Today's Hypershrill

Right-of-Center Washington Post security analyst William Arkin:

Rumsfeld's Enemy: It's Us - Early Warning: Either Rumsfeld has delivered one of the most important speeches of the modern era, or he's gone crazy. I think the latter, not just because I think the secretary is wrong on his intellectual characterization of terrorism, and not just because he is wrong about the media and its intentions, and not because he is so pugnacious, or because he has been wrong so many times before.

Rumsfeld is so wrong about America... his argument... not only polarizing but ineffective.... This is not the first time that Rumsfeld has shown himself to be so out of touch, so contemptuous of America.... Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld pushed a losing strategy in Afghanistan... declared "mission accomplished" long before President Bush stepped on to the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln... wrong in fighting and too quick to declare victory thereafter.... And even as Iraq has become one of the biggest hornets' nests in history, the secretary has convinced himself over and over that progress is being made and victory is just around the corner...

Right-of-Center Gregory Djerejian:

The Belgravia Dispatch: Unity, Then and Now: Time constraints have prevented me from analyzing Donald Rumsfeld's dishonest and repulsive speech... Rumsfeld's transparent demagoguery...

The New York Times Editorial Page Is Shrill

Good to see:

The Falling Paycheck - New York Times: After huddling with his economic team at Camp David this month, President Bush emerged from a meeting and... announced to reporters, "Things are good for American workers.

The comment is preposterous. As The Times's Steven Greenhouse and David Leonhardt reported yesterday, the economic expansion that began in late 2001 is on track to become the first since World War II that fails to offer a sustained lift to the real wages of most American workers. Although the nation's economy has grown and productivity has been strong, American employees have not shared in the wealth they've helped to create.... Until recently, the decline in real wages has been masked in large part by the housing boom that allowed many Americans to borrow and spend, even as their pay was squeezed. But now the housing market is flagging and with it, the Bush-era economy -- without American workers having ever experienced a period of solid prosperity.

Unfortunately, there's little likelihood of meaningful improvement anytime soon. When Mr. Bush and his advisers are not insisting that everything is fine, they're promising more high-end tax cuts as a cure-all, or painting the problem as one of impersonal market forces for which there are no government solutions.

Those are not the paths out of the predicament. Just the opposite, they are approaches that have contributed to it.

The Editors Are Shrill

Tremble before their eldritch beaks:

The Poor Man Institute: the conduct of our current war leaves me with no doubt that, had Rumsfeld & Friends been in charge during Kosovo, we would all be speaking Serbian right now...

The Shillness of William Arkin Surpasses All Bounds

Arkin Fhtagn!!

Rumsfeld's Enemy: It's Us - Early Warning: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld delivered a fire-and-brimstone speech at the American Legion's annual convention yesterday -- after acknowledging young soldiers serving in Iraq and giving the boy scouts a shout-out, the secretary wove an elaborate picture of an enemy made up of terrorists, morally misguided Westerners, disagreeable military strategists, and a cynical news media.

Rumsfeld stated there could be no appeasing the enemy and any "any moral or intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong can weaken the ability of free societies to persevere."

The "who" Rumsfeld is talking about is himself.

Rumsfeld is the "who" that is right, and everyone who disagrees is not only wrong, but a danger to freedom.

Within minutes of the conclusion of Rumsfeld's speech yesterday, I received an e-mail from Thayer C. Scott, the secretary's speechwriter, serving up talking points.

The Defense Department then took the unusual step, usually reserved for its broadsides against Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker, of issuing a statement saying that the Associated Press coverage of Rumsfeld's Salt Lake City remarks mischaracterized them.

Either Rumsfeld has delivered one of the most important speeches of the modern era, or he's gone crazy.

I think the latter, not just because I think the secretary is wrong on his intellectual characterization of terrorism, and not just because he is wrong about the media and its intentions, and not because he is so pugnacious, or because he has been wrong so many times before.

Rumsfeld is so wrong about America. His use of World War I history and the specter of fascism and appeasement, and his argument about moral weakness or even treason in any who oppose him, is not only polarizing but ineffective in provoking debate and discussion about the proper course this country must take to "fight" terrorism.

This is not the first time that Rumsfeld has shown himself to be so out of touch, so contemptuous of America. Rumsfeld as secretary of defense has displayed a contempt from long before 9/11 for anyone who disagrees with him, particularly in his initial wars against those in the uniformed military.

Moreover, Rumsfeld's declaration of war yesterday follows from his basic view that the Defense Department has to do it all: He has created an intelligence bureaucracy because he is distrustful and contemptuous of the CIA and all others. He has built up a secret army and covert capabilities in special operations forces because he wants to control and to rely only upon his own warriors. He has created a homeland security apparatus that looks over the shoulder of the Department of Homeland Security and is the ultimate arbiter of security. He has created his own FBI in the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), and fought to ensure that the NSA stays under Pentagon control. He has created his own law and his own human rights policy. He has subverted Congress through unexamined supplemental budgets and super-secret programs.

Even as a military strategist, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld pushed a losing strategy in Afghanistan. This is not just because he went to war with an initially small force. After all, the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda began just weeks after 9/11 and that was what could be mobilized in that short period. The tragic error was that Rumsfeld continued to think that the terrorist threat existed in the form of a small army to be routed by his fabulous "transformed" warriors.

It is Rumsfeld who declared "mission accomplished" long before President Bush stepped on to the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Rumsfeld has been wrong in fighting and too quick to declare victory thereafter.

Rumsfeld declared victory in Afghanistan, in addition, because he was twitching to move on to the next enemy, and the next and the next. But even when the weaknesses and problems became apparent about how the Afghanistan war had been fought, Rumsfeld still pushed an identical military strategy in Iraq, brushing aside any criticism as naïve and appeasing and out of touch with the new gathering storm of weapons of mass destruction.

And even as Iraq has become one of the biggest hornets' nests in history, the secretary has convinced himself over and over that progress is being made and victory is just around the corner. America, Rumsfeld says, is not to blame, conflating a just war with a preemptive American strike. America is not to blame and therefore Rumsfeld is not to blame: no missteps, no errors of judgment. The secretary just wants his soldiers to believe now that he anticipated all along that the enemy was totalitarian and fascist and that Iraq was part of the big plan.

If I were the conspiratorial type, I'd say Rumsfeld was a particular menace to America because in his view of a monolithic and totalitarian terrorist enemy, and in his analysis of the weakness of American society, he can only come to the messianic conclusion that he indeed needs to takeover the country in order to save it. And this might even be worth speculating about were it the case that Rumsfeld reflected the views of those in the military leadership, or were it the case that Rumsfeld could actually engineer such a coup.

But alas, the secretary would get the intelligence wrong, employ too few troops and send tank columns on thunder runs through Manhattan and Hollywood, prematurely declaring victory and then being befuddled about the American desire to recover and preserve its way of life, which is not the Rumsfeld way.

"Can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America -- not the enemy -- is the real source of the world’s troubles?," Rumsfeld asked yesterday.

This has got an easy answer: World troubles? Rumsfeld is the source of troubles much closer to home.

Fire Donald Rumsfeld. Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Richard Cheney. Do it now.

Gerard Baker is Shrill!

The screaming sound you hear is The Times' US editor Gerard Baker waking up, alarmedly pointing out the government is naked, being told he must be wrong, and realizing the awful truth: there, under the cold uncaring stars, the emperor has no clothes.

“HOW’M I DOIN’?” was the question the quixotic Ed Koch used to ask New York’s voters during Hizzoner’s eleven turbulent years as the city’s mayor. For a man who governed the globe’s most neurotic metropolis in the style of a rolling public psychiatric consultation, it was a fitting question.

But as the world contemplates the nervous breakdown of American policy in the Middle East, it is something President George Bush should surely be asking himself, or at least his fellow Americans. How’m I doin’?

Let’s see. You invaded Iraq because you argued you would be able to bring about a peaceful, democratic society in the heart of the Arab world, a step vital to the eradication of modern terrorism. Many of us supported the project because we believed the stakes were so high that you would not stint in committing the resources necessary to achieve it.

But you tried to do it on the cheap. If many of us miscalculated the scale of the threat Iraq posed, there was no excuse for the woeful lack of preparation by your Administration for the task of pacifying the country.

The outcome? A broken nation on the verge of civil war, prey to the avarice of tyrannical regional neighbours, violently immolating itself and nurturing new generations of terrorists.

How’m I doin’?

You're doing fine, Gerard. fhtagn.

You Go to War with the President You Have, Not the President You Wish You Had

TBogg writes:

TBogg - "...a somewhat popular blogger" : Shorter Victor Davis Reductum Ad Absurdum Hansen:

It is possible that using the most inarticulate and stupid President in my lifetime to explain the war on terror to the yokels was a bad idea.

Heh:

Victor Davis Hanson on At War on National Review Online: the president must explain the pathologies of the Middle East to such a degree as to warn Americans of our mortal danger, but not to the point of excess so that we feel that there is no hope for such people. He must somehow suggest that jihadism could not imperil us were it not for the moderates who tolerate and appease it--while this is the very same group that we feel duty-bound to offer an alternative other than theocracy or dictatorship. And he must offer a postwar plan of reconstruction to the citizens of the Middle East at a time when many of them do not feel that their romantic jihadists have ever really been defeated at all.

Even the eloquence of a Lincoln or Churchill would find all that difficult.

Indeed.

Finish the thought, Victor!

Even the eloquence of a Lincoln or would find all that difficult, but the ineloquence of a Bush makes it impossible.

It's not shrillness, exactly, but we will not be picky. It will do.

And so we say the words that we thought would never be said, not if we waited until the stars grew cold and the frozen armies of the Great Old Ones clashed on the plain of Megiddo:

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Victor Davis Hansen R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!!

You Go to War with the President You Have, Not the President You Wish You Had

TBogg writes:

TBogg - "...a somewhat popular blogger" : Shorter Victor Davis Reductum Ad Absurdum Hansen:

It is possible that using the most inarticulate and stupid President in my lifetime to explain the war on terror to the yokels was a bad idea.

Heh:

Victor Davis Hanson on At War on National Review Online: the president must explain the pathologies of the Middle East to such a degree as to warn Americans of our mortal danger, but not to the point of excess so that we feel that there is no hope for such people. He must somehow suggest that jihadism could not imperil us were it not for the moderates who tolerate and appease it--while this is the very same group that we feel duty-bound to offer an alternative other than theocracy or dictatorship. And he must offer a postwar plan of reconstruction to the citizens of the Middle East at a time when many of them do not feel that their romantic jihadists have ever really been defeated at all.

Even the eloquence of a Lincoln or Churchill would find all that difficult.

Indeed.

Finish the thought, Victor!

Even the eloquence of a Lincoln or would find all that difficult, but the ineloquence of a Bush makes it impossible.

It's not shrillness, exactly, but we will not be picky. It will do.

And so we say the words that we thought would never be said, not if we waited until the stars grew cold and the frozen armies of the Great Old Ones clashed on the plain of Megiddo:

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Victor Davis Hansen R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!!

General John Batiste Is Shrill!

Welcome, general:

Think Progress: Gen. Batiste: Rumsfeld "Served Up Our Great Military A Huge Bowl of Chicken Feces": Today on MSNBC, retired General John Batiste -- former commander of the First Infantry division in Iraq -- said that it was "outrageous" Rumsfeld was still in charge of the Pentagon. Batiste added, "He served up our great military a huge bowl of chicken feces, and ever since then, our military and our country have been trying to turn this bowl into chicken salad."

Transcript:

Donald Rumsfeld is still at the helm of the Department of Defense, which is absolutely outrageous. He served up our great military a huge bowl of chicken feces, and ever since then, our military and our country have been trying to turn this bowl into chicken salad. And it's not working.

Ia Fred Kaplan! Ia! Ia!

Fred Kaplan gets shriller:

Office Politics: Press Conference Fallout: Fred Kaplan writes in Slate:

Among the many flabbergasting answers that President Bush gave at his press conference on Monday, this one -- about Democrats who propose pulling out of Iraq -- triggered the steepest jaw drop: 'I would never question the patriotism of somebody who disagrees with me. This has nothing to do with patriotism. It has everything to do with understanding the world in which we live.'

George W. Bush criticizing someone for not understanding the world is like . . . well, it's like George W. Bush criticizing someone for not understanding the world. It's sui generis: No parallel quite captures the absurdity so succinctly.

Fred Kaplan? Yeah, he's Shrill too....

Gone are the days when Fred Kaplan analyzed military strategy for the CATO institute. Now are the days where Fred Kaplan seems to have been driven to shrill, unholy madness by the inability of the president to use a PSAT word in context. For the "subject says it all" department in Slate, Kaplan writes, "What a Moronic Presidential Press Conference!"

As for Iraq, it's no news that Bush has no strategy. What did come as news—and, really, a bit of a shocker—is that he doesn't seem to know what "strategy" means.

Asked if it might be time for a new strategy in Iraq, given the unceasing rise in casualties and chaos, Bush replied, "The strategy is to help the Iraqi people achieve their objectives and dreams, which is a democratic society. That's the strategy. … Either you say, 'It's important we stay there and get it done,' or we leave. We're not leaving, so long as I'm the president."

The reporter followed up, "Sir, that's not really the question. The strategy—"

Bush interrupted, "Sounded like the question to me."

First, it's not clear that the Iraqi people want a "democratic society" in the Western sense. Second, and more to the point, "helping Iraqis achieve a democratic society" may be a strategic objective, but it's not a strategy—any more than "ending poverty" or "going to the moon" is a strategy.

Indeed.

Michael Barone Is a Member of the Order of the Totally Clueless

There is not a hint of irony in Michael Barone's denunciation of himself, and of all his friends--Bush and Cheney and Rove and Bolton and Delay and Hastert and Frist and Gingrich and all the others--who "declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War set out to write a narrative in which they, rather than those who obeyed the call to duty, were the heroes." Not a hint of irony:

Sadly, No!: From Michael Barone's latest piece:

We have always had our covert enemies, but their numbers were few until the 1960s. But then the elite young men who declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War set out to write a narrative in which they, rather than those who obeyed the call to duty, were the heroes.

You know who served in Vietnam? John Kerry, Al Gore and Jack Murtha. You know who didn't? George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Gavin adds: And Karl Rove, and John Bolton, and Tom Delay, and Dennis Hastert, and Bill Frist, and Newt Gingrich, and... Michael Barone?...

Though come to think of it, maybe there is no irony in Barone's piece. Maybe he's just inadvertently telling the truth...

Yep:

FOXNews.com - Michael Barone - Bio: Michael Barone joined FOX News Channel as a political contributor in 1998.... He graduated from Harvard University in 1966 and Yale Law School in 1969.

Glenn Greenwald Is Highly Shrill!

Glenn Greenwald flames the highly-intelligent and usually-reliable Orin Kerr and the blind squirrel Ann Althouse:

Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: Grading the law professors; apologies due Judge Taylor: [M]any of the "experts" who were widely cited to support the attacks on Judge Taylor's opinion were actually themselves quite misinformed about the basic matters governing her rulings. Here, for instance, is a post from Orin Kerr which reflects a deep misunderstanding of the issues which Judge Taylor ruled on. I'm not trying to single him out. To the contrary, he's been commendably candid about his lack of expertise in (I would even say knowledge of) how civil litigation works (a modesty and candor which many lack). Yet despite his self-professed unfamiliarity with civil litigation, he was one of the most widely-quoted law professors by those wanting to disparage the quality of Judge Taylor's opinion....

In his post, Kerr responds to a point I (and others) have made -- that a principal reason why Judge Taylor was somewhat conclusory in her analysis of some issues, and the reason she repeatedly said that certain propositions were "undisputed," is because the Bush administration either failed or chose not to dispute them. Specifically, the Justice Department was so intent on telling the Judge that she had no right to even rule on these issues (because the NSA program is a "state secret," the legality of which the court cannot adjudicate without damaging national security and/or because the plaintiffs lack "standing"), that it basically chose not to address the merits....

[T]he DoJ twice tried to convince Judge Taylor not to rule on the substance of the ACLU's claim, but instead to rule first on the DoJ's "state secrets" argument. Twice, the court refused this request, ordering the DoJ to address the merits of the case.... But the DoJ essentially refused to do so, and devoted almost all of its brief (.pdf) to arguing why the court lacked the power to adjudicate....

[T]he Bush administration's refusal to address the merits of the claims (which is part and parcel of its general contempt for the role of the courts in scrutinizing its conduct) meant that Judge Taylor was not only entitled, but was required by the Rules of Civil Procedure (Rule 56), to treat the ACLU's factual claims as undisputed for purposes of deciding the motion... Kerr... had no idea (a) that any of this (meaning the case's procedural history) had happened and (b) that on a Motion for Summary Judgment... the most basic rule is that any fact that one party fails to dispute (with evidence) shall be deemed "undisputed."...

[I]n response to my pointing out the other day that the DoJ's failure to dispute any of these factual assertions compelled the court to treat them as undisputed, Kerr wrote:

Glenn Greenwald suggests that this is correct because the DOJ's failure to address the merits should be seen as a tacit admission that the ACLU's position is correct; this seems quite bizarre to me, as surely the assertion of a legal privilege as to why a question should not be answered does not constitute an admission.

But far from being "bizarre," this proposition -- that facts which a party fails (for whatever reasons) to dispute on Summary Judgment are deemed "undisputed" by the court -- is one of the most basic principles of civil litigation in the federal courts, as any federal court litigator would know.... How can someone who is (a) unfamiliar with the case itself and (b) unfamiliar with the rules governing the key issues before the court be cited as the preeminent expert to opine that the court's opinion is so flawed?

Then we have University of Wisconsin School of Law Professor Ann Althouse, who wrote a post last night citing to Kerr's post and declaring that he "seems to be getting at what happened" in this case. She then points to what she calls "the weird repetition of the strange word 'undisputedly' throughout the opinion" and -- in bolded letters -- she criticizes the court for not even mentioning the DoJ's motion for a "stay" (i.e. its request that the court not rule on the substance of the claims until it decides the DoJ's motion to dismiss on the "state secrets" ground). But then, in an "Update," Althouse... write[s]:

Arguably, this gave the defendants an opportunity to present evidence to defeat the summary judgment motion, and they chose not to take it....

The court directed the DoJ to address the substance of the claims and the DoJ simply failed and/or refused to do so -- facts which neither Kerr nor Althouse even knew when attacking the court's opinion. And there is nothing "arguable" about it -- if one party moves for Summary Judgment and presents competent evidence supporting its factual claims (as the ACLU indisputably did here), and the other party fails to dispute those facts with competent evidence (as the DoJ indisputably did here), then those facts are "undisputed," by definition.

I seriously doubt based on their commentary that Kerr or Althouse (and most, though not all, of the other law professor critics) have been following this case at all...

John Quiggin Is Shrill

The chutzpah of Kenneth Pollack drives him batty:

Posted by John Quiggin: That was then, this is now: Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack start a lengthy Washington Post piece by observing

The debate is over: By any definition, Iraq is in a state of civil war.

and their assessment only gets gloomier.... They have essentially nothing positive to suggest except... [that] it probably would require 450,000 troops.... Since the commitment of 450 000 troops is even less likely now than it was in 2003, the conclusion is, in effect, that the situation is hopeless.

We're well past the point where admissions of error will do any good. Still, I'm stunned that Pollack could write

How Iraq got to this point is now an issue for historians (and perhaps for voters in 2008); what matters today is how to move forward

This was so brazen that I thought I must have got him confused with someone else. But no, it's the same Kenneth Pollack who wrote The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq.

The fact that the Washington Post would publish a piece by him with such a claim is yet another stake through the heart of its reputation an "objective" source of news, and another reason to give the Post as an organization a decade. The fact that Pollack would write such a claim is evidence that Brookings's money would be better spent on a different Middle Eastern "specialist."

Jim Henley Exceeds Critical Shrill Mass!

Run for your lives!

Unqualified Offerings: You Should Have Thought of That Before You Left Home, Ultimate Super Edition: Kenneth F---ing Pollack writes to tell us that civil war in Iraq is a very bad thing. Honest to god, this kind of thing is all the explanation this blog's frequent resort to profanity requires. Ken baby, it's your civil war as much as anyone's. Pollack did more than anyone to encourage the famous "liberal hawks" to provide the bipartisan patina so useful in getting the Iraq invasion started. In the Army, someone would have long since left him alone in the study with a pistol and the discreet interval required to make the only appropriate gesture of regret, genuine atonement being impossible under the circumstances. In Japan he' be a picture of the different ways light reflects off entrails and cutlery. In Washington, he gets to write new articles, as if he were an epidemiologist and not Typhoid Mary.

James Wolcott Is Shrill!

Four octaves shrill:

James Wolcott: 40 Yard Line: This morning's Financial Times (reg. required) brings grim tidings for the Israeli leadership, numbers that correlate to Nasrallah's triumphant mug on the cover of the new Economist. "In the early days of the conflict with Hizbollah, Ehud Olmert, prime minister, and Amir Peretz, defence minister -- both of whom have little military experience in contrast to many previous Israeli leaders -- saw their ratings rise. But Mr Olmert's approval has fallen to 40 per cent from 78 per cent at the height of the war and Mr Peretz to 28 per cent from 61 per cent, according to a poll by TNS-Teleseker published on Wednesday."

That is quite a high-board dive. But the bitter irony to those of us accustomed to the toasty crunch of bitter irony first thing in the morning is that even with Olmert's facedown splat he's still got better poll numbers than Bush! If Bush clawed his way back into the forties, the Note would form a conga line and bugger each other until they squeaked, Peggy Noonan would paint herself pink and roll downhill like an Easter egg, and Presidential Historian Michael Beschloss would make the rounds of the political chat shows to muse knowingly about Bush's Reaganesque Indian summer, and his durable bond with the American people (most of whom despise him, but Presidential Historian Michael Beschloss prefers to accent the positive and dip into the pantry to fetch some wry anecdotes--"Did you know, Charlie, that just before he left office, Woodrow Wilson was carried sideways through the White House like a log?")...

Five octaves shrill:

James Wolcott: It's the burning question failing to divide America: Is Bush an idiot? Is water wet? Is Colin Farrell stubbly?... Unlike other two-term presidents, Bush hasn't grown in office, become an old familiar whose irritating traits and lapses could be accepted almost affectionately, like Reagan's dottiness. He's demonstrably diminished, dwarfed by the reality that he continues to deny and repeating himself in press conferences like a robot whose wiring is on the fritz, for whom words and phrases are nothing more than pre-programmed units of sound. He's more irritating and dangerous than ever before, because he doesn't know anything, doesn't know or care that he doesn't know anything, and yet persists in a path of destruction as if it were the road to salvation. It's finally dawned on responsible minds that Bush could take all of us down with him before he and the neocons are through...

Six octaves shrill:

James Wolcott: Servants' Quarters: Conservative New York radio talkshow hothead Bob Grant once said on the air that then-New York mayor David Dinkins (a far more elegant dresser than Grant, by the way) reminded him of a "men's room attendant". On Imus in the Morning, Imus or one of his crew once joked about the pre-Washington Week in Review Gwen Ifill: "Speaking of reporter Gwen Ifill, he's said, 'Isn't the [New York] Times wonderful? It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House.'" A week ago, Mickey Kaus's arm candy wrote, "Congresswoman Maxine Waters had parachuted into Connecticut earlier in the week to campaign against [Sen. Joseph I.] Lieberman because he once expressed reservations about affirmative action, without which she would not have a job that didn't involve wearing a paper hat." And now the cover of the latest Weekly Standard brings us Al Sharpton as a Driving Miss Daisy faithful retainer "who dares not look his master in the eye."

Washroom attendant. Cleaning lady. Cafeteria worker. Chauffeur. Notice a pattern?

No matter what height of prominence a black person reaches, conservatives will always find a way to reduce him or her to low-paid, low-status, low-skilled caricatured servitude. That's their idea of cutting black personalities down to size and putting them in their place. Whatever uniform they wear, it's still a monkey suit in the eyes and mouths of the white-makes-right contingent, which should make it no surprise that Senator George Allen, adopted son of the Confederacy, would reach back for a race-baiting jibe as his beanball pitch...

Seven octaves shrill:

No matter what height of prominence a black person reaches, conservatives will always find a way to reduce him or her to low-paid, low-status, low-skilled caricatured servitude. That's their idea of cutting black personalities down to size and putting them in their place. Whatever uniform they wear, it's still a monkey suit in the eyes and mouths of the white-makes-right contingent, which should make it no surprise that Senator George Allen, adopted son of the Confederacy, would reach back for a race-baiting jibe as his beanball pitch. It's also no surprise that George Allen would be Fred Barnes's kinda guy.

"[T]here's a rich seam of serious thought running underneath the good cheer. Mr. Allen has more thoroughly (and productively) contemplated an array of issues--education, immigration, judicial philosophy, Iraq, Iran, even abortion--than one first supposes. You're fooled by the way he talks, never rushing his words, and by his inelegant presence (he's the only Virginian I know who wears cowboy boots). It's a kind of George W. Bush effect, style overpowering substance. Soon enough, though, substance steps forward."

Fred Barnes wouldn't know a "rich seam of thought" from a river of raw sewage, but let it pass. At the end of his love-letter lunch with Allen, he relays what the mission statement of an Allen presidential campaign would be: "securing our freedom, making sure this is a land of opportunity for all people, and making sure that we preserve our foundational values." I'm going to assume going forward that "foundational values" is one of those conservative code phrases intended to connote the noble white pillars of the old Southern plantation...

Arkin Fhtagn!!

Wow. William Arkin is really shrill today:

Israel's Failed Strategy of Spite - Early Warning: In the 24 hours before the agreed cease-fire, the Israeli Air Force carried out more than 200 air strikes, including attacks on eight "gas stations serving Hezbollah." Gas stations. If Israel and Hezbollah are fighting again in six weeks or six months, it will be because of those gas stations.

President Bush says Hezbollah was the loser. Israelis are already asking whicih mistakes allowed Hezbollah to outwit and outlast their vaunted high-tech force. What went wrong? When the smoke clears, we will discover that Israel's strategy was flawed. Not in defending itself or in attacking Hezbollah, and not even in employing airpower and showing initial restraint on the ground in the south.

It is in pursuit of some theory about punishment of Hezbollah and its Lebanese supporters that the Israelis followed the wrong course. The Israelis -- specifically the Israeli Air Force -- undertook an intentionally punishing, destructive and ultimately counter-productive air campaign, wielding high technology to Neanderthal levels of precision. Israel bombed too much, bombed the wrong targets and conducted its campaign with inexcusable abandon. What is more, Israel satisfied itself with conventional measures of "success" in the campaign -- counting rockets hit, dead fighters, destroyed infrastructure -- with utter disregard for the day after.

It all comes down to the gas stations, eight of thousands of civilian objects that were bombed in pursuit of a theory of "degrading" Hezbollah's military capabilities in the future but in the end bombed for no direct and concrete military reason and thereby rightly seen by the other side as sheer spite.

If you've been reading my commentary on the Israel-Hezbollah war here, you know that I am a fan of airpower. To me, modern precision airpower is the epitome of discriminate warfare.... The technology has become so good, and is so widely accepted as genuine, that even anti-war protestors and human rights workers no longer question the capability to put bombs on target....

The Israeli Air Force now says that it flew 15,500 sorties (individual flights) over Lebanon during Operation Change of Direction.... Israeli military spokesmen claim that the bombing predominantly focused on missile launch sites, missile launchers, weapons storage sites, radars and communications, Hezbollah bunkers and other strictly military objects. We know, however, this "Hezbollah" list includes buildings, homes, vehicles, tunnels, fuel depots and gas stations, and Israel additionally attacked Lebanese airports, electrical power distribution, oil storage, communications (including state-run and private news media), bridges and roads. Israeli press releases were practically useless in distinguishing between what was being bombed as Israel tended to use the word "structure" to describe every home and building attacked.

In pursuit of these "structures," and in carrying out its punishment campaign, Israel has left behind a shocking level of destruction outside the direct battle zone.... [W]hat Israel has wrought is far more ruinous than anything the U.S. military -- specifically the U.S. Air Force -- has undertaken in the era of precision warfare....

I'm not suggesting that Israel, as part of its military campaign, didn't have the "right" to strike objects distant from the battlefield, only that it needs to account now for what targets it struck. Of course there were missile launchers and ammunition depots and Hezbollah barracks and depots and even Hezbollah "leadership" offices and residences far from southern Lebanon.

But no object in lawful targeting is sacrosanct. Take the Beirut civilian airport, for example. In the opening salvo of the war, Israel precisely bombed the intersections of the runways and aprons, making it impossible for aircraft to take off and land. No human rights or international organization particularly condemned the bombing as illegal, but it was: This was not bombing of Hezbollah's air force, it was not directed at Hezbollah fighters, it was not intended to disable the airport's radars and communications. It was pure punishment....

I'm asserting... that had Israel limited its strategic bombing to purely military objects, it might have -- might have -- engendered more sympathy and support in some circles in Lebanon (or at least in the West) for its efforts. It might have achieved another objective: not creating even more fighters tomorrow....

Israel and U.S. intelligence insist on seeing the result of the Israeli military effort in the most conventional of ways: Hezbollah's six years of investment and effort to build up infrastructure in Lebanon is gone, the routes of Syrian and Iranian re-supply are gone, 70-80 percent of the long-range launchers and 50 percent of the short-range launchers are destroyed, more than half of the stock of actual rockets and missiles have been destroyed or expended, about 530 fighters are dead.

All this "damage" and yet Hezbollah has emerged victorious, more popular than ever, the force that stood up to the "best." There is no question that the conflict bolstered Hezbollah's popularity in Lebanon and the Arab world.... We accumulate statistical success not only to no political avail but to our future detriment.... "We" show no regard for civilians in our conduct, we even destroy their gas stations. Given that "they" don't have F-16s to attack us with, they are reduced to using rockets or airliners to strike back.

Israel won, whoopee.

Jonathan Chait Expels Himself from the Order of the Shrill

Jonathan Chait flushes his reputation down the toilet, and expels himself from teh Order of the Shrill by defending the defenders of Ann Coulter:

The Plank: DEFENDING IDEOLOGICAL INCORRECTNESS: Elspeth Reeve, our extremely talented reporter-researcher, penned a clever, interesting, very well-executed defense of despicable authoritarian pundit Ann Coulter.... [T]his was a piece less about the destination than the journey. What made her column interesting was... that she had thought-provoking observations about Coulter's role in the political culture.... Her piece attracted the ire of Atrios, someone named Charles P. Pierce, and other partisan hysterics. That, of course, is unsurprising. They cannot imagine the notion of measuring a piece by any criteria other than ideological correctness.... The Atrioses and the Pierces, on the other hand, offer their readers nothing but the certainty that they will confirm their ideological predilections. A world in which there are non-ideological criteria for judging an article... is a world in which they have no place.

And in so doing drives Greg Sargent shrill:

The Horse's Mouth: ANN COULTER'S LATEST COLUMN: IN DEFENSE OF ETHNIC PROFILING. Since there was a whole lot of arguing in the blogosphere yesterday about The New Republic's defense of Ann Coulter, I thought it would be useful to quote from her latest column, which has just been posted at her web site. It's a defense of ethnic profiling:

This terrorist plot -- like all other terrorist plots -- was stopped by ethnic profiling....

To pull off a 9/11-style attack now, literally half the passengers on the plane would have to be terrorists. (At least the airport screeners wouldn't have to worry about confiscating a lot of deodorants.)

I think a planeful of Arabs would attract attention -- except from people who had recently completed a government training program teaching them not to notice anyone's appearance....

What stopped last week's terrorist attack was ethnic profiling. We don't know the details of the British intelligence work that nabbed the 24 Muslims because The New York Times has not been able to obtain that classified information and publish it on its front page yet. But it is a fact that you could not catch 24 Muslim terrorists by surveilling everyone in Britain equally.

This speaks for itself, but it's probably worth pointing out that the plot was foiled with the help of a Muslim, and that scores of "planefuls of Arabs" fly around certain parts of the planet every day without "attracting attention." One can of course have a reasonable discussion about ethnic profiling. But the point is, Coulter's column isn't meant to feed reasonable debate; it's meant to feed bigotry and hysteria. The problem with Coulter isn't merely that she's "conservative," it's that what she writes is hateful, demagogic garbage. She's peddling bigotry and lies to an audience of dummies and crackpots, dumbing down our discourse and getting very rich in the process, thanks to the legitimacy she gains from network execs who cravenly grant her platforms on their shows and from quasi-liberal writers who think it's cute or counterintuitive to defend her....

Jon Chait got very upset yesterday with some people for attacking TNR's defense of Coulter. He singled out Atrios, my TAPPED colleague Charles P. Pierce, and other "partisan hysterics," saying: "They cannot imagine the notion of measuring a piece by any criteria other than ideological correctness." Chait almost certainly knows that this is false. But he wrote it anyway, probably because he'd fallen in love with his own loathsome "ideological correctness" formulation, and couldn't bear to part with it.

The obvious truth is that the objections to the TNR piece were mainly substantive, not ideological. Pierce, for instance, specifically faulted the piece for saying that it's "a little absurd to hold up a person as an expert judge of the 9/11 Commission Report...just because she lost a loved one," when in fact the "Jersey Girls" are held up as experts on 9/11 because, well, they are experts on it. Again, that's a substantive objection, not an ideological one. What's more, Pierce also linked to another piece making a long and detailed substantive case against the TNR defense of Coulter. Why Chait felt the need to mischaracterize the arguments against his mag's piece is beyond me, but he no doubt had his reasons.

JD Henderson To Be New Grand Heresiarch?

It appears that the Honorable Anna Diggs Taylor has allowed JD Henderson to exude a new level of shrillness. He used to be an officer in the United States Army, and soon he may be an officer in this here Order.

I took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States against ALL enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC. Just because Al Qaeda is a threat does not mean other threats cease to exist. One threat is an executive branch that decides it can take power the People never gave to it.

The argument that the president can ignore the law and the Constitution because some nutbag terrorists are attacking us is false. We have faced much larger threats than Osama and company. We fought our Revolution without betraying the principles of that same Revolution. The main principle behind our system is that we have a limited government, that the government has only the power that the People give it, and that the government is subservient to the People, not the other way around.

No exceptions. Ever.

From today's decision (which is well worth reading):

The Government appears to argue here that, pursuant to the penumbra of Constitutional language in Article II, and particularly because the President is designated Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, he has been granted the inherent power to violate not only the laws of the Congress but the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, itself.

We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all “inherent powers” must derive from that Constitution.

Any government that decides to bypass the People or the checks and balances in our Constitution becomes an enemy of the Constitution, and of the People. Supporting such a government is not patriotism, it is treason.

Today a federal judge ruled that the president has violated the Constitution of the United States. That is clearly an impeachable offense. Allowing him to get away with such behavior sets a precedent that will lead to the end of the republic.

This is so much more important than any fight against terrorists.

Joe Scarborough Is Shrill!

Welcome!

The Blog | Joe Scarborough: Is Bush an idiot? | The Huffington Post: For the past six years George W. Bush has been the target of ridicule from liberal circles. But now, instead of laughing at Democrats’ ill-directed arrogance, Republicans are quietly joining the left in questioning the President’s intellectual prowess. The biggest knock on Bush’s brain is his lack of intellectual curiosity. Former administration officials still close to the White House will tell you Mr. Bush detests dissent, embraces a narrow world view and is intellectually incurious....

So does it matter in the end whether our president is articulate and intelligent? You bet your life, it does.... [W]hen America is fighting a global war on terror where the battle is for hearts and minds instead of beachheads and landing strips, we need a leader who can explain to friend and foe alike why America is in Iraq, why we keep sending arms to Israel and why liberal democracy really is preferable to Islamic fascism.

Right now, George W. Bush is not that leader.

Carole O'Leary and Eric Davis Are too Cowardly to Be Shrill

Cowardly academic watch: Carole O'Leary and Eric Davis department:

Bush Said to Be Frustrated by Level of Public Support in Iraq - New York Times: President Bush made clear in a private meeting this week that he was concerned about the lack of progress in Iraq and frustrated that the new Iraqi government -- and the Iraqi people -- had not shown greater public support for the American mission, participants in the meeting said Tuesday.... [T]he president expressed frustration that Iraqis had not come to appreciate the sacrifices the United States had made in Iraq, and was puzzled as to how a recent anti-American rally in support of Hezbollah in Baghdad could draw such a large crowd. "I do think he was frustrated about why 10,000 Shiites would go into the streets and demonstrate against the United States," said another person who attended....

[P]articipant[s]... Carole A. O'Leary, a professor at American University ... Eric Davis, a Rutgers University political science professor.... [N]one of the academics openly criticized Bush administration policy...

We are so s---ed.