" ... 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?

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.

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.

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.

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

Until the summer of 2003, warlords and commanders on the U.S. payroll also maintained their own prisons, often holding them on behalf of the Americans. In Herat, the warlord Ismail Khan frequently used torture. Prisoners described how "beatings, hanging upside-down, whipping, and shocking with electrical wires attached to the toes and thumbs" were commonplace. A close friend of mine and a prominent lawyer in Herat, Rafiq Shahir, was arrested by Ismail Khan, who wanted to stop him from contesting a seat for the Loya Jirga in 2002. His family asked me to save his life. I telephoned several prominent officials in Kabul, asking them to intervene, but by the time Shahir was freed he had been whipped, beaten, and threatened with death. The scars on his back and stomach still show.

The fundamentalist warlord Abdul Rasul Sayyaf maintained several prisons just outside Kabul. Hazrat Ali, a key ally of U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan, ran private jails, while his commanders indulged in robbery, kidnapping, and sexual violence against young boys, even as they served under the command of the U.S. SOF [special operations forces]. The warlords terrorized civilians, knowing they would never be reprimanded by the Americans. U.S. forces were to establish the same system of secret detention in Iraq, using Iraqi warlords and military units. The abuse of prisoners by U.S. jailers at Abu Ghraib was only a follow-on to what had already happened in Afghanistan.
Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos p.307.

Rashid goes on to talk about the joint interrogation facility run by the ISI, CIA, and FBI at Kohat, and jails at Haripur and elsewhere, and describe how President Musharraf and the ISI were to adapt the regime to fit the needs of keeping the military dictatorship in place, until Asma Jahangir and the HRCP brought suits to the Pakistani Supreme Court and President Musharraf sacked CJ Iftikar Chaudry touching off the Lawyer's Movement, the suspension of the Constitution, and the end of the Musharraf regime. He then documents similar adaptation of CIA and U.S. military brutal treatment and arbitrary imprisonment by Karimov (Uzbekistan), and by the Chinese against the Uighurs in Xinjiang.

Yesterday, ersatzdavid questioned why I said that if the U.S. fails to stand itself up and re-assume the burden of human rights it had tried to assume before all this, it would have world wide implications. The downfall already has. Those photos need to be released, and there is nothing that would in the long run spare as many lives of American troops than the U.S. coming clean before the world on civil liberties and human rights. As I quoted in my previous post,

Justice is the origin of rule.