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Now for Something Completely Different

By Larry Johnson on June 12, 2008 at 9:46 PM in Current Affairs

For those of you sick to death of the political back and forth and the bashing of Barack, here’s a change of pace. Two stories hit today relevant to the question of terrorism and the future of US policy in the middle east.

Story 1–A majority of US Supreme Court Justices ruled that people detained as terrorists at Guantanmo can seek judicial remedy. CNN has a nice summary (here) and I am sure all of the major news dailies will weigh in.

Story 2–A US predator air strike (may have been Global Hawk) killed some Taleban and some Pakistani soldiers. According to the Times of London:

The Pakistan military has accused US-led forces in Afghanistan of launching an “unprovoked and cowardly” missile attack on an army checkpoint in Pakistan’s volatile Mohmand tribal zone, further straining ties between the two allies in the ‘War on Terror’.

So what does this mean?

Some folks on the right, including prominent politicians (Lindsay Graham, for example) are having a melt down. They view this as the Supreme Court requiring the U.S. military to conduct themselves like members of Law and Order’s Special Victims Unit. I understand their concern that we do not want our soldiers in a position of having to think and operate like law enforcement personnel.

But I think the majority of the Supreme Court made the right call. The United States is conducting itself in a manner that we once condemned when the Soviets and Cubans grabbed someone, declared them an enemy of the state, and threw them into prison without access to a judge or the ability to defend themselves and challenge their accusers.

The notion that the terrorist threat is more dangerous and more difficult than anything we have faced previously betrays a shocking ignorance of World War II and the conduct of the Japanese and the Germans. At the end of the day, the trials for War Crimes helped solidify our nation’s status–justifiably so–as an international leader and world power.

I think our conduct in Guantanamo is simply allowing tyrants in places like Cuba and Zimbabwe to excuse their own egregious conduct by pointing at us. We are capable of better and should not surrender our nation’s honor to a bunch of piss-ant terrorists and religious fanatics.

Our killing of Pakistani soldiers goes in the category of “too damn bad.” The Pakistani military and intelligence service has elements who are aiding our enemies. No two ways about it. Killing a few helps send a clear message. If you are going to fire on U.S. troops expect to pay with your life. This may sound a bit harsh, but if that was your son or daughter on that patrol I doubt you would shed a tear for the deaths of those who were helping shoot at your loved one. We have a long term problem in Pakistan and will have to tread carefully. Nonetheless, there is a time for sending a lethal message.

What do you think?

  • Joe

    Eastern Afghanistan is like North Vietnam while Pakistan is like China in terms of funneling military support to the Taliban fighting the Afghan government and its NATO allies. Until Pakistan gets its act together and stops all support to the Taliban, the war there will continue to drag on.

    • Joe

      And given Obama’s leanings, I seriously doubt an Obama adminstration will seriously challenge Pakistan to do anything about its support for the Taliban. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they withdrew all support for the Afghan government and allowed the Taliban to retake Afghanistan and reestablish Al Qaeda camps in it.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity Woman

    I tell you, when I read that Obama is having pakistani citizens raise money for him, that was the limit for me. I find pakistan to be the most offensive place in the middle east. They are the most vile of people in their treatment of women. They set them on fire. SO many women have been aflame in pakistan, the hospitals can’t even keep up. Should the women live, they are treated as if they did something to deserve it. A woman in pakistan doesn’t even have to be set flame by her husband. It can be her inlaws if they are so disposed. This is a vile place and being buddies with one of those guys gives me the chills. Sick bastards. If they would do that, they would do anything. So I’m with you on this one Larry.

    • Joe

      Technically, Pakistan is not part of the Middle East. But yes, they are despicable in terms of their treatment of women.

    • sinking ratboat

      Obama has ties to important people in Pakistan going back to his college days. These need to be looked into.

    • beebop

      Greg Mortenson is doing TERRIFIC things in Pakistan to educate girls. His thinking is that if you get a girl an education until fifth grade, you improve the quality of life not just for that girl, but for her children and her family. If she can read, she can take important nutritional and health steps to fight infant mortality, etc. If you want to really help Pakistani women from the ground up, read Three Cups of Tea and donate to Greg’s charity. It is so well run. He has declined any US government help since it would 1) make him suspect in Pakistan and 2) make him less effective overall with needing to cut through US red tape. But he’s doing FABULOUS things.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity Woman

    I think Obama Bin Forgotten is in Pakistan.

  • POdVet

    Guantanmo is a national disgrace. We should have never had anything that could legitimately be compared to the Soviets Siberia.

    Those you see following the Obamessiah are not Democrats, though the species may try to look similar. They are in fact nothing but JACKASSES!
    P.U.M.A.

    • MP98

      So what would you do with these people?

      Their countries of origin don’t want them.
      They’re TERRORISTS, for Christ’s sake…
      HELLOOOO………..

      I know, let’s give them full US citizenship (which this idiot Supreme Court just about did) and their terrorist-loving lawyers can get them off on bullshit technicalities and we’ll release them into YOUR community.

      • Hope Floats

        Thank you! This decision makes our country look like a sappy bunch of mollycoddlers. I’m against torture, but I’m also against giving terrorists immigration priority.

  • Joe Smith

    I think unless we take a bold step and actually start rebuilding Afghanistan, starting with the schools. The war there will never end. Congress had the chance to do this after the soviets were kicked out of there and they have a chance to do it now. But one thing everybody has to realize that this will not be resolved over night. It will take 10 to 15 years to fix the problem over there.

    For a long time I thought that we should just get out of Iraq and Afghanistan but reality has a way of slapping one in the face. At the moment leaving from Iraq or Afghanistan would just cause us to have to go back there in few years.

  • Joeconservative

    That supreme court ruling was a disgrace! The PUMA/Conservative coalition will make sure that kind of pandering to the left will not happen again! John McCain will ensure that only strict constructionist judges are elected to the highest court. We must protect life and country!

    The PUMA/Conservative alliance for John McCain and a new republican majority!

    • LandOLincoln

      Oh, I soooo hate to bust your bubble, little O-Troll, but your guy was all for confirming John Roberts as chief justice, until it was pointed out to him that a vote for Roberts would come back to bite him in his future run for president as a Democrat.

      Barack Obama is a right wing Trojan horse.

      And you’re a fool.

  • Colin

    Obama is the only candidate who wants to focus on al-Qaeda along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. As Obama said, if we have actionable intelligence on the locations of A-Q leadership and the Pakistanis aren’t willing to act, we will.

    Obama ’08

  • http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Mzc3ZWNhNThmM2JhMzliZDUxMWNmMmU5M2ZiNmM1YTY= Shane

    Do you guys even read the news? Remember when Obama was given days of criticism for his talks about invading Pakistan? Eh, maybe not. Of course, let’s focus on that story and not the one that shows how diametrically opposed Obama and McCain are about Habeus Corpus and how the SC decision down party lines shows the importance of rejecting an anti-civil liberties President when up to three of the more liberal judges may step down during the next administration.

    The Founding Fathers would be so proud of you guys.

    • Ivory Bill Woodpecker

      Shaaanne! DON’T come back, Shaaaane! :D

  • Colin

    Habeus Corpus lives!

    Obama ’08

  • OxyCon

    What do I think?
    I cheer and say a big “Hell Yeah!!!!!!” every time we use predator drones to kill terrorists and their sympathizers.
    Let them bastards run scared, worried that an unseen drone may be hovering over their heads, ready to blow them to kingdom come.
    In fact, after I’m done raising my son, I’d like to enlist and be part of the Predator drone team with my hands on the joystick.

  • cb

    Don’t forget kids… Larry is the terrorism expert!

    • Mary

      Well, he’s certainly more of an expert than YOU are.

      I rather doubt you could pass the entrance exam, let alone manage the physical exertion.

      You sound more like a cheeseburger expert at Burger King.

      • Hope Floats

        DING FRIES ARE DONE

        • beebop

          Hope … he probably wants to supersize it!

    • Caya

      I thought that was a great article.

  • http://thehorizontalworld.blogspot.com/ Medusa

    Interesting post.
    Today I showed my university students the propaganda film The Triumph of the Will, made in 1934 by Leni Riefenstahl. The class is on rhetoric and the film is considered a masterpiece of visual rhetoric.

    My students were stunned by this film. It is so powerful, so beautifully made with scenes of children and villages, of people so inspired by and grateful to the vision of a “new” Germany.

    The dramatic irony of watching it and knowing how the story turns out is almost too much to take. While watching smiling village children, running along the parading Nazis, one can’t help but mentally flash forward to the piles of human bodies found at the concentration camps.

    Two things: Gitmo has destroyed our Geneva cred.
    With allies like Pakistan, who needs Iran?

  • J Cardozo

    In Hamadan, the Supreme Court held that Guantanamo detainees are to accorded prisoner of war status under the Geneva Conventions. Todays decision says that those same detainees are to be accorded rights under the Constitution reserved for citizens and non-citizens residents of the US in the criminal justice system. These two decisions are contradictory in that POW status does not accord the detainee any rights under the detaining country’s legal system. The issue thus is not settled since the opinion handed down today did not explicitly over rule the opinion in Hamadan.

    • so saddened

      haven’t had a chance to read it. was this even addressed in the opinion?

  • TeakWoodKite

    My sane half and I spent the morning going threw the Supremes decision.

    I found the minority opinion disturbing on two levels. They did not want to take the case in the first place and their opinions where made from a statutory position.

    What was most telling of all was the look on GW’s face. Good luck getting any of it done on his watch…

    He was not a happy camper. igit.

  • cb

    For more info, see http://www.fightthesmears.com.

    • Mary

      No thanks. We don’t march with the borg.

      • cb

        You will be assimilated.

        (Apologize for the fairly obvious comeback…)

        • Hope Floats

          We know by now there are no original thoughts coming out of the Obama camp. This happens all the time.

          • cb

            RAWWWRR!!!

        • beebop

          The next time you go to your grocery store and there isn’t any tin foil, don’t say we didn’t tell you in advance.

          No votes for you, Obama!

    • Northwest rain

      The KING of smears is worried about smears???

      hahahahahahaha
      hahahahahahahahaha
      hahahahahahahahahaha
      hahahahahahahahahahahaha

      • Hope Floats

        Live by the smear; die by the smear!

  • 1Watt

    on the lighter side, one of our troops @ work:

    http://my.break.com/content/view.aspx?ContentID=467852

    via vetvoice.org

  • churl

    Sleep. Sleep. Sleep, little Borg.

  • http://deleted AnninCa

    I come out pretty much on the same page. I was glad to hear about the ruling. That also made me feel a bit better about the judges appointed that tend to be more conservative, too.

    I agree about the fall-out of the bombing, too.

  • Laura

    I’m not sick of obama bashing.

  • TheVoiceOfReason

    Obama birth certificate -> 400+ posts
    critical Supreme Court decision -> 30 posts

    it’s all about substance here :)

    • beebop

      That’s what’s got the troll panties in a wad. Go read who’s there you tilly sroll!

  • Ho Ha

    When Rome burns, people like Larry Johnson popup.

  • http://jonswift.blogspot.com/ Jon Swift

    Your continuing efforts to get John McCain elected President, which will allow him to appoint more conservative Justices to the Supreme Court, who will overturn this terrible decision and get rid of this antiquated principle of habeas corpus, which is so foreign to American values that it doesn’t even have an English name, not unlike Barack Obama, is to be congratulated. Keep up the good work.

    • Hope Floats

      We already lost habeus corpus, you idiot. Sure. Obama is going to bring it back, because the hard line left has been so passionate about civil liberties.

      • beebop

        Right after they run out of baseball players on steroids.

        • Hope Floats

          lmao.

      • Mary

        Amen, Hope!!

        All those establishment Democratic leaders supporting Obama like Daschle and Kerry and Rockefeller are the VERY ones who ENABLED every single illegal act George W. Bush enacted.

        If we want to CHANGE things, we need to clean out the compliant Democrats, too.

        Let’s start with Nancy Pelosi.

  • Hope Floats

    I was just arguing about the potential for Armageddon arising from Zbig’s machinations in Pakistan v. the war drums being beat for Iran right now. You know, the 911 truthers and antisemites are going nuts about “AIPAC’s latest war in the Middle East.” Iran is still enriching for whatever reasons; Pakistan already has nukes. Their government is a very fragile dictatorship with a strong military. Destabilizing that region would be suicidal.

    Obama’s comments before freaked me out, and I’ll be amazed if older Jews vote for him knowing what is known about Brezinski. Not only does he hate Jews, but he was quoted as saying the Islamofascist threat was a small price to pay for the fall of the Soviet Empire. I’m sure that helps everyone sleep better in Tel Aviv.

    Here are some of my comments which I wanted to paste together cohesively, anyway…

    This guy was going on and on about Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran and WWIII and McBush, and I said, “WWIII is more likely to happen if we allow Obama to invade Pakistan.” Then he replied:

    We’ve already “invaded” Pakistan according to our latest agreement with them, we have preemptive rights to attack “Osama” within their borders and have special operation troops inside Pakistans borders as of many months ago. They’ve even capture and “extridited” (sic) a few terrorists already.

    So, I pointed out we were conducting targeted missile attacks under Clinton. He jokes that while the Lewinski affair was blowing up, he was sleeping on the couch and planning to capture OBL. It is not an attack, if we have Pakistan’s permission to seek out terrorists within their borders. We have been doing that with special ops forces in cooperation with the ISI.

    This guy kept going on about Iran and Israel’s top defense minister said such and such… I really don’t see mushroom clouds and the end of the world coming out of this. It has long seemed an inevitability that we would see an attack on Iran during this administration and certainly as close to the election as possible. Obama should post something about this on his “smear” website – they started a war to make me look weak on national security.

    Moving right along…

    If a US break with Musharraf and/or a real democratic opening in Pakistan merely pave the way for unilateral US or NATO aggression, we could be going very quickly from the frying pan to the fire. Pakistan remains the most dangerous country in the world today — and like the ticking clock that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists used to post on how close the world was to midnight, thus we are closer to a nuclear war there than with Iran.

    Obama is surrounded by stranger friends than AIPAC, and I don’t mean Ayers/Wright/ Khalidi. Zbig is an infamous Cold War hawk who has managed to re-invent himself in the eyes of some dupes by opposing the Iraq adventure, mainly because it is bad for imperialism.

    Senator Jay Rockefeller and Trilateral / Bilderberger boss Joseph Nye are also actively campaigning for Obama. Nye is the theoretician of “soft power,” a new form of imperialist aggression based on economic warfare, subversion, deception, and people power coups. They want Obama to mobilize soft power to give a face lift to US imperialism.

    Brzezinski’s goal is confrontation with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the main world center for resistance to US-UK global domination.

    Anti-war activists are still fixated on Iran, but not Brzezinski is not – his target is China, TWENTY times bigger than Iran, with ICBMs ready to launch, followed by Russia, the world’s biggest nuclear power. Such confused activists need to focus on stopping the next war – the final global showdown with Pakistan, China, and Russia. That means rejecting Brzezinski’s puppet candidate Obama.

    Then this guy quoted Ron Paul: The biggest threat today is not necessarily a country but an idea that you can spread democracy (or any other ideology) using the barrel of a gun. BTW, I think a lot of theRon Paul people more motivated by (and misinformed on) the antiwar movement instead of the libertarians, went over to Obama. These supporters were sensitive on race, antisemitic and sexist. The abusive comments began before the Ron Paul campaign imploded in NH.

    My response:

    What you described, the notion of “making the world safe for democracy” is Wilsonian foreign policy. It has now returned to its roots in the Democratic party with Obama as the presumptive nominee.

    Anticommunist sentiment and Carter’s Afghanistan. Brzezinski in bed with the right-wing, “Freedom House” (“America House”, get it?!) Anthony Lake. Azer Commerce (ie OIL). In the mid and late 1990s you could track all three of them to one place. What do Charlie Wilson, Brzezinski and Azerbaijan have in common? Afghan Mujahideen. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

    Make no mistake that Iran is our enemy now as they arm Iraqi insurgents, fund Hamas and arm Hezbollah. They are enriching at a rapid pace, though no one knows why. It’s even made the Saudis nervous; they always had proxy control through Pakistan’s nukes and controlling our intelligence through their petrodollar funding for CIA black ops banned by the Democratic Congress… under Jimmy Carter. That is how US intel defected to the private sector and these arms dealers came into power, the very same network of rogue spooks, corrupt bankers, and mercenary weapons designers was the seed from which BCCI, Iran-Contra, and 9-11 sprang.

    This next administration is charged with cleaning up that mess. It also presents an opportunity for the ruthless seekers of power who manipulated an inexperienced and idealistic George W. Bush to put another puppet in the White House. Barack Obama is a Trojan Horse. When John McCain sings of bombing Iran, that is tough talk for the mullahs’ benefit. Bush tried talking tough but had no idea of how to follow through. Neither does Obama.

    Not all of us who supported Clinton did so because we saw her as an Eleanor Roosevelt up against a new JFK. National security is on the line, and following another learn- as-you-go President into the wilderness is too dangerous, especially when he is being advised by someone who said, “What is the most important thing when you look at world history, the Taliban or the fall of the Soviet empire? Some excited Islamists or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?” Where do you see the next WWIII happening now?

    • Caya

      I really appreciate that you took the time to write this.
      I don’t know where to begin with all this stuff. There is more funny business too with Soros and his involvement in the Rose Revolution. Zbig and The American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus (ACPC) at Freedom House. Assuming of course that this is not just about Caspian Oil. The Islamic terror threat also appears to be popping up in the Caucasus after these so called revolutions (there have been many, I mention the Rose Revolution because it is widely accepted that Soros funded it). And of course these “wahhabi radicals” are coming from Russia.
      It all fits together and is very suspicious.

      • Hope Floats

        This article is an interview with Brzinski that you might find interesting. I can’t tell you how much he freaks me out with his uncanny resemblance to Doctor Strangelove.

        http://www.voltairenet.org/article30038.html

        I want to follow through on how Soros fits into this more, because I’ve heard his name thrown around but not really thought much about his interests outside of currency manipulation.

        • Caya

          I totally agree. I have not been able to piece this all together yet but frankly, I had a dream – yes a dream. I kept asking myself why Obama? I woke up thinking about Eduard Shevardnadze (this sounds so silly), but I thought I would look him up in the news and see what he’s been up to. Well, it lead to Soros and it lead to a lot of other things too. The pipelines, rail and Russian oil. This is also really interesting, go down to “the merger” and read down from there.

          It is also possible that a major motivation for the arrest was Khodorkovsky’s meeting with vice-president Dick Cheney to discuss selling a large share of Yukos to American oil companies to make sure that he could pursue politics without having to fear losing his company, because it would now be backed by foreign big oil.

          Look up Mikhail Khodorkovsky on Wiki, that is where is quote is from

          Like I said, I can’t quite put it all together yet but smell it if you know what I mean.

          • Hope Floats

            Is this the same Michael Chodorovsky? Because I’ve read his essays on the Caspian pipeline and the remapping of the Middle East.

            • Caya

              Yes, I think so YUKOS Oil – This is the wiki address

              en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Khodorkovsky

              What was the Essay? Is it online?

              • Hope Floats

                Sorry… It was Michel Chussodovsky I was thinking of. :)

                Here is the link, anyway. It is about the remapping of the Middles East, oil, and it has some helpful diagrams.

                http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20060726&articleId=2824

              • Hope Floats

                Thanks for the link. I see what you mean by a lot of pieces to fit together.

                • Caya

                  You too – Thanks. Look up Yushchenko & his wife too. That gets really interesting.

        • Caya

          Also, I just wanted to say thanks, the link is great.

  • Hope Floats

    Also, I cut and paste pretty freely from the internet. I should be more responsible about linking sources, but I think the writers I’m sourcing have in many instances done the same thing. This is more for the purpose of thinking out loud than making assertions.

  • Hope Floats

    It is not an attack, if we have Pakistan’s permission to seek out terrorists within their borders.

    *invasion

  • http://adolfobama.org David Axisrutt

    Larry: I think it’s tough issues but I think you’ve made convincing arguments. Thanks for sharing.

  • Mr.Murder

    Think we’d do better to have them blame a neighbor like India before they do the USA.

    Might as well go with the Brzez model and use regional rivalries for strategic purpose….

    • Hope Floats

      The only problem is blowback. We armed and trained the muhajideen in the 70s, and now we have Islamofascists who want to kill us. Look at the disaster the Carter administration was. We do not want to stir up conflict for our own selfish reasons just to antagonize two superpowers. That’s just crazy. It is better to keep allies like Pakistan, even if they spend our foreign aid on fighting with India.

  • http://Sicktodeath Ed Reed

    Thanks for the update and your return to sanity. More please.

  • Mr.Murder

    Meanwhile the UK is also having a controversy gin up on the window of days detention can be allowed.

    Some claim this is for technical aspects of evidence gathering, the time needed to secure password encryption. It’s entirely doubtful Menworth can’t descramble something far faster than that.

    TWN has the story in greater detail using the PM’s appearance to Parliament on BBC.
    http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2008/06/cameron_does_a/#comments

    This is plausible cover for the Bush White House,
    something is pending that could get into news cycles, this extra month or so may well push some item past the window of an election when coupled with other matters of process.
    This comes on the heels of our own SCOTUS decision.

    Connect the dots….

  • http://hotair.com/archives/2008/06/02/michelle-obama-dont-trust-bloggers-because-people-lie/ Kelly

    I think the Court ruling was reasonable. This is at the heart of separation of powers. Like a case from decades ago held that the wife of a military man overseas was entitled to a jury trial despite being tried by a military tribunal. The point is that no branch of law is above the Constitution.

    The military can still set up its own procedures to diminish the amount of meritless writs. Like in Hamdi, the court suggested steps courts could take to ensure due process while balancing security interests.

    The point about being held overseas turned out to be a weak argument since the US still has control, even if no control over the sovereign. I wonder if this will open the door to claims from prisoners being held in places by our agents, like in Pakistan.