cross the street as she sees me approach.  It’s not a good feeling, I assure you.

I still think NPR jumped the gun here.  Williams is not known as a divisive figure, or a polemical analyst.  In fact, while I may not always agree with him, he’s always struck me as a pretty level headed, cogent columnist and pundit–there aren’t too many of them around anymore.

Juan should have really stopped going on Fox News.  The negative karma has rubbed off on him.  I kid.  Sort of.

And applying this standard, why hasn’t Fox News fired that ignorant bluster buss Brian Kilmeade?

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Think Progress makes the case in the affirmative:

Newsweek reveals the most concrete evidence yet that this campaign is serving to bolster support for Islamic radicalism abroad. In an interview with the magazine, a Taliban operative going by the name Zabihullah said that, by “preventing this mosque from being built, America is doing us a big favor.” He goes on to explain that the anti-mosque campaign is providing the Taliban with “with more recruits, donations, and popular support.” Another Taliban official expects that the anti-mosque campaign will provoke a “new wave of terrorist trainees from the West,” similar to suspected Times Square car bomber Faisal Shahzad. Zabihullah concludes, the “more mosques you stop, the more jihadis we will get”:

Taliban officials know it’s sacrilegious to hope a mosque will not be built, but that’s exactly what they’re wishing for: the success of the fiery campaign to block the proposed Islamic cultural center and prayer room near the site of the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan. “By preventing this mosque from being built, America is doing us a big favor,” Taliban operative Zabihullah tells NEWSWEEK. (Like many Afghans, he uses a single name.) “It’s providing us with more recruits, donations, and popular support.” [...]

Taliban officials say they’re looking forward to a new wave of terrorist trainees from the West like this year’s Times Square car bomber. “I expect we will soon be receiving more American Muslims like Faisal Shahzad who are looking for help in how to express their rage,” says a Taliban official who was a senior minister when the group ruled Afghanistan and who remains active in the insurgency. As an indication of the anger that is growing among some Muslims in the West, this official, who requested anonymity for security reasons, mentions the arrest of three Canadian Muslims in Ontario last week on charges of plotting to build and detonate improvised explosive devices. (A fourth individual was arrested in Ottawa last Friday in connection with the case.) The Ground Zero furor will likely add to that anger. “The more mosques you stop, the more jihadis we will get,” Zabihullah predicts.

It’s not difficult to see the how terror organizations would used our own fear and ignorance against us.  It just seems too easy of an assumption to make–after all, radical Islamists need no additional motivation to strike Americans.  What the Mosque fiasco is however, is the latest example of manufactured fear-mongering on the part of some in this country.  It is an overreach, most certain to sully our reputation even further in the Muslim world.  But I’m quite certain that’s exactly the way conservative war hawks want it.  It makes it easier to load rocket launchers.

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UPDATE:  McCrystal has been relieved of command.

As President Barack Obama prepares to meet with General Stanley McChrystal, it’s worth noting the circumstances surrounding one of the most ridiculous acts of insubordination–and abject stupidity– ever exhibited by a commander during wartime operations.  The General’s behavior makes his staying aboard a toxic deterrent to the overall success in Afghanistan.

McChrystal’s problems did not begin with his flippant attitudes toward leadership.  The General’s back story includes not only a remarkable ascent to leadership in the Afghani theater, but the unremarkable dark chapter that is the Pat Tillman cover-up.  McChrystal’s leadership during that time period remains under a cloud of suspicion, and it has sullied his previously iron-clad reputation.  From Jon Krakauer:

McChrystal was the head of Special Operations command in Afghanistan during Army Ranger (and former football star) Pat Tillman’s death. McChrystal was the one who approved paperwork awarding Tillman a Silver Star despite knowing (or at least suspecting) that he had died in fratricide and not, as originally determined, enemy fire.

This was once a big embarrassment for the army and, to a lesser extent, McChrystal himself (though he has copped to making an innocent mistake). But when the general was elevated to top spot in Afghanistan this past spring, relatively few publications revisited the affair.

In an even more eerie twist, Pat Tillman’s mother wrote a letter to the Obama administration and members of congress, when she heard of McChrystal’s impending appointment to the top spot in Afghanistan.  Mrs. Tillman called the lack of deliberation about the General’s promotion “disgusting.”

The president’s decision on the fate of McChrystal casts the entire Afghan campaign in doubt.  As the troop surge falters, and the direction of the war remains in doubt, dismissing the top commander at such a difficult stage is risky at best and dangerous at worst.  McChrystal’s new found propensity for honesty is leaving the administration with a no solid options.  However if the general believes he has no true support from civilian leadership, then the prudent move would be to remove him.

Nowhere is the chain of command more important than in the military.  It is the absolute difference between life and death.    Obama would be best served exhibiting real leadership here– strengthening that chain of command– and instilling some sense of direction and authority back into the minds of troops who are desperately reaching out for it.  The armed forces and this campaign cannot abide such a deeply split military-civilian power structure.

Update II: President Obama will speak on the McChrystal situation at 1:30 PM EST today.

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I sat riveted in my chair for a good 20 seconds before I realized this was one of the most futile exchanges I’ve seen in a while.  Debating whether or not American citizens should have Miranda rights is anathema to American ideals.  Throwing the baby out with the bath water.  I’m amazed that conservative fervor toward combating terrorism, blinds them to the very tenets of freedom they champion so strenuously.  Anyway, watch Beck and O’Reilly have at it:

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Photo courtesy of Reuters

“Now, the president, with all the vast nuclear experience that he acquired as a community organizer and as a part-time senator, and as a full-time candidate, all that experience, still no accomplishment to date with North Korea and Iran.”  Sarah Palin, speaking at SRLC, April 9th, 2010

President Obama is hosting 47 world leaders in Washington, D.C. for a two day summit on nuclear non-proliferation and terrorism.  It is the first summit of its kind in more than 50 years, and it has already borne fruit.  The Ukraine has decided to eliminate its nuclear material.  This is a real policy victory.  Former Soviet republics like the Ukraine, have an abundance of enriched uranium, shining like a beacon to terrorist organizations seeking such to craft a weapon.  The crux of the summit is to secure world cooperation in eliminating the threat of nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists–and ultimately reducing the threat of nuclear warfare.

This is most admirable, even if it may not be totally achievable.  Does the president have the will and experience to tackle such a difficult subject? Let’s take a closer look into the president’s work on nuclear non-proliferation. While doing so, please keep the above quote from Sarah Palin in mind.

The Obama administration has negotiated its first major arms control treaty: a new pact between the U.S. and Russia that would cut by 30 percent the number of strategic nuclear warheads each country is permitted to deploy.

In 2005, in his first foreign trip as a U.S. senator, Obama traveled to Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan with Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), then-chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. The purpose of the trip was to examine facilities for the storage and destruction of conventional, biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. Obama and Lugar subsequently co-wrote a December 2005 Washington Post op-ed on the issue and appeared together in a discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations on “Challenges Ahead For Cooperative Threat Reduction,” in which Obama detailed ways to improve the U.S. program to control, secure, and dismantle weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union.

Obama and Lugar co-authored the “Lugar-Obama non-proliferation initiative,” which “enhances U.S. efforts to destroy conventional weapons stockpiles and to detect and interdict weapons and materials of mass destruction throughout the world.” The legislation was signed into law by President Bush in January 2007. According to a June 28, 2007, press release from Lugar, he and Obama subsequently secured “$36 million for programs to destroy heavy conventional weapons, $10 million for efforts to intercept weapons and materials of mass destruction, and $2 million for rapid response to proliferation detection and interdiction emergencies.”

Obama introduced the Nuclear Weapons Threat Reduction Act of 2007 (S.1977), with then-Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) as an original co-sponsor, which would “provide for sustained United States leadership in a cooperative global effort to prevent nuclear terrorism, reduce global nuclear arsenals, stop the spread of nuclear weapons and related material and technology, and support the responsible and peaceful use of nuclear technology.”

Obama reportedly authored his college thesis on “Soviet nuclear disarmament.” Moreover, Washington Monthly reported in September 2006: “On the campaign trail in 2004, Obama spoke passionately about the dangers of loose nukes and the legacy of the Nunn-Lugar nonproliferation program, a framework created by a 1991 law to provide the former Soviet republics assistance in securing and deactivating nuclear weapons. Lugar took note, as ‘nonproliferation’ is about as common a campaign sound-bite for aspiring senators as ‘exchange-rate policy’ or ‘export-import bank oversight.’”

Moving beyond the red-meat rhetoric and empty firebrand talking points, one gets the sense that the president’s credibility on this issue is nuanced, iron-clad and genuine.  It comes from a position of strength and knowledge.   His efforts will result in a more secure world, where all nations–even nations in which Sarah Palin is a part– will play a role in being accountable for nuclear security and non-proliferation.  Does this mean we’re all safe from nuclear holocaust?  No, but the path is more clear, and the foundation has been laid to advance the summit’s goal. 

Nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism pose the greatest threat to the collective security of all nations, and it’s time someone led the charge against it.  And those that question the president’s initiatives– without full knowledge of his experience on them– should be advised to think before they speak.  Bravo Mr. President.

HT: Media Matters

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I’m, for one — I know it’s not politically correct to say it — I believe in racial and ethnic profiling. I think if you’re looking at people getting on an airplane and you have X amount of resources to get into it, you get at the targets, and not my wife. And I just think it’s something that should be looked into. The statement that’s made, it’s probably 90 percent true with some exceptions like the Murrah federal office building in my state, Oklahoma. Those people, they were not Muslims, they were not Middle Easterners. But when you hear that not all Middle Easterners or Muslims between the age of 20 and 35 are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims or Middle Easterners between the age of 20 and 35, that’s by and large true. –Senator James Inhofe, (R-OK)

When I was in the tenth grade, I had a friend who attended a catholic high school about two miles from my public school.  On occasion, several of my other friends and I used to walk the distance to go meet up with him.  We thought nothing of the trek, other than the fact that we wished he’s gone to our school instead.  One particular day, three of us made the journey to meet him for a game of basketball.  We walked right up to the front gates, as we normally did, and waited for him.  This time, one of the nuns came out of the front office to meet us.  This was an unusual occurrence.  Of the countless trips I’d made to see my friend, none of the nuns ever deigned to set foot outside for any reason.

The nun, all four feet of her– clenched her fists nervously– and said in a rather standoffish tone that the three of us needed to wait across the street.  I told her that we were waiting for a friend.  Again, she told us to wait across the street for him.  Rather than get into a bizarre argument over something quite minor, the three of us walked the 50 yards across the busy street.  As soon as my foot met the cracked curb, three police cars– lights flashing and sirens blaring–rolled up right behind us.  Six police officers hurriedly jumped out of their vehicles, and proceeded to throw us all against them.  Trying to discern the reason why we were all being treated as if we had just robbed a bank, was a secondary thought to the sheer terror pulsing through my body.  Was I going to jail? Why? What were we guilty of?

As it turned out, there were a few break-ins in the well kept neighborhood the school resided in.  I reasoned that the nuns called the police as soon as we made our approach onto school grounds.  After a few minutes of telling police who we were and why we were there, they let us go with a warning:  Don’t come into this area until the suspects are apprehended.

I left, without my two friends, visibly shaken and angry.  The was the first time I was profiled.  As a 15 year old kid,  just for going to see a friend of mine.  For those who don’t know, there is this degrading sense of shame and anger in being profiled.  Your rights as an American citizen are challenged, based upon some supposed method model of criminal activity.  You fit the profile because you may be the same color– or speak the same language, or pray to the same God– as the intended targets.  But you are a model citizen.  You don’t have a criminal record.  You do all of the right things.  And you are still the target of some ill-conceived, comprehensive model of criminal behavior  It made me sick.  It makes me sick today.

My story is intended to illustrate a point.  Last week Colleen Larose, better known now as “Jihad Jane” –was apprehended by authorities on suspicion of recruiting for terror organizations, and plotting to kill an artist in Sweden.  Ms. Larose is a white woman with blond hair and blue eyes, far from the norm of what our perceived conception is of a terrorist.

Does this change the dynamic of profiling in the eyes of those wanting to do it?  It should.  Believe me, I want our country to be as safe as humanly possible.  I don’t want to have to worry about nut jobs high-jacking airplanes, or exploding bombs on city buses.  But in an unpredictable world where things are never what they seem, racial profiling is emblematic of our false attempts at weeding out true criminals and terrorists. It not only infringes upon our civil rights, it does not work nearly as well as its proponents believe. I could ask all of my readers what their idea of a terrorist looks like, and I’m sure I won’t get Colleen Larose.  But that is the reality right now.  So was Tim McVeigh.  So was Ted Kaczynski.  So was Adam Pearlman.  So was Richard Reid.  Maybe we should just profile everyone Senator Inhofe?  I wonder how that would make some Americans feel?  Would it make then feel as I did back in high school?

Racial profiling doesn’t catch criminals, it generates assumptions and spreads grievous generalities that in the long run, harm our society far more than terrorist ever could.

UPDATE: As this post hits the interwebs, a second white woman has been arrested and charged in the Islamist conspiracy.  “Jihad Jamie’s” arrest further buffers the points I make in my post.

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Liz Cheney’s ridiculous outfit Keep America Safe should investigate this:

It turns out that among the many high-profile lawyers who have represented so-called “terrorist detainees” is a top attorney with Rudy Giuliani’s firm, Bracewell Giuliani, according to court documents examined by TPMmuckraker.

Bracewell Giuliani Attorney Carol Elder Bruce, a distinguished white collar litigator, is listed as counsel in two detainee habeas cases, EL-MASHAD et al v. BUSH et al and ALLADEEN et al v. BUSH et al. Both are in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia.

El-Mashad, an Egyptian national who was captured near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in late 2001, was released to Albania late last month.

Cheney’s group is known for its propagandist, blisteringly false critiques of the Obama administration’s stance on foreign policy– and its approach to the war on terror.  Lately Cheney has sounded off on Justice Department officials who have represented Guantanamo detainees.  Here’s one of the group’s ads regarding Gitmo representation.

Will Cheney call Guiliani out for his firm’s business dealings with suspected terrorists?  Here’s her opportunity to prove she’s not a shrill mouth piece for her father’s antiquated views, and defend her position without demagoguery.   Or not.

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Who is Vernon Hunter?  I wouldn’t have known the answer to that question if it weren’t for a few dedicated writers.  They decided to spotlight the real hero of last week’s domestic terrorist attack against an Austin IRS building.  Vernon Hunter was a father.  He was a husband.  He was a Vietnam veteran, who was employed at the IRS building at the time of Joe Stack’s premeditated, cowardly attack.   Ask yourself this question:  Why would the media focus so intimately on Stack’s dementia and anarchist views, and not on the man who was killed as a result of them?  Ken Hunter, Vernon’s son, wonders aloud to reporters last week that very same thing:

“There was just too much going on about what the guy did and what he believed in, and enough’s enough. They don’t need to talk about him. Talk about my dad. You know, some people are trying to make this guy out to be a hero, a patriot. My dad served two terms in Vietnam. This guy never served at all. My dad wasn’t responsible for his tax problems.”

Lost in the madness of the act itself, and the fascination with the culprit, is the real tragedy.  The human tragedy that seems is being ignored.  Amidst the Stack frenzy– the plaudits from fringe elements hailing him as a hero and the profane, chilling attempt at humor by Jed Babbin at the CPAC conference– where is the attention on the man who was killed?  Why is the focus not on a man who leaves behind a family who loved and honored him?  Could it be because Mr. Hunter did not have blond hair and blue eyes as writers have suggested here and here? I only have questions to ask at this point.

I will do my part to remember Vernon Hunter, the man who perished in a senseless attack.  The man who just went to work that day, engaging in the mundane routine so many of us take for granted.  The man who ably, proudly served two tours of duty in a foreign land fighting an unwinnable war and survived unscathed– only to see his life snuffed out by exploding fuel and twisted steel in his own country.  Vernon Hunter did not deserve to die this way any more than Joe Stack deserves his surreal turn in the spotlight.  I am outraged.  Outraged and embarrassed.  Embarrassed because we don’t love heroes anymore.  We love sideshows.  We love television movies of the week– the more lurid and sick, the better.

I am sorry Mr. Hunter, that your country did not think more of you than this.  At least in my eyes, your death is not an insignificant occurance.  Perhaps after this, it won’t be in the eyes of others as well.

HT: Brown Man Thinking and Joan Walsh

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