By Capt. Fogg
I can't laugh, or smirk too hard since it's pretty easy to mix up the names Osama and Obama even for those who don't have old age as an excuse. But when Glenn Beck came up with “lets kill Obama” would not be “a tough call to make” the other day, it certainly had to raise an eyebrow even the eyebrow of one who long ago lost faith in Freud and his slips.
It's a different story though, when Beck had to temper his admission that some respect was due with the notation that the president seemed "a little arrogant." He didn't seem so to me even if I force myself not to remember his predecessors little end-zone dance on the flight deck where he had just pretended to land a fighter plane and with his parachute harness arranged to accentuate his manhood. I didn't notice any Foxers laughing that "mission accomplished" day -- quite the contrary, really.
Obama was a model of confident restraint as far as I'm concerned, but that's just what his paid detractors would prefer to call "uppity" if they hadn't been told not to. I mean, isn't the fellow who accomplishes what you've failed to do in ten years and without breaking a sweat or busting the budget going to feel a bit arrogant to you, even if he's a bit to classy do the victory dance and the high fives?
Some Fauxers were proclaiming the killing of UBL was illegal.
ReplyDeleteOf course it's illegal when a Democratic president does it. But it's always IOKIYAR with that group.
ReplyDeleteHis Freudian slip was showing!
ReplyDeleteThe legality of this operation is a legit question. However, those on the right who bring it up would have more credibility if they also questioned the legality of their own (or their presidents') decisions. Like, for example, starting wars under false pretenses.
ReplyDeleteI believe it was Nixon who said something to the effect: "If the president does it, it's not illegal."
ReplyDeleteThe legality of this operation is a legit question...
ReplyDeleteI don't believe so. I think there's no question the operation was legal. The president took an oath to protect and defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic ... and there's the Congressional authorization passed immediately after 9/11 authorizing the President to "use all necessary and appropriate military force against those responsible for the 9/11 attacks." So I'd say we're covered on two fronts there. And this NPR report on the matter indicated some leeway in the U.N. charter as well.
What is really going on, I think, is that the Goopers are insanely upset that Mr. Obama had the courage to order a very daring, and potentially disasterous, military operation, and that it was a success.
ReplyDeleteRemember, more than anything, these sickos want this president to fail, and said so before he even took the oath of office.
The Goopers are so eaten up over this success and the ass-handing the president gave to the prancing peacock, Trump, on Saturday that the only thing left for them to express their frustrations is to squeal like little piglets, wee, wee, wee, all the way home.
I read one winger blogger complaining that the president took too long to make the decision to launch the operation. Because apparently this nincompoop thinks the correct way to behave as a CiC is to rush, headlong, into a covert action without thinking through all of the consequences, y'know, like Bush&Co. did in Iraq.
As for Beck, it is so fine to see him become irrelevant, like Palin, right before our eyes.
The right wing reactions are too predictable to pay any attention to, nor do they give a rodent's rectum whether anyone refutes them. They just move seamlessly on to the next outrage.
ReplyDeleteI remember when the same SEAL team shot some pirates holding the Maersk Alabama captain hostage. It was another spectacular and successful feat but within hours my mailbox was filled with the Manufactured outrage the idiots were forwarding round the world. Seems it would have been done earlier but that pirate lover Obama had given an order that pirates should not be fired upon without his personal orders -- orders that he was not enough of a man to give and the Navy commander who ordered the action was going to be court marshaled. A total invention worthy of the people who would smear a paraplegic candidate who lost limbs falling on a grenade or tell us Senator Kerry got his medal murdering children while holding Jane Fonda's hand.
Critize Bush's bloody bungling? What are you, a traitor?
They will say anything, invent any kind of slander, libel and lunacy without regret. No sense of honor, sense of shame; no concession to decency or even patriotism. Nothing matters but winning.
Limbaugh says we should have dropped a bomb. If we had dropped a bomb and killed a thousand people, he would say we should have shot him and would insist that the man was still alive. Predictable and not worth paying attention to.
And sorry, killing him was self-defense and we may have saved many lives by taking his.
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteYou've hit upon the most disturbing thing about some of these ultra-critics: their willingness to lie without conscience or remorse. Someone who can do that is quite clearly a sociopath and capable of just about anything. A normal person is ashamed to be caught fabricating for no good reason, but these people crow about the empires they're carved out for themselves by slandering others who have done nothing to them. In the end we have nothing but our integrity. What kind of human being takes such pride in belonging to a club the password for which is a self-conscious, vicious pack of contradictory lies that makes a mockery of the very notion "integrity"?
Thank you for your explanation, Southern Beale.
ReplyDeleteApropos, here is a somewhat different perspective; and here, 12 questions about bin Laden's death, including perhaps two most important of all:
Can those who were tough on Bush apply the same standards and skepticism to the Obama administration, or is everything partisan and self-serving now?
Do we, after all of the years of lying, all of a sudden accept whatever the government says as true?
Brief recap:
ReplyDeleteGlenn Beck - Osama 'loony bin' Laden
George Dubya - Osama 'spin' Laden
Karl Rove - Osama 'double chin' Laden
John McCain - Osama 'has been' Laden
Dick Cheney - Osama 'twin' Laden
Did I miss any?
No matter what Obama does, to the racists and bigots he will always be the uppity Negro won't he?
ReplyDeleteHe has handled himself with such restraint and class in spite of all the horrible digs and barbs at himself and his family - he is a much better human being than I am.
I don't always agree with his policies or actions but I will forever admire and appreciate what an exemplary president he has been.
rockync,
ReplyDeleteWell said. My feelings. Exactly.
Sarah Palin - Wasilla Lynn Baden
ReplyDeleteElizabeth,
ReplyDeleteOne thing that troubles me is this – once extraordinary powers are asserted and exercised, it’s practically impossible to get a leader to give them back. Bush 43’s lawyers claimed for Himself little short of Jedi Warrior status – you know, unitary executive, Patriot Act, and all that rot, so a precedent has been set. Walking things back could easily be construed as weakness: “What?! As C-in-C, I can’t drop Predator drones on people’s homes in foreign countries or sweep moderately suspicious individuals off the streets and ship them to a foreign country to be waterboarded? The guy before me did it! Am I less than a man?” Etc. It seems to me that the accumulation of powers is all but inexorable; I’m glad that at least with Obama we have a president rational enough to ensure that the progress isn’t exponential. Give us three or four Dubya-style presidencies in a row, and we could well end up with an American Caligula pushing hapless tourists into the Potomac just to watch them die, or a stateside Elegabalus serving up marble peaches to his dinner guests while congress declares his horse a senator.
Dino,
ReplyDeleteI wish I could share your optimism with respect to Obama's presidency. Unfortunately I can't, given the evidence (yes) of the continuation of the American politics as usual under his leadership.
I don't have much more to add about Osama's assassination -- my mind is still reeling and will be for a while, trying to reconcile Obama's jingoistic speechifying on the occasion ("tonight, we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to") with the atrocious, unacceptable -- and yes, illegal under international law (which still exists and it still matters in other parts of the world, like Pakistan, for example) -- act of
killing, by a group of trained assassins, of an unarmed man -- in his own house, in the middle of the night, and right in front of his family.
No matter how strong our bloodlust and desire for revenge cloaked in assorted notions of justice, this is an act of inhumane horror that has no place in a civilized society to which we allegedly aspire.
Unless we accept that extrajudicial assassinations of unarmed individuals are indeed an expression of our values and can-do spirit, as our president proudly implied. And that just may be the case, given the contemporary American history -- but I, for one, cannot do it.
Elizabeth,
ReplyDeleteThere is at least one point I can concede here. If the performing seals had orders to bring OBL back alive, there would be no doubt about his identity, no imagined Death Photo conspiracies, and no Elvis sightings. There would, of course, be a kangeroo trial, but that would at least be the lesser of three evils.
In sympathy with Elizabeth's position: there are two media moments galvanized in my mind: the first was the look on Bush II's face as he sat in the kids' classroom upon hearing the news of the plane crashing into the tower; the second was the look on the face of Obama while watching the extermination proceedings of Osama. Both events struck me as the soul-death of a president. And of a nation.
ReplyDeleteFrom the outside, both portraits affected me profoundly. And I can't even interpret the actual/literal meaning.
Elizabeth,
ReplyDeleteI think I understand your concern. My own feeling is that there are times when an exception to ordinary practice can be made: we are not talking about a political opponent or some loser who had robbed a liquor store. I suspect that Osama bin Laden was accorded the least bad end someone in his position could receive: sudden, violent death instead of a trial and eventual execution. Things weren’t going to end well for him, considering what he had done and shown no remorse for doing. Pakistan isn’t going to complain about any violation of their sovereignty – they’re probably too embarrassed that the man was practically staying at the Abbottabad Hilton when apprehended. I don’t think people should celebrate bin Laden's death, but I honestly can’t feel sorry for someone who not only killed thousands but was obviously proud of doing it and continued to taunt and threaten the United States over the years, and I’m not going to worry about legal niceties in this one extraordinary case, either.
Edge’s portrait of the two faces seems to me rather too sensitive: in the faces mentioned, I saw only pained befuddlement and grim determination, respectively. I didn’t see anybody’s soul dying, and something tells me Mr. Obama isn’t exactly John Wesley Hardin.
Having said all that, I agree that assassination proper is a deplorable habit, and I don’t want the US to get back into the business.
Edge,
ReplyDeleteThere are two moments in American history, moments I recall within my own lifetime, that I would consider the soul-death of a nation.
I was 15 years old when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and I recall the headmaster of my prep school going door-to-door summoning students to the assembly hall where a portable radio held to a microphone broadcast the grim news. In the ensuing years: The LBJ presidency, the escalating war in Vietnam, the draft, campus protests, reactionaries known as ‘hard hats’ telling my generation to ‘love it or leave it,’ followed by the disastrous Nixon presidency.
The other indelible moment was 9/11 and the images of the day were horrific: The planes crashing into the twin towers, and people hurling themselves from windows to certain death. I knew those buildings well. Decades before, they were the subject of a documentary film produced by me. Years later, my accountant, Touche Ross, was housed on the 92th floor. Yes, I knew people who survived and people who died that day.
Two memories within the span of a lifetime, and each time a violent event soul-murdered the nation, the country turned to reactionary leaders who lead us down a sinister and self-destructive path.
"Yes, I knew people who survived and people who died that day."
ReplyDeleteMe too and none of them were armed either. I'm sorry, but what we did was the best way to end it and entailed the least loss of innocent life. His capture would have been a rallying cry and a propaganda tool and we would have suffered more.
I'm glad he's dead. There are limits to my belief in compassion and I have far more for those he killed and those he would have killed had he lived longer. He was not a kindly old man sitting by his fireside, he was a psychopathic serial mass murderer plotting more of it. He had weapons in the room and his bunker was surrounded by armed guards. No white flag, no offer to surrender. I have more sympathy for a tumor.
Captain ('n all), I don't think anyone this side of the world cries for Osama, but I'd say it is important not to fall for the predictable propaganda associated with his death (as well as his life).
ReplyDeleteThere is no evidence that he had weapons anywhere in his house:
Security officials said they did not recover any arms and explosives during their detailed search of the compound on Monday and Tuesday.
And it not true that his house was surrounded by armed guards. All available reports mention that in addition to Osama, there were only three other males there -- two couriers (brothers), and his 19-year-old son. One of the couriers, who lived in the guesthouse, allegedly shot at the SEALs, and was immediately killed in the courtyard, before they entered the main house (per the official US reports).
It is probably true that extrajudicial assassination was the most expedient way to eliminate the enemy we've created (lest we forget, we trained and armed Osama -- he was our man before he turned against us), but the propaganda-driven myth-making and all the lies that have surrounded this event (a la Jessica Lynch debacle) in order to make it more palatable and acceptable are no less jarring than the event itself. To me, at least.
Osama's assassination could have been an opportunity for a serious national reflection about who we are and what the enemies we create teach us about ourselves; instead, it's become a massive bloodgasm and gloat-fest bursting with the sadly predictable exceptionalist rhetoric and jingoistic self-aggrandizement.
To paraphrase Dubya's infamous statement, our children is not learning. Which means that we are doomed to repeat our mistakes. Which means that an emergence of another Osama is inevitable. And our unbroken (or unbreakable, perhaps) cycle of hatred and violence will continue.
Elizabeth, Ebizaleth and all,
ReplyDeleteAs a edjikater, eye can shorely uhgree that our childrin isn't lerning. They never was, moast leiklee.
I agree with a lot of what you say, but what you’re opposing here is human nature in all its mediocrity and sordidness. Could the unseemly celebration have been fended off? I wish it could have been, but I doubt it. The educated and restrained among us will see it for what it is.
I also agree that the post-raid handling hasn’t been good – too many "details" were coughed up almost instantly, and while most Americans aren’t going to care about the details, those of us who were paying close attention couldn’t help but notice that there was beaucoup confusion and/or laying it on thick. It would have been much better for the Administration just to say, "We weren’t expecting UBL to surrender, and it didn’t look like he was going to, so we gunned him down. Justice has been done for the pre-meditated massacre of thousands. End of story." Instead, spokespeople belted out that Osama may have used a woman as a human shield, engaged in a firefight, did this, did that. Much or all of it was apparently inaccurate, and it’s hard to understand how they didn’t know it was inaccurate since the assault was by their own admission mostly or entirely available to them real-time.
I think we get the likely picture: commandos entered the compound reasonably expecting deadly resistance, and shot whoever seemed likely to pose a problem. They weren’t playing by Queensbury’s Rules, and nobody expected them to. Everything else that was said, I suspect, stemmed from a desire to ensure that everyone saw the event in black and white rather than in the shades of blood-spatter red and moral grey most appropriate to acts of war.
My dear Dino, as en estemed edjukator you sumed up tis isue wel, methinks.
ReplyDeleteI do understand those arguments (in the last para). Yet I remain unswayed by them.
Today, Haim Baram had an excellent comment on the Osama's killing in Haaretz.com. It expresses most of my thoughts, too, only much better. Here is some of it (and that'll be probably my last contribution to this discussion, to everyone's relief, I imagine):
Since most of the political commentators here behaved like particularly rowdy soccer fans after a bloody and perhaps even undeserved victory, we, the leftists, are not exempt from expressing disgust about the millions dancing on the corpse of mega-terrorist Osama bin Laden. The man was contemptible, and his hands were sullied with the blood of innocents - there's no question about that. But the operation by the U.S. Navy SEALs was an act of licensed gangsterism, murder without trial, and a cruel operation that did not take into account the victims who fell around the main victim.
The humanist approach requires us to reject the act of terror against bin Laden for three reasons: ethical, legal and political-ideological. The president of the United States has no authority to operate in foreign countries arbitrarily and in contradiction to the principles of international law. Even inside his country, nobody authorized him to issue a death sentence, not to mention murdering people who were next to the victim.
For years the U.S. has been bringing hostages to the horrifying concentration camp in Guatanamo, Cuba, and shamelessly torturing them. There is an international conspiracy of silence in most of the Western countries - which consider themselves enlightened - in regard to the acts of terror, looting and greed that characterize Washington's conduct in the international arena. (...)
The ethical aspect is unequivocal. The humanism that is officially accepted by the U.S. too, requires its leaders not to murder political opponents or military enemies, and mainly to refrain from murdering people who have no connection at all to terror. U.S. President Barack Obama ignored all the ethical criteria, and murdered bin Laden in order to achieve success at any price in advance of the elections. Even someone who prefers Obama to his opponents has good reason to fear the cynicism that Obama demonstrated in the bin Laden affair.
The legal aspect is also clear. Murder in cold blood (especially in a foreign country ) contradicts the principles of international law, but thanks to military, economic and political power - and not for reasons of principle - there is no chance that Obama will have to pay for it. The murder of bin Laden now enables many governments the world over, including the Israeli government, to continue to slaughter civilians and to explain the act by referring to the Obama precedent.
(...)
On the diplomatic front, Obama is allowing American conservatives and their allies everywhere (...) to preach in favor of official terror as the only way to stop liberation movements the world over. Bin Laden was a terrorist in every possible sense, but his success in surviving for so many years also stems from the fact that the industrialized West refuses to share its treasures with poor countries. The president, who came to power with liberal slogans and a pose of reconciliation with the Muslim world, speaks like Martin Luther King but operates in the international area like a right-wing/conservative outlaw from Alabama. He may defeat the Republicans at the polls, but he has adopted their ideological path.
More.
Elizabeth,
ReplyDeleteThanks. Someone has to stand up for the basic principles cited in the excerpts, no doubt about it. I don't think they can always be applied in terms of politics on the ground -- can anyone here imagine the uproar if it came out that Obama knew where bin Laden was but didn't act or didn't act resolutely? public sentiment would overwhelmingly condemn him -- but principles and ideals must be asserted strongly, lest they disappear altogether and lose any power they may have to shape our course in the future. It's a saucy world, and Milton was correct that "Necessity" was ever "the tyrant's plea." Sometimes even better men end up using it, and I admit that it doesn't reflect well on any of us when they do.