Billmon:

Ratzinger’s little dissertation was all pain, no gain. It was totally gratuitous. It served no useful purpose, either for peace or war. As such, it amounted to a nice little windfall gift to Al Qaeda — and was thus objectively pro-bin Laden.

I hope the pope has learned at least a small lesson from this debacle, which is that he simply doesn’t have the intellect, the stature or — most important — the moral authority of his precedessor to pontificate on such matters.

Objectively Pro-Bin Laden

News & views …

Billmon:

II. Festung Baghdad

I. Shorter Krauthammer

Billmon:

What this amounts to (and what Powell was really complaining about) is the final decommissioning of the myth of American exceptionalism — once one of the most powerful weapons in the U.S. arsenal. Without it, we’re just another paranoid empire obsessed with our own security and willing to tell any lie or repudiate any self-proclaimed principle if we think it will make us even slightly safer.
[…]
Then again, maybe it’s best if the myth gets permanently busted. Maybe America should take public responsibility for torturing prisoners — instead of just pawning the job off to the Jordanian or Egyptian or Saudi intelligence services, who could and would hook car batteries to testicles with gusto while we piously pronounced our hands (and hearts) clean. A U.S. torture statute would at least bring a certain degree of clarity to the "vague" and "open to interpretation" policies that have long allowed the United States to enjoy the fruits of torture (and other crimes) without actually committing them ourselves. I know that’s not exactly the kind of clarity Shrub was asking for today, but it would still be a refreshing oubreak of honesty.

A Tortured Definition

Billmon:

My guess is the effect will wear off relatively quickly as we put the 9/11 anniversary behind us. Lower gas prices will probably do more to improve the GOP’s chances in November than Shrub’s second-hand terror attacks. Iraq will probably do more to hurt them. But for now at least, I guess we should score at least a few points for the Rovian brand of propaganda-based reality. Fear still works.

Pavlovian Politics

Billmon:

II. Gibbon Take

I. Be All You Can Be

rememberinggiap, a commentator on this blog since its first day, has just received a new computer. His old machine died some month ago. He has/had no money and his fascinating job (read down) did/does not nearly pay enough to get a replacement.

So after Conchita generously raised the awareness, some donors put up the needed money to get r’giap going again and regulars here donated, underlining their solidarity and spreading the burden. A big genuine "Thanks" to all of them!

Billmon once called r’giap a Stalinist fruit cake. The relevant dialog is here, here and here.

Nearly a year later, I today re-ask the question r’giap raised and was rebuked for.

Cont. reading: Fruit Cake Conclusions

Billmon:

[T]o the extent that America does have a choice between fighting terrorists "here" (in the Islamic ghettos of London or New York or Hamburg) or "there" (the deserts of Anbar, the Hindu Kush) maybe it should choose here — our turf instead of theirs, the near enemy rather than the far. Because at this point, it’s not clear our far enemy can be defeated on its own home ground.

The Far Enemy

Billmon:

Maybe the best way to put it is that the Rovians are radical reactionaries — so reactionary their aspirations to turn the clock back to circa 1896 actually sound like something fundamentally new, in the same way that "globalization" sounds so much more hip and modern than good old Manchester Liberalism. The conservative "Great Leap Backwards" probably isn’t attainable (and, considering the death toll from Mao’s attempt to jump in the opposite direction, thank God for that) but I’d be willing to bet there are Cheney Administration staffers who will be scheming, or at least dreaming, of "the day" until the day they die.

Rules for Radicals

Billmon:

Clearly, the studio understands how offensive a movie about a world filled with slack-jawed morons could be to a contemporary American audience — not to mention the top executives at Newscorp. Also not to mention the White House, the RNC, the Pentagon, the American Enterprise Institute, the major Wall Street investment banks, Ivy League universities and all the other places where the morons of today like to congregate and pretend they’re the genetically superior elite.

The Marching Morons

There are some very good links and texts in the last Open Thread too.

News & views …

Billmon:

This is the United States of Amnesia, and history is for losers. (A friend of mine likes to say that in the Middle East, what happened a thousand years ago is far more important than yesterday’s news. Here, they’re both irrelevant.) Still, the prime-time propaganda we’ve been subjected to over the past few days makes that "you’ve covered your ass now" crack a particularly acidic pill to have to swallow.

Changes

Billmon:

O Brave New World

Billmon:

This is not, I know, the most inspiring way to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the event that essentially kicked off the new American century — which at this point seems unlikely to last even a decade. If you want the standard patriotic rhetoric (hallowed ground, blessings of democracy, forward strategy for freedom, etc.) you’ll have no trouble finding it elsewhere. There’s no shortage of the stuff today (whitehouse.gov is a good place to start). But I personally don’t think the record of the past half decade (or the current condition of Ground Zero) really justifies that kind of self-serving, self-justifying pablum.

Do you?

The Sixteen Acre Ditch

Billmon:

When Shrub is finished wallowing in his 9/11 nostalgia trip, maybe he’ll have to time to contemplate the strategic disaster he’s created in Iraq. For Al Qaeda, trading Afghanistan (and they may get it back yet) for a sanctuary on the borders of Saudia Arabia, Jordan and Syria is definitely trading up.

A Strategy for Victory

Billmon:

[I]t’s getting hard to see how an economic and/or foreign policy train wreck can be avoided, one that will eventually force large numbers of voters to fundamentally reassess their existing political loyalties.

Until it happens, though, it’s probably best if the corporate dreamweavers and the Rovian propaganda technicians keep their bosses in the power. I still believe (call it an article of faith) that a majority of the voters will eventually figure out they’ve been had — sold not just a bill of goods but a counterfeit reality, one that is crumbling in front of their eyes. When that happens, they’re going to be enraged, in a way that makes this year’s discontent look like the passing tantrum of a grumpy two-year old.

Dog Bites Man

Billmon:

[T]he newfound feistiness of the Democratic minority, coupled with the revolt of the GOP moderates, offers at least a faint hope that future Phase II reports (whenever they appear) will amount to something more than just fresh coats of whitewash on the biggest political scandal (and foreign policy fiasco) since the Vietnam War.

Of course, now that the policy agenda has moved on to an even bigger prospective fiasco — war with Iran — that also may not mean much. Still, it’s at least some minor comfort (if only for history’s sake) to know the Cheney administration’s next plan to wage aggressive war might be investigated a bit more aggressively …

Limited Hangout

News & views …

Billmon:

It’s so much easier just to lose the war, especially when the Pentagon can throw a shitload of money to its favorite contractors while doing so.

A Bigger Bang for the Buck

Billmon:

Kidding aside, though, it’s stories like these that make me wonder: How much longer can this corrupt, idiotic excuse for a republic keep stumbling along on sheer inertia?

Horsing Around