Where the heck are you? Did they come and get you? I'm anxious to get your "read" on all of this mess.....

@richhein:

I'm totally with you that torture and a general relinquishment of civil liberties follow from the thinking Glenn describes.

My own frustration regarding THE torture hypothetical--that there's a bomb about to go off in Los Angeles in 45 minutes--comes from the fantastic nature of it. Antonin Scalia unbelievably used this cliche in his interview with the BBC last week--one would think a sitting SCJustice would be a little more rigorous--and lamely defended the "unlikely" nature of the scenario as reasonable justification on which to form public policy.

Let's recap the GIVENS of this famous scenario, shall we?

We know that there is a bomb in Los Angeles. We know that it will explode in 45 minutes. We happen to have in custody the very man who can make it stop. We happen to know which particular man in custody this is.

(Remember, all this is necessary for the hypothetical to work because--and this is so important to torture apologists--we would never torture anyone unless 1. we knew for certain the threat was immanent and 2. the torture was applied only to the source of relief of the threat.)

Back to the pure fantasy of the hypothetical:

If we know all that, we know where the frickin' bomb is.

"Senator McCain, given all that's at stake in the war in Iraq, and given that 'retreat' or 'surrender' is not possible, and given that your main solution for containing the chaos in Iraq is the 'surge' (which, as you never fail to mention, is working), and given the fact that military experts say that the surge is unsustainable because we don't have enough troops to extend it much longer, would you, as president, call for the reinstatement of the draft in order to have the troops we need to win the war?"

If you accept the premises of the War of Civilizations crowd, it becomes all the more reprehensible that they're unwilling to do "everything it takes" to win the war. Not only are they unwilling to personally serve in the military, but they don't even have the courage to take the unpopular move of calling for a draft to ensure that we have the troops to fight this supposed War of Civilizations. As Glenn points out, the war continues in large part because for most people it doesn't involve any direct sacrifice or risk. But if we're really fighting War War III, is it defensible to do it with an all-volunteer army which is stretched to its breaking point?

I think the unwillingness to risk popular wrath by calling for a draft points to the hollowness of the hyperbolical rhetoric of the war hawks.

FISA Is Ratings Poison

Excellent link, thanks.

It would be an understatement to suggest that the modern media is beyond hopelessly pathetic, but it bears repeating as often as possible.

-The degree to which the real terrorists in the Middle East and the wannabe warriors in the midwest are dependent on each other for their continued sustinence is really quite disturbing.-

Very true, and that applies to Bush and bin Laden. They help each other's cause as though they were allies....are they allies?

Whenever Bush or the GOP face an election or need to get some draconian law passed, Osama, or someone who is quite similar in appearance, appears on TV or the internet at the critical moment.

Conversely, Bush's misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to have the obvious effect of breeding hatred exponentially.

BTW: For the 'Surge is working' crowd, US service fatalities in Iraq, the only metric officially permitted, are documented at the highest since Sept. 2007 for the month of January 2008.

Of the 57 documented months since the initial invasion, January 2008 ranks nowhere near the lowest body count. How is then that 'the surge is working, the surge is working'?

corollary.

I'm just glad we're all alive here is morning, having dodged the midnight bullet last night. I woke up around 3AM and things were all dark. I got scared, but quickly realized that it was still nighttime.

I have previously stipulated that I served in the Air Force and did a tour in South Vietnam from summer 1967 - 68. I was there for Tet.

My father was in the Army during World War II. He was assigned to a Boston coastal battery; he went through Utah Beach; he was assigned to Patton's command as a captain; he was part of the relief force for Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge; and he was on the German border when the war ended.

I don't come from a military family, but my brother and his son are Navy veterans, and a few uncles and some other in-laws also served.

I'm only setting this history up to say that people who do not serve just don't know what they're talking about.

But, Lordy, how they do go on.

All they can do is yap, attach themselves to some heroic tall tales or set of mythologies, fall for a fake war leader, and, while they're at it, ignore the perspective of people who are actually familiar with the terrain - because they've walked the walk at some time in their lives.

It think it's extraordinary, given what kind of bile came out the Vietnam War, that people my age are so at odds with each other after all that went down then - that we've allowed this rank manipulation to have occurred, and, that we've allowed our troops to be abused the way they have been. We have allowed ourselves, after all that happened 35 to 45 years ago, to be divided in a way that the best dystopian writers could never have imagined.

Another slice of American pie.

Talk about lessons learned.

If these yappers, the faux warriors, choose not to serve (or respond to a draft), then when they talk of military service, it can only be an abstraction, comprehensible to them in their little caucuses.

Aside from the strange political or psychological need to immerse themselves in pipe dreams that they are Napoleon, or Alexander, or William Tecumseh Sherman (or Bill Belichick), it's nothing but virtual reality, a game of pinball, or a movie.

There actually used to be a time when Americans were pretty fussy about certain protocols having to do with basic citizenship, such as how to display the flag.

Now I'm not carping about how we should do it (or argue that everyone should enlist), or say that Congress should once again divert our attention from critical issues by having another debate about flag burning. I'm just saying a lot people don't even know how to handle this basic symbol of nationhood any more.

But you do learn some of these things in the service.

And so, over the years I've always been amused (more than incensed) when I see the flag hung from a horizontal bar rather than a flag pole, like they do in the House, and you see it with the stars in the upper right hand corner. The stars should be in the upper left hand corner; that's the way it's done.

Another example of confusion about a clearly defined protocol within the government, expressed here by one of the faux warrior theorists, is that the president, specifically George W. Bush, is our "commander in chief."

This a small big lie, peddled by the super patriots, and they know it, because, strictly speaking, only if you are in the uniform of the armed forces of the United States of America - that is, actively serving - are you required to regard the president as the CIC.

No civilian, regardless of service history or the lack of it, is required to jump out of bed in the morning and regard the president this way.

People who say this are misinformed. They could also be liars or fakers.

It may also be that such people don't know how to handle the flag.

But that's not my problem.