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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
John Manning
Published Letters: 48 Editor's Choice: 1
Then he proceeds to blame the shootings on our refusal to lock up huge numbers of individuals whom we deem in advance to be "crazy" (a policy Krauthammer says is a "humane decision, but with the inevitable consequence that some who really need quarantine are allowed to roam the streets").
Someone should remind Krauthammer that we, as a society, used to provide psychiatric services on a much larger scale over thirty-five years ago. Then Reagan was elected and he started swinging the budget ax like, well, a veritable mass murderer. As a result, many psych patients ended up on the streets (homelessness became an issue around this time) and the availability of psych services was dramatically reduced.
I'd bet my life that Krauthammer was an enthusiastic supporter of Reagan's government shrinking policy at the time.
"Before he enter on the execution of his office he shall take the following oath or affirmation: 'I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.'" [emphasis mine]
I'm not a lawyer and I may well be naive, but hasn't the president broken this explicit oath? Isn't this breach actionable?
It's past time for Congress to ask Mr. Bush to defend his abilities with respect to his oath of office and how he preserves, protects and defends the Constitution by ignoring and/or defying several of its provisions.
Couric is a television celebrity, not a journalist. As such, she is emblematic of the decline of the evening news format (pretty boy Brian Williams is no better, nor is Charlie Gibson who strongly implied in a recent San Francisco Chronicle interview that he's ok with reporters acting as stenographers).
I disagree with Anonymous about Diane Sawyer. She, like most network news personalities, is far too comfortable with her fame and wealth to seriously report anything discomforting to the status quo.
Christiane Amanpour, on the other hand, has the street cred of a heavyweight journalist who would actually be interesting to watch on a nightly basis. Unfortunately, because she's willing to criticize the powers-that-be, she'll never get the opportunity.
Obviously, I don't personally know the man, but whenever I saw Dan Barlett on television the predominant image in my mind was that of an empty-eyed and soulless apparatchik, not a speaker of truth: the president is always right; his policies are always the correct course of action.
The one significant time Bartlett prevailed on Bush to characterize the administration in a less than honorable light was in the aftermath of Katrina. But where was Bartlett during the early stages of that disaster when his "truth telling" might have done some good? A Newsweek article (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9287434/site/newsweek/page/0/) from the time tells us.
"Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him." And, "[w]hen Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth: that the state and local governments had been overwhelmed, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not up to the job and that the military, the only institution with the resources to cope, couldn't act without a declaration from the president overriding all other authority."
In today's Times article, Gordon cites a military spokesman comparing the flight of al Qaeda from Baquba with "the escape of Qaeda leaders from Falluja ahead of an American offensive that recaptured that city in 2004."
Funny, that.... In an April 2004 article (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/09/international/middleeast/09FALL.html?ex=1182744000&en=9ccd44786cd1aef1&ei=5070),a week after the four American "contractors" were killed, Gordon writes about all the reasons Fallujah is a hotbed of insurgent activity. Not once did he use the term al Qaeda.
Something else: An Agence France-Presse article (http://rempost.blogspot.com/2006/06/most-foreign-fighters-in-iraq-come.html) published almost exactly one year ago quotes Army spokesman Major General William Caldwell claiming al Qaeda "is very disorganised right now and very disrupted right now. The reason we were able to pick up and track some of the middle-level people is because their system is so disrupted and that has given us the opportunities to find them, track them and go get them."
So, last year al Qaeda was on its heels and now nearly every insurgent captured or killed is al Qaeda. Someone should ask Bush what happened in the past twelve months and why his policy in Iraq is breeding al Qaeda fighters.
People of the authoritarian bent are looking for daddies, not leaders. That was the appeal of Ronald Reagan: The congenial but tough-minded dad. Goldberg says it explicitly in the excerpt above: "I can just see him yelling, hey you kids, get off my lawn. I love it." Cheney is the cantankerous neighborhood dad who doesn't brook any misbehavior from the local kids.
Yet these people (the Goldbergs, Hasselbecks and the like) are seen in the public mind, paradoxically, as representing the tough and individualistic strain of the American psyche. In reality, they are merely soft and frightened little children looking for someone the hold their hands and reassure them as they face the scary world.
Al Qaeda--Iraq, Iran, Hezbollah, Taliban, Mexico, Democratic Party
progress--improvement, stasis, failure,
progress in Iraq--fewer insurgent attacks, more insurgent attacks
six months--forever
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
