You know, the thing is that when Ahmed Abu Khatallah got pissed off, he didn’t wet his pants at the idea that he’d be attacking the consulate of the most powerful nation on Earth. He just went out and did it, killing our ambassador to Libya in the process. He’s not a bedwetter. He is a religious fanatic, but he’s not a coward. How much more courage does it take to attack the United States than to prosecute a criminal in court?
I’m not a rah-rah macho kind of guy, but I do expect my government to demonstrate some testicular fortitude. It embarrasses me when American elected officials act scared of anything, even when it is in some way understandable. This country is known for its can-do attitude, and I like that. When I was growing up and even into my early thirties, I knew guys who stormed beaches in Libya and Italy and the Solomon Islands. They didn’t talk about it much, but they sure as shit weren’t afraid to hold a trial for some asshole who attacked our foreign-assigned personnel.
On most political issues, I disagree with the Republicans because I have different values than them. But when it comes to folks who are afraid to hold trials for terrorists, it’s much more personal. I feel like these people are destroying my country’s reputation. They’re cowards. They’re cowards and they’re the face of my country. I have a really hard time abiding that. I don’t want anyone else in the world to see or even know that some of my countrymen are this pathetic because it shames me.
I feel somewhat similarly when I see people make idiotic anti-scientific statements, but cowardice really cuts me to the bone. I want these people to shut up not because I care about whatever political points I think they might be scoring but simply because I am ashamed of them. I am ashamed that they are Americans.
Look, if we can’t just fucking railroad this guy into a guilty verdict, the terrorists have won.
Not a consulate. It was a special mission compound. Special missions do not have the same legal status as an embassy or even a consulate. And not even either of those are legally considered sovereign US soil.
O/T — one of the best kept secrets is the Principal Officer’s Residence in Havana. The Cuban government has respected the US ownership and occupation of this house for 55 years.
Excellent rant BooMan, I fully agree.
“I have serious concerns that conducting a rushed interrogation onboard a ship and then turning Abu Khatallah over to our civilian courts risks losing critical intelligence that could lead us to other terrorists or prevent future attacks,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-New Hampshire, said in a statement.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio began to criticize President Barack Obama’s administration because they believed the alleged terrorist should go through a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay instead of being tried in a federal court.
“If they bring him to the United States, they’re going to Mirandize this guy and it would be a mistake for the ages to read this guy his Miranda rights,” said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.
That is the State of the Union because the Obama administration refused to prosecute the bastards for flaunting International Law during the Bush-Cheney years of abysmal leadership of the world’s leading democracy. That destroyed the status of exceptionalism of the United States of America. Becoming a financial corrupt state of corporatism and void of ethics and morality. The US is one of a few Western nations implementing the death sentence on its own citizens: see map.
Yes, even Israel although the IDF uses lethal force on Palestinians.
The Iraqi population was grateful to the ISIS militants entering Mosul (Bush’s flowers) for attacking the regime’s prisons and releasing militants and women. Yes, also Abu Ghraib, the permanent stain on US military caused by Bush’s buddies in the Pentagon and the White House. The damage done to the peoples of the Middle East we see today.
See my latest diary – What NATO Left Behind In Libya.
○ Sweeping ‘Patriot’ Laws Passed As Jordan Fears Uprising and ISIS
○ US With Both Feet in Syrian Quagmire
○ CBS 60 Minutes – Camp Delta in Guatanamo Bay and Prisoner Abuse (Sept. 2003)
○ SAD/SOG Op: Abu Kamal raid in bordertown Al-Qa’im, Syria during 2008
○ Al-Qa’im crossing in today’s Sunni insurgency in support of ISIS
As if the US government wasn’t perfectly capable of discrediting itself. Are these the same bright sparks who accused Guantánamo suicides of practicing “asymmetrical warfare” and somehow dishonestly taking advantage of their weakness?
That’s rich.
The only thing discrediting the US government is what is going on at Gitmo.
We have met the enemy and he is us.
I think your formulation is wrong about the DP. Makes it sound imposed when it has 60-40 support if not more and that support us falling very, very slowly. If you want to blame someone for DP blame the people, Most Americans believe in punishment as retribution as a good in itself.
Oops, missed that. We’re a democracy and we the people wanted torture, gitmo, drone killings, Iraq War, support for jihadists in the Middle East … corporate America has got nothing to do with our Congress, legislation and foreign policy. My bad.
International Law? Not for America.
Torture and drone killings (I think) yes.
Anyhow I deliberately did not address the rest of your post because I think you are correct with it. So I don’t see why you needed to roll out a repeat.
Of course they want a controlled trial, Booman. The more controlled the better. Why? Because there is so much spook shit involved in what happened in Benghazi…and in the aftermath as well…that its exposure could blow the lid off of secret U.S. intelligence double-dealing throughout the world. The U.S. is playing both ends against the middle, from the erstwhile halls of Moctezuma right on through to the shores of Tripoli and beyond.
Drug deals.
Payoffs.
Double and triple agents.
Arms to so-called enemies.
Blind eyes turned to actions against Americans and their supposed allies as well.
If a tactic serves the strategic purpose, use it and damn the collateral damage.
Realpolitik is always written in blood.
This guy?
He knows some things.
Bet on it.
Or…he’s just another patsy.
Either way, keep him controlled.
Obama wants him in a federal court. Miranda rights? Great. A clandestine deal will be offered. If he keeps his mouth shut and no important PermaGov assholes, spook plots ot backroom fixes are outed, he’ll disappear into the prison system and after a reasonable time he’ll be set free. Dinosaurs like Peter King want him in Guantanamo and under military trial? Of course. They don’t understand how slick the Obama PermaGov faction really is. They have no concept of how the kinder, gentler fix works. That’s why they’re dinosaurs and that’s why they are going to lose eventually.
Meanwhile, the truly slick hustlers continue to run their game.
Bet on it.
AG
I agree completely. They don’t want a trial because they are afraid of their own complicity being revealed.
Just like Papa Bush and Noriega.
You do know you’re nuts, right?
On a Boy Scout level?
Absolutely.
Nice handle.
AG
I mean…I was maybe a little off for not including the following possibility:
It is very difficult to fix a military court, especially if you are not in (or in true control of) the military. However, it is very easy to fix a civilian court, right on up to the Supremes. The 2000 and 20004 elections are more than sufficient evidence of that, right there. The fact that every Supreme Court or federal justice owes his or her position to a sitting president of one or the other PermaGov UniParties seals the deal. Markers can be called in.
The old “For the good of the country” line.
One way to make sure whatever happened in Benghazi does not come to light?
A swift execution. Of one kind or another.
Bet on it.
The stakes are very high here. How high? It is quite apparent that the early 2016 fix is in for Hilary. How best to mess it up? Let some jihadist speak publicly about the undercurrents and local hustles of “The War On Terror.” The State Department/CIA undercurrents and hustles. Bet on it.
Betcha he never gets on the stand. And if he does…then you should know that the fix is in.
Bet on that as well.
AG
AG, you’re giving the GOP bedwetters too much credit for intelligence.
It’s more like the playground antics of a bunch of ill-mannered grade school kids, with lots of bullies and drama “queens”.
Unfortunately, the voters seem to be much too lax at delivering the sound spanking that they so richly deserve.
No, Snarki…I am giving the actual bedwetters (leftiness and rightiness both) almost no real credit for intelligence. It’s the controllers who ride above all of this soap opera who are evincing “intelligence,” although since it seems to contain no moral dimension whatsoever it is not really intelligence at all. True intelligence has a moral, a spiritual aspect. Intelligence that is not coupled with a certain morality is just brute cunning. This is what makes tyrants like Adolf Hitler so destructive.
Bet on it.
AG
I agree completely.
And it astounds me that most Americans don’t see these people that way.
To me the Republican Party has been the party of cowards for a long time, but most especially since 9/11.
Defending My Pet Goat, running to Louisiana, issuing a taped statement, and then going to Nebraska or wherever before returning to Washington was simply ridiculous. Then Gitmo, torture, outing covert agents.
Chicken hawks works as a slur because it’s so god damn true.
I’m a prototypical Liberal Cold Warrior in the lay man’s sense: Strong but not excessive national defense keeping the world safe for democracy and not sweating the details because our system of laws will stand us in good stead if we just follow them.
Confident, ethical leaders stick with their principles when the going gets tough. Weak, unethical leaders avoid or exploit pain to compromise the country’s principles.
People like Dick Cheney, Addington, Libbey, Rove, never believed in them in the first place, but they’re gone. The rest are just simply gutless, ‘criminally weak sisters’ who embarrass themselves, their constituencies, and their country.
Simply pathetic. My uncle did not get malaria and wounded at Guadalcanal and my father did not sleep in a bomber bay building Thule to see this trash running the country.
Ditto, BooMan!
I never thought I’d see our country openly torture people, or send them to other countries to be tortured.
As an American, I feel ashamed – VERY ASHAMED! – that that happened when I was alive.
Conservatives are cowards.
Period.
Nuff said…
What are they afraid of, though? Surely it’s not what they say at face value; who the hell would think it could serve as some sort of recruitment tool and/or martyrdom when we have Gitmo open?
No, they’re afraid of airing any and all dirty laundry. Same goes for those who are in Guantanamo. Fair trials demand they also get fair representation. Obama is a bedwetter himself. Even if Congress allowed funds to be utilized — and imo with the release of those 5 Taliban nobodies, he’s only exposed himself to this flank of attack — he should be releasing those we cannot charge in court. Why isn’t he? Because he’s afraid of pulling a Huckabee: release people we cannot charge in court but “know” they’re also dangerous allows for a chance that they go back and plan attacks. Well, too bad then. No charges, no jail cell. But that’s not how we operate. Because this nation has always been led by cowards; ask the Japanese and Japanese Americans.
Want to know what country isn’t full of bedwetters? Norway.
Jens Stoltenberg, Norway Prime Minister, Says Oslo Tragedy Response Will Be ‘More Democracy’
There’s another side: Conservatives doing their best to frighten the public because that’s how you sell conservative policy, whether it’s the Jacobins and their guillotines under the bed in 1798 or Reds and their dynamite in 1919. Osama bin Laden was a gift to Republicans, real terror for them to exploit which they exploited as hard as they could and still do. They are themselves terrorists by the dictionary definition, using mass fear to achieve their political ends.
I personally go to work every day in the shadow of the Empire State Building and don’t think much of those crybabies from Tupelo and Bozeman waiting for the A-rabs to come and kill them, but what can you do?
What Obama is justifiably fearful of, in my view, is the complete lack of scruple and of nonpartisan patriotism on the conservatives’ part. Remember how we “all pulled together” in September 2001 in spite of our feelings about Bush and Giuliani? That’s because the conservatives were on Bush’s side. If such an incident were to occur during Obama’s presidency there would be no such pulling together. Indeed in the conservative press every day is 9/11, or at least Doomsday, as it is, and every bit of it is Obama’s fault.
Rather than seeing the release of the five quasi-Taliban as a pathetically inadequate gesture (to us hippies?) I prefer to see it as a bold statement (to the bedwetters), along with the insistence on giving Khatallah a proper civilian trial, that all this cowardice has a limit and we’ve been putting up with it too long.
Because he’s afraid of pulling a Huckabee: release people we cannot charge in court but “know” they’re also dangerous allows for a chance that they go back and plan attacks. Well, too bad then. No charges, no jail cell.
I’m going to be brutally cynical here. Yes, you’re absolutely right that one of the risks you run with a released criminal (or suspected criminal) is more criminality. You’re also right that this is totally survivable by survival. Hell, you could make the point that pantswetting over this actually hurts more people — even those who aren’t in the ‘others’ — in the long run.
Unfortunately, that’s not how the political calculus of the country, or more specifically that of Traditional America, operates or has operated since who knows God when. Ask Dukakis what happens when you try to convince these people to ignore the black swan and focus on the trend. What happens is that these people will flip the fuck out on you for daring to suggest that their idiotic (in the classical Greek and modern sense) viewpoint and notions is not the end-all be-all of society and will punish you and the rest of the country by acting in an even more counterproductively and willfully ignorant manner. Take, oh, gun control for instance.
This is why even though I don’t like it, I support Obama being a pantswetter on this issue. Like with drone strikes, I know that in one sense the hundreds of deaths were preventable and will make the country less safe — but they also function as valuable insurance policy against another Afghanistan/Iraq War or more specifically against another Iranian Hostage Crisis debacle.
In fact, I’d be upset if he actually did the morally right thing.
The cowardice is despicable. We’ve tried and sentenced dictators, generals, and drug czars, suddenly we’re supposed to be afraid to try terrorists? Wait, we’re supposed to be afraid, aren’t we? Okay, I get it.
On the otherhand, Obama is reminding the bedwetters of what real strength is.
By not choosing to shuttle this guy out the backdoor to Gitmo but to bring him front and center, displays a faith and pride in the system on our shores.
It’s time that Americans see something besides Issa’s version of patriotism.
Yeah, I wish those guys would grow a pair –
of breasts,
so they might know how courage feels.
Damn it. I’m an Old who grew up during the Cold War. Yep, duck-and-cover drills, the whole package. I find it incomprehensible that a nation that faced existential threats both from other nations and from its own Civil War now finds itself with Congresscritters who want us to be afraid of guys with small arms and improvised munitions. Is yellow the new black?
It is so much easier to grift the suckers if you keep them terrified.
Terrorists aren’t scary supermen, they are criminals who want to frighten you. When bed wetting Republicans spew the nonsense that terrorists can’t be prosecuted under the rule of law they are aiding and abetting the crime.
To be fair to them — and Lord knows they need every bit that they can get — it’s less cowardice and more a complete inability to do any kind of risk assessment that relies upon sociological imagination and/or statistics.
I mean, if you’re going to pull a Broder and do the lazy ‘both sides do it!’ crap in terms of threats that one ideology finds existentially threatening but the other one is more calm about then you have a wealth of contrived counter-examples. You know, income inequality, deflation, our response to the energy crisis, and of course climate change.
Conservatives view the issues of gun proliferation, demographic shift, the social safety net, gay rights, and of course terrorism through a difference lens than liberals. Terrorism isn’t an issue of law enforcement and political blowback to them — it’s a direct attack on every cultural totem that they hold dear and we’re only one skipped waterboaring session and unlaunched missile from a terrorist detonating a nuclear bomb inside the Pentagon.
The state always knows they’ve got the right man even when they’ve got the wrong man or just somebody they picked up to close a case. Under those circumstances, the state and often the public as well want that guy found guilty and put away forever.
Law in Federal Article III courts assumes that the defendant is innocent and requires the state to present the evidence of the defendant’s guilt. The bedwetters want vengeance, not justice.
I would be very curious as to what evidence the US had that this particular guy is worth finding guilty. If the state takes the usual limited evidence because sources and methods approach to trials of terrorists or plays fast and loose with public anger, an Article III court is little better than a kangaroo court. It becomes a form of limited bedwetting just to ensure that the prosecutor scores a win and and you have gone through the motions of “justice”.
Frequently these days it is a matter of how much of a bedwetter the judge in the trial is. Will the judge lift the blindfold and put his or her fingers on the scales of justice on the government’s side?
When US courts exonerate a innocent person in a high-profile case in which the public and media have prejudicially pre-decided the outcome, that raises the US stature in the world because in so many countries the outcomes of trials are predictable as to who wins and who can act with impunity.
The No, We Can’t party continues to say no to Constitutional principles even while trumpeting its hymns to strict constitutionality. Most Democrats, having been hit with the “soft on defense” 2×4, bray a little and duck and cover.
Can we once again have an honest trial in a difficult case?
If we can in this case, that would be a signal turn back to sanity in this country.