Here.
For all the talk of the Cult of Obama, there's more than a little discontent and disappointment among the liberal base. Be it Obama's languid approach to "Don't Ask; Don't Tell"; his inability to control Senate "moderates" ; his continuation of Bush II's most idiotic and immoral "defense" policies ; Obama's liberal and progressive critics have much to criticize.
It's a mixed bag, of course. For every half-assed stimulus plan, there's a "Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act." But I'm not a Catholic ; his good acts don't wipe out his sins.
And even if they did, I'm not certain they would.
Something in particular stood out to me. From the front page of Daily Kos:
RNC Hates America, DNC Calls Them on It
Actually, the real question Americans are asking is, "Why do Republicans hate America?" Or as the Democratic National Committee put it:The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists — the Taliban and Hamas this morning — in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize. Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize — an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride — unless of course you are the Republican Party. The 2009 version of the Republican Party has no boundaries, has no shame and has proved that they will put politics above patriotism at every turn. It’s no wonder only 20 percent of Americans admit to being Republicans anymore – it’s an embarrassing label to claim.
Spot on.
I can't tell you how chilling I find this. First: The fact that the DNC would make such an outrageous, fallacious, and Bush-esque claim. Second: That Dailykos would "throw its lot in" with these kinds of Rovian criticisms.
I'll let Glenzilla take it:
I'm all in favor of applying disgusting political rhetoric and twisted political arguments to the purveyors of such tactics in order to demonstrate their hypocrisy and/or to neutralize those tactics. If that's all that were going on here -- if it were made clear that these tactics are unacceptable and dumb but that the Rovians on the Right who have spent the last eight years wielding them should be hoisted on their own petard -- I wouldn't have any objections to it. But, plainly, that's not all that is going on.
[...]
What's particularly bothersome about yesterday's attacks is the premise that it's improper, unpatriotic and even Terrorist-mimicking to do anything but cheer -- have a "national celebration" -- when Obama is awarded the Nobel Prize. Whether Obama is actually pursuing policies of peace happens to be an extremely legitimate topic of debate. The same is true for whether he's done anything meaningful yet to merit the award. Numerous liberals in good standing objected to Obama's award -- from Ezra Klein ("It is undeserved. It is a bit ridiculous") to The Nation's Richard Kim ("I woke up, read the New York Times website and thought I had come to the Onion instead . . . Obama doesn't deserve the prize, yet") to Naomi Klein ("disappointing, cheapening of the Nobel Prize"). While there are arguments to make in his favor -- I even made some myself yesterday in the first two paragraphs of what I wrote -- there is something unquestionably bizarre about awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to a leader who did not merely "inherit," but is advocating, actively prosecuting and escalating, a major war that is killing large numbers of civilians with no plans to stop, while at the same time building prisons to house people who will have no due process.
Unquestionably, those are and must be legitimate topics of debate. Some smart people yesterday made some reasonable arguments for Obama's Prize. But to insist that it's the patriotic obligation of every American to stand and cheer -- and that those who don't are "casting their lot with the Terrorists" -- is creepy and repugnant. It's also a very dangerous game to play.
Now, even if you think that Obama did deserve the Nobel Prize (I happen to be just fine with it), there's no basis for accusing those who claim that he did not of being "unpatriotic."
That x and y happen to agree on a specific point, and that y happens to be a particularly repugnant group, does not automatically delegitimize x's position. Indeed, there's a name for that sort of argument : ad hominem.
And in his case, it's worse. If the lessons of the McCarthy era taught liberals anything it should be the seriousness with which claims of "unpatriotic" should be treated.
But there's a deeper problem, and one dealt with in the latest New Yorker (Oct. 26, 2009). Jane Mayer's excellent piece, "The Predator War," (sub. req.) lays out how the Obama administration is directly continuing Bush II's deeply troubling tactic of extra-judicial and arbitrary assassinations of terrorists (bearing in mind that, as the article points out, we don't always know that the people we're killing are terrorists. This isn't just epistemological hand-wringing ; it's fairly established that we've fucked up more than once.)
Putting aside the fascinating--if concerning--ethical questions raised by the increasing use of Predator Drones in U.S. military actions. i.e. On the one hand, it reduces the risk to American servicemen and women--certainly a good thing. On the other hand, as "Mary Dudziak, a professor at the University of Southern California's Gould School of Law" argues:
Drones are a technological step that further isolates the American people from military action, undermining the political checks on ... endless war.
But, putting that aside... Mayer writes:
[T]here was widespread anger after The Wall Street Journal revealed that during the Bush Administration the C.I.A had considered setting up hit squads to capture or kill Al Qaeda operatives around the world ... [H]ad the program become fully operational, it would have violated a 1976 executive order, signed by President Gerald R. Ford, banning American intelligence forces from engaging in assassination.
Hina Shamsi, a human-rights lawyer at the New York University School of Law, was struck by the inconsistency of the public's responses. "We got so upset about a targeted-killing program that didn't happen," she told me. "But the drone program exists ... There are targeted international killings by the state.
And if you want hypocrisy, well, here you go:
The American Ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk said at the time (July, 2001), "The United States government is very clearly on record as against targeted assassinations.... They are extrajudicial killings, and we do not support that.
[...]
Seven years later, there is no longer any doubt that targeted killing [read: assassination] has become official U.S. policy. "The things we were complaining about from Israel a few years ago we now embrace," Solis says. New, he notes, nobody in the government calls it assassination.
As you might imagine, I, a liberal in good standing, have some serious problems with assassination. And I think if you polled liberals (particularly in the blogosphere), they would have a problem with it too. But where is the outrage?
It's a sign of the sickness, both in our body politic in general, and in the lefty blogosphere, that there hasn't been more noise on this. It's a sign of the sickness in our bastion of "reality-based" reportage and commentary that we, for the most part, allowed this sickening program to be reported without a peep--not to mention the Rovian tactics of the DNC.
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