Psyche, Science, and Society

Charles Johnson: Why I Parted Ways With The Right

Conservative blogger Charles Johnson, at Little Green Footballs has had it with right-wing hatred and xenophobia. It is nice to see an intelligent and skeptical conservative. While I’m sure I disagree with him on many issues, I suspect I could have an intelligent and interesting conversation with him. What more could one ask for? It will be interesting to watch his future development.

He explains in a recent post [Also read his A Climate Skeptic's Conversion.]]:

Why I Parted Ways With The Right

1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)

2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)

3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)

4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.)

5. Support for homophobic bigotry (see: Sarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.)

6. Support for anti-government lunacy (see: tea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.)

7. Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.)

8. A right-wing blogosphere that is almost universally dominated by raging hate speech (see: Hot Air, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, etc.)

9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.)

10. Hatred for President Obama that goes far beyond simply criticizing his policies, into racism, hate speech, and bizarre conspiracy theories (see: witch doctor pictures, tea parties, Birthers, Michelle Malkin, Fox News, World Net Daily, Newsmax, and every other right wing source)

And much, much more. The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff.

I won’t be going over the cliff with them.

December 1st, 2009

The end of the Obama administration

Tonight’s Afghanistan escalation speech marks the end of the Obama administration. Instead we are witnessing the birth of the second Lyndon Johnson administration as President Obama joins a long line of American presidents who place imperial war above all other goals.

Yes, he campaigned on a platform of expanded war in Afghanistan. But we hoped, stupidly it seems, that that was just campaign rhetoric. We hoped that, once elected, he would come to his senses and at least not escalate a hopeless and destructive conflict.

But he has proved us wrong. While on most other issues that mattered to us — torture, detainee abuse, civil liberties, civil rights for gays, healthcare reform, the economic well-being of the majority of the population, economic domination by the banks and other hyper-wealthy — he has proved that his campaign promises were primarily rhetoric. But he has proved that when it comes to war and destruction, he is a man of his word.

From this day forward, Barack Obama is and will be the president of war and occupation. The myth of change, and even of intelligent administration, is over. All we are left with is the Audacity of Disgust.

Today I regret voting for Barack H. Obama. It won’t happen again.

2 comments December 1st, 2009

Bush deliberately let Bin Laden escape, says Congressman

A Congressman has stated what many have speculated, that the Bush administration deliberately let bin Laden and other al-Qaeda escape from Tora Bora because of the need to keep a bogey to justify the Iraq invasion. In what passes for acceptable discourse in this country, the idea cannot even be discussed without attacking the one expressing this opinion as crazy:

Rep. Hinchey: Bush ‘intentionally let Bin Laden get away’

By Stephen C. Webster

The Bush administration permitted the world’s most notorious terrorist mastermind to escape because it needed additional justification to invade Iraq, according to a Democratic lawmaker from New York.

Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) leveled the allegation during an interview with MSNBC host David Shuster on Monday afternoon.

“Look what happened with regard to our invasion into Afghanistan, how we apparently intentionally let bin Laden get away,” he said. “How we intentionally did not follow the Taliban and al-Qaeda as they were escaping. That was done by the previous administration because they knew very well that if they would capture al-Qaeda, there would be no justification for an invasion in Iraq.”

“They deliberately let Osama bin Laden get away?” asked an incredulous Shuster. “They deliberately let the head of al-Qaeda get away right after he, right after the 9/11 attacks? You really believe that?”

“Yes, I do,” Hinchey replied. “There’s no question about that. The leader of the military operation in the United States called back our military, called them back from going after the head of al-Qaeda because there was a sense that they didn’t want to capture him.”

“…To suggest that they deliberately let Osama bin Laden get away so they could invade Iraq, that will strike a lot of people as crazy,” Shuster countered.

“I don’t think it will strike a lot of people as crazy,” Hinchey said. “I think it will strike a lot of people as very accurate and all you have to do is look at the facts of that set of circumstances and you can see that’s exactly what happened. When we went in there, when our military went in there, we could have captured them. We could have captured most of the Taliban and we could have captured the al-Qaeda. But we didn’t, and we didn’t because of the need felt by the previous administration and the previous head of the military — that need to attack Iraq, which is completely unjustified.”

Hinchy apparently based his allegations on a recently released Senate report that found then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rejected calls for reinforcements in December 2001, when the military allegedly had bin Laden trapped in Afghanistan.

“The vast array of American military power, from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the marine corps and the army, was kept on the sidelines,” the report says.

“Instead, the US command chose to rely on airstrikes and untrained Afghan militias to attack Bin Laden and on Pakistan’s loosely organized Frontier Corps to seal his escape routes.”

Entitled “Tora Bora revisited: how we failed to get Bin Laden and why it matters today,” the report — commissioned by Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — says Bin Laden expected to die and had even written a will.

“But the Al-Qaeda leader would live to fight another day. Fewer than 100 American commandos were on the scene with their Afghan allies and calls for reinforcements to launch an assault were rejected.

“Requests were also turned down for US troops to block the mountain paths leading to sanctuary a few miles away in Pakistan.

“The decision not to deploy American forces to go after Bin Laden or block his escape was made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander, General Tommy Franks,” the report says.

“On or around December 16, two days after writing his will, Bin Laden and an entourage of bodyguards walked unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan’s unregulated tribal area. Most analysts say he is still there today.”

This video was broadcast by MSNBC on Monday, Nov. 30, 2009, as snipped by Talking Points Memo.

December 1st, 2009

Juan Cole: On Afghan “government”

On this fateful day, Juan Cole informs us that there simply is no “Afghan government” for the US to “partner” with. There is nothing but a bunch of thieves (15 current and former cabinet ministers under investigation for fraud, how many others not yet being investigated?):

Obama Partnering with Afghan Gov’t
But is there any there there?

By Juan Cole

President Barack Obama’s commitment to “finish the job” in Afghanistan by sending 55,000 US troops to that country (counting the 21,000 he dispatched last winter shortly after being inaugurated) depends heavily on a hope of building up an Afghan government and army over to which the US can eventually turn control. But one of the questions we seldom hear any detail about concerns the country’s governmental capacity. Does the government function? Can it deliver services?

As might be expected, governmental capacity is low, but here are some specifics. Months after the controversial presidential election that many Afghans consider stolen, there is no cabinet, and parliament is threatening to go on recess before confirming a new one because the president is unconstitutionally late in presenting the names. Almost no one bothers to attend the parliamentary sessions. The cabinet ministries are unable to spend the money allocated to them on things like education and rural development, and actually spent less in absolute terms last year than they did in the previous two years. Only half of the development projects for which money was allotted were even begun last year, and none was completed.

In other words, we can say of the Afghanistan government what Gertrude Stein said of her inability in later life to find her childhood home in Oakland, Ca.: “There is no there there.”

President Hamid Karzai pleaded with the lower house of parliament on Monday to delay its winter recess by one week so that he can present his final cabinet nominees for confirmation, according to Pajhwok. Speaker of the House Yunus Qanuni sniffed that the parliament was responsible for setting its own recess, implying that he would not be strong-armed by the president. (Qanuni is a Tajik formerly a leader of the Northern Alliance, and has long been a rival of Karzai, running against him in 2004; he was a counselor to Abdullah Abdul lah, Karzai’s main rival in the August 20 presidential election).

But Qanuni seems to have been one of the few members of parliament who cared one way or another. Nader Khan Katawazai, an MP from Paktika, complained that only 30 of the 238 MPs attended Monday’s session. This is the government we are being asked to prop up with blood and treasure? Only 30 legislators bothered to come in to work?

By law, Karzai was supposed to have presented his cabinet to parliament within two weeks of being sworn in (which was two weeks ago). Since he has been insisting he was the winner since early September, he should have had time to put together a cabinet. But he presumably had to make some substitutions once he admitted that three of his current cabinet members were under investigation for corruption. (12 other former cabinet members, having fled the country, were also being looked at for criminal prosecution.

That is the government that the US has been propping up for the last 8 years. 15 cabinet members that Interpol is looking into?

Even the non-corrupt ministers may not be confirmed by the parliament because of substantial dissatisfaction with the inability of many of them to spend the development money their ministries had in the kitty.

Seven ministries spent only 40% of their allocated budget in the past year, according to Pajhwok News. And, the sums expended on development projects declined 10% last year from the two previous years!

Let’s repeat that. The Afghanistan government presides over the fifth poorest country in the world. It has millions of dollars in aid to spend for the betterment of its constituents. But it actually managed to spend less on these tasks this year than in previous years, despite having more money.

The Ministry of Rural Rehabilitatio n and Development expended 10 billion Afghanis from its allocation of 22 billion Afghanis;

The Public Works Ministry spent 6 billion of 18 billion Afghanis;

The Water and Energy Ministry 9 billion of 17.6 billion Afghanis;

The Education Ministry 3 billion Afg of 8 billion Afghanis;

The Public Health Ministry: 2.3 billion out of 5.5 billion Afghanis;

The Finance Ministry spent 3.5 billion out of 5.5 billion Afghanis;

The Agriculture Ministry spent 1.5 billion out of three billion Afghanis.

The chairman of the National Economy Commission, Siddiq Ahmad Usmani, continued that 500 development projects were supposed to have been pursued last year with the 111 bn. Afgh. budget allotment, but in fact, “But work on only 263 of 500 was carried out which are yet to be completed,”

The low governmental capacity of the Afghan state bodes ill indeed for Obama’s success in Afghanistan. He wil be constantly looking for a reliable partner. He will find shifting quicksand.

December 1st, 2009