That’s a provocative headline, I know, but it is not meant to provoke. It’s a real question, inspired by some of my emails from people taking me to task for insufficient appreciation of our current president, and for unseemly appreciation of our previous president, whom they and the world “hate.”
The question is also inspired by something I noticed while I was digging up articles on the good President Bush has done in Africa – that many people who wish to give Bush anything resembling even the faintest praise, are compelled to preface that praise with a condemnation of the man, himself:
“I am heartbroken overall by the Bush administration,” Ruxin said in a telephone interview. “But from my perch here in Rwanda, it is impossible to deny the results and achievements of PEPFAR. Many Rwandans were made Republicans because [President Bush's] was the first administration that has taken an interest and done something here.”
“I am heartbroken overall…” You see echos of that or something akin to, “he was a horrible, evil person and an incompetent moron, but…” or, “I am second to none in my loathing of Bush, but…”
It’s such a cowardly thing to do, this reflexive serving up of one’s Bush-hate bona fides: “don’t hate me for saying something good about him, but…”
It takes no courage at all to jump onto a bandwagon, just the fear of being left behind.
So, these people castigate me for not loving Obama enough (I’ve more than once pointed out that I dislike the president’s policies and am rather agnostic on the man, himself, but you know -that’s “hate”) while proudly proclaiming their brave hatred of Bush, and I cannot help wondering, “why, exactly, do you hate Bush?”
Oh, I know what the answers will be – we’ve heard them over and over. But in the face of this new presidency, let’s change the question a little:
You hate Bush because: “He stole the 2000 Election!”
Well, not really, but if that’s the case, why are you not troubled by President Obama’s long and close association with voter-fraud-lovin’ ACORN? Why don’t you “hate” Obama?
You hate Bush because “he tortured people!”
All indications are that the torture was very limited in scope and that -whether we are comfortable with it or not- information gleaned through waterboarding saved lives. But the thing is, after making a big noise about “ending” torture, Obama has still left the door open even if it’s just the tiniest bit, to its use, if needed. Why don’t you “hate” Obama?
You hate Bush because “he created extraordinary renditions and indefinite detentions!”
Well, actually, that was President Clinton’s baby, but yes, Bush continued it. And um…it seems Obama is expanding renditions, and continuing the indefinite detentions, too. Why don’t you “hate” Obama?
You hate Bush because “he wiretapped the American public & shredded the Bill of Rights.”
Well, that is a highly overdramatic and rather inaccurate charge, but indications are that the terrorists and terrorism supporters who were being studied under the NIE policy have been stopped from blowing people up on American soil, and um…after making a lot of noise about how evil the man and how rights-eroding the policy, Obama has decided to keep it all in place and he is becoming seriously worrying on free speech, the most fundamental of our rights. Why don’t you “hate” Obama?
You hate Bush because “he spent the Clinton surplus and put us in debt and cut taxes for the rich!”
You’re kidding right? The “surplus” was a projected only, a projection that the GAO eventually admitted was optimistic by 30% and the mythical surplus never factored in an attack on our soil. The big, bad tax cuts (which the Congress voted in a second time, soundly) seem to have propelled us to spectacularly low unemployment rates (remember, when Clinton was in office we accepted that 5.6% unemployment was “virtually full” employment). And even, yes, the New York Times admitted that 2006 tax receipts were at record highs and were lowering the deficit. President Obama has ushered in a failure of a stimulus plan, he’s going to raise taxes on everyone (those Bush tax cuts end in January, btw) so that will be nice, and if you hated the “Bush debt” then you should be vociferously objecting to the nation-killing “Obama-debt.” And yet, you seem rather unconcerned by it. Why don’t you “hate” Obama?
You hate Bush because: “someone in his White House exposed Valerie Plame!”
No, someone in both Clinton’s and Obama’s White House, Richard Armitage, exposed Valerie Plame. But if that story bothered you, then you should have been livid at the Obama administrations potential exposure of our undercover people, and their apparent leaks of same to the press. Why don’t you “hate” Obama?
You hate Bush because: “He Lied Us Into War with Cherry-Picked Intelligence!”
Well, whether President Clinton and other Democrats will agree with that is an interesting question, but if believing bad intelligence is “lying” and cherry-picking is deceitful, then what do you think about President Obama’s insistence that he must destroy our economy in order to save the environment, all based on “cherry picked” climate bombast which every day looks more and more like snakeoil salesmanship that is unworthy of belief? You hate Bush for believing bad intelligence and moving forward with a plan based on those flaws, so, why don’t you “hate” Obama?
Oh, and you hate Bush because “He Refused to Sign Kyoto & Probably Killed the Planet”:
The Kyoto Treaty that our Congress rejected unanimously and Clinton subsequently shelved. President Bush decided to work out an alternative to the Kyoto treaty; it addressed environmental concerns without wrecking economies. Since Obama is pledging to design alternatives to a congressionally unpopular plan, why don’t you “hate” Obama?
For that matter, it looks to me like we have a Convenient Boondoggle being exposed, here. Yesterday the BBC asked “whither global warming” and today the media is heralding the virtues and values of shale processing, which, ummm…was not to be seriously discussed while there was an “oilman” in the White House, but is now going to save the world! Do you climate true-believers who are willing to wreck the economy for a dubious cap-and-trade plan feel “played” yet? Bush was never played by these people and because he wasn’t neither were you.
In reviewing all this, it does seem to me that this passionate “hate” of George W. Bush is based not on substance but on style. Obama swagger is cool; Bush swagger was arrogant. Obama arrogance is “confidence.” Bush confidence was “ignorance.” Obama’s misspeaks and gaffes are ignored, Bush’s were magnified. Obama looks good. Bush looked goofy. All that “hate” seems to be part of an adolescent values system that is willing to overlook a multitude of sins as long as you get to belong to the jock/cheerleader clique, and not the Nerd/AV gang.
Although some seem to be tireless in their efforts to convince me that I should “hate” President Bush as much as they think I “hate” President Obama, I don’t think we should “hate” anyone, and I am not seriously suggesting that you “should” hate President Obama. I am simply wondering why two men can do very similar (sometimes exactly the same) things, and the first man’s actions can garner your life-long, cockle-warming hate, while the other man’s actions go overlooked and your cockles go agreeably cold.
“Obama might be doing all those things, but at least he’s not Bush!” You say. Right. And Bush was bad again, because…why? Oh, yeah, all those things I mentioned plus the bad economy!
Why would I ever expect consistency, that “hobgoblin of small minds” when your minds are so wide-open and huge. Stupid of me.
I know I’ve just wasted my time asking this question, that you will continue to simple hate Bush; you’ll do that because it’s the easy, mindless thing to do, because it will keep you aboard the bandwagon with all the cool kids, and never mind where the wagon is going. But please don’t expect me to take your flaming righteousness all that seriously.
October 12th, 2009 | 4:31 pm | #1
Whew! Well done!!!
October 12th, 2009 | 4:39 pm | #2
Right on.
October 12th, 2009 | 4:40 pm | #3
Style Over Substance
BTW there has been some kind of storm over Obama not being pro-gay enough- Andrew Sullivan has gone into a rage about it. I don’t follow it closely myself as I’m STILL not an American
& I’m not particularly interested in gays to begin with.
I’d like to see him move towards a more rational policy on the “war on drugs”- I actually think a lot of conservatives, especially the libertarian-minded ones, are becoming aware that prohibition doesn’t work & in fact top law enforcers privately don’t believe in the authoritarian measures they are ramming through.
I keep forgetting to compile an archive. But it is interesting that on the right, many are seeing through prohibition. I regard it as a logical step & a welcome one. Maybe not on this blog, but others are turning
[Well, I don't actually blame the gay community for being upset. They were promised an end to "Don't Ask Don't Tell" and really that's about as simple a move Obama could make, and yet he is not making it. They helped bring him to the party, and now he'll bring them a glass of punch, but won't do a jig with them! -admin]
October 12th, 2009 | 4:48 pm | #4
All indications are that the torture was very limited in scope and that -whether we are comfortable with it or not- information gleaned through waterboarding saved lives.
Anchoress, do you realize that Catholics can never endorse or excuse torture according to Gaudium et Spes?
[Uh-huh. Do you see me "endorsing or excusing" torture? I'm simply saying what is we know. But I did expect to get the subject redirected from Obama to me. It's the Alinsky thing, again. -admin]
October 12th, 2009 | 4:51 pm | #5
You’re hinting at it, but all presidential politics these days seem to be high school student body elections on a larger scale. Seems to me that started some time in the late 80’s.
Perhaps that isn’t a surprise… the baby boomers and beyond all learned how an election is “supposed” to work in high school–why should the real world be any different…
October 12th, 2009 | 4:53 pm | #6
I don’t hate President Obama; nor did I have a lot of tolerance for those pinheads who made up and prattled all the scurrilous bilge about that good man, George W. Bush.
Hate is a destructive and demeaning emotion and it isn’t one I’m willing to permit into my life. It poisons the hater much more than it does the hated. All you have to do is look at the faces of the haters (La Pelosi, Harry Reid, Janeane Garofalo amongst them) and you will see that it is manifesting on their faces – and not in a good way. I love my fellow man always, even the worst of them. That doesn’t mean that I LIKE them all that much, some of the time anyway, nor does it mean that I have any respect for the output of their so-called brains!
October 12th, 2009 | 4:57 pm | #7
Well done, but I think it is more a psychological thing. They hate Bush because 9/11 frightened them so and shook their world view that they preferred to blame him in the ways you outlined rather than face up to the fact that those fears were well-founded and theor foundational world view had been built on a pile of sand.
October 12th, 2009 | 5:00 pm | #8
I think they hate Bush for a reason that you have side-stepped entirely. And I really can’t blame you for doing so, because it is a very ugly reason.
They hate him because he is a true Christian with Christian values and was looked to by the American Christian Right to support Christian values.
Obama is a phony Christian, whose theology is embedded in hatred of other groups. That’s why they love him.
This is unsettling and disturbing, to say the least.
It brings to mind the Scripture: He was a murderer from the beginning: and he stood not in the truth, because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof. 45 But if I say the truth, you believe me not. 46 Which of you shall convince me of sin? If I say the truth to you, why do you not believe me: 47 He that is of God heareth the words of God. Therefore you hear them not, because you are not of God.(Jn 8:44-47)
[I don't know if I agree. Not saying you're wrong, but I don't know that I agree. Don't know if they are thinking even that much. -admin]
October 12th, 2009 | 5:01 pm | #9
All true enough.
Alas, a man convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still.
“Facts” are just decorations for these peoples’ preconceived FEELINGS. Discredit their “facts” and they find some other “fact” to justify their firmly felt irrational feelings
October 12th, 2009 | 5:02 pm | #10
Maybe we have better things to do than walk around obsessing about politicians to the point of frothing at the mouth (or we just don’t care to be one of the bleating sheeple). Trust me, I have lots of issues with all sorts of things Obama is doing — and have very little good to say about the Pelosi/Reid politburo — but hate? Maybe for a minute or two every now and then, but no politician is worthy of that investment of emotion. Get a grip, Bush-haters, and try to have a little better perspective on life.
October 12th, 2009 | 5:14 pm | #11
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by The Anchoress, Tim Motte and John Rambo. John Rambo said: RT @TheAnchoress why don't they "hate" Obama? http://bit.ly/rDVKF [...]
October 12th, 2009 | 5:15 pm | #12
An interesting take…
October 12th, 2009 | 5:17 pm | #13
I don’t hate bush: I personally liked the guy a lot, and voted for him twice. But I was very disappointed by the end, and I think he damaged conservatism.
He did nothing to curb spending, did a poor job at articulating conservative principles, chucked the pro-life movement (and women everywhere) overboard by allowed “Plan B” to go over-the-counter, and moved too fast on Iraq.
TARP was the last straw for me. It was a terrible decision, and will just encourage more irresponsible behavior in the future.
[I didn't like TARP (I almost wrote TRAP) either, but I think succumbed to "bad intel" again on that one, myself. -admin]
October 12th, 2009 | 5:21 pm | #14
I think it all comes down to sex in the end, Mrs. A. Obama supports the ultimate fall back protection – abortion – from the consequences of sex. Bush did not support it. Until the 60s generation is cold and in the ground, this culture will not have a fighting chance to overcome the toxic soup left behind by Woodstock and Roe. Consequence-free intercourse is the holy grail to those folks – to the point that they have described “a woman’s right to choose” in ritualistic almost sacramental language – and I don’t see them changing.
But that’s just me.
October 12th, 2009 | 5:36 pm | #15
All indications are that the torture was very limited in scope
All indications are, as a matter of law and a matter of fact, that THERE WAS NO TORTURE.
October 12th, 2009 | 5:41 pm | #16
I’m reminding you what Gaudium et Spes said because the entirety of your comment breezes right past Catholic teaching in Gaudium et Spes and into excusing waterboarding (“limited in scope”, “saved lives”).
And yes, I am pro-life, outspokenly so. And since you brought it up, not a fan of Alinsky. My comment wasn’t about politics or an attack on you. But you turned around and attacked me because what I said was a simple truth that the pope himself wrote: We can’t excuse wrongdoing in order that good may come of it.
[I wasn't talking about Gauium et Spes or anything Catholic, and I wasn't "excusing" anything; I was simply putting out the facts as we know them, as part of a much larger discussion. I was talking about Obama, politics and what facts we have. If I wanted to discuss my own conscience, church teaching and torture, that's what I would have done. For me to have wandered into an exposition of Catholic teaching with appropriate qualifiers exonerating myself sufficiently for the concerns of others, that would be a very messy piece, don't you think? You were the one who redirected the issue. I did not attack you; I simply made the point that I did anticipate someone turning the topic away from Obama, and onto me. Your may not have pivoted from an Alinsky point; you pivoted from a "don't you know Catholic teaching" point, but the end result was the same - you succeeded in taking the focus off of the point of the whole piece. If you wanted to read my post as an "excuse for wrongdoing" well, as I have said before, it's interesting how people receive things, but this post wasn't about any of that. If I wanted to debate torture, I'd have written a post about torture. -admin]
October 12th, 2009 | 5:47 pm | #17
Linked and replied here.
October 12th, 2009 | 5:48 pm | #18
Anchoress: Alinskyite? Moi?? I didn’t even vote for Obama. I guess I hit a nerve. Sometimes you can’t be partisan and be in communion with the Catholic Church.
Because I am guess that you know as well as I do that torture is a non-negotiable even if it did save lives — which I doubt, by the way. Your statement is an excuse for it. How is it not?
Not a single part of your comment acknowledged any problem with waterboarding other than maybe being “uncomfortable with it” and not that it is a non-negotiable Catholic teaching.
[Okay, I'm going to say this one more time, and then I think I am done with this. I was not writing about torture, I was making a larger argument. You may feel that the piece needed a long and extended qualifier on my part, explaining Catholic teaching and clarifying my position on torture, but I did not. -admin]
October 12th, 2009 | 6:05 pm | #19
Here is a new one to add to the list:
Why is it OK for Obama to declare war on Fox news, set up a blog paid for by taxpayers to address their complaints against Fox news, and name it as an opponent and refuse any interviews to Fox news? Are not the news agencies called the fourth estate for a good reason – an estate to put another check and balance on the use of governmental power?
Is it OK to wield the power of the executive branch of our government against a news agency? Is that not a gross abuse of executive power by the White House. It is more than a gross abuse, it is a frightening attack on free speech.
Does anyone remember Watergate and Nixon’s war on the Washington Post? Not only is Obama fair game to be compared to Carter, but now Nixon aka Tricky Dicky.
[I just think it's amusing that the WH spokesperson said Fox was "not a real news organization, like you at CNN"...right after CNN did a "fact check" on an SNL skit!
admin]
October 12th, 2009 | 6:14 pm | #20
Anchoress, your post was carved out of a
large and flawless block of excellent. I do
think that Mr. Brooks, in his 5:00 pm comment,
is onto something. The perception of President
Bush as a man whose Christian faith influenced
his actions infuriated many people. Those same
people are content with President Obama’s
profession of Christian faith, knowing it will
have little influence on his actions in office.
It is the same sort of contrasting reception the
opinion makers gave the nominations of
Justices Scalia and Roberts on one hand, and
Justice Sotomayor on the other. Remember
raised eyebrows concerning the men’s Catholic
faith? When Ms. Sotomayor was named, we
were reassured that she was the ‘right’ sort
of Catholic, who would not let her religion
influence her worldview.
October 12th, 2009 | 6:26 pm | #21
Very, very good! I enjoyed reading this and don’t feel so alone anymore!
October 12th, 2009 | 6:27 pm | #22
All indications are, as a matter of law and a matter of fact, that THERE WAS NO TORTURE.
I’m going to repeat what Bender said, only in italics!
(That’s almost always a wise move. We’re getting to have a whole squad of Bender’s cheerleaders around here!)
October 12th, 2009 | 6:30 pm | #23
“Not a single part of your comment acknowledged any problem with waterboarding other than maybe being “uncomfortable with it” and not that it is a non-negotiable Catholic teaching.”
You are assuming waterboarding is torture. We have subjected tens of thousands of our own troops to waterboarding as part of their training. Do you believe we torture our own troops?
October 12th, 2009 | 6:38 pm | #24
“Snakeoil” (re: Global Warming hype). Thanks! I’ve been looking for that word. For critically-thinking, interested parties, the late Michael Crichton wrote an entertaining and scholarly novel on this topic, titled “State of Fear”, with twenty pages of bibliography.
October 12th, 2009 | 6:40 pm | #25
Ah the truth shall set you free and if your discourse on the truth sets a single mind free from their fear of acceptance it is well worth it.
October 12th, 2009 | 7:12 pm | #26
Yes, Bender – there was no torture! And the very few (only one that I know of) who stepped over an ethical line were prosecuted and served time or received a black mark on their record.
But really, Bush hatred, like Palin hatred, is not about Bush or Palin. It is about the hater and his/her moral vanity – or animal piety – or situational ethics – whatever. As I think you’ve said A, Palin could be everything she is (hard working, intelligent, moose hunting, honest, of humble background mother of five), but if she had liberal political positions and a “D” after her name, she’d be a hero to those who now spit her name. Just spent a week with a couple of those in my family. Interesting difficult times.
October 12th, 2009 | 7:19 pm | #27
Sometimes I wonder if the leaders on the Democratic side really “hated” George W. Bush but merely used him as a conduit to rile their base, raise money and take power.
Because neither he nor his father ever possessed the communication skills of a Reagan, and DID possess the civility that they all claim is lacking in politics today, they knew that he would not get into the gutter with them. That made him a VERY easy mark.
When they start crying racism and hatred, that usually translates into, “You’re making a valid point in opposition and I need to shut you up.”
October 12th, 2009 | 7:31 pm | #28
Brava! The most enjoyable compare-and-contrast piece I have read in some time.
October 12th, 2009 | 7:36 pm | #29
To expand one of the points:
You hate Bush because “he tortured people!”
All indications are that the torture was very limited in scope. . .
A rouge unit of the Chicago Police in a district whose boundaries substantially overlapped State Senator Obama’s district tortured a number of people to get confessions, not waterboarding but electrodes to the gentiles and similar activities. While some were guilty many weren’t, recently an innocent man was finally acquitted after 20 some years on death row. While the torture took place before Obama was elected, the basic facts were in the press and there is virtually no indication that he did anything to help his constituents.
Why don’t you “hate” Obama?
[electrodes attached to the gentiles? -admin]
October 12th, 2009 | 7:39 pm | #30
I think the president is a front man. I know they said this about Bush too, (VP as Bush’s Brain). But this huge clique seems to follow ideology above all, and has a plan– shock and awe ruination of the economy, assuring elders have no nest egg, young people are 53.4% unemployed, grandchildren in hock. With the neutering of our armed forces, the incursion into blogland, the goal seems to be to bring America low.
So I hate. I hate Leftest ideas. I think they’re cruel.
Thanks for your great post.
October 12th, 2009 | 7:40 pm | #31
That is a pretty good article. I gave up long ago arguing against “Bush derangement syndrom” as it is referred to on talk radio.
Attacking Bush was a political ploy, and it is pretty obvious that it worked so well, the left is terrified the same thing will happen to there guy.
It probably will work, so there terror is justified. The question is, after Republicans and Democrats are discredited via vile hatred, who will emerge?
October 12th, 2009 | 7:48 pm | #32
Everything T. McDonald said and throw in the drug entitlement Gbush hoisted on us. I think Skeeton and Scott Brooks have related points. Darned ol Christianity frowns on free-wheelin’ yahoo sex. Gbush represented for the Christian folk.
October 12th, 2009 | 8:00 pm | #33
The level of contempt that each side so fervantly wants the other to feel is awful.
October 12th, 2009 | 8:15 pm | #34
I have only occasionally looked in at this blog. Today I popped in from InsideCatholic.
I am a traditional (Extordinary Form) Roman Catholic.
I do not hate Mr. Obama, Mr. GW Bush, Mr. Clinton or Mr. GHW Bush. But none of them was fit to be President. I could say that I hold each one in contempt. Mr. Obama – a Democratic party hack straight from the Chicago machine. Bush fils – a spoiled rich kid and general screw up who avoided any “Kopechne” incidents and managed to fall into the Presidency. Mr. Clinton – a chisler and confidence man writ large. Bush pere went to all the right schools, had all the right entries on his resume, but didn’t seem to know why he wanted to be president and broke his most solemn promises and then wondered why he was a one termer.
But let’s cut to the chase.
The comments apall me. There are one or two brave souls who will denounce torture. The rest of the crowd fall over their feet either justifying it or simply denying it outright.
Please. Think of what your saying. Look at the article link and excerpt below and remember that Paul Craig Roberts was assistant secretary of the Treasure under Ronald Reagan – hardly a flag burning hippie.
If Only US Law Applied to the US Government
by Paul Craig Roberts
The U.S. government does not have a monopoly on hypocrisy, but no other government can match the hypocrisy of the U.S. government.
It is now well documented and known all over the world that the U.S. government tortured detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and that the U.S. government has had people kidnaped and “renditioned,” that is, transported to Third World countries, such as Egypt, to be tortured.
[Right. And all I am saying is that if it was wrong under Bush, it should be wrong under Obama, too, yet somehow he escapes criticism. Btw, whether you think any of these men were worthy to be president, the fact is, we can only elect the folks who run. Our selections are what they are.
-admin]
October 12th, 2009 | 8:18 pm | #35
Is waterboarding torture? Well, let’s see what Gaudium et Spes says about the matter. I have bolded the relevant text:
Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator.
The Anchoress stated that waterboarding is torture but says that doing it saved lives. Catholics may not excuse evil by saying the outcome was good, and when called on this denied it and said I was an “Alinskyite” for pointing it out.
I hate neither Bush nor Obama and wouldn’t dream of entertaining the notion to hate either, though both of them have fallen short as presidents.
My politics is informed by the Magisterium and therefore I have no home in either political party and resist all attempts to make the Catholic Church the Republican (or Democrat) party at prayer.
[What I said -specifically- was this: All indications are that the torture was very limited in scope and that -whether we are comfortable with it or not- information gleaned through waterboarding saved lives. That is not an endorsement of it, not an excuse of it, it is a simple statement of the facts as we understand them, made for the purpose of a larger argument. You are welcome to comment here, but not to take something I said and either mischaracterize it or impugn my motives. Your morals are admirable, but you're highjacking a thread and a discussion to fixate and lecture on one sentence that you appear to be willfully mischaracterizing as me making a moral argument. The bottom line -as much as you appear to wish to continue focusing on me, is that for many suddenly quiet people waterboarding and rendition -under Bush- was a reprehensible evil. That same under Obama is apparently something less objectionable. Ken, is that you? -admin]
October 12th, 2009 | 8:33 pm | #36
(That’s almost always a wise move. We’re getting to have a whole squad of Bender’s cheerleaders around here!)
Cathy – you are the official co-captain of the squad!!
The level of contempt that each side so fervantly wants the other to feel is awful.
Barbara, I really don’t like feeling contempt towards any of my fellow Americans, but it gets to the point that reasonable thinkers are trumped by sheep. The flocks are driving the shepherds in both parties, but I think we can all admit that the conservative sheep are a whole lot less vitriolic than the dems. Maybe I’m wrong.
October 12th, 2009 | 8:42 pm | #37
[...] Making comparisons to the identities and policies between George Bush’s presidency and that of the current White House resident’s, The Anchoress asks Leftists Why Don’t You Hate Obama? [...]
October 12th, 2009 | 8:43 pm | #38
Now Anchoress, you know darn well that I’m not going to be scared away by waving around the word “hate”.
Nor am I going to approach the “Waterboarding For Fun & Profit” crowd. If they aren’t convinced by or refused to view the Keith Oberman/Sean Hannity charity bet on the matter, nothing anyone else says is going to make that much difference.
Really, the matter is simple: there is nothing in your post that addresses any serious historical criticism of Bush’s actions or his words. You have chosen the fluff to make a point–that the people who are fixated on the fluff generally have fluff between the ears and are using the fluff as an excuse for indulging personal dislike of the man.
I would agree with almost all of what T. McDonald said, and what he said was emphatically not fluff. And both you and anyone who calls themselves “conservative” should listen and learn from him.
I am not conservative, so much of what he has to say is less compelling to me than I think it should be to you, but it’s real, it’s right, and everyone should think very carefully about it.
Bush took a country that had just experienced the longest single period of continuous prosperity in its history and that clearly was going to need careful management through a downturn. And he led it into its worst economic collapse in 80 years, provoking a worldwide collapse in the bargain.
Now this post is too focused elsewhere for me to burden it with the specific and destructive things that were done on his watch to the economy, but I assure you I can present them in detail for another post should you require them. Or details of any of my other assertions.
And I hope you will refrain from any foolish claim that 8 months of action by Barack Obama has anywhere near the impact on our situation as 8 years of bad management by George W. Bush.
He waged war badly and unintelligently because he was seduced by the appearance of infinite power that our fancy weapons create. He divided his forces without need when he needed to concentrate them most–when our main enemy had just slipped beyond our grasp.
Now, don’t give me any business about “bad intellegence”. In 2002 Saddam Hussein was in no position to do anything immediately dangerous with whatever weapons he may or may not have had, whether they were “mass destruction” or not.
And no sensible military man would have asserted that Saddam was able to or had been able to for ten full years. And I don’t think you will find any military assessment of the time that says he was.
Also don’t give me any business about the “liberation” of the Iraqi people from a tyrant. Tyrants are a dime a dozen around the world, and if any Democratic President had made the massive military blunders of George W. Bush to liberate the suffering citizens of Myanmar, you and most of your commentors would be demanding that President’s scalp.
But even worse than that, in two separate wars Bush made exactly the same mistake of dawdling and allowing the recrudescence of resistance to our military that has made these two wars the longest in our history.
He took a situation in the Middle East where our military power to dissuade the bad actors in the region was absolutely dominant and he frittered that dominance away. And that situation of dominance of the region was at it’s apogee after the invasion of Afghanistan and just before he went off on the wild goose chase in Iraq. So it was not a matter of his merely having made war. It was hubris and overconfidence after having made war successfully.
So no implications by anybody, please, that my politics makes me too weak and impotent to ever consider using military force.
He constantly asserted, either himself, or by proxy that the power of the Presidency was absolute and above the law. He issued executive orders contramanding and refusing to enforce any law that did not please him, and asserted his right to set aside any constitutional protection of any American citizen whom he labeled a “terrorist”.
No extralegal application of executive power was not in play, from abuse of material witness detention, to outright refusal to abide by the legal principle of haebus corpus and the American guarantee of a speedy trial by holding of a citizen without trial and with the clear intention of never bothering to try him. There were apparently even plans drawn up to send American troops immediately to any city where any “terrorist plot” was suspected without even bothering to rely on law enforcement agencies like the FBI.
Don’t give me any business either about the Patriot Act and the secret intelligence wiretapping court. I’m not even talking about the stuff he actually bullied Congress into giving him the legal authority to do. I’m talking about the stuff that was clearly outside any law and destructive to anyone’s freedom and rights should any President do them by mere fiat.
Mere fantasies about Obama planning to destroy constitutional rights simply don’t cut it, if anyone sat idly by and justified these actions of the past 8 years.
Finally, there is one last criticism that may seem small in comparison to what I have written above, but it means more than its mere presence would warrant. At no time in Bush’s 8 years in office was any citizen who disagreed with him ever allowed to even see the President in public.
His speeches were packed solely with shills and his motorcades deliberately rerouted away from groups of citizens who disagreed with him while they were held essentially in preventive detention in so-called “free speech zones”.
There is something still in this country called “the consent of the governed”. If you hide yourself in public from all but your own cheerleaders, you make it very clear that you’re not interested in it.
["And I hope you will refrain from any foolish claim that 8 months of action by Barack Obama has anywhere near the impact on our situation as 8 years of bad management by George W. Bush." Aw, come on, Joseph! Folks on your side were blaming Bush for 9/11 (he'd been in office 8 months) and refusing to look at the failures of the Clinton administration...and there were plenty...but thinking people understood that 9/11 was neither Bush's fault nor Clinton's but the terrorist's fault. Likewise, this economy, which was booming (and you know it was; we've had this fight for 4 years) did not suddenly suffer a world death because of Obama's 8 months or Bush's 8 years...but Obama is scaring the hell out of me with his debt. Why isn't he scaring you? And "free speech zones..." talk to me about those again in a couple years. Btw, these political discussions certainly do take their tolls on our serenity, don't they?
-admin]
October 12th, 2009 | 8:43 pm | #39
I tell you solemnly, if Bush had been pro-choice, all – ALL – would be ignored/forgiven/overlooked, just as it is for the current president. Why the loud, hideous expressions of hatred for a beauty queen or for an Alaskan governor or for a former senator (Santorum) and his family or for various talk-show hosts? Their enemies act as though the right to sex without consequences is the highest good, a right to be defended with screaming voices and flying spittle. Abortion infects everything it touches.
October 12th, 2009 | 9:11 pm | #40
I’ve thought for a while now that Bush was hated because he was 1) a devout Christian and 2) pro-life. That is all that is needed to be hated by the left. Try discussing the evils of abortion with a true leftist and see how far it gets you. The screams are deafening and the name-calling and hate aimed at you are incredible. Even if they liked you before.
Nope. Bush was hated simply because he was a true Christian and pro-life. The two “unforgivables.”
October 12th, 2009 | 9:12 pm | #41
Thanks Mr. Marshall for your comments. I appreciate them greatly. We are all human and each have our own strengths and weaknesses. I feel that we could have used someone with more reserve and intelligence during President Bush’s terms in office.
[Did you think that the second time you voted for him? I'm just curious, why you did vote for him that second time, then? Why not go for Kerry? -admin]
October 12th, 2009 | 9:18 pm | #42
Oh yes. As far as commenting to the actual subject of this post, 8 months is not enough time to judge someone in office, but I have to say that President Obama seems to be trying hard to get this country our of the mess that it has gotten itself into since the last depression. I have harsher criticism for our representatives in Congress who think on partisan lines rather than think what is good for the country. But, this is an unrelated argument.
[Voted for Bush twice, were troubled by his policies (which I assume means his spending as well) but not troubled by Obama's similar policies or his incredible spending? Interesting. Tell me more...-admin]
October 12th, 2009 | 9:23 pm | #43
Dear Anchoress:
I did vote for Kerry the second time around for two reasons. One, President Bush does not have the intellectual scope that is required for POTUS witnessed by all of the mistakes he made during his first term. Secondly, his mistakes by the end of his first term were already obvious, and accordingly the war in Iraq was off focus from the original critical mission. Where is Osama bin Laden?
[Wait, I am confused. Are you T Harris or T MacDonald, because you've both just shown up here, and T MacDonald was the one who said he voted twice for Bush and yet was disappointed, etc and he was also the one Joseph Marshall praised, but you heartfully thanked Joseph for his comments. Are you T MacDonald or T Harris? See, I'm a little dyslexic and all of these new T's are confusing me! I may have been teasing you unfairly! "Where is Osama bin Laden?" I don't know. Probably wherever US Forces are not, or where we soon will not be!
admin]
October 12th, 2009 | 9:24 pm | #44
elmo, are you incapable of getting the point being made? It’s been explained to you multiple times now. Our host wasn’t making any statement about torture itself but about the similarities in different administration policies regarding same, and the vastly different reactions to those similarities.
Get a clue, please.
October 12th, 2009 | 9:29 pm | #45
Anchoress, I do not believe I mischaracterized what you wrote — it still reads as an excuse or apologia for waterboarding based on whatever good you believe came of it. If you meant otherwise, ok fine. I stand corrected.
But you stated it this way and that is why I made the comment about whether you were aware that torture is not compatible with Catholicism. The phrasing implied (maybe unintentionally) that what the Bush administration did wasn’t as bad as those Obama supporters/Bush haters are claiming they are. I am saying, and I believe that the teaching of the church backs me up, that waterboarding and torture is intrinsically evil, regardless of what good made come of it.
I made and implied no statement whatsoever about your motives. You, however, called me an “Alinskyite”, so if anybody is impugning character or mischaracterizing statements, it is you. I did not intend to highjack the thread, but I wanted to defend myself against your slur.
[Funnily enough, elmo, I was defending myself against what I perceived to be YOUR slur of me. Truce? Or must this go on until we all want to puke? -admin]
October 12th, 2009 | 9:34 pm | #46
“Anchoress, I do not believe I mischaracterized what you wrote”
You did.
“it still reads as an excuse or apologia for waterboarding based on whatever good you believe came of it.”
No, it doesn’t.
October 12th, 2009 | 9:48 pm | #47
“Likewise, this economy, which was booming (and you know it was; we’ve had this fight for 4 years) did not suddenly suffer a world death because of Obama’s 8 months or Bush’s 8 years.”
I meant what I said about details. The key is very simple: increasing war spending while cutting taxes [as he did in 2002-2005] will obviously induce a certain amount of immediate stimulus that may be reflected in a boomlet of the sort that happened 2005-2007.
But what was far more important was that to manage the immediate stagnation that those debt and spending increases induced from 2000-2004, Alan Greenspan was forced to cut interest rates to levels not seen since the 1960’s. By doing this, he solicited the overeliance on credit that nearly collapsed the banking system.
But he had no other choice given the ballooning spending and shrinking Federal revenue from 2002 forward. The US government was simply sopping up the credit market, which is what businesses actually rely on to capitalize–not sales. Greenspan had to keep lowering the interest rates to compensate and encourage lenders to extend more credit.
The housing bubble was fueled by the exaggerated demand that this sustained low interest rate encouraged. And a good deal, if not all, of the so-called prosperity of 2005-2007 was fueled by people borrowing against their home equity while the rates were lower than they ever have been in the lives of most of us. Certainly the $ volume of the borrowing was much larger than the $ cut from taxes.
And all other debt instruments, including credit cards followed exactly the same pattern. When credit is cheap and easy people will use it, and when the collateral for credit is real property even bankers can be, and were, deceived into thinking that the forecloseable collateral would hold its value.
But the essential failure was trying to use tax cuts to stimulate while sharply increasing borrowing and the dumping the capital raised half a world away where it could have no impact on the domestic economy.
[And yet even the NY Times admitted that our tax revenues were at a record high in 2006, and it was only in late 2007, when the recession began (umm...who controlled Congress, then) that we started tumbling, and as to this part: "The housing bubble was fueled by the exaggerated demand that this sustained low interest rate encouraged. And a good deal, if not all, of the so-called prosperity of 2005-2007 was fueled by people borrowing against their home equity while the rates were lower than they ever have been in the lives of most of us. Certainly the $ volume of the borrowing was much larger than the $ cut from taxes." Where did that derive from, Joseph, from which policies under which president? Did you forget that the Bush administration tried over a dozen times, to get Congress to rein in those loans and reform what was going on w/ Fannie and Freddie? No. You cannot pin it all on Bush, but I know you'll try to. The bigger question, rather than our continuing 5 year spat, is how will Obama's tax increases other increases -and they're going to be huge, and they're going to affect every facet of our lives- help to create the jobs that will be needed in order to once again create tax revenues and pay down the terrifying deficit? Your solutions to that? And what about this, Joseph? -admin]
October 12th, 2009 | 10:08 pm | #48
Beloved Anchoress, you are utilizing logic. Liberals do not do so; they are limited to the ravages of emotion. God bless you for speaking the truth to (now) power. Keep on keeping on.
October 12th, 2009 | 10:11 pm | #49
dear Anchoress,
Thanks for your defense president George W., an honorable and good man, whatever the debate of what he could have done better. I do miss him.
Yes, president Obama and the forces and folks who are bringing such a tide of dismay (vs hope) and distressing “change” are scarey and anger me, but I am reminded to pray for them in Scripture, and so I do (not enough, I’m sure!)
Actually, when I do, my heart is eased. And maybe the Lord’s answer to such prayers will be amazing!
Bless you for your site, mixing political concerns, faith contemplations, and general good stuff!
October 12th, 2009 | 10:21 pm | #50
A, the snark is back….
I believe that Bush had the full Alinsky pulled on him.
October 12th, 2009 | 10:23 pm | #51
Hell’s bells, hopeful Mary – not only do I miss W, who, no matter what, had something horrible to deal with, and it changed everything, I miss that (so-and-so) Clinton, and I couldn’t even bear to watch him on tv – 8 years and every time he showed up, I had to turn it off or leave. Sheesh – it makes me ill that I just said that!
Thanks for your prayers for all this – maybe I’ll get up the stomach to do it one day soon, too.
October 12th, 2009 | 10:29 pm | #52
Not that it’s worth talking with people like you, Anchoress, you —-ing —-, but what exactly was ever admirable about W? One thing? Anything? Anyone? That he was credulous? That he had “gut feelings” (like my dog)? That he claimed to be “saved” (as any damn fool can)?
A man who was a thundering sub-mediocrity, at best, and who was born with a super-platinum spoon in his mouth, which is the only reason he was ever given the opportunity to fail at the level he did. Am I supposed to admire the privileged oligarchy/plutocracy that the oaf represented? Why? Enquiring (non-Right) minds want to know.
[Hmmm...so, you come in here, tell me I'm not the sort of person worth talking to, call me a ----ing --- (as though that makes it alright) and then demand some sort of reasonable good faith debate from me? No, I don't think so. But I'll let your comment through, since it says more about you than it does me...or for that matter, Bush or Obama. -admin]
October 12th, 2009 | 10:43 pm | #53
There are two standards in judging Obama and Bush; that is clear. Great work, thanks for the research! I think it may also be that media types believe it is OK to ridicule, name call, and viciously ondemn conservative white men and women (Bush and Palin), but everyone else gets a pass.
October 12th, 2009 | 10:44 pm | #54
Re: your reply to Hank concerning electrodes attached to the “gentiles” – I was still trying to figure out, Anchoress, what it meant that Chicago’s police department had a “rouge” unit.
October 12th, 2009 | 10:53 pm | #55
Electrodes on the gentiles? You know, eventually the Jews get blamed for everything.
[These are apparently heavily made-up Jews.
-admin]
October 12th, 2009 | 11:05 pm | #56
Please. Think of what your saying.
Please don’t insult those you disagree with by accusing them of not thinking about the issue.
A good many of us HAVE thought about the issue of torture. Indeed, we have thought about it much more than those who flippantly condemn the United States of engaging in torture (and who quote Treasury officials in support).
And having engaged in such a substantive legal analysis, considering both the actual statutory law, case law, and the known facts, it is clear beyond argument that THERE WAS NO TORTURE engaged in as a matter of policy or in any of the enhanced interrogations at issue. I’m not going to repeat that rather extensive analysis, which was posted in these pages some months ago when the matter last came up (go search for it yourself), suffice to say that there has been no additional information to alter that considered legal analysis and conclusion.
And the fact that Eric Holder — attorney of record for Gitmo detainees — has not and will not ever obtain a conviction, or even seek a prosecution, rather than a persecution, is because he and the rest of the Justice Department know that there was no torture. All that there has been is people like Holder and Obama shooting their mouths off about things they know nothing about and, characteristically, attacking and slandering good American people.
October 12th, 2009 | 11:59 pm | #57
Did you forget that the Bush administration tried over a dozen times, to get Congress to rein in those loans and reform what was going on w/ Fannie and Freddie?
Anchoress, Fannie and Freddie are not the only ones in the lending business. All these lenders did just fine under the usual interest rates that we’ve seen since at least 1980–rates pegged to permit a very moderate amount of inflation during periods of prosperity.
Lenders are actually borrowers, too. They borrow from the Federal Reserve and when the Fed reduces the rates at which they lend, it is an inducement for the lenders to borrow more and re-lend it. That’s how the lenders make money and make much more money than they could just lending their own deposits. .
Moreover, lenders borrow from other lenders: Diddledy Squat Bank in Topeka hasn’t enough capital in deposits to lend what they feel they can make money on because Microsoft just relocated to Topeka [how's that for liberal fantasy?]. So they borrow from Chase, or Citicorp, or some other mega-bank. Diddledy Squat is the “downstream” lender, Chase is the “upstream” lender, and the Fed is the source of the stream.
So when the Fed encourages borrowing at the level of 2000-2004 it has a massive ripple effect throughout the entire financial community. The banking business is purely a matter of confidence and trust, and that trust is based on the banker’s judgment–weighing the cost from the bank borrowing from upstream, the profit to be made by relending it, and the safety factor of being able to seize and resell the collateral.
Judgment is always uncertain. Real property has always had a very high safety factor as collateral. If something changes that then the banker’s will be deceived into lending too freely. And the more loaned cash the Fed has released downstream, the higher the stakes for everybody if conventional judgments are becoming less accurate.
The Fed is the key player, not Congress. In fact, one of the reasons the Fed exists is to keep Congress from manipulating the economy in the interest of politics.
However, the Executive Branch has to cooperate. How much they borrow has one set of effects. What they do with the money has another. Not only did Bush borrow extensively, most of the extra money was poured into the Middle East and largely did not circulate through our economy.
Generally speaking this pattern tightens all credit since the lenders have the choice of lending to the US at a good rate of return and much higher safety. To keep credit flowing for business, the Fed then has to lower it’s interest rates as an inducement to more lending.
But Bush didn’t just do this. He also cut taxes, which means he had to borrow still more to make up for the short-term revenue loss. Hence Greenspan’s dilemma: release more money in the stream and run the higher risk of a crisis if judgment starts to go sour. Or release less and starve business for capital.
Tax cuts induce expansion, but on a much longer time frame than lending because the money has to circulate through consumption. So the flight of the US borrowed money abroad and out of domestic circulation has a strong dampening effect on what a tax cut can accomplish, because it’s pull on the credit markets is faster and harder than push of consumer spending can ever be.
I have no idea whether what Obama will do will succeed. But we must all understand the essential difference in what he is doing. His deficit will fund things like domestic medical care, if some bill for it passes. This will put the money into immediate circulation here rather than draining it off abroad.
My best guess would be that the greatest danger would actually be a sudden-onset overstimulation of the economy, forcing the Fed to raise interest rates sharply to clamp down on inflation.
But this is just a guess. I did better than Alan Greenspan did in calling the Housing Crisis, but I don’t expect to beat the central banker at his own game ever again.
October 13th, 2009 | 2:58 am | #58
Elmo has certainly clarified Church teaching, particularly citing Gaudium et Spes. The teaching about “coercion of will” obviously condemns advertising, most interrogations, and good old fashioned spousal nagging. If my coerced will can rebound I’ll cite this the next time I’m forced to attend a chick flick.
October 13th, 2009 | 5:12 am | #59
I think the Left’s hatred of Bush (and the corresponding love for Obama) can all be traced to a fairly simple cause. Bush, for all his shortcomings, was an adult. He had admitted his “youthful indiscretions” and, from all that I can see, moved beyond them. He was constantly tarred as a “frat-boy”, but I never met one of them who was so consistently disciplined (not to mention home in bed–with his wife, no less–at 9pm).
President Bush, for good or ill, was Dad. He was going to protect us, even when we didn’t want him to.
President Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, is not Dad, but rather the Cool Older Brother. He seems like the type who, rather than going to bed at a reasonable hour, will stay up all night with a bottle of Boone’s Farm Apple Wine and engage us in an endless dorm room bull session. We won’t get much done, but we will listen in awe as he talks about Sartre and Camus and Chomsky.
Some on the Left have never outgrown their fondness for such figures. Me? I have a family to protect and provide for, and so I don’t have time, energy or inclination to sit up all night and say “Wow, HEAVY, man!”
October 13th, 2009 | 5:26 am | #60
Joseph Marshall
October 12th, 2009 | 11:59 pm
As enlightening as your little lecture on the housing crisis was, you conveniently leave out some very important players – like ACORN, and Congress, bringing some serious pressure on banks to provide loans to those who could not pay for them, through providing real teeth to the CRA.
Then with Congressional shepherding by the likes of Dodd and Franks, these little morsels of loans were packaged up and sold with the imprimatur of Freddy and Fanny and implied Govt. guarantees.
Unlike you, I have some idea of Obama’s ideas succeeding or no. He is paying off unions, bloating Government jobs / spending and placing the country into a debt situation which threatens to destroy our economy and our military security. The injection of $$$ into the government is much less efficient than into the private sector, and moreover, this WH policy has driven investment, domestic and foreign, out of the market while waiting to see the when the other shoe, rising taxes and other onerous policies, will be made law, making this a terrible market in which to risk capital.
We agree on inflation, but the cause is the endless printing press of the Fed producing cash.
While I disagreed with many of the Bush moves, can’t say I suffered from BDS. Your mileage may vary on that.
Back to our hostess’ primary point.
I work hard at praying for this president. I don’t think I hate him, but I surely fear his behavior. He is either over his head, being controlled by Soros or other socialists, or he is destroying our infrastructure on purpose. Neither belief on my part engenders much in the way of trust of him.
Now hate? My contempt and disgust is largely directed toward the dinosaur media, who betrayed this country by not vetting this cypher of a president, and even now suppresses information that citizens need to make sound decisions. They have long passed up bias and are so in the tank for this administration that they need fish food. Thank God for blogs and alternative media – the transition just isn’t fast enough.
October 13th, 2009 | 9:00 am | #61
Conservatives Shift In Favour Of Openly Gay Service Mmbers
The Gop Speaks
October 13th, 2009 | 9:14 am | #62
Ending DADT
October 13th, 2009 | 9:50 am | #63
like ACORN, and Congress, bringing some serious pressure on banks to provide loans to those who could not pay for them, through providing real teeth to the CRA.
Nobody is going to make loans that they think people will default on and the lender will not be able to recoup the loan value with the collateral–particularly when the lender has to borrow money to do it. It all depends on judgment of what the real risks of the lending are and no amount of “pressure” is going to force a banker beyond his perception of the safety level, Congress or ACORN or not.
But, for all their articles of faith about the “free market”, conservatives really have very little understanding of how markets actually work. This is why they are running around under the illusion that Fannie and Freddie acted as if anybody who walked in the door was qualified for a loan–safety level or no.
Lower the interest rates for everybody, and you encourage everybody–bankers, marginal home buyers, current home owners and businesses to assume more risk, thus creating more demand for loans.
The market, and the problem, doesn’t just consist of marginal borrowers. One of the major components of this crisis was borrowing against equity purely for purposes of consumption–and it wasn’t the marginal borrowers who did this–they had no equity to speak of.
It was all the fine folks, many of them “conservatives” who are always looking down their nose at those pesky marginal home buyers and pontificating to them about how spendthrift they are.
The injection of $$$ into the government is much less efficient than into the private sector
Now, frankly, this is a piece of a catechism that I have never heard anybody who avers it follow with a single scarp of evidence or an example that supports it. Catechisms are just fine when the issue is one where there is little empirical evidence–such as the Nature of God–but they really are out of place in economics.
Money is money wherever it comes from and wherever it goes to. Nobody “injects” it into the private sector, they either lend the money at interest or purchase goods and services. Even the so called “government bank bailout” consisted of loans secured by the collateral of stock in the banks. I doubt that one in ten people who put up such a fuss over it even bothered to find this out.
Moreover, wonder of wonders, the banks are actually paying the money back with all deliberate speed. Why? Because they can’t stay solvent and do profitable business hanging on to the debt and merely operating on the borrowed money.
Does anybody who made the fuss even mention this? Do any of these fine people even know? Or are they still nursing a grudge that the Government printed up a bunch of “free money” just gave it to the banks.
Another part of the catechism, I suppose.
Now consider the matter of consumption. If the government pays me as a doctor under Medicare or Medicaid the money I get spends just the same way as the stuff I get from Nationwide paid out under their policies. So it has exactly the same impact on the economy in either case. They pay me, I spend it.
Frankly, government spending has one genuine advantage over consumer spending–you can direct a whole lot of it at once into a small sector of the overall market and insulate that sector from the operation of supply and demand.
This is how all those fancy new weapons systems that make Presidents feel so powerful and all of us feel so safe come into being. They are nursed along with “cost overruns” that are supplemental payments to the contractors to keep them going until they finally come up with a weapon that’s worth shooting at somebody with.
Can you imagine giving Wal-Mart a “cost overrun” on your next purchase of bath towels? Or the government trying to buy missile interception systems or new attack helicopters from Target?
“Free market” dogma is generally a substitute for facts and thought. And not a very good substitute at that.
October 13th, 2009 | 10:40 am | #64
Anchoress: Fine, consider it a truce. I have been coming here for years and generally enjoy your blog posts and I would hate to stop coming back!;)
October 13th, 2009 | 11:00 am | #65
“if it was wrong under Bush, it should be wrong under Obama, too, yet somehow he escapes criticism”
Absolutely true to the first part. For myself and many others he does not escape criticism. It is the HuffPost liberals who should be up in arms – but aren’t.
“we can only elect the folks who run”
True. And there is little excuse for supporting a John S. McCain over a Ron Paul or a Barack Obama over a Mike Gravel. And if necessary sitting out the election between the two sock puppets of the so-called major parties. Already only half of Americans vote. Some may be apathetic, but surely some abstain from disgust. If we could get that participation down to 20% maybe we’d starting getting better candidates?
Bender:
Years ago I worked at a large company. This company was exploring a ’strategic partnership’ with a technology company. There was one problem. Objectively, the partnership made no economic sense – both the geeks and the bean counters knew it and showed it in their evaluations of the proposition. That didn’t matter a bit. The two CEO’s told the evaluators to ‘do it over’ with the implication that the ‘right’ answer had better be forthcoming. Dare I say that nobody was surprised that the re-evaluation supported the views of the top tacos? Of course the deal collapsed in less than 1 year (instead of running 10 as it was supposed). Reality has a way of doing that.
Lesson learned? The boss can have any recommendation he requires.
John Yoo is to the practice of law as Lon Horiuchi is to the practice of law enforcement. That neither man will pay for his deeds is a small matter compared with our obligation to properly name those deeds.
Some of the folks here seem to be saying that if it doesn’t leave a mark, it is not torture. So, I guess breaking on the wheel or eye-gouging is out.
Would those individuals like to conduct the Holy Father about Abu G. or Gitmo while some of these enhanced interrogation techniques were in operation? Do you think that you could persuade him that what was being done was proper? Do you think it matters?
And as a last point: The supposed value of the intelligence extracted is affirmed by the same authority that affirmed that there was no torture.
October 13th, 2009 | 11:01 am | #66
Why the Bush hate?
There are many secondary reasons, reasons that are specific to Bush. But the primary reason is easy — because hate is what they do.
We saw this when their darling became the GOP nominee for president. The “sure thing” was suddenly abandoned and treated as someone to be destroyed.
We see it now, when conservatives and Republicans are totally powerless to stop them from doing anything. And yet, 99 times out of a 100 when you happen to stop at MSNBC when flipping through the stations, they will be trashing those utterly powerless conservatives and Republicans.
Every Obama speech is incomplete without some contemptuous slap, often backhanded, at some person or group.
Spend a few moments in hell — Detroit — where the libs and Dems have been in 100 percent total control for decades, and see the seething hate that spews from that place.
Hate and resentment is what they do. It is intrinsic to their emphasis on “justice” — social justice, economic justice, racial justice, reproductive justice, gender justice, environmental justice, etc. — all of which are inherently adversarial, divisive, and forever bent on “settling scores” and “getting even,” bringing others down and getting/taking the power and material goods that are “owed” to them.
It does not matter who the president is, or other political office (or religious office, e.g. that Nazi pope), they hate because they have hated so much and for so long that they have become what they do. They have become hate.
Besides if the world hated Jesus enough to crucify Him, do you really think the people of the world are going to treat you any better?
October 13th, 2009 | 11:26 am | #67
“Nor am I going to approach the “Waterboarding For Fun & Profit” crowd. If they aren’t convinced by or refused to view the Keith Oberman/Sean Hannity charity bet on the matter, nothing anyone else says is going to make that much difference.”
I do not watch either Olbermann or Hannity, so I have no idea what this is.
In any event, we waterboarded three admitted al Qaeda leaders in an attempt to save lives. We were not just randomly waterboarding guys we picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan for laughs.
They were told before they were waterboarded that they would not die, which they probably figured out anyway when they did not die after the first few times. We had doctors observing them during the entire process.
The problem with the word “torture” is the same one society has with the word “racism” — they are overused and applied to such a wide range of actions that they lose their meaning.
Is waterboarding, which we have performed on almost 30,000 of our own troops as part of their SERE training, really the same as as cutting off a finger or toe every time someone gives an answer you do not like? Is it really the same as turning on the juice to electrodes (or worse, car battery cables) attached to their genitals in order to get them to talk? Is it really the same as pushing a drill through someone’s knee cap to force an answer?
Catholics can pride themselves on a tradition of applying reason to difficult moral issues. The question of what methods of coercion can be used on men who have killed innocents and have planned to kill even more is a difficult moral issue. Simply labeling all coercive interrogation techniques as “torture” is intellectually dishonest and extremely dangerous to our society.
October 13th, 2009 | 11:28 am | #68
I have a few things to say on the “alleged” torture such as waterboarding. Anything can be torture, if the right thing is done to the right individual. Inflicting horrendous pain such as pulling out fingernails, the rack, etc. is torture by most standards but is waterboarding. I don’ know. All I know is that by most standards, music is music, but some of today’s music is torture as a lot of other things. We need to be careful how we use our words.
October 13th, 2009 | 11:40 am | #69
“Would those individuals like to conduct the Holy Father about Abu G. or Gitmo while some of these enhanced interrogation techniques were in operation? Do you think that you could persuade him that what was being done was proper? Do you think it matters?”
No one here is claiming that the prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib was proper. The guards involved in that were prosecuted by the military. It is typical in these discussions to see various unlawful and unauthorized activities lumped in with the interrogations at Gitmo.
I also absolutely think I could adequately explain to B16 why three admitted al Qaeda leaders had to be waterboarded. He has come face-to-face with evil men in his life, so I am sure he would recognize what they are and what had to be done to protect the innocent.
“And as a last point: The supposed value of the intelligence extracted is affirmed by the same authority that affirmed that there was no torture.”
Wrong. Obama’s head of the NSA, Admiral Blair, confirmed the value of the intelligence.
October 13th, 2009 | 11:42 am | #70
I think “elmo” might appreciate my, uh…. criticism of First Things and their seeming inability to deal with certain issues here.
BTW, this is a great post. Thanks for your excellent work.
October 13th, 2009 | 11:59 am | #71
Thank you, Anchoress, for an excellent article. I won’t defend some of President Bush’s actions because I don’t think it is necessary. History will be the best judge. But you are dead on, if something is bad under one administration why isn’t it under the other. One more point, people seem to forget that the President is not a monarch. We have a congress that passes the laws. Yes, the president has to sign them but if he doesn’t like the law, he can veto. However, that is always not possible. Also, remember that states have governors and that has to do alot with what happens in those states. Under Clinton, he had a republican congress and mostly republican governors. Under Bush, it was the opposite. Generally, we have a Congress that is the opposite party to the executive branch. That wasn’t so for over 40 years and those years saw all those “welfare” and social programs that are law today. Whether they were good or not depends on a person’s perspective. While I don’t have all the evidence, it might be worthwile for someone to look at how many democratic governors we had during the Bush years. I know Calif. had a “republican” but come on, does anyone thinking person really think Swartesnegger(sp) is really republican? You can’t lay every economic problem on the president, be it Clinton, Bush or anyone else. All that said, I believe President Bush to be a good man who did all he could to protect our country. He did not bite back like this president is doing when the media criticized him as well as all the lefties in Congress and Hollywood. While I dislike some of what he did I think he was not “stupid” nor bumbling. He did not have the media build him up nor overlook his stumbles as they have this president. Obama stumbles almost daily yet we hear nothing in the MSM. Honestly Folks, do you really think that a stupid person could be elected president – what does that say about us.
October 13th, 2009 | 12:50 pm | #72
A conservative friend of mine directed me to your blog in the hope,I guess, of swinging my views rightward. Quite the opposite.
I really enjoyed reading the back and forth between Anchoress and Mr Marshal. His devastatingly fact filled critique has reduced the hostess to ad hominid rebuttal.
As to the torture issue, please. Even as a lapsed Catholic I still recall that the Church’s teaching on violence are adamantly anti-. That 30,000 GI’s have experienced waterboarding in their training is not an excuse for using it to extract mostly inaccurate and false confessions. I don’t have time here to list all the cases that support this but the most important one is involves General Powell’s use of information gleaned as a result of waterboarding to justify the need to invade Iraq in his UN speech that sealed the case for war.
The man waterboarded was bn al-Sheikh al-Libi, [referred to by intelligence agencies as "Curveball"] “an al-Qaeda operative who later claimed he gave the CIA false information in the face of actual and threatened torture.
The military & intelligence services have belatedly admitted than an unspecified number of detainees have died in custody. What do you think caused their deaths? Too much cake and ice cream??
And, if you don’t think being rendered to a prison in some remote area of Egypt or the Turkish mountains isn’t torture, you should go on line and see for your self.Horrifying doesn’t begin to describe reality.
Sending me here didn’t quite accomplish what Joe was probably hoping for, but the generally civil tone of posters and the level of discourse is very good. Most conservative blogs I’ve read wouldn’t allow space for the point of view of Joe Marshall or myself. America is all of US> It is WE who are the ones who must solve ALL of our problems. There is no room for HATE. If we cannot TALK this through we are all DOOMED.
[Welcome; I am glad you find the place "civil" in tone, which is what we strive for here. I'm sure you have seen some more conservative sites that "won't allow space" for opposing view points, I certainly have seen more than my share of uncivil "liberal" sites that will not allow an opposing view to stand, so perhaps "civility" is all too rare on both sides. As to whether my responses to Joseph Marshall, who is a good friend, has been "ad hominid" or not, I will let Joseph decide on that. We know each other well, have long disagreed on pretty much everything, and still manage to be friends, so perhaps we're not doomed, just yet. -admin]
October 13th, 2009 | 1:01 pm | #73
First of all: liberals didn’t “hate” Bush, if by that you mean have a personal grudge against him. You will recall that Bush enjoyed massive popularity after 9/11. The entire country, liberal and conservative alike, were willing to give him a chance. He blew it, and so justifiable criticism came his way. Of course the critics were denounced as traitors by all good conservatives, but just because you were uncomfortable criticizing Bush, doesn’t mean we “hated” him. That’s stupid. It wasn’t personal.
Second: Liberals are levelling the exact same criticisms at Obama. I realize that the conservative talking point is that liberals worship Obama and never speak ill of him, but if you read Digby, and Atrios, and Glen Greenwald. . . in fact just about any liberal blogger, you will find pointed, sane and passionate criticism of the Obama administration. (ead what Micheal Moore, for example, said on Huffington Post about Obama’s Nobel). We don’t “hate” Obama any more than we “hated” Bush, but we criticize when criticism is due.
Tjird: why are you still talking about Bush? He is no longer president, and all of the mean hurtful things that were said about him are in the past. Can’t you move on? Would you like an apology from all those who hurt his feelings, and apparently your as well? Because it’s not going to happen. You will have to grow up and remember that politics is a rough business.
[You are new to this blog, so you perhaps do not realize that my frustration with Obama has more to do with the press, than with anything else. There are, yes, a handful of liberal bloggers who are losing patience with Obama, but his minions in the press still allow him the very "passes" (and the double standards) that I have enumerated here, and if my email (and the comments section) are indicative, the majority on the left is still willing to overlook a great deal that Obama does -even when it is precisely what Bush did- because he is Obama. You write "Of course the critics were denounced as traitors by all good conservatives..." Really...I didn't make that denunciation. You come here and criticize me for being too broad in my accusation and then...accuse me (and all conservatives) that broadly? That's ironic, isn't it. Were you going for irony?
"Liberals don't 'hate' Bush"? Be honest, now -that is not even debatable. As to your "Bush isn't president, move on, and grow up," remarks, I'm pretty grown up, thanks. As to moving on, I'm as ready to move on as all the rest of the world, but since the Nobel committee is still communicating about Bush, in one way of another, and since the media is gleefully crowing that Obama "got that for not being Bush" and since my email still gets the daily "at least Obama is not Bush you Bushbot moron" missives, I'd say perhaps we're not ready to "move on" after all. For that matter, even my esteemed friend Joseph Marshall, seems completely disinterested in all of those similarities in policies (and differences in temperament) between Bush and Obama and in content to simply rehash old arguments, justifying his own fervent dislike of Bush, rather than addressing the main point of this piece -which is that the things which were decried, mocked and hated for 8 years, are suddenly simply shrug-offable. No, I'm not looking for an apology for Bush. Consistency would be nice, though! -admin]
October 13th, 2009 | 1:16 pm | #74
[...] Anchoress has a wonderful compare and contrast essay, Why don’t you “hate” Obama? , which is essential reading. In essence, how you see and describe the man says much more about you. [...]
October 13th, 2009 | 1:38 pm | #75
“As to the torture issue, please. Even as a lapsed Catholic I still recall that the Church’s teaching on violence are adamantly anti-. That 30,000 GI’s have experienced waterboarding in their training is not an excuse for using it to extract mostly inaccurate and false confessions. I don’t have time here to list all the cases that support this but the most important one is involves General Powell’s use of information gleaned as a result of waterboarding to justify the need to invade Iraq in his UN speech that sealed the case for war.
The man waterboarded was bn al-Sheikh al-Libi, [referred to by intelligence agencies as "Curveball"] “an al-Qaeda operative who later claimed he gave the CIA false information in the face of actual and threatened torture.
The military & intelligence services have belatedly admitted than an unspecified number of detainees have died in custody. What do you think caused their deaths? Too much cake and ice cream?? ”
This is typical. Mixing events that occurred years apart and in different locations, reporting unsubstantiated rumors as fact, and simply misstating facts.
Three al Qaeda leaders were waterboarded. None of them died. Admiral Blair, Obama’s NSA Director, stated in an internal memo, which was acquired by that right-wing rag The New York Times, that those interrogations obtained valuable information and saved lives.
As far as deaths in American custody, I recall one. I would like a citation to support your claim that the military and intellegence services have “belatedly” admitted to an “unspecified number” of deaths. Slandering the men and women who try to protect this country by that type of general accusation is shameful. Be specific if you are going to accuse our troops and intelligence officers of murder.
October 13th, 2009 | 3:04 pm | #76
Here’s a place to start on “deaths in custody”
I’d also say to simply google “gitmo” and “deaths in custody” – you’ll get plenty of hits.
Brian E.:
“Wrong. Obama’s head of the NSA, Admiral Blair, confirmed the value of the intelligence.”
What I meant by confirmed by the same authority was that the government confirmed that the government did not torture. The government confirmed that the government found the intelligence useful.
For my purposes just because the occupant of a given musical chair changes it doesn’t change the authority that is making the finding.
[Hey, if you guys are going to start giving each other links, please take a moment to learn how to embed them or you'll find yourself stuck in the spam filter while I go get a haircut and make supper, my schedule for the night means I am not likely to be checking on comments, and if you get stuck in the spam filter you might be there until tomorrow afternoon and I'm sure you won't like that! -admin]
October 13th, 2009 | 3:08 pm | #77
“There are, yes, a handful of liberal bloggers who are losing patience with Obama, but his minions in the press still allow him the very “passes” (and the double standards) that I have enumerated here, and if my email (and the comments section) are indicative, the majority on the left is still willing to overlook a great deal that Obama does -even when it is precisely what Bush did- because he is Obama.”
It is more than a handful, as you say. And it has been less than a year that Obama has been in office.
And Obama’s “minions” in the press were Bush “minions” during his tenure, failing to seriously criticize anything he did until it was far too late.
The press defers to power, they don’t care which party weilds it. They gave Bush a nice long honeymoon after 9/11.
And lets’ face it, the criticism you aim at liberals can be easily flipped to apply to conservatives: how can they claim that Obama is a far left socilaist who seeks to weaken America, when his policies concerning national defense are pretty much the same as they were under Bush. . . who was a hero to the right.
I had hoped that the election of Obama meant a repudiation of the “torture and open-ended war” theory of foreign policy that Bush championed.
If that is not the case, if Obama is just as bad, then I will vote against him.
But ti is not at all clear what your criticism is: are you against torture and pre-emptive war, and if so, why were you not against them when Bush was president?
[We can get into whole philosophical discussions regarding preemptive war and how that may even be defined in an era where terrorism has supplanted formal declarations, but I'm don't have the time or energy for such debates, not this week. I also have absolutely no intention of once again opening this thread up to the question of what I believe or don't believe. I have 5 years of archives that more than explain my pov's, my meanderings, and even those subjects on which I admit I am either poorly informed or not fully decided. This post was not a "criticism" of policies, but a simple wondering on my part why some people are so willing to excuse policies in one president that they despised in another. I'm not even telling people they should hate anyone - God forbid! But the question, "why is this not worthy of the same hate (or anger, if you prefer) you espoused for the past 8 years," is a fair one. -admin]
October 13th, 2009 | 4:01 pm | #78
Old Crusader:
I did your search on bing (not a google fan), and found an msnbc story on five detainee suicides at Gitmo. Those are our fault?
The Wikipedia entry on Gitmo also mentions the suicides. It states that the Saudi Human Rights Group (how is that for an oxymoron?) blames the U.S. for the deaths, but that is what you would expect from them.
What am I missing?
October 13th, 2009 | 4:49 pm | #79
“But the question, “why is this not worthy of the same hate (or anger, if you prefer) you espoused for the past 8 years,” is a fair one. -admin”
Fair enough. But my answer is simple: The left is acquitting itself much better in this regard than the right did when Bush was in power.
There are many serious criticism’s levelled at Obama from the left. Whereas the right had very little bad to say about Bush until they started losing elections.
October 13th, 2009 | 4:53 pm | #80
Hank:
“A rouge unit of the Chicago Police” – 7:36 post
Could that be related to DADT?
October 13th, 2009 | 4:57 pm | #81
Phosphorus,
What cave were you in during the Bush years? There was tons of criticism directed at him from conservatives. The isolationists who were against going into Iraq, those who thought he shouldn’t work with Kennedy on the “no child left behind” program, those who thought he should have been more specifically anti-Muslim, etc.
October 13th, 2009 | 5:05 pm | #82
Brian E:
You have to start digging down in the results list and maybe go off into some side alleys. It’s not an easy trip because the MSM is no more interested in this kind of report than it is interested in reporting on anti-abortion marches.
BTW: It appears that almost all search engines do some discreet editing. I think Bing is supposed to be a bit more agressive than some of the others – though from what I have read it tends to be in areas where MS has some sensitivities
. You might want to experiment with others like Ixquick
Try this article:
here to pick up one interesting report.
N.B. I am not talking about deaths just in Gitmo. Overall it looks like we have more than 100 deaths in captivity. Say 12-30 (depending on the different reports you may run across) clear homocides. Some suicides. Some inadequate medical care. Some who-knows?.
October 13th, 2009 | 5:08 pm | #83
Scott Brooks wrote:
“They hate him because he is a true Christian with Christian values and was looked to by the American Christian Right to support Christian values.
Obama is a phony Christian, whose theology is embedded in hatred of other groups. That’s why they love him.”
I write:
Actually, this is why I hate Bush (and I won’t bother with the usual circumlocutions about how I don’t really “hate” him, just disgaree with everything he stands for. In as far as “hate” is a negative psychological reaction to the mere thought of someone, then yes, I hate Bush. I pray for charity in this regard, but as a simple description of my psychological state, that describes about as well as anything.)
Anyway, this is the reason for my reaction: the fact that Bush was supposed to represent “real” christianity, and that therefore to oppose him was to not make a purely political, prudential judgment, but to take a stand against the church.
I suppose it’s unfair to blame Bush for this, since he never claimed the mantle of “Leader of Christianity” for himself, but his supporters sure did.
He wasn’t a catholic, and he violated just war doctrine, and he supported torture, and he did nothing to actually end abortion. . . and yet somehow it was assumed that christians should support him. He was just another politician, but he was presented as somehow morally superior.
The Bush years represent a time when religion and politics got mixed up in very dangerous ways. This hurt politics, but it hurt religion even more.
I don’t know if Bush can be blamed for this, but he certainly thrived on it.
It’s all very well to criticize liberals for worshiping Obama, but you really need to be more honest about your own support for Bush.
October 13th, 2009 | 7:02 pm | #84
Old Crusader:
The issue is just not if prisoners have died. I know two prisoners died at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. The issue is whether the incidents were investigated and, if there was wrongdoing, were the guilty parties punished?
Atrocities have been committed in every war. The key question is whether those atrocities were standing operating procedure or were they aberrations that were investigated and punished?
October 13th, 2009 | 7:22 pm | #85
Most of these comments irk the heck out of me. The Anchoress is NOT talking about specific points in terms of right or wrong, but is MAKING AN ANALOGY!
I’m starting to think that the vast majority of people are too uneducated to understand and recognize analogies or other analytical writing devices.
From wikipedia: Analogy is a cognitive process of transferring information from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another particular subject (the target), and a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process.
It seems to me that like:
Hand – palm, Foot – sole,
the Anchoress is saying :
President A – Policy 1, President B – Policy 1.
She is not discussing the merits of any individual policy, but merely the reactions of people to the above relationships. To digress to the various policies and debate them is to MISS THE WHOLE POINT of this blog column.
My apologies for yelling. But if we were all together in person, I would probably be shaking people. This is one of the few things in life that makes me fly off the handle.
October 13th, 2009 | 7:40 pm | #86
“I’m starting to think that the vast majority of people are too uneducated to understand and recognize analogies or other analytical writing devices.”
Everybody understands this. But I also understand that she is not questioning conservatives as to why they supported Bush and his policies, but claim that Obama is “weakening America” for doing the exact same thing Bush was doing.
If she wants to accuse Obama of hypocrisy. . . he said he was against torture, but supports it, while Bush never claimed that torture was wrong. . . fine. But in as far as her accusation is aimed at liberals in general, I repeat: liberals are doing much better at criticizing their own president than conservatives did.
October 14th, 2009 | 10:12 am | #87
As to whether my responses to Joseph Marshall, who is a good friend, has been “ad hominid” or not, I will let Joseph decide on that.
No, Anchoress, your responses have not been ad hominid. Regrettably, however, my posts have been ad homonym when they have not been ad synonym.
Somebody upstream asked about the Oberman/Hanity bet. Hanity asserted on the air that “waterboarding was not torture”. Oberman offered to bet him several thousand dollars, given to charity, that he couldn’t last under waterboarding for even 3 minutes. Hanity took the bet and got no further than about 15 seconds with his dunkiing. Afterwards Hanity admitted that waterboarding was, indeed, torture.
But it is, perhaps, not so torturous as the arguments that end up getting used to justify it.
October 14th, 2009 | 1:03 pm | #88
“Somebody upstream asked about the Oberman/Hanity bet. Hanity asserted on the air that “waterboarding was not torture”. Oberman offered to bet him several thousand dollars, given to charity, that he couldn’t last under waterboarding for even 3 minutes. Hanity took the bet and got no further than about 15 seconds with his dunkiing. Afterwards Hanity admitted that waterboarding was, indeed, torture.”
A quick search on bing reveals Hannity was never waterboarded. Erich “Mancow” Muller, a shock jock from Chicago, underwent what he claimed was waterboarding and subsequently appeared on Olbermann’s show and stated waterboarding was torture.
However, e-mails subsequently surfaced that indicated the “waterboarding” was intended to be a hoax. In addition, the procedure that Mancow did actually undergo was not waterboarding. Waterboarding is supposed to simulate drowning. The water was being poured directly into Mancow’s mouth, so he was actually drowning.
October 14th, 2009 | 1:13 pm | #89
Also, those who participated in the Mancow hoax have admitted that they had no idea as to what the actual procedures and protocols were, so they made it up as they went along.
October 14th, 2009 | 1:22 pm | #90
I’m glad to see others verifying deaths in custody. I should have cited but my post was getting too long. The five suicides are crucial issues, no one can claim that these deaths were unrelated to their prolonged confinement. .murder. We do not At least one detainee died at Basram AB in Turkey and who knows how many others elsewhere. Its not like the CIA has a history of being very openon these matters. They don’t call it the Black Arts for nothing.
Trust me, the left is giving Obama plenty of grief & heat for not fulfilling various campaign promises.For example I oppose the possibility of more troops to Afghanistan from the anti killing standpoint and also because I do not believe more troops will solve a war in a country that has foiled both the British and the Russians He’s catching from both sides and trying [I hope] to balance competing interests for the greater good of all.
October 14th, 2009 | 1:26 pm | #91
It’s fun to shoot fish in a barrel, isn’t it?
Yeah, the people who “hated” Bush are silly. As are people who “hate” Obama.
So what? What does that prove? Where does that get us?
All these protestations that commenters asserting the immorality of torture are missing the point only goes to prove that the original point was uninteresting.
October 14th, 2009 | 1:34 pm | #92
As far as the actual argument goes, isn’t there a difference between introducing a policy and not completely reversing it?
By the logic of this post, if one “hates” those who established a Constitutional right to abortion, one should also hate those who have governed since then and failed to overturn it.
Of course, this isn’t what the poster believes, as evidenced by this item:
–
You hate Bush because “he created extraordinary renditions and indefinite detentions!”
Well, actually, that was President Clinton’s baby, but yes, Bush continued it. And um…it seems Obama is expanding renditions, and continuing the indefinite detentions, too. Why don’t you “hate” Obama?
–
So, in this instance, Bush’s culpability is diminished because he didn’t establish the policy.
Which isn’t the end of the world, but since this is a post whose sole purpose is to criticize others for their inconsistency, it doesn’t look good.
October 14th, 2009 | 1:48 pm | #93
“The five suicides are crucial issues, no one can claim that these deaths were unrelated to their prolonged confinement.”
So should we let them all go? There are also people in prison serving much longer sentences who have not killed themselves. You really blame the U.S. for these suicides?
“At least one detainee died at Basram AB in Turkey and who knows how many others elsewhere. Its not like the CIA has a history of being very openon these matters. They don’t call it the Black Arts for nothing.”
Actually, two died in Bagram AB in Afghanistan. The deaths were investigated. Implying that there have been other deaths elsewhere that have not been investigated is unfair to our military. No military in the world polices itself the way ours does. Have some proof before you accuse people of murder.
October 14th, 2009 | 1:55 pm | #94
However, e-mails subsequently surfaced that indicated the “waterboarding” was intended to be a hoax. In addition, the procedure that Mancow did actually undergo was not waterboarding. Waterboarding is supposed to simulate drowning. The water was being poured directly into Mancow’s mouth, so he was actually drowning.
Oh, so waterboarding is not torture then. Good thing. I’m sure this argument will be quite persuasive at the Final Judgement.
October 14th, 2009 | 3:27 pm | #95
Well, Mr. English, I must admit that you are right and I am wrong. And now that you’ve drawn me in where I really didn’t want to go, I’ll speak my mind.
I think waterboarding is a heinous thing. I think the people who defend it, for any reason, are “misguided” and I wonder why on earth you troubled to take me and my idle remark on. Are you that thin skinned about it?
In my father’s war, the people who did such things were the Nazis and the Japanese militarist fanatics. In the next war after that, the people who did such things were the North Koreans. In John McCain’s war people who did it were the North Vietnamese. In between the Soviet Union did such things, and the Chinese “cultural revolutionaries” did that or worse to each other for what were the probably the zaniest and most bewildering reasons anyone has ever done it.
These days, we are the people who do it.
Now if you can’t see that this reflects no real credit on America to have taken up this tactic from the Nazis, the Japanese militarists, the North Koreans, the Soviet KGB, the Maoist Chinese, and the North Vietnamese, I hold no brief to try to persuade you otherwise.
I wouldn’t waste my time.
October 14th, 2009 | 3:50 pm | #96
if one “hates” those who established a Constitutional right to abortion, one should also hate those who have governed since then and failed to overturn it
I assume that you mean that, if we hated the Roe majority of 1973, we should also hate the majority of the Supreme Court of the intervening years who have continued to uphold Roe, as well as those who fought against “Robert Bork’s America.”
I don’t know about the use of the word “hate” as applied to the members of the Court, but I can assure you that most pro-lifers have the same opinion of latter pro-Roe members as they did of the Roe majority, with this proviso — certain members of the Court (cough, Kennedy) should know better than to spout nonsensical ideas such as “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
October 14th, 2009 | 4:41 pm | #97
John:
“In my father’s war, the people who did such things were the Nazis and the Japanese militarist fanatics. In the next war after that, the people who did such things were the North Koreans. In John McCain’s war people who did it were the North Vietnamese. In between the Soviet Union did such things, and the Chinese “cultural revolutionaries” did that or worse to each other for what were the probably the zaniest and most bewildering reasons anyone has ever done it.”
Don’t just say “such things.” Be specific. Do you really believe waterboarding, which we have performed on 30,000 of our own troops, is the same thing as cutting off fingers, toes and other appendages to get answers? Do you really believe it is the same as attaching car battery cables to someone’s testicles to get them to talk? Do you really believe it is the same as drilling elbows and knees until you get the answer you want?
Waterboarding was far too tame for the murderous thugs you compare our interrogators to. The Japanese did use water and a board, but the water was forced down the prisoner’s throat into his stomach, with the purpose of rupturing the stomach. When they really wanted to have fun, they would have the prisoner eat uncooked rice beforehand.
What do you think interrogators can do to admitted al Qaeda leaders? No popcorn for the movie that night? The interrogator saying he will not be the prisoner’s friend anymore? How do you define “torture?”
What I am “thin-skinned” about Mr. Marshall, are accusations that the intelligence officers of the United States are the equivalent of the Nazis, Imperial Japan, and various communist murderers. That diminishes the crimes of those regimes while it slanders people who are trying to defend innocent lives.
October 14th, 2009 | 5:29 pm | #98
“which we have performed on 30,000 of our own troops”
The trainer-trainee relationship is fundamentally different from the captor-captive relationship in ways that are obvious to any who want to see them.
Millions of instances of marital intercourse are perfectly morally licit. That doesn’t make adultery and rape OK.
October 14th, 2009 | 6:29 pm | #99
Of course, the detention of those at Gitmo are not captives, and their detention is not unlawful, unlike adultery and rape. They are, rather, detainees being held under the laws of war who have been found to be unlawful enemy combatants.
It is a strange logic, though, that tries to say that it is OK to drop a bomb on their heads, but pouring water on their heads, in the same manner that it is poured on one’s own troops, is wrong.
October 14th, 2009 | 8:47 pm | #100
“Captive” does not imply lawfulness or unlawfulness — the point is the captor is in complete control of the captives. This is true if the captor is completely guilty of what he is being held for.
I’m not sure dropping a bomb is always licit, but if it is stopping an act of aggression, it can be.
The same is not true for someone who is a captive.
But I’m sure you knew that already.
October 14th, 2009 | 9:20 pm | #101
But waterboarding did stop acts of aggression.
But I’m sure you know that already.
October 15th, 2009 | 12:32 am | #102
Ok, I’ll draw it out more.
Catholic theory allows killing in self-defense under the principle of double effect. If the act is against someone engaged in an aggressive act it is permissible. I may licitly kill an intruder lunging toward my wife or children.
This is not the case with torture, including waterboarding. The captive, or detainee, or terrorist if you prefer poses no immediate threat. He is not currently engaged in an act of aggression against me. Therefore, it is not permissible to harm him under the principle of double effect.
October 16th, 2009 | 8:46 pm | #103
even my esteemed friend Joseph Marshall, seems completely disinterested in all of those similarities in policies (and differences in temperament) between Bush and Obama and in content to simply rehash old arguments, justifying his own fervent dislike of Bush
Now Anchoress, I must confess this has annoyed me. So much so that I have waited a couple of days before taking it back up. Unfortunately, the two days did nothing to defuse my annoyance.
I was going to come back when I was less annoyed and address your post point by point. However, not only has my annoyance not dissipated, when I looked over the post again it has increased.
Each and every time you ask, “Why don’t you hate Obama?” you have structured the context as that wonderful attorney’s cross-examination tactic known as the wife-beating question: “How long has it been since you’ve stopped beating your wife?”
Why am I annoyed with this? Because your questions are not disinterested and aboveboard. They are clearly motivated by political opposition to Barack Obama disguised as objective answer seeking, and you are trying to force a certain answer to make a realistic response outside of your political opposition to him impossible.
I am not interested in playing this game. I am not interested in being baited this way.
If you want to ask me about any of Obama’s policies or actions, please do not frame them with this shabby rhetorical trick.
If you do, I am perfectly willing to tell you what I think about 1] the fairness of the 2008 election, 2] Obama’s executive order concerning interrogation tactics, 3] His executive order about extraordinary renditions, or his current policy on indefinite detentions, 4] his Attorney General’s investigation of CIA interrogations, 5] His budgetary proposals, 6] His stance on Global Warming, 7] or his stance on the rag-tag of other issues your sources present–but only without the underhanded rhetorical claptrap.
Now, given the claptrap, I suspect you are not that interested in this degree of detail. So what I will say is insofar as his proposals meet my sense of fitness of things, I support them, insofar as they don’t, I oppose them. In neither case do I hate him.
But if and when I do oppose him, it will be for specific reasons, about his specific actions, buttressed by evidence and grounded in fact.
Just as I have done above with George W. Bush.
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