Those of us who want to send Bush & Cheney to the Hague are criminalizing policy differences after all!

I'm still searching for any pro-photo-suppression Democrats who criticized Obama when he triggered controversy by originally announcing he would release them.

You might as well search for five-pound pearls while you're at it. Most Dems are still infatuated with Obama, so pointing out that he hasn't DONE anything differently than Bush when it comes to the war, torture or other crimes is futile as of now -even though it's necessary to call him out for it.

History not repeating, but rhyming.

Democracy's Prisoner by Ernest Freeberg

As with today, many of the progressives kidded themselves that Wilson was under the evil influence of other members of his administration: like he couldn't overrule his own Post Master general, who was busy censoring nearly every left wing publication out of business!

Read the book. Excellent.

Mimetic behavior is very common among the human animal.

The little fish are easily frightened and weak when alone. When they swim in a school they take on the appearance of a large and formidable animal to a smaller single predator. The school darts this way and that in the flash of an eye.

Do not look for an explanation of animal behavior in words. The fear and uncertainty causing group cohesion is not easily stated both accurately and with the flattery required for acceptance.

" ... it's impossible to understand how anyone whose objections over the last eight years were sincere (as opposed to a handy weapon opportunistically used to politically weaken Bush) could be supporting what Obama, in these areas, is doing now."

The natural complement is that anyone who IS supporting Obama's actions (not Obama the man, but his actions) now, who opposed Bush's actions then, was not sincere, but was merely using the constitution as a handy weapon that could weaken Bush.

Yes, that fits.

As for asymmetry, I'd like to follow-up heru-ur's mention of 4th Generation Warfare, sometimes called 'asymmetric warfare', and William S Lind's contribution to the study of that form of military doctrine, by highlighting the central point of his work, which is that 4GW occurs predominantly in the moral sphere, and the actions of 4GW practitioners are not intended to weaken the physical forces of the enemy, but to weaken their moral legitimacy, and especially so in the eyes of their own people.

That no US command has ever really understood this can be readily seen in the increasingly physically destructive (i.e. on the surface, successful) measures employed in Vietnam, their signal failure, and the corresponding frustration expressed as further escalations; intense carpet bombing, napalm up the wazu, counting bodies accumultaed rather than objectives achieved, wrecklessly dangerous expansion beyond the original sphere of action, and etc.

That those in command of the military and political machinery of the west still do not understand this at all can also be readily seen in that the exact same pattern is being played out, with the exact same results. More and more wreckless flailing about is causing more and more physical damage to ever-increasing numbers of "enemy combatants" yet the moral legitimacy of both the wars themselves and those prosecuting them decrease with every escalation.

Just as in Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia, the moral legitimacy of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are in severe decline among the very people they are supposed to be defending, and this is rapidly eroding any moral standing the current political administration might have had to begin with.

Of course, the apparent paradox of this symmetrical asymmetry was captured many years ago by a very well-known saying:

"plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"

But why would a liberal progressive care about, or be interested in, the works of such conservative warriors? Well, take a look at what they have to say for themselves:

Cheney won the debate by drawing the usual Republican distinction, that between doing what is necessary for national security and being nice. If Republicans are allowed to frame the issue that way, they will always win. But in fact, theirs is a false position. We do not have to choose between doing what works in the "war on terrorism" and doing what is morally right. The two are the same.

The military theory that allows us to see this is the work of Col. John Boyd, USAF. Boyd argued that war is fought on three levels: the moral, the mental, and the physical. Of the three, the moral level is the most powerful, the physical level is the least powerful, and the mental level lies between the other two.

Cheney argued that we should sacrifice the moral level to the physical. We should engage in torture because it may gain us information that could prevent another attack like 9/11. That could be the case.

But Boyd’s theory would respond that the defeat we suffer on the moral level by adopting a policy of torture will outweigh any benefits torture might bring us on the physical level of war. How so? By pumping up the terrorists’ will, cohesion, and ability to cooperate while diminishing our own.

(from link at sig)

The enemy of my enemy is my friend?

Well, maybe not ... but perhaps an ally?

It is the overwhelming case in history that a country at war sees its citizens lose civil liberties. (even if they have few to lose) Therefore, it is necessary to understand the war (GWOT) that we find ourselves embroiled in if we want to try to understand how to improve our situation in regards to civil liberties.

Consider:
How we know Iran's election was not decided by fraud
or
The Tehran Bureau: Possibly ground zero for the key lie that fueled Iran's election dispute
at
http://mideastreality.blogspot.com/

If it is true, and it is, that the USA helped in any way to destabilize Iran then we are continuing and escalating a war that the other side can only fight in the manner of forth generation warfare. As long as we continue to put others, no matter where on the globe, into a position that they must use forth generation warfare to fight back against the evil attacking them, then we will be faced with fighting a "war on terror".

It really is time to stop intervening in the affairs of others and try to fix this country we live in first. We outspend the entire planet put together on the military budget --- while people in this country are in deep poverty, just barley making it, have no access to medical care, can not afford a decent diet, and so on.

It takes one's mind off our troubles at home to yell and shout about monsters we perceive abroad, but it is truly time to worry about the monsters in the nation's capitol city.

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Note: It is time to give Florida all these 400 million dollar appropriations to destabilize governments. We could at least use it to feed people or clean up the environment.