http://www.cagle.com/politicalcartoons/pccartoons/archives/booth.asp?Action=GetImage

Pick May 18, 09.

An spooky-looking Obama with burned out eyes, speaking:

"My new position is to say fuck you to the ACLU. "FUCK YOU, ACLU!" There. I must now ask, for the sake of satisfying the current demands of my National Security Advisors, that all mirrors in the country be destroyed and replaced with one of those itty-bitty American flags that kids wave in parades, or a yellow ribbon, a real one or a sticker, doesn't matter to me, or the Shepard Fairey poster about hope. Remember, we can only win this war on terror if the enemy keeps being everybody else but us."

At first I thought the Mr Fish cartoon linked here

http://greatscat.com/2009/06/diane.html

(or click on signature)

was an injustice to Obama. Increasingly, I'm not sure.

"Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated".

One way of thinking about our establishment is that it is an embodiment of the Star Trek nightmare, the Borg. Obama's resistance against it, if he ever had any, lasted less than a hundred days. The National Security Apparatus can now enact the very same policies, but with a titular head who is highly popular in the polls, unlike his predecessor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_(Star_Trek)

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I wonder if our celebrity-obsessed culture contributes to the public seemingly oblivious about the expansion of the Presidency at the expense of the non-celebrity mostly-anonymous Congress. (Likewise, we have a great tolerance for overpaid CEOs to the detriment of anonymous workers and shareholders.) We want our society to be run by a few superpowered comic book characters, it seems.

The US is a much bigger target. There are more American assets spread around the world than Israeli, etc. etc. Read through the list of attacks on or protests near American embassies and consulates. Some of them are anti-Israel, but there is not nearby Israeli consulate to bomb or burn down - the nations where these happen may not have even diplomatic relations with Israel.

And they do attack Jews. E.g., they went out of their way to attack the Chabad House in Mumbai (Nov 2008). There are claims out there that New York City is a target not only because it is American but also because of its sizeable Jewish population.

Wikipedia reports:

"Atta's friends in Germany described him as an intelligent man with religious beliefs who grew angry over the Western policy toward the Middle East, including the Oslo Accords and the Gulf War.[31][32] MSNBC, in its special "The Making of the Death Pilots," interviewed German friend Ralph Bodenstein who traveled, worked and talked a lot with Mohamed Atta. Bodenstein said, "He was most imbued [sic] actually about Israeli politics in the region and about U.S. protection of these Israeli politics in the region. And he was to a degree personally suffering from that.""

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Atta#Germany

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/6.22.09-janko-habeas-opinion.pdf (PDF file)

I think it merits a GG column.

Over on turcopolier, Retd Col W. Patrick Lang writes:

"I was so fortunate as to be asked to give my opinion to the court in this matter. Judge Richard Leon of the DC District Court and the good people of the Oregon Federal Public Defenders office have returned honor to American justice in the case of Abd al-Rahim al-Janko who has been wrongly imprisoned and abused by the Taliban and then the US Government for eight long years. pl

Download 6.22.09 Janko Habeas Opinion"

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2009/06/judge-leons-decision-in-the-aljanko-case.html

(or click on signature)

G-d or Allah or the Flying Spaghetti Monster bless you! I had just reached the point of saying "Amity Time" and there was your post!

Matthew B. Crawford, NYT magazine, May 24, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html

"As it happened, in the spring I landed a job as executive director of a policy organization in Washington. This felt like a coup. But certain perversities became apparent as I settled into the job. It sometimes required me to reason backward, from desired conclusion to suitable premise. The organization had taken certain positions, and there were some facts it was more fond of than others. As its figurehead, I was making arguments I didn’t fully buy myself. Further, my boss seemed intent on retraining me according to a certain cognitive style — that of the corporate world, from which he had recently come. This style demanded that I project an image of rationality but not indulge too much in actual reasoning."

I guess the point you're trying to make is that all sides have to be willing to negotiate. True!

When this deal successfully completes, the Proof of Concept that diplomacy can work will be there for anyone to examine. If the right lessons are drawn there is hope for the future.

I thought that one of the justifications for torture is that the tortured will sing.