We Knocked Em All Dead, Babe, Then We Brought It All Back Home
Of the million reasons to despise the official Democratic Party’s conduct during the course of passing the so-called detainee bill this week, especially the conduct of the party’s Senators, the greatest is this: even their cravenness is blinkered, myopic and inadequate to the moment. Attempting to avoid risking this election, they guaranteed losing all of them. For the foreseeable future, there will still be Democrats that win federal races, including many of the Senators and Congressmen now serving. We can even predict, in general, how many will win this year and two years from now and biennially after that: as many as do not excessively inconvenience the Republican Party. We don’t grow bananas this far north and we’re not much on marches. Our version of one-party rule will feature campaigns and elections and a nominal opposition and clockwork invocations of “Freedom” every Fourth of July. (We do like our picnics.)
But this detainee bill was, I think, the ballgame. Partly for what it is: in addition to formally disavowing all that was best about our legal system and ideals in the name of “a little security,” it amounts to the Burying the Executive’s Mistakes Act of 2006. With “aggressive interrogations” and without habeas corpus, the law means never having to say you’re sorry if you happen to be President when it passes. The ruling party’s junior auxiliary in the House has already added language broadening those subject to the bill to include US citizens providing “material support” to the nation’s enemies. (On one plausible readong, anyone a military tribunal declares an “unlawful enemy combatant” by any criterion it chooses to apply.) One does not have to read too far into the ruling party’s partisan media to understand that, for them, “the traitors” include all but the tamest members of the nominal opposition. The Senate will pass a bill with somewhat less expansive language; the Congressional leadership will stack the conference committees and report out a combined bill using the House wording or something even worse. A Presidential signing statement will disavow any restrictions on Executive prerogative remaining in the bill by some oversight.
The only good bill under the circumstances was no bill, and the only way to get no bill was to filibuster until Congress adjourned. This the Democrats lacked either the courage or even the self-preservation to undertake, still imagining that if they just get the unpleasant business of showing the throat on national “security” over with, they can get on with convincing the voters that they are just the running dogs to fetch the public slippers and other entitlements. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, though after 2002 and 2004 the Republican maneuver of wrongfooting the Dems on something, anything to do with scary foreigners who want to kill us all looks like a very old one.
Compound the detainee bill with the Congressional Democratic Party’s existing abdication of all practical war-starting authority to the Executive and you have Presidential and Congressional election losses stretching as far as - from what I can tell, as far as the international bond market will let it stretch. There are 191 members of the United Nations. The Republican Party is not going to run out of countries it can turn into a national-security crisis any year soon.
But the other reason the detainee bill was the Democratic Party’s last shot at remaining a credible force in its own right is what its (non)response to the bill represents: forfeiting the chance to present any meaningful divergence from the precepts of the national-security state as defined by the Republicans. It is now official United States policy that our security depends on hiding people away and torturing them, said decision to be made in secret without review. This is what the United States says about who we are. By not just failing to stop it but failing to oppose that with eloquence and passion, by failing to cohere around an alternative vision, the Democratic Party has ceded the precept not just for this election cycle but for all time.
My personal domestic politics analyst insisted to me tonight that the Democrats are still going to win one or both houses of Congress this year. I disbelieve her, but even if she is right, all it means is that a Democratic Party that has already ceded the principle that “our security depends on hiding people away and torturing them” will take power. That party will not have the self-confidence or ambition to spend political capital undoing what it allowed this week to be done. That party will be able to provide a nice living for its officials, do a tidy business in fundraising and maybe push marginal tax rates up a point or raise the gas mileage requirements on new cars - in a country whose official policy is that “our security depends on hiding people away and torturing them.” It will not be a party that opposes anything worth opposing. It will not be a party that can sustain majority support for an alternate philosophy of governance. In important ways it will hardly even count as a second party. And that’s the pleasant scenario.
There is, as they say, a lot of ruin in a nation. I expect the yoke of our weirdly Brezhnevite future to fall relatively mildly on most necks for quite awhile, including mine. People like me and all the other cranks with blogs are fundamentally unimportant, and the genius of one-party rule in this country is, so far, to let the unimportant slide. There remains an escalation problem. Four years ago, the “crises” were a rush vote on a manufactured war and the creation of a new bureaucracy. Two years ago it was the imperative not to admit that the manufactured war was pointless and counterproductive. This time it’s the overpowering need to hide whoever the executive claims is a terrorist away and torture them. Next time, if the economy is a little worse and the people a little more restless, what will it take? And the time after that? We can’t say. We can only say that Republicans will slaver and Democrats will whicker, shuffle and, finally, shrink.
Comment by Nicholas Beaudrot —
September 27, 2006 @ 11:40 pm
I’m not happy, but some perspective is in order here.
Uncle Sam has endured the Alien and Sedition Acts, Japanese internment, McCarthy-era paranoia, domestic wiretapping in the ’50s and ’60s, and a number of other serious blemishes on civil liberties. We managed to overcome all of these … eventually.
Now, obviously the Kafka Act of 2006 feels different, but I think that’s just because we’re living in it.
Comment by SomeCallMeTim —
September 28, 2006 @ 12:43 am
We’re fucked. We’re led by a people with an alternate history, an alternate culture, and an alternate understanding of the American tradition than that which I took to be standard. Even if the Democrats win, even if they had taken a stand against this bill, or even if they repeal it in the future, those “technical Americans” are still going to be in our country and voting.
Comment by Doug T —
September 28, 2006 @ 7:40 am
I’m not quite as pessimistic as you are, but I’m close. It’s very depressing and headspinning to see how quickly the country has slid downhill. We were never as good as we thought we were, but I thought we were a lot better than this.
Our only hope is that somehow, from somewhere, the Democrats find a strong and moral candidate in 2008 who will both repudiate this monstrosity and also manage to win election on that platform. But I’m not sure where a candidate like that would come from.
More likely we’ll get enabler in chief, “maverick” John McCain, who’s main advantage over Bush on issues of the imperial presidency is that he won’t be such a fuck-up. But that’s not really a good thing, I think. I’d just as soon maintain criminal incompetance when it comes to the country’s slide towards authoritarianism.
And I don’t agree with your crack about bond markets, if you were really serious with it. The nation’s economic ruin when the bills come due will fall on the little guys, not on those controlling the levers of power of the Republican party. Their money will be well protected.
And they’ll just use it to fuel the anger and xenophobia of the population. Rather than redeeming the nation’s soul, I see a loss of power and prestige more likely to create an even stronger backlash and more concentration of power to protect us from the foreign enemies.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
September 28, 2006 @ 7:43 am
I think that I finally have to agree with this one. I had been hoping for more delaying tactics in the Senate.
Well, the political strategy of the netroots is basically unchanged, I think. The U.S. political system ensures that there can only be two parties. What’s needed is for people to take over the Democratic party. That can be done through the build-up of alternate power structures, pushing primary challenges, etc.
Comment by thoreau —
September 28, 2006 @ 7:48 am
First, as Doug says, this could yet turn very, very nasty once the bills for our wars come due. For now they’ll leave us little people alone. For now. But when we feel the bite of the debt, they’ll find domestic scapegoats and do something very, very nasty.
In the meantime, here’s how I see them extending the principle that it’s OK to hide people away and torture them:
1) They’ll start by covering their fuck-ups: Guys who were under suspicion but turned out to be innocent. They’re already doing some of it, and they’ll do more of it.
2) If they need to prove that they aren’t just going after Muslims, they’ll go after an abortion clinic bomber. Or an accused abortion clinic bomber. They’ll go after a few accused ecoterrorists. Basically, they’ll go after some domestic fringe groups. It’s hard to work up much sympathy for people accused of bombing an abortion clinic or sabotaging a lumber cutting operation, and that’s the point. They’ll set the precedents in the cases where it’s hard to work up sympathy.
3) Rowdy protestors could be next. No, not your average inflammatory blogger, I’m talking about the kids who break windows and spray paint. Again, it’s hard to work up much sympathy for them, and that’s the point.
4) Reporters in a war zone, guys who fail to report “the good news from Iraq” could find themselves spirited away on suspicion of providing information to insurgents. Not too many, just one or two. Probably reporters for media outlets just outside the mainstream, with some plausible evidence fabricated to bolster the accusation.
5) Of course, in the end, there’s the Drug War. You know these tactics will spill over to the Drug War.
Maybe I should look for a job overseas.
Trackback by Inactivist —
September 28, 2006 @ 7:55 am
How the Democratic Party Lost Its Soul…
Jim Henley observes that the Dems lost their credibility to win elections:
It is now official United States policy that our security depends on hiding people away and torturing them, said decision to be made in secret without review. This is what the …
Comment by Brian C.B. —
September 28, 2006 @ 8:21 am
Covering their fuckups isn’t an afterthought. It’s the whole shebang. Moynihan remarked that transparency and accountability were more important for representative government than elections. The Republicans’ Party seems to have agreed, and aims (with its acolytes) to weaken America in order to strengthen its grip on the polity. Because, that’s the point that wasn’t, so far as I know, made by the opposition: the Framers and their followers built a government around an acknowledgement of autonomous human rights (and an orderly public demonstration and evaluation of the reasons those rights might be removed from an individual) because such a government would be maximally durable. Openness and careful deliberation bred legitimacy. No foreign power could disturb us more thoroughly than could our home grown fuckups and dictator-wannabees and sunlight killed off those threats. It was an idea that started to look pretty quaint to a lot of the world after the Great War, but thanks to watching the 75 years of extensive on-site European and Asian testing of alternative constitutional possibilities that followed the Armistice, here in North America it’s held its appeal. But, blow up a few buildings, kill a couple of thousand innocents horribly, and rather than take rational aim at those who performed these dastardly acts, we cower. We have a roach problem, and we react by setting fire to our house.
Anthony Paxton defines fascism in part as a willingness to dismantle the institutions of liberal democracy, a sense that, after 1848, that form of government has worn out. To dredge up a hoary Henleyism: you’re soaking in it.
Lords and Commons of England! consider what nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors. Eh?
Comment by Nell —
September 28, 2006 @ 8:51 am
Anthony Paxton defines fascism in part as a willingness to dismantle the institutions of liberal democracy
Brian, you mean Robert O. Paxton, in The Anatomy of Fascism, yes?
This is what I saw coming five years ago, when I picked up the Post on a fine October morning to find a discussion of torture on the front page. “This is how it begins,” I thought. And now we see how it goes on.
I’m bemused by Rich P’s reaction, since he’s been a staunch advocate here and in other comment sections of an approach I’d summarize as “What can you do? Face reality: The electorate are pigs.”
Comment by Jim Henley —
September 28, 2006 @ 9:08 am
BTW guys, what I mean by the “international bond market” remark is that the Republican Party can only afford a program of permanent saber-rattling and little wars so long as foreigners keep buying US paper. It’s a very interesting question whether the Permanent Regime can keep the money coming in, and what they do if the allowance gets cut off.
Comment by Nell —
September 28, 2006 @ 9:09 am
the other reason the detainee bill was the Democratic Party’s last shot at remaining a credible force in its own right is what its (non)response to the bill represents: forfeiting the chance to present any meaningful divergence from the precepts of the national-security state as defined by the Republicans. It is now official United States policy that our security depends on hiding people away and torturing them, said decision to be made in secret without review. This is what the United States says about who we are. By not just failing to stop it but failing to oppose that with eloquence and passion, by failing to cohere around an alternative vision, the Democratic Party has ceded the precept not just for this election cycle but for all time.
Much as I hope Mrs. Offering is right, I’m with Jim on how little it will matter, even if it happens. I haven’t been able to do any normal work for the last five days; this sh*t has brought me very low. Must get up and go through motions. Bye.
Comment by Dave Trowbridge —
September 28, 2006 @ 10:43 am
“It’s a very interesting question whether the Permanent Regime can keep the money coming in, and what they do if the allowance gets cut off.”
And so regaining our civil rights may depend on the government of China.
As Spider Robinson said: “If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron.”
Comment by Hesiod —
September 28, 2006 @ 10:44 am
Jim,
You and I share the same frustration with Washington Democrats.
The thing is, though, the Democrats out there who are running for office this year (and I mean the ones running for open seats or against Republicans) are not as “blinkered,” as the shellshocked losers in the DC-based party.
Elected Democrats in “sing states” lack confidence in their party. They are used to losing, and think they lsoe because the Republicans attack them. But all they do is reinfoirce the perception taht Democrats are weak, vacillating, and only take stances for political reasons, and not out of principle.
Don’t chuck out the baby with the bathwater, though. Think about it this way, if Ned Lmonat beats Lieberman, you get a nother good vote in the Senate. If Tester beats Burns, ditto. The same goes, I strongly suspect for Jim Webb and Ben Cardin vs Macaca and Michael Steele.
I’m not so sure Harold Ford could be counted on, but I damn well know John Corker can’t.
And so on.
And Mary Landrieu, the poor dear, has seen her state denuded of Democratic voters since Katrina.
Don’t lose hope. The rank and file of the Democratic party is just as pissed off and angry about this as you are. And we are going to change our party for the better. Even if it means more primary challenges in the future.
Comment by Brian C.B. —
September 28, 2006 @ 10:53 am
Yeah, Neil. I meant Robert Paxton. I’ve bought and read the book, but it’s not here, and I’m too lazy to Google. (Isn’t that a sad, sad admission?) I guess I got him somehow confused with Anthony Perkins, who’s just one of the great living film actors. Wait…
Comment by Anodyne —
September 28, 2006 @ 11:04 am
I feel your pain, Jim. Nevertheless, while reading this post I counted no fewer than 6 explicit forecasts characterized by terminal horizons ranging from approximately a few days to a few generations; a separate forecast with an indeterminate horizon that was apparently so self-evident that the explicit details of the prediction could be omitted without loss of meaning; and finally, a set of forecasts prepared for the contingency that someone else’s forecast, which might negate some of your previous forecasts, turned out to be accurate.
There was also one statement of that incorrectly delimited the range of possible parliamentary tactics available in the US Senate (perhaps you intended it to be a statement about your preferred tactic), a failure to recognize legislative tactics that (perhaps unwisely) contemplates intervention by the Judicial branch in the interpreting Article 1, section 9 of the US Constitution; and a moral declaration that explicitly precludes one major party, and by implication the other, from ever reembracing a valued precept. Oh, and lest I forget, a final taunt that includes a trio of intransitive verbs that taken together sound like the name of a law firm.
This is the second time in a week you’ve mixed your outrage with a shot at a group out of power and I confess I’m beginning to lose the plot.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
September 28, 2006 @ 11:38 am
Nell: “I’m bemused by Rich P’s reaction, since he’s been a staunch advocate here and in other comment sections of an approach I’d summarize as “What can you do? Face reality: The electorate are pigs.””
Only somewhere around half the electorate. My impression of the torture bill kabuki had been that the Democrats were not taking a stand because they were planning on running out the clock. The time for a stand is after you have done whatever you can to avoid the possiblity of a vote in which the U.S. majority proudly stand up for torture.
But now it’s time for that stand, and it hasn’t appeared. Therefore, the minority/near majority of the people in the U.S. who are against torture now have to take over the Democratic party to a greater degree. This has been the standing project of the Democratic netroots as I perceive it, so I don’t see any immediate change in long-term strategy. I do see a difference in how far along we are.
Comment by Hesiod —
September 28, 2006 @ 11:42 am
Some Democratic Senators get it.
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
September 28, 2006 @ 11:50 am
The problem with hoping for improvement from challengers who seem to have values and clues is the lack of reliably valid elections. As Avram said, Even if the American President and Vice-President were to be possessed by the raised spirits of Hitler and Stalin, every Tueday after the first Monday in November, there would still be something called “Election Day”, during which millions of Americans would file into polling placed and mark cards, toggle levers, or push buttons, and sometime later certain candidates would be announced to have won.
I’m still going to show up and vote for people I would wish to see in office, but I expect them to get their fair results only insofar as those results don’t inconvenience the Republican leadership very much.
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
September 28, 2006 @ 11:56 am
Hesiod, maybe I’m just feeling mean today, but…
Fuck the nice speeches. Fuck even the very good, strong, patriotic, decent, American speeches.
Where are the filibusters? Where was any of the most rudimentary coordination? Where was the using of opportunities to make sharp, incisive comments on the fundamental amorality of all this when the press was actually paying attention for a change? Where was denying a quorum, or doing anything else that might have mattered?
As with those who vote for cloture on evil Supreme Court nomineees and then try to act as though voting against the nomination when it’s guaranteed to win counts, I say it’s spinach and I say the hell with it. It’s not that they’re now saying bad things, it’s that it doesn’t fucking matter now, and either they know or they should, and they’ve already failed us when it came to actually protecting the republic. Some of them have good histories. Some don’t. But all them together have failed us, and their oaths, and the most rudimentary fundamentals of decent humanity. They surrendered to the monsters and are now making pretty noises while we all see whom the executioners want to take first.
Comment by Leonard —
September 28, 2006 @ 12:11 pm
Hmm, I’m nowhere as depressed as y’all sound. Not that I like this thing; it’s an abomination, etc. The canary’s singing with the ‘eavenly choir. Just that I’ve been a libertarian a long time, seeing crap after crap going down at the Federal level (and lower), that is ruin. Ruin, ruin, ruin; the shitrain never stops. But there is so much of it in a nation, as Jim says. Very much indeed. There is so much further to fall.
I don’t know what alternate vision Jim has in mind for the Democrats, but I can’t imagine that whatever they do come up to replace their current vision (”me too! only nicer!”) being anything he’d like that much. Other than the part where we are The Republic of Nice, and as such we don’t torture people because it wouldn’t be Nice. But executive power? The Democrats liked it a lot when they had it. The legislative power? They used that a lot, too.
As a real beaten-down loser, just let me say that y’all Democrats ain’t seen nothing by way of losing, and you never will. You’ll have your wins and losses in coming years, as we drift inexorably down into the slime of smiley-faced fascism lite. You’ll feel the triumph of “your guy” winning, even though he’s not ideal in a few ways. The hope (though it will disappoint) that you felt when Clinton won (remember that?). You’ll have all that again.
Comment by Gsnorgathon —
September 28, 2006 @ 1:33 pm
Blame the evil, America-hatin’ liburls (and assorted nasty brown people), of course.
.
And then proceed to make things even worse.
Comment by Delicious Pundit —
September 28, 2006 @ 1:52 pm
Within 20 years I bet we’ll have forgotten that we only torture foreigners, and wonder why we’re not torturing the dangerous criminals in our own streets.
Comment by Phillip J. Birmingham —
September 28, 2006 @ 2:08 pm
I think Melissa Bean just lost my vote — this was the last straw.
I just hope I’m not pulling a “Nader 2000″ for Illinois 8.
Comment by Jim Henley —
September 28, 2006 @ 2:12 pm
Who is Melissa Bean?
Comment by jlw —
September 28, 2006 @ 2:20 pm
“. . . and wonder why we’re not torturing dangerous criminals in our own streets.”
Within 20 years? Five, tops.
We’ve got to torture them in the streets of Harlem so they can’t torture us in our homes in Scarsdale.
Comment by Phillip J. Birmingham —
September 28, 2006 @ 3:06 pm
Oops, sorry for not being clear — Melissa Bean (D IL-8) is my Representative, and one of the 34 Democratic ‘yea’ votes.
Comment by Former Republican —
September 28, 2006 @ 3:12 pm
It seems to me that the “party” system of government tends to be the real problem. It’s not in the Constitution, and I’ve read that the “checks and balances” of the three branches of government were put in place because the Founders thought that each branch would be loyal to its own branch. Now we see, of course, that party loyalty trumps all, and effectively eviscerates the checks with which the three branches were to balance each other out.
Doesn’t it make sense to amend the Constitution to prohibit party affiliation? That way, voters couldn’t be led like sheep to vote a particular way based on which “team” the candidate was on, and the constitutional system might begin to work as it was supposed to.
Comment by jlw —
September 28, 2006 @ 3:17 pm
Former Republican@26 writes: “Doesn’t it make sense to amend the Constitution to prohibit party affiliation?”
The Nebraska legislature is nominally non-partisan. Anyone know if it works measurably better (or even different) than other similar bodies?
Comment by John Emerson —
September 28, 2006 @ 4:03 pm
Jesus, Henley just gave up on the Libertarians, and now I have to give up on the Democrats. So everyone’s nowhere now.
Comment by The Sanity Inspector —
September 28, 2006 @ 5:35 pm
Back in 1965 Herbert Marcuse called this crafty, devious policy of tyranny in freedom’s robes Repressive Tolerance. The tedious old fossil just couldn’t imagine anything more anti-human than LBJ’s America.
As for blogs being “fundamentally unimportant”, you must be thinking of Kos’ political endorsement record over the past few years.
Trackback by Integral Practice —
September 28, 2006 @ 8:15 pm
U.S. Senate Okays The Torture and Unlimited, Unquestioned Detention…
Of course they aren’t calling it that.Here is a deeply pessimistic ake.For myself, one of the more interesting ……
Comment by Madeline F —
September 28, 2006 @ 9:00 pm
Gotta say Leonard’s got it: “There is so much further to fall.” Grim kind of encouraging, to me.
I think Anodyne’s got something important to say, too: “This is the second time in a week you’ve mixed your outrage with a shot at a group out of power and I confess I’m beginning to lose the plot.”
Earlier, when you wrote “Discussion below has been lively and has occasionally strayed usefully from its apparent mission of recapitulating every trope of the Internet Forever War Between Liberals and Libertarians” you implied that you wanted something other than a liberal/libertarian fight out of “Buffalo Bill’s Defunct, And Not Just Him”. But as you wrote Buffalo Bill you must have known what you were summoning. I know you masterfully command words and forensics both.
It seems like in your grief you’re looking to pick fights, and after five years there aren’t any neocons left who will fight you.
Anyway, it is grim, and grief is right and fitting. It’s pretty much “turn to the book of Ecclesiastes” time. “What is crooked cannot be made straight,
and what is lacking cannot be numbered.”
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
September 28, 2006 @ 9:18 pm
From where I sit, picking fights with the leadership of the party out of power is an excellent and timely thing to do. An opposition party has two general responsibilities: to make life hard for the party in power (particularly when it’s trying to do bad things), and to draw the public regard that will convert minority sympathy into majority support.
We know that a majority of the American public believes the war in Iraq was a mistake and is going badly, and that things in general are a mess. So where is the Democratic leader to say “None of this is acceptable! We will fight every inch of it, and work instead to use and abide by the laws of the land!”? Not a one of them ever comes out clear on the point of principle in any practical, useful way. There are no filibusters. There is no punishment of Senators and Representatives who consistently undermine Democratic challenges to the administration.
Yes, of course they’d lose on this stuff. But…they’re losing anyway. Yes, of course they’d get painted as traitors and loons…just as they already are. What they’d have going for them is exactly what the Republicans had in their out-of-power days, and that’s ongoing attention and a chance for the public to shift from thinking “that’s crazy” to “well, ya gotta admit they have the courage of their convictions” to at last “yeah, gonna support the guys with a spine”.
The Democratic leadership has no spine, and it’s not at all improper for people who’d like an effect answer to Republican tyranny to point it out, criticize it, and use it as a reason to be less than overwhelmingly grateful for the scraps they get.
Comment by James —
September 29, 2006 @ 3:15 pm
It is of ongoing interest to me that Republicans keep chewing away at civil liberties and Jim Henley keeps excoriating Democrats.
If this is a generalizable phenomenon (and it’s easy to find examples that do not involve Mr. Henley), it may have something to do with why Democratic officials are being so timid. Cutting people in a difficult position (I’m reasonably sure that their phones are tapped, how about you?) a bit of slack might seem a radical notion, but it has the attractive quality of not having previously failed, as it does not seem to have been tried, either.
Comment by Jim Henley —
September 29, 2006 @ 3:29 pm
I promise to be more attentive to the tender sensibilities of Democratic officials as soon as I give a shit about them. This blog has not lacked for criticism of Republicans. I’ve been pretty clear that the distinction is between outright evil on the one side and cowardice on the other. I’ve also been pretty clear that my complaint isn’t with the so-called Democratic netroots, except insofar as they bitch and moan when I call their heroes on their shit. The instant Atrios runs for something, I’ll vote for him. Promise.
I think there’s a good chance you’ve got it exactly backward, actually. The actions of Democratic officials shows them to be motivated by fear of being attacked. So let them be afraid that a huge number of Americans will attack them for abandoning the principles of liberal society and see how it goes.
Comment by James —
September 29, 2006 @ 5:39 pm
This isn’t about “tender sensibilities.” This is about whether or not the enemy of your enemy is your friend, and how you treat your allies.
But if you think that you can bully the timid, remember what the other side has to put on the scales: wiretaps, media attack dogs, illegal search and seizure, and imprisonment without habeas corpus. If you can’t match that, then maybe you’d better think up a new strategy.
And I must stand in awe of Rovian brilliance. Who would have guessed that you could make torture a wedge issue? Of course that might backfire, if only his enemies would resist squabbling amongst themselves.
Which applies to me, as well, obviously, since I’ve just picked this fight. Having made my case as best I can, I apologize for the way I made it. Sorry Jim. I think you are as frustrated as everyone else is.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
September 29, 2006 @ 7:02 pm
“Who would have guessed that you could make torture a wedge issue?”
Well, me, actually. People have known that we’re torturing people for years, at least since Abu Ghraib, and there’s a recent poll by Pew, Is Torture of Terrorist Suspects Justified?: 15% “often”, 31% “sometimes”, 17% “rarely”, 32% “never”. We who think that torture is never justified are approximately the same size as Bush’s core base.
Comment by Brad DeLong —
September 29, 2006 @ 11:10 pm
Jim–
You go to the election to throw the bastards out with the opposition party you have, not the opposition party you wish you had.
Nevertheless, you go to the election to throw the bastards out.
Yours,
Brad DeLong
Comment by Azael —
September 30, 2006 @ 9:23 am
I think Sifu Tweety, over at the Poor Man’s place, has the definitive list.
Top ten sure-fire techniques Harry Reid could have used to kill the torture bill
Trackback by Where Worlds Collide —
October 2, 2006 @ 2:57 pm
Torture…
The British media hasn’t made much of the ugly ‘deal’ between George Bush and the US Congress, which legitimises torture……